"Structuring" has to be one of the most asinine concepts in law. Law is ideally supposed to have clear and defined limits, so when you can't actually prosecute someone for violating it, you charge them with violating the *spirit*, not the letter
Leaving legality to paperpushers
— RSTYShcklfrd (@RShcklfrd) March 21, 2023
Category: Rights
The U.S. Government Is Building A Vast Surveillance And Speech Suppression Web Around Every American
Our government is preparing to monitor every word Americans say on the internet and censor citizens who don’t toe the party line.
While the “Twitter Files” offer a glimpse into the government’s efforts to censor disfavored viewpoints, what we have seen is nothing compared to what is planned, as the details of hundreds of federal awards lay bare. Research by The Federalist reveals our tax dollars are funding the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning (ML) technology that will allow the government to easily discover “problematic” speech and track Americans reading or partaking in such conversations.
Then, in partnership with Big Tech, Big Business, and media outlets, the government will ensure the speech is censored, under the guise of combatting “misinformation” and “disinformation.”
AI and ML Technology Will Monitor Everything We Say and Read
The federal government has awarded more than 500-plus contracts or grants related to “misinformation” or “disinformation” since 2020. One predominant area of research pushed by the Department of Defense involves the use of AI and ML technology to monitor or listen to internet “conversations.”
Originally used as a marketing tool for businesses to track discussions about their brands and products and to track competitors, the DOD and other federal agencies are now paying for-profit public relations and communications firms to convert their technology into tools for the government to monitor speech on the internet.
The areas of the internet the companies monitor differ somewhat, and each business offers its own unique AI and ML proprietary technology, but the underlying approach and goals remain identical: The technology under development will “mine” large portions of the internet and identify conversations deemed indicative of an emerging harmful narrative, to allow the government to track those “threats” and adopt countermeasures before the messages go viral.
TEXIT: Bill to put Texas independence referendum on ballot referred to state House committee
“Independence has always been a part of our DNA since our founding,” said Daniel Miller, president of the 440,000-member Texas Nationalist Movement.
The Texas Independence Referendum Act, also known as “TEXIT,” was assigned to committee earlier this week, and the leader of the Texas independence movement is looking forward to public testimony as a platform for the voice of the people to make itself heard.
HB 3596 is “headed to the State Affairs Committee in the Texas House,” noted Daniel Miller, president of the 440,000-member Texas Nationalist Movement, “and we’re looking forward to having it scheduled for testimony and letting the public speak and say with one loud voice that at a minimum, whether you agree with TEXIT or disagree, Texans should have a vote on the issue.”
Introduced by Republican state Rep. Bryan Slaton on the anniversary of the fall of the Alamo March 6, the bill would, if passed, “place a referendum on the ballot during the next general election, allowing the people of Texas to vote on whether or not the State should investigate the possibility of Texas independence, and present potential plans to the Legislature,” Slaton wrote on Twitter.
“The Texas Constitution is clear that all political power resides in the people,” he continued. “After decades of continuous abuse of our rights and liberties by the federal government, it is time to let the people of Texas make their voices heard.”
Texas has attempted to secede from the U.S. on multiple occasions, but the Supreme Court ruled in the 1868 case Texas v. White that states could not unilaterally secede from the union.
“The TEXIT issue has been in the minds of Texans for probably generations, it just wasn’t necessarily known as TEXIT,” Miller said in an interview Thursday on the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “Independence has always been a part of our DNA since our founding.”
Miller cited a litany of grievances fueling the Texas independence movement, including runaway federal spending, onerous debt, regulatory overreach, and the breakdown of border security.
“You look at something like the federal debt that continues to ratchet up, that burdens all of us, that is essentially fiscal child abuse because it’ll be our children and grandchildren that are going to be on the hook for it when the United States continues [to incur more debt] to the point of insolvency,” Miller said. “The people of Texas, much like every other state, we groan under 180,000 pages of federal laws, rules and regulations administered by two and a half million unelected bureaucrats. Every day when we wake up, we have to wonder which one of our rights is going to be under assault by the federal government today. The federal government doesn’t shrink, it only gets bigger. It really trashes everything that it touches. All you have to do is look down to our southern border to see an example of how not just mismanagement but malfeasance can lead to severe crises.”
Miller sees a growing disconnect between the United States as a formal political entity and the spirit of the American people. “[W]e all have to ask ourselves,” he said, “is America the same as the United States right now? The United States is a political and economic entity, an institution, that no longer reflects America, those values that we consider America.”
