Category: RKBA

The Supreme Court dealt with this in Heller. That the gun grabbers still try to roll it out merely indicates they have nothing left but BS.

UNDOING THE MUSKET ARGUMENT

While Virginia gun owners are trying to take back their state this month from the radical far-left that pushed through most of Ralph Northam’s extremist gun control agenda in 2020, elsewhere around the country anti-gunners will once again fall back on their favorite boilerplate arguments to do the same in your state.

You can have some fun with these people, while teaching them a lesson and making the extremists look really foolish.
Good for the goose …

I’ve lost count of the occasions when someone has tossed up the argument that at the time the Second Amendment was written, there weren’t modern firearms. The Amendment, they argue, should only apply to muskets and flintlock rifles.

Here’s how I’ve responded to the premise: “Look, if you want to roll back the clock and calendar, I’m game. But remember, if that’s where you want to take this debate, there are a few things to consider.”

• When the Bill of Rights — for which the Second Amendment is the cornerstone — was adopted, we didn’t have television or radio, no cable channels, no web offset presses for mass-producing newspapers or the Internet and social media. So, under your suggestion, they wouldn’t be protected by the First Amendment, right?

• We didn’t have organized police departments, and if criminals came to your home, you were expected to deal with the problem, not call 9-1-1 for help because they didn’t have telephones, either.

• Nobody needed a license or permit to carry a firearm. There were no background checks. It was not unusual to encounter armed citizens doing business in towns and villages, and no one raised an eyebrow.

Naturally, they’ll try to ridicule these remarks but the Bill of Rights is an all-or-nothing proposition. It’s not a legal buffet from which you can pick and choose those rights you like while discarding those you don’t. The Bill of Rights is a 10-course banquet and it’s still today’s menu, not yesterday’s blue plate special.

This would be a good time to remind your opponent the U.S. Supreme Court could be taking on more Second Amendment cases to further define the parameters of the right to keep and bear arms.

Joe Biden has made a habit of contending the Second Amendment is “not absolute.” Five months ago, when he announced his “Comprehensive Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gun Crime and Ensure Public Safety,” he told a gaggle of reporters, “The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn’t buy a cannon.”

This is demonstrably false. Mississippi River keel boats were frequently armed with swivel guns; small cannons used to fend off river pirates or raiding war parties. Some on the frontier owned cannons to defend their stockades. Privateers sailed with cannons.
Last year, when quizzed about Biden’s campaign assertion regarding cannon ownership, a fact checker consulted David Kopel, research director and Second Amendment project director at the Colorado-based Independence Institute.

“I am not aware of a ban on any arm in colonial America,” Kopel said at the time. “There were controls on people or locations, but not bans on types of arms.”

In 2020, when the Biden campaign was questioned about his cannon allegation, a fact checker wrote in the Austin American-Statesman newspaper, “the campaign was unable to come up with an example of a law banning private ownership of cannons, and historians of the period doubt that any existed.”

Where Humor Stops

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While the ‘rifle behind every blade of grass‘ quote has little to no confirmation, what Yamamoto is noted for saying is that it would be necessary to “...march into Washington and dictate the terms of peace in the White House.” and that would be after conquering everything beforehand. He knew that anything less would not be sufficient, and also that it was an impossible task.
The Chinese commie goobermint should take his words to heart.

China’s Ominous Focus On Second Amendment

The nation of China is a fascinating place. The history and culture are among the most interesting in the world to me.

The government? Not so much.

Luckily, I don’t have to interact with what the Chinese government says or does very much. More correctly, I didn’t. However, lately, Chinese state-run media outlets have opted to pontificate about the Second Amendment and gun control.

Now, to be clear, a lot of countries voice opinions on what other nations do and permit. I actually take issue with China about their human rights record, specifically the whole “herding people into camps, taking their organs, and sterilizing them” thing.

You know, small stuff.

But China is talking about the Second Amendment, a core part of who we are as a nation, and it’s troubling. In particular, why are they so interested in American gun laws? It’s not like they’re that interested in American lives. If they were, they might have taken more care in trying to contain COVID-19. They might even be more open with the rest of the world in trying to find the origins of the pandemic.

They’re not.

So instead, China is doing this for reasons that will benefit them. We, as a nation, would do well to question why.

The most obvious answer, of course, is that they benefit from a divided United States. If we’re arguing and debating domestic matters with such vehemence, we can’t examine what they’ve done and continue to do within their own borders.

Further, by claiming our refusal to adopt gun control is a human rights issue, they’re trying to gaslight the international community to ignore the concentration camps and eugenics taking place within their own borders.

That’s the easy answer, and Occam’s Razor tells us that’s probably the right one. Yet Occam’s Razor also assumes you have all the facts. We may not in this case.

