Second Amendment advocates and grassroots activists from across the nation will gather in Tampa for the 31st annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, Sept. 23-25.
The event, jointly sponsored by the Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, will be held at the Doubletree Hilton Tampa Airport Hotel. Registration is free and may be done by clicking here.
Florida Carry is serving as this year’s state host for the annual event, which will see some of the top gun rights experts participating in panel discussions and presentations.
What makes this year’s conference important is that the federal elections will be just seven weeks away when the event is held. Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton has made gun control a cornerstone of her campaign. Republican nominee Donald Trump, on the other hand, has repeatedly declared his intentions to protect the Second Amendment. Trump has been endorsed by the National Rifle Association.
The next president will fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the untimely death earlier this year of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. He was the author of the landmark 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, which affirmed that the Second Amendment protects an individual civil right to keep and bear arms.
That ruling was followed two years later by SAF’s equally, if not more important McDonald ruling that not only nullified the Chicago handgun ban but also incorporated the Second Amendment to the states via the 14th Amendment.
Whoever wins the November election could have the opportunity to name other Supreme Court justices, as well as many federal court judges. No doubt there will be at least one panel discussion during the conference stressing the importance of keeping Congress under Republican control because it is up to the Senate to confirm all court nominees.
There are widespread concerns that a Clinton victory will mean the high court ultimately gets tilted strongly to the left, and that will affect Second Amendment-related rulings for decades.
