Another ‘She said what!?’. The Justice that can’t tell you what a woman is, thinks that the goobermint should have the power to restrict the freedom of the press to protect the populace.

Just to refresh your memories. Here’s the preamble to the Bill of Rights with my emphasis of really important parts.

The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.


Noem is first governor to declare invasion before state legislature

(The Center Square) – When South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem declared an invasion before the state legislature, she became the first governor in modern history to do so.

Texas Gov. Sam Houston referred to an invasion being fought on two fronts before the Texas legislature in 1860, The Center Square first reported.

While Gov. Greg Abbott has invoked constitutional clauses, he has not declared an invasion or laid out the constitutional authority of Texas’ right to self-defense before the Texas legislature. As he’s issued executive orders and sent letters to President Joe Biden citing Texas’ constitutional right to self-defense, 55 Texas counties have passed invasion resolutions and 60 have issued disaster declarations, citing the border crisis.

Last month, Noem spoke before the South Dakota legislature to specifically address the southern border crisis. She said, “Nearly 10 million foreign nationals have broken federal law and they’ve infiltrated our country within the past three years bringing with them drugs, trafficking, crime, and violence,” creating a national security crisis. While American history is “proudly built on the stories of our ancestors who came to this country for opportunity and for a new beginning,” she said, “today, many of those who are entering our country under the current policies of the Biden administration are known terrorists. They’re criminals, they’re human traffickers, and they’re drug cartel members.”

Because of Biden’s policies, “people from over a hundred different countries have heard the story of our open border,” she said. “Countries such as Venezuela are known to be emptying out their prisons and their mental institutions, and they’re sending them to America.

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If so, we can only hope the Court takes these cases and crams their rulings in Heller, Caetano, McDonald and Bruen down the lower court’s and state’s throats


Groundswell of Second Amendment Cases Seems Destined for the Supreme Court
Federal courts in blue states seem to be upholding the majority of gun control laws, even after landmark Supreme Court decisions upholding the fundamental right to keep and bear arms

We recently posted about the New York Second Amendment case challenging New York’s concealed carry permit law that requires that a permit applicant prove to a local official that he or she is of “good moral character.” Not only is this an absurd requirement (how exactly are you supposed to prove that you have “good moral character”), but even after doing so, said local official then has complete discretion on whether to approve the applicant’s permit request . . . or not. The challengers in the case just asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case after the Second Circuit approved the “good moral character” requirement:

From our report: Second Circuit’s Partial Upholding of New York’s Gun Carry Law Appealed to SCOTUS:

The key part of the Petition [asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case] is its discussion of the New York law’s requirement that New Yorkers prove that they have “good moral character” before obtaining a concealed carry permit:

[T]his case would allow this Court the opportunity to clarify that government may not selectively disarm law-abiding members of “the people” whenever licensing officials feel they are of poor character, potentially dangerous, or otherwise unworthy of enjoying the natural right to self-defense with which they were endowed by their Creator
.

In Bruen, this Court rejected New York’s requirement that, to be authorized to bear arms in public, citizens first must demonstrate “proper cause” — defined as “a special need for self-protection.” Here, the panel sanctioned New York’s stand-in requirement that citizens convince licensing officials of their “good moral character” prior to licensure. As the district court explained, New York simply “replaced” proper cause with good moral character, “while retaining (and even expanding) the open-ended discretion afforded to its licensing officers
.”

New York’s “good moral character” standard is
a prohibited “suitability” determination and, as the district court noted, is merely a surrogate for the “proper cause” standard that was struck down in Bruen
Indeed, under the CCIA, New York officials decide whether a person “ha[s] the essential character, temperament and judgement necessary to be entrusted with a weapon
.”

It is quite difficult to understand Bruen’s criticism of “suitability” not to include “good moral character.” And it is even more difficult to believe that this Court would approve the discretionary power to deny carry licenses to “all Americans” unless they first “convince a ‘licensing officer’” of their general morality.

In doing some research to see if other cases exist that are working their way through the courts, I was surprised to find out that there are — a lot of them.

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NSSF PRAISES INDIANA GOVERNOR SIGNING LAW TO END CITY OF GARY LAWSUIT

WASHINGTON, D.C. — NSSF¼, The Firearm Industry Trade Association, praises Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb’s signing of House Bill 1235, legislation that “provides that only the state of Indiana may bring or maintain an action by or on behalf of a political subdivision against a firearm or ammunition manufacturer, trade association, seller, or dealer concerning certain matters.” The bill “prohibits a political subdivision from otherwise independently bringing or maintaining such an action.”