See, China and the US aren’t exactly best pals. China is an aggressive military power that is trying desperately to become a superpower. Arguably, they’re close. Plus, no one is expecting them to be a peaceful superpower.

That means the odds are that sooner or later, the United States and China will clash. If that clash becomes a war, we can’t rule out the possibility of invasion. It’s better to fight in someone else’s yard than your own. That means we must at least consider that any contingency plans include the possibility of invading the US.

After World War II, a story popped up that Japanese General Yamamoto warned his people that if they invaded the US, there would be “a rifle behind every blade of grass.” The story appears to be apocryphal, unfortunately, but the sentiment expressed is certainly valid. As an armed society, we have the means to assist our military in repelling invaders. Plus, since the popular AR-15 uses the same ammunition and magazines as the M-4/M-16, we can easily be resupplied from military stores if need be.

In light of this, China’s opposition to gun ownership in the United States takes on a frightening tone.

It’s not about discord among the American citizenry, but about hopefully pushing the United States to weaken itself so that if an invasion were to take place we would be less able to repel it.

While American gun control activists may actually agree with the sentiment expressed via China’s state-run media, even they should at least question why China is so concerned about a domestic issue. They should be concerned that Chinese interest has less to do with concerns about American lives and more with destabilizing our nation or worse.

Unfortunately, too few are interested in doing anything but echoing Chinese media whenever convenient and never questioning why they care about this at all.

FBI: Over 3.5x More Killed with Knives than Rifles of Any Kind

FBI data released Monday in the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) show over three and a half times as many people were stabbed to death in 2020 than were killed with all kinds of rifles combined.

The UCR shows that 454 people were shot and killed with rifles in 2020 while 1,732 were stabbed or hacked to death with “knives or cutting instruments.”

Breitbart News reported that the previous UCR release showed over four times as many people were stabbed to death in 2019 than were killed with rifles of all kinds.

The exact figures for 2019 were 375 killed with rifles while 1,525 were stabbed to death with “knives or cutting instruments.”

On September 30, 2019, Breitbart News reported that the FBI’s UCR for 2018 showed a similar finding, with over five times as many people stabbed to death with “knives or cutting instruments” as were killed with rifles of any kind.

The broad categorization of “rifles” includes a broad swath of firearms, from bolt action rifles to lever action, pump action, breech action, and beyond. It also includes semiautomatic rifles that take a detachable magazine, which the left often classifies as “assault weapons.” Yet three and a half times more people were stabbed to death in 2020 than were killed with all of these various rifle types combined.

Yes, while ‘getting out of Dodge’ is a pretty good idea, personally, I also think shooting the ‘active shooter’ stands a good chance of solving the problem too. To do that, you need a gun.

FBI agent: How to survive an active shooter situation

The fatal shooting at a Kroger in Memphis, Tennessee on Thursday left at least a dozen people injured, one dead and a nation worried as the threat of active shootings in America lingers.

Former FBI deputy assistant director Daniel Coulson joined “Your World” following the tragedy to share advice on how best to protect oneself if found in an active shooter situation. Step one: recognize when you’re in danger.

“The police are minutes away when seconds matter,” he said. “It’s up to you and your family and your friends to take action, to protect yourself in a situation like this. If you’re in the grocery store and you hear firecrackers going off, that’s not firecrackers. That’s somebody killing people.”

Coulson suggested for shoppers to prepare themselves for a shooting incident without being paranoid by locating the exits and planning to take all belongings and run.

“Do I put my child in a basket and run out the door? Yeah, you do,” he said. “And get space between you and whatever’s going on.”

While customers should identify their exits in all departments of the store, Coulson explained that employees should already be aware of an active shooter plan and have designated areas to lock down and buy time. The former FBI official stressed that shooters who are normally in a hurry will not spend time fiddling with a locked door.

“They want to get this thing over with as quickly as possible,” he said. “If they get delayed by a locked door, they move on… Time is on your side here. Buy time, get yourself out of there but more importantly, try to get out the door. Just leave.”

“It’s up to us to protect ourselves,” he repeated. “Get out. Find a place to defend yourself. If you happen to be armed with a pistol, like I am, then maybe you can do some good there. But your best bet is to leave. Get the heck out.”

Coulson said the investigation into the Memphis shooting will attempt to dig up the now-deceased shooter’s motive and run an analysis on Kroger’s response in adherence to the shooter policy.

New Work on Who the Second Amendment Protects

Abstract:

Once mentally ill does not mean always mentally ill. This underlying premise is not only scientifically accepted, but has been long recognized in the history and tradition of our common law. However, rather enigmatically, two circuit courts have deviated from this long understanding to find that once an individual has been classified as mentally ill, that classification is permanent. This flawed understanding has not only created a rupture in our Second Amendment jurisprudence, but it has also produced a significant circuit split between three circuits, in which neither the conclusions nor analyses are uniform. Notwithstanding the judicial disarray, federal law historically—and currently— poorly addresses this issue as well.

