Category: Rights

Saul Cornell has always been a elitist political hack when it comes to gun control.

Preamble he says?

He’s trying to make people believe ‘A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state’ somehow overrides ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed‘ and thus only the military & the national guard – the elistist/anti-civil rights, wanna-be gun controller’s current definition of ‘militia’ – have a right to have guns.

Of course common English sentence diagraming, taught in grade school, confirms he’s lying.

But – again – Preamble he says?

Well, I’ve got one for him. One that I think he believes he can evade through general ignorance due to the lack of civics education:

PREAMBLE TO THE BILL OF RIGHTS

“THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its (the Constitution’s) powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.”

Bold & parenthesis are mine.

That preamble clearly states that the amendments are to declare certain things that are restricted from the government exerting its powers on them. The Bill of Rights is a list of restrictions on government, not the people, and Mr Saul Cornell knows this.

Cornell: Originalism Means Gorsuch and Barrett Should Rule in Favor of Strict Gun Control

In another of Heller’s odd intellectual moves, Scalia read the Second Amendment backwards, and in the process effectively erased the text’s preamble. To justify this unusual reading strategy, an interpretive approach that Stevens reminded his colleagues on the bench had never been done in the court’s history, Scalia cited legal treatises written decades after the adoption of the Second Amendment. Once again, to obtain his preferred result Scalia rummaged among sources written a half a century after the adoption of the Second Amendment to find evidence of the text’s original meaning.

Such a move only makes sense if one believes that nothing significant happened in American legal history between the adoption of the Second Amendment and the Civil War, a view most historians would find bizarre and erroneous. Curiously, Justice Scalia did not turn to a legal source more readily available that was written at the same time as the Second Amendment. John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and co-author of The Federalist, had ruled on this issue in 1790s.

Jay wrote: “A preamble cannot annul enacting clauses; but when it evinces the intention of the legislature and the design of the act, it enables us, in cases of two constructions, to adopt the one most consonant to their intention and design.”

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U. OF PENNSYLVANIA CAPITULATES; APPROVES HUNTING, ARCHERY, AND SHOOTING CLUB.

PHILADELPHIA, April 29, 2021 — After more than a year in limbo, the University of Pennsylvania’s Hunting, Archery, and Shooting Club is officially a recognized student group.

Under pressure from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and with help from FIRE Legal Network attorney Patricia Hamill, the university relented this week and processed the group’s registration.

On March 17, FIRE called on Penn to stop engaging in viewpoint discrimination and promptly recognize the club.

“We are pleased that Penn finally hit the mark,” said FIRE Senior Program Officer Zach Greenberg. “However, the approval is long overdue. It should not take a year for a university to make good on its promises to uphold students’ rights.”

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High court halts Calif. virus rules limiting home worship

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is telling California that it can’t enforce coronavirus-related restrictions that have limited home-based religious worship including Bible studies and prayer meetings.

The order from the court late Friday is the latest in a recent string of cases in which the high court has barred officials from enforcing some coronavirus-related restrictions applying to religious gatherings.

Five conservative justices agreed that California restrictions that apply to in-home religious gatherings should be lifted for now, while the court’s three liberals and Chief Justice John Roberts would not have done so.

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This is an alternate tactic the gun grabbers have been trying for decades. Getting their econutz shills to sue to ban lead bullets and shot.

Judge Affirms Hunters Can Use Traditional Ammo in NRA Case

On April 1st, a federal judge in Arizona sided with NRA-ILA and Safari Club International and held that hunters’ use of traditional ammo does not violate federal environmental law.

The case dates back to 2012, when a group sued the U.S. Forest Service. The group alleged that by allowing hunters to hunt with traditional lead ammo in the 1.6-million-acre Kaibab National Forest—which is authorized by Arizona state law—the Forest Service was violating the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. That Act was originally passed in 1976, to address the increasing amount of municipal and industrial waste that was being disposed of at the time. But over time, it has been used to attack gun owners and shooting ranges.

