Ethics Complaint Filed Against Ashcroft

W A S H I N G T O N, July 3 -- A pro-gun control group and a citizens' watchdog organization today accused Attorney General John Ashcroft, the nation's top law enforcement officer, of undermining one of the very laws he took an oath to defend.

"[W]e believe that Attorney General Ashcroft has blatantly violated numerous ethical guidelines that govern his conduct as an attorney toward his client, the United States of America," Michael D. Barnes, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, and Scott Harshbarger, president of Common Cause, wrote in an ethics complaint.

In the complaint, filed today with the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General and the D.C. Court of Appeals, they called for a full federal investigation.

The allegation stems from a May 17 letter from Ashcroft to the National Rifle Association, the country's largest gun-rights advocacy group. In it, the attorney general described his view that the Constitution protects the private ownership of firearms.

"[L]et me state unequivocally my view that the text and the original intent of the Second Amendment clearly protect the right of individuals to keep and bear firearms," he wrote in the two-page letter addressed to NRA Executive Director James Jay Baker.

"While some have argued that the Second Amendment guarantees only a 'collective' right of the States to maintain militias, I believe the Amendment's plain meaning and original intent prove otherwise," Ashcroft wrote.

The Second Amendment states: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The NRA boasted of Ashcroft's interpretation of the much-debated article in speeches and publications.

"[It] marks a decided reversal from the days of the Clinton/[Attorney General Janet] Reno Department of Justice," read a May 25 "Fax Alert" released by the organization. "Please feel free to contact Attorney General Ashcroft and thank him for his public support of our Right to Keep and Bear Arms."