Federal law categorically prohibits the possession of a firearm from an individual who has been “adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution.” The United States deems this class of individuals worthy of a lifetime Second Amendment ban with only two avenues for relief: one that is nullified; and the other that is non-uniform and arbitrary. While this statute is imposing, it certainly does not lack justification. There is without a question a governmental interest and objective in protecting the citizens through crime reduction and suicide prevention. This objective, however, cannot be reached by categorically denying a constitutional right to a classification of individuals without due process.

This article uses an originalist approach to demonstrate that the classification of “mentally ill” is not a permanent and static one; rather that it is fluid and subject to transformation and development. With this main premise in mind, this article critiques the insufficient statutory response to this issue and offers an originalist judicial approach to resolving the circuit split. In the end, this article analyzes recent circuit court decisions on this issue from the Third, Sixth, and Ninth Circuits and offers a solution that safeguards the constitutional rights of an individual, ensures that due process rights are feasible, and preserves the governmental interest of reducing crime and preventing suicides.

Abstract:

To say that the moral stain of racism pervades American history would be an understatement. One does not have to look hard to find examples where people of color were treated disparagingly or disparately. Thus, it should come as no surprise that throughout much of American history there are examples where race played a role in lawmakers deciding who may and may not acquire, own, and use firearms for lawful purposes, or where race was the principal factor in orchestrating state and non-state sponsored armed violence against people of color. The painful and often tragic historical intersection between race and firearms is indeed a complex and multi-faceted narrative worthy of examination and reflection, including in the area of history-in-law —that is the study of how the law has evolved in a particular area, what events and factors caused the law to evolve, and how, if at all, this history is important when adjudicating legal questions.

Yet in the ongoing discourse over the purpose, meaning, and protective scope of the Second Amendment, the historical narrative of race and firearms is becoming increasingly misappropriated and hyperbolized. There are indeed numerous examples, but two are particularly concerning and exist at the extreme opposites of the Second Amendment political spectrum. The first—often stated by gun rights proponents—is history shows that gun control is inherently racist. The second—sometimes stated by gun control proponents—is that the Second Amendment itself is inherently racist, with some going so far to claim the right to “keep and bear arms” is on historically on par with the Constitution’s morally “indefensible” three-fifths clause—the clause that provided slaves would account for three-fifths a person for the purpose of congressional apportionment.

This article seeks to examine and unpack these extreme historical opposites and explain why their ‘racist’ claims ultimately do more societal harm than good. This article is broken into three parts. Part I critically examines how and why the ‘gun control is racist’ narrative came to be. Part II then critically examines how (and the elusive why) the ‘Second Amendment is racist’ narrative came to be. Lastly, Part III outlines why accepting either of these ‘racist’ narratives do more harm than good, particularly in the confines of history-in-law.

Abstract:

Gun control in the United States has a racist history. Nevertheless, federal courts and academics have invoked Southern gun restrictions enacted after the Civil War to suggest that history supports stringent regulation of the right to bear arms. We argue that courts’ reliance on these restrictions is illegitimate. Drawing on original research, we reveal how the post-war South restricted gun-ownership for racist reasons, deployed its new laws to disarm free Blacks, yet allowed whites to bear arms with near impunity. We then show how modern reliance on these laws contravenes the Supreme Court’s decision in Ramos v. Louisiana, which deemed similarly tainted statutes unconstitutional. Since the Court will soon consider the validity of modern limits on concealed carry, placing Southern gun restrictions in their proper historical context matters today more than ever. While Southern gun control after the Civil War might tell us something about how the South sought to preserve white supremacy, it tells us almost nothing about the true scope of the Second Amendment.

BLUF:
The First and Second Amendments peacefully co-exist as equal rights in the vast majority of states, which is as it should be. The ACLU’s insistence that the Second Amendment take a back seat to our freedom of speech and our right to peaceably assemble flies in the face of the Constitution, and it’s truly shameful than an organization ostensibly created to protect our civil rights would argue for the demise of one of them, to the point of giving the thumbs up to mandatory prison sentences and felony convictions for those New Yorkers caught carrying a gun without a state-issued permission slip.

ACLU: Restrict The Second Amendment To Protect The First

The American Civil Liberties Union has always had a blind spot in defense of Americans’ individual rights; our right to keep and bear arms. The group has defended the First Amendment rights of even the most controversial of groups and individuals, including neo-Nazis and the Ku Kluk Klan, but they won’t support the right of the average citizen to bear arms in self-defense. The organization has long viewed the Second Amendment as a collective right instead of an individual right, and I don’t know why the ACLU website states that they are reviewing their position in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Heller case, given the fact that they’ve had 13 years to change their mind and have yet to do so.

