Editorial O’ The Day – Page 3

Alaska must reject infringement that is presented as ‘gun safety’

By KEVIN MCCABE

The Second Amendment is not a footnote in our Constitution; it is a promise. “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.” These are deliberate words from our Founders. They meant what they wrote. They understood that the right to bear arms was not granted by government, but a natural right of men that must be recognized by that government. It is a natural, God-given right, fundamental to liberty and self-governance.

Alaskans know this instinctively. We live in a place where self-reliance is not a slogan but a way of life. Firearms are not symbols; they are tools of survival and security. Yet even in Alaska, legislation has emerged that seeks to undercut this right, not through outright bans, but through clever language and incremental encroachment. This year, two bills in the Thirty-Fourth Legislature, HB 134 and HB 89, are nibbling at the edges.

HB 134, introduced by Representative Carrick, is titled the “Alaska Child Access Prevention and Secure Storage of Firearms Act.” While it seems to promote responsible gun storage, it goes further. It amends existing laws and creates a new criminal offense that holds gun owners legally accountable if a minor or prohibited person uses their firearm to commit a crime. Though it stops short of confiscation, it lays the foundation for a legal structure that mirrors so-called “Red Flag” laws. It moves responsibility away from the individual committing the crime and places it on the law-abiding gun owner, a significant and dangerous precedent.

HB 89, introduced by Representative Josephson, creates “gun violence protective orders” that allow law enforcement or family members to petition a court to remove firearms if someone is deemed a threat. These orders can be issued without the gun owner’s presence and require the surrender of firearms within 24 hours. Twenty-four hours, in Alaska? Violations carry stiff penalties, including jail time and heavy fines. This firearm confiscation without due process is not safety, it is big government control.

The Founding Fathers warned us about such measures. Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1776, “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms within his own land.” Patrick Henry declared at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, “The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun.” They did not believe the right to bear arms should be handed out selectively by the state. They believed it was inherent to the dignity and sovereignty of a free citizen.

George Mason, also at the Virginia Convention, stated plainly, “To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.” John Adams, quoting Cesare Beccaria, considered the father of modern criminal law and criminal justice, warned that laws forbidding arms “disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.” He added that such laws “make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants.” These are warnings written in blood and experience.

The American Revolution began with British efforts to disarm the colonies. In 1775, General Gage ordered the seizure of weapons in Boston, with thousands of muskets and pistols taken from the people. The Founders never forgot that. They lived the reality that a disarmed populace is a controlled populace. Their solution was clear: the citizen must be armed, both for self-defense and as a check on government power.

That dual purpose is embedded in the Second Amendment. James Madison, in Federalist No. 46, wrote of “the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.” He understood the link between personal liberty and national sovereignty.

These are the principles that shaped our nation. They should be the same principles that guide Alaska’s Legislature today. Yet HB 134 and HB 89 disregard them. They prioritize theoretical safety over constitutional certainty and open the door to abuse, placing power in the hands of judges and petitioners without the presence or knowledge of the accused. They presume guilt and seize property before any crime has occurred.

In rural Alaska, the implications are even more severe. Law enforcement may be hours or days away. Court systems are distant, and legal representation is scarce. The practical result of these bills is not increased safety; it is the criminalization of responsible firearm ownership and the erosion of liberty for those who live farthest from government services.

History is full of warnings. In the 20th century alone, governments that disarmed their citizens:

Turkey in 1911,
Russia in 1929,
Germany in 1938

All paved the way for atrocities that cost millions of lives. The pattern is always the same: disarm, then dominate. While we often assume that such tragedies cannot happen here, the Founders knew better. Their solution for this eventuality was the Second Amendment.

In 2008, the United States Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess firearms for lawful purposes, including self-defense within the home. That ruling, like the Amendment itself, is not subject to Alaska reinterpretation or legislative dilution.

The right to bear arms is not something to be balanced against the whims of political pressure or temporary fears. It is a bedrock of a free society. As Jefferson wrote in a letter to his nephew in 1785, “Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks. Not because violence is inevitable, but because freedom must be preserved.”

In Alaska, where isolation and wilderness are part of life, that right is essential. HB 134 and HB 89 may appear measured and moderate, but they start us down a path we cannot afford to walk. They represent a retreat from the vision of our Founders, from the realities of our state, and from the rights of our people.

We must reject them.
The Constitution is not a suggestion.
The Second Amendment is not conditional.
In Alaska, we will not be disarmed.

Despite what you may hear from Alaska Gun Rights, Representative McCabe is an ardent supporter of the second amendment, he is a shooter, a reloader and a hunter. He serves in the Alaska House where he represents District 30.

Calm Down, Conservatives

Many of my fellow America First conservatives need to take a chill pill and calm the hell down. I get the frustration. I get the irritation. We’ve waited decades for justice. We’ve waited decades to use the power granted to us by the American people to reshape this country back into something like it was rather than the gross, formless blob of neo-commie failure it has become. But this Gramscian Rome wasn’t built in a day, and we’re not going to burn it down overnight, no matter how hard we fiddle. Start taking “Yes” for an answer, conservatives.

Let’s take some of the more common gripes, starting with the complaint that our Congress hasn’t passed anything. But, of course, Congress has passed several things. It passed the Laken Riley Act to keep Third World savages who are illegally here locked up. It just overturned the ridiculous California “no gas engines” law. So, the objection is not that the Republicans haven’t passed anything. It’s that the Republicans haven’t passed enough.

But there’s a structural fact that frustrated conservatives refuse to admit exists. This is why most of our actions must be taken via executive orders. Because of the Senate filibuster, we have to get 60 votes, but we have only 53 Senators. All the Democrats hang together, breaking the neck of our legislation.

