Editorial O’ The Day

Yanis: Preserve, Pass On Legacy of Second Amendment

“Remember what brought you to where you are. Remember why you love doing what you’re doing and keep it going.”

That was the message from Jared Yanis, host of the YouTube channel Guns & Gadgets, who addressed the Gun Rights Policy Conference, challenging the audience to not only teach the next generation how to shoot, but why Americans have the special right to keep and bear arms.

“We have some incredible firearms instructors in this country,” Yanis observed. “We have competitive shooting, hunting, concealed carry classes, millions and millions of parents are teaching their kids, sons and daughters, about firearms safety. We have a pretty good chance of them being taught the right way.

“What worries me is much bigger,” he admitted. “Will the next generation understand WHY they have the right to do this? That’s a much bigger question, because there are two different things:

“Knowing how to operate a firearm is a skill,” he explained. “But understanding why the American citizen has the right to keep and bear arms is true education. If we lose that education, we will eventually lose that right.”

Yanis was not so much “preaching to the choir,” he was challenging every grassroots activist in the room to go beyond passing along a tradition, and carry on the process to a next level.

“We need to ask ourselves a difficult question: What exactly are we trying to preserve,” he posited. “Are we trying to preserve gun ownership? I’m not. Are we trying to preserve the principle that makes gun ownership a right in the first place? That’s what I’m about, because they’re not the same thing.”

He acknowledged that people in other countries own firearms, but under far different circumstances. It might involve licensing, government approval, registration and other restrictions.

“America was built around something fundamentally different,” he said. “The government doesn’t give you any of our rights. They’re just stewards of our rights. The Constitution doesn’t give us the right. The Bill of Rights doesn’t give us the right. We had those rights before anyone put quill to parchment.

“Now, the Second Amendment recognizes a pre-existing right that belongs to us, the people and it tells government ‘You shall not infringe,’” he stressed. “That distinction is everything. I don’t think we’re teaching it that way nearly enough.”

One problem with the current battle to protect Second Amendment rights is that people have become focused on “the controversy of the moment,” Yanis explained. This could involve bans on so-called “assault weapons,” original-capacity magazines, pistol braces or the “zero tolerance” philosophy of the Biden administration, which focused on cancelling federal firearms licenses for literally any infraction.

“Sometimes we become so focused on fighting the latest infringement,” Yanis observed, “that we forget to explain why that fire we’re fighting matters in the first place.”

Yanis focused on semi-auto rifles. He brought up the argument anti-gunners have made, that “nobody needs an AR-15.”

“And you’ll say, ‘Yes I do,’” he noted. “But why? Because it’s my right, or because the Second Amendment says so.

“If our education ends there,” he said, “we have a serious problem in America, because somebody on the other side is going to teach that young person, they’re going to give them an explanation of why they think they shouldn’t have an AR15. They’re going to talk about public safety, crime, mass shootings; all the blue tokens they throw out there to make people feel it in their hearts.”

He then boiled things down for the audience to remember and take home.

“The Founders didn’t include the Second Amendment because they loved guns,” Yanis said. “They included it because they understood power, and that’s the conversation we need to bring back to the forefront.

“The Constitution is fundamentally a document about power,” he continued. “Who has it. Where it comes from, how much the government possesses, how that power is divided and what happens when government exceeds it.

“The Founders had just fought a revolution against the most powerful government that they knew, and the most powerful military on this rock,” Yanis recalled. “And they didn’t emerge from that experience believing that human beings would suddenly stop abusing that authority. In fact, they knew it would happen again. So they built a system based on the opposite assumption, that power must be divided, it must be checked, and certain rights must remain beyond government’s legitimate reach.”

Among these are speech, religion, assembly and the right to keep and bear arms. Yanis explained how the Second Amendment is not just about a right to keep and bear arms. It’s about the entire constitutional philosophy, he said; the relationship between the citizen and the state.

“Once you understand that philosophy,” he stated, “once you get that relationship, once you know what the founders believed when they fought for this, the Second Amendment makes a lot more sense to you.”

He closed by reminding the GRPC audience that passing on the tradition in all the traditional ways is good and proper.

“Taking your kids shooting is fantastic,” Yanis affirmed. “Teaching them firearms safety is essential. Teaching them how to hunt is wonderful. But at some point, maybe on the ride home from those things, turn around and ask them this ‘Do you know why you have this right?’

“Teach them about Lexington and Concord,” he advised. “Teach them what happened on April 19, 1775.

Tell them why ordinary people possess arms and why it matters. Teach them about the Bill of Rights.

Teach them that with rights come responsibilities and that an armed citizen should be safe, but a responsible citizen, an informed citizen and most importantly, a citizen, and not a subject.”

Well, Biden was senile even then, so…..

Joe Biden Said “You Couldn’t Buy a Cannon.” Wrong.

He said the Second Amendment limited the people and the weapons they could own. The text limits the government. A letter of marque took private cannon as given.

On June 23, 2021, in the State Dining Room, he said: “The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn’t buy a cannon.”

That is the claim. The Amendment limited the people. It limited the cannon.

The text does the opposite.

“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.”

Shall not be infringed is a limit on the government. It is not a menu of who may own what. The Constitution does not grant rights. It does not hand the people a list and cross the cannon off.

What the founding record shows

Jonathan Goldstein, The Militia of the Sea: The Marque and Reprisal Clause as Textual Proof of Private Heavy-Arms Ownership at the Founding (SSRN 7195398, written July 28, 2026; last revised August 13, 2026), reads that claim against the Constitution’s own text.

People could own cannons. That is the point.

Article I, section 8, clause 11 lets Congress “grant letters of marque and reprisal.” A letter of marque authorizes a private citizen to fight in his own ship, with his own cannon. Goldstein: “A license presupposes what it licenses. The Clause takes a privately owned, cannon-armed fleet as given; nothing in the Constitution creates it.” His word “license” means the commission. It is not a carry permit.

