By Dave Workman
Former Vice President Richard “Dick” Cheney, the conservative Wyoming Republican who served eight years as second-in-line under then-President George W. Bush, and prior to that as Defense Secretary and earlier as a member of Congress, was a staunch Second Amendment champion.
Cheney died Monday night at the age of 84, his family announced, according to Fox News. When he was vice president—and Senate president—Cheney signed onto an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008, which argued the Second Amendment protected an individual right to keep and bear arms. In the unusual move, as reported by NBC News at the time, Cheney joined some 300 members of Congress in the brief, which went further than a brief submitted by the Bush administration, because the Congressional version urged the high court to declare the handgun ban in Washington, D.C. was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. It was that view which prevailed in the 2008 Heller ruling.
In a July 2000 interview with ABC News when he was running for the vice presidency, Cheney appeared on “Good Morning America” where he stated, “I was a great believer and am a great believer today in the Second Amendment — the right of citizens to keep and bear arms.” He opposed waiting periods on handguns, opposed a ban on so-called “cop killer bullets” (a term fabricated by the gun prohibition lobby) and also opposed a ban on handguns with polymer frames, which were at the time wrongly described as being able to pass through metal detectors.
In April 2004, Cheney delivered the keynote address at the National Rifle Association’s annual banquet, during which he took a swipe at Sen. John Kerry, who was then running against President Bush, as a “potential threat to gun owners,” according to NBC News.
A devoted outdoorsman, Cheney was a skilled fly fisherman and he also was a hunter. In February 2006, Cheney was involved in a highly-publicized accident when he fired a shot which left fellow hunter and longtime friend Harry Whittington with facial wounds.
Four months later, when Congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-RI)—sone of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy—was arrested for driving under the influence, Alan Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, issued a statement declaring, “I’d rather go quail hunting with Dick Cheney than get in a car being driven by a Kennedy.”
In February 2007, a suicide bomber targeted Cheney at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, while the vice president was there. The bombing killed 23 people and wounded 20 more, according to an account at Wikipedia, but Cheney was in a building a half-mile away and was not injured.
In January 2013 at the Safari Club International convention in Reno, Cheney was interviewed by MSNBC during which he talked about gun control and about having armed officers in schools to prevent campus shootings.
Cheney had suffered health problems for decades, and was a heavy smoker for some 20 years, according to biographical information. He suffered five heart attacks, underwent several heart surgeries and in 2012, received a heart transplant from an anonymous donor. At the time he was 71.
Cheney’s cause of death was described as complications from pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease.
Workman is editor-in-chief at TheGunMag.com