It would be one thing if the ACLU simply remained neutral and silent on the issue, but instead the groups is actively pushing to keep New York’s restrictive carry permitting laws in place. In a brief filed with the Supreme Court on Tuesday, the group argues that the laws preventing the average citizen from lawfully bearing arms in defense of themselves and others “reasonably furthers the peace and safety conducive to robust civic engagement, and therefore does not contravene the Second Amendment.” In other words, restricting the Second Amendment rights of New Yorkers somehow protects their First Amendment rights to speak their mind and to publicly assemble.

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Observation O’ The Day
Another reason may just be the concentration of ownership of major media in the hands of a few, very wealthy, people. Wealthy people have feared armed commoners for most of recorded history, and especially since the invention of reliable, concealable firearms, so publication of news likely to encourage gun ownership is discouraged.

There Are Far More Defensive Gun Uses Than Murders in America. Here’s Why You Rarely Hear of Them.

While Americans know that guns take many innocent lives every year, many don’t know that firearms also save them.

On May 15, an attacker at an apartment complex in Fort Smith, Ark., fatally shot a woman and then fired 93 rounds at other people before a man killed him with a bolt-action rifle. Police said he “likely saved a number of lives in the process.”

On June 30, a 12-year-old Louisiana boy used a hunting rifle to stop an armed burglar who was threatening his mother’s life during a home invasion.

On July 4, a Chicago gunman shot into a crowd of people, killing one and wounding two others before a concealed handgun permit holder shot and wounded the attacker. Police praised him for stepping in.

Al Hartmann/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP
According to academic estimates, defensive gun uses — including when guns are simply shown to deter a crime — are four to five times more common than gun crimes.
Al Hartmann/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP

These are just a few of the nearly 1,000 instances reported by the media so far this year in which gun owners have stopped mass shootings and other murderous acts, saving countless lives. And crime experts say such high-profile cases represent only a small fraction of the instances in which guns are used defensively. But the data are unclear, for a number of reasons, and this has political ramifications because it seems to undercut the claims of gun rights advocates that they need to possess firearms for personal protection — an issue now before the Supreme Court.

Americans who look only at the daily headlines would be surprised to learn that, according to academic estimates, defensive gun uses — including instances when guns are simply shown to deter a crime — are four to five times more common than gun crimes, and far more frequent than the fewer than 20,000 murders each year, with or without a gun. But even when they prevent mass public shootings, defensive uses rarely get national news coverage. Those living in major news markets such as New York City, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles are unlikely to hear of such stories.

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Little Rock woman providing gun training for women and minorities
Desstoni Johnson is the founder of Fearless Firearm Instruction LLC: a firearms academy in central Arkansas created with women in mind.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark — After her husband bought seats to a concealed carry class as a gift for her 21st birthday, Desstoni Johnson left the class feeling like she didn’t learn a thing.

Many times during class, she felt the male instructor was speaking to everyone except her and the only other woman in the class. Johnson and her classmate would constantly glance at one another wondering if they were the only ones confused and feeling left out.

Instead of becoming discouraged about it, Johnson became motivated to continue practicing and learning as much as she could on her own. It inspired her to want to help others.

“From then on, I couldn’t put guns down. When carrying, I feel I am in control of my own safety and when teaching, I feel empowered knowing I am gifting that same sense of security to other men and women,” said Johnson.

She created Fearless Firearm Instruction LLC, a firearms academy in central Arkansas founded with women in mind.

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Pew: ‘Key Facts About Americans and Guns’ Revealing

A recent analysis of polling data by the Pew Research Center shows personal protection “tops the list of reasons why gun owners say they own a firearm.”

This would certainly square with what a 20-something Seattle resident—a transplant from Florida about five years ago—told John Carlson, the morning drive time talk host at KVI-AM in an interesting interview about why he felt the need to arm himself and take some firearms training, and get a concealed pistol license. The young man’s name is Wyatt, and he is one of nearly 98,000 residents of Washington’s King County, which encompasses Seattle, to have an active CPL, according to the most recent data from the state Department of Licensing.

Wyatt told Carlson he’s been a witness or intended victim of crime over the past couple of years, and said he’s’ had to draw his legally-carried sidearm more than once on knife-armed thugs.

So it is no wonder why he’s part of what may be a growing number of Americans now packing hardware. The Pew story referred to a survey conducted in June which revealed “Men are more likely than women to say they own a gun (39% vs. 22%). And 41% of adults living in rural areas report owning a firearm, compared with about 29% of those living in the suburbs and two-in-ten living in cities.”

