Category: Rights

California passes call for constitutional convention on guns

California Gov. Gavin Newsom floated his idea for a 28th Amendment that would codify certain gun control measures into the Constitution and called for a constitutional convention to pass it.

It’s kind of hilarious because gun control advocates can’t get these things passed as actual laws at the federal level, but they’re sure getting them in as a constitutional amendment would be easier.

Apparently, none of them ever took civics.

Regardless, Newsom’s effort required the state legislature to actually pass a call for a constitutional convention. On Thursday, the legislature did just that.

California lawmakers on Thursday approved Gov. Gavin Newsom’s resolution calling for a constitutional convention of the states to consider a new amendment on gun control, a politically astute yet seemingly unattainable proposal from the Democratic leader.

The governor introduced the proposal on national television over the summer, boosting his profile in the culture wars between Democrats and Republicans at a time when many voters feel increasingly frustrated over the lack of action in Washington to address mass shootings that have anguished communities all over the country. But constitutional scholars have warned that Newsom’s plan could be risky by opening the door for other changes to the U.S. Constitution if a convention took place.

Newsom’s resolution asks Congress to call a constitutional convention to allow states to approve an amendment that imposes new laws requiring universal background checks on gun purchases, raises the federal minimum age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21, institutes a “reasonable waiting” period for all gun purchases and prohibits the sale of assault weapons to the public. The resolution also calls for states to be able to approve an amendment to affirm that federal, state and local governments may adopt safety regulations limiting firearm sales, possession and carrying guns in public.

For Newsom’s proposed 28th Amendment to be considered, legislatures in two-thirds of the states must vote in favor of a constitutional convention.

And, to be fair, according to Common Cause 28 states have already called for a convention, with California being the 29th.

So it would really just take a few more to reach that threshold.

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The Tool Who Governs New Mexico Has Handed Patriots a Potent New Tool

I want to thank the versatile governor of New Mexico, whose name I don’t care about, for being a communist and a fascist all at once. Now that may seem strange, coming from somebody who actually believes in freedom and actually defended it for 27 years, but I want you to hear me out. She may be an aspiring dictator and a mid-wit Karen brimming over with Xanax wishes and Chardonnay dreams, but she’s providing us with a valuable opportunity that we should take full advantage of. She has decreed that the constitutional right to keep and bear arms must yield to what she unilaterally decided is a “public health emergency.” Cool. Now, I’ve got some decrees of our own.

I’ve long said that there are three ways things can go. Option One is a free society where there are norms and rules that we all abide by and our Constitutional rights are protected and everybody has a right to participate in their own governance. This is my favorite option. It’s the one that I grew up in back when America was a free country and not a pronoun-fixated banana republic. Option Two is an authoritarian dictatorship where guys like me are in charge. Not my first choice, but I can live with it. Finally, Option Three is a communist dictatorship, and then it’s basically break out the rifles, boys. I was never good at kneeling, and at my age, my knees just won’t tolerate it any better than my attitude will.

Well, Governor Paula Pot has made it clear that Option One is now off the table, so I guess we have to go with Option Two – ironically, during the week of the 50th anniversary of Augusto Pinochet overthrowing the communist dictator of Chile. Now, I think it’s a bad idea and I’m still pushing for Option One, but it’s pretty clear that freedom no longer an option. So Option Two it is.

Let’s start decreeing stuff, Republicans!

The first thing red states need to decree is a ban on the teaching, advocacy, or practice of socialism in any of its putrid forms. Those who care nothing about the children will immediately pipe up about the alleged right to speak freely, but they refuse to acknowledge the harm this poisonous ideology does. Harm trumps rights, as colleges and the regime media have taught us. And boy, is socialism harmful. It’s violence – literally. Marxism is responsible for over 100 million deaths in the last century. That’s more deaths than net neutrality, Republican Medicare cuts, and dead-naming combined!

From the killing fields of Russia and Ukraine, to those of Red China and Cambodia, Marxism is murder. We must prioritize safety, for the children, and there is no safe space when an ideology of death like socialism is able to be articulated and advocated in public. Free speech is nice, I guess, but it is officially known that no right is absolute. Socialism is clearly hate speech, which is totally a thing in our Constitution, according to sources and experts who you can watch on MSNBC anytime you want – well, not after we ban socialism! Because socialism is hate speech, not only can we ban it, but we must ban it as the public health menace that it is.

