By Mike Sweeney, Gun Owners Action League
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has aspired to higher office in Massachusetts for years. Scott Brown defeated her and the “machine” in a closely contested U.S. Senate race in 2010 but that didn’t deter her, she’s back again, this time running for Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
If ever there were a candidate that illustrates blind faith voting, Martha would be it. The brand name Democrats including Hillary Clinton and Senator Elizabeth Warren have been in state, rallying the troops to “pull the D” on November 4th, because… “progressive.”
As a gun owner and proponent of Second Amendment freedom I have never had any love for Martha. During her tenure as A.G. she always looked the other way when licensed gun owners were enduring abuse of their rights at the hands of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and has never offered any relief from the backdoor ban on common use handguns imposed by her predecessor.
To make matters worse, she also prosecuted gun owners for things like storage violations, ensuring that they lost their Second Amendment rights in Massachusetts because they didn’t lock up a firearm correctly.
One such case, which was prosecuted in 2010 before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court clearly illustrates candidate Coakley’s character.
The case known as Commonwealth v. Runyan involved a questionably legal search of a gun owners home in which police found firearms not locked up to the states standard of the law.
The case had been dismissed in lower court on the grounds of the Heller decision giving the homeowner the right to have a firearm in the home. Of course, A. G. Coakley appealed and the case moved onto State Supreme Court.
During the trial prep and arguments before the State Supreme Court A.G. Coakley showed her true colors.
On numerous occasions she cited as the states defense the Supreme Court’s Cruikshank Decision of 1875. Cruikshank is a case renowned as one of the most racist, anti-civil rights cases ever handed. For those unfamiliar with Cruikshank, it regards a massacre at the Colfax Court House where approximately one hundred fifty people guarding the premises, mostly freed black men, were disarmed and murdered by a white mob comprised of members of the KKK and other white supremacy groups of the time. The decision absolved the murderers of guilt.
It set the civil rights movement back for decades.
Coakley seized upon this horrid decision to argue her side before the State Supreme court and cited it to convince the court to disregard Heller.
She won and Runyan was sentenced. A good man was now a criminal because he didn’t lock up his guns according to the laws of Massachusetts.
Most disturbing of all though was Attorney General Coakley choosing to side with a pro KKK, anti-civil rights Supreme Court decision in order to pursue her and the states agenda.
The Massachusetts State Second Amendment rights group, Gun Owners’ Action League covered this in detail at the time of the decision, but it was widely ignored by the media, just another detail to overlook in the path of destruction left by A.G. Coakley and ignored by progressives like Clinton and Warren.
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Mike Sweeney writes for the Gun Owners Action League of Massachusetts – click here to visit their site.
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