His organization, he said, crystallizes the issue for Texans by asking them whether today’s United States is a union they would opt into anew if given the choice.
“[W]e go out to Texas voters,” he said, “and we say, ‘Look, imagine that Texas was already a self-governing independent nation, and we had control over our own border and immigration policy and our own monetary and taxation policies — everything that 200 other countries around the world have — and instead of talking about Texas, we were talking about whether or not today we would vote to give up all of that control and join the union, knowing everything we know about the federal government today, would you vote to join? And if you wouldn’t vote to join, why would you stay one moment longer than you had to?'”
I’ll take “Because They’re Stupid” for $500, Alex
Why Gun-Control Activists Can’t Have Intelligent Discussions
David Hogg, co-founder of the March for Our Lives gun-control group, recently tweeted what he thinks the Second Amendment means.
“After reading about the history of the second amend and talking with a lot of hist & law professors- I believe the second amendment has been intentionally misinterpreted. It was never meant as an individual right it was created to protect state militias like the national guard,” read Hogg’s tweet.
That legal theory he is parroting has been debunked by historians, by many legal scholars and by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) clearly said, “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.”
What Hogg tweeted next further demonstrated his ignorance.
“It says well regulated militia for a reason. The ‘shall not be infringed’ part means the federal government is not allowed to forcibly disarm state militias. I’m not alone in this interpretation. Over 100 years of jurisprudence back me up on this,” read Hogg’s follow-up tweet.
“Hogg mentions ‘jurisprudence,’ but it seems he does not really understand the term. When contemplating the philosophy of law in the United States as it relates to the Second Amendment, the longest held view of what it protects is an individual right; a view that goes back more than 230 years. There are countless quotes from our Founders—many of whom were deeply involved in the process of writing, debating, and ratifying the Second Amendment—referring to the right of individuals to possess firearms. Even those quotes that mention a ‘militia’ do so in the context of it being comprised of individual citizens who are expected to supply their own arms,” reported the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (ILA).
NRA-ILA also cited several other cases in their analysis, before summing up Hogg by saying, “Ultimately, David Hogg is simply another anti-gun activist, and like most others, he is prone to making false claims about a subject for which he has little understanding.”
This militia argument has been so thoroughly debunked that it is disappointing, brain-numbing and counterproductive to have to again refute it, but such is the anti-intellectualism of today’s gun-control movement; unfortunately, this includes, in this case, David Hogg, a student who Time says is now “studying the history of conservative political movements” at Harvard. Given these tweets, he isn’t getting much of an education.
How red states are set to permanently undermine gun control
When Missouri passed it’s sanctuary law, the measure basically said that federal gun control laws were invalid. They just didn’t exist within the state’s borders.
Other states started trying to follow suit.
I got a fair bit of heat because I actually said I thought that was probably a bad idea. It wasn’t that I dislike Missouri’s law, only that I didn’t think it would stand up to legal challenge from the federal government. I wanted to see what the courts said so other laws could be better crafted.
In Ohio, though, it seems they are taking an approach that I personally feel is far wiser. And they’re not the only ones treading that same path.
The bill mirrors a law passed in Missouri in 2021 that restricts the enforcement of federal laws which violate the state’s view of the Second Amendment, according to the Dispatch. The Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Missouri after the law was passed, saying the state could not “simply declare federal laws invalid,” according to a DOJ press release.
Loychik believes that HB 51 is even stronger than Missouri’s law, according to the Dispatch. “There have been changes that have been made. This bill is a lot stronger,” he said, noting that the bill will not violate the Supremacy Clause.
“House Bill 51 does not challenge that,” Loychik said. “It simply states that the state of Ohio will not help the federal government agencies enforce their gun-control agenda by commandeering our local enforcement.”
Earlier in February, Republican Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, saying that Montana would not enforce the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) final rule for pistol braces.
The letter follows HB 258, passed by the Montana Legislature in 2021, a law that blocks peace officers, state employees or employees of a political subdivision “from enforcing, assisting in the enforce of, or otherwise cooperating in the enforcement of a federal ban on firearms, magazines, or ammunition,” according to the legislation.
See, I like the Missouri law. I want it to stand up in court. I just don’t believe it will.
However, agencies like the ATF depend on local law enforcement for assistance. Without them, they can’t really do all that much in our local communities.
By laying down the law and saying that local and state law enforcement will not help enforce unconstitutional gun control laws, they’re accomplishing the same thing as the Missouri law from a far more defensible legal position, in my layman’s opinion.