The industry members the City of Gary sued are expected to promptly file a motion to dismiss the case based on this new law that became effective immediately upon the Governor’s signature. Lawyers representing the city acknowledged in their testimony opposing the bill that if it were to be enacted it would mean the City of Gary’s lawsuit will be dismissed. The City of Gary’s nearly quarter-century old frivolous lawsuit against firearm manufacturers seeks to hold them responsible for the criminal actions of unrelated and remote third parties.

“This is a tremendous victory for common sense. The City of Gary never had a serious claim. Instead, it was committed to a losing strategy of lawfare to abuse the courts in order to force through gun control policy outside of legislative channels,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President & General Counsel. “NSSF is grateful for Indiana Rep. Chris Jeter for his leadership when he introduced this legislation, the Indiana legislature including Sen. Aaron Freeman for its commitment to the law and Governor Holcomb for his faithfulness to the principles of ensuring politically-motivated lawsuits don’t clog our courts and allow special-interests to circumvent the legislative authority reserved by the State of Indiana.”

The City of Gary, Ind., first filed their claims in 1999, as part of a coordinated effort by 40 big city mayors who conspired together through the U.S. Conference of Mayors with gun control activist from Brady United (formerly known as the Brady Center), lawyers and trial lawyers.

All these municipal lawsuits have either been dismissed by the courts, e.g., Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Fransico, Detroit and St. Louis, or simply dropped by several cities, e.g., Boston, Cincinnati and Camden. Many of these municipal lawsuits were dismissed based on state preemption laws enacted between the 1999 to 2001 time period upon which H.B. 1235 is modeled. Like H.B. 1235, these laws – that have been upheld by the courts – reserve to the state the exclusive authority to sue members of the industry except that they allow for breach of warranty and related claims for firearms a political subdivision purchased. 

Additionally, Congress passed in a broad bipartisan fashion, and President George W. Bush signed into law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) in 2005. The PLCAA blocks lawsuits that attempt to hold firearm and ammunition industry companies liable for the criminal actions of third parties who misuse the industry’s lawful non-defective products. More specifically, this common-sense law ensures that responsible and law-abiding federally licensed manufacturers and retailers of firearms and ammunition are not unjustly blamed in federal and state civil actions for “the harm caused by those who criminally or unlawfully misuse” these products that function as designed and intended.

Illegal Alien from Lebanon Caught at Border Admits He is Hezbollah, Hoped to Make a Bomb.

An illegal alien from Lebanon was apprehended illegally crossing the southern border near El Paso, Texas by Border Patrol agents on March 9.

Basel Bassel Ebbadi, 22, was asked what he was doing in the United States. He said he was going to New York and hoped to make a bomb. “I’m going to make a bomb.” He admitted he is a member of Hezbollah.

During a sworn interview, Ebbadi said he trained with Hezbollah for seven years. He said he was an active member guarding weapons locations for another four years.

Thanks, Joe Biden.

Ebbadi’s trained to be a jihadi to kill people “that was not Muslim,” according to ICE documents.

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Tell me about it. My insurance premium went up 10% and the Tahoee is a year older…..Of course I’m a year older too and ‘seasoned citizens’ supposedly are higher risks as they get older.


Why auto insurance costs are rising at the fastest rate in 47 years.

As car prices moderate from a pandemic-era surge, insurance has pushed the cost of car ownership to the brink for many Americans.

New data out this week showed auto insurance costs rose 20.6% from the prior year in February, matching January’s increase as the most since December 1976, when costs rose 22.4% over the prior year.

On an annual basis, motor vehicle insurance costs rose 17.4% in 2023, the most since a 28.7% increase in 1976, according to data from the BLS.

The sticker shock hitting many American drivers is being driven by a rise in accidents, the severity of accidents, and geographical factors combining to create a perfect storm and push costs higher.

The most alarming factor driving insurance costs higher is more severe claims.

“In general, the numbers of crashes, injuries, and fatalities are up, and inflation has made the cost of repairs more expensive,” AAA spokesperson Robert Sinclair told Yahoo Finance.

Sinclair said motorists developed “bad habits” on the road during pandemic lockdowns, contributing to current behavior. For example, as the New York Times reported earlier this year, researchers in Nevada discovered that during the pandemic, motorists were speeding more (and driving through intersections), seat belt use was down, and intoxicated driving arrests were up to near historic highs.

Sinclair also pointed to NHTSA data, which found that in 2021, at the height of the pandemic, road fatalities increased by 10.5% to their highest level since 2005, even while most Americans stayed at home. The NHTSA said it was the highest percentage increase it had ever seen. The agency found that fatalities in 2022 only decreased by 0.3% as compared to 2021.

Insurance tech firm Insurify found that auto insurance premium hikes were “largely due to the skyrocketing price of auto parts and the increasing number and severity of claims.” And while increases may moderate, analysts still believe further premium hikes are on the horizon.