What is so amazingly difficult to understand about this? Do people not know what the filibuster is? Do they not care? Look, I get the anger. I’ve been a conservative longer than many of you people have been alive. I was a conservative in the 80s, faithfully reading America’s only right-wing outlet, National Review, before it became the Teen Vogue of conservatism.

All the stuff we are trying to do today is stuff that we’ve been dreaming about for decades. But we’ve been lied to, spat upon, disregarded, persecuted, and generally treated like crap not only by the Democrats but our own Republican Party for as long as I can remember. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – the Republican base is the abused spouse of American politics. We are naturally suspicious and looking for any reason to validate our gut instinct that we are about to get screwed over yet again.

That’s why we act like we do, but let’s not pretend it’s always rational. The fact of the filibuster is not an excuse for inaction; it’s the reason for it. Gravity is not an excuse why you can’t jump 50 feet high. The filibuster is a structural reality that we have to work around – unless we make the major decision to get rid of it. If you want to do that, make that argument. But don’t whine because Congress is not doing something it literally cannot do.

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Ben B@dejo

I think I’ve figured it out.

Harvard never disciplined certain foreign students who harassed and assaulted Jews on campus. They didn’t suspend them, so that they wouldn’t lose their F-1 visa status. That’s what they’re “hiding” from DHS.

Harvard keeps saying they provided all records, which is not entirely false — because there is no disciplinary record for students who were not disciplined. They aren’t failing to produce disciplinary records. The disciplinary records don’t exist. DHS is looking for disciplinary records that should exist, but don’t.

Harvard won’t explicitly say that they didn’t discipline them, because the moment they say that, the Trump administration can issue a finding, on that basis alone, that Harvard violated Title VI by failing to discipline them. And then Harvard has to either agree to a “voluntary” resolution agreement with the federal government (the Office for Civil Rights in either the Department of Education or the Department of Health and Human Services), or be issued an involuntary resolution agreement on terms that it doesn’t decide, or begin losing its federal funding — in a manner that cannot easily be challenged in a suit alleging violations of the Administrative Procedures Act (because the procedures will have been followed).

Harvard doesn’t want to admit that they didn’t discipline foreign students. And it’s too late to discipline them now, because if they do so now, it will be clear that they only disciplined them after DHS started asking questions.

DC_Draino

This is a brilliant analysis of why Harvard is refusing to work with DHS and why Trump is punishing them

DHS wants to deport foreign criminals who violated the rights of others in violent protests on campus

Harvard never punished them and is hiding surveillance footage of their crimes

Once its proven they failed to protect the Civil Rights of American citizens to protect foreign extremists, Harvard loses its federal funding

Harvard is backed into a corner by Trump

There’s a Difference Between Being Pro-2A and Anti-Gun Control

This morning, as I awoke, the House Rules Committee was debating the budget reconciliation bill. The One Big, Beautiful Bill, as it’s being called. Part of that debate was the inclusion of the Hearing Protection Act, which would remove suppressors – they’re safety devices, by the way – from the list of items regulated by the National Firearms Act.

It should have already been included, but Rep. David Kustoff of Tennessee reportedly offered up something that was just table scraps for gun rights supporters. It reduced the fee for an NFA tax stamp from $200 to nothing.

It’s not nothing, but it’s pretty darn close.

See, the problem here is that we’ve been looking at Republicans and their position on guns wrong for quite some time.

For a while, the big thing was where they stood on gun control. The National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups’ questionnaires typically revolved primarily around whether they’d oppose things like universal background checks, assault weapon bans, and things of that sort.

There were some questions about measures that would restore people’s Second Amendment rights from where they are now, but a lot of it was about opposing gun control, and not without reason. After all, we were largely playing defense in legislatures across this nation, with more success in some than in others.

In truly pro-gun states, we saw the advancement of gun rights, of course, but in most places, that was much harder. That included in Congress.

The problem with playing defense is that you find yourself with two different groups. Some are pro-gun while others are anti-gun control.

Anti-gun control lawmakers have their place. In a state like California, that can be a big difference, especially if enough of them get elected to office. They can stem the tide of anti-Second Amendment legislation.

These are the defensive players.

What we really need right now, though, are actual pro-gun legislators in Congress.

Those are the ones who would easily back the Hearing Protection Act without hesitation and would insist the SHORT Act – which removes short-barrelled rifles from the National Firearms Act list as well – be included, too. They’d not just oppose gun control, but support legislation like national constitutional carry or, at least, national reciprocity.

Pro-gun doesn’t mean opposing gun control. It means looking at our right to keep and bear arms as a sacred right gifted to all people by virtue of being free men and women. It’s a right that makes damn sure we remain free, too.

For generations, our gun rights have been under assault, but for the first time, we have a chance to correct at least some of those past wrongs.

What we need aren’t anti-gun control folks. Not right now. We need lawmakers to actually be pro-gun for a change. We need them to step up and do what they know is right. We need to get some of our rights back so that we can defend ourselves from tyranny, either a tyrannical government or from the tyranny of the thug.

I’m willing to accept that we can’t get everything back, but nothing but the removal of the cost of a tax stamp is a slap in our faces. That’s the act of Republicans who are anti-gun control more than pro-gun.

It’s time we start calling them what they are.

Make them defend it, if they can.

Guns are here to stay in US, that’s an opportunity not a threat

With yet another school shooting in the news in April, the familiar rhetoric has made a reappearance nationally.