After all, the feds can’t just appropriate local law enforcement for their own purposes. They can’t swoop in and just demand the county sheriff dedicate X number of deputies toward their own investigations and arrests. They need those agencies to cooperate.
These efforts basically say that’s not going to happen.
In impact, there’s not a whole lot of difference between what they’re doing in Ohio and what Montana has already done. Yet the latter will likely survive legal challenges while the former isn’t as likely to.
I could be wrong, of course, and I’d love to be. I’d love it if Missouri’s sanctuary law was upheld by the Supreme Court and numerous other states decided to follow suit.
But I don’t think I am and I think most of you probably agree that I’m not, no matter how much we hope I am.
Ohio and Montana though? I think they’re on the right road.
Who Are the Real Extremists?
America’s vast lawful gun culture is the norm today, as it has long been, not the infringement inherent in gun-control activists’ dystopian worldview.
In December of 2022, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) confirmed that the state of Florida will soon improve the concealed-carry permitting system it has had in place since 1987 by adopting constitutional carry as well. In so doing, Florida would become the 26th state to get out of the way of the peoples’ right to “bear arms.” If this happens, in just a few decades, the United States will have gone from having one state with a permitless carry system in place (Vermont) to having a majority of states with permitless carry systems in place.
To those who follow this area of the law, the news that Florida is moving to add itself to the constitutional-carry list should be entirely unsurprising. Historically, Florida has often been a trailblazer in pursuit of the restoration of the Second Amendment, but, in this case, it has fallen behind the times. Indeed, to take a look at a map of constitutional-carry states is to notice that Florida is effectively surrounded. In the last few years, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia and have all made the switch, and they were preceded by so many other states that it is now possible to drive from Georgia to Arizona (via Montana) without ever leaving a state that hasn’t eliminated its permitting requirement.
But here’s a peculiar thing: If, for whatever reason, you were to have followed Florida’s wholly unexceptional plan solely via the mainstream press, you’d have a hard time learning any of this. Instead, you’d “know” all sorts of other things—things that, on closer inspection, turn out to be flatly false. Specifically, you’d end up thinking that Florida’s decision represented a dramatic departure from the norm. You’d end up thinking that Florida’s governor—and its legislature—were full of wild-eyed extremists. You’d end up thinking that states that abolish their permitting requirement become more dangerous as a result. Hell, if you availed yourself of the more-hysterical coverage, you might even end up worried that there were bound to be shootouts in the streets as a result of this change.
Don’t take my word for it; try it yourself. Pick up your phone, type the words “Florida constitutional carry” into Google and peruse the news articles that come up. Note the language that is used as a matter of routine: “extreme,” “dangerous,” “unsafe,” “radical.” Count the number of times that the uninformed opinion of the author is laundered through the phrase “experts say.” Observe the non-sequiturs and the lies; in particular, note the pretense that constitutional carry means that criminals are able to carry firearms with impunity, or that all regulations have been abolished. Consider how many times you are informed, as an aside, that the Second Amendment has been misinterpreted, or that it was never supposed to apply to individuals in the first instance. It’s remarkable.
It’s typical, too. Increasingly, stories about gun laws in America resemble dispatches from an alternate universe—one in which the Second Amendment does not mean what it says; in which the advent of “shall-issue” concealed carry never happened; in which permitless carry remains a fringe and untested idea; in which the massive increase in the number of concealed carriers coincided with an increase, rather than a precipitous drop, in crime; in which gun ownership remains the preserve of a handful of white men; and in which states such as Texas and Georgia, rather than states such as California and New York, are the outliers.
Contrast the manner in which the press habitually treats the gun laws of, say, Illinois or New Jersey, to how they treat the gun laws of, say, Arizona or Maine. If one were to take these various descriptions at face value, one would be forgiven for concluding that Illinois and New Jersey were “normal,” while Arizona and Maine represented outliers. But that is entirely false. Continue reading “”
Gun industry marketing may end up before SCOTUS
The Protection of Lawful Commerce of Arms act is a bit unusual. It’s rare that Congress would enact protection for an entire industry to prevent unwarranted lawsuits from bankrupting it. However, the gun industry actually needed those protections.
Firearm manufacturers were facing a bevy of lawsuits from pretty much anyone looking for someone to blame. They were blamed for the actions of third parties, people who quite often never purchased the gun legally in the first place, and faced stiff penalties in court.
So, Congress acted.
Now, though, many anti-gun activists want to overturn gun industry protections while others are trying to find ways around them, as we’ve seen in several states.
It seems some are speculating about those latest efforts at bypassing the PLCAA ending up before the Supreme Court.
