Category: RKBA

New study contradicts “More Guns = More Crime” theory

Do increased gun sales lead to increased crime rates? According to gun control activists, the answer is “yes,” but a new study published in the Journal of Surgical Research finds no connection between firearm purchases and the number of crimes. I’m very pleased that Dr. Mark Hamill, a trauma surgeon and associate professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center who was a primary author and researcher for the new study, could join me on today’s Cam & Co to discuss his findings and the current state of “gun violence” research in the medical community.

For this particular study, Hamill and his associates used both national and state-level data on crime rates between 1999 and 2015 as well as NICS reporting data over the same time period as a reasonable proxy for gun sales. Hamill hypothesized beforehand that there would be no correlation between gun sales and crime rates, and as it turns out, that’s exactly what researchers found.

Nationally, all crime rates except the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–designated firearm homicides decreased as firearm sales increased over the study period.

Using a naïve national model, increases in firearm sales were associated with significant decreases in multiple crime categories. However, a more robust analysis using generalized estimating equation estimates on state-level data demonstrated increases in firearms sales were not associated with changes in any crime variables examined.

Robust analysis does not identify an association between increased lawful firearm sales and rates of crime or homicide. Based on this, it is unclear if efforts to limit lawful firearm sales would have any effect on rates of crime, homicide, or injuries from violence committed with firearms.

This study follows on previous research released by Hamill and others back in 2019 that examined concealed carry laws and crime rates; looking to see if changes to a state’s concealed carry laws resulted in more crime overall. Just as in this most recent study, the data found no significant association between “shifts from restrictive to nonrestrictive carry legislation on violent crime and public health indicators.”

As Hamill says, the results make sense. Most people who legally purchase and lawfully carry firearms are never going to commit a violent crime, so increasing the number of those who are legally exercising their Second Amendment rights shouldn’t result in more violent crime. As for gun sales and crime rates, while the number of firearms sold might vary from year to year, the number of privately-owned firearms in the United States continues to increase. If more guns equated to more crime, then we’d expect to see a steady rise in criminal offenses year after year. Instead, a graph of violent crime rates going back to 1900 shows that crime tends to ebb and flow in waves that can last for decades.

Note, by the way, what happened to the homicide rate in the years after the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968. While homicide rates had been fairly flat throughout most of the 1960s, there was a sharp increase starting around the time the GCA became law, and a steady decline didn’t begin until more than two decades later in the early 1990s.

That crime decline generally continued until 2020, when shootings and homicides soared in the midst of the COVID-19 shutdowns, disruptions to the criminal justice system, riots, and a pullback from proactive policing strategies. Gun sales also exploded in 2020, but despite the assertions of some gun control activists that the increase in gun purchases must have played a role in the increased violence, there isn’t much evidence that was the case, as even some anti-gun researchers have acknowledged.

Dr. Garen Wintemute of the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis investigated a possible relationship between 2020’s gun sales and the increase in crime and found none.

“Instead, [researchers] concluded that unemployment, economic disparity and physical distancing exacerbated by the pandemic were far more potent predictors of increased violence,” the FiveThirtyEight article notes.

Hamill’s study comes at a time of heightened interest in the gun control debate within the medical community, including a special issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association dedicated to examining “gun violence” and advocating for a host of new gun control laws. Hamill says that unfortunately there does seem to be a bias towards gun control among many researchers, and described how this most recent study was actually rejected by another journal; not because of any issues with the researcher’s methodology, but because the journal’s editor didn’t like the results.

Thankfully this new paper found a home at the Journal of Surgical Research, and I would encourage you to not only read the paper but share its findings far and wide. More guns does not equal more crime, and we’ve got the data to prove it.

BLUF
At this point, after multiple ignored corrections, it’s a stretch to pretend that the president’s misstatements are accidental; he obviously doesn’t care about their truth. What’s important to him and his supporters is achieving their policy goals, even if they have to lie to do so.

President Biden Lies About Guns. Again.
Amidst official hysteria over “misinformation,” the president continues to willfully misrepresent the facts on firearms.

Government lies aren’t new; political fibs have such deep roots in history that you could open a museum of official mendacity and have enough rotating exhibits to keep things fresh. But now, amidst much hysteria over “misinformation,” we see a resident of the White House misrepresent facts in pursuit of restrictions on legal ownership of firearms and ignore corrections. President Biden’s claim that bullets fired from AR-15’s are impossibly speedy is only the latest example of his continuing lies about guns.

“There’s no justification for a weapon of war. None. The speed of that bullet is five times that that comes out of the muzzle of most weapons. It can penetrate your vests,” President Biden huffed last week. “What in God’s name do you need an assault weapon for?” he added.

This wasn’t the first time the president insisted on the supposed superpowers of so-called “assault weapons” and especially of AR-15s, which are popular among gun owners.

“Do you realize the bullet out of an AR-15 travels five times as rapidly as a bullet shot out of any other gun, five times—is lighter—and can pierce Kevlar?” he insisted on August 30 while touting his administration’s “Safer America Plan,” which includes tighter firearms restrictions.

Really? Well, no.

“President Biden’s statement that a bullet shot from an AR-15 travels 5x faster than a bullet shot out of ‘any other gun’ is false,” Greg Wallace, a Campbell University law professor who focuses on Second Amendment issues, told The Washington Post early in September. As for bullets fired from AR-15s piercing Kevlar, “that is true of almost all centerfire rifle bullets. Body armor protection against rifle bullets require steel, ceramic, or composite plates.”