But in Seattle, where there have been at least 32 homicides so far this year, and other cities experiencing increasing crime rates in the 19th month of COVID-19, that could change.

Another revelation in the Pew report is that 48 percent of Americans “see gun violence as a very big problem.” By why single out guns for demonization? In Wyatt’s case, he was almost a victim of “knife violence,” except that nobody in the media ever calls it that. For some reason, guns get not-so-special treatment when used in a violent crime.

Pew based its conclusion on research from April which showed 48 percent of survey respondents think gun-related crime is a problem.

The same April survey revealed 53 percent of Americans “favor stricter gun laws,” but that’s a decline since 2019, when it was 60 percent. Could this have anything to do with the fact that the past 19 months have seen an estimated 8 million people purchase guns for the first time? Going through the process—depending upon the jurisdiction—can be an eye-opener for people who previously thought guns were too easily obtained. The Washington Examiner recently reported that the pandemic and rising murder numbers could change gun politics for a long time to come.

According to Pew, “Republicans are currently more likely to say gun laws should be less strict (27%) than stricter (20%)…Today, a large majority of Democrats and Democratic leaners (81%) say gun laws should be stricter, though this share has declined slightly since 2019 (down from 86%).”

Pew has also found Americans are split when asked if restricting gun ownership would result in fewer mass shootings, with 49 percent contending there would be a reduction, and 42 percent saying it would make no difference. Nine percent think there would be more mass shootings if it was harder for people to legally buy a gun.

‘Nearly One-Third of Gun Owners Have Used Gun in Self-Defense,’ Says Report

A whopping 31.1 percent of gun owners—estimated to be about 25.3 million American adults—have used a gun in self-defense, according to the 2021 National Firearms Survey, by Prof. William English, PhD., at Georgetown University.

The survey was designed by Deborah Azrael of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Matthew Miller of Northeastern University, according to the Wall Street Journal. English released a draft in June and the WSJ just reported on its contents.

Ammoland obtained a copy of the 23-page report and it contains some eye-popping data. For example:

  • There are approximately 1.67 million defensive gun uses annually.
  • In most cases (81.9%) the gun is not fired.
  • Handguns are the most commonly-used firearm in defensive incidents. Shotguns follow at 21 percent and rifles at 13.1 percent.
  • Slightly more than 9 percent of gun owners carry a handgun openly or concealed “always or almost always.” Another 6.9 percent carry a handgun “often.”
  • The majority (74.8%) of defensive gun uses take place outside the home, and many (51.2%) involve more than one assailant.

That last item is important, as it bolsters the argument that the right to bear arms must apply to carry outside of the home. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case challenging the New York State permitting scheme on Wednesday, Nov. 3.

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AZ Gubernatorial Hopeful Kari Lake: ‘We Do Not Have a Country Without the 2nd Amendment’

Breitbart News sat down with Arizona gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake this week and she stressed “we do not have a country without the Second Amendment.”

Lake talked to Breitbart News about the change she witnessed in the country during the 2020 gun buying surge, noting, “I know people who didn’t even understand the Second Amendment a year and half ago, and now you could almost call them gun nuts.”

She said, “You know, I know, they are trying to take away our rights, our freedoms, our liberties, and the only thing that is keeping us America, and not turning us into Australia, is our guns. If we did not have our guns right now they would have taken our power  and we would be powerless. We would not be America.”

Breitbart News asked Lake what she would do, as governor, to protect the Second Amendment rights of Arizonans.

Lake responded, “We’re really fortunate here in Arizona. The freedoms we enjoy have been well-protected.” She noted how Texas just adopted constitutional carry on September 1 of this year, something that Arizona adopted in 2010.

Then she said, “We need to preserve those Second Amendment freedoms. And as governor I will never, ever sign a piece of legislation that takes away one scintilla of our Second Amendment rights. As a matter of fact, we need to look at some of the laws we have on the books that might actually be infringing those rights.”

Lake pointed out Arizona is a Second Amendment sanctuary state, and noted, “If Joe Biden gets bossy with us he needs to know up front that he and his people will never take my guns away in Arizona, they will never take our daughter’s guns, my husband’s guns, or our ammo.”

She concluded, “If you haven’t woken up to the fact that our Second Amendment is holding this country together, then you need to take a close look at what this country was founded on and what our Founding Fathers saw coming; what they prepared us for with the Second Amendment.”

Data Shows Crime Dropped After WV Adopted Constitutional Carry

We’ve seen no shortage of politicians and police chiefs complaining that Texas’ new Constitutional Carry law is going to lead to an increase in violent crime, though I have to admit that their arguments don’t make a whole lot of sense to me. The vast majority of crimes in which a gun is used already involve individuals who aren’t legally allowed to own one, so the fact that legal gun owners can now carry in Texas without the need for a government-issued license doesn’t equate to more violence overall.