Congress issued on the order of 1,700 privateering commissions in the Revolution, voyage by voyage, before the Constitution was ratified. The commission licensed the fight. It did not issue the guns. “The private citizen needed a federal commission to fight. He needed no one’s leave to acquire the guns or to keep them.”

The keep-rule is on the government

Article I, section 10, clause 3 says no state shall, without Congress’s consent, “keep troops, or ships of war in time of peace.”

That keep-rule is on the sovereign. Goldstein: “The Framers made a sovereign ask permission to keep a warship. They made the shipowner ask no one.” And: “Nowhere does the Constitution provide that no person shall keep a ship of war without consent.”

The same Constitution that told a state to ask before it kept a ship of war told the shipowner to ask no one.

Nothing in it says you couldn’t buy a cannon.

Second Shot at the Second Amendment: Could Heller Be Undone by an Errant Qualifier?

Many of us are gearing up with columns previewing the Court’s October term and have highlighted the upcoming arguments over bans on AR-15s and semiautomatic weapons out of the Seventh Circuit in Chicago (Viramontes v. Cook County) and the Second Circuit in New York (Grant v. Higgins).

In a recent column, Professor Rory Little suggests that these cases will strike at what he considers a glaring flaw in the Heller decision that recognized the individual right under the Second Amendment. Professor Little repeats a common claim about Heller that some of us have challenged. I wanted to briefly address that controversy again.The column appeared in Scotusblog, a respected site that offers tracking and commentary on pending Supreme Court cases. Here is the portion that I wanted to address:

The 2008 Heller decision, which changed precedent to find a Second Amendment right to own handguns for self-defense, was decided 5-4. To me (and others) it is clear that Justice Antonin Scalia had to include various qualifiers in his opinion, or he would have lost one or two of his five votes and Heller would have come out differently.

Part III of the opinion was clearly added to capture, or keep, the narrow but earth-shattering majority, and ought to be viewed as the binding judgement of the court. Specifically, in addition to listing various “longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms” left undisturbed, part III said “we also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. … the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time’” (quoting United States v.Miller, a 1939 precedent upholding bans on machine guns).

I add emphasis on “at the time,” because the Viramontes briefing all but ignores what the court said was this “important limitation.”

As the solicitor general’s brief notes, “the AR-15 rifle was developed in 1956,” and the first semiautomatic rifle of any kind was sold in 1903. Thus, while they may be the “most commonly owned rifle[] in America” today (albeit by less than 10% of all Americans), semi-automatic rifles were undisputedly not in common use “at the time” the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791.

Indeed, as the SG’s brief also explains, it is the modern technological developments in the AR-15 that makes it popular today. (This is also why they are commonly used in mass-shootings.) Rather, the solicitor general’s Viramontes brief subtly changes the language, saying (on page 21) that the proper Second Amendment test is whether AR-15s “are in common use” today (again, my emphasis).

This radically departs from the doctrinal limits that were essential to cementing the Heller result. In his 2025 dissent from denial of certiorari, Kavanaugh (joined by Justice Samuel Alito) adopted this same semantic transfiguration of Heller (changing “were” to “are”) – an error (or strategy) presaged in Kavanaugh’s 2011 Circuit judge dissent when Heller was remanded in 2011.

Many folks will be listening on Dec. 2 to see whether a majority of justices will agree that Heller did not actually mean what it appeared to say.

As others have noted, this is an old saw repeated by many critics of Heller.

Justice Scalia anticipated this argument in the actual Heller decision. He wrote:

“Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment.

We do not interpret constitutional rights that way…Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”

As I recently discussed in a column, this issue came up nine years ago when Massachusetts attempted to ban stun guns. The Court issued a per curiam opinion in Caetano v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts that sent back a case to the First Circuit and rejected the logic that they were not in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s enactment. The Court pointed out that in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 582 (2008), it expressly rejected that argument and held that the Second Amendment “extends . . . to . . . arms . . . that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” It also rejected two other rationales. (Notably, the Court is considering another stun gun case in Calce v. New York after the Second Circuit failed to heed the warning of the Court).

Notably, a new challenge has been filed in Connecticut over a ban of convertible handguns. It is likely to raise many of these same issues. The Firearm Industry Trade Association filed a lawsuit this week that will be before the district court as the Supreme Court hears arguments on the two pending cases.

I obviously disagree with Professor Little and other experts who raise this claim. There are, of course, good-faith arguments against the Heller decision. Some like Professor Little view that decision as “earth-shattering.” I do not. I still believe the Court was correct in viewing this as an individual right. However, I do not believe that this claim of a glaring and hypocritical contradiction between Heller and later cases is fair or supported. There was no sleight of hand in “changing ‘were’ to ‘are.’”

This really does not come down to a change in verbs. While many hope that packing the Supreme Court will result in an immediate reversal of Heller, it is unlikely to turn on the word “were.”

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”

1791 Does Not Give You a Menu

The Founders did not say a State may pick a manner of carry and extinguish the other. Concealment-as-such is not a 1791 category. When the early republic later regulated manner — starting in 1813 — it regulated secrecy and left open carry standing. Chandler and Nunn are that analogue, not a State menu.

Madison’s text is “keep and bear.” St. George Tucker, writing the first major American Blackstone in 1803, treats the Amendment as the “true palladium of liberty,” self-defense as “the first law of nature,” and stresses that unlike England the American right has no “condition or degree” qualifier. (Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries, 1803, app. 300.) He is attacking disarmament-by-pretext (game laws), not drafting a concealed-vs-open codebook. He never says the legislature may elect one mode and abolish the other.