Buffalo’s lawsuit, filed in December, is one of the first cases of its kind under New York’s 2021 public nuisance gun law, which allows the state and people affected by gun violence to sue gun manufacturers, sellers and distributors for endangering the public’s health and safety — or creating a “public nuisance.”
The new statute and similar laws recently enacted in other states mark the latest round in a long-running battle between gun-control advocates and firearm manufacturers over a 2005 federal law that protects the industry from liability.
And this time, the issue could land before the Supreme Court, according to legal experts, as several Democratic-led states take a more aggressive approach to restricting firearms even after the court acted to expand gun rights last year by striking down a decades-old New York law that limited the ability to carry a handgun outside the home.
“For more than a decade, the court turned away basically every Second Amendment petition that it received,” said Joseph Blocher, a Second Amendment law professor at Duke University. But after last year’s ruling, “it could be that we’re going to be looking at multiple gun cases at the Supreme Court.” …
The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry’s trade association, is leading the challenge, arguing the new laws are unconstitutional because they are too vague, regulate transactions that take place outside of the states and are preempted by the 2005 law.
The laws are a “transparent and obvious attempt to circumvent the will of Congress,” said NSSF senior vice president Lawrence Keane.
A New Jersey federal judge sided with the group last month when he blocked the state’s law from being enforced, noting that it “is in direct conflict” with federal law. New Jersey has appealed the ruling.
And, at least in my mind, that’s only part of the issue here.
See, these “public nuisance” laws try to target the gun industry and its marketing. However, on top of the law being vague as to what constitutes “improper” marketing, there’s no requirement to show evidence that those who misuse the guns are even remotely familiar with the marketing in question.
In other words, gun companies simply wouldn’t be able to market at all if these states get their way about it.
I’m sorry, but nothing about that seems remotely right.
As a nation, we don’t punish people or companies for the actions of third parties without good cause. In the wake of the George Floyd riots, we didn’t seek to punish the news agencies that reported on Floyd’s death. Why would we? They did nothing wrong in reporting the news.
Yet similarly, the gun industry has to market new products. Otherwise, they cannot continue to exist.
You cannot blame them for what some maniac does with that firearm when nothing in their marketing remotely condones such an action.
So yes, this may well end up before the Supreme Court, and I suspect the gun industry hopes it does.
We’ve seen what the current makeup of the Court is and what it can do in support of the Second Amendment. I suspect these new laws seeking to undermine the PLCAA are going to be gutted if not completely overturned.
And that is very good news.
Massey hits the nail on the head.
https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1628416798910545920
Bill filed in Illinois to ban "armor plates, body armor, and military helmets." All existing items would have to be declared to the state police, and current police, retired police, and private security guards would be exempt. https://t.co/QvsS2pV2mJ pic.twitter.com/HBRncq8R7H
— Rob Romano (@2Aupdates) February 21, 2023
Go figure:
A worthy repetition. Also something to consider is that U.S. law that created the National Guard (simply a reserve force of the military) and defined it as the ‘organized militia’ created the select militia the founders and framers were righteously concerned about
Madison on the 2nd Amendment & militia clause
The Supreme Court in the Heller decision explained that the second amendment guarantees an individual right of the people to keep and carry arms for their defense in the event of a confrontation.
The anti-gun crowd, however, refuses to accept this common sense reading of the amendment. The best way to interpret the Constitution begins with actually reading it. The next best thing is to read what the Constitution’s chief drafter, James Madison, had to say about America’s founding document. Madison was the chief author of the Federalist Papers, along with John Jay and Alexander Hamilton. The Federalist Papers offer great insight into the political theories of the day that led to our system of government.
Students of the second amendment should be familiar with both Federalist 29 and 46, which discuss the role of an armed populace in protecting the precious freedom which had so recently been won. It was that thinking that led to the adoption of the second amendment.
Madison was also the original drafter of the Bill of Rights, including what would become the second amendment. The anti-gun crowd regularly accuse second amendment supporters of only focusing on what Justice Scalia called the operative clause of the second amendment, the phrase “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” They assert that we ignore the prefatory clause that reads, “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state.” To them the prefatory clause confirms that the purpose of the amendment was to protect the right of the states to have militias or as they sometimes phrase it, the right to bear arms when in militia service.
However, beyond that, they never exactly explain what is meant by “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The anti-gun crowd cling to the so-called collective rights view of the amendment that held sway with a number of federal circuit courts pre-Heller. However, beyond denying an individual right to keep and bear arms, those courts said precious little on exactly what the amendment actually protected.
