Category: RKBA

Ohio Senate Approves Armed School Staff Legislation

There are already dozens of school districts across the state of Ohio that have armed school staff in place, but a lawsuit filed with the help of Everytown for Gun Safety is putting the legality of thousands of vetted and trained school staff in jeopardy. Parents in the Madison school district argue that under Ohio law, teachers and staff need to have the exact same training as police officers before they can legally carry, and the issue is currently before the state Supreme Court.

Lawmakers in the Buckeye State aren’t waiting for the court to decide if the current statutes allow for districts to determine their own training policies for armed school staff. On Wednesday, the state Senate approved legislation that specifically authorizes school staffers to carry without going through hundreds of hours of peace officer training.

State Sen. Bill Coley, a Butler County Republican sponsoring the bill, said the “court went off the reservation” with its ruling. The legislation, he said, would ensure that “school districts in my area of the state can have the same rights that all of your school districts in your areas of the state have.”

Gun-rights groups, including the National Rifle Association, have expressed support for SB 317, arguing local education officials should be allowed to determine the best policies for ensuring their schools are safe. The Madison Local School District put its policy in place after a 14-year-old student opened fire at Madison Junior-Senior High School in 2016, injuring four.

Several Democratic senators spoke against the legislation prior to the bill’s passage in the GOP-dominated Senate. They argued that the bill is unwanted by most Ohioans and makes schools less safe.

“No child in Ohio should have to worry about if there is a gun at school, or if the person with the gun has had proper training,” said state Sen. Hearcel Craig, a Columbus Democrat.

First off, no teacher or staff member in Ohio is carrying without first volunteering, being vetted, and then undergoing several days of training, typically through the Ohio FASTER program, which focuses specifically on stopping armed threats at school. Educators not only learn how to respond to an attack with their lawfully-carried firearm, but they learn de-escalation techniques, first aid, and other strategies to deal with an active assailant and the aftermath. Continue reading “”

Read on down to the Progressive’s ideas on RKBA and note that there’s a link to each group’s ‘ideal’ Constitution.

Constitutional Visions for the Arms Right

The National Constitution Center’s recent Constitution Drafting Project convened scholars and practitioners from three different camps to draft and define their own revisions to the U.S. Constitution: the Libertarian Constitution, Conservative Constitution, and Progressive Constitution. Of course, there are many things that separate these three visions of what a more ideal Constitution would look like, but one notable fact is that all of them retain a fundamental, protected right to private gun possession, though none keep the wording of the current Second Amendment. Continue reading “”

Texas Anti-Gunners File Many Bills

At least 16 gun control bills have already been filed for the upcoming Texas Legislative Session beginning in January, setting the stage for a contentious battle over the gun rights of private citizens.

One of the bills is HB 196, filed by Irving State Representative Terry Meza.  Her bill would remove a homeowner’s legal right under the Castle Doctrine to use a firearm in the defense of their homestead against an intruder.  Meza believes homeowners are too quick to pull the trigger during a home invasion, and HB 196 would essentially gut that provision from the Castle Doctrine.

“I’m not condoning stealing, it is against the law, “Meza says, “but it’s not an offense that is punishable by death.”

Meza claims she’s already become the target of intense scrutiny online.

“People are already attacking me on Facebook saying I’m against the 2nd Amendment,” she says.

Meza says a homeowner would still be able to defend their life, but using a gun would be illegal, thus placing the homeowner in legal jeopardy.

Critics point to what is often a slow response time from police, and argue that there’s very little time to determine whether a person who has broken into a home is there simply to steal, or to commit acts of violence.

Other gun control bills awaiting the next session include:

  • HB 152 and HB 245 would ban the private sale of firearms at gun shows;
  • HB 238 would eliminate the state’s firearm preemption, allowing local governments such as the Austin City Council to pass local gun bans and regulations as they see fit;
  • HB 201 would ban Campus Carry;
  • HB 127 would ban the open carry of long rifles;
  • HB 236 would overhaul the 30.06 and 30.07 signage requirements to make it much easier for a business to ban a legal and licensed gun owner from entering;
  • HB 118 would eliminate family members from being able to transfer firearms among each other, instead requiring a federal license application to process each transaction “at an undetermined fee”;
  • HB 164 and HB 395 relate to Red Flag laws, allowing the removal of a person’s firearm without due process;
  • HB 185 would legally require homeowners to keep all guns locked inside of a safe at all times;
  • HB 231 raises the legal age required to purchase semi-automatic rifles and shotguns;
  • HB 172 and HB 241 would ban the transfer or possession of certain “commonly owned semi-automatic firearms”;
  • HB 178 and HB 234 would ban the sale or possession of any magazine that holds more than ten rounds.