If you want a Founding-era practice rule, it is this: peaceable public carry was not a crime in the early republic, and concealed-weapons statutes almost do not exist until 1813 onward. Kopel’s count is eight states before 1846, mostly Southern plus Indiana. That inventory is Clayton E. Cramer, Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic (1999). That timing matters. A wave of dirk / Bowie / “secret assassination” statutes a generation after ratification is not the 1791 settlement.

What the 1840s–50s Courts Actually Held — and What They Did Not

This is the layer the cases actually use.

Bliss v. Commonwealth (Ky. 1822) goes the other way: a conceal ban was void because it forbade a manner that was lawful when the state constitution was adopted. Kentucky later amended its constitution to authorize conceal bans. Bliss is the high-water mark that the right includes even the secret mode.
State v. Reid (Ala. 1840): a conceal ban can stand if the arm can still be borne openly; a “regulation” that makes the arm “wholly useless for the purpose of defence” would be void.
Nunn v. State (Ga. 1846): the conceal half of the statute stands; the open-carry prohibition is “in conflict with the Constitution, and void.” Heller later cites Nunn with approval.
State v. Chandler, 5 La. Ann. 489 (1850): the 1813 act is valid because it “interfered with no man’s right to carry arms … ‘in full open view.’” That open mode “is the right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.” Concealment was the vice (secret advantage / assassination). Openness was the equality condition.

Read those holdings in order and the modern slogan falls apart. They are not “the State may choose open or concealed.” They are “the State may burden the secret mode because the constitutional mode remains.”

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BLUF
There are far too many conservative politicians and commentators who lack spines. They are afraid to stand tall, and they will retreat even before being criticized.

Why Conservatives on this Side of the Atlantic Lose.

I am an expat U.S. citizen writing to you from Ireland. I doubt it will surprise you that here, in Ireland, and across the nearby islands of the East Atlantic archipelago (a/k/a the British Isles), there are few conservative newspapers, podcasters, and other pundits. Amongst the handful of conservative commentators is nothing like a spirit of cooperation. The larger number of them are prima donnas who will bad mouth other conservatives for no apparent reason at all. And for the crumbs of popularity and social media engagement, they are all too willing to engage in random anti-Americanism and TDS-driven commentary.

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Texas2AAttorney
CJGRISHAM

Every legal system rests on an answer to one question: who has final authority? Our Constitution answers it clearly and succinctly: Sovereignty rests in the people, exercised through written law, amendable by us, binding on everyone equally.

Classical Islamic jurisprudence answers that question differently. Sharia is not merely private devotion. It is a comprehensive legal order covering contract, family, inheritance, criminal punishment, and the terms on which one may leave the faith. In its traditional formulation, that law is divine, and therefore not subject to amendment by any legislature, including ours.

Where those systems meet, the friction is real. Our First Amendment protects the right to blaspheme, to convert, to ridicule any doctrine. Traditional Islamic law treats apostasy and blasphemy as offenses. Our Fourteenth Amendment demands equal protection. Traditional rules of inheritance and testimony assign different weight to men and women. These are not caricatures. They are positions found in the standard schools of jurisprudence.

American law has always accommodated religious practice. What it cannot accommodate is a parallel legal authority that claims precedence over it. A faith may ask for space within the constitutional order. It cannot be granted a place above it.

The question before us is not whether Muslims may worship freely. They may, and must. The question is whether we will be honest that some doctrines make claims our founding documents cannot honor, and that we owe every American, including Muslim Americans, the clarity of saying so.

Armed Defense is Simple, Hard, and Necessary

We go along and then something happens to us that changes our perspective. I was talking to a young man not long after I wrote about armed defense. Each of the ordinary stories I covered included an advanced self-defense skill. The young man said he wanted to make his family safer. We talked about it for a minute. I think that is where emotion raised its head, where truth and fantasy parted company. Let me state the obvious. Protecting your family takes work. Knowing what to do is the first layer of defense. Armed defense is also a skill that takes practice.

We often think that we can buy skill. I’ve felt that way myself. It is true that some firearms will fit your hands better than others. That said, is the problem that your hands are not doing what you want them to do, or is the problem that your brain doesn’t know what your hands and feet should be doing? Hardware won’t replace study and practice. Sometimes we have to climb over our ego and admit we have some homework to do. Let me give you a window into armed defense by looking at the examples from my recent podcast.

In the first story, male and female intruders entered an apartment and attacked the occupants. This happened on a Sunday morning. What could be more ordinary.

On a Sunday morning, it is easy to imagine that our children would be home and that they would open the door if someone knocked and shouted. When you read through this story, there were also children in the apartment but they didn’t open the door.

Right there is our first dose of reality. We need a safety plan at home. We have to talk with our family about what all of us will do. We have to talk with our roommates or frequent guests. We also have to walk through that plan. The walk-through does several essential things. It changes words into habits. It also uncovers the errors that seemed good at first but didn’t work well in practice.

Who is going to call 911? Who is armed or going to be armed, and where will they be positioned to defend the rest of the occupants? It sounds simple, but I’m sure your third attempt will be vastly better than your first rehearsal. It is easier to learn in the daylight than to discover problems at night when a stranger is hitting you.

Staying with this first story, a female roommate shot the attackers while they were hitting the male roommate who opened the door. Shooting at moving targets is beyond what we learned in basic marksmanship. In this case, the attackers and the victim were both moving. Speed, distance, and motion work together to determine how accurate we will be with our shots. Even though a gun works at a distance, we might have to get closer so we are sure to shoot the attackers and not shoot our roommate. Do you know what you can do and how much time you need?

Your safety plan should also include calling your lawyer and getting help as you fill out the final police report. That also includes your roommates knowing what to say, and what not say, to the police. That information is only lightly covered in most concealed carry classes.

