By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Retired U.S. District Court Judge Roger T. Benitez, whose rulings on the side of the Second Amendment have earned praise from gun owners and condemnation from gun prohibitionists, reminded his audience at this year’s Gun Rights Policy Conference that the debate is not about guns, but about rights.
It is an argument which has been made by Second Amendment advocates before, and now it’s got what amounts to a “seal of approval” from a veteran jurist who admitted during remarks at the GRPC Saturday that he is “not a gun guy.”
“This group talks about guns, and that’s okay,” Judge Benitez observed. “But maybe it’s a good idea to not just think about what you’re talking about, what you’re advocating for as being about guns. It’s about civil rights. Your right to protect yourself. To protect your family. To protect your property. It’s a civil right. It’s a right that deserves just as much protection as the right to practice your religion, to be able to speak freely, to have the press, to assemble.”
At another point in his Saturday afternoon keynote address, Benitez reiterated, “The Second Amendment is no different than any other civil right in the Bill of Rights. It’s not a second class right. It is not the Rodney Dangerfield of the Bill of Rights, as a judge once said. It’s a civil right that the founders thought was sufficiently important to put into the Bill of Rights.”
Benitez, who served on the bench in San Diego’s Southern District of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, opened his remarks with a story about a couple of ducks that lived in his pool. One day he herd a commotion, and upon investigating, saw that the male duck was defending his mate from two other male ducks.
“Every species on Earth has the right, if not the obligation, to defend itself, its territory and its partner,” he stated. “And if a cute little duck will fight other ducks in order to protect his territory, his mate, why don’t we?”
He talked about the origins of the Constitution, and about how the strongest army in the world at the time, the British Army, marched on Lexington and Concord in the Massachusetts colony “to disarm the population.”
The colonials fought back.
“It wasn’t an army,” he noted. “It was a bunch of teachers, and doctors, and lawyers and blacksmiths and store clerks who used the weapons that they had, that they commonly possessed for lawful purposes, and they brought them to the battle. And with those weapons, they were able to drive the British back to Boston.”
The soft-spoken judge, who has delivered powerful rulings on gun control laws, also reminded the audience that the founders realized the country needed a government.
“But we need something else,” Benitez remarked, “and that is to limit government, to make sure that government stays within certain boundaries and that’s why they created the Constitution.
“Some folks thought the Constitution was enough,” he added. “But others thought, ‘No, we have to have something more.’ We have to have A Bill of Rights; something that is clear, something that tells the government ‘Keep your stinking hands off of these things.’ And what are those things? First Amendment, Second Amendment, Third amendment and so on.”
Prior to Benitez’ appearance as the keynoter, he was honored by the Second Amendment Foundation as the recipient of its Distinguished Service Award for 2026.
SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb stated, “His series of rulings on Second Amendment cases were more than excellent, and while many of them were overturned by the Ninth Circuit, he’s shortly going to be vindicated by the Supreme Court of the United States.”