On April 1st, the judge held that the Forest Service is not disposing any waste by allowing hunters to hunt in accordance with state laws. But the case had even bigger implications. The Plaintiff was asking the court to order the Forest Service regulate hunting. But the states own the wildlife, even while it is on federal lands. “Each national forest,” the judge said, “is required to cooperate with state wildlife agencies to allow hunting in ‘accordance with the requirements of State laws.”’ A ruling to the contrary would have given the federal government the authority to enter a field of regulation that belongs to the states on lands where hunting takes place. Those implications would be huge because 640-million acres (about twenty-eight percent of the country) is owned and managed by the federal government. Thankfully, the judge sided with NRA-ILA and Safari Club.

NRA-ILA will continue to protect the rights of hunters everywhere to use commonly owned and affordable ammunition to hunt and enjoy public lands.

The case is called Center for Biological Diversity v. United States Forest Service. The National Shooting Sports Foundation also intervened as a defendant in the case.

The Growing Desperation (And Dangerousness) Of The Gun Control Movement

Gun control activists are growing increasingly frustrated with the fact that even with Democrats in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, their agenda is still in doubt on Capitol Hill. A new piece at POLITICO highlights the palpable sense of desperation starting to emanate from anti-gun organizations like Everytown for Gun Safety and its affiliate Moms Demand Action, where activists know that their window of opportunity to put new restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms is closing. The razor-thin Democratic majority in the House and Senate could very well disappear after the 2022 midterms, and activists

For the gun reform movement — a centerpiece of the Democratic Party’s agenda for at least a quarter century — the question this week has become, if not now, when?

… It’s a pivotal moment for gun politics. The history of midterm elections suggests Democrats are at risk of losing the House next year, shrinking their window for legislative victories.

“The time is definitely now,” said Peter Ambler, executive director of the gun-control group Giffords. “We can’t wait.”

There’s a muddled message coming from the anti-gun advocates. On the one hand, they say that now is the time, knowing that they’re likely to lose ground in next year’s elections, but they’re still trying to spin their movement as one that’s growing in popularity across the country.

Tom Sullivan, a Colorado state lawmaker who sought elected office after his son, Alex, was killed in the Aurora theater shooting in 2012, said the climate surrounding gun legislation has “obviously” shifted — as evidenced by his own election and those of other survivors of victims of gun violence, including Rep. Lucy McBath of Georgia, whose teenage son was shot to death in 2012. Gun control was a winning issue for Democrats in some congressional swing districts nationally in the midterm elections in 2018.

“We can run on this issue, and we can win elections on this issue,” Sullivan said. “Quite obviously, the tone has changed.”

At the federal level, Democrats and gun control activists lost ground in the House, and were it not for the absolute sh*tshow in the Georgia Senate runoffs, Republicans would still be in control of the U.S. Senate. The gun control movement didn’t receive a mandate in the 2020 elections, but they have to act like they did because they know that they’re likely to be in an even worse position after the midterms.

In that sense, the gun control groups are right that this is the best position for the movement in decades, but that doesn’t mean that they’re still in a great position to get what they want. As long as it still takes 60 votes to pass most legislation through the Senate, the prospects for new gun control laws is murky at best. That’s why you’ll be seeing more calls from gun control groups to nuke the filibuster in the coming days and weeks.

The gun control debate has put more pressure on Democrats to abandon the legislative filibuster in the Senate, broadening the range of constituencies lobbying for the change. Lonnie Phillips, whose daughter was killed in Aurora and who now advocates on behalf of survivors of gun violence, said, “The best thing that can happen right now — the one thing I would give everything up for — is get rid of the filibuster so we can pass some laws.”

If the filibuster goes away, the least of our worries will be the passage of gun control bills like H.R. 8 and H.R. 1446. At that point, Democrats would try to ram through Biden’s gun ban and a host of new infringements on our Second Amendment rights, while also passing legislation like H.R. 1 that’s designed to ensure a permanent Democratic majority in Congress. One party rule is completely antithetical to the very idea of the United States, and it would be nothing less than a legislative coup. I’m not worried about my Second Amendment rights if the filibuster were to disappear. I’m worried about the future of the nation itself.