The vast majority of those gun control bills are not expected to pass muster when state lawmakers reconvene.

SAF Rising as 2A Warrior, Challenging Restrictive Carry Laws

Empowered by its landmark 2010 Supreme Court victory in McDonald v. City of Chicago, which nullified the Windy City’s handgun ban and incorporated the Second Amendment to the states via the 14th Amendment, the Second Amendment Foundation—a scrappy gun rights group based in Washington State—has become a legal powerhouse that is now targeting at least three states for their alleged arbitrary, prohibitive concealed carry laws.

This year alone, according to SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb, SAF has filed “an average of two lawsuits each month.” With its most recent legal action—a federal lawsuit challenging Maryland’s arbitrary “good and substantial reason” requirement to obtain a concealed carry permit—the foundation has launched, usually in cooperation with other groups, 24 lawsuits so far in 2020. And, he acknowledged with a wink, “the year isn’t over.” December could see even more activity, he indicated.

It’s part of a strategy announced by Gottlieb some five years ago with the intention of “Winning Firearms Freedom, One Lawsuit at a Time.” The organization, founded more than 40 years ago, has been constantly active since the June 2010 McDonald ruling, and this year has seen their legal gears shift into overdrive. Continue reading “”

Gun Control Plummeted in Popularity This Year

Gun sales have surged in 2020, fueled by a pandemic, nationwide riots that Democrat leaders showed little interest in stopping, and, even prior to election day, the mere prospect of a Biden/Harris administration that would implement new gun control measures.

Americans have purchased more guns in the first eight months in 2020 than the entirety of 2019, and are on pace to make this year the biggest year for gun sales ever. Firearms seller Vista Outdoor has a backlog of over $1 billion in ammo purchases alone.

These sales don’t reflect existing gun owners hoarding firearms either, as there are over five million new gun owners this year, likely the largest surge in gun ownership in U.S. history.

Naturally, that surge in gun sales and ownership has coincided with the popularity of gun control plummeting.

According to the latest polling from Gallup: Continue reading “”

Hour and half long, if you’re interested

 

Social Elites Call for Dangerous Gun Data Changes

It seems antigun billionaires think there’s nothing a few dollars and manipulation of government data can’t fix. Arnold Ventures, ran by former Enron trader John and Laura Arnold, is a billionaire philanthropy organization that wants to save us from ourselves through their deep pockets. More specifically, they seek to restrict the freedom to keep and bear arms

Arnold Ventures wishes to paint a grim picture that firearms are an epidemic much like political activist and gun control billionaire Michael Bloomberg. John and Laura Arnold have commissioned the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago to construct and convene a panel of medical professionals to organize a wishlist of dangerous and overreaching proposals. These demands are detailed in the Blueprint for a U.S. Firearms Data Infrastructure. With major changes possible in Washington, D.C., it is crucial to not only examine the large, sweeping gun control proposals but also to look at the less attention-grabbing proposals, like changing how the government collects, shares, and presents data. Gun control advocates in Congress are already turning to items on this wish list in their latest proposals, including the misleadingly titled, “ATF Improvement and Modernization Act.” Continue reading “”

More from the Justice’s speech

BLUF:
If you’ve got an hour or so and you’re a legal geek like me, go watch Alito’s entire speech and read the brief that I linked above. Obviously Alito wasn’t going to say anything unbecoming of a Supreme Court justice, but I was struck by his quiet indignation over the NYC gun case, the second-class status of the Second Amendment, and the threats of “restructuring” the Court by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and four other Democratic senators. I get the feeling that Justice Alito is itching to take another Second Amendment case soon, and Lord knows there are plenty in the pipeline for him and his colleagues to accept in the months ahead.

Alito: Senators’ Threats In 2A Case “Affront To The Constitution”

Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito’s address to the Federalist Society on Thursday night is making headlines today largely for his comments about COVID-19 and the threat that the pandemic poses to individual liberties, but I’m surprised that more people aren’t talking about Alito’s reserved smackdown of five Democratic senator who threatened the Court with “restructuring” if it didn’t drop a challenge to a New York City gun law. The case, known as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York, ultimately was mooted by the Court earlier this year after New York City changed the law being challenged after SCOTUS agreed to hear the case.