In fact, a new report out of West Virginia shows that five years after Constitutional Carry took effect in the Mountaineer State, violent crime didn’t increase. Instead, it dropped substantially.

The FBI Crime Data Explorer showed the rate of violent crime offenses by population in West Virginia at 362.7 per 100,000 in 2016, the year the law passed. That number had risen from 347.5 in 2015, 316.4 in 2014, and 305.2 in 2013. After that, the violent crime rate in the Mountain State has been mostly downhill: 361.2 in 2017; 299.9 in 2018; and 316.6 in 2019. One provision: The FBI doesn’t receive reports from all of the state’s approximately 435 law enforcement agencies.

The number of violent crime offenses involving handguns did increase briefly in the wake of the new law: From 529 in 2015 to 706 in 2016 and 644 in 2017. But after that, in 2018 (458) and 2019 (358) the handgun total was more closely aligned to what it had been leading up to the passage of the law.

While the West Virginia News says that violent crime involving handguns rose after Constitutional Carry became the law, that’s not what the data indicates. The 644 offenses reported in 2017 is less than the 706 reported in 2016, when the law took effect, and since then the number of crimes has only declined. In fact, most of the local law enforcement that the West Virginia News spoke with say they haven’t seen any ill effects from Constitutional Carry’s implementation at all.

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Yes, this is known, but it always bears repeating.

BLUF:
But that is really what Kulturkampf politics is all about: fortifying one’s own social status by exercising ritual domination over cultural rivals. That’s how you get punitive tax policies that don’t raise much revenue, “inclusiveness” policies based on exclusion, and gun-control proposals that don’t have anything to do with gun crime. It just feels good to exercise power over people you loathe or envy. That is the beginning and the end of it.

Gun-Control Laws Aren’t about Preventing Crimes

In the latest issue of National Review, I write about the lax enforcement of our gun laws and touch on a theme that is worth exploring a little more: Gun control is not about gun crime — gun control is about gun culture.

If we cared about keeping guns out of the hands of felons, we’d be locking up straw buyers. We’d be prosecuting prohibited “lie and try” buyers who falsify their ATF paperwork. And we’d be confiscating guns sold in retail transactions that were wrongly approved because of defects in the background-check system. But, for the most part, we don’t do much of any of that.

Instead of doing the hard work of enforcing the law on people committed to breaking it, we focus almost all of our efforts on the most law-abiding group of Americans there is: People who legally buy firearms from licensed firearms dealers, a group that, by definition, has a felony-conviction rate of approximately 0.0 percent. These are law-abiding people, but they also are, in no small part, the type of people who mash the cultural buttons of the big-city progressives who dominate the Democratic Party both culturally and financially. From that point of view, what matters is not that retail gun dealers and their clients are dangerous — which they certainly are not — but that they are icky.

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The pandemic and the homicide surge will have a lasting effect on our gun control politics

The surge in new gun owners could have a political impact that lasts far longer than the pandemic and the surge in homicides that inspired it.

Between January 2019 and April 2021, approximately 7.5 million people became first-time gun owners. Nearly 50% of them were women. More than 40% are black or Latino. This is bad news for the gun control movement and, perhaps in the long term, for the Democratic Party.

One of the most telling graphics from the 2016 election came from the New York Times. It showed the great bulk of voters in households with no guns voted for Hillary Clinton in every state except West Virginia and Wyoming (the latter had insufficient data). Voters in gun-owning households favored Donald Trump in every state but Vermont. That includes the most Democratic states in the country, including California, New York, and Hawaii.

According to Gallup data , roughly two-thirds of Republicans live in gun-owning households, compared to just one-third of Democrats. Half of Republicans personally own a firearm, compared to 18% of Democrats.

Granted, it isn’t as simple as these first-time gun owners immediately becoming Republicans. But, even among Democrats, gun owners are more likely to oppose gun control measures. According to data from the Pew Research Center, 87% of non-gun-owning Democrats support banning “assault-style weapons.” That number drops to 65% among gun-owning Democrats. Allowing concealed carry in more places has support among 39% of gun-owning Democrats, compared to 16% support among Democrats who don’t own firearms.

Gun control, despite polling well as a collection of general platitudes, is already a losing issue throughout the country. Each time someone becomes a first-time gun owner, the chances of passing the strict gun control measures that the gun control movement and the majority of the Democratic Party want to see implemented go down. The pandemic will go away, and homicides will decline — but this will continue to shape our gun control politics for years to come.

Gun Grabbers Outraged At Suggestion Asian-Americans Should Get Guns

We hear an awful lot about anti-Asian hate crimes. Asian-Americans are being targeted for violent crime, and it often appears to be because they’re Asian. This is a significant problem. Anytime anyone is targeted because of their ethnicity, it’s a problem.