On the one hand, President Donald Trump marked the occasion by bloviating about one short section of the Constitution while systematically flouting dozens of other sections. On the other, the usual gun-control forces are fundraising off the Florida State tragedy with yet another call for “commonsense” gun regulation.

We’ve been here before, and we’ll be here again, and we’re getting nowhere. It’s not where most Americans want to be with gun issues.

As a school board member in Second Amendment-loving Pennsylvania, I see every month urgent, complex challenges connected to firearms that get less attention than shootings, but they’re important, too.

We encounter everything from parents’ worries about the psychosocial impact of active shooter drills to how to deal with kids who bring toy guns to school (sometimes with blaze orange tips unlawfully removed). There are complicated finance and legal issues related to firearms. There are discussions of “hardening” buildings as targets. There are security armories to maintain. All in all, forecasting and policy-making around issues of gun-related safety and crime are inescapable in K-12 education. I don’t foresee that changing.

Why? Because guns aren’t going away. Four in 10 American adults live in a house with a gun, according to one recent Pew survey, and civilians own an estimated 380 million guns. We can’t hide from such sobering data.

Meanwhile, positive community-building gun experiences are being sidelined. Public support for shooting sports and legal hunting have seen worrying declines. Despite two very active popular private shooting ranges in our school district near Bethlehem, for instance, our school’s rifle team — a club that offered students of all ability levels a chance to learn about gun safety in a politically neutral environment — closed down years ago and sold off its rifles for lack of community support.

Any resolve to teach beneficial, sustainable relationships with guns for sport doesn’t seem to exist. It’s easier to slap a SIG Sauer weapons maker sticker on the back of a back of a big pickup than to spend time teaching a high school kid to safely clear a chamber, clean a barrel, use a scope or handle a loaded rifle. We’ve been discussing the process of resurrecting our school rifle team (using air rifles), and I’m hopeful, but we’ll be competing with the easy allure of “Call of Duty” and online cultures.

Young Americans aren’t getting the whole story when it comes to firearms and national history either, so they easily fall prey to steroid-fueled, hyper-masculine, action-movie narratives that grossly distort American identity.

Even before the founding of our republic, Puritans in the Americas needed to protect themselves. From the moment Myles Standish stepped ashore in present day Massachusetts, in 1620, the idea of America was anointed in gunpowder and the unholy chimes of matchlock musket fire. You think Pete Hegseth is a mad Christian neo-fascist militant? You wouldn’t like a hothead soldier of fortune like Standish, whose general rule was kill-first-make-peace-later. Our early settlers were fiercely fiercely protective of their homes, and for better and sometimes worse, this impulse remains part of the American DNA.

A theme of community safety is huge in this country’s gun history, too. As the the writer Charles E. Cobb once said about incomplete portrayals of the Black civil rights movement in the 1960s: “One important gap in the history … is the role of guns in the movement. I worked in the South, I lived with families in the South. There was never a family I stayed with that didn’t have a gun. I know from personal experience and the experiences of others, that guns kept people alive, kept communities safe.”

We’ve forgotten that complex, social heritage. Instead of treating guns either as evil instruments of psychopathy, or glorifying them as extensions of an incomplete masculinity, we need to respect their place in American communities, and in our nation, for what they are: Extremely dangerous, essential and often fascinating tools of sport and defense with the deepest of roots in our history and culture.

We can recognize the horror of mass shootings and do all we can to prevent them. There are many preventative actions we can take that don’t involve Second Amendment infringement. But at the level of civic policy and education, this also means working to demystify firearms and remembering their positive contributions to American kinship and community empowerment. By doing so, we help prevent gun pathologies from taking root and give law-abiding gun owners the right to protect themselves.

Guns aren’t going away. The Second Amendment certainly isn’t going away. It’s time to see that as an opportunity, not a threat.

This is a contributed opinion column. Bill Broun teaches writing at East Stroudsburg University[Pennsylvania]. He is a school director for Saucon Valley School District. [Hellerstown PA]

The Totalitarian Impulse Buckley Knew

I’ve just finished reading Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America, a forthcoming biography of National Review founder William F. Buckley by Sam Tanenhaus. It is a magnificent, absorbing work about a man known as the father of postwar American conservatism, and one that will lead to a lot of debate when it is published early next month.

That debate will be good, as there is much to consider when thinking about a figure like Buckley today. The book itself is over 1,000 pages, and it’s best to break it down into parts. Naturally, Buckley was disliked by the left, and he was right about the nature of communism. Yet Buckley also has critics on the right. Many consider that over time Buckley kicked out too many real conservatives from of the movement he helped to found—conservatives like Pat Buchanan, who turned out to be right about many issues, such as immigration. Many of today’s conservative’s also suggest that Buckley’s errors led to the sad state of affairs at today’s National Review, a magazine that has become practically irrelevant.

For the purposes of this first part of the review, however, I’d like to focus on the things Buckley got right. Namely, communism and the totalitarian nature of the American left. The most important paragraph in Buckley appears in a section that takes place in the early 1960s. Buckley was debating Arthur Schlesinger Jr., an advisor to President Kennedy. Schlesinger thought that whenever dictatorships arose in the modern era it was “because democratic government is too weak, not because it is too strong.” The best way to prevent totalitarianism was for the government to create economic prosperity and social equality, providing “a minimum national standard to save individuals from intolerable handicaps.” Tanenhaus explains Buckley’s reaction:

This might sound good, Buckley countered, but in reality, Schlesinger and others were concealing their true intentions, their “intellectual desire to redirect society. Even if every citizen had a million dollars, John Kenneth Galbraith would still find a need for government action….There are in motion today forces that want to drain our power into a reservoir. I hope someday Mr. Schlesinger will turn in horror on the system he has abetted.”