“While the magnitude of rate increases is likely to ease somewhat, after several years of double-digit increases, some lingering claim cost inflation and adverse claim severity and frequency will likely lead to a ‘higher for longer’ auto rate environment,” CFRA analyst Cathy Seifert told Yahoo Finance.

Not surprisingly, severe accidents leave insurance companies with rising loss ratios, or a share of premiums collected that insurers paid out in claims.

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Man shot after forcing entry into Orange County home

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – A man was shot Saturday night after allegedly forcing entry into a home near Baldwin Park, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.

Deputies responded around 8:50 p.m. to the 700 block of Eldridge Street, a statement reads.

The man accused of forcing entry to the home suffered a non-life-threatening gunshot wound and was taken to a hospital in stable condition, deputies said, adding the two parties know each other.

The sheriff’s office is still investigating.

If there’s any question, he’s referring to a ‘gas pipe’ shotgun. And the price of the materials has increased significantly.


Armies of Chaos
by L. Neil Smith

Before anyone proposes more gun control, he or she should know about a simple, deadly weapon 4 times as powerful as Dirty Harry’s legendary .44 Magnum — and at least twice as concealable — that can’t be controlled.

This simple, deadly weapon can be made by anyone—even a child—with unpowered hand tools in an hour’s time using $5 worth of materials, most of which are available around the house anyway. In traditional form it’s reusable an unlimited number of times, and modern plastics have rendered its disposable version electronically undetectable. You can clear a room with such a weapon (more of a hand-held directional grenade than a gun—sort of a recyclable Claymore mine) and it’s just one of hundreds of similar time-proven designs.

Complete instructions for building this simple, deadly weapon could be given in half the space I’m using here and not require a single illustration. Or it could be done as a line-drawing and not require a word. Either way, the results would Xerox splendidly and reduce, for effortless distribution, to the size of a 3X5 card.

No, I’m not making this up.

Self-styled liberal academics and politicians generally suffer an ancient Greek prejudice against the manual trades and often fail to comprehend what it means, with respect to banning weapons, that we’re a nation of basement lathe-operators. Americans unknowingly tend to follow Mohammed’s precept that, whatever a person’s station in life, he or she should also do something manual, if only to stay grounded in reality. And if there’s any lingering doubt about the ease of basic weaponscraft, ask the Israelis who, early in their nation’s history, turned out submachineguns little more complicated than what I’m discussing here, in automotive garages lacking even a lathe.

Civilized restraint precludes my describing the weapon in any greater detail here. Many gun enthusiasts will know by now exactly what I refer to, anyway. It’s in everyday use in much of the Third World, especially where governments foolishly believe that they’ve outlawed weapons. But that, of course, is impossible—unless the same governments want to try repealing the last 1000 years of civil engineering.

Now suppose somebody went ahead and wrote out those easy-to-follow instructions, made that line drawing, or simply Xeroxed it from any of 100 sources already in print. Suppose the plans for a reusable, undetectable weapon 4 times as powerful as a .44 Magnum and twice as concealable began circulating on every junior high school campus in America. Or suppose they were simply sent to the media who can never resist giving viewers step-by-step directions for committing a crime—even as they bemoan the terribleness of it all.

So what, you say. So this: within hours, every self-styled liberal academic and politician extant would begin to weep, wail, and whimper (the only thing they’re really good at) and before the media-amplified screaming was over—but after the legislature had met—we’d find that the rights protected by the First Amendment (not created or granted, mind you, only recognized and guaranteed) are no more secure than those supposedly protected by the Second. Free expression would be trampled under without another thought or a moment’s hesitation by the same jackals, vultures, and hyenas currently leading the stampede to outlaw weapons—using exactly the same excuses.

When Xerox machines are outlawed, only outlaws will have Xerox machines.

Human rights are indivisible because there’s really only one—the right to remain unmolested by the government or by anybody else. Those who threaten one right threaten them all—and aren’t really “liberals” by any definition of the word. Suppressing the human right to own and carry weapons is a step toward suppressing the human right to read, write, and think. Ask Canadians, for whom censorship is a fact of daily life, and for whom certain “assault” books (many of them published by Paladin Press) are on the “hafta smuggle it in” list.

The same thing can and will happen here. Haven’t we had ample warning in the way self-styled liberals, assisted by the corrupt media, suppress their opposition on these and other issues? Or in their willingness to present lies as truth while the truth is called a lie? Or in the fact that elected officials who advocate gun control—which is a felony—are still at large instead of behind bars where they belong? The very existence of a gun control lobby gives the lie to any claim they make to liberalism. The word “liberal” itself is false advertising, and the question arises, why do we go on applying it when the word “fascist” is so much more appropriate?

