(CNN) One of President Donald Trump's appointees to the federal bench issued a controversial opinion this week with a startling opening line that amounted to a ringing endorsement of law enforcement and a dire warning to its critics.

"If we want to stop mass shootings, we should stop punishing police officers who put their lives on the line to prevent them," James Ho of the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals said in an opinion released Monday.

Ho, a former solicitor general of Texas, served in the Justice Department as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and then as an attorney-advisor to the Office of Legal Counsel. He is a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas and was nominated in 2017 and confirmed 53-43 to the conservative-leaning appeals court.

He was technically dissenting from a "denial en banc." In layman's terms, he was criticizing his colleagues on the court for clearing the path for a wrongful death case to go forward.

The case, with hotly disputed facts on both sides, concerns a shooting that occurred in 2013 and prompted a series of 911 calls and terrorized a Texas neighborhood. When police arrived on the scene, they observed an individual 150 yards away. The suspect fired at two officers and then disappeared. After a few minutes, Gabriel Winzer rode his bicycle toward the officers. Winzer's family contends he was not the suspect, but on an innocent mission to show officers his toy pistol and that his hands remained on the handlebars. The officers claimed he was armed and had raised a pistol to a firing position. The officers ultimately shot and killed Winzer.

Read More