Here Buckley gets to the heart of the matter. The left wants revolution and totalitarian control. Period. If every house had a full refrigerator and every American had a job, they would still be calling for revolution. To think otherwise is naïve.

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Mark W. Smith/#2A Scholar

2A “SENSITIVE PLACES” EXPLANATION. I wrote this to a Four Boxes Diner fan so I thought I would post it here too! This explains when government can ban guns in a specific location consistent with 2A based on US’s historical tradition of gun regulations. Let me know if this makes sense. The below is superior to the other theories folks have advanced elsewhere!

Mark’s Explanation:
In short, if a government does not provide comprehensive security with limited points of entry, metal detectors and armed guards, then it cannot be a constitutionally-acceptable government-mandated gun free zone. The only time the government can take away your fundamental 2A right to keep and bear arms in a specific location is when the government itself assumes the full responsibility for protecting you with armed defense; short of this, you have a right to protect yourself.

If you look at our Founding history, the three “sensitive places” mentioned in Bruen (polling places, legislative chambers and courthouses) all had armed guards. Sheriffs, sergeant at arms, and bailiffs.

Today, with the rise of small, concealable handguns (less of a problem at the founding where everyone carried unconcealable rifles/shotguns/long guns), to have comprehensive security, the gov’t must provide metal detectors and limited entry points in addition to armed guards. At the founding, you did not need metal detectors b/c the main weapons were big and not concealable. Today, with handguns being ubiquitous, you need the metal detectors for comprehensive security, which is what we see at airports, courthouses and Congress.

Note, the government does NOT have to provide comprehensive security at a location. However, if they want to ban guns in a location, then they MUST provide comprehensive security. No government-provided armed security means the government cannot deprive you of your 2A rights.

Finally, the practical benefit to the comprehensive security approach to the “sensitive places” question is it is an objective test: has the government ACTED to make a place “sensitive” or have they just paid lip service to the question by labeling a place as “sensitive” without treating it as such.

If the government has not provided the same level of security as is provided by the government to protect the judges in a courthouse, then it is not comprehensive security and, by extension, a gun ban would not be constitutional in that specific location.

Legal Adults, Limited Rights: The Second Amendment Fight for 18–20-Year-Olds

Over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed a trend that’s hard to ignore. New lawsuits are popping up. Legislatures are introducing bills. Some states are loosening restrictions. Others are cracking down. But they all revolve around the same issue: the Second Amendment rights of 18- to 20-year-old adults.

It struck me just how widespread and fast-moving this fight has become. In a single day, I saw headlines about a federal court striking down the handgun sales ban for young adults, while another state pushed a new law to raise the ammo purchase age to 21. The issue isn’t isolated—it’s everywhere.

In the United States, turning 18 makes you a legal adult. You can vote, serve on a jury, enter contracts, and enlist in the military. But in many states—and under some federal laws—you still can’t buy or carry a handgun. This paradox has sparked a legal and legislative battle stretching across the country, with courts divided, lawmakers digging in, and gun rights advocates pushing back hard against age-based restrictions.

A National Patchwork of Rights

While some states have recently expanded Second Amendment rights to include adults under 21, others have doubled down on restrictions. In 2025 alone, at least a dozen legislative or judicial actions have focused on the question: Do 18- to 20-year-olds have full Second Amendment rights?

In Iowa, lawmakers passed House File 924, lowering the age to carry a handgun from 21 to 18. Florida considered a similar rollback to age of purchase with House Bill 759, while Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Nevada all saw legislative action aiming to either expand or restrict firearm access for this age group. Meanwhile, Colorado moved in the opposite direction, raising the age to purchase ammunition to 21 and restricting home delivery.

Major Lawsuits Reshaping the Debate

The fight isn’t just in statehouses—it’s in the courts.

In Worth v. Jacobson, the Eighth Circuit struck down Minnesota’s age-based carry restriction, ruling that 18–20-year-olds are indeed part of “the people” protected by the Second Amendment. This ruling directly conflicts with NRA v. Bondi, where the Eleventh Circuit upheld Florida’s ban on handgun purchases for those under 21. The NRA plans to petition the Supreme Court for review, but we’ve already seen SCOTUS pass on issuing any ruling on Worth v Jacobson so the conflict between these Circuit court decisions may exist for a long time.

In NRA v. Bondi Florida’s ban on firearm purchases by adults under 21 was upheld by the Eleventh Circuit Court.

In the Fifth Circuit, another milestone was reached when the court struck down the federal ban on handgun sales to 18–20-year-olds, declaring the law unconstitutional under the Bruen standard and citing a lack of historical tradition supporting the restriction.

Lara v. Paris: A Turning Point

One of the most significant rulings so far came from the Third Circuit in Lara v. Paris. The court held that 18–20-year-olds are “the people” under the Second Amendment and that the relevant historical benchmark is 1791, not 1868 as some courts had previously argued. This decision has already restarted previously paused litigation like Young v. Ott, which challenges Pennsylvania’s concealed carry age restriction.

The Road Ahead: SCOTUS Showdown?

With multiple federal circuits now in direct conflict and more states enacting laws both for and against under-21 gun rights, the U.S. Supreme Court may be forced to weigh in despite them already passing on the opportunity to do so. The question will be whether constitutional rights can be delayed based solely on age—even for adults legally recognized by every other standard.

Conclusion: A Defining Test for the Second Amendment

This unfolding legal battle isn’t just about guns. It’s about defining what it means to be a legal adult in America. The coming months and years will likely shape not only Second Amendment jurisprudence but also broader civil rights questions for young Americans caught in legal limbo. I find it utterly disgusting that our country has any question at all about allowing the same men and women we send to war to purchase guns and ammo here at home for their own personal protection. It is an absolute insult.