“Biden was clearly wrong in his statement this week,” the Post‘s Glenn Kessler concluded.

In fact, the 5.56x45mm round most commonly fired by an AR-15 (which can be chambered in multiple calibers) is faster than many rifle rounds with a muzzle velocity of roughly 3,100 feet per second, but slower than others (a few exceed 4,000 fps). And speed only partially measures the lethality and utility of a cartridge. Military types, hunters, and enthusiasts are forever debating the issue. So is Biden.

“A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body,” the president improbably claimed in May about the popular handgun cartridge, again while touting gun restrictions. Knowledgeable people had fun pointing out that Biden seemed to have confused the round with a cannon. But Biden lies about cannons, too.

“When the amendment was passed, it didn’t say anybody can own a gun and any kind of gun and any kind of weapon,” Biden insisted with regard to the Second Amendment in February. “You couldn’t buy a cannon in—when the—this—this amendment was passed.”

“As other fact-checkers noted when Biden made versions of this claim at least twice before, nothing in the Second Amendment said that citizens could not own cannons, and there is no evidence that any federal or state laws barred possession of the weapons at the time,” the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org pointed out.

Biden had been called out on precisely that point the previous year, by The Washington Post, and in 2020 when PolitiFact rated his claims as “false.” So, the fibs appear deliberate, not just slips of the tongue. So are his misstatements about legal protections for the firearms industry.

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If the left wants to try stuff on this side of the pond, we’ve got a remedy we’ve retained since we were still colonies.

HOMICIDAL URGES ON THE LEFT
If you have the feeling that liberals would like to kill you, you aren’t paranoid. You are catching on.

Around the world, we are seeing increasingly violent talk from the Left. All too often, that talk has led to violent action. When Congressman and Senate candidate Tim Ryan says “we’ve got to kill and confront” the movement of “extremist Republicans,” you are right if you think he means you.

This liberal outrage comes from the U.K.: a video game in which you try to kill Margaret Thatcher. The game is endorsed by a former leader of the Labour Party:

Jeremy Corbyn has been pictured playing a video game modified to let players kill Margaret Thatcher.

The former Labour leader was pictured playing the Thatcher’s Techbase game on a console at Left-wing political festival The World Transformed (TWT).
***
On Thursday night, Mr Purvis tweeted a photograph of Mr Corbyn, the independent MP for Islington North, using the console and posing alongside it, with the caption: “He liked the game.”

I’ll bet he did. Can you imagine the fallout if someone produced a video game where the object was to murder, say, Barack Obama? No, I don’t think you can. But killing conservatives is all the rage.

A description of Thatcher’s Techbase written by Mr Purvis on its release read: “On Sept 24, Margaret Thatcher will rise from her grave. Only you can send her back to hell.

“Faced with the return of one of humanity’s greatest threats, you have no choice but to head to the 10th circle of hell: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Margaret Thatcher is back from hell, and the lady’s not for returning.”

The cover art for the game pictures Baroness Thatcher, who died in 2013, with devil horns, demon eyes, fangs and a gun for an arm.

Here is Corbyn playing the kill-Thatcher game:

I am afraid that political violence is going to get a great deal worse before it gets better.

Report: China Readying Push Against ‘Global Gun Proliferation’

A report by Global Times, an official Chinese Communist Party propaganda outlet, claims China is readying a focused push against “global gun proliferation.”

The Global Times notes that China’s international gun control push is part of the Firearms Protocol, which was originally introduced at the U.N. General Assembly in 2001. It is a push China is preparing to undertake in earnest now.

“China is fulfilling its domestic legal procedures to ramp up ratifying the Firearms Protocol, a key step in implementing the global security initiative and maintaining international peace and stability amid the global threat of gun proliferation, said Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday,” according to the Global Times,

China is using its internal gun policies as a model in the global push against firearms. The Global Times quoted Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi saying, “China has become one of the safest countries in the world with the least gun-related violent crimes after years of efforts. And China’s strict management of military exports and earnest fulfilling the international obligations have been widely praised by the international community.”

The Firearms Protocol is part of China’s larger Global Security Initiative.On April 21, 2022, Breitbart News pointed out that Chinese dictator Xi Jinping used a speech at the Boao Forum for Asia to urge the world to join the Global Security Initiative to “oppose the pursuit of one’s own security at the cost of others’ security.”

China’s Xinhua News Agency noted Xi used the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine as an example of the kind of conflict that emerges from the continued existence of an incorrect “Cold War mentality.”  Xi did not personally condemn Russian strongman Vladimir Putin for having such a mentality but he did make clear that the objective of the “Global Security Initiative” would be in part to prevent such conflicts.

Xi said, “In today’s world, unilateralism and excessive pursuit of self-interest are doomed to fail; so are the practices of decoupling, supply disruption and maximum pressure, so are the attempts to forge ‘small circles’ or to stoke conflict and confrontation along ideological lines.”

On September 24 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China noted:

State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced when addressing the General Debate of the 77th Session of the United Nations General Assembly that China has decided to launch its domestic procedure to ratify the UN’s Firearms Protocol. This is an important step taken by China to actively implement the Global Security Initiative and uphold international and regional peace and stability. It embodies China’s determination to support multilateralism and build a community with a shared future for mankind. China is fulfilling the domestic legal procedure in accordance with relevant provisions and will endeavor to ratify the Protocol at an early date.