And when we retake the White House, it won’t just be red governors doing it. As a nation, we will be able to scratch “Destroying Socialism” off our to-do list. It will be totally illegal and we can get right on enforcing the ban with the reconstituted FBI, the reformed Department of Justice, and the United States Army helicopter corps.

The next public health decree? No trans insanity! We’ve got a public health crisis where children are being mutilated with chemicals and scalpels to conform their God-given bodies to the delusions of their Chardonnay-sodden Munchhausen mommies. This must stop. I know it’s weird that I have to say it, but castrating a boy so he can more effectively pretend to be a girl causes harm. And it is unsafe. And therefore it should be subject to being banned by a decree issued by a caring chief executive. And if you disagree, you clearly don’t care about the children – wait, that’s actually not sarcasm.

But why stop at kids? The decree should include outlawing mutilation as a treatment for mental illness in adults as well. I know that there are some well-meaning libertarianish folks out there who buy the idea that after age 18, we as a society have no interest in what you do to yourself. Well, we don’t let people walk into a hospital and say “Chop off my arm” because they feel like it, and what’s good for the arm is good for the penis.

If you want to cut up your body because you think you’re the other gender, you have a mental problem and not a physical one that can be cured by some quack surgeon slicing you into pieces. Some people will say this isn’t tolerant, and that’s fine with me. We tried tolerance, and we ended up with men dressed like Charo twerking their be-thonged butts in the faces of our kindergartners.

The next decree should address a massive public health crisis among children, because it’s always about the children, who are failing to learn and be educated in unionized schools. That’s public healthish, right? Clearly, teachers unions must be outlawed, and those running them prosecuted and punished for the lasting harm they have inflicted on a generation of kids. Now, some might argue that this is the kind of policy that should go through the normal legislative process, but I beg to differ. It’s a public health emergency when children are failing to learn to read and write because I said so, and if you disagree that’s violence, and if you oppose this common sense measure, you clearly hate the children. There’s blood on your hands. You should be deplatformed. You’re also racist and probably a transphobe or something.

Remember, we must protect Our Democracy, which is why those in power – us – must be able to rule by decree. Now these decrees may represent an expansive reading of “public health emergency,” but that’s OK. As currently understood, laws should be read expansively if that’s what’s required to, say, get the result a politicized prosecutor wants. Once again, it’s not the paradigm that I support – I think this is all a terrible idea – but it is the operative New Rule, and I know that because I see a governor of a miserable desert state issuing decrees that the Second Amendment is no longer in effect, and I watch a senile, corrupt, desiccated old pervert’s Department of Justice (sic) being sicced on a man who will very likely be his opponent in the next presidential election.

Again, I don’t like any of this, but you know what I like even less? Taking this crap without hitting back. Leftist jerks, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I told you so.

Grisham responds to backlash, ruling blocking her order

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham had to know that she’d get pushback with her declaration of a “public health emergency” regarding violent crime in Albuquerque and the subsequent order banning the lawful carry of firearms there.

I mean, it’s a gun order. There’s literally no way that she could be oblivious to the fact that a lot of people weren’t going to like it.

However, Grisham got a lot more than she likely bargained for.

I mean, members of her own party pushed back. Then, on top of everything, a court issued a restraining order stopping enforcement of the rule.

But Grisham isn’t taking her lumps and learning from them. No, she’s trying to push back.

The governor told “GMA3” earlier Wednesday she has the “courage” to take a stand against gun violence in response to backlash over her emergency public health order.

“Everyone is terrified of the backlash for all of these political reactions,” Lujan Grisham told Eva Pilgrim on “GMA3” Wednesday. “None of those individuals or groups focused on the actual injuries or deaths of the public.”

“They aren’t dealing with this as the crisis that it is,” she continued.…

“How would you feel in a city or a community if people had handguns in their belts, on parks, near schools, on public trails, at the grocery store?” Lujan Grisham told “GMA3.” “It’s outrageous and it must stop. And I will keep doing everything that’s based in science and fact and public safety efforts to clean up our cities to make this the safest state in America. And I will not stop until that’s done.”