CP nails it again

Cynical Publius

I feel like I have been sleepwalking for years and just woke up.

It’s kind of embarrassing as I have always considered myself to be very astute and alert when it comes to American politics.

But Trump 2.0, DOGE and civilian heroes like Data Republican woke me up.

For DECADES, the Deep State has been taxing us at obscene levels, all the while claiming through their media mouthpieces that it was all going to national defense and untouchable entitlements, and there really wasn’t any fat in the budget to cut.

But there WAS fat. Lots of it.

And here’s the thing: that fat was seized from our pockets at the point of a gun, added to the federal budget, then dispersed to NGOs tasked to carry out ostensibly useful tasks which were in reality a concerted effort to undermine and destroy our Constitutional Republic. We were paying for our own demise, and were oblivious to it. We were like a parasite’s host, growing weaker day by day and totally unaware of the parasite thriving on our life’s blood.

What’s worse is that the cycle of America-hating NGOs also wrapped an entire class of Democrats in luxury. Exploiting the basic goodness of Americans to help those in need, we were in reality funding grift and graft whereby Democrats cycled from elected office, to lobbyists, to industry, to NGOs, and back again on an endless loop where the only true value was enriching themselves. Five of the seven richest counties in America are on the Washington DC Beltway. I just explained why that is so.

Now I know there are some who will belittle the cuts we are seeing as being inconsequential in the grand scheme of the entire federal budget and the national debt, and as a solely mathematical analysis this may be true. But this minority portion of the federal budget has nevertheless had an enormous and outsized impact on the destruction of the United States of America.

Cutting off the dollars we have been paying to these parasites will silence their voices of hate and American destruction, and allow us room to maneuver to recover our nation, all in the nick of time.

Ending the doom loop of America-destroying NGO graft is the greatest thing Donald Trump is doing. He deserves a statue on the National Mall for this alone. (With little statues of Elon, Big Balls and Data Republican.).

Thank you, Trump 2.0 Team, for saving us from funding our own demise.

‘Law-Abiding’™ – *cough*
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
– Thomas Jefferson

The Constitutional Rights of Law-Abiding Gun Owners

By Rep. Adrian Smith (NEB-3)

The right to keep and bear arms is fundamental to the American experiment in self-governance. From its founding, our nation has recognized how a free people must not be deprived of means of protection and self-defense. In 1791, the Founders enshrined the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights, declaring the right to bear arms “shall not be infringed.”

I have always strongly supported the Second Amendment because I recognize it speaks to the heart of our country. This right is more than a safeguard for sportsmen, hunters, and firearms collectors. Law-abiding Nebraskans and other Americans across our land own and utilize guns in order to deter crime and protect or defend themselves, their families, livestock, crops, and homes.

Congress has a responsibility to uphold the Second Amendment and apply its constitutional authority to our nation’s laws. For this reason, I am again a cosponsor of the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act. This bill would provide legal clarity for carrying concealed firearms when crossing state lines. In 2023, Nebraska passed constitutional carry legislation enabling individuals over 21 years old to carry concealed firearms without a permit, and many other states already practice reciprocity. In 2024, with my support, the House passed a version of this bill. However, it was not taken up by the Senate before the end of the 118th Congress.

I am also an original cosponsor of the Reining In Federal Licensing Enforcement (RIFLE) Act. Under the Biden administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF’s) zero tolerance policy of revoking licenses from dealers threatened the livelihood of Federal Firearm Licensees (FFLs) such as small and mid-sized gun stores for making minor clerical errors and typos on paperwork required by federal law.

I am encouraged to see how after President Trump took office, ATF’s zero tolerance policy was repealed administratively. Yet, the consequences of this overbearing policy have been serious. In 2024, the ATF recorded its third straight year of increased FFL license revocations and the greatest number of revocations in 20 years. The RIFLE Act would reinstate licenses suspended, revoked, or denied under Biden’s zero tolerance policy and enact permanent avenues for FFLs to appeal before the ATF moves to revoke a license.

Furthermore, I am a cosponsor of the No Retaining Every Gun in a System That Restricts Your (REGISTRY) Rights Act. Currently, FFLs which go out of business must provide all firearm transaction records to the ATF, which maintains these records in the Out-of-Business Records Imaging System (OBRIS) database. This bill would safeguard the privacy of American gun owners by requiring the ATF to destroy existing firearm transaction records and requiring FFLs to destroy existing transaction records should they go out of business.

Without privacy protections like the ones provided by this bill, creating such record keeping requirements leads down a path toward a mandatory gun registry, threatening law-abiding citizens with excessive scrutiny. The constitutional rights of law-abiding gun owners must be respected. Standing the test of time, the Second Amendment has proven the wisdom of the Founders. Its critics are misguided, and I will never stop defending American liberties from abuses by the ATF or encroachment by overreaching restrictions.

Long, but worth reading as he takes apart all these claims

Easter Is Not Pagan, and Neither Are Its Origins
Jesus is our Passover, and the events of one specific Passover week are the origin of the holiday, no matter how many Cadbury eggs you may consume.

Every year, as Christians around the world celebrate Easter, skeptics revive a familiar claim: that Easter is just a repackaged pagan festival. They point to spring fertility rites, to goddesses like Ishtar and Eostre, and to symbols like eggs and rabbits, declaring Christianity guilty of cultural plagiarism.

