11th Circuit Will Review En Banc Whether Second Amendment Protects 18-to-20-Year-Olds
Yesterday, the Eleventh Circuit granted en banc rehearing on this issue in NRA v. Bondi. For more on the underlying legal issue, see Stephen Halbrook’s April post, which mentions the panel opinion (which has now been vacated) as well as some other cases.
Federal Appeals Judge Speaks to The Four Boxes Diner about the 2nd Amendment, Justice Thomas & Originalism
Federal court rules Measure 114 constitutional despite criticism
The ruling (hold onto your hat for the legal acrobatics the judge used)
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Oregon’s Measure 114 is constitutional, according to a ruling by the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon.
The federal court ruled in Oregon’s favor in a lawsuit against the gun control measure approved by voters by a slim margin in 2022. The ruling means the state may ensure Oregonians get a permit before obtaining firearms, require a state police-maintained permit/firearm database and prohibit “large capacity” ammunition magazines.
There is an exception for military and law enforcement.
The measure describes “large capacity” magazines as “fixed/detachable magazines (or functional equivalent) that can accept ‘more than 10 rounds of ammunition and allows a shooter to keep firing without having to pause to reload.’” The measure also includes exceptions for “’lever-action’ firearms and permanently altered fixed magazines, 10 rounds or fewer.”
The plaintiff’s attorney made the case that magazines are critical for the gun, so they should be considered arms, but attorneys defending Measure 114 argued that detachable magazines are accessories – not firearms – and don’t affect the operability of the gun itself.
In response to the measure’s ruling, Jess Marks, the executive director of the Oregon Alliance for Gun Safety, issued the following statement:
“We know Measure 114 is an effective and life-saving policy, and now a federal judge has ruled it is also in line with the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court has articulated that Second Amendment rights are not unchecked — they come with responsibilities — and the U.S. District Court affirmed this in our case. This victory belongs to those who have lost loved ones to gun violence and to every Oregonian who demanded change.”
“Our team looks forward to ultimately prevailing in the state courts as well,” she said. “Measure 114’s provisions – passed by Oregon voters – are common sense safety measures that will save lives.”
SAF FILES AMICUS BRIEF SUPPORTING CHALLENGE OF HAWAII GUN LAW
BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation has filed a 29-page amicus brief supporting a motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction in a challenge of Hawaii’s restrictive concealed carry law, in a case known as Wolford v. Lopez.
The brief was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii.
As explained in the court document, Hawaii “has followed New York, New Jersey, and Maryland in taking deliberate action to undermine the Supreme Court’s landmark Bruen ruling and the fundamental general right to carry an effective mechanism of self-defense it affirmed. Hawaii’s SB 1230 and similar laws specifically, and unfairly target those who have taken their rights most seriously in attempting to exercise them, even submitting to Defendants’ background check and training requirements.”
Following the 2022 Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Hawaii passed SB 1230, a sweeping law designed to severely limit the places where licensed, law-abiding citizens can legally carry firearms for personal protection. So restrictive in its nature, the new legislation was colloquially dubbed the “Bruen response bill.”
“As we contend in our brief,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “Hawaii’s new law is written to make citizens afraid to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms, to the point they’re even afraid to enter a coffee shop without first being invited. We cannot have law-abiding citizens afraid to exercise a right for fear of being prosecuted and made into criminals. That is not how constitution works, and specifically, it is why the Second Amendment includes the phrase ‘shall not be infringed.’ SB 1230 constitutes a serious infringement.”
“There are no historical analogues supporting the extreme nature of Hawaii’s gun law,” added SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “To the contrary, as we explain to the court, history shows lawmakers respected Second Amendment rights as part of everyday life, to the point of encouraging people to bring their guns to public meetings and even church. Hawaii, on the other hand, is trying to make have a gun outside of one’s home or private vehicle a crime.”
Experts See Uncertainty in New Supreme Court Gun Case
The nation’s highest court is set to decide a new Second Amendment case, but how the justices might come down is murky at best.
A collection of experts from across the ideological spectrum who have spent decades studying the Second Amendment and American gun laws told The Reload United States v. Rahimi presents a unique challenge for the Court that will likely flush out its new test for gun cases. But they were less confident about the direction the justices might take or the conclusion they might arrive at.
“It is still too early to tell what the Supreme Court will do in Rahimi,” George Mason University professor Robert Leider, who writes about the Second Amendment and teaches at the Antonin Scalia Law School, said.
Rahimi will be the first gun case the Supreme Court takes up since it handed down a new Second Amendment test in last year’s New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. It is an appeal of a Fifth Circuit panel’s ruling that found the federal ban on those subject to domestic violence restraining orders possessing guns was unconstitutional under the Bruen test. It stems from a case against a Texas man who pled guilty to violating a restraining order his child’s mother had against him over accusations he assaulted her when police found he had guns in his home. The police were able to search his home and find the guns because he is also accused of carrying out multiple shootings unrelated to the situation with his ex-girlfriend.
“Doubtless, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8) embodies salutary policy goals meant to protect vulnerable people in our society,” Judge Cory T. Wilson wrote for the panel. “Weighing those policy goals’ merits through the sort of means-end scrutiny our prior precedent indulged, we previously concluded that the societal benefits of § 922(g)(8) outweighed its burden on Rahimi’s Second Amendment rights. But Bruen forecloses any such analysis in favor of a historical analogical inquiry into the scope of the allowable burden on the Second Amendment right. Through that lens, we conclude that § 922(g)(8) ‘s ban on possession of firearms is an ‘outlier that our ancestors would never have accepted.’ Therefore, the statute is unconstitutional, and Rahimi’s conviction under that statute must be vacated.”
The Department of Justice (DOJ) decided to skip appealing to the full Fifth Circuit and head straight to the Supreme Court, which agreed to take up the case late last month. All of the experts who spoke with The Reload agreed that move was a potentially-smart piece of strategic litigating by Attorney General Merrick Garland (D.) and the DOJ.
