The American Civil Rights Union filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on October 5, urging the Court to take the appeal of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision last March holding that the Second Amendment does protect an individual right of citizens to keep and bear arms. The ACRU wants the Court to take the case to affirm and thereby greatly strengthen this landmark ruling.

ACRU General Counsel Peter Ferrara told the Court, “The courts cannot treat the Second Amendment as a politically incorrect, disfavored stepchild of the Bill of Rights. Fidelity to the Constitution requires the courts to give it the same zealous protection as every other right stated in our founding document. The Amendment is not being read broadly to protect the rights and liberties of the people if it is somehow interpreted to allow the government to adopt a virtually complete ban on handguns, and an effective prohibition on the use of rifles and shotguns, as in this case.”

Ferrara is Legal Director and serves as General Counsel for The American Civil Rights Union (ACRU). He also is currently the Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy at the Institute for Policy Innovation and is a Senior Fellow at the Free Enterprise Fund. In addition to various speaking engagements throughout the United States, he writes and produces studies and media presentations on a wide range of domestic policy issues, including the Second Amendment, tax reform, budget issues, government spending, health care, and a personal account option for Social Security.

The ACRU is dedicated to protecting our fundamental rights and liberties across the board. The ACRU focuses, in particular, on those areas of our civil rights that are ignored, or even actively undermined, by other supposed civil liberties groups. The ACRU also supports freedom of speech and of the press, sound principles of criminal justice, and proper voting processes and procedures, among others. Our policy board is comprised of Hon. Edwin Meese, III, Judge Robert H. Bork, Hon. William Bradford Reynolds, Dean Kenneth W. Starr, Dr. James Q. Wilson, Dean J. Clayburn LaForce and Professor Walter E. Williams.