So 3 television networks, a couple of national news magazines, and a handful of newspapers per big city? amirite?

A Biden Appointee’s Troubling Views On The First Amendment.

When Columbia law professor Timothy Wu was appointed by Joe Biden to the National Economic Council a few weeks back, the press hailed it as great news for progressives. The author of The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age is known as a staunch advocate of antitrust enforcement, and Biden’s choice of him, along with the appointment of Lina Khan to the Federal Trade Commission, was widely seen as a signal that the new administration was assembling what Wired called an “antitrust all-star team.”

“Big Tech critic Tim Wu joins Biden administration to work on competition policy,” boomed CNBC, while Marketwatch added, “Anti-Big Tech crusader reportedly poised to join Biden White House.” Chicago law professor Eric Posner’s piece for Project Syndicate was titled “Antitrust is Back in America.” Posner noted Wu’s appointment comes as Senator Amy Klobuchar has introduced regulatory legislation that ostensibly targets companies like Facebook and Google, which a House committee last year concluded have accrued “monopoly power.”

Wu’s appointment may presage tougher enforcement of tech firms. However, he has other passions that got less ink. Specifically, Wu — who introduced the concept of “net neutrality” and once explained it to Stephen Colbert on a roller coaster — is among the intellectual leaders of a growing movement in Democratic circles to scale back the First Amendment. He wrote an influential September, 2017 article called “Is the First Amendment Obsolete?” that argues traditional speech freedoms need to be rethought in the Internet/Trump era. He outlined the same ideas in a 2018 Aspen Ideas Festival speech:

Listening to Wu, who has not responded to requests for an interview, is confusing. He calls himself a “devotee” of the great Louis Brandeis, speaking with reverence about his ideas and those of other famed judicial speech champions like Learned Hand and Oliver Wendell Holmes. In the Aspen speech above, he went so far as to say about First Amendment protections that “these old opinions are so great, it’s like watching The Godfather, you can’t imagine anything could be better.”

If you hear a “but…” coming in his rhetoric, you guessed right. He does imagine something better. The Cliff’s Notes version of Wu’s thesis:

— The framers wrote the Bill of Rights in an atmosphere where speech was expensive and rare. The Internet made speech cheap, and human attention rare. Speech-hostile societies like Russia and China have already shown how to capitalize on this “cheap speech” era, eschewing censorship and bans in favor of “flooding” the Internet with pro-government propaganda.

— As a result, those who place faith in the First Amendment to solve speech dilemmas should “admit defeat” and imagine new solutions for repelling foreign propaganda, fake news, and other problems. “In some cases,” Wu writes, “this could mean that the First Amendment must broaden its own reach to encompass new techniques of speech control.” What might that look like? He writes, without irony: “I think the elected branches should be allowed, within reasonable limits, to try returning the country to the kind of media environment that prevailed in the 1950s.”

— More ominously, Wu suggests that in modern times, the government may be more of a bystander to a problem in which private platforms play the largest roles. Therefore, a potential solution (emphasis mine) “boils down to asking whether these platforms should adopt (or be forced to adopt) norms and policies traditionally associated with twentieth-century journalism.”

That last line is what should make speech advocates worry.

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Feinstein’s biannual regurgitation:

To regulate assault weapons, to ensure that the right to keep and bear arms is not unlimited, and for other purposes.

 

When the name of your bill directly contradicts the wording of the constitution you’ve probably made a mistake somewhere.

Let’s use this same description for any other bill dealing with any right, especially an enumerated right.

“To regulate raids, to ensure that the right against unreasonable search and seizure is not unlimited, and for other purposes.”

“To regulate detentions, to ensure the right against cruel and unusual punishment is not unlimited, and for other purposes.”

Plug in any other right and it sounds insane but there are people that view the description of this bill as a positive. That should be hair raising to anyone that knows history and appreciates their rights.

In the Declaration of Independence, it is written that it is a self evident truth that the creator endowed mankind with – among others – the right to life. Abortion can be argued therefore as a secular civil rights, as well as a religious issue, and as I believe that life begins at conception, that life has human rights that mere inconvenience can not supersede.