The University of Sydney’s GunPolicy.org categorizes China’s internal gun policies as “restrictive,” noting, “In China, no civilian (private ownership prohibited, Govt.-issued firearms are allocated to those in genuine need) may lawfully acquire, possess or transfer a firearm or ammunition.”

SAF ASKS COURT TO DECLARE HANDGUN BAN FOR YOUNG ADULTS UNCONSTITUTIONAL

BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation today filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in West Virginia, challenging the federal prohibition on handgun sales to young adults ages 18-20, and is asking for a declaratory judgment and injunctive relief.

Joining SAF in this legal action are the West Virginia Citizens Defense League and two private citizens, Benjamin Weekley and Steven Brown. Defendants are the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, ATF Director Steven Dettelbach and Attorney General Merrick Garland, in their official capacities. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia. The case is known as Brown v. ATF.

Weekley and Brown, both being in the affected age group, were unable to purchase handguns from a West Virginia sporting goods store earlier this year. According to the lawsuit, “The Handgun Ban impermissibly infringes upon the right to keep and bear arms of all law-abiding, peaceable individuals aged eighteen to twenty,” and further asserts the ban “is flatly unconstitutional under the Second Amendment” and Supreme Court opinions in the 2008 Heller case and 2022 Bruen decision.

“There is no historical evidence supporting an arbitrary prohibition on purchase and ownership of handguns for young adults over the age of 18,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “Indeed, history goes the other direction, with young adults considered mature enough for militia service, duty in the armed forces and in today’s world being able to vote, run for public office, start businesses, get married, enter into contracts and enjoy the full protections set down in the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth amendments.

“Yet these same young adults are hampered by a politically selected age limit that prohibits them from purchasing handguns from licensed firearms dealers,” he added. “This makes absolutely no sense. This handgun ban for young adults is an unconstitutional infringement of their rights s protected by the Second Amendment.”

An Open Rant Aimed at Those Who Would Repeal the Second Amendment

Talk is cheap, but persuading Americans to surrender their rights will be expensive, difficult, and time-consuming.

Editor’s Note: We are re-posting this 2015 piece by NRO editor Charles C. W. Cooke in light of retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens’s call to repeal the Second Amendment. 

A few hours after yesterday’s shooting hit the news, the comedian Rob Delaney penned this tweet:

The @NRA & the politicians they own must not know this T. Jefferson quote. The 2nd Amendment is a ******* BOY’S COAT. pic.twitter.com/cKR0Nk4Uwm

— rob Delaney (@robdelaney) August 26, 2015

For ease of viewing, here is that Jefferson quotation in full (it’s adapted from a July 12, 1816, letter to Samuel Kercheval):

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.

As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.

We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

We should be absolutely clear about what Delaney is arguing here: He is a) agreeing with Jefferson that “laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind,” b) contending that “progress” suggests that the individual right to keep and bear arms is now counterproductive, and c) concluding that it is time therefore to make a “change in law and constitution” — in other words, to repeal the Second Amendment. This, it is true, is not a mainstream position on the American Left — at least, it is not one that is argued openly.

But it is a reasonably popular one on social media, it has strong support   within the more leftward-leaning parts of the political commentariat, it is often implied by the casual manner in which progressives such as President Obama refer to “Australia” and other heavily regulated nations, and it enjoys indirect approval from around one quarter of the American public. When the likes of Rob Delaney and Bill Maher and Keith Ellison say that we need to get rid of the Second Amendment, they are not speaking in a vacuum but reflecting the views of a small but vocal portion of the American population. And they mean it.

That being so, here’s the million-dollar question: What the hell are they waiting for? Go on, chaps. Bloody well do it.

Seriously, try it. Start the process. Stop whining about it on Twitter, and on HBO, and at the Daily Kos. Stop playing with some Thomas Jefferson quote you found on Google. Stop jumping on the news cycle and watching the retweets and viral shares rack up. Go out there and begin the movement in earnest. Don’t fall back on excuses. Don’t play cheap motte-and-bailey games. And don’t pretend that you’re okay with the Second Amendment in theory, but you’re just appalled by the Heller decision. You’re not. Heller recognized what was obvious to the amendment’s drafters, to the people who debated it, and to the jurists of their era and beyond: That “right of the people” means “right of the people,” as it does everywhere else in both the Bill of Rights and in the common law that preceded it. A Second Amendment without the supposedly pernicious Heller “interpretation” wouldn’t be any impediment to regulation at all. It would be a dead letter. It would be an effective repeal. It would be the end of the right itself. In other words, it would be exactly what you want! Man up. Put together a plan, and take those words out of the Constitution.

It’ll be tough explaining to suburban families that their established conception of American liberty is wrong. You might even suffer at the polls because of it. But that’s what it’s going to take.

This will involve hard work, of course. You can’t just sit online and preen to those who already agree with you. No siree. Instead, you’ll have to go around the states — traveling and preaching until the soles of your shoes are thin as paper. You’ll have to lobby Congress, over and over and over again. You’ll have to make ads and shake hands and twist arms and cut deals and suffer all the slings and arrows that will be thrown in your direction.

You’ll have to tell anybody who will listen to you that they need to support you; that if they disagree, they’re childish and beholden to the “gun lobby”; that they don’t care enough about children; that their reverence for the Founders is mistaken; that they have blood on their goddamn hands; that they want to own firearms only because their penises are small and they’re not “real men.” And remember, you can’t half-ass it this time. You’re not going out there to tell these people that you want “reform” or that “enough is enough.”