A popular bumper sticker proclaims that “GUN CONTROL IS PEOPLE CONTROL”. More to the point, and far more sinister, gun control is MIND control. The relationship only begins with ludicrous attempts by self-styled liberals to convince a population protected by the Second Amendment that the Bill of Rights doesn’t mean what it says. Weapons consist of more than machined steel or wood, cast aluminum or plastic. As John M. Browning or Sam Colt would tell you, their second-most vital component is an idea. (The first, for better or worse, is the will to use them.) Without that idea behind it, all the steel, wood, aluminum, and plastic in the world doesn’t make a weapon.

Those who would outlaw weapons must first outlaw the knowledge of weapons. And those who would outlaw the knowledge of weapons must outlaw knowledge itself.

Similarly, civilization consists of more than just impressive public buildings and a battery of arbitrary rules. Its continued existence depends absolutely on the day-to-day good will of each and every individual. History (especially recent Soviet history) proves that this good will depends on how well individual rights are respected. Alienate the individual, lose his good will, and you lose civilization itself.

Think I exaggerate? Take another look at Beirut, Los Angeles, or the World Trade Center.

Every day we learn again how dependent we’ve been all along on individual self-restraint. Self-styled liberals label this lesson “terrorism” because it makes them feel better and helps them to forget until tomorrow. But it doesn’t matter what they call it. In sufficient numbers, disaffected individuals become armies of chaos, reducing whole civilizations to archaeological rubble. And, as with most violence in our culture, it is self-styled liberals who will make it happen here.

Sorting for Stupidity?
Thoughts on the state of the federal government.

Is the federal government sorting for stupidity?

I had this thought when I was out for beers with an old friend, who’s a former Senior Executive Service bureaucrat with the federal government.  He was remarking that in the old days of Washington, say up through the 1960s or maybe the 1970s, being a senior federal bureaucrat was a plum job, and often even paid more than working in the private sector.

That was also a time when Washington, D.C. was a comparatively sleepy town where a senior civil servant’s salary was plenty to allow a nice house in the suburbs and meals at the best restaurants (such as they were) that Washington had to offer.

Now, however, you can make much more money outside the government, trying to influence it, than you can make inside the government, trying to do your job.  The result is a steady movement of the smartest people out of government.  That of course tends to mean that the people who remain are, well, not the smartest. (There are plenty of exceptions on both sides of this, of course, but  the overall impact is as described.)

The reason why it’s so lucrative to influence the federal bureaucracy now is that the federal bureaucracy is sweeping and powerful.  You would be a fool – as Microsoft learned in the 1980s and 1990s when it bragged about not having a DC office – not to try to influence it, if only out of self-protection.  Back when the federal government was much smaller, say in the 1940s, 1950s, and even the 1960s, there was less call to influence it, and so the opportunities for people to earn big salaries by moving from administrating to lobbying were much less.  But that changed.

This happened in the early 1970s, during the Nixon Administration.  Despite (because of?) Nixon’s conservative reputation, his administration saw an explosion of federal regulatory power, to the point where those years are known among scholars of administrative law as the “regulatory explosion.”  New agencies like the EPA and OSHA were created, new statutes  like the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, OSHA Act, etc., were passed, and existing agencies were given – or simply assumed – much farther-reaching powers.

As Jonathan Rauch notes in his classic book, Demosclerosis, in 1929 the federal government made up about three percent of the U.S. economy.  Now it’s closer to twenty-five percent.

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They’ve – sorta – made several movies about this.


The New World on Mars: What We Can Create On The Red Planet.

Robert Zubrin, world-renowned space authority and founding president of the Mars Society, taps today’s newest science and most dogged research to foretell in astounding detail the brave, new Martian civilization we will achieve when (not if!) humankind colonizes Mars

When Robert Zubrin published his classic book The Case for Mars a quarter century ago, setting foot on the Red Planet seemed a fantasy. Today, manned exploration is certain, and as Zubrin affirms in The New World on Mars, so too is colonization. From the astronautical engineer venerated by NASA and today’s space entrepreneurs, here is what we will achieve on Mars and how.

SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic are building fleets of space vehicles to make interplanetary travel as affordable as Old-World passage to America. We will settle on Mars, and with our knowledge of the planet, analyzed in depth by Dr. Zubrin, we will utilize the resources and tackle the challenges that await us. What we will we build? Populous Martian city-states producing air, water, food, power, and more.

Zubrin’s Martian economy will pay for necessary imports and generate income from varied enterprises, such as real estate sales—homes that are airtight and protect against cosmic space radiation, with fish-farm aquariums positioned overhead, letting in sunlight and blocking cosmic rays while providing fascinating views. Zubrin even predicts the Red Planet customs, social relations, and government—of the people, by the people, for the people, with inalienable individual rights—that will overcome traditional forms of oppression to draw Earth immigrants. After all, Mars needs talent.