It was commonly stated outside the court room that the operative clause meant that the federal government could not disarm the state militias. But that is not what the amendment says and no federal circuit court actually provided any reasoned discussion supporting such an interpretation. In any event, if that were what the amendment was meant to accomplish, one would think the amendment would have been written in some way like “A well-regulated militia being necessary for a free state, Congress shall not infringe the right of the states to arm the militia.” However, this interpretation of the amendment would have worked a radical transformation of Congress’s power over the militia.
The Constitution addresses the militia in Article I, Section 8. It states “The Congress shall have the power … To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.”
Thus, it was Congress’s responsibility, not the states, to organize and arm the militia, with the states having only the responsibility to appoint officers and train the militia as Congress mandates. The militia is not treated by the Constitution as a creature of the several states, but of the nation as a whole to be organized, armed and disciplined by Congress, while being trained by the states as Congress directs.
Congress has in fact exercised this authority.
Title 10 of the United States Code, Section 311 defines the militia of the United States with certain exceptions as “all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and … under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and … female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.”
The National Guard is the organized militia and the unorganized militia consists of those militia members not in the Guard. In the Second Militia Act, passed in 1792, Congress specified the arms militia members were to have. It was incumbent on militia members to report for training and duty with their own arms. The second amendment did not change Congress’s authority over the militia, nor was that the intent of the amendment. Most notably, the second amendment did not provide that the states would or could arm the militia. If that were the meaning of the second amendment, then states could be free to arm the militia in any way they saw fit. States could for instance under the collective rights view of the second amendment, authorize each member of the unorganized militia to own a fully automatic weapon such as the M-16. That would raise issues with respect to the provisions of the National Firearms Act of 1934, which greatly restricts the ownership and transfer of automatic weapons. States could also abrogate many other federal firearm restrictions. It is certainly the case that some founders, such as Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, feared that Congress would neglect its responsibility to arm the militia. And so it is not an unreasonable view that a primary purpose of the second amendment was to ensure that the militia would not be disarmed by taking guns away from the people who constituted the militia.
However, that view is perfectly consistent with the wording of the operative clause, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The amendment thus ensured that there could be a body of the people armed and available to serve in the militia. It had nothing to do, however, with transferring to the states the right to arm or specify the arming of the militia. That remains the prerogative of Congress. Review of the legislative history of the second amendment confirms that it was designed to protect an individual right of the people generally to possess and carry arms.
When Madison initially introduced the various proposed amendments that would later become the Bill of Rights, he proposed to insert the bulk of them, including what would later become amendments one through five, part of the sixth amendment, and amendments eight and nine, into Article I, Section 9, between Clauses 3 and 4. His speech to Congress can be found here.
This is the portion of the Constitution which limits Congressional power over individuals. Clause 3 is the prohibition on Bills of Attainder and ex post facto laws.
Clause 4 is the limitation on the imposition of taxes directly on individuals as oppose to excise taxes on economic transactions. This clause has been substantially abrogated by the sixteenth amendment, authorizing the federal government to tax incomes. In other words, Madison proposed to put these amendments into that part of the Constitution that protected individual rights of the people from the federal government. The context of Madison’s original introduction to Congress of the Bill of Rights, including the second amendment, is powerful evidence supporting the conclusion that the right to keep and bear arms was intended to confirm an individual right of the people to arms.
Madison did not propose to place the second amendment in that part of the Constitution that governs Congress’s power over the militia. The obvious reason is that Madison was seeking to protect an individual right to keep and bear arms, not some undefined right of the states to arm or control militia members within their borders. Indeed, it was Madison himself who coined the phrase “Bill of Rights” to refer to the amendments he was proposing, including what would become the second amendment. States do not have rights. They have powers. Individuals have rights. In any event, the second amendment guarantees in its own words a right of the people, not a right of the states.
NRA predicts Supreme Court will finally define Second Amendment
A coalition led by the National Rifle Association this week sued to stop the Biden administration’s bid to regulate AR-style “pistols,” an effort that could prompt the Supreme Court to finally define what is allowed under the 231-year-old Second Amendment.
While its suit is specifically aimed at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and its flip-flop on regulating and taxing guns, it has the potential to both smoke out the court on what is legal under the Second Amendment and end years of practice by federal agencies and states to make up rules that Congress is supposed to set.
“At some point, the supremes are gonna say, ‘To hell with you. We can’t trust you. We’re gonna strike it. This is what you can do. Anything outside of that you cannot,'” said NRA President Charles Cotton.