You’re going there to solicit their support for removing one of the articles within the Bill of Rights. Make no mistake: It’ll be unpleasant strolling into Pittsburgh or Youngstown or Pueblo and telling blue-collar Democrat after blue-collar Democrat that he only has his guns because he’s not as well endowed as he’d like to be. It’ll be tough explaining to suburban families that their established conception of American liberty is wrong. You might even suffer at the polls because of it. But that’s what it’s going to take. So do it. Start now. Off you go.

And don’t stop there. No, no. There’ll still be a lot of work to be done. As anybody with a passing understanding of America’s constitutional system knows, repealing the Second Amendment won’t in and of itself lead to the end of gun ownership in America. Rather, it will merely free up the federal government to regulate the area, should it wish to do so. Next, you’ll need to craft the laws that bring about change — think of them as modern Volstead Acts — and you’ll need to get them past the opposition. And, if the federal government doesn’t immediately go the whole hog, you’ll need to replicate your efforts in the states, too, 45 of which have their own constitutional protections.
Maybe New Jersey and California will go quietly. Maybe. But Idaho won’t. Louisiana won’t. Kentucky won’t. Maine won’t. You’ll need to persuade those sovereignties not to sue and drag their heels, but to do what’s right as defined by you. Unfortunately, that won’t involve vague talk of holding “national conversations” and “doing something” and “fighting back against the NRA.” It’ll mean going to all sorts of groups — unions, churches, PTAs, political meetings, bowling leagues — and telling them not that you want “common-sense reforms,” but that you want their guns, as in Australia or Britain or Japan. Obviously, the Republicans aren’t going to help in this, so you’ll need to commandeer the Democratic party to do it. That means you’ll need their presidential candidates on board. That means you’ll need to make full abolition the stated policy of the Senate and House caucuses. That means you’ll need the state parties to sign pledges promising not to back away if it gets tough. And if they won’t, you’ll need to start a third party and accept all that that entails.
And when you’ve done all that and your vision is inked onto parchment, you’ll need to enforce it. No, not in the namby-pamby, eh-we-don’t-really-want-to-fund-it way that Prohibition was enforced. I mean enforce it — with force. When Australia took its decision to Do Something, the Australian citizenry owned between 2 and 3 million guns. Despite the compliance of the people and the lack of an entrenched gun culture, the government got maybe three-quarters of a million of them — somewhere between a fifth and a third of the total. That wouldn’t be good enough here, of course.
There are around 350 million privately owned guns in America, which means that if you picked up one in three, you’d only be returning the stock to where it was in 1994. Does that sound difficult? Sure! After all, this is a country of 330 million people spread out across 3.8 million square miles, and if we know one thing about the American people, it’s that they do not go quietly into the night. But the government has to have their guns. It has to. The Second Amendment has to go.

You’re going to need a plan. A state-by-state, county-by-county, street-by-street, door-to-door plan. A detailed roadmap to abolition that involves the military and the police and a whole host of informants — and, probably, a hell of a lot of blood, too. Sure, the ACLU won’t like it, especially when you start going around poorer neighborhoods. Sure, there are probably between 20 and 30 million Americans who would rather fight a civil war than let you into their houses. Sure, there is no historical precedent in America for the mass confiscation of a commonly owned item — let alone one that was until recently constitutionally protected. Sure, it’s slightly odd that you think that we can’t deport 11 million people but we can search 123 million homes. But that’s just the price we have to pay. Times have changed. It has to be done: For the children; for America; for the future. Hey hey, ho ho, the Second Amendment has to go. Let’s do this thing.

When do you get started?

BLUF
It’s about those “weapons of war” the violence monopolists are trying to swindle the people into turning their backs on and surrendering. It’s about tricking Americans into thinking it’s all about hunting (which they then regulate through licensing, restrictions, and lead ammunition bans that are extended to the non-sporting gun owner population). And by appointing known prohibitionists and masking their affiliations, the Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Council is doing its part to help spread the deception.

Hunting Council Masks Hostility to Founding Intent with Gun Banner’s Appointment

U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “The Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Council’s purpose is to provide recommendations to the Federal Government, through the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture, that (a) benefit wildlife resources; (b) encourage partnership among the public; sporting conservation organizations; Federal, State, Tribal, and territorial governments; and (c) benefit fair chase recreational hunting and safe recreational shooting sports,” the Council declares on its website.

A name included among primary council members raises a red flag, particularly in how it is presented:

“Ryan Busse (Unaffiliated) representing shooting sports interests”

“The appointment of Ryan Busse to the Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Council, a federal advisory committee, is a farce and demonstrates the contempt the Biden administration holds for lawful gun owners who hunt on America’s public and private lands,” Mark Oliva, the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Managing Director of Public Affairs tells AmmoLand News. Busse was listed as ‘unaffiliated,’ but that is not true. He is not an unaffiliated shooting sports interest expert.”

“He is an advisor for the Giffords gun control group and has openly advocated the ban on the most popular selling centerfire rifle in America – the Modern Sporting Rifle (MSR),” Oliva explained. “He has published a book advocating radical gun control policies.”

“Glaringly absent, however, is any representative from the firearm and ammunition industry even though the industry is responsible for the vast majority of conservation funds through the Pittman-Robertson excise tax,” Oliva continued. “To date, the firearm and ammunition industry has provided over $15.3 billion to wildlife conservation since 1937 and over $1.1 billion of the conservation funds apportioned to the states last year was directly tied to taxes paid by firearm and ammunition manufacturers.”