With all of this in place, Zubrin’s Red Planet will become a pressure cooker for invention, benefiting humans on Earth, Mars, and beyond. We can create this magnificent future, making life better, less fatalistic. The New World on Mars proves that there is no point killing each other over provinces and limited resources when, together, we can create planets.

The Amazing True Story Of The Real St. Patrick

St. Patrick really existed, and the ripple effects of what he accomplished during his lifetime are still being felt today.  Sadly, very few people know the true story of this remarkable man.  If you have a few moments, please let me share that story with you.  Once you understand what really happened, you will never view St. Patrick’s Day the same way again.  Today, most people regard St. Patrick’s Day as an excuse to wear green and get drunk.  According to Wikipedia, St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated in more nations “than any other national festival”


Saint Patrick’s Day is a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland,[13] Northern Ireland,[14] the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador (for provincial government employees), and the British Overseas Territory of Montserrat. It is also widely celebrated in the United Kingdom,[15] Canada, Brazil, United States, Argentina, Australia, South Africa,[16] and New Zealand, especially amongst Irish diaspora. Saint Patrick’s Day is celebrated in more countries than any other national festival.[17] Modern celebrations have been greatly influenced by those of the Irish diaspora, particularly those that developed in North America. However, there has been criticism of Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations for having become too commercialised and for fostering negative stereotypes of the Irish people.[18]

So was there an actual historical figure that inspired this holiday?
Yes, but the truth is that the real St. Patrick wasn’t even Irish.

Maewyn Succat was born in Britain some time around AD 387 to Christian parents.
But he did not embrace the faith of his parents during his youth.
In fact, he considered himself to be “idle and callow” when he was a boy.

A turning point came when he was taken captive by Irish raiders at the age of 16


At the age of 16, Patrick was taken prisoner by a group of Irish raiders who were attacking his family’s estate. They transported him to Ireland where he spent six years in captivity. (There is some dispute over where this captivity took place. Although many believe he was taken to live in Mount Slemish in County Antrim, it is more likely that he was held in County Mayo near Killala.)

During this time, he worked as a shepherd, outdoors and away from people. Lonely and afraid, he turned to his religion for solace, becoming a devout Christian. (It is also believed that Patrick first began to dream of converting the Irish people to Christianity during his captivity.)

He was finally able to escape after six years in Ireland, and he was reunited with his family.

But some time later he was instructed in a dream to return to Ireland as a missionary


After more than six years as a prisoner, Patrick escaped. According to his writing, a voice—which he believed to be God’s—spoke to him in a dream, telling him it was time to leave Ireland.

To do so, Patrick walked from County Mayo, where it is believed he was held, to the Irish coast. After escaping to Britain, Patrick reported that he experienced a second revelation—an angel in a dream tells him to return to Ireland as a missionary.

Patrick’s return to Ireland was spectacularly successful.

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Az Senate approves extension of “castle doctrine” self-defense law

PHOENIX – A Senate committee approved an expansion of Arizona’s “castle doctrine” self-defense to make it apply not just in someone’s home and yard but on any property they own or control after a fiery debate on Thursday.

The fight between Republicans backing what the sponsor of House Bill 2843 originally framed as a needed protection for farmers and ranchers against Democrats who said it targeted migrants.

But in debate at the Judiciary Committee that lasted an hour, Rep. Justin Heap, R-Mesa, the sponsor of the measure, said it had nothing to do with migrants and only makes a minor change to the existing law.

“It just makes it clear to judges in what circumstances you can raise a defense in court,” Heap told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

That, however, is not how Heap sold the measure when it went through the House.

He told colleagues that the law was needed specifically to give ranchers and farmers tools they need to stop large number of migrants from crossing their lands. Those remarks during testimony in an earlier House committee hearing were widely reported in various news media.

During that much more sedate House hearing last month, Heap said the change would simply give legal cover for property owners to threaten to use deadly force to evict a trespasser on vast swaths of the state’s open ranch and farm land. If they actually used deadly force, they’d have to show they were themselves threatened.

Heap tried to walk back those statements on Thursday, saying the change in law he was proposing had nothing to do with immigration. But the damage was done.

“My first question would be why were you surprised that the attention that this has brought is what it is,” Sen. Anna Hernandez, D-Phoenix, asked Heap.

Heap said statements he was quoted as making at that hearing were inaccurately conveyed.

But numerous Democrats read directly from transcripts during Thursday’s hearing. And a review by Capitol Media Services of Heap’s testimony confirmed it.

Republicans, however, slammed the media for crafting an inaccurate narrative. Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said it does not change existing law that only allows someone to shoot in defense of themselves or someone else.

“Yet all the opponents of this bill have blanketed the news media with ‘you can use deadly force in your house and now we’re taking it outside,'” said Kavanagh. “The result will be some people may be killed because of misinformation gun control people against this bill have spread all over the place.”