SAF FILES REPLY BRIEF IN CHALLENGE OF MARYLAND CCW LAW
BELLEVUE, WA – Attorneys representing the Second Amendment Foundation and its allies in a federal challenge of Maryland’s restrictive concealed carry statute today filed their reply to the state’s arguments against an earlier motion for a preliminary injunction in the case known as Novotny v. Moore.
The response brief was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
SAF is joined in the case by Maryland Shall Issue, the Firearms Policy Coalition and three private citizens, all of whom possess “wear and carry permits,” including Susan Burke of Reisterstown, Esther Rossberg of Baltimore, and Katherine Novotny of Aberdeen, for whom the lawsuit is named. They are represented by attorneys David H. Thompson and Peter A. Patterson at Cooper & Kirk in Washington, D.C., Mark W. Pennak at Maryland Shall Issue in Baltimore, and Matthew Larosiere from Lake Worth, Fla.
The lawsuit focuses on SB1, a bill signed by Gov. Wesley Moore, which has added new restrictions on where legally-licensed citizens may carry firearms for personal protection. Maryland is attempting to wildly expand so-called “sensitive places” in an attempt to virtually prohibit lawful, licensed concealed carry in almost every venue in the state outside of someone’s home or business.
“As we maintained in our initial lawsuit, the State of Maryland is desperately trying to justify its extremist policy by offering alleged historical analogues that don’t really exist,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “As we noted earlier, instead of trying to comply with the new guidelines set down in the Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling last year, Maryland lawmakers responded by adopting gun laws more restrictive than they were before. This is tantrum-level stubbornness usually confined to elementary school playgrounds, and it doesn’t belong in state legislatures or governors’ offices.”
“Today’s brief further underscores the fact that Maryland’s recently enacted restrictions on carry are incompatible with this nation’s history and tradition of firearms regulation,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “In defense of its law, Maryland grasps at straws and reasoning well removed from a logical pathway to justify its new existence. Our brief systemically refutes the positions put forth by the government and demonstrates that the challenged restrictions are constitutionally impermissible.”
Supreme Court Considering a Case That Might Upend Hundreds of January 6 Prosecutions
Prosecutorial overreach is not uncommon in high-profile cases. The prosecutors pile on the charges to frighten defendants with the prospect of long prison terms so they plead out. The state also hopes to throw enough charges against the wall to see what sticks.
But the danger of overreach is that a judge may want to smack a prosecutor down for bringing unnecessary charges. Such is the case in the January 6 prosecutions.
One of the rioters, Edward Lang, is facing 11 charges and pleaded not guilty to all of them. But a district court judge threw out the charges relating to “obstruction of an official proceeding” concerning Lang and two others accused of violence at the Capitol.
The law in question sentences a guilty party to up to 20 years in prison for anyone who “corruptly alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document,” or “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.” Lang is questioning whether the Sarbanes-Oxley statute fits the behavior of hundreds of rioters.
Sarbanes-Oxley was passed in response to financial malfeasance in the 2002 bankruptcies of telecom giant Worldcom and Enron, an energy company based in Houston. Lang argues that the obstruction defined in Sarbanes-Oxley bears no relationship to the violence that occurred on January 6, 2021.
The panel of the United States Appeals Court for the District of Columbia, though, by a 2-to-1 margin, upheld the use of the obstruction charge, deciding that Judge Nichols’s reading was too cramped. Judge Pan, writing for the majority, ruled that the “broad interpretation of the statute — encompassing all forms of obstructive acts — is unambiguous and natural.”
The request for a hearing before the Nine asks whether the statute, intended to clamp down on financial malfeasance, “can be used to prosecute acts of violence against police officers in the context of a public demonstration that turned into a riot.” Mr. Lang argues that a “statute intended to combat financial fraud has been transformed into a blatant political instrument to crush dissent.”
Lang’s petition before the high court warns that a “revolution is underway, with ambitious federal prosecutors reworking the penal code to make it do work never intended to be done, work that threatens to chill, and does chill, ordinary Americans in their First Amendment rights.” The petition says there’s no need to “create a new and novel application of a statute to capture the violence that took place that day.”
Lang argues that the obstruction must be done “corruptly,” which doesn’t appear to be the case in his prosecution. And finally, Lang warns that this prosecutorial strategy “will serve to chill political speech and expression on the eve of one of the most consequential events in American life — the election of the next President of the United States.” He says it “falls to this Court to rein in the Department of Justice.”
It’s easy to argue that there is a certain amount of vindictiveness in many of these prosecutions. The question facing the court will be, did prosecutors go too far in fashioning a legal argument to prosecute based on a loose interpretation of a statute that was never meant to cover violence during a riot?
Courts are reluctant to reign in prosecutors, but in this case, there’s a chance the Supreme Court might look to cut the DoJ’s misused freedom of action and bring them down a peg.
For some rioters, it could mean the difference between prison and freedom. For others, taking a 20-year sentence off the table will be, if nothing else, a relief.
Connecticut state parks gun ban challenge dismissed
Connecticut’s ban on guns in state parks has survived a challenge.
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit where a man had argued the policy violated his Second Amendment rights.
For folks enjoying the outdoors, there are mixed feelings about the current ban on guns in state parks and forests without authorization.
“There’s no need for a gun in a park with families,” said Connie DeMonte of Middletown.
“I believe people have the right to defend themselves no matter where they are,” said Scott Taffaro of Manchester.
On Wednesday, a federal judge threw out a challenge to the rule.
“This is an important decision, but it doesn’t really get to the heart of the matter. The judge dismissed the case on standing grounds, which is lawyer talk for, you don’t actually have the right to file this lawsuit,” said Mike Lawlor, University of New Haven criminal justice associate professor.
This rule has actually been around for more than 100 years and apparently there’s no record of it ever being enforced. That’s part of why the judge tossed out the case, though the fight is potentially not over.
In the lawsuit filed against the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection commissioner, David Nastri argued the ban prevented him from carrying a gun for self defense.
His lawyer says they will appeal and wrote in part:
“We are profoundly disappointed in the district court’s ruling, which we believe is significantly at odds with U.S. Supreme Court precedent and is based on an unprecedented legal fiction.”