Former Twitter executive Yoel Roth justifies censorship:
"Unrestricted free speech, paradoxically, results in less speech, not more." pic.twitter.com/e8tkoqPjyp
— Young Americans for Liberty (@YALiberty) February 9, 2023
Iowa student sues over 2A t-shirt suspension
An Iowa high schooler has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that her school district and a civics teacher violated her First Amendment rights by suspending her for wearing a pro-Second Amendment t-shirt to class; a case that could one day have far-reaching implications for students across the country.
In the complaint, which is the topic of today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co, the student (identified by her initials A.B.) alleges that just two days after discussing students’ rights to free speech in class, teacher Thomas Griffin “removed her from class and suspended her” for wearing a t-shirt promoting the Second Amendment, claiming it was “inappropriate”.
Griffin told his students that, although they had some right to free speech, that right was “extremely limited” when the students stepped on school property. Griffin told his students that their teacher (in this case, him) would decide what was acceptable speech in the classroom. And with respect to clothing—which was at the very core of the Tinker case—Griffin told his students that he would not allow students to wear any clothing that depicts guns, alcohol, or any other “inappropriate material.”
A.B. knew that Griffin was wrong about the scope of the First Amendment, so the next time she had Griffin’s government class, September 1, 2022, she wore a shirt to school that said “What part of ‘shall not be infringed’ do you not understand?” with a depiction of a rifle underneath it.
A.B. had worn the shirt to school before, with no complaints from students, teachers, or administrators. And A.B.’s brother, who graduated from Johnston High School in 2019, had worn the same shirt to school multiple times with no complaints.
Griffin, who teaches the Bill of Rights, knew that shirt was quoting the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and he knew it was a commentary on gun control efforts. Nevertheless, he claimed that the shirt violated the school’s dress code and he removed A.B. from the classroom, sending her to the school administration office.
A.B. told Griffin she had a right to wear the shirt, which was not causing any disruption in the class—other than any disruption Griffin himself created by removing A.B. from the classroom. But Griffin said she was wrong about the First Amendment and that the administration would back him up.
As you can see, there are no depictions of violence on the shirt worn by A.B., but the school administration did indeed originally stand by Griffin’s actions, suspending her after she refused to change her shirt in order to return to class.
The lawsuit alleges that later that evening, however, A.B.’s mom Janet Bristow received a call from the school district’s superintendent to apologize for their actions, as well as a similar mea culpa from Chris Billings, the Executive Director of School Leadership.
We recently discussed the ruling of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit striking down a ban on gun ownership by individuals accused of domestic abuse. Now, U.S. District Judge Patrick Wyrick in Oklahoma City dismissed an indictment against Jared Michael Harrison for violating a federal law that makes it illegal for “unlawful users or addicts of controlled substances” to possess firearms. It is only the latest such loss for the Justice Department as the Biden Administration pushes sweeping rationales for limiting Second Amendment rights in the wake of last year’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
Harrison was arrested by police in Lawton, Oklahoma, in May 2022 after a traffic stop where police found a loaded revolver as well as marijuana.
Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), Congress prohibited the possession of firearms by users of substances made unlawful by the federal Controlled Substances Act. The court noted that this provision “is rarely used by prosecutors, as it accounts for only about 5% of prosecutions brought under § 922.”
The Justice Department argued that such a ban was “consistent with a longstanding historical tradition in America of disarming presumptively risky persons, namely, felons, the mentally ill, and the intoxicated.” It is similar to the broad rationale used unsuccessfully before the Fifth Circuit. Indeed, the Justice Department again tried to argue that such bans are allowed because Bruen’s described the plaintiffs in that case as “ordinary, law-abiding, and adult citizens.” It is clearly an argument that the Biden Administration wants to push in cases across the country despite the rather poor reception from the courts. I agree with these judges that the reference is being radically overblown by the Justice Department. Indeed, it cuts against the department’s credibility in arguing for Second Amendment limits.
This latest loss shows the Biden Administration pushing a post-Bruen claim that could find itself back before a skeptical Court majority. Notably, as discussed in the earlier post, a similar issue was addressed by Justice Amy Coney Barrett when she was sitting as an appellate judge. This court also relies on Barrett’s dissent in Kanter v. Barr, 919 F.3d 437, 451–53 (7th Cir. 2019) (Barrett, J., dissenting).
In September, U.S. District Judge David Counts in Midland, Texas also struck down a firearms law that banned individuals under felony indictment from buying guns.