As such, many of us have recommended these folks look at getting firearms. After all, if you’re concerned about being attacked, having a gun is probably a good idea unless you actually like being injured or possibly killed.

Apparently, for some people, that’s a problem.

Gun control advocates from Connecticut and across the country say the firearms industry is exploiting fear of hate crimes to sell more guns to Asian Americans, according to a study led by the Violence Policy Center.

“Historically, Asian-Americans have owned very few guns, which is precisely the reason why we have experienced comparatively low rates of gun violence. That the gun industry is now targeting our community as a lucrative new market is incredibly troubling, because more guns means more gun-related injury and death,” said Gloria Pan with advocacy group Moms Rising, another contributor to the study.

Advocates said groups like the NRA and the Newtown, Connecticut-based National Shooting Sports Foundation have targeted people of color since 2015. But since the pandemic, they have started groups and social media campaigns to reach Asian-Americans.

In other words, the gun industry is looking at a series of high-profile crimes, then are trying to leverage it to make money by telling people this will make things better?

Yeah, that’s absolutely awful…wait, isn’t that literally what gun control groups do?

Why yes it is.

Look, I don’t care if someone with Moms Rising, Moms Falling, Moms Tripping Over My Socks, or any other “moms” group finds it troubling. The truth of the matter is that if law-abiding citizens are armed, they can respond to violent attacks with something besides begging or harsh language. Will it result in more gun-related injuries and death? Yeah. For the bad guys, you simple-minded twit!

That’s kind of the point of carrying a gun, for crying out loud.

Law-abiding Asian-Americans aren’t going to result in more criminal activity. Why would they? Unless Ms. Pan is suggesting that Asian-Americans are somehow incapable of controlling themselves, which sounds like a pretty racist thing to suggest. I’m sure she didn’t mean that, now did she?

Yes, many of us are suggesting these folks get guns. Law-abiding citizens acting responsibly for their own safety has never been an issue and will never be an issue for anyone except for shrieking violets (yes, this is phrased this way intentionally) who think that the entire universe really revolves around their preferences.

I, for one, welcome our Asian-American gun-owning brethren to our ranks. I’d love to invite each and every one of you to the range. I just don’t think my local range would hold everyone.

And if it infuriates the gun control crowd because yet another minority group seems to be leaving the reservation for the land of milk and freedom, so much the better.

I’m not going to ‘fisk ‘ this in too much detail. It’s clear that this college student is just another over educated indoctrinated proggie.
What I will do is this:
I remember somewhere years ago reading an article about placing too much reliance on centuries old English goobermint declarations and documents, their 1689 Bill of Rights in particular.
The point being made was that, although our nation was formed from English colonies, and our Bill of Rights was based on the concepts found in the earlier English one, ours is not bound or restricted by it.
‘We The People‘ , citizens of the U.S., secured rights to ourselves and restricted goobermint, as specified in our Bill of Rights own preamble.
The subjects of England have their rights granted and restricted by their goobermint.

This child can ‘observe’ all he wants. What I see is another elitist who likely finds all those icky guns in the hands of all those icky people almost too much to bear.

Observations Regarding the Interpretation and Legacy of the Statute of Northampton in Anglo-American Legal History

The Statute of Northampton of 1328 remains central to the current debate surrounding the limits and protections the Second Amendment provides to carry arms in public.[1] The Statute provided that “no man great nor small, of what condition soever he be, except the king’s servants in his presence…come before the King’s justices, or other of the King’s ministers doing their office, with force and arms, nor bring no force in affray of the peace, nor to go nor ride armed by night nor by day, in fairs, markets, nor in the presence of the justices or other ministers” (2 Edw. 3, c.3). Certain Second Amendment scholars hold that the Statute was “not interpreted literally” and was only enforced when weapons were carried with the intent to terrify or threaten or when dangerous and unusual weapons were carried.[2] While the Statute has been much studied, some key sources remain neglected, namely the reliance of Sir. Edward Coke on 13th Century English legal scholar Henry de Bracton in Coke’s interpretation of the Statute. Coke’s quotations from de Bracton, which have usually been ignored because they are written almost entirely in Latin, offer additional evidence that the Statute of Northampton was understood to be a broad-based prohibition on the carrying of arms.

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David Frum is wrong: Guns save lives and sustain communities
From self defense to funding fire departments, they’re woven into the culture of red America

The debate over guns in the United States could, until recently, be divided into two extreme camps: the liberal elites (invariably protected by armed guards) who call for ever-more restrictive control of firearms, the basic functionality of which they cannot even begin to explain, and the uber-conservative right, for whom guns are a way of life and are ofttimes life-sustaining.