The state attorney general applauded the dismissal, writing in part:
“Connecticut’s commonsense gun laws are life-saving and constitutional– they strike the right balance between respecting Second Amendment rights while also protecting public safety.”
Among those we talked with at the parks just happened to be the father of Lieutenant Dustin DeMonte – the Bristol Police officer shot and killed in the line of duty.
Philip DeMonte is against guns in the parks.
“I don’t need to have to worry or even want to have to worry about that. Because, I mean, there’s a lot of craziness out there already,” DeMonte said.
Lawlor said he believes if a case does move forward, judges would back governments having the right to regulate access to parks.
He points out there are rules about other things you can’t bring in like alcohol in some parks.
Judges Confused by Supreme Court’s Historical Test for Gun Laws
Confusion over the US Supreme Court’s last gun rights ruling is likely to persist even after the justices decide a new Second Amendment case next term.
Establishing a constitutional right to carry a handgun in public in a landmark 2022 decision forced lower courts to play historian and look to Colonial-era laws to justify the lawfulness of gun restrictions, a duty that has frustrated some judges.
“Judges are not historians,” Judge Carlton Reeves of the US District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi said in dismissing a case after finding no history or tradition to support upholding the federal ban on convicted felons having guns. “We were not trained as historians. We practiced law, not history.”……………….
This is rank, ripe, stinking BS.
1, It’s from Bloomberg, so should a posteriori be suspect.
2, They’re not confused. They’re not stupid. They’re subversives.
If a federal judge is incapable of looking up and analyzing legal and legislative history, they shouldn’t have a job. As an appellate judge, it is literally a core part of their responsibilities, and a big part of why our tax dollars pay for them to have clerks.
3,“We were not trained as historians. We practiced law, not history as an excuse? Judges do history all of the time. Even worse, Bruen doesn’t ask them to be historians of the 18th century in general. It only asks them to research historical laws.
One of the experts the article quoted admitted this is hard because most gun laws are from the twentieth century. That isn’t so much an attack on the Text/History/Tradition test as it is a condemnation of the last century’s purposeful rejection of a constitutional standard.
4, Historical revisionism is at the core of the modern gun control movement. It’s why Biden repeats the lie about people not being able to buy cannons and why news organizations wring their hands about how judges having to understand history is an unprecedented attack on our legal system.
5, The end goal is to make the following the only publicly acceptable opinion to hold:
a, There is no such thing as a right to own firearms
b, The very idea that there could be such a thing was created by NRA lobbyists and far-right conspiracists in the 70’s.
This is the gun control ‘Big Lie’.
Biden’s anti-gun executive orders falling one by one
The purpose of an executive order is for the president to tell others in the executive branch precisely how they’re to carry out the laws passed by Congress. It was never intended as a way to create laws without the legislature.
However, President Joe Biden, like so many before him, does just that.
Take gun control, for example. Biden can’t pass it. Not like he wants. Congress just isn’t interested in banning things like so-called ghost guns.
So, Biden uses an executive order, directs the ATF to essentially declare them illegal, and calls it a day.
Only, that didn’t work out.
Numerous federal gun control policies enacted by the Biden administration via executive order have faced extensive scrutiny in federal courts with jurisdiction over matters arising in Texas, the latest being a rule implemented last year seeking to regulate home-build firearms kits.
Texas residents Jennifer VanDerStok and Michael Andren, along with the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), challenged the new rule expanding the definition of a “firearm receiver” to include kits that contain partially manufactured parts and are marketed to be completed into functioning firearms, which are also referred to as “ghost guns.”
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) issued a statement when the rule was published last year, explaining that it was prompted by a proliferation of untraceable guns without serial numbers from being used in crimes. The ATF claimed it would help prevent those prohibited by law from obtaining a gun, such as convicted felons, from easily obtaining one.
The ATF claimed there were 692 instances of ghost guns being used in homicides or attempted homicides.
Of course, from what we’ve seen, those 692 instances were spread out over a significant period of time, meaning that they’re a statistical drop in the bucket when looking at so-called gun deaths.
But this wasn’t the only example of Biden’s executive orders showing signs of trouble.
There’s trouble brewing for Biden’s other big-ticket executive order, the ban on pistol braces. There’s already some judicial skepticism and the membership of the Second Amendment Foundation and the Firearms Policy Coalition are already exempt from it by court order.
In fact, it’s so bad it’s not unreasonable to ask whether any of Biden’s executive orders will stand.
Oh, I’m sure a few will. Parts of this order are just about speeding up the process of collecting data the government already collects, which isn’t likely to be overturned.
But that same executive order also deals with the so-called rogue gun dealers who appear to just be FFL holders who make administrative errors, and that is likely to end up in court sooner or later. Based on what we’ve seen, that’s going to be bad news for the Biden administration.
At the end of the day, most of Biden’s executive orders will probably be overturned, but not without a lot of time and resources spent fighting this power grab.
And none of it should be happening. The truth is that the legislative branch is who should be passing laws, not the executive, but with Congress having basically turned a blind eye to the ATF’s repeated “reinterpretations” of gun control laws, we have the mess we’re currently in.
If only that would fall in court.
Gun groups appeal Delaware ‘assault weapons’ ban ruling
(The Center Square) — Gun rights groups are asking a federal appeals court to overturn a lower court ruling upholding Delaware’s “assault weapons” ban and other firearm restrictions.
In April, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Andrews rejected a request by the Delaware Sportsmen’s Association and other groups who sued the state for a preliminary injunction blocking the new regulations from being enforced as he considers the lawsuit.
But the groups have filed an appeal to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, urging the three-judge panel to overturn Andrews’ ruling that upheld Delaware’s ban on so-called “assault weapons” and “large capacity” magazines.
“The district court wrongly held that Delaware’s bans, which affect some of the most popular firearms and magazines in the country, could be justified by reference to a pattern of historical regulation targeting a variety of arms, from ‘slung shots’ to machine guns,” lawyers for the group wrote in the 64-page brief.
“But the state has not put forward, and the district court did not cite, a single law that banned possession or carriage of an arm that was in common use at the time like the Delaware bans do.”