But these assertions, repeated so often they’ve become clichés, collapse under any serious historical scrutiny. The truth is simple: Easter isn’t pagan, and neither are its origins. Rather, it is the central celebration of the Christian faith, grounded in real events, rooted in Jewish (not pagan) practice.

Perhaps some of the people who claim otherwise are simply used to distrusting authority (a good thing). A few may feel “superior” by asserting “hidden knowledge” (which is not at all a good thing: it’s pride, or gnosticism, or both).

But the truth is, even if Easter had all manner of pagan trappings (it does not), it wouldn’t matter: Christ came to conquer and redeem all things. That’s the whole point of the Resurrection: our Lord even conquered death! And Scripture tells us that it is indeed that Resurrection which is our hope, and that if it is not true then “we are to be the most pitied among men.” (1 Corinthians 15:17-19)

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The Right To Bear Arms

In recent decades, the US government has been doing its best to find a way to limit the ability of its people to bear arms. And, in turn, the people respond vehemently that their Constitution guarantees them the right to bear arms.

Regardless of which side of the argument any particular American is on, I’ve almost never met one who knows what caused this right to be written in the Constitution.

Countless Americans believe that they have the right to bear arms, so that they can protect themselves and their homes from burglars or other miscreants. Others, particularly those who live in rural areas, believe in the right to go hunting if they wish.

Whilst both of these concerns are reasonable, they’re not by any means the reason why the founding fathers were so adamant that the right to bear arms is critical.

The Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, was passed by the US Congress in 1791, some eighteen months after the ratification of the Constitution in 1790. The reason why it was considered essential by the framers leads directly back to the Gunpowder Incident in 1776.

In 1774, in Boston, a meeting of the First Continental Congress took place to discuss the introduction of the Intolerable Acts by Britain, including the seizure by the British of gunpowder that was stored in Charlestown. In addition, Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies, prohibited the importation of further supplies of gunpowder.

In Boston, this generated discussion, but no action. But in Williamsburg, then the capitol of Virginia, the reaction was quite different. There, the colonists, in early 1776, began to form armed militias. Governor Dunmore (the ruling British representative in the colony) decided to repeat the Boston seizure in Virginia. Just down the street from the Governor’s mansion, in the House of Burgesses, Patrick Henry had just delivered an impassioned speech in which he proclaimed, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

Around the corner from the Governor’s mansion was the Magazine (pictured above), where gunpowder and armaments were stored by the Crown for the protection of the colony from Indian attacks or other disturbances.

Governor Dunmore ordered that the gunpowder be removed from the Magazine to limit the colonists’ ability to resist official diktat. As it was being removed to a British ship anchored in the James River, a few colonists discovered the fact and alerted others.

The city council demanded its return, stating that it was the property of the colony and not the Crown. Patrick Henry led the Hanover County Militia – about 150 men – to Williamsburg to reclaim the gunpowder.

A wealthy (and loyalist) plantation owner paid £330 for the powder, to calm Henry, who was then charged with extortion by Lord Dunmore. Dunmore’s popularity quickly waned. He left Williamsburg and attempted to continue his rule from a British ship, offshore.

Virginia’s government was taken over by a Committee of Safety and Henry became the now-independent state’s first governor in July, three months after the seizure.

The Gunpowder incident not only led directly to the creation of the Second Amendment. It led directly to the independence and liberty of the American people.

Think that over for a moment, with regard to the present times.

Now, as I’m British, it would be fair (though possibly incorrect) to suggest that I cannot be trusted to comment on the independence of the American colonies from Britain.

So, let’s ask the American founding fathers for their views. Although very few Americans can actually name them, there were seven, and they all had something to say about what they learned from the Gunpowder Incident.

George Washington – “A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined…” — First Annual Address, to Congress, 8th January, 1790

John Adams – “To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, counties or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government.” – Stated during the drafting of the Second Amendment, 1780.

Thomas Jefferson – “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” – Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776

“The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.” – Letter from Jefferson to John Cartwright, 5th June, 1824.

James Madison – “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country.” – Annals of Congress 434, 8th June, 1789.

Benjamin Franklin – “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

Alexander Hamilton – “[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens.” – Federalist #28, 10th January, 1788.

John Jay – “Government that wants away citizens right to bear arms is unworthy of trust.” – Date unknown

And a final one from Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to James Madison in 1787:

“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.”

But perhaps the most succinct quote from that time is from George Mason, stating in the Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, 14th June, 1788,

“To disarm the people… [i]s the most effectual way to enslave them.”

These are indeed words to be remembered. Just as all governments will do their utmost to prevent their citizens from being armed, so too should those citizens do their utmost to be armed.

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately, most people have no idea what really happens when a government goes out of control, let alone how to prepare…

Where Is the DOJ’s Second Amendment Report?

On February 7th, President Donald Trump gave Attorney General Pam Bondi 30 days to finalize and submit a policy plan of action for enacting pro-gun reforms. Nearly two months later, the Trump Administration hasn’t released any plan.

“Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General shall examine all orders, regulations, guidance, plans, international agreements, and other actions of executive departments and agencies (agencies) to assess any ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights of our citizens, and present a proposed plan of action to the President, through the Domestic Policy Advisor, to protect the Second Amendment rights of all Americans,” the order stated.

The 30-day due date for that report would have been March 9th, but that day came and went without any movement from Bondi or the White House. When this omission got some attention, the Department of Justice (DOJ) told ABC News that the deadline was extended to March 16th. Since then, the department has not provided any additional progress updates and did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

The administration’s apparent slow-walking and opacity surrounding its progress raises questions about how much it plans to follow through with the order’s proposed scope.