In the second story, the defender had to move out of the way to avoid being shot. The defender then had to present his concealed firearm on the move. He had to shoot at his attackers who were likely moving as well. Firearms instructors teach classes where the students move and shoot. Some competition includes moving targets and multiple attackers. Have you practiced moving from one target to another? Have you practiced shooting while most of your body was hidden behind a wall or a car?

In the third story, the defender was being robbed at work. The robber tried to push the victim into a back bathroom. That is horribly dangerous for the victim, and he decided to fight. The defender had to turn so that the attacker couldn’t reach the defender’s gun. The defender then had to create enough distance between himself and his attacker so he could rotate his firearm and point it at his attacker. That means the defenders support arm was in front of his muzzle and between him and the the bad guy. You want to see how that works before you have to perform it on your own. At first, you want to practice with an instructor making sure you’re safe.

In the fourth and last story, an elderly woman was trying to stop a strange dog from biting her dog. In that case, it is best practice to grab your attacker and hold on tight so you both move together. That keeps you from shooting your dog or shooting yourself as the attacker moves.

I said that armed defense was both simple and hard. The contrast is complex and easy. Fortunately, we can decompose a new lesson into small incremental steps so that each new skill is relatively straightforward. The hard part is admitting we won’t suddenly become John Wick when we hear glass break at night.

Many of us have taken some form of firearms class. Please review those skills so they remain available when you need them.

Gun Control Doesn’t Stop Mass Shootings, It Helps Mass Killers

We’re probably going to spill a lot of digital ink talking about the shooting in Twin Falls, ID. That’s to be expected following a high-profile shooting that claims people’s lives. This time, though, while we mourn the loss of life, we’re also able to celebrate the fact that it wasn’t worse.

Good guys with guns stop massacres, often before they can become a “mass shooting” by various definitions.

Still, in the wake of these massacres, anti-gunners routinely demand gun control. Yet, as Victor Joecks notes at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, gun control hurts the good guys, not the killers.

It’s possible to stop mass shooters, but not if the gun grabbers get their way….

After a 2021 shooting at the Boise Towne Square mall, Salinas started training with a firearm in earnest. He provides full-time care for his brother, who’s in a wheelchair. Salinas believed a gunman would look for “soft targets” — such as a man in a wheelchair and his caregiver.

He refused to be one and ended up saving numerous lives.

Think about what would have happened if gun-control advocates had been able to enact new restrictions after the 2021 Boise shooting. They would have made it harder for Salinas to obtain the weapon he used to stop this mass shooting. That’s because new gun laws have the greatest effect on the least dangerous people. People are alive today because Idaho has firearm freedom.

Don’t expect a national debate on these trade-offs. The propaganda press has a predictable rubric for how much coverage mass shootings receive. If the villain or narrative can be tied to conservatives, it’ll be a major story. If the villain is connected to the left, it’ll be a story about guns. If the shooting is inconvenient to gun grabbers, it’ll disappear. And if it involves gangs, it won’t even make the national news. Another example of inverse journalism.

It’s not intentional, but mass shooters have no stronger allies than gun-control advocates.

And let’s understand just what that last sentence really means.

One of the most popular talking points among anti-gunners is that modern sporting rifles are the most popular choice for would-be mass killers. On Tuesday, though, Cam wrote about an FBI report looking at active shooters. That report noted that 53 percent of shooters used a handgun. Rifles were only used in a third of the attacks.

So, it would seem that handguns are still the preferred weapon for these people, despite what anti-gunners would have you believe. Assault weapon bans wouldn’t help.

Meanwhile, these same people want to make it as difficult as possible for people like Jordan Salinas to carry a firearm. They wanted the vampire rule in place, which would probably have forced Salinas to either ignore the law or disarm, had it been in place in Idaho. Especially since it’s unlikely an In-and-Out place is going to announce guns are welcome.

They oppose the Bruen decision, which, among other things, killed “may issue” permitting. They’d prefer to see someone like Salinas have to prove a need to carry a firearm, and the seemingly unlikely chance that a massacre was going to take place in front of him would probably have been unpersuasive to many.

Honestly, the list could go on. I could probably write an entire book about all the gun control propositions that would have protected actual mass killers if anti-gunners got their way.

Luckily, they haven’t.

It’s up to us to make sure they never do.

Why Gun Control Is a Non-Starter Even Without Second Amendment

Let’s play a little game; a thought experiment, if you will. Let’s say that there were no Second Amendment, that while owning guns was accepted and normal for generations, it wasn’t considered sacrosanct and thus not preserved in the Bill of Rights. Yes, for the pedantic among us, that would mean the Second Amendment would still exist; it would just forbid the quartering of troops against people’s will. Let’s not get bogged down in the details.

So, with that in mind, and assuming that past gun control efforts hadn’t come to fruition any more than they have in our version of the world, would violent crime make me inclined to support gun control now?

It would seem a simple question, and as one who has talked a lot about our right to keep and bear arms, it’s easy to say that I’d still say no. Yes, even if I had no grounds to argue it was a right.

Why?

Because the people asking me to support it don’t seem to care all that much about so-called gun violence.

I’ve covered the shooting in Tucson with a couple of posts. It’s gotten a little lost following Seattle, but it still happened, and while Seattle has shown that Washington state’s gun control policies failed, Tucson shows us something different.

The attack wasn’t a “random act of gun violence.” According to a news report by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the suspect, who was arrested and faces charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault with serious physical injury and discharging a firearm at a structure, should have been in jail at the time.

As NSSF pointed out, Pima County Attorney Laura Conover noted in an emailed statement that the suspect, 21-year-old David Leroy French, was previously charged for firing a weapon during an altercation, according to Arizona Family News. KOLD also reported that in October 2024, police said French fired a gun at the man and missed.

French could have gotten nine years — he got probation instead

While French could have faced up to nine years in prison, he did not serve any jail time. Instead, he was put on probation, and remained on probation at the time of the attack.