Last year, Gov. John Carney signed a package of gun control measures that included a ban on the sale of so-called assault-style weapons, an increase in the age to purchase firearms from 18 to 21, strengthened background checks and limits on large-capacity magazines. It also banned the use of devices that convert handguns into fully automatic weapons.
The bills were pushed through the Democratic-controlled Legislature in the wake of several mass shootings, including the massacre of 21 at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
The sportsman association, a state-level affiliate of the National Rifle Association, filed the lawsuit shortly after Carney signed the bills arguing they violate Second Amendment rights and Delaware’s Constitution, which guarantees a right to own and carry firearms.
The plaintiffs argued the new law “criminalized” the purchase and ownership of common firearms used by labeling them as “deadly weapons” and making it a felony “for law-abiding citizens to exercise their fundamental right to keep and bear such arms.”
The lawsuit is one of hundreds of legal challenges across the country filed in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the N.Y. State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen’s case, which struck down a New York law requiring applicants to show “proper cause” to get a permit to carry a firearm.
The ruling has prompted reviews of firearm licensing laws in Delaware and other Democrat-led states to tighten their gun laws to further restrict firearm carrying, spurring other legal challenges from Second Amendment groups.
“No matter what the State of Delaware thinks, the guns and magazines it banned are protected by the Second Amendment and thus cannot be prohibited,” Richard Thomson, a spokesman for the Firearms Policy Coalition, said in a statement. “We look forward to the Third Circuit getting right what the district court got wrong when it declined to preliminarily enjoin Delaware’s bans.”
Fifth Circuit poised to strike down another prohibited persons statute?
Unless you’re Hunter Biden, the Department of Justice takes a very dim view of possessing firearms and using illicit drugs of any kind; even those that have been decriminalized or legalized at the state level. But is the federal prohibition on that activity constitutionally permissible? The Fifth Circuit is asking that question in a case called U.S. v. Daniels, and this week both the Second Amendment Foundation and Firearms Policy Coalition gave their answers in amicus briefs filed with the appellate court. The short version? Absolutely not.
Patrick Darnell Daniels, Jr. was indicted by a federal grand jury last year for allegedly violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), which forbids gun possession for “unlawful users of controlled substances”; a charge, incidentally, that the media insisted is rarely brought against defendants. Guess Mr. Daniels was just extra unlucky, because not only was he charged but he was convicted and sentenced to 46 months in federal prison for illegally possessing firearms while regularly consuming marijuana.
Daniels’ public defenders appealed that verdict to the Fifth Circuit, arguing that 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) is both unconstitutionally vague because it fails to adequately define “unlawful user” and a violation of Daniels’ Second Amendment rights. The Fifth Circuit heard oral arguments in the case back in early June, but as SAF’s founder Alan Gottlieb says, the three-judge panel took the somewhat unusual step of soliciting amicus briefs from interested parties who could flesh out the historical record on just how longstanding and widespread similar prohibitions may have been.
While SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut says the organization isn’t taking a position for or against certain laws, attorneys failed to turn up any evidence of “historical gun regulations that essentially strip someone of their Second Amendment rights for life, because they may have been under the influence of, or impaired by, an intoxicating substance.”
As the brief explains:
… there were less than a handful of laws enacted during the colonial/pre-Founding Era and zero known laws during the Founding Era itself relating to the possession of firearms by users of illicit or intoxicating drinks or substances, and few known such laws during the 19th century, whether before or after the Civil War.
None of these laws were distinctly similar or relevantly similar to § 922(g)(3) because (1) in contrast, “the restrictions imposed by each law only applied while an individual was actively intoxicated or using intoxicants,” (2) “none of the laws appear to have prohibited the mere possession of a firearm,” or (3) “appear to have applied to public places or activities” rather than “being a total prohibition applicable to all intoxicated persons in all places . . . .” Harrison, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18397, at *14. Whereas these laws “took a scalpel” to the right to bear arms, § 922(g)(3) “takes a sledgehammer to the right.”
The amicus brief notes that the DOJ itself has failed to come up with any Founding-era historical analogues to § 922(g)(3), which SAF’s attorneys say should be the fact that should carries the most weight, “given the Supreme Court’s command that the historical analysis required by Bruen must flow from 1791.”
Instead, the federal government cites three laws from the colonial/pre-Founding era; a 1655 law in Virginia that prohibited “shoot[ing] any guns at drinkeing (marriages and ffunerals [sic] onely [sic] excepted),” a New Jersey law from 1746 authorizing militia officials to disarm any soldier who “appear[ed] in Arms disguised in Liquor,” and a 1773 New York statute that prohibited the “fir[ing] or discharge [of] any Gun, Pistol, Rocket, Cracker, Squib or other fire Work [sic]” in certain areas between December 31 and January 2,” a restriction the SAF attorneys explain was meant to address “great Damages [] frequently done on . . . New Years Days, by persons going from House to House, with Guns and other Fire Arms and being often intoxicated with Liquor.”
The SAF brief found a few post-Civil War statutes that dealt with intoxicating liquors and guns, but none of them prohibited gun ownership for any regular consumer of alcohol or drugs (illicit or otherwise). Instead, these were mostly “time, manner, and place” restrictions; individuals may have been barred from carrying while actively intoxicated, but getting intoxicated wasn’t cause for them to be stripped of their Second Amendment rights.
The FPC brief treads similar ground, pointing out that firearms and alcohol were both ubiquitous in the colonial and Founding era, and yet prohibitions on gun ownership for users of intoxicating spirits is nowhere to be found in the historical record. Even when we get to the age of the temperance (and eventually teetotaler) movement, laws prohibiting gun ownership for drinkers are simply absent from the statutes.
Attorney Joseph Greenlee argues that the only historical justification for prohibiting gun ownership to someone is their “dangerousness”, but the “DOJ failed to make any serious effort to establish that connection” in relation to modern day drug use, illegal though it might be.
The DOJ’s fallback argument is that even if there aren’t any historical analogues to support the modern prohibition, the Second Amendment only protects “law abiding citizens,” so any illicit drug use is automatically cause to strip someone of their right to keep and bear arms. That argument is going to be tested by the Supreme Court in the Rahimi case this fall, and I suspect the Fifth Circuit will weigh in with their own views on the DOJ’s position as it applies to § 922(g)(3) before Rahimi‘s oral arguments take place.