The thing is, it’s not the bad guys walking around openly carrying. Criminals never open carry so far as I’ve seen.

If this is what Grisham is pushing then it’s about theater, not safety. It’s about giving the illusion of making things better. What’s more, she knows it.

Of course, much of this is about responding to the pushback to her order.

She also had this to say following the restraining order being issued.

“As governor, I see the pain of families who lost their loved ones to gun violence every single day, and I will never stop fighting to prevent other families from enduring these tragedies,” Lujan Grisham said in the written statement.

“Over the past four days, I’ve seen more attention on resolving the crisis of gun violence than I have in the past four years,” she said.

No, she hasn’t.

What she’s seen is her entire party–at least those who spoke out–calling her out for this blatantly unconstitutional action. Everyone has been telling her that she can’t do what she’s tried to do and now a federal court has done the same.

Grisham’s problem is that she can’t see beyond her own partisan blinders. She can’t comprehend that there might possibly be ways to address violent crime in cities like Albuquerque that don’t involve restricting people’s rights.

Which is funny, because this whole “public health crisis” isn’t just about restricting guns. Among other things, it calls for state police to go to Albuquerque to help crack down on violent crime in the city. It actually does do a few things that might well help all on its own, and they’re far less controversial than trying to unilaterally restrict someone’s basic, constitutionally protected rights.

Then again, so many anti-gun Democrats can’t think beyond gun control for solutions to such issues.

And that’s a problem since gun control doesn’t really solve those issues.

We all know New Mexico goobernor Grisham issued an Emergency “Health Order” suspending concealed and open carry of guns in New Mexico even for concealed carry permit holders.

Group sues after New Mexico governor suspends right to carry guns in Albuquerque in public

Seems everyone else concerned know the goobernor stepped in it.
The most salient part of the article is this ⇓.

Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman, who once served as a Democratic party leader and was appointed by Lujan Grisham, on Saturday joined Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller and Police Chief Harold Medina saying they wouldn’t enforce the order.

“As an officer of the court, I cannot and will not enforce something that is clearly unconstitutional,” said Bregman, the top prosecutor in the Albuquerque area. “This office will continue to focus on criminals of any age that use guns in the commission of a crime.”

Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen said he was uneasy about how gun owners might respond.

“I am wary of placing my deputies in positions that could lead to civil liability conflicts,” Allen said, “as well as the potential risks posed by prohibiting law-abiding citizens from their constitutional right to self-defense.”

The crimes that are ‘felonious’ has been so broadly expanded that it’s almost like it’s a plan, a feature, not a bug, to disarm as many people as possible. Also, it’s only been an actual federal prohibition since 1968.

Ramaswamy: Former felons should be allowed to carry guns
The GOP presidential candidate fleshes out what it means to be a “Second Amendment absolutist” on a podcast.

Vivek Ramaswamy says convicted felons should be allowed to carry weapons.

Appearing on former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s podcast, set to air on Thursday, the Republican presidential candidate was asked to flesh out what it meant to be a “Second Amendment absolutist,” as Ramaswamy has labeled himself.

“Everyone has a gun?” asked Cuomo, once a prominent figure in Democratic Party politics. “Everyone has an assault weapon? A former felon? No background check? Concealed carry?”

“Has the right to,” Ramaswamy responded. “And I do think concealed carry is important, constitutional carry is important.”

He said background checks are “absolutely a legitimate part of the process” but that “law-abiding” gun ownership “deters many violent criminals from being able to roam the streets with guns as they do today.”

Ramaswamy emphasized high crime in cities and inadequate mental health resources while calling for more support for police officers. The discussion of guns was part of a wide-ranging conversation on Cuomo’s “As A Matter Of Fact” podcast.

Ramaswamy, as he has before, endorsed the idea of re-institutionalizing people deemed dangerous and brushed aside Cuomo’s description of a mass school shooting, saying, “That case that you described is not a real case that presents itself very often, compared to real-life violence between a lot of violent criminals in cities who are breaking a lot of other laws.”