Trump promised gun voters swift action in undoing all of President Biden’s gun-control achievements during his “very first week back in office.” But he took three weeks before even broaching the subject, and only ordered a review to eventually consider which, if any, of his predecessor’s policies to reform or reverse.

To date, that has not resulted in the initiation of any new rulemaking to repeal any Biden-era regulations.

The few concrete indications of DOJ compliance with the order have mostly taken the form of requests for pauses in various ongoing gun cases to allow it to consider what position it wants to take. The department also began to push for a new framework for restoring the gun rights of former convicts. The New York Times has reported that move could benefit actor Mel Gibson and at least nine other as-yet-undisclosed individuals, though they haven’t announced any action yet.

While each of those fronts may eventually play out in gun-rights advocates’ favor, the administration’s restrained approach, especially in contrast to actions it has taken elsewhere, has already resulted in one significant loss for gun-rights groups. Though it could have immediately started rolling back Biden’s gun rules without Bondi’s review as an intermediate step, the Trump Administration’s decision to wait left the “ghost gun” kit ban case uninterrupted. That culminated in the Supreme Court issuing a 7-2 ruling upholding that ban at the end of last month, which could make undoing the ban down the line harder.

Delaying legal challenges while the department decides what position to take also risks drawing out the gun-rights movement’s longer-term project of stacking up court decisions permanently invalidating federal gun laws. Even if the DOJ decides not to defend a given gun law or de-prioritize enforcement, subsequent administrations can simply reverse that discretion. The same holds true for the new gun-rights restoration process, which risks undermining gun-rights advocates’ legal challenges to the federal ban on non-violent felons possessing firearms.

To be sure, the administration has also offered gun voters policy changes with more straightforward upsides. It unceremoniously dispensed with the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, for example, which was set up by former President Biden to promote gun-control policies. Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services also scrapped a 2024 surgeon general advisory calling for an “assault weapon” ban, among other new gun restrictions.

It has also, at times, broadened its view beyond the federally-focused executive order. For instance, the DOJ last month announced a civil rights investigation into Los Angeles County over its practice of subjecting concealed carry permit applicants to lengthy wait times and high application fees, and it suggested that additional investigations could soon follow. Shortly thereafter, Trump also issued a separate executive order establishing a new federal task force charged with, among other things, “increas[ing] the speed and lower[ing] the cost of processing concealed carry license requests in the District of Columbia.”

Those moves have no doubt been welcome developments for Second Amendment advocates. Still, they are less potentially impactful than the areas Trump ordered the DOJ to review, and those have seen little to no movement.

DataRepublican

I’ve had a change of heart on federal income tax. On the surface, it’s just a way for the government to generate revenue—it has to get its funding from somewhere. But I now see that the method of taxation itself fundamentally alters the relationship between the government and its people.

When the government relies on taxing individual income, it shifts from serving its citizens to exploiting them as a revenue source. This dynamic creates an inherent friction, where the government no longer answers to the people but to the system that extracts from them. And if you look around, it’s clear—whatever our tax dollars are funding, it’s not serving us.

This is what modern economists fail to grasp when they dismiss tariffs, sales taxes, or luxury taxes as harmful. The structure of taxation matters, not just the amount collected. The income tax distorts governance itself—and it needs to go.

The Unitary Executive Meets the Unitary Judiciary

The Use of Nationwide Injunctions by U.S. District Courts

Authors

Paul Larkin

Rumpel Senior Legal Research Fellow

GianCarlo Canaparo

Senior Legal Fellow, Edwin Meese III Center

Federal courts may—and should—supply complete relief to a victorious party, but that can be done without granting strangers the same judicially enforceable rights that a judgment provides to a successful litigant. Nationwide injunctions not only cross that line, but also prevent the federal government from enforcing an act of Congress, executive order, or agency rule against nonparties. Unless and until Congress endorses that practice, the federal courts should limit the reach of their judgments to the parties to a lawsuit. The Supreme Court would need to overrule its unanimous decisions in Zbaraz and Mendoza to uphold a nationwide injunction like the ones that have been entered against the government. That is as unlikely as it would be unwise.

Key Takeaways

Supplying complete relief to a victorious party can be done without granting strangers the same judicially enforceable rights that a successful litigant enjoys.
Nationwide injunctions both cross that line and prevent the federal government from enforcing an act of Congress, executive order, or agency rule against nonparties.
Unless and until Congress endorses that practice, the federal courts should limit the reach of their judgments to only the parties to a lawsuit.

[FYI; It’s l-o-n-g, and like all legal treatises by lawyers, they interject the source of citation directly after a cite, breaking up the text and making it difficult to read.]

So:

Introduction: The Practice of Issuing Nationwide Injunctions

The Unitary Executive Theory1

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Well, I did too, so…….

The Left Knew They Were Lying to Us All Along

Victor Davis Hanson

For years, the left has advanced utter untruths for cheap partisan purposes that it knew at the time were all false. And now when caught, they just shrug and say they were lying all along.

They damned as incompetent, racist, and conspiratorial any who dared follow logic and evidence to point out that the Chinese government and its military were both culpable for the virus and lying.

A million Americans died of COVID. Millions more suffered long-term injuries. Still, the left-wing media and Biden administration demonized any who dared speak about a lab origin of the deadly virus.

The lies were designed to protect the guilty who had helped fund the virus’s origins, such as Doctors Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins.

The Biden government also tried to use the lab theory to ridicule a supposedly pro-Trump “conspiracy.”

Western corporate interests deeply invested in China did not want their partner held responsible for veritably killing and maiming hundreds of millions worldwide.

Almost as soon as Joe Biden was inaugurated, the left knew that he was physically and mentally unable to serve as president.