The Fifth Circuit has already taken a dim view of several other gun control provisions, including the ATF’s ban on bump stocks and unfinished frames and receivers, as well as determining that those subject to a domestic violence restraining order like Zachey Rahimi still possess the right to keep and bear arms, and this should be a relatively easy call for the judges to make. The history, text, and tradition of the right to keep and bear arms is at odds with § 922(g)(3)’s lifetime prohibition on gun possession for “unlawful” users of drugs, and Hunter Biden shouldn’t be the only one to avoid federal prosecution for doing so.
Hunter Biden probe shows corruptness in America’s two-tier justice system.
America’s two-tier justice system keeps rolling along.
And Delaware US Attorney David Weiss, who snubbed the House’s request for documents pertaining to his probe of Hunter Biden, is the latest to show how far the Department of Justice will go to keep it rolling.
Hunter, President Joseph Robinette Biden’s black-sheep son, is facing tax and weapons charges that would represent deep hot water for most Americans. But Hunter isn’t most Americans.
He’s the president’s son, and, allegedly, bagman as well. And our Justice Department, headed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, is out to spare him the consequences of his actions.
IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley has come forward to report that Department of Justice officials took care to ensure that Hunter couldn’t be charged by ordering US attorneys in Washington, DC, and California not to prosecute.
Weiss didn’t charge Hunter because he allegedly said he lacked the authority to charge for things outside his home jurisdiction.
Garland could have granted Weiss the power to do so, but despite claiming that Weiss had unlimited powers, Garland never made the grant.
Hunter’s charges thus fell through a crack.
IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley has come forward to report that Department of Justice officials took care to ensure that Hunter couldn’t be charged by ordering US attorneys in Washington, DC, and California not to prosecute.
But hey, the tax fraud was only one of Hunter’s legal problems where the Department of Justice was happy to help out.
Hunter did get charged in Delaware, but only with two misdemeanor tax charges and a felony gun charge, for which he’ll get pretrial diversion and no prison time.
The tax charges could carry as much as two years in prison, and the gun charge could produce a 10-year sentence, but Hunter’s plea deal is expected to produce none.
Columnist J.D. Tuccille writes, “If, as expected, Hunter Biden’s plea deal on tax and firearms charges keeps him out of prison, it would be a remarkable display of leniency. . . . It’s enough to make a suspicious person wonder if the deal was meant to give the appearance that justice was done to divert attention from more serious matters. It’s also a hint of the restraint prosecutors exercise for the powerful, and which the rest of us would appreciate.”
The tax charges could carry up to 2 years in prison along with the gun charge producing a possible 10-year sentence, but Hunter’s plea deal is expected to produce none. Ya think?
As law professor Jonathan Turley notes, the charges also allow Hunter to avoid discussing the (likely unsavory) sources of the money.
How convenient.
“The House Oversight Committee has documented potentially millions in financial transfers from foreign sources to Biden family members. . . . Garland took the most important step in pulling off the controlled demolition by steadfastly refusing to appoint a special counsel. Such an appointment would allow the release of a report that would detail the alleged corrupt practices of the Biden family and the knowledge and involvement of the president,” Turley wrote.
That’s why they didn’t do it.
This seems deeply suspicious, and the House Judiciary Committee is investigating.
But Weiss, ignoring a subpoena, is stonewalling.
People used to say that it’s the coverup that gets you, not the crime, but today’s Democrats obviously don’t believe that.
It’s been obvious for a while that there’s a two-tier justice system in America.
If you’re a Jan. 6 protester who just wandered around the Capitol, you can expect solitary confinement before trial, and prosecutors who’ll throw the book at you.
But if you’re the son of a (Democratic) president, you can expect to be handled with kid gloves.
Our Constitution forbids “titles of nobility,” whereby the elite live by different rules than the rest of us.
It doesn’t seem to be working very well, does it?
FPC Files Opening Brief in Lawsuits Challenging Delaware “Assault Weapon,” Magazine Bans
PHILADELPHIA, PA (July 5, 2023) – Today, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced the filing of an opening brief with the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in its Gray v. Jennings and Graham v. Jennings lawsuits, which challenge Delaware’s “assault weapon” and standard capacity magazine bans, respectively. The brief can be viewed at FPCLegal.org.
“The district court wrongly held that Delaware’s bans, which affect some of the most popular firearms and magazines in the country, could be justified by reference to a pattern of historical regulation targeting a variety of arms, from ‘slung shots’ to machine guns,” argues the brief. “But the State has not put forward, and the district court did not cite, a single law that banned possession or carriage of an arm that was in common use at the time like the Delaware bans do.”
“No matter what the State of Delaware thinks, the guns and magazines it banned are protected by the Second Amendment and thus cannot be prohibited,” said FPC Vice President of Communications Richard Thomson. “We look forward to the Third Circuit getting right what the district court got wrong when it declined to preliminarily enjoin Delaware’s bans.”
FPC is joined in these lawsuits by the Second Amendment Foundation……
Democrat Rep. Has Psychotic Meltdown – Calls Supreme Court “Illegitimate White Patriarchy”
The separation of the political left from any sort of reasonable governance has been obvious for years now. To put it simply, they see the government as their personal weapon for deconstructing the country so they can rebuild society the way they want. They believe this is their right – The right of the collective to socially engineer
The notion that elements of the government might serve the interests of conservatives and independents is an unthinkable heresy. And, whenever they don’t get exactly what they want from the government (which is rare) they immediately act as if they have been betrayed; that an “insurrection” is afoot to enslave them.
This attitude seems to overlook the fact that every major institution in the US has been catering to the far-left for decades. Even when GOP Republicans have taken a majority in the House, the Senate or put their man in the Oval Office, the general legislative trend has always taken a progressive direction, to the point that America has become increasingly more socialist in its functions. It’s also the reason why America has become economically and socially unstable.