Arkansas Governor Signs Additional Restrictions on Abortion Into Law

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (R-AR) signed a bill restricting abortions, SB6, into law on Tuesday. The law prohibits women from obtaining abortions in Arkansas, with one exception for the life of the mother.

Exceptions for rape or incest are not written into the bill, which Hutchinson said that he would have preferred in the final version of the legislation. He hopes the law will compel the Supreme Court to review the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion on the federal level.

“SB6 is a pro-life bill that prohibits abortion in all cases except to save the life of the mother in a medical emergency. It does not include exceptions for rape and incest,” Hutchinson said on Tuesday “I will sign SB6 because of overwhelming legislative support and my sincere and long-held pro-life convictions. SB6 is in contradiction of binding precedents of the U.S. Supreme Court, but it is the intent of the legislation to set the stage for the Supreme Court overturning current case law. I would have preferred the legislation to include the exceptions for rape and incest, which has been my consistent view, and such exceptions would increase the chances for a review by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

 The new law will go into effect by the upcoming summer, upon the legislature adjourning. Other states have implemented similar abortion restrictions in hopes of the Supreme Court taking up an abortion case and reconsidering the landmark Roe decision.

Another Anti-Gun Extremist Promoted for Biden’s Cabinet

President Biden’s nominee to serve as United States Secretary of the Interior, U.S. Representative Deb Haaland (D-NM), is yet another cog Biden hopes to fit into his administration’s anti-gun machine. Perhaps it would be more newsworthy if we only reported on Biden nominees that don’t support gutting the Second Amendment, but then we might have nothing to say.

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Isn’t it interesting how no 2nd amendment advocate claims this about the 1st amendment?

BLUF:
The Second Amendment is not in conflict with the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, or any of our other rights protected by the Constitution, and our rights don’t have to be exercised one at a time. We don’t give up our Fourth Amendment rights when we peaceably assemble, so why should we lose our Second Amendment rights when we gather in support or opposition to a piece of legislation or governmental action?

Well, the obvious answer is that we shouldn’t have to give up our Second Amendment rights in order to exercise our right of free speech, public assembly, and private worship. Unfortunately, that’s the world that gun control activists want, and it’s one reason why you’re seeing the rise of Second Amendment sanctuaries around the country; a grassroots response to the creeping authoritarianism of gun control.

New Anti-Gun Argument: 2A Getting In The Way Of Other Rights

The Second Amendment has long been treated as a second-class right by gun control activists and even some unarmed Americans who simply aren’t as concerned about protecting a right that they’re not currently exercising. Unfortunately for those opposed to the right to keep and bear arms, 2020 was a banner year for new gun owners with an estimated 8.5-million Americans purchasing a firearm for the very first time.

As you can imagine, gun control activists are not happy about these developments, and their opposition to exercise of our Second Amendment rights is leading some down a dangerous road; arguing that we must restrict the right to keep and bear arms in order to protect other civil rights.

Law professors Joseph Blocher of Duke and Reva Seigel of Yale make that case in a new piece at The Atlantic, proclaiming that we need more gun control laws to protect “citizens’ equal freedoms to speak, assemble, worship, and vote without fear.”

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The Government Censors Are Here.

Congressional Democrats are demanding to know what communications giants such as Comcast and AT&T are going to do about “the spread of dangerous misinformation.” How quickly this country is descending into an authoritarian regime where the government controls speech and the flow of information.

Ahead of a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Wednesday, California Democratic Reps. Anna G. Eshoo and Jerry McNerney wrote a letter to Comcast, AT&T, Spectrum, Dish, Verizon, Cox, Altice, Roku, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Hulu. According to the New York Times, which says it has reviewed the correspondence, the pair is not pleased that “the cable, satellite and over-the-top companies that disseminate these media outlets” – likely referring to Fox News, One America News Network, and Newsmax – “have done nothing in response to the misinformation aired by these outlets.”

The hearing was called to focus on “disinformation and extremism in the media.” In practice it’s a stage for peacock strutting, spin, and projection (a diversionary tactic Democrats are well-practiced in) with the ultimate goal of gaining full control of the flow of information.