“The Biden administration has politicized this advisory council to legitimize Busse and the far-left gun control policies he and the gun control group he represents,” Oliva concluded. “This is a sham and doesn’t come close to representing the interests of lawful gun owners who hunt and are faithful stewards of the precious wildlife resources our nation enjoys.”

Readers here are well aware of Busse and the danger he represents to the right to keep and bear arms. Once a highly compensated industry insider, he now masks his (that is, his Giffords benefactors’) citizen disarmament goals with the obligatory big “but” qualifier:

I believe in the Second Amendment but…

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About 3 1/2 years ago, Judge Benitez ruled that California’s magazine ban was unconstitutional and enjoined the state from enforcing the ban. That injunction was in effect for about a week before the 9th circuit reversed it.
During that week anyone could  -legally- buy, and retain, magazines that had been previously banned. It was called ‘Freedom Week’.
What this did, in effect, was make possession of all previously banned magazines legal in California since there is really no way for the state to prove someone didn’t buy them during that week
The case, still at the 9th circuit, was remanded back to him last week with the instruction to rehear the case, taking SCOTUS’ Bruen ruling into account.
So the Judge made his original injunction effective again. Heh heh heh heh.

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2A Reality isn’t “falsehood,” no matter how much you scream

The text of the Second Amendment is, all in all, surprisingly clear for a bit of law. The same can be said for most of the Bill of Rights, of course, but the Second is particularly important, and it’s the reality of that we need to talk about. After all, few disagree that people have the right to assemble, worship as they please, or petition the government. The idea that people should be protected from unreasonable search or seizure is also pretty well agreed upon.

But there is this weird perception of the Second Amendment that simply doesn’t conform to anything real.

You see, there are still those who think the individual right to keep and bear arms is a modern invention and call any claim to the contrary a fabrication.

Like this dipstick from The Hill:

The gun lobby’s triumphs have been due in large part to two coordinated and well-funded disinformation campaigns. The first was designed to revise legal scholarship around the Second Amendment and the second flooded Americans with false information about the benefits of firearms. These campaigns use what is called a “firehose of falsehood” strategy, a type of disinformation campaign that is challenging to counteract and has four foundational features:

  1. It is high-volume and multichannel
  2. It is rapid, continuous and repetitive
  3. It lacks a commitment to objective reality
  4. It lacks a commitment to consistency

The first firehose deployed by the gun lobby was intended to change the interpretation of the Second Amendment itself. The book, “The Second Amendment: A Biography,” found that before 1960, every law review article on the Second Amendment rejected the “individual rights” interpretation touted by the gun lobby, which was trying to claim that the Second Amendment should be applied to an individual, not just to a group (such as a militia).

And?

What? I’m supposed to be moved that law review articles–which are authoritative in many ways, but are not how we are governed, nor should they be–found something that makes absolutely no sense?

See, the author is trying to use law review articles and a review of them to deflect from some very simple facts that don’t require legal expertise.

First, there’s the fact that the Second Amendment plainly says, “the people’s right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Nowhere else in the Constitution is “the people” taken to mean the right is collective, rather than individual. There’s no understanding that the Fourth Amendment only applies to society as a whole rather than you as an individual.

So why would that suddenly change in the Second Amendment and not before or afterward in the Bill of Rights?

Second, what law reviews say is less than meaningless in this discussion because what ultimately matters is what the Founding Fathers intended, not what some lawyers decades or centuries later thought.

From the Founding Fathers’ own quotes, it was clear they intended gun rights to be individual rights. The Buckeye Firearms Association has a nice collection of those quotes. Here are a few highlights:

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

“To disarm the people…[i]s the most effectual way to enslave them.”
– George Mason, referencing advice given to the British Parliament by Pennsylvania governor Sir William Keith, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adooption of the Federal Constitution, June 14, 1788…

“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops.”
– Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, October 10, 1787…

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

“The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”
– Samuel Adams, Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788

So it seems pretty clear that regardless of what some people wrote in various law reviews, the Founding Fathers saw the Second Amendment as an individual right.

And really, why wouldn’t it be?

In what reality would the government need to preserve the right for the government to have guns? On the very surface, that makes no sense and no amount of law school is going to change that.

Oh, but our author at The Hill was far from finished in distorting reality.

The second firehose of falsehood strategy was designed to convince the public that firearms make people safer. The U.S. has a long history of gun ownership for hunting, but in the 1970s and 80s, the gun lobby’s focus shifted substantially to promoting guns for self-defense. When research funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention demonstrated that a firearm in the home substantially increased the risk of death, the gun lobby successfully petitioned their allies in Congress to threaten the CDC with massive funding cuts if such research continued. This greatly hampered the production of new research, as well as the dissemination of such research to the public.

Except that the research was fundamentally flawed and would never have been tolerated on literally any other subject.

We’ve already seen a lot about how gun research is heavily biased toward the anti-gun side and how pro-gun results are routinely stifled.

And that’s a gross misrepresentation of what happened. The CDC was always permitted to carry out whatever research it wanted. The threatened cuts to funding were from anti-gun advocacy. The fact that the CDC interpreted their research as advocacy is telling, of course, but only in so far as it revealed their own biases.

The truth of the matter is that the “falsehoods” the author seeks to debunk are nothing of the sort. He simply cannot fathom that reality refuses to conform to his own beliefs. Well, that’s just how life is sometimes and he’ll learn to deal with disappointment.