The opinion by Judge Wyrick is very interesting in its comprehensive exploration of historical sources. It also dismantles the Justice Department’s suggestions that marijuana users are both law breakers and threats to society:
“under the United States’ own conception of the historical tradition, such restrictions would only apply to those who are both unvirtuous and dangerous. And as explained above, because the mere use of marijuana does not involve violent, forceful, or threatening conduct, a user of marijuana does not automatically fall within that group.”
I particularly liked this observation from the court about reading discretion into the amendment to bar those deemed untrustworthy by the government:
[I]t would be odd indeed for the Framers to have incorporated such a trojan horse into the Second Amendment. The purpose of enshrining a right into the Constitution is to limit the discretion of a legislature. But if the United States’ theory is correct and all a legislature must do to prohibit a group of persons from possessing arms is to declare that group “untrustworthy,” then the Second Amendment would provide virtually no limit on Congress’s discretion. The Framers weren’t perfect, but they also weren’t fools.
Here is the opinion: United States v. Harrison
When they write articles like this, they merely indicate the title of their site is incorrect. They are not ‘good men’. And it begs the question: Which right will be the next one they decide the people should not have?
I love life, and I love the people of my country far far far more than I value the “freedom” to bear arms. I don’t know if any “reforms” will really solve the problems of gun violence in the United States. In all actuality, I believe, therefore, that we must repeal the Second Amendment now!
There! I uttered the unutterable, the ultimate taboo in U.S. political discourse. But I am not running for public office or reelection. I am not expecting large payouts from the National Rifle Association or from the firearms manufacturers through their lobbyists.
As the horse once served as a primary means of transportation in earlier times, it now grazes and prances peacefully on rich pastures. Possibly during former moments in our history, we may have had reason to enact and enforce the Second Amendment of our great Constitution, but those bygone days have long since passed. Now we must put the Second Amendment out to pasture.
Disarming The People: How Dictatorships Used Gun Control
USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- Mao Zedong once said, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
Which is why he made sure no one in China could access that political power. Throughout history and well into the modern world, gun control legislation heralded the death of democracies. Usually, it preceded an attempt by the government to take full control of people’s lives. Weapon bans frequently led to human rights abuses, including massacres and sometimes outright genocide.
According to a 2022 Gallup poll, 66 percent of Americans surveyed support stricter gun laws and a sizeable minority advocate for a total gun ban. Most of these people base their opinions on recent tragic events like mass shootings and high crime rates involving firearms and refuse to believe the government would ever do anything to take away their rights.
It’s almost as if they don’t remember the lockdown. Granted, it was for the sake of public health ….in the beginning. Still, once the United States government began restricting travel and requiring the entire population to take a COVID vaccine designed in just a couple of days, as was the case with Moderna, many Americans began to view this as an abuse of government authority, especially when some who took the “life-saving” vaccine died from COVID anyway.
A government gets away with whatever its people allow. A recent attempt to ban semi-automatic firearms across the state of Illinois was met with widespread resistance. 88 percent of the state’s counties refuse to enforce the governor’s mandate, and they can because of the Second Amendment. Additionally, sheriffs work for their communities, not for the state.
Rights Protected by the Second Amendment are Being Restored, NOT Created
U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)-— The jurisprudence of the Second Amendment is: it was ratified to protect the existing right of the people to keep and bear arms. It did not create new rights. One reason to protect the right was to enable the creation of militias from the armed population.
It was well understood, at the time of ratification, the right to keep and bear arms included the right to do so for self-defense as well as community defense, for hunting, and included the ancillary rights to practice, buy, sell and make weapons, as well as ammunition and accessories for them. These rights were not disputed and were considered to be derived from the natural rights to life and liberty. From Heller:
1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2–53.
The American Second Amendment was recognized as needed because the English right to arms had been construed too narrowly to protect the colonists against the exercise of power by King George and the British Empire. The Americans had recently fought a long and bitter war sparked by the British attempts at disarming the American colonists. The initial battles of Lexington and Concord were direct attempts by the representatives of the British Crown to confiscate gunpowder and, particularly, cannon. Cannon were crew served weapons. The officers of the Crown confiscated plenty of individual weapons as well.
Well, just to put it bluntly:
No, Second Amendment does protect AR-15s
I get that there are some people who don’t like AR-15s. They see these guns that look an awful lot like what our troops use and they get uncomfortable. They see people traipsing around the woods or our communities with them, often espousing what they think are extremist points of view, and it makes them even more uncomfortable.
So, they want AR-15s banned. After all, then no one could get such weapons and the extremists wouldn’t be as much of a threat anymore.