Reason has a full transcript and video of Justice Alito’s remarks, but I want to focus on what he had to say about our right to keep and bear arms.

Of course, the ultimate second tier constitutional right in the minds of some is the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. From 2010, when we decided McDonald v. Chicago, until last term; the supreme court denied every single petition asking us to review a lower court decision that rejected the Second Amendment claim. Last year, we finally took another second amendment case. And what happened after that is interesting.

This isn’t the first time that Alito has complained about the Second Amendment being treated as second-class right. Alito penned the majority opinion in the McDonald case, and a decade ago he warned that the right to keep and bear arms rests on the same footing as the rest of our individual rights. Continue reading “”

Biden Wants to Prevent Armed Teachers From Protecting Themselves and Their Students

Preventing teachers from carrying firearms is just one of Joe Biden’s gun control goals. See his other priorities for rolling back Second Amendment rights here.

The idea of arming teachers to prevent school shootings burst into the national conversation after Parkland, when President Trump raised the possibility in listening sessions with grieving parents. Shortly after the 2018 shooting at the Florida high school, he told attendees at the 2018 CPAC that as many as one out of every five teachers should be carrying a gun.

It provoked an uproar. But often lost in the bluster of that moment was the reality that teachers had already been carrying guns in U.S. schools for over 10 years. Trump had just become the policy’s highest-profile advocate yet. The first serious proposals to arm teachers cropped up after the Columbine shooting in 1999, and the first school district to announce such a policy was in Harrod, Texas, in 2008, after Virginia Tech.

The decision to let schools arm teachers is left to state governments. Since the 1990s, 19 states have passed laws and created programs to arm some teachers and other school staff, like principals or superintendents. In 24 states, school boards have the discretion to authorize anyone of their choosing to carry a gun on campus. A 2019 investigation by VICE News found that in the year after Parkland, the number of school districts arming their teachers more than doubled, from around 215 school districts to nearly 500, encompassing hundreds of thousands of students.

President-elect Joe Biden has said he strongly opposes arming teachers, but because it’s up to state legislatures—which stayed resoundingly Republican this election, including in armed-teacher states like Florida, Texas, Ohio, Missouri, and Utah—it’s a policy that may be here to stay.

– Jen Kinney in Biden Hates the Idea of Arming Teachers, But It’s Way Too Late to Stop It

Gun trade groups say more women are becoming licensed firearms owners

Some call it firearm feminism. According to gun trade groups, more women are buying guns than ever before.

One recent survey indicates self-protection is the main reason, but first-time female gun buyers are also citing fear of civil unrest, election uncertainty and the coronavirus as influencing their decision to buy firearms.

Business owner Angela Geotz says she wants to be legally armed if trouble comes her way.

“I just want to be able to protect myself if I have to, my family,” Geotz said.

Geotz is not alone. Jessica Howard is a first-time gun owner.

“There is a lot of crazy stuff going on and I’m a single mother,” Howard said.

Firearm sales to women are up 40% from 2019, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The trade group surveyed gun retailers. The survey finds personal protection is the primary reason and semi-automatic pistols are the most popular.

First-time gun owner Vickie Hayes bought a semi-automatic pistol after someone broke into her home.

“It kind of scared me a little bit, so I thought a good way to protect myself would be to get a handgun license. So, I did and I purchased a gun,” Hayes said.

The firearms industry noticed the surge beginning in March with the coronavirus outbreak.

Since then, concern over civil unrest is the biggest reason for the surge, that’s according to a poll conducted by national firearms group A Girl & A Gun:

  • 14% Riots/Fear of Mobs and civil unrest.
  • 12% Concerns over 2020 Elections.
  • 8% Lack of Law enforcement resources.
  • 7% Pandemic uncertainty.
  • 7% Fear of targeted violence/discrimination.

Continue reading “”

Militias challenge gun laws in Virginia: “It’s about shooting tyrants in the face”

On a cold winter morning last February, a woman named Samantha assembled her AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in the parking area next to Timbrook Public Library in Campbell County, Virginia. Her husband, Chad, had his AR-15 in hand and commented, “I would trust going into a gun fight right next to my wife. I’ve seen her shoot.”

Samantha was one of a handful of women attending the call for volunteers to join a group calling itself the Campbell County Militia. Along with Chad and Samantha (who asked to have their last name withheld), over 200 people were at the event, most of them carrying arms.

Kurt Feigel, a gun rights activist and militia organizer, told the group, “We are here today to send a clear and collective message to any would-be-tyrants that would attempt to disarm us: We will not comply.”