Or he won’t and can be miserable for his entire life. I honestly don’t care.

But he should be aware that the only one peddling falsehoods here is him.

2nd Amendment Foundation Backs Federal Challenge Of Illinois Transit Weapons Ban

BELLEVUE, WA – -(AmmoLand.com)- The Second Amendment Foundation announced today it is financially supporting a federal lawsuit filed by four Illinois residents who are challenging a ban on licensed concealed carry on Public Transportation under the state’s Firearm Concealed Carry Act.

The plaintiffs in the case are Benjamin Schoenthal, Mark Wroblewski, Joseph Vesel, and Douglas Winston. They are all residents of counties in northern Illinois in the greater Chicago area. They are represented by attorney David Sigale of Wheaton, Ill. The case is known as Schoenthal v. Raoul.

Defendants are Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and State’s Attorneys Rick Amato (DeKalb County), Robert Berlin (DuPage County), Kimberly M. Foxx (Cook County), and Eric Rinehart (Lake County), all in their official capacities.

“We’re financially supporting this case because it is the right thing to do,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “All four plaintiffs in this case are law-abiding citizens who cannot exercise their fundamental rights as spelled out by three Supreme Court rulings, including SAF’s 2010 McDonald victory that nullified Chicago’s unconstitutional handgun ban.

“Illinois lawmakers have made it as difficult as possible for honest citizens to exercise their right to bear arms,” he continued, “and the prohibition on licensed carry while traveling via public transportation is a glaring example. This ban is a direct violation of the Second and Fourteenth amendments, and we are delighted to support this case because it cuts to the heart of anti-gun extremism.

“Buses and commuter trains are public places, but they are hardly sensitive places,” Gottlieb observed. “The four plaintiffs in this case rely on public transportation to travel to and from various places, including work, and they should be able to carry firearms for personal protection while in transit. However, current laws, regulations, policies and practices enforced by the defendants have made that legally impossible.

“Illinois is trying to perpetuate an indefensible public disarmament policy despite the clear meaning of Supreme Court rulings,” he concluded, “and we’re going to help the plaintiffs put an end to this nonsense.”

US V. Quiroz – §922 (N) Held Unconstitutional

Jose Gomez Quiroz was indicted in a Texas state court for burglary and later indicted for jumping bail. Both are felonies under Texas state law. While on the lam, Quiroz sought to buy a .22LR pistol from a dealer and answered “no” on the Form 4473 when asked if he was under indictment for a felony. He got a delayed (but not denied) response and subsequently took possession a week later. Then, the NICS System notified the BATFE of Quiroz’s transaction. He was charged with lying on the Form 4473 (18 USC §922(a)(6)) and illegal receipt of a firearm by a person under indictment (18 USC §922(n)). A Federal jury found him guilty on both charges. A week later, Quiroz moved to set aside the conviction under Rule 29 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and asked the court to reconsider in light of Bruen.

US District Court Judge David Counts of the Western District of Texas issued his decision yesterday and found §922(n) facially unconstitutional. Moreover, since §922(n) was found unconstitutional, Quiroz’s lie on the Form 4473 was immaterial. The US Attorney is already appealing the decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The media is making a big deal over the fact that Judge Counts was appointed by President Trump. What they fail to say is that Counts was originally nominated for the position by President Barack Obama and that the clock ran out before he could be confirmed by the Senate. Prior to the nomination by President Obama, Counts served as a Magistrate Judge in the Western District and was the State Judge Advocate for the Texas National Guard where he was a Colonel.

The expansion of civil rights has often come in cases with less than desirable defendants. Witness the expansion of rights thanks to Clarence Earl Gideon, a drifter, and Ernesto Miranda, a kidnapper and rapist, whose cases established the right to counsel and the right to a warning against self-incrimination respectively.

Now it is time to examine the decision in detail.

Continue reading “”

The Second Amendment puts safety first

The Second Amendment which addresses the right of American citizens to bear arms, is a touchy subject these days, but its effect on our daily lives cannot be overstated. Being able to protect ourselves in a world that is becoming increasingly dangerous by the day is essential to survival. The right to arm oneself, whether the weapon is concealed or not, has become more important than ever.

Take a stroll through any major city and you’re likely to see a replay of what I witnessed recently in New York City, rampant homelessness, burgeoning crime and a proliferation of drug use. Feeling safe should be and has previously been an inalienable right, but today that’s no longer a given in this country. Instead, our cities are in a dangerous downward spiral. They are increasingly filthy and crime rates are skyrocketing. Make no mistake about it, America and its people are at risk. Cities that used to be barometers for the American experience are now bastions of hellish disarray.

Take for example San Francisco and you will see precisely what I mean. Shoeless drug addicts roam the streets like zombies in a trance, treating the streets like public toilets. Droves of homeless people shoot up heroin, not in trash-littered back alleys, but in plain sight on major roads and the gutters are filled with discarded syringes. What we need to rectify this situation is more policing and enforcement of the current rule of law. Until then, we are going the wrong direction by focusing on gun control. Our focus needs to be increased funding to the police, not “defunding” them. We also need to ensure that law-abiding citizens are afforded their constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms which is becoming an increasingly essential way for men and women to protect themselves.