The Democrats telegraphed their intentions when Eshoo and McNerney assumed the role of prosecutors to ask the companies what steps they took “prior to, on and following the Nov. 3, 2020, elections and the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks to monitor, respond to and reduce the spread of disinformation, including encouragement or incitement of violence by channels your company disseminates to millions of Americans?”

Eshoo and McNerney further exposed their repressive intentions when they asked the companies if they are “planning to continue carrying Fox News, OANN and Newsmax” on their platforms “both now and beyond the renewal date?” and “if so, why?”

Is this not chilling? The Democrats care nothing about misinformation and disinformation, nor freedom of speech. Their objective is to use the Jan. 6 Capitol trespass-and-vandalize ruckus, as well as legitimate questions about the 2020 election, to shut down the speech of their political opponents. They lust for raw political and social power, to rule, not govern under constitutional limits, forever. It is that simple.

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Enemies of the Deep State: The government’s war on domestic terrorism is a trap

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead

“This is an issue that all Democrats, Republicans, independents, Libertarians should be extremely concerned about, especially because we don’t have to guess about where this goes or how this ends. What characteristics are we looking for as we are building this profile of a potential extremist, what are we talking about? Religious extremists, are we talking about Christians, evangelical Christians, what is a religious extremist? Is it somebody who is pro-life? [The proposed legislation could create] a very dangerous undermining of our civil liberties, our freedoms in our Constitution, and a targeting of almost half of the country.”—Tulsi Gabbard, former Congresswoman

This is how it begins.

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THE BILL OF RIGHTS IS AN OBJECTION TO ‘GOVERNMENTAL AUTHORITY’!

Biden DHS Issues Domestic Terror Alert Warning of ‘Objections’ to ‘Governmental Authority.’

As President Joe Biden set a new record for executive orders in his first few days in office, and as former CIA Director John Brennan compared libertarians to ISIS-style “insurgencies,” the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a domestic terrorism bulletin warning about “ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority.”

It stands to reason that federal law-enforcement agencies may be on edge after the breach of the Capitol on January 6, but Biden’s inauguration went off without a hitch. Threats may indeed exist, but the DHS domestic terrorism bulletin is chilling, considering recent moves that suggest Democrats are planning a new domestic “War on Terror” targeting conservatives.

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Gov. Abbott says during keynote that he wants to make Texas a ‘Second Amendment Sanctuary State’
Abbott said he wants to ensure that no government officials can take Texan’s guns

Tulsi Gabbard on Dems’ Terror Law: ‘We Don’t Have to Guess About Where This Goes or How This Ends

Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) raised the alarm about the Democrats’ disturbing crackdown on “domestic terrorism” in the wake of the Capitol riot on January 6. She warned that the domestic terror bill that House Democrats have proposed would “undermine our constitutional rights and freedoms,” and lead to law enforcement targeting “almost half of the country.”

“We don’t have to guess about where this goes or how this ends,” Gabbard said, ominously, in an interview with Fox News on Friday.

“When you have people like former CIA Director John Brennan openly talking about how he’s spoken with or heard from appointees and nominees in the Biden administration who are already starting to look across our country for these types of movements similar to the insurgencies they’ve seen overseas, that in his words, he says make up this ‘unholy alliance’ of religious extremists, racists, bigots, he lists a few others and at the end, even libertarians,” the former congresswoman noted.

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Don’t neglect tedious arguments

This week’s column is quite short, but fear not, more lengthy analysis and discussion will be published in the near future. As the incoming president who has openly advocated for the implementation of horrific and unconstitutional gun laws prepares to take office, we can expect a renewed visibility of the gun control debate in American politics.

The legacy and new media establishments are not on our side, so if there is to be any progress in advancing a pro-gun narrative, it must be made by individuals. A recent video by Mrgunsngear discussed how the rise of social media has had a positive impact on sales of NFA items. Perhaps these sales were primarily to persons who would have been purchasing firearms regardless, but the point of the correlation is that speech, especially online, can still have real-world impacts.