In truth, leftists have been getting what they want from governments and the corporate world for so long they have become utterly entitled, like spoiled children.
That’s the kind of sad energy we now see on display among Democrats in the face of multiple Supreme Court losses, including the reversal of Roe v. Wade, the blocking of Biden’s student loan relief program and the end of affirmative action on college campuses. All these court decisions really amount to is a reversal of entitlements that never should have existed in the first place. Leftists see such entitlements as “civil rights,” never mind that they exist as a means to take the rights of others.
Democrat Representative Jaamal Bowman echos this ideology, combining it with a tired and psychotic rant about “white patriarchy” being the core function of the Supreme Court.
Rep Jaamal Bowman has a meltdown on tiktok over Supreme Court rulings.
Says Supreme Court is “illegitimate” and they’re only there to serve “white supremacy” and “white patriarchy” and “they don’t want black people to be educated” pic.twitter.com/f755B0F9Yg
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 30, 2023
The message? It’s complicated because it’s unhinged, but at bottom the far-left wants to fundamentally change the very fabric of the government so that it always acts in their favor regardless of who else is trampled in the process. Let’s try to break down Bowman’s claims…
Playing the racism card is the Democrat go-to tactic for a reason. The primary purpose is to incite civil unrest as a tool for control – “Give us what we want or the cities will burn.” The secondary purpose is to declare ownership of minorities. The propaganda acts as if all minorities are a monolith that serves the aims of the political left. The idea that minorities might also be conservative is ignored.
Affirmative action has always been a racist policy; it allows institutions to actively discriminate based on skin color and ethnicity. Interestingly, white people are not the most affected by affirmative action on college campuses; Asian people are the most discriminated against, with double standards in testing and academic excellence designed to keep them out of the classrooms. According to research from Princeton University, students who identify as Asian must score 140 points higher on the SAT than whites and 450 points higher than Blacks to have the same chance of admission to private colleges.
The notion of a constitutional convention has already been cited by other Democrats including California Governor Gavin Newsom as a means to dismantle the 2nd Amendment, but Bowman seems to be suggesting a convention to completely upend the Supreme Court and the very foundations of the law. Keep in mind that Democrats have avidly defended the court structure when it works in their favor, but since the court is finally operating on a more constitutional framework they argue it is now corrupt and white supremacist.
Student loan debt relief is nothing more than a way for Dems to buy votes – “Put us in office and we will eliminate the debts you accrued getting that degree that was probably useless.” Of course, taxpaying Americans would have to cover the bill for debt forgiveness on college loans, not the Democratic Party. It’s rather brilliant when you think about it – Democrats use your money to buy votes to keep themselves in office so they can continue to erode your constitutional rights. You pay for your own oppression.
People should have to pay for their own debts. Taxpayers should not have to pay their debts for them. It teaches a terrible lesson to the next generation that if they make mistakes the government will make sure they don’t have to learn from those mistakes.
Finally, it’s not surprising that Bowman attacks expanded gun rights in his diatribe on affirmative action, given that the political left cannot maintain power unless the public is eventually disarmed. Leftists believe in majority rule, as long as they are the majority. If they are the minority, they riot. If they are the majority, they demand government suppress their political opponents. In either case, gun rights stand as a major obstacle to them.
It was only a couple years ago that establishment elites and Democrats were pushing for permanent covid mandates, jail time for those who spread information contrary to the government narrative and economic discrimination for anyone who refused to take the vaccines. The political left took the mask off completely and showed who they really are. They cannot be trusted to rewrite or rebuild core government structures.
Their hatred of the Supreme Court is not based on any legitimate grievances, it’s based on how they view power. The court is a center of power that does not always act according to the dictates of social justice Marxism. They see the court as just another “platform” that needs to be co-opted.
Many conservatives and moderates also have concerns about how the Supreme Court makes decisions, but one cannot deny the constitutional logic behind their recent rulings. It’s a shift that should have happened a long time ago, though it is happening in an era in which leftists see ideological deviation as treason. They will use every trick at their disposal to undermine the law and create double standards to their benefit. Bowman essentially admits that this is the plan.
The sun may be out, but guns are not. Lawsuit challenges a new gun ban on Hawaii beaches
HONOLULU —
Sun’s out, guns out? Not on Hawaii’s world-famous beaches.
Beginning Saturday, a new law prohibits carrying a firearm on the sand — and in other places, including banks, bars and restaurants that serve alcohol.
Three Maui residents are suing to block the measure, arguing that Hawaii — which has long had some of the strictest gun laws in the nation and some of the lowest rates of gun violence — is going too far with its wide-ranging ban.
Residents carrying guns in public is new to Hawaii. Before a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year expanded gun rights nationwide, Hawaii’s county police chiefs made it virtually impossible to carry a gun by rarely issuing permits to do so — either for open carry or concealed carry. Gun owners were only allowed to keep firearms in their homes or to transport them — unloaded and locked up — to shooting ranges, hunting areas and places such as repair shops.
The high court’s ruling found that people in the U.S. have a right to carry firearms for self-defense. It prompted the state to retool its gun laws, with Democratic Gov. Josh Green signing legislation in early June to allow more people to carry concealed firearms.
At the same time, however, the new law prohibits people from taking guns to a wide range of places, including beaches, hospitals, stadiums, bars and movie theaters. Private businesses allowing guns must post a sign to that effect.
The lawsuit, which the three residents and the Hawaii Firearms Coalition filed in U.S. District Court in Honolulu last week, doesn’t challenge all the prohibited locations. But bans on carrying at beaches and parks, in family restaurants or in bank parking lots where people might be getting cash from ATMs are “egregious restrictions on their 2nd Amendment right to bear arms,” the lawsuit says.
“There’s a lot of crime at some of the parks and beaches,” said Todd Yukutake, a director of the coalition. “And it can be very scary at some of these beach parks.”
Alan Beck, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said his clients especially want to protect themselves at isolated beaches, where they might be fishing or going for a walk rather than sunbathing or swimming.
“The truth is it’s probably safer at Waikiki Beach during the day when there’s, you know, thousands of people around,” he said of Honolulu’s tourist mecca. “But a lot of these beaches in Hawaii aren’t the beaches people think of when, you know, they see movies or TV.”