People kill people, guns do not. Research has demonstrated that over-regulating gun ownership will have zero effect on the estimated 400 million guns that are already in private circulation. Gun control simply cannot stop violence in this country, which is being caused by a crime-ridden society that is out of control. Imagine that you are a small businessman in a big city rife with crime and short on cops. Imagine how you might react if an armed robber burst into your store, pulled a gun and demanded cash. You could meekly hand the money over and put your fate in the hands of an armed criminal, hoping he doesn’t just decide to orphan your children, or you could up the odds in your favor by defending yourself with a legally purchased and properly registered firearm.

In San Francisco, the former District Attorney decided that the city would not be prosecuting thieves who stole, as long as their thievery fell beneath a certain price point, these initiatives were announced publicly, talk about throwing gasoline on a fire. The result of that ridiculousness? We have all seen the videos of the resulting crime sprees posted online of gangs of criminals breaking into and robbing stores. In this era of lawlessness, the best life insurance policy is one tucked into a holster. Should we be forced to choose a thug’s life or our own, we should have the means to make the right decision.

Gun control advocates like to point to the mayhem wreaked by mass shootings, especially in schools, which are a truly terrifying reality. But we know that the perpetrators of those horrors are often mentally ill people. I am not opposed to sensible steps to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of the insane and the criminal—but I am opposed to overreach by the government to prevent law-abiding and rational Americans from securing the firearms of their choice.

Gun violence deaths detailed by Giffords Law Center hype the numbers but fail to look at the hard truth, the overwhelming majority of gun deaths are caused by people who misuse guns and stricter gun legislation would do little to stop those individuals who are compelled to use guns to commit crimes. The sooner we recognize this truth and the sooner we recognize where our country is headed, the quicker we will come to the realization that we truly must protect ourselves at all costs. Responsible gun owners know how to properly secure their weapons away from children and often routinely train with professionals to maintain standard of skill.

Gun ownership by good people deters crime. Criminals may think twice about committing their attacks if they are forced to wonder if their victims are packing heat. As the saying goes, “if guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have them.” What’s more, strict gun laws make it more difficult for people to protect their homes and families, a growing concern in a day and age where fewer and fewer people want to become police officers. In addition, considering this reality, police simply cannot protect everyone all the time. Response times may be short, but the window for self-preservation often occurs in mere moments.

A Pew Foundation report found that 79% of male gun owners and 80% of female gun owners said owning a gun made them feel safer. Another 64% of people living in a home in which someone else owns a gun also said they felt safer.

Safety in a land without allowing people to exercise their Second Amendment will become even harder to find. However, good people can make America safer with a permit in their pockets, and a holstered gun on their hips.

____

Mr. Williams is Manager / Sole Owner of Howard Stirk Holdings I & II Broadcast Television Stations and the 2016 Multicultural Media Broadcast Owner of the year. He is the author of “Reawakening Virtues.”

Just now, the Ninth Circuit vacated and remanded the lawsuit challenging California’s magazine ban, which means it will now go back to the district court to be heard again….by Judge Benitez!!

The judgment in this case is vacated, Duncan v. Bonta, 142 S. Ct. 2895 (2022), and this case is remanded to the district court for further proceedings consistent with New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. ____, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022)

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Poll: Majority of Texans Reject ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban

“Hell no.”

That’s what Texans appear to be saying about the idea of banning AR-15s and AK-47s, according to a new poll. 50 percent of likely voters told Spectrum News and Siena College they oppose efforts to ban “assault-style” weapons, a term the poll did not define but is generally understood to include the rifles. In contrast, 46 percent said they support a ban. An equal number “strongly” opposed and supported the policy.

Beto O’Rourke (D.) has based much of his campaign against incumbent Governor Greg Abbott (R.) on the need for further gun restrictions in Texas. He is best known for his viral commitment to seize the guns Texans told the pollsters they don’t want to see banned.

“Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” O’Rourke said during a September 2019 presidential primary debate. “We’re not going to allow it to be used against our fellow Americans anymore.”

And, while he has been consistently inconsistent on whether he stands by his famous call for confiscation, he has continued to advocate for stricter gun laws.

“Five of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history have taken place in this state in the last five years on Greg Abbott’s watch,” O’Rourke said in an ad featuring a Uvalde shooting survivor that was posted to his social media on Tuesday. “Those kids were not just up against that gunman and that AR-15 and those high-impact, high-velocity rounds that hit their body; they were up against a governor who would not lift a finger to prevent this from happening.”

The focus on gun control hasn’t benefited O’Rourke much in the polls, though. While the Siena poll found Texans were open to some new gun-control policies, with 85 percent supporting universal background checks, Abbott still holds a substantial lead in the race. Siena found 50 percent of respondents support Abbott while 43 percent support O’Rourke, moving Abbott’s lead in the Real Clear Politics average of the race down slightly to 7.5 percent.

O’Rourke hasn’t become any less brash in his approach either. He has crashed a post-Uvalde press conference to heckle Abbott and cursed out a man for laughing during one of his stump speeches on the topic.

The race’s outcome will provide a good guide for how American gun politics are playing out in the wake of a slew of major recent gun-related events. The Uvalde shooting and the first bipartisan federal gun restrictions in decades, combined with two years of recording setting gun sales and the Supreme Court setting a new standard for reviewing gun laws as it struck down restrictive gun-carry permitting regimes, have injected a lot of uncertainty into how the issue will impact voters’ decisions in November. With O’Rourke running on an aggressive gun-control platform against Abbott, who has signed several reforms that removed gun-carry and ownership restrictions, how the candidates fare may indicate where things have settled after those significant shakeups.