I myself used to be deeply indoctrinated into the belief that all guns were bad, that gun owners were dangerous, and that the ownership of weapons should only be permitted after a lengthy and invasive process. How could I not be? My schools, the media, everyone, advanced the same narrative over and over until it became normalized. It was only through being able to hear others outside of those circles rebutting the arguments that had been drilled into my head that I was able to begin to change my perspective.

I also know from personal experience that some of the most frustrating conversations to have are with anti-gunners. As a general rule, those who oppose the right to keep and bear arms know nothing of firearms technology or history, very little of the philosophy of firearms ownership, and perhaps a few misleading statistics on the subject.

When debating with anti-gun individuals or those who claim to be “pro-Second Amendment, but…”, it is inevitable that there will be a repetition of the exact same arguments over and over. Oftentimes, you will not be able to win over someone deeply indoctrinated into the belief that citizens should be left defenseless and subject to the wills of common criminals and tyrants. However, winning over such opponents is not the purpose of debating, the purpose is winning over the audience.

Change is made on an individual level, and it is the onlookers capable of having their minds changed that are your target. On rare occasions, you might discuss the subject with someone open-minded who can be convinced that the government should not be infringing on the right to keep and bear arms, but even when you are not, it is crucial to press onward.

There are many who have surrendered to a defeatist perspective, coming to the conclusion that the cultural battle is lost, so we must simply place all of our eggs into the basket of legal action. While this position is understandable, it is also foolish and self-destructive. Those who wish to see us disarmed have pushed legislation incrementally over decades, infested cultural institutions, and refused to cease their onslaught despite the people’s protestations. Why should we be any less determined than them?

It is mind-numbing to repeat the same arguments over and over again, but it is necessary when so many have been brought to believe the same exact falsehoods. If we are unwilling to engage with those who repeat nonsensical talking points that they half-remembered from a John Oliver clip or a slogan by Moms Demand Action, then how can we ever hope to make progress in the restoration of our rights?

It is only through constant and repeated efforts to counter lies and ignorance that any minds will be changed. A properly devoted effort to advance our cause is essential for deradicalizing anti-gun zealots to the more modest position that all gun laws must be repealed. We the people are now, and always have been, our only hope to stand against tyranny.

The author takes a long time to observe that you can’t have a meaningful discussion with people who want to put you in a gulag.
Personally, I like talking this way:
See the source image
How To Talk to Someone Who Wants To Put You In A Gulag

A few months ago, I was having a few beers with TAC managing editor Matt Purple, and we ended up pondering the great question of our times: why did people vote for Trump?

After tossing around the usual answers (a reaction against Hillary’s hawkishness, his carefully curated aura of success, post-industrial blue collar angst), Matt told me about an acquaintance of his whose vote for Trump was pure belligerence. His justification for his vote, as relayed to me by Matt, was something like: “Look around you. These people want us gone” (“us,” presumably, being straight, white, conservative, religious people). He knew Trump was a cad and a moron, but he didn’t care because Trump would fight for him. He wasn’t concerned about losing his privilege; he was concerned about losing his freedom and even his life.

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The painful symbolism of the 26,000 National Guard troops in D.C.

Those of you who are reading this post are the type of people who pay attention to things. That’s why you already know that 26,000 National Guard troops drawn from all over America and from Puerto Rico, have assembled in Washington, D.C., in advance of Joe Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday. (That’s about three divisions worth of troops.) But have you given serious thought to what the troops’ presence means?

I’ve heard from some optimistic people who believe that the troops are the last phase in a Trumpian plan to reclaim America and maintain it as a true constitutional republic, rather than the socialist tyranny the Democrats seem to have planned. I’m a perennial pessimist, so I’m sorry to say that I don’t believe that the troops’ presence means anything good.

Instead, I’m inclined to agree with Tucker Carlson’s brilliant Monday night opening monologue regarding the deeper meaning behind a massive D.C. lockdown that makes it look like Baghdad, circa 2003. As Tucker noted, this troop build-up is five times the number of military personnel currently stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

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