Guns at beaches is not the image that tourism-dependent Hawaii wants to project, said Democratic state Sen. Karl Rhoads.
“A sensitive place is a place where you would not expect there to be guns,” he said. “Where you expect to have a good time and not have to worry about violence and being shot.”
Hawaii’s beaches are “the livelihood of our state in many ways,” said Chris Marvin, a Hawaii resident with the gun-violence prevention group Everytown for Gun Safety.
“And they are safe today. By allowing people to carry guns on them, they will become less safe.”
He recalled the “pandemonium” that ensued last year when a man brandished a gun on Waikiki Beach, causing tourists “to run for their lives.”
The lawsuit doesn’t challenge restrictions on carrying guns at bars, but the plaintiffs don’t see why family restaurants that serve alcohol should be included, Beck said. As for banks: Going to an ATM at night is “prime time for someone to try and mug you,” he said.
Legal challenges to similar laws adopted in New York and New Jersey last year are making their way through federal courts.
A federal appeals court temporarily agreed to keep in effect part of New Jersey’s handgun carry law, which also includes public beaches, as court proceedings play out.
In January, the high court ruled that New York can continue to enforce its sweeping law that bans guns from places including schools, playgrounds and Times Square.
Hawaii’s law reflects a “vast reach that goes beyond any other jurisdiction to date,” said Kevin O’Grady, another lawyer representing the plaintiffs.
The restrictions render concealed carry permits virtually useless, he said.
The Hawaii attorney general’s office said in a statement that the law is constitutional and vowed to defend it.
U.S. District Judge Leslie Kobayashi is scheduled to hear a motion for a temporary restraining order blocking the law on July 31.
We’ve let these schools raise up a generation or two of snowflake pansies.
If you need therapy after a court rules against you, you shouldn’t be a lawyer.
Make SCOTUS great again: Boston University law students offered therapy after recent rulings.
The work week ended with monumental rulings from the Supreme Court. The hot takes coming from the media are heavy with doom-and-gloom vibes because most of them are liberals.
There is no denying the rulings on the three big cases that deal with affirmative action, religious freedom, and student debt forgiveness, will “re-shape America for generations to come,” as one CNN anchor said this morning. A Washington correspondent for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said the rulings were made “strictly along ideological lines.” Another anchor noted that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, opined that the rulings show that it may be time for “re-shaping the Court.’
The drama. The Supreme Court is following the Constitution and the liberals are emotionally distressed. They have become so accustomed to the Court randomly making law instead of following the Constitution, like Roe v Wade back in 1973, that justices who are originalists are seen as oddities of the right. For example, Joe Biden, who has been humiliated by the rulings, especially the one on student loan bailouts, said the Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution wrong. Imagine the ignorance and arrogance of Biden, who barely graduated from law school, saying the Supreme Court just didn’t understand the Constitution.
The big affirmative action case where the Court ruled that the admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina “violate the Equal Protections Clause of the 14th Amendment,” was a punch in the gut to those who think discrimination is bad if it is against black and brown students but ok against Asian and white students. That is an over-simplification but it is the core of the system that routinely denied admission to qualified Asian students so that preference could be made for black and Hispanic students. Picking winners and losers based on skin color in college admissions always results in discrimination against someone. We long ago abandoned the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. that his children would be judged on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. In other words, meritocracy is back in college admissions and that is a good thing. Students deserve admission based on merit, not skin color, and the ability to check a box on an application.
Boston University is trying to cope with the fact that we now have a Supreme Court that follows the Constitution.
“The rulings of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS)—in cases addressing the admissions practices at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina—are profoundly disappointing because they take us backward, potentially creating less diverse college campuses and a less just America,” Boston University President Robert A. Brown wrote in a letter sent to the University community shortly after the decision Thursday. “These decisions are antithetical to Boston University’s values and mission.”
Brown added that the University would continue to review the decision “to better understand what it means for our admissions and academic practices and the changes we may be required to make.”
Whenever I think of affirmative action, I am reminded of a line George W. Bush often used in speeches about education – the soft bigotry of low expectations. It is insulting to black and brown students to assume that because of their skin color, they need special consideration. It assumes that all black and brown students come from poverty and few opportunities that others are afforded. Perhaps back when affirmative action first began but not now. There are more middle-class and upper-class minorities now than ever before. Affirmative action was never meant to be a forever policy. It is no longer needed as it once was.
There are ways for colleges to make their own admissions policies, something that Chief Justice Roberts notes. One associate professor at BU School of Law notes the lack of guidance in the ruling.
“It’s hard to say what this means for other colleges and universities because the majority opinion wasn’t all that clear in a lot of important ways,” says Jonathan Feingold, an associate professor of law at the BU School of Law.
“I wouldn’t take this opinion as a reason to take off the table ever considering race again,” Feingold says. “Colleges and universities may just have to do it in a more careful, defined way than what Harvard and UNC did.”
To that end, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, writing in the majority opinion, notes: “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” In other words, “the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race,” he writes.
In order for Boston University law students to be able to cope with a Supreme Court that follows the Constitution, mental health resources are being made available to help them “navigate these times.” The resources are not specialized counseling for students but resources that are already available.
Two of the resources were BU Behavioral Medicine and BU Student Wellbeing. According to its website, BU Behavioral Medicine offers therapy, on-call service for mental health emergencies and mental health diagnoses, among other services.
The student government criticized the decision in 303 Creative LLC. v. Elenis, which gave a Christian web designer the right to deny services to same-sex couples. It also condemned Biden v. Nebraska, which ruled President Biden’s proposed student loan forgiveness plan was unconstitutional.
“These three decisions form part of a lengthy sequence of this court’s ruling which steadily erode the rights of marginalized communities and undermine the very diversity upon which our nation was built,” the SGA argued.
The group that has benefitted the most from affirmative action policies is women. On today’s college campuses, women students often outnumber men. In 2022, for example, there were almost two women attending college for every man. It was the highest recorded gender imbalance favoring women in U.S. college enrollment. To hear the left speak, affirmative action was solely about skin color. That was never true.