The election results may also provide insight into the politics surrounding AR-15s and AK-47s in particular. O’Rourke wants to confiscate them or, failing that, ban their sale to adults under 21. Abbott has opposed both ideas as unconstitutional. The fight in Texas mirrors the national one, with Democrats recently passing an “assault weapons” ban through the House of Representatives despite opposition from all but two Republicans. The push to ban the popular rifles, estimated to be more than 24.4 million in circulation, has been facing increasing headwinds even as they have been used in recent high-profile mass shootings. If Abbott can hold off O’Rourke, it could pull further wind from the sails of those pursuing a ban.

Another recent poll in the state provides a slightly brighter picture for O’Rourke’s confiscation plan. Support for “a mandatory program where the government would buy back semi-automatic assault-style rifles from citizens who currently own them” was 52 percent in the latest Dallas Morning News and University of Texas at Tyler poll. However, respondents were more likely to strongly oppose the idea than strongly support it.

As with the Seina poll, the confiscation scheme was the least popular gun policy polled. The Morning News poll also found 55 percent of Texans support arming teachers, which O’Rourke opposes and Abbott supports. That is in line with Seina, which found support at 53 percent.

Seina’s results on issue importance were also similar to a recent poll from The Texas Tribune and the University of Texas. The Tribune poll found Texans said guns were only the sixth-most-important issue in the race. Siena found it was the fifth behind economic issues, threats to democracy, immigration, and abortion.

All three polls found Abbott maintained a significant lead over O’Rourke.

The Seina poll was conducted among 651 likely voters between September 14th and the 18th.

Denver Gazette: Gun control hits a wall in Colorado

Gun-control measures enacted in Boulder County have been placed on hold by the federal courts; left in doubt by a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, and, as reported in The Gazette last week, stymied even more amid further court developments here in Colorado.

All of which should prompt advocates of more restrictions on firearms to ponder shifting tack in the campaign to curb gun violence. If the courts are turning out to be no friends of more gun control, perhaps it’s time for policy makers to move beyond tilting at the Second Amendment.

How about focusing instead on steps that likely would draw little opposition while making a real difference — like beefing up security at our children’s schools? Let’s have more police deployed as school resource officers. And tighter limits on access during the school day. There’s even a program that has been training faculty and staff in firearms use if needed to defend kids at dozens of participating school districts around the state.

Such alternatives to more gun control make all the more sense considering the inherent futility of attempting to legislate an end to gun violence. Rebranding firearms as “assault rifles” and banning them; limiting the capacity of gun magazines, and other knee-jerk responses were always more about sending a message in the wake of a shooting tragedy than about providing any realistic hope of heading off the next one.

Last Friday, a federal judge declined to combine four different lawsuits brought by right-to-arms advocates against Boulder County and the cities of Boulder, Louisville and Superior. The local governments had enacted similar firearms regulations, including bans on large-capacity magazines and on so-called assault weapons.

U.S. District Court Judge Raymond P. Moore, whose court is handling the lawsuit against Superior, declined that city’s request to merge all the court actions. The result could be conflicting rulings between various judges as to whether the local ordinances violate the Second Amendment. But as Moore observed, “if anyone thinks the district court is going to have the last say on this, they’re kidding themselves.” Perhaps there’s no harm, then, in giving each lawsuit its full day in court in light of the long legal journey that lies ahead.

The laws are not in effect thanks to court-issued restraining orders. That’s pending further proceedings and maybe even the resolution of the entire court challenge. Which could take years.

Underlying all of it is the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, which set a higher bar for gun restrictions to pass constitutional muster.

Given a new prevailing philosophy on the Second Amendment at the nation’s highest court — and lower courts’ pragmatic deference to it — the prospects for imposing new restrictions gun ownership appear a lot dimmer than they used to. Gun control could become the dog that won’t hunt.

Coloradans across the political spectrum should resolve to lower the odds of random violence where they can, in ways that actually work. Our schools — the scene of some of the worst shooting tragedies in Colorado and across the country — are a good place to start.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board

It’s bizarre when a senile President actually seems to believe his own BS.
And I know a perfect rationale for owning ARs & AKs. The founders were very concerned about what our goobermint might turn into – SloJoe and his puppetmasters being a prime current example – and made the best provisions they could against such within the Constitution & Bill of Rights.

Joe Biden: Continued Sale of ‘Semiautomatic Weapons Is Bizarre’

During the September 18 airing of CBS News’s 60 Minutes, President Joe Biden described the continued sale of semiautomatic weapons as “bizarre.”

Scott Pelley conducted a wide-ranging interview with Biden, but when it turned to guns and gun policy, Biden pledged once again to ban “assault weapons.”

Biden suggested that “there is no rationale” for owning firearms like AR-15s, AK-47s, etc.

He talked of visiting Uvalde, Texas, after the May 24, 2022, school shooting, saying he not only visited there but “every one of those places.”

Biden observed, “The NRA continuing to push the sale of assault and semiautomatic weapons is bizarre.”

On August 26, 2022, Breitbart News noted that Biden renewed his pledge to ban “assault weapons” if Democrats manage to hang onto Congress after the November midterm elections.

The Washington Post quoted Biden saying, “I want to be crystal clear about what’s on the ballot this year … Your right to choose is on the ballot this year. The Social Security you paid for from the time you had a job is on the ballot. The safety of our kids from gun violence is on the ballot.”

He later added, “If we elect two more senators, we keep the House … we’re going to get a lot of unfinished business done.”

Biden stressed that banning “assault weapons” is part of the Democrats’ unfinished business.