He said people who believe that could end up being charged with homicide because they thought the reports were accurate.

“Let’s stop the misinformation,” he added.

“This bill does nothing but expand the area of the existing law, which doesn’t allow deadly force purely for trespass,” Kavanagh said. “And decent people who were misled by that lie will end up being prosecuted for criminally negligent homicide or manslaughter because they thought that they could shoot to kill in their house.”

Others, however, said the effects of what Heap is proposing are significant.

Anne Thompson, a volunteer for Moms Demand Action, a group that pushes for strong gun laws, urged the panel not to broaden the state’s self-defense laws.

“Unfortunately, the ramifications of this bill can be dehumanizing and can provoke vigilantism and escalate conflicts to violence,” Thompson said.

Marilyn Rodriguez, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, warned that enacting the measure would be misread by ordinary people – namely the farmers and ranchers Heap initially said he was trying to help.

“Often, it is applied so broadly by individuals and then held up by law enforcement as a means to shoot and kill trespassers who are marching across your farmland at the border,” Rodriguez said.

Arizona has several trespassing laws on the books, including one that already allows a property owner or manager to order someone to leave their land and to ask law enforcement officers to compel them to do so or be arrested.

The change in law that Heap is proposing is in the actual self-defense law. Currently, that law applies only to a residence or a residential yard.

The measure was passed by the committee on a 4-3 vote, with only Republicans in support.

“Every week I’m amazed by the egregious types of bills that we hear in this committee and other committees and as we vote for them in the (majority Republican) makeup of what exists now,” Hernandez said. “The fact that we’re trying to expand legislation that would encourage killing and shooting that would result in death is wild to me.”

Republicans continued to push back, calling the narrative embraced by minority Democrats false.

“I am disturbed by the amount of misinformation and politicking taking place from the left side of the dais today,” said Sen. Justine Wadsack, R-Tucson. “And if you read the bill, you would see that your arguments have nothing to do with the bill. You’ve clearly not read the bill.”

That prompted one last eruption during the hearing, this one from Sen. Mitzi Epstein, D-Tempe.

“I clearly read the bill, aloud, to the audience, so do not accuse me of not reading the bill,” Epstein said.

“Misinformed, misinformed,” Wadsack shot back.

Heap said during House meetings that he was pushing for the change because of concerns with ambiguities in the current law raised by prosecutors in Yuma and Yavapai counties. But the two county attorneys, Jon Smith in Yuma and Dennis McGrane in Yavapai, told Capitol Media Services they had not asked for the law to be changed.

McGrane said a recent case in his county did involve questions about how the law it applied in specific circumstances. He said, though, someone outside his office raised it with a lawmaker.

Attorney General Labrador Leads 27 States Encouraging SCOTUS Overturn Gun and Magazine Ban in Illinois

The following press release was sent out by the Office of Attorney General RaĂșl Labrador. Press releases do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of those at the Idaho Dispatch.

BOISE – Attorneys General RaĂșl Labrador of Idaho and Todd Rokita of Indiana led 26 other states in filing a brief with the United States Supreme Court challenging Illinois’ unconstitutional ban of AR-15 rifles and their standard 30-round magazines.

“This ruling from the Seventh Circuit flies in the face of the Bruen decision and the Second Amendment’s unqualified command,” said Attorney General Labrador. “To restrict an inanimate object based on nothing more than cosmetic appearance is absurd, and the Supreme Court needs to make this right with all expediency.”

The Seventh Circuit’s decision in Barnett v. Raoul found the Illinois gun ban constitutional, holding that the plain language of the Second Amendment and the term “Arms” does not apply to AR-15s because of their militaristic appearance. The Seventh Circuit’s decision lacks any textual or historical basis. In fact, the arms the Second Amendment originally protected were those used in military combat. The Seventh Circuit’s analysis bears no resemblance to the analysis prescribed by the Supreme Court of the United States.

The brief asks the Supreme Court to grant certiorari and correct the Seventh Circuit’s erroneous decision, arguing that,

“[e]ven apart from having no basis in the text of the Second Amendment, the Seventh Circuit’s artificial divide between “militaristic” firearms and firearms used for self-defense is indefensible.”

This brief was also joined by Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming, and the State Legislatures of Arizona and Wisconsin.

No charges in NYC subway shooting; Brooklyn DA cites “evidence of self-defense”

EW YORK  The Brooklyn district attorney said Friday he will not be filing any criminal charges right now against the shooter in Thursday’s subway shooting due to self-defense.

The chaotic scene happened right during the evening rush and unfolded on videos posted across social media.

On Friday, the NYPD responded to the terror witnessed on board.

