BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) is urging President George Bush to appoint an associate justice to the U.S. Supreme Court who is “committed to a strict individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment.”

In a July 8 letter to President Bush, CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb and Executive Director Joe Waldron said that a nominee to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor should be “committed to a strict interpretation of the Constitution and to the principles and protections of individual rights that have guided us through our first two centuries.

“That strict construction,” they wrote, “and the principles and protections of individual rights must include the individual right to keep and bear arms.”

The letter coincides with the launch of a CCRKBA fund raising effort to pay for grassroots activities and advertising in several key states, where gun owners will be urged to pressure their senators to fight any attempted filibuster, and confirm a pro-gun justice to the high court.

“With a number of legal cases affecting the rights of gun owners in the lower courts,” Gottlieb and Waldron said, “it is almost certain that the Supreme Court will address this issue in the near future. The appointment of an Associate Justice committed to a strict individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment is critical.”

Gottlieb noted that there have already been clear signals from anti-gun Senators, because pro-gun nominees to lower courts have been filibustered. He urged Mr. Bush to stand firm against such opposition.

“We are counting on you,” Gottlieb and Waldron wrote, “at this critical time in our nation’s history to make the right appointment.”