See, even without gun rights as a rallying cry, I would still see no reason to give up my guns when the problem is that so many of these incidents turn out to be criminals who should have been put in prison, but weren’t.

How are you going to tell me that lawfully obtained guns are the problem when you’re literally refusing to lock up those who criminally misuse a firearm? Just as I’d refuse to give up my car because of drunk drivers who won’t stop driving even without a license, I’m not going to give up my guns because of criminals who keep committing violent crimes when they should be worrying about not dropping the soap.

Luckily, the Second Amendment does exist. Gun rights do exist. The Second Amendment is the backbone of our defense of those gun rights.

Recently, I’ve been watching conspiracy theory videos for fun. The ideas of aliens from Atlantis building the pyramids, reptilians infiltrating the United States government, all sorts of things like that. No, I don’t believe in them, though the time since 2020 and Fauci’s diary might make me rethink some of this.

I bring this up because it’s harder and harder to tell myself that crap like this isn’t intentional. If you refuse to punish violent criminals, then use their violence to justify gun control, it’s hard not to see a connection there.

I’m not saying it’s on purpose. I will say, though, that if they were going to try and create more of a demand for gun control through increases in violent crime, I can’t think of anything I’d do differently.

Why Fauci Matters
He’s not just a powerful guy who acted in bad faith. He’s a totem to a whole class of people who don’t care about that.

This is old inside- baseball blogger stuff in part, but there’s a bigger lesson.

Old time (and I mean old-time) blog readers may remember Jeff Jarvis’s fierce post-9/11 warblogging, which pivoted rather suddenly into leftish pro-Democratic blogging in time for the 2004 election. Jeff and I were close before the pivot (he got me my long-ago MSNBC gig), and remained friendly even after. We were Facebook friends from the beginning, though our interactions over the past decade-plus were confined to the occasional like or happy birthday.

Then the other day I posted this:

Jeff’s response was “He saved lives. What have you done?” My reply was “Did he?”

A few of my friends came on to suggest, politely enough, that Fauci’s contribution was mostly negative and Jeff abruptly responded “Good-bye, Glenn,” and unfriended me.

Well, I will survive the shock of that blow, but it struck me — after all those years of disagreeing on politics, this was the straw that broke Jarvis’s back? Anthony Fauci? Especially now, when he’s the butt of self-incrimination jokes? In front of Congress, Fauci wouldn’t even say what color his tie was. (I’m trying to talk one of my distiller friends into putting out a limited run of Fauci whiskey, with the slogan “Take the Fifth!”)

Why Fauci, and why now?

I think the answer is that Fauci, and Faucism, represented the apotheosis of what the managerial/academic/journo class desires: An excuse for sweeping power, based on (alleged) expertise, in which they could ride roughshod over those stupid proles and flyover people while preening about the allegedly superior moral and intellectual qualities that justify their rule.

Then it turned out that they were wrong about nearly everything and — as Fauci’s diaries demonstrate — knew it at the time, at least at the top. And their overreach is one of the things that gave us Trump 47.

That this is out in public now produces cognitive dissonance. The easiest thing to do is to check out of the discussion. And so. Well, goodbye, Jeff, if by chance you’re reading this. I never stopped liking you, but I confess I liked the pre-pivot Jeff better. Enjoy your life as you are now.

Krzysztof Szczawinski

The gun is the most misunderstood object in Western civilization. Not a weapon. A technology. The technology that made the idea of equality physically real.

1. The longbow democratized warfare – a peasant could kill a knight with a stick and a string, and Agincourt proved it. The gun completed the process. The armored warrior class whose claim to social dominance rested on physical superiority became obsolete. The aristocratic monopoly on violence ended not with a philosophy but with a mechanism. The gun is the physical enforcement of the idea that all men are created equal. Which is why the American founders put it in the second amendment – not as an afterthought, but as the guarantee of everything else.

2. The Roman citizen had the right to bear arms. The Greek citizen had it. The English yeoman had it. The Swiss canton built its entire civilization on it. The disarming of the population has always been, in every civilization, in every century, the first act of the government that intends to stop being answerable to that population. Show me a disarmed population and I will show you a population that lost something else shortly after.

3. The Second Amendment is not about hunting. It is not about sport. It is about the relationship between the armed citizen and the state – the explicit constitutional acknowledgment that the citizen’s right to defend himself, his family, and his civilization against any threat, including the government itself, is not granted by the state and cannot be revoked by it. Power flows upward from the armed citizen, not downward from the armed state.

4. The gun defends the family. The woman alone with her children. The farmer on the edge of civilization. The shopkeeper in the neighborhood the police no longer patrol. The gun is the equalizer – the technology that makes the physical difference between a large man and a small woman irrelevant. Every argument for disarmament is, at its core, an argument that the state will protect you better than you can protect yourself. The evidence for this proposition is not encouraging.

5. In Europe, the disarmament is now nearly complete – and it happened precisely as the state’s ability and willingness to protect its citizens began to decline. The timing is not coincidental. A population that cannot defend itself must trust the state to defend it – which is a population that cannot effectively question whether the state is doing so. The dependency is the design.

6. The gun is a civilizational technology in the deepest sense: it requires responsibility, judgment, and the willingness to accept the consequences of your decisions. You cannot outsource it. You cannot have a committee fire it. It is the most anti-bureaucratic object ever invented – a direct, personal, consequential instrument that puts the full weight of the decision on the individual holding it. Which is precisely why the administrative state finds it intolerable. Not because it is dangerous. Because it is sovereign.