Cuomo — who resigned from office amid sexual abuse allegations he has denied — said after recording the podcast: “The Republican candidates all insist on trying to appeal to the ultra conservatives within their own party and take positions that alienate a majority of Americans. Deporting millions of immigrant families who have been here for years peacefully and successfully and arming felons with guns, everyone carrying a concealed weapon, returning to the Wild West, etc. It’s all absurd.”

Missouri has state preemption of any and all gun control laws, except they let cities ban open carry if a person doesn’t have a concealed carry permit. Strange, but that’s how permitless carry worked out when the different bills were combined and passed.

Gov. Mike Parson criticizes Kansas City’s new gun rules: ‘You can’t supersede state law’

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson spoke to KCUR’s Up To Date about the case of Kansas City Police officer Eric DeValkenaere, the expansion of I-70, the 2024 gubernatorial race, and Kansas City’s new gun ordinances.

Criminal justice advocates across Kansas City have speculated that Gov. Mike Parson might pardon Eric DeValkenaere, the former Kansas City Police detective who was convicted in 2021 for killing Cameron Lamb.

Parson told Up To Date’s Steve Kraske that he hasn’t sat down to discuss a potential pardon. He said that the legal process has to work out before he comes into play — DeValkenaere is currently appealing his conviction.

“It’s been unfortunate,” Parson said of the speculation. “I think a lot of people got spun up by that, elected officials up there are kinda claiming that. But the reality of it is that I haven’t had a conversation about that.”

Parson also criticized the new gun laws recently passed by Kansas City Council, outlawing certain modified firearms and prohibiting the transferring of weapons and ammo to minors.

“You can’t supersede state law, just like I can’t supersede federal law. I wish I could sometimes, there’s lots of things I’d like to change,” Parson said. “The reality is that it needs to go in front of the General Assembly or needs to be voted on by the people to make those changes.”

In 2021, Parson signed into law the “Second Amendment Preservation Act,” which penalized law enforcement for enforcing federal gun restrictions. However, that law was ruled unconstitutional.

Saturday is Constitutional Carry Day in Nebraska!

On Saturday, September 2nd, constitutional carry and statewide preemption laws will take effect in Nebraska. Thanks to the significant victories from this year’s legislative session, law-abiding citizens can exercise their Second Amendment right to carry firearms for self-defense without unnecessary government interference and can exercise their rights freely across the state without having to navigate a patchwork of local gun control ordinances.

The NRA is grateful to Senator Tom Brewer for championing this legislation and all the Nebraska state legislators who fought for these laws to pass. We also thank all of our members and other Second Amendment advocates whose vigilance made this victory possible.

We encourage you to stay engaged, support pro-Second Amendment candidates, and be prepared to defend our rights whenever necessary. Together, we can continue making strides in protecting our cherished heritage and ensuring that future generations enjoy the freedoms bestowed upon us by our Founding Fathers.

The Washington Post Calls for Reducing Free Speech to Improve Democracy

In very post-2016 fashion, The Washington Post last week published an article implying democracy might require curbs on freedom of speech. This unsettling approach suggests concerns around “misinformation” on social networks supersede freedom of speech, a move that has elicited intense debate and, rightly so; criticism.

In what appears to be a shift in public discourse towards further censorship, the widely-read Washington Post article critiqued Elon Musk’s reinstatement of former President Donald Trump on the social media platform, X, previously known as Twitter.

The article suggested that the proliferation of what it calls “political misinformation” disturbs democracy, sparking concern amongst proponents of free speech.

The perspective is reflected in the reporting by The Washington Post journalists Naomi Nix and Sarah Ellison. However, their piece lacks critical analysis of the ambiguity surrounding the term “misinformation” and fails to address the consequential question of how to moderate content in situations where politicians’ statements are arguably false or misleading.

The article’s glaring omission of any mention of the First Amendment – a core pillar of American democracy fostering media freedoms – also raised eyebrows amidst media and legal circles.

The Washington Post reporters worryingly suggest the retreat of social media companies from combating online falsehoods could impact the 2024 presidential election. They fault Musk, along with Facebook and YouTube, for taking a step back from reining in what they call misleading claims and conspiracy theories.