The formation of the Campbell County Militia is part of a larger movement organized by gun rights activists pushing back against gun laws Virginia enacted in 2020. They claim the new regulations, which include a “red flag” law and universal background checks for gun purchases, infringe on their Second Amendment right to bear arms. Virginia lawmakers shelved more controversial proposals that would have banned semi-automatic guns and high capacity magazines. Still, gun rights activists are bracing for a possible future ban.

“We won’t comply. We won’t give up our guns,” said Feigel.

Virginia became a battleground for the gun policy debate after Democrats swept both houses of the state legislature in 2019 on a gun safety platform, consolidating Democratic control of the state government.

Gun policy has long been a divisive issue in the United States. Even as support grows for stricter gun laws, the country remains deeply divided along partisan lines. A 2019 Pew Research Center survey found 60% of Americans think gun laws should be more strict, up from 52% two years earlier. But the same survey also found 80% of Republicans think it’s more important to protect gun rights than to control gun ownership, while just 21% of Democrats agree.

In Virginia, gun rights supporters pushed back against the Democratic legislative majority. Over 90 counties and municipalities in the state passed Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions opposing the enforcement of certain gun laws. And there were calls to form local militias to give their movement some “teeth.”

“If we have the numbers, we can back up the statement — we will not be disarmed,” said Feigel. “[The Second Amendment] is not about hunting. It’s not about self-defense. It’s about shooting tyrants in the face.” Continue reading “”

(Florida governor) DeSantis Pushes To Expand Stand Your Ground Law To Allow Citizens To Defend Against Rioters, Looters

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has reportedly drafted “anti-mob” legislation that would expand the state’s Stand Your Ground law to allow armed citizens defend themselves against violent rioters and looters.

Written after violent rioters caused billions of dollars of damage to America’s cities over the summer, the proposal would expand the list of under Florida’s self-defense law to justify the use of force against rioters who engage in looting or arson that “results in the interruption or impairment of a business operation.”

“The draft legislation put specifics behind DeSantis’ pledge in September to crack down on ‘violent and disorderly assemblies,’” the Tampa Bay Times reported. “Other key elements of DeSantis’ proposal would enhance criminal penalties for people involved in ‘violent or disorderly assemblies,’ make it a third-degree felony to block traffic during a protest, offer immunity to drivers who claim to have unintentionally killed or injured protesters who block traffic, and withhold state funds from local governments that cut law enforcement budgets.” Continue reading “”

Left Leaning Writer Recognizes Biden’s gun control plan is terrible for working class firearm owners

As of late, I’ve noticed many left-leaning gun owners tend to engage in willful ignorance or blissful naivety when it comes to the rather blatant in-congruent relationship they have with democrat politicians and guns.

So when I came across an article titled, “Biden’s gun control plan is terrible for working class firearm owners”, I lazily assumed it was written by a right wing conservative who was making the point about Joe Biden’s gun control plan that I’ve been making about gun control in general for years.

I was wrong

Kim Kelly wrote the article. You don’t have to know who Kim Kelly is to conclude that she’s anything but a right-wing conservative; all you’d have to do is make it to the latter half of the article or read her short author bio underneath the article image.

All things considered, even she recognizes that Joe Biden’s gun plan negatively affects the people who likely voted for him the most.

She Writes:

Continue reading “”

Joe Biden’s Plan For Common Sense Gun Control

2020 Breaks All the Records

A record number of Americans have exercised one of the most important rights affirmed by the founders of this great nation: the right to keep and bear arms.

The FBI NICS office conducted 3,305,465 background checks last month – breaking the record for the month of October by nearly a million checks. Each month in 2020 has broken the record for background checks in that month. October was the fifth busiest month ever for the NICS office, which has now run 32,131,914 NICS checks in 2020. We – the American people –  broke the annual record last month; this year has now seen 13% more checks than the previous busiest year for the NICS office.

Thirty-two million background checks so far this year, and we haven’t seen Black Friday or holiday sales yet.

Not all of these checks are related to the sale of a firearm. Some may be related to the sale of multiple firearms and some are permit applications that result in the permit holder being able to lawfully acquire a firearm without a NICS check (as the permit itself involves a NICS check). Continue reading “”

Biden Vows Swift Action On Gun Control

According to the media, Joe Biden is the president-elect of the United States. Who knows, maybe when all is said and done, he actually will be. Regardless, there are legal challenges to the election outcome in enough states that you just don’t know how things will shake out in the end.