And every so often, someone thinks they’re clever enough to find a loophole, that the Second Amendment actually allows banning such firearms.
Gun advocates insist that the AR-15 is protected by the Second Amendment. This is not true – yet.
Neither the law nor the Second Amendment prevents Congress from banning such weapons. The obstacle is not just public opinion — polls show that far more people support such a ban than oppose it — but failure of political will before a powerful gun lobby and donors, a polarized Congress and a divided and fearful nation in thrall to the Cult of the Second Amendment.
Justice Clarence Thomas does not mention the AR-15 in his June 23 majority Supreme Court opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. This most expansive interpretation yet of the Second Amendment strikes down restrictions on the ability to carry guns outside the home in New York and five other states. The AR-15 also goes unmentioned in the bipartisan bill signed into law June 25 – the first major gun legislation in nearly 30 years.…
Gun advocates commonly cite District of Columbia v. Heller, the 2008 case authored by Justice Antonin Scalia. That opinion, which Thomas mentions frequently in Bruen, struck down the District’s banning possession of all handguns by non-law enforcement officials. That law required that owners of firearms of other kinds keep them unloaded, disassembled or locked when not located at a business place or while being used for lawful recreational activities.…
However, the Heller opinion, far from protecting a weapon like the AR-15, made clear that such a weapon could not only be regulated but banned once again. Heller specifically affirmed the National Firearms Act’s restrictions on machine guns and sawed-off shotguns, concluding that the Second Amendment does not protect “those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes such as short-barreled shotguns.”
Heller makes it clear that the Second Amendment, like most rights, is not unlimited and does not grant the right to keep and carry any weapon in any manner for whatever purpose.
But that right there is where the author screws up. See, he’s a lawyer, so he figures he knows the law. And I’m not, so he probably knows it far better than I do.
Where he makes his mistake, though, is in his lack of understanding about firearms in a far more general sense.
What he leaves out is that the Heller decision permitted the banning of guns not “in common use.” This is why machine guns could remain banned. I disagree with that interpretation by Justice Scalia and figure it was to make the ruling a bit more politically palatable, but my agreement or disagreement changes nothing.
Yet that phrase, “in common use,” matters with regard to the AR-15.
That gun is one of the most popular firearm models in the country. Millions of them are sold every year. An estimated 20 million of them are in circulation right now.
Maybe it’s just me, but that sure sounds like they’re in common use.
See, the author doesn’t like AR-15s, so he presents his interpretation. It misrepresents what Scalia actually wrote so badly that one can’t help but believe it’s intentional. Especially since the author is an attorney, someone who not just should understand what Scalia said but also knows how to twist things from a legal standpoint.
I’m sorry, but this is just a reinterpretation of the tired argument that, frankly, ignores a large part of the Second Amendment. You know, that whole “shall not be infringed” thing?
Sadly typical, unfortunately.
New Hampshire Bill Would Take on Federal Gun Control; Past, Present, and Future
CONCORD, N.H. (Jan. 15, 2023) – A bill introduced in the New Hampshire House would end state enforcement of a wide range of federal gun control measures; past, present and future. The passage of this bill would take an important step toward nullifying federal acts in practice and effect that infringe on the right to keep and bear arms within the state.
Rep. Tom Mannion (R) introduced House Bill 474 (HB474) on Jan. 11. Titled “Protection of Natural Right to Property and Self-defense,” the legislation would ban any entity or person, including any public officer or employee of the state and its political subdivisions, from enforcing any past, present or future federal acts, laws, executive orders, administrative orders, court orders, rules, regulations, statutes, or ordinances that infringe on the right to keep and bear arms.
The bill is similar to the Missouri Second Amendment Protection Act (SAPA) enacted in 2021.
Mannion said he was building on the momentum created by a bill passed last year that took a small step toward banning state and local enforcement of federal control. Mannion called that bill a “foot-in-the-door” and said he was “adding teeth to this law.”
DETAILS OF THE LEGISLATION
The bill includes a detailed definition of actions that qualify as “infringement,” including:
- Any tax, levy, fee, or stamp imposed on firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition not common to all other goods and services.
- Any registering or tracking of firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition.
- Any registration or tracking of the owners of firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition.
- Any act forbidding the possession, ownership, use, or transfer of a firearm, firearm accessory, or ammunition by law-abiding citizens.
- Any act ordering the confiscation of firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition from law-abiding citizens.
The proposed law defines a “law-abiding citizen” as “a person who is not otherwise precluded under state law from possessing a firearm.”