Nix and Ellison also critique X for permitting Tucker Carlson’s President Trump interview, which they deem as a platform for Trump to reiterate his allegations about the 2020 election. They contend that social media should only host political content if its accuracy can be proven, posing an unrealistic expectation that conceals underlying issues of censorship under the pretext of curbing “misleading” or “hateful” speech.

How Big Are Our Virtues?

This is as serious as it gets. It is scandalous when millions of us are put at risk by bad government policy. Likewise, it is vitally important to recognize when we’re doing the right thing and saving thousands of lives every day. This is hard to understand because some of the problem is political, but some of the difficulty is simply the size of our virtue. How can we begin to understand that millions of us prevented serious injury and saved a huge number of lives every year?

Ordinary citizens like us legally use a firearm in self-defense about 2.8-million times a year. Sure, that is a number, but how big is that really?

This is a matter of life and death and society takes it very seriously. In the simplest terms, we are not allowed to use a firearm, or even threaten to use a firearm, unless an innocent victim faces the most serious threats. We are expected to use less violent tools when we face less dangerous threats. We’re only allowed to defend ourselves with a gun when it is the safest thing to do, yet we were forced to use a firearm in self-defense over 76-hundred times a day. That says a lot about how often ordinary citizens were thrown into very dangerous situations.

How frequent is armed defense?

As background information, the FBI said violent criminals committed these 1.2 million crimes in 2019-

  • Aggravated assaults- 821,182
  • Robberies- 267,988
  • Rapes- 139,815
  • Murders- 16,425

 

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Louisiana Man Arrested for Making a Joke About COVID-19 and Zombies Wins Appeal
5th Circuit overrules grant of qualified immunity for officers who made warrantless arrest

NEW ORLEANS—During the COVID-19 pandemic Waylon Bailey made a joke about the virus, zombies, and his local sheriff’s department on Facebook. Today, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that Waylon’s joke was protected by the First Amendment and that deputies violated his free-speech rights and his Fourth Amendment rights when they arrested him. Waylon teamed up with the Institute for Justice (IJ) to appeal a lower court decision that granted qualified immunity to the detective and sheriff responsible for his arrest.

“I’m relieved that the court recognized that the deputies were wrong to arrest me for making a joke on Facebook,” said Waylon. “I’m glad that I will be able to hold the detective and sheriff accountable, and hopefully my case will stand as a strong statement to officers about what the First Amendment protects.”

Judge Dana M. Douglas, writing for the unanimous panel, said that: “The First Amendment’s protections apply to jokes, parodies, satire, and the like, whether clever or in poor taste.”

“The court’s opinion makes clear that the First Amendment applies with full force to online speech,” said IJ Attorney Ben Field. “Government officials can’t get away with stretching criminal laws to go after people who make jokes at their expense. This is a victory for free speech and common sense and against the pernicious doctrine of qualified immunity.”

Waylon Bailey’s March 2020 Facebook post used over-the-top language, emoji, and a hashtag referencing the Brad Pitt movie World War Z in facetiously warning that the local sheriff’s office had been ordered to shoot the “infected.” Despite the obvious indications that it was a joke, sheriff’s deputies decided to arrest Waylon, without a warrant, under an anti-terrorism law and sent a SWAT team with guns drawn to his garage.

Waylon was taken to jail and booked, though the absurd charge was dropped when a prosecutor reviewed the case. But when Waylon brought a civil-rights lawsuit, the deputy responsible for the arrest was granted qualified immunity by the district court. To add insult to injury, the court also said that Waylon didn’t have any free speech rights to make a joke in the first place. The 5th Circuit reversed and remanded to the district court, which will now fully consider Waylon’s civil-rights lawsuit.

“Any reasonable officer would have known that Waylon’s zombie joke was clearly protected by the First Amendment, and certainly wasn’t ‘terrorizing,’” said IJ Attorney Caroline Grace Brothers. “By denying qualified immunity to the detective who arrested Waylon, this decision confirms that government officials should not escape accountability when it should have been obvious that their actions were unconstitutional.”

Aside from the constitution, why are citizens allowed to purchase semi automatic rifles?

Because there is no “aside from the Constitution”. You have appreciated the American system opposite to how things work here.