7. The family that can defend itself does not depend on the state for its most fundamental security. The civilization that can defend itself has not yet outsourced its survival to an institution that will negotiate the terms of that survival on its own behalf. The gun determines who controls violence – and therefore who controls everything that violence can threaten. Which is everything. The Sobieski who rode down the hill had a sword and sixty thousand horsemen. The equivalent today is the armed citizen who understands what he is defending and why. Every civilization that forgot this discovered it the hard way. The ones that remembered it are still here

Crossing a State Line Shouldn’t Cost You Your Right to Self-Defense

Imagine a woman driving across state lines alone at night, fearful that her car might break down and leave her vulnerable. Or picture a truck driver hauling valuable cargo across the country. In states such as California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Oregon – five of the ten states that refuse to recognize concealed handgun permits from other states – these travelers can find themselves defenseless. Nine states also either deny non-residents permits altogether or make them extremely difficult to obtain.

Last week, President Trump again called for passage of national concealed carry reciprocity. The legislation would allow anyone legally permitted to carry a concealed handgun in their home state to carry across state lines, much as Americans use their driver’s licenses nationwide. The legislation would affect millions of law-abiding Americans.

Much of the gun-control debate centers on hypothetical risks. With reciprocity, however, we don’t have to speculate. With 21.5 million concealed handgun permit holders in the United States, we already know how they behave. In addition, most Americans already benefit from reciprocity. The average state recognizes permits from 30 other states, allowing permit holders to travel legally with their firearms.

Last year, when House Judiciary Committee passed national reciprocity along party lines, Democrats also opposed legislation that would allow current and retired law enforcement officers with at least ten years of service to carry firearms in facilities open to the public – including schools – while traveling across the country. Given their fear that allowing experienced current or retired law enforcement officers to carry would endanger public safety, it comes as no surprise that they also oppose allowing civilians to carry across state lines.

Congressional opponents of reciprocity warned that permit holders would commit crimes but cited no evidence to support that claim. The facts point in the opposite direction. Concealed handgun permit holders are extraordinarily law-abiding. States revoke their permits for firearm-related violations at rates measured in thousandths – or even ten-thousandths – of one percent. Police officers rarely commit firearm crimes, yet permit holders lose their permits for firearm offenses at only about one-twelfth the rate that police are convicted of firearm related crimes.

“This legislation is a dramatic infringement on states’ rights,” claimed Emma Brown, executive director of the gun-control group Giffords, echoing a common criticism. Yet those same organizations routinely advocate federal gun-control laws that override state policy choices.

Opponents also claimed that national reciprocity would confuse travelers about which gun laws apply in each state and lead to more arrests. But reciprocity already exists across much of the country, and no evidence shows that out-of-state permit holders create such problems. Indeed, the same situation exists for drivers when they cross state lines: They are required to follow the driving regulations for the state they are in.

Critics also argue that permit standards vary from state to state. Yet no evidence shows that states with less restrictive permitting systems experience higher permit revocation rates.

Despite these fears, more than 86% of police chiefs and sheriffs support national reciprocity, and over 90% of rank-and-file officers support concealed carry laws. These officers see firsthand how concealed carry works in practice. They understand that police deter crime, but they also know they usually arrive after the crime has begun. Victims often must defend themselves first. Consistent with that experience, the overwhelming weight of academic research finds that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns reduces crime.

With tens of millions of Americans legally carrying concealed handguns over many decades, if opponents could identify even dozens of cases in which out-of-state permit holders created serious problems, their concerns would deserve careful consideration. They cannot. Such cases remain exceedingly rare. Americans do not need to guess whether gun-control advocates’ concerns are justified.

Carrying a firearm provides the greatest benefit to those who face the largest physical disadvantages – women and the elderly – and to those who face the highest risk of violent crime, including many poor black residents of high-crime neighborhoods. Not surprisingly, these groups have accounted for the largest percentage growth in permit ownership over the past decade. Between 2015 and 2024, permits held by women grew 112% faster than those held by men, while permits held by black Americans grew 284% faster than those held by whites.

Real life is not the movies. Most women cannot overpower several larger, stronger men, no matter how well trained they are. Men also generally possess greater upper-body strength and speed.

A firearm changes that equation. It gives women a far more effective means of self-defense. If an attacker has already closed the distance enough to seize a woman’s firearm, she is already in grave danger regardless.

Peer-reviewed research finds that allowing concealed carry reduces murder rates for both men and women. The reduction for women, however, is roughly three to four times larger than the reduction for men.

The House will likely pass national reciprocity, but it faces a steeper challenge in the Senate. Breaking the expected Democratic filibuster will require 60 votes, meaning at least seven Democratic senators must cross party lines. Those senators need only examine their own states’ experience. Six states represented by 12 Democratic senators – Arizona, Georgia, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Virginia – already recognize concealed handgun permits from every other state. None has seen a problem with reciprocity.

Police play an indispensable role in public safety. But around 700,000 officers cannot protect over 340 million Americans everywhere at once. Congress should ensure that law-abiding Americans do not lose their ability to defend themselves simply by crossing a state line.

John R. Lott Jr. is president of the Crime Prevention Research Center.

InfantryDort

I think civilization is worth preserving.
I think merit should outrank favoritism.
I think children deserve protection.
I think nations deserve borders.
If that makes me “partisan,” the problem isn’t me.

An idea does not become partisan simply because a politician adopts it.
Some principles existed before parties.
They will exist long after them.
Understand what time it is.

Remember.

What becoming an American taught me about liberty

Growing up in Australia, I lived in what most people would call a “free” society. But it wasn’t until I moved to the United States and embraced the U.S. Constitution that my entire worldview transformed. I realized that back home, freedom was treated as a privilege carefully defined by the government. In America, the Second Amendment taught me a profound truth: we are born free.

Today, as a firearms instructor and the Northeast Regional Director — and former New Hampshire State Director — of Women for Gun Rights, I live by a simple creed proudly stamped on my adopted home state’s license plates: Live Free or Die.