It is the Supreme Court of Clarence Thomas now and that is a remarkable change. The correction is long overdue. The left is just going to have to learn to cope with getting back to the Constitution as it was meant to be, not as the left wanted it to be.
I don’t agree that President Trump’s use of DoD funds to build a wall was wrong. The Constitution makes clear in Article 4 § 4 the requirement to protect the states from invasion, and if hoards of illegal aliens coming into the country doesn’t qualify, I don’t know what would.
On CNN of all places…………
Why the Supreme Court got it right on student loans
Ilya Somin is a professor of law at George Mason University, the Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute and the author of “Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration and Political Freedom.”
In a lawsuit brought by six state governments, the Supreme Court on Friday ruled that President Joe Biden’s massive $430 billion student loan forgiveness plan is illegal because it was never authorized by Congress, and the Constitution gives Congress – not the president – the power to determine how federal funds are spent. The court made the right decision: If the administration had won, Biden and future presidents would have been empowered to use vague statutes to usurp Congress’ constitutional control over the federal budget. Moreover, because of the context for this case, it also would have allowed the president to abuse emergency powers for partisan ends.
But the Biden administration was relying on a provision of the act that gives the secretary of education authority to “waive or modify” federal student loan requirements in order to ensure that recipients of financial assistance who have been affected by a national emergency “are not placed in a worse position financially in relation to that financial assistance” because they were affected by the emergency. The administration claimed beneficiaries of the loan-forgiveness plan qualified because they have been negatively affected financially as a result of the Covid-19 national emergency declared by then-President Donald Trump in March 2020.
The Supreme Court on Friday rightly ruled that the HEROES Act’s language comes nowhere near authorizing such a massive loan forgiveness plan. As Chief Justice John Roberts explained in the majority opinion, “The authority to ‘modify’ statutes and regulations allows the Secretary to make modest adjustments and additions to existing provisions, not transform them.” The word “waive” also doesn’t give the government the power to forgive loans on a massive scale, because, as Roberts noted, the government conceded that the term “waiver” as used in the HEROES Act cannot refer to waiving loan repayments.
SCOTUS accepts case dealing with gun ban for those subject to domestic violence restraining order
In its last conference before heading out for summer recess, the Supreme Court granted cert to U.S. v. Rahimi on Friday; setting up a fight over the scope of the Court’s history, text, and tradition test spelled out in last year’s Bruen decision.
As we’ve written about here previously, the case involves the federal prosecution of Zachey Rahimi, who’s accused of illegally possessing a firearm in violation of a domestic violence restraining order. Rahimi (or rather, his public defenders) challenged those charges after the Supreme Court issued its decision in Bruen last year, arguing that the modern day prohibition on firearms possession for those subject to the civil restraining order falls outside the historical scope of gun control laws and earlier this year the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with that proposition. Continue reading “”
Looking Forward to the U.S. Supreme Court Standing Behind Its Bruen Ruling
“A year ago today, the Supreme Court ruled to strip away the rights of a governor to protect her people from concealed carry weapons. We refused to go backwards,” tweeted New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on June 23.
This tweet—and other statements from Gov. Hochul—is an admission she is obstructing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, an NRA-backed case, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that the Second Amendment protects the right of law-abiding citizens to carry a firearm for personal protection when it struck the “proper cause” requirement in New York’s Sullivan Law.
In doing so, the Supreme Court clearly declared that the government cannot trample on our Second Amendment rights through “abusive” permitting schemes.
Nevertheless, people barely had time to read the Bruen decision before Gov. Hochul and the New York state legislature blatantly stepped all over the ruling with the inappropriately named Concealed Carry Improvement Act.
Although the Concealed Carry Improvement Act doesn’t require citizens demonstrate they have a proper cause to carry firearms, it banned carry almost everywhere with unconstitutional “sensitive-place” restrictions. Also, citizens applying to the state for their constitutional right to bear arms must first take a 16-hour training class, including a two-hour live-fire session. Then they must have an in-person interview with a licensing officer where they must disclose several types of personal information, including all of their social-media accounts. The officer then reviews that information to determine if the applicant has “good moral character,” which is even more subjective than the unconstitutional “proper cause” standard. The licensing officer then has up to six months—unless they want more time, which they will be granted indefinitely—to pore through the applicant’s information to determine if that individual is “eligible” for a license.
When Gov. Hochul was asked where people could carry under the gun-control law, she said “probably some streets.”
As a result, the NRA sued.
The state’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act “replaces one unconstitutional, discretionary law with another unconstitutional, discretionary law,” the NRA lawsuit says. “The [law] contains a slew of burdensome and discriminatory requirements for obtaining a Handgun Carry License—violating the First, Second, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments—and an additional slew of restrictions on where and how Handgun Carry License holders may exercise their right to carry arms outside the home.”
Gov. Hochul’s tweet also admits something else. By saying that, in Bruen, the “Supreme Court ruled to strip away the rights of a governor to protect her people from concealed carry weapons,” Gov. Hochul is blaming guns for crimes. She can’t really believe that guns are acting on their own to commit crimes. She likely knows that people (in this case, criminals) commit crimes. So her job is then to protect law-abiding people from violent criminals, not to disarm good citizens who merely want to protect themselves. Given that simple logic, she should next realize that a lot of criminal law (state and federal) gives law enforcement and prosecutors a lot of tools to arrest and put away felons and other prohibited persons who are carrying firearms. It then seems logical that she should focus state resources on the actual problem.
After all, it seems fair to assume that Gov. Hochul is capable of understanding the basic idea that criminals commit crimes and therefore, to prevent more crimes, the state needs to find and prosecute criminals.
The fact that Gov. Hochul has decided to disingenuously virtue signal about crime—by literally blaming good citizens for the actions of criminals—should be clearly said in New York state’s newspapers and on its local news broadcasts. But it isn’t. Too many in the media are also playing this “blame-freedom, not criminals” political game. And this is a shame, as good policy can only come from open and honest debate.
For this reason, the NRA’s court challenge to this unconstitutional law is doubly important.