You ask why we’re ‘allowed’ to do something? It doesn’t work that way. We Americans can say, do, own, buy, sell, possess whatever we want. We’re not ‘allowed’ anything. We need no ‘permission’. Read the whole Constitution, including the Bill of Rights and you’ll find nothing among the powers given to government, by the people, saying we must first seek to be allowed to do something.

This is the main difference of the American way where we are free citizens not government subjects. America has the ethos that anything not explicitly banned is allowed. Not that anything not explicitly allowed is banned.

To stop, ban, or restrict this freedom, a law, eventually found to be ‘constitutional’ if someone thinks it isn’t and takes it to court in our judicial system, must be passed in the legislative political process. Not the other way around.

They want us disarmed?

There Can Be No Negotiating on the Right to Arms — with Hate Groups or with Anyone

“Senate Majority Leader @SenSchumer  is negotiating with the NRA to pass his priority bill – the SAFE Act, a cannabis banking legislation – with Section 10 added as a sweetener for the NRA-backed Senate Republicans,” Newtown Action Alliance tweeted (x’ed?) Monday. “We appreciate @SenJackReed  working to modify the bill to ensure that regulators can warn banks about risky customers – like gun retailers. Congress should not be negotiating with the NRA, a terrorist group that is pushing its any guns to anyone everywhere agenda. Guns are the #1 killer of our children & gun deaths have increased 50% since the Sandy Hook shooting tragedy.”

That’s a lot of vitriol-drenched lies to unpack. Let’s start with NRA’s interest, which is passage of the  Fair Access to Banking Act to protect against “banks, credit card companies, and other financial service providers [setting] terms of service that openly discriminate against lawful firearm-related commerce.” Gun owners who recall the days of Operation Chokepoint recall the offensive excesses – from financial ostracism of FFLs and the pejorative conflation equating them with purveyors of “Ponzi schemes” and “racist materials” to the ridiculous revelation that ATF’s banker was stiffing porn stars – pun intended. (Note: Those last two links go to the Internet Archive and may take a bit to load).

Democrat gun-grabber Jack Reed’s interest is in imposing Operation Chokepoint on steroids, this time by mandating Department of Precrime “snitchware” via “Merchant Category Codes” developed by a “progressive” bank affiliated with a leftist union that “rakes in millions from Dem campaigns, liberal orgs,” and has organized rallies and marched in solidarity with communists.

Suddenly motives are seeming less and less about “gun safety” and more and more about totalitarian citizen disarmament. So, let’s look at the last part of Newtown Action Alliance’s missive.

Congress should just impose such edicts and not include the largest lobby group representing millions of gun-owning citizens in its deliberations…? Leave them with no voice in what’s going to happen to their property — and to them if they don’t comply…?

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Fourth Amendment Abuse
We do it all the time, don’t we?


Image generated with MidJourney using the prompt dawn swat raid in the suburbs

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I was going to make this a paid post, but I think I want people to see it more than I want to make money. It’s not a minor matter.

In my last post, I talked about why we might want to make it hard for the government to get a warrant. And before we start, let’s make something clear: this is a right afforded to all Americans and cannot be undercut by state or local authorities. Also understand that there is no specification about who does the searching and seizing. It does not matter if it’s the President of the United States himself. He doesn’t get to look at your stuff without a damn good reason and a warrant.

And yet we violate this amendment so often that we don’t even think about it. Why should we? The letter of the law is usually followed. The spirit, however…

We’re talking about the Fourth Amendment, kind of in isolation, but it doesn’t exist by itself, and there isn’t really any order of priority to the rights enumerated. In other words, you can’t justify breaking the Fifth Amendment just because you kept the Fourth. And the Fifth actually has bearing on what has happened with the Fourth because of one of its clauses: [No person shall] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

Why is this clause important? Because you either have a system in place to protect We the People from abuse by those who have authority to take away everything, or you don’t have a government established by We the People. The whole process, the whole system, is designed to give every American a chance to argue their case, and not just in front of a judge. It’s also designed to give every American a chance to cooperate with the process peacefully.

Which brings us to one of the major loopholes in the above amendment. It says that a warrant must be issued. It does not say how that warrant has to be delivered.