The news briefing that took place in the afternoon made clear what the investigation had concluded at the moment — that the passengers of the train had to act and disarm an attacker with a gun, including the man who police say shot the attacker with it.

A few hours later, the DA’s office followed suit.

Cellphone video obtained by CBS New York of the inside the moving A train shows the terrifying situation as it escalated during Thursday afternoon’s rush hour. It left a 36-year-old man in critical condition after being shot in the head. However, on Friday afternoon, the DA’s office said it would not be charging the man who pulled the trigger, saying in a statement, “Evidence of self-defense precludes us from filing any criminal charges.”

“It was incredible what people from the community did yesterday, people who tried to intervene,” NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey said.

Maddrey and NYPD officials say the 36-year-old man aggressively approached a 32-year-old man, eventually pulling out a gun that was wrestled away. Police say the 32-year-old then shot the alleged attacker in the head with his own gun.

Police said they also want to talk to a woman who had a sharp object or knife and stabbed the 36-year-old man during the confrontation. She was apparently traveling with the 32-year-old man, CBS New York’s Lori Bordonaro reported.

Police released video they say shows the attacker entering the subway from the emergency exit before the incident, without paying a fare. During the briefing Friday, NYPD officials centered their focus on that.

“Sometimes people ask why would we do such a big operation for people not paying a $2.90 fare,” NYPD Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry said. “We are seeing a small group of people doing these operations that don’t pay their fare that are recidivists, that have warrants.”

The witness who shot the dramatic cellphone video describes to CBS New York the terrifying moments on board the moving train.

“I see blood coming out when they’re on top of each other,” the woman named Sherri said. “He pulled out the gun, and I said, ‘It’s time to go.'”

Other New Yorkers chimed in on the violence underground.

“I’m a New Yorker. I’ve been here my whole life, so I know the subway culture,” Aaron Mealy said. “If an altercation happens on the subway, you can’t get off until the next stop, so it’s best to de-escalate the situation.”

“We can’t say, ‘Oh, this happened on the subway, the subway is dangerous.’ No, there’s a bigger issue, and if we don’t address those issues it’s gonna keep happening, whether it’s on a bus or the street,” Nysheva Starr said.

CBS New York asked Mayor Eric Adams about the shooting at an event on Friday morning.

“These random acts of violence send the wrong message. I’m really pleased with the police department being there to apprehend and make sure other people are not injured,” he said.

Over the last several weeks, the mayor and Gov. Kathy Hochul have both made a point to stress the importance, not of the numbers, of whether people feel safe, which is part of the reason why the National Guard was called in. But during Friday’s news briefing, Deputy Commissioner Daughtry pointed out that while many saw what happened Thursday, millions got to their destination safely.

So far this year, there have been eight shooting victims in the transit system. In the same period last year, there was just one. There have also been 17 gun arrests, versus eight last year.

Goobermints and Bureaucraps didn’t listen because there was just too much of an opportunity presented for them to grab whatever power they could to increase their control over the populace.


The Prophets: D.A. Henderson. Years before Covid, the scientist credited with eradicating smallpox warned against shutting down the world to combat an epidemic.

In 2006, ten years before his death at the age of 87, the legendary epidemiologist D.A. Henderson laid out a plan for how public health officials should respond to a major influenza pandemic. It was published in a small journal that focused mainly on bioterrorism—and was quickly forgotten.

As it turns out, that paper, titled “Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza,” was Henderson’s prescient bequest to the future. If we had followed his advice, our country—indeed, our world—could have avoided its disastrous response to Covid.

This month marks the four-year anniversary of lockdowns on a global scale. And though the pandemic has passed, its consequences live on. The lockdowns embraced by the U.S. public-health establishment meant that millions of young people had their education and social development disrupted, or left school for good. Mental health problems rose substantially. So did incidents of domestic violence and overdose deaths.

It didn’t have to be that way.

Last year, Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health during the pandemic, said at a conference, “If you’re a public health person, you have this narrow view of what the right decision is. . . . you attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life. You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives [or] ruins the economy. This is a public health mindset.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the president during much of the pandemic, was asked in the fall of 2022 whether he regretted his advocacy of lockdowns. He said, “Sometimes when you do draconian things, it has collateral negative consequences. . . on the economy, on the schoolchildren.” But, he added, “the only way to stop something cold in its tracks is to try and shut things down.”

It’s no secret that Fauci’s draconian recommendations did nothing to stop the virus, nor did closing schools save children’s lives. And the idea asserted by Collins and Fauci that public health is about a single metric—stopping a disease, no matter the unintended consequences—was an inversion of the principles espoused by D.A. Henderson. 

Public health, as Henderson knew well, is very much about the entire health of society. A lifetime of watching people react to pandemics had taught him two essential things.