To me, the motto means embracing personal responsibility and never surrendering the agency that belongs to free people. The U.S. Constitution, which is now my Constitution, does not create those rights — it recognizes them and establishes a government whose powers are limited so those rights may endure.

I am now one of millions of American women who choose to live prepared, not scared. Many of us volunteer our time to defend this civil right. Yet for years, well-funded gun control organizations have tried to convince the public — and women in particular — that passing more restrictions is the only way to keep our children and communities safe.

These groups often claim to speak for all women and all families. But those of us working alongside women in our communities know the rhetoric does not match reality.

Now, hard data has finally caught up to what we’ve known all along.

A national survey commissioned by the Crime Prevention Research Center and conducted this year validates what Second Amendment advocates have long argued: the public rejects the gun control premise. When asked what would do the most to reduce violent crime, voters overwhelmingly favored holding criminals accountable over passing new restrictions.

Thirty-one percent of respondents chose enforcing existing laws as the best way to lower crime rates, while more than 30% favored arresting and prosecuting violent and repeat offenders. Only 30% supported passing new firearm-related legislation. Combined, enforcement-focused solutions outperformed new gun-control measures by more than 30 percentage points.

The message from the American people to their legislators is remarkably simple: hold violent criminals accountable, stop treating law-abiding citizens like the problem, and trust ordinary people pursuing their own happiness.

Crucially, the Center’s survey shatters the myth that women universally support disarmament. Substantial numbers of female voters favored enforcing existing laws over passing new restrictions.

Among women, the data highlights a growing trend. Instead of looking to politicians or an unreliable government for a false sense of security, women are increasingly choosing self-reliance. Nationally, concealed carry continues to grow among women, reflecting a profound cultural shift.

According to the survey, 20% of voters report possessing a concealed carry permit, and nearly 30% report carrying a firearm at least occasionally. More importantly, the number of Americans carrying concealed firearms increased by more than 5% in just over a year. Carrying a firearm for protection is no longer exceptional — it has become part of the American mainstream.

In New Hampshire, we understand the value of removing unnecessary obstacles to liberty. We are consistently recognized as one of the safest states in the nation while respecting the right of law-abiding citizens to carry without first asking government permission. A culture that values
So what concerns me in the Live Free or Die state is not death itself, but the slow erosion of personal agency — the quiet cultural shift that teaches us to look first to the government, rather than to ourselves, for our safety, our well-being and ultimately our freedom.

The right to self-defense is not a bureaucratic luxury. It is an inherent human right.

Coming from a country that chose a different path, I can tell you that restrictions do not deter violent offenders. They only disarm the vulnerable. Australia continues to grapple with violence against women and violent home invasions despite some of the world’s strictest firearms laws. While these challenges are not unique to Australia, America remains exceptional in one important respect: it trusts ordinary, law-abiding citizens with access to an equalizing force.

That is true empowerment.

The Center’s survey suggests Americans are waking up to this reality. They don’t want more laws that turn peaceful citizens into criminals. They want safety, accountability and the freedom to protect what they love. They want to live free.

When I first arrived in America, I thought freedom was something carefully defined by the government. Becoming an American taught me something far more profound: we are born free. Liberty is our birthright. The Constitution did not give us that birthright — it recognizes it and establishes a government whose powers are limited so that liberty may endure.

Yet liberty is more than a birthright. It comes with a solemn civic responsibility. As a naturalized American citizen, I swore an oath to honor and defend it. That responsibility belongs to all of us: not only to preserve liberty for ourselves, but to pass it intact to the Americans who will one day inherit it.

Thoughts On Independence Day
by JimT

I am a citizen of the United States of America by birth. By vocation I have been a blocklayer, an aircraft mechanic, a teacher, a pastor, a cowboy, a shootist, a hunter and a missionary. I have lived for more than a year in other countries including South Korea, Japan and Mozambique. I am also a citizen of heaven by Papa God’s grace and mercy. My calling is to love: myself, others including my enemies, and God … all of which I am still learning. If I don’t measure up sometimes please have patience with me. I am still under construction.

My one political quote in this letter:
Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time…
and your government when it deserves it.
-Mark Twain-

WATCH YOUR HEART! It controls the issues of life! No. I am not talking about the pump though it too is important. I am talking about the attitudes and emotions that make up and govern our life. Do not allow hatred of others in your life. I AM NOT SAYING THAT WHAT OTHERS DO IS NOT IMPORTANT! I am not saying to agree with them.
BUT
I am saying our attitudes will affect us more than those we disagree with.
HATRED WILL AFFECT OUR PHYSICAL HEALTH AS WELL AS OUR MENTAL HEALTH.
It is like eating poison and hoping it will kill our enemies.
Guard your heart! Get rid of hatred.
You do not have like or agree with … and you do not have to hate!

A Suggestion For Happiness
-look for the opportunity to do unexpected acts of kindness for someone
-help someone you do not know and who most likely you will never find out how your help affected
-stop any judgmental thoughts that may come and do your best to see the person simply as a fellow human being

One of the problems today is “under-defining” grace. We tend to weaken grace and make it just one of the resources of God that helps us do things either for ourselves or for God. We have lost the understanding that grace is the foundation that everything is built on. Somehow we have forgotten that salvation is God’s plan and His doing. We did not find the Lord! He found us and included us in His love. It was totally His doing, not ours. In doing this He gave to us everything that is needed for life and godliness. He made us perfect and complete and we can stand in His presence with no fear, no shame, no guilt. Not because we did so well but because God through Jesus has completed everything that needed to be done to make it so. We often get lost in trying to do when all along we need to realize, it is done! Religion says “Do” while grace says “Done.” Remember, religion is “do-do!”

“Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace, but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on Him who declares the ungodly “Not Guilty”, his faith is counted as righteousness.”
Romans 4:4-5
Did you see that? God is not asking people to “shape up” and “try to be better.” He declares THE UNGODLY “Not Guilty” and when the UNGODLY believe that, God says, “Not only are you not guilty, you are righteous!” That means we can stand in His presence without fear of punishment. He ain’t out to hammer us! He is out to pour His love upon us.

This is the great mystery of His grace, that He would come and seek us out, rescue us and save us.
We do not deserve it.
Yet He has done it!
It is called “GRACE.”

Celebrate the Birthday of our nation … but even more, celebrate Papa God’s Love for humanity!

Blessings!

Another way to look at it.

Cheer Up! The Birthright Citizenship Case Moves Us Toward Inevitable Victory.

Would I have loved Justice Barrett or Chief Justice Roberts to have defied their natural judicial conservatism—in the non-political sense—and embraced the new thinking today? Yeah, that would’ve been great, but it wasn’t in the cards. Instead, we got two votes that I frankly didn’t expect. And those two votes position us for victory. If one of those five majority justices goes away and President Donald Trump appoints the replacement, it’s very likely we will have a 6–3 majority that supports limiting the current idea of effectively unlimited birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment.

Let me put it in sportsball terms. We didn’t score a touchdown today, but we moved the ball down the field and put ourselves in position for a field goal or maybe even a touchdown in the next couple of plays.

So don’t freak out, don’t cry, don’t scream and yell. There’s no reason to. This result was better than we had any right to expect at this juncture in the process of changing the way the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause is viewed under the law. And this is why keeping the Senate in 2026 is more important than ever.

Cheer up. Don’t doom. We did better than we had any right to expect, and in the end we’re going to win.

Cynical Publius

RE: The Reflecting Pool

Let’s review a few undeniable, irrefutable facts about this subject:

1. The Reflecting Pool on the National Mall has been a leaking, algae-overgrown mess for years.
2. Having a national monument in such disrepair reflects poorly on our nation.
3. President Trump saw these problems and decided America deserved better for our 250th Birthday, and has been trying to resolve those problems in time for July 4th.
4. Democrats everywhere want the repair efforts to fail.

*******************

These are FACTS people, not my opinion.
FACTS.

So what logical conclusion do all these facts lead to?
Simple.

***Democrats would rather see the United States of America fail than see President Donald J. Trump succeed.***

Democrats are not patriots. They do not care about our nation or our national pride.
They only care about power, and to achieve power they would destroy our nation if that was what they deemed necessary.
It’s basically the same ethos that caused them to burn down our cities in 2020 rather than see Trump win a second term.

I really do not see how it is possible to coexist with these people unless they change.

Wesley Hunt It’s amazing how quickly the gatekeepers of culture decide what’s acceptable.

In June, every logo becomes a rainbow. Every stadium, every jersey, every broadcast gets a political message.

But put a Bible verse on your cap? Suddenly that’s “controversial.”

Put an American slogan front and center? Suddenly that’s “divisive.”

The NFL had no problem painting political movements in the end zone. Major League Baseball has no problem turning every June into a month-long corporate activism campaign.

Yet the moment someone wants to celebrate faith, patriotism, or traditional values, we’re told those things don’t belong in sports.

Funny how the people preaching inclusion always seem to have a very specific list of viewpoints they’re willing to include.

If rainbow logos belong in sports, then so do Bible verses.

If political messages belong in sports, then so do messages celebrating faith, family, and country.

The double standard isn’t subtle anymore. EVERYONE sees it.

Montanans Once Again Reject Gun Control Cheerleader at the Ballot Box

By Larry Keane

OPINION: It’s the same story all over again. Montana voters, who overwhelmingly revere their Second Amendment rights and rich hunting traditions, again rejected one of the more outspoken proponents for gun control as he tried again to win their approval and elected office.

Ryan Busse, the former firearm industry executive who’s now a staunch gun control activist working for GIFFORDS Courage to Fight Gun Violence, tried to sell his “I support the Second Amendment, but …” position to Montana voters to secure the Democratic nomination for the open Congressional seat following U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke’s (R-Mont.) announcement that he will not seek reelection in November.

Montana voters said, “No thanks — we’re just not that into you.”

In the Democratic primary for the First District Congressional seat, Montana voters kicked Busse to the curb and instead chose Sam Forstag as their nominee.

Rejection on Repeat

For Busse, this wasn’t the first time Montana voters turned him down. He thought he could win over Montana voters in his run for the governor’s mansion. But he lost his gubernatorial bid to Gov. Greg Gianforte by nearly 20 percent. Montana voters roundly rejected his platform that included implementing strict gun control laws like banning Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) — highly popular in the Big Sky State among both men and women.

It doesn’t take a political genius to recognize that’s a really tough position to sell to voters in the state with the highest percentage of gun owners per capita in the entire country.

For his part, the outgoing Rep. Zinke has been a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment and firearm industry that makes the exercise of those Constitutional rights to keep and bear arms possible for tens of millions of Americans. Rep. Zinke earned an A+ in the 2024 NSSF Congressional Report Card. In that regard, Rep. Zinke and Busse were already as far apart on Second Amendment issues as Montana is wide.

Busse, on the other hand, spent 25 years working for a firearm manufacturer, during which span they produced more than 2.3 million rifles, pistols and revolvers. After that, he did a 180 and went and took a hefty paycheck from the national gun control group GIFFORDS. THe national gun control group still has the press release up announcing Busse was joining as a “senior advisor,” and he parlayed that role into multiple television appearances and media opportunities to push an antigun agenda more in line with Fudds than true Montana ranchers and outdoorsmen and women. He hawked his self flagellating book that was just Busse marketing Busse about his supposed “Saul-to-Paul” conversion to gun control.

It wasn’t surprising then that many Montana voters rejected him once again. It’s time he put his political ambitions out to pasture.

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