Regardless, Biden is acting like the president-elect. It’s not like the media will call him on it, to be sure.

So what precisely does Biden have in mind for his first days in office? Oh, nothing much.

Joe Biden has a lot of plans for his first day as president, and some of it can actually happen in a single day — a fair amount of which he can set in motion right away even though Democrats have so far fallen short of capturing the Senate.

Biden has promised to rejoin the Paris climate agreement, reverse President Donald Trump’s rollbacks of public health and environmental rules and call allies worldwide to reassure them, all on his first day in the White House. Before that day is done, he says he will put in place a national strategy for containing the coronavirus pandemic, rejoin the World Health Organization, end the ban on immigration from several predominantly Muslim nations and expand rights for Latin American asylum seekers.

Biden has also promised swift action on housing, labor, gun control, LGBTQ rights and government reform.

Yep. Old Sleepy Joe has his sights set on our guns, the same as always. Continue reading “”

Gun Control and Racism: The Laws and Taxes Meant to Limit Minority Gun Ownership in America

“There’s a direct correlation between gun control and black people control.” – Stacy Swimp, President of the Frederick Douglass Society

Every schoolchild knows that the Declaration of Independence declares that the basic equality of man is “self-evident.” The United States Constitution enumerates what the inalienable rights only alluded to by the Declaration. An inalienable right is one that exists regardless of whether or not it is recognized by the state. For example, you have a right to free speech regardless of whether or not the Constitution recognizes it. Thus any restrictions on free speech are curbs of this pre-existing right, not an actual elimination of that right. One of them is the right to keep and bear arms. Another is the right to a speedy and public trial.

However, particularly with the Second Amendment, there’s long been a struggle between the ideals of America and the reality on the ground with regard to race. What’s more, minorities in the United States are disproportionately the victims of violent crime. Both of these things together make it crucial to understand self defense and the Second Amendment from the perspective of race in America.

Part of the problem is that, unlike European nations which grew organically, America is an invention of a handful of Englishmen. They founded the nation on a set of ideas and there has always been a tension between those ideas and the reality. This is, in some sense, unavoidable: reality will always have trouble living up to an ideal. A failure to live up to that ideal in the past according to terms established today doesn’t make the entire project – or any specific part of it – worthless or suspect.

Before we get into the meat of the matter, we should note that the American ideal has expanded the Second Amendment (and the rest of the Constitution for that matter) to de jure include all Americans. One can be skeptical of the notion of “progress” while seeing the moves to repeal race-based restrictions on firearms ownership as big steps in the right direction.

Finally, it is worth noting – and we will do so at length later – that none of the racially-motivated laws on the books in America are uniquely American. Racism, in the sense employed by the average person not the expanded version used by left-wing ideologues, was not a uniquely American institution, but the norm throughout human history. Continue reading “”

A Dark Moment for Democracy Affirms the Need for the Second Amendment

Businesses in major American cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. erected plywood barricades for fear of election day violence. To observers in other countries, the picture of boarded up businesses looked like they came from the third world. To historians, the pictures looked like they were taken from a country descending into tyranny.

We all know who these barriers were built to defend against. They weren’t built to defend against Tea Partiers. They weren’t built to defend against Proud Boys. They were built to defend against Antifa and Black Lives Matter, groups who Joe Biden has repeatedly refused to condemn despite their coordinated violence and property destruction.

Shortly before the election, Biden tweeted that he would ban “assault weapons,” implement “universal background checks,” and enact other allegedly “common sense” gun reform laws.

If he proves the victor, and the Democrats win one run-off race in Georgia, America will see an unprecedented assault on the Second Amendment. A Biden Department of Justice would try to bankrupt gun manufacturers in court. And gun confiscation would be on the table, given that Biden has promised to put Beto O’Rourke, who famously said “Hell yes, we are going to take your AR-15s,” in charge of his administration’s gun policies.

Fortunately, over the last six months gun sales – especially to first-time gun-buyers – have shattered all historic records. This is because for hundreds of thousands of Americans, 2020 has settled the gun control arguments they hear so often in the media. The question “what could anyone need an AR-15 for?” has been answered by images of store owners standing guard against a mob with that gun as their neighbor’s businesses burned to the ground.

The argument that “people should rely on the police for protection,” has been countered by the reality that in major American cities our elected officials pro-actively refuse to allow the police the enforce the law. This wasn’t a matter of the police getting there moments too late. What we saw was elected officials refusing to allow the police to enforce the law because they agreed with the political aims of the violent mob. Continue reading “”