First, there were limits to what can be done to stop one. As Dr. Tara O’Toole, a close colleague and one of his three co-authors on that 2006 paper told me, “D.A. kept saying, ‘You have to be practical, and you have to be humble, about what public health can actually do, especially over sustained periods. Society is complicated, and you don’t get to control it.’ ” (While the paper dealt with influenza, its lessons applied to what we faced with the novel coronavirus.)

Second, Henderson believed in targeted protection for the ill and medically vulnerable, and that overreacting, in the form of shutting down society, would bring enormous harm that could be worse than the virus. 

“Be not afraid of any man;
No matter what his size;
When danger threatens, call on me;
And I will equalize!”
-Colt’s revolver advertisement, 1870s

“Put your trust in God….but keep your powder dry!”
-Oliver Cromwell, 1642


Terrorism is a disease. Constitutional carry is the cure
FBI’s latest terrorism warning is dire and should not go unheeded.

FBI Director Christopher Wray must be frustrated. He issued one of the strongest terrorism warnings earlier this week, but few seemed to notice and even fewer seemed to care. Instead, the legacy media remained fixated on the testimony of former special counsel Robert K. Hur, who concluded that Joe Biden committed multiple federal crimes but was too incompetent to stand trial. While Hur’s findings were certainly newsworthy, they were not news. Most of the country already knew Old Yeller’s best days are behind him.

Wray’s warning, however, was dire. He told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that known or suspected terrorists were infiltrating the country across the wide-open southern border using counterfeit documents. One of the smuggling networks, he said, has ties to ISIS. Add to this the thousands of unknown border crossers from countries that hate us, and the more than 80,000 military-age males from China, and you have a terrorist hellbroth just waiting to bubble over.

“The threats from homegrown violent extremists that is jihadist-inspired, extremists, domestic violent extremists, foreign terrorist organizations, and state-sponsored terrorist organizations all being elevated at one time since October 7, though, that threat has gone to a whole other level,” Wray said. “And so, this is a time I think for much greater vigilance.”

We should thank Director Wray for his timely information and for his candor. This is precisely why we have fought so long and so hard to restore our Second Amendment rights, so that law-abiding Americans no longer have to bend a knee and beg the Crown to sell them back their constitutional rights in the form of a permit to carry defensive arms. Constitutional carry levels the playing field, making it easier for the good guys and gals to lawfully carry arms.

In the 29 states that now offer some form of constitutional carry, when a terrorist rears their ugly head — be they a card-carrying ISIS member or a lone-wolf jihadist — Americans can take immediate action without waiting for First Responders to arrive, assess the situation, plan and then respond.

Time and time again, we have seen how judicious marksmanship can end a madman’s murderous plans.

  • In 2015, an off-duty police officer shot two home-grown terrorists who were trying to gain entry to an exhibit at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, which featured images of Muhammad. ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) took credit for the attack — their first upon American soil.
  • In 2019, 71-year-old Jack Wilson dropped a 43-year-old shotgun-wielding madman, who had fatally shot two parishioners at the West Freeway Church of Christ in a Fort Worth suburb, with a single round to the head.
  • In 2022, Elisha Dicken fired 10 rounds from his Glock at a madman who was shooting people inside an Indiana shopping mall. Eight of Dicken’s rounds struck the bad guy, who was 40-yards away. Dicken was carrying his Glock lawfully because of Indiana’s recently enacted constitutional carry law.

Despite these and many lesser-known examples, the left and the legacy media they control still consider an armed response by a private citizen a fantasy. Instead, they continue to push the laughable Run, Hide, Fight response.

One of the most important lessons learned after last year’s Hamas attacks is that terrorists are capable of much better planning than most thought possible, especially when paired with a state sponsor such as Iran. There is no reason not to believe a terrorist group would be even more prepared for an attack on American soil. Their target analysis will likely include the possibility of armed opposition. In other words, the terrorists are more likely to focus on a target where concealed carry is heavily regulated if not impossible, and civilians have no option other than to run, hide or fight.

Despite our misgivings about the FBI and how it has been weaponized by the Biden-Harris administration, Wray’s warning should not go unheeded. However, now is not the time for paranoia. The main goal of terrorism is to terrorize. They want us to overreact, change our lifestyle and curtail our own freedoms.

Instead, use the time Wray has given us to service or upgrade your EDC. Replace batteries. Re-confirm zero. Buy those extra mags you’ve wanted. Most importantly, go to the range and train. Shoot up your old defensive ammo and replace it with new.

There are 21 states that do not offer any form of constitutional carry, including several that make it nearly impossible for law-abiding Americans to defend themselves. This will prove to be a deadly mistake and it must change. Once your EDC is prepped, please help make that change.

Constitutional carry saves lives and it should be the law of the land. Every American should enjoy their God-given right of self-defense, regardless of where they live.