Indeed, that was the point.

Biden’s role was designed as a waxen figurine for hard-left agendas that, without the “old Joe Biden from Scranton” pseudo-moderate veneer, could never have been advanced.

His handlers operated a nightmare administration: the destruction of deterrence abroad, two theater wars, 12 million illegal aliens, a weaponized justice system, hyperinflation, and $7 trillion more in debt.

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The Only “Constitutional Crisis” is That Democrats Lost, Now They’re Trying To Govern from the Courtroom

My Hot Take on Democat Lawfare: “There is no constitutional crisis other than the Democrats lost. They are trying to create a constitutional crisis by having the judiciary and the federal district courts assume control of the executive branch.”

Democrats have launched a pre-planned, well-organized lawfare campaign against the Trump administration.

The NY Times reported in late November 2024 on the massive effort which was two-years in the making and in the immediate post-election period focused heavily on finding plaintiffs and lining up legal groups to challenge expected Trump policies:

More than 800 lawyers at 280 organizations have begun developing cases and workshopping specific challenges to what the group has identified as 600 “priority legal threats” — potential regulations, laws and other administrative actions that could require a legal response, its leaders said. The project, called Democracy 2025, aims to be a hub of opposition to the new Trump administration….

Democracy Forward has spent the last two years working to identify the possible actions the new Trump administration could take on issues they see as key priorities to defend, the group’s leaders said, using as a blueprint Mr. Trump’s first-term actions, his campaign promises and plans released by his allies, including the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025 agenda….

The flotilla of lawyers is preparing to challenge new regulations released by the Trump administration, even beginning the process of recruiting potential plaintiffs who would have legal standing in court.

We have seen the fruits of the lawfare planning in the opening three weeks of the Trump administration, with several dozen lawsuits filed, and many (not all) district court judges willing at least to grant temporary restraining orders, incuding one ex parte TRO issued by an emergency duty judge at 1 a.m. last Saturday morning that by its terms removed political appointee control of Treasury payment systems. (That TRO was scaled back by the judge permanently assigned to the case, and is under review by her in a ruling expected soon.) It may be that the short-term TROs are not extended to longer-term preliminary injunctions, and if that happens the “crisis” may solve itself, but I’m not hopeful.

Here is my ‘hot take’ on how the lawfare, not the Trump administration, is creating the real ‘constitutional crisis’. This is a short excerpt from my much longer (almost 20 minute) explanation as part of the podcast we just posted.

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Cynical Publius

It used to amaze me at how effective Democrats were at flooding the zone with huge numbers of zealous demonstrators for whatever the party’s cause de jure was at the time.

I was always jealous of the ideological commitment that it took to get so many individuals to turn out for those sorts of events, and wished we conservatives could similarly harness such passion.

But I was really wrong.

It turns out that Democrats do nothing for free, and instead our tax dollars–funneled through America-hating NGOs–were in many cases paid to hired “demonstrators” to create that aura of political passion.

We’re already starting to see the effects of cutting off that firehose of dollars, as the anti-Trump demonstrations thus far tend to consist of a gaggle of patchouli-smelling ex-hippies in their late 70s singing Woody Guthrie songs, accompanied by a handful of obese, nose-ringed transgender college students with blue hair LARPing at Marxism.

Deon Joseph

So I get into it with a friend on another platform who keeps spewing the same propaganda as if anyone who voted for Trump lost their minds and rely on him like God to make our lives better. He also accused me of being willing to sidestep democracy to get the things I want.

I may have lost a friend, because my correction was as follows:

“You folks and your propaganda are nauseating. You think it’s about making my life better? It’s all about me?

You know what I wanted out of Trump?

The same damn thing I wanted out of Obama, Biden, Bush, Big Bush and and Clinton.

Those those things are the following

– Transparency
– A secure border
– Honesty
– Common sense leadership
– Doing exactly what you campaigned on
– A strong military
– An end to political indoctrination in our schools
– Respect for personal freedom
– And someone who would think about America first before giving everything to the world while his own people suffer.

Not one of them came through. Each one of them failed. Most didn’t even try. They just faked it well enough that you are still pining for their pipe dream. But guess who did come through? As flawed as he is as a person, it was freaking Trump. A man I was never a fan of personally but respect because he does the hell what he says he’s going to do or tries.

That’s what I voted for. Not some polished fake politician who pretends to be an angel but is doing the devils work as we are distracted by their platitudes and symbolic gestures that get us absolutely no where.

No one is side stepping democracy, genius. By the way, we don’t live in a democracy. We live in a constitutional republic.

But let’s go with your twisted idea of democracy.

Was it democracy when Biden coerced Big Tech into silencing millions of Americans for their opinions and thoughts?

Was it democracy when that old man lied to you and told you he didn’t know about his sons dealings and that the laptop didn’t exist? Because for many that may have changed their vote in the 2020 election if they knew then candidate Biden was compromised.

Was it democracy when he got 51 intelligence agents who we are supposed to trust, to go along with the lie and call it Russian disinformation?

Was it democracy to force people to choose between feeding their damn family and a damn shot in the arm that is causing damage to a lot of people?

Was it democracy when Biden flew in hundreds of thousands of migrants in the middle of the night without telling us and also opened the borders? Did we the American people have a say in that? No the heck we didn’t.

Was it democracy when if we question elections or vaccines that we get silenced and are forced to self sensor just to survive?

It that’s your democracy? You can keep that crap bro, respectfully.

Trump is no God or saint but it’s a damn shame it took a flawed man to do right by the American people. He’s showing you how corrupt your government truly is and I’m here for it. No regrets whatsoever.”