Look at the illustration above. Are there times when this is the correct approach to serving a warrant? Possibly. Had all other avenues been exhausted first? There are two recent cases that I will highlight to suggest that they were not.

The first happened in Utah, in a scenario similar to the illustration above. The FBI gathered before dawn and breached a man’s residence at six in the morning using a vehicle mounted battering ram. The details aren’t clear about what happened, but the man in question was shot and killed. He was in his seventies, needed a walker to get around, and the FBI says he pointed a gun at them. But none of the agents involved wore a body cam, and they left the man’s body on the sidewalk for hours. This was not an isolated property, either, but in a residential area, where stray shots could have injured or killed people who were not involved.

The second happened in Kansas, where local law enforcement raided a small newspaper’s office and the home of the one of the co-founders. They had a warrant that said they could seize all the computers and cell phones in connection with their investigation of alleged identity theft by one of the paper’s reporters, which of course effectively kept them from publishing until the equipment was returned.

Without getting into the details of either case, my concern is not about the guilt or innocence of the citizens involved. My concern is that in both cases, the accused was not given a chance to comply peacefully, or to cooperate with the investigation. This is opposite of why the Bill of Rights was even considered necessary, which was to give the highest respect to every individual American.

The Kansas case gets into the problem of perception. If you serve a warrant on any news organization, you have to be very careful that you do not give the appearance of violating the Freedom of the Press. In this case, the newspaper had printed some accurate but embarrassing information about someone who then accused the paper of obtaining the information illegally. The fact that local law enforcement obtained a warrant in order to start their investigation comes across as way of saying, “No, no, we’re completely following the Bill of Rights. We’re good Americans, and we would never violate anyone’s God-given rights, especially the Freedom of the Press!” The fact that they served their warrant forcefully, even grabbing a cellphone out of a woman’s hand, does not really lend credence to that claim.

Similarly, the Utah case completely misses the point of having to get a warrant in the first place. Especially if you are going to bring a SWAT team in to serve the warrant, and even if everything goes perfectly peacefully, the warrant and the process leading to the decision to use massive firepower to serve it had better be public after the fact. I don’t care if it happens against a gang-banger in the depths of the urban jungle. I want to see the justification for such an intimidating display, and I want it to be judged.

And here’s where we get into the way the Constitution and the Bill of Rights see the government as opposed to the citizen. Going back over the way the branches of the Federal Government are given checks and balances, while the citizen is given every benefit of the doubt, tells me that America is based on the idea that any government is suspect, and will eventually devolve into a system that abuses the authority it is given. Americans have the civic duty to notice these impulses and stop them before they get out of hand.

The individual American is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The government gets no such protection, and perhaps we should treat it that way.

Joe Biden Boasts He Has Bypassed Congress for Gun Control More than Any Other President

On August 17, 2023, President Joe Biden boasted about the number of times he has used executive action to institute gun control that Congress did not pass.

He tweeted:

On April 8, 2021, Breitbart News reported Biden used executive gun controls that included restrictions on “ghost guns,” a push for red flag laws, recategorization of AR-15 pistols, and DOJ-led research into gun trafficking.

These controls led to an ATF-issued rule classifying “partially complete pistol frames” as firearms. That rule means a background check is now required in order to purchase certain gun parts kits.

The  same executive controls also led to an ATF-issued rule categorizing AR-pistols with stabilizer braces as short-barrel rifles. This new categorization means owners of said pistols with stabilizer braces are required to the register the firearms under the auspices of the National Firearms Act (1934).

On July 21, 2022, the White House recounted that Biden had issued 21 executive actions related to gun control and gun violence up to that point in his presidency.

On May 14, 2023, Breitbart News noted that Biden issued yet another executive order on gun control, this one directing Attorney General Merrick Garland to act where Congress has not acted and take the United States “as close as possible” to universal background checks.

Another executive gun control is anticipated late this year or early next year, in the form of an ATF-issued rule to redefine the meaning of gun dealer so as to broaden it, and thereby broaden the number of gun sales in which a background check will be required. The goal of the ATF rule will be to get as close as possible to a universal background check scenario in America.