David Frum is evidently of the first faction, writing in The Atlantic this month about how ‘Responsible Gun Ownership Is a Lie.’ Gun sales – especially among first-time gun buyers – surged between 2019 and 2020, and continue to smash records. This trend has Frum worried.

As a card-carrying member of the second camp (I literally have a Sandy Ridge Sportsmen’s Club membership card a’settin’ here on my desk), I’d like to give Frum and other anti-gun radicals the benefit of the doubt, at least until they’ve had the chance to finish reading this article. Let’s pretend that their civilian disarmament schemes stem from innocent ignorance. Perhaps Frum and others like him simply do not understand the life-giving role guns play in society – especially in rural America.

Guns can be scary. I get it. They are loud, and, with even a little power, capable of much destruction. They are not unlike elected officials in these ways.

But in the backwoods of Pennsylvania, where Hunter-Trapper Education Certification was part of my required fifth-grade curriculum, and the opening of deer season always means two consecutive school holidays, guns are more than a political talking point.

Considering this, the debate over guns should really be set against the backdrop of two different, apolitical sets: those who understand gun culture and those who do not.

Those of us who grew up around guns know them to be tools useful in the procurement of food, the dispatching of predators, a unifying pastime, the prize showpiece of a collector’s mantle, and, yes, an invaluable means of self-defense.

Guns are more powerful than Frum thinks, but not in a bad way. In some places, firearms take on a vital role that sustains entire communities.

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Women Are Nearly Half of New Gun Buyers, Study Finds

SAN DIEGO—Close to half of all new U.S. gun buyers since the beginning of 2019 have been women, a shift for a market long dominated by men, according to a new study.
The preliminary results from the 2021 National Firearms Survey, designed by Deborah Azrael of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Matthew Miller of Northeastern University, show an estimated 3.5 million women became new gun owners from January 2019 through April of this year. About 4 million men became new gun owners over that period, they found.
For decades, other surveys have found that around 10% to 20% of American gun owners were women.
The number of federal background checks for gun purchases hit an all-time high in 2020 of 21 million, according to an analysis of federal data by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry trade group.

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David Hogg: Second Amendment Is Collective Right

If you want a hot take on guns and gun rights that probably has no resemblance to reality, you should follow David Hogg’s Twitter feed sometime. Of course, it’s also a place with a lot of stupid that’ll probably cause you to give yourself a concussion with the constant overwhelming need to smack your forehead.

The failed state-college applicant turned Harvard man–if that phrase doesn’t tell you all you need to know about Harvard, I don’t know what will–has said some pretty dumb things, including recently claiming he thinks he’s the target of Russian bots.

But on Wednesday, he went down a rabbit hole of stupid with just one single tweet. Pretty impressive, until you see the tweet.

Now, Hogg isn’t a thought originator. He’s a parrot, repeating what others have told him and making himself sound important so the media will keep fawning all over him.

This ain’t original either.

A lot of people claim that the Second Amendment was never meant to be an individual right. Yet people like Hogg can never answer one simple question in response. If it’s wasn’t intended to be an individual right, then why did the writers use the phrase “the right of the people” in the first place?

In the First Amendment, it makes reference to “the right of the people” to assemble peacefully and to petition the government.

The Fourth Amendment highlight “the right of the people” to be secure in their homes and their property from unreasonable search and seizure.

The Ninth and Tenth Amendment both also reference “the people’s” rights.

How is it, in 50 percent of the amendments in the Bill of Rights, the writers refer to “the people” but it was only in the Second Amendment that they really meant the people collectively and not an individual right?

In truth, any deflection from this fact is nothing more than an attempt to muddy the waters, to make it seem less clear that our right to keep and bear arms wasn’t so the state could have guns or formally recognized militias could, but for you and me to have them.

This bizarre claim that the Second Amendment isn’t an individual right keeps cropping up, and a number of people share it. It’s almost a litmus test for where someone stands on gun control.

Regardless, though, it’s a tired argument that’s been trotted out over and over again.

I find it amusing that people who think Roe v. Wade is definitive and should be the final say on a topic like abortion are so ready to completely dismiss Heller which specifically found that the Second Amendment was an individual right and not a collective one.

The question was answered, and it’s highly unlikely to be overturned on the merits of anything. If it is, it’ll be an activist court pushing a leftist agenda. It won’t be because of anything else, as I’ve clearly shown.

But people like David Hogg will persist, no doubt, to try and insist it’s a collective right, as if that term has any actual meaning in the first place, and consider themselves smart because they believe that.

However, if David Hogg is the caliber of person who can get into Harvard and manage to stay, then we as a nation need to seriously rethink how much gravitas we give Ivy League graduates.