Category: RKBA

Second Amendment supporters attend militia muster in Amherst County

1st & 2nd Amendments in action.
1st Amendment you ask? The ‘right of the people peaceably to assemble’!

AMHERST CO., Va. (WSET) — Amherst County has joined the growing list of militias.

Residents of Amherst County gathered on Saturday, March 7 to participate in a militia muster call.

Over 130 people lined up to volunteer as part of the militia.

 

I’m a proud gun-owning Republican because of my feminist beliefs. And I think Bernie Sanders is dangerous
My parents are Democrats, but I realized at college that I was more conservative than them

The demoncrap partei thinks he’s dangerous too. Not because they are against his politics, but that he’s so open about it and most people in the U.S. value their freedom, liberty, personal property and bank account.

I’m a Texas native, born and raised in Dallas. However, my parents are Nigerian immigrants, so I didn’t have the stereotypical Texan upbringing you’re probably imagining.

When I was five years old, my dad went to prison for a drug trafficking crime. In an era where mandatory minimums were king, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He would eventually get out in 18 for good behavior.

Most of my early life was spent with three younger siblings, a single immigrant mother, grandparents that lived with us, and a deep, dark secret. It was shameful to talk about my dad with Americans, much less the Nigerian community. Because of that, my mother grew more and more isolated from the Iarge Igbo community in Dallas we had once been close to. For me, friends became much more vital, much more accepting and much more familiar than family.

I developed a strong sense of community. And that community didn’t have to look, act or talk like me to help me feel like I belonged. In high school, my close circle of friends spread the gamut of Asian countries: Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Indian, Pakistani. Because my mother is a registered nurse, she was able to command an income that enabled us to stay in the middle-class area that my dad moved us into prior to imprisonment. Because of her stable position, we didn’t have to suffer the instability of moving from place to place — a fate that many families in a similar situation to us were often subjected to.

My parents were Roman Catholic Democrats and I, for the most part, accepted that political ideology. Ironically enough, that was right up until I went to college. After a series of events, one being my conversion into the Protestant faith, I slowly realized that my conservative beliefs did not match the party I was in at the time. And just as ironically, another big factor in my political conversion was my feminist beliefs.

When I was a child, aged five, I was raped by a family member while we visited them in Nigeria. From that time onward, I was on a quest to gain my power and dignity back. I achieved that by empowering myself and other women to be independent, free and capable.

That line of thinking inevitably led me to the Second Amendment. The movement to protect our Second Amendment rights was smack-dab in the middle of college campus conversation back in 2012, because of the concealed carry on campus legislation that was being hotly debated on the Texas capitol floor.

It made sense to me to advocate for a law that allowed law-abiding, capable, independent women like myself and my fellow peers to take safety into their own hands. Speaking up to about the rights of people to defend themselves is not only a calling but an outright ministry for me. The concealed carry on campus bill passed in 2015 and was implemented in 2016 and 2017. Shortly after, I started an organization that seeks to empower women through the Second Amendment.

All of this led me here to Colorado in 2020. I met the love of my life in 2018, moved to Colorado and married him in 2019. Despite the obvious weather and terrain differences, moving from Texas to Colorado was a pretty seamless one. I recognized right away the same freedom-loving, independent spirit in politics that I found in Texas. And a state that still respected a personal right to defend oneself was a state that I believed could actually empower women.

What I find the most beneficial in Colorado law is that it is not incredibly cost-prohibitive to become a certified firearms instructor. This has allowed me to teach all classes completely free for women in the community looking to get a concealed carry permit or just to get more self-defense training and knowledge in general.

The very first thing I do in each class is to ask every woman to stand up, introduce themselves and say why they are here, what brought them to my class. The introductions alone always take about half an hour. Women stand up and talk about their stories of surviving domestic violence, abuse, or sexual assault. Single mothers stand up and share their stories of realizing that they were the only person between a man or woman intent on doing harm to them and their children. The stories are both inspiring and heartbreaking. And it gives me much joy to sign their certificates and thank them for coming at the end of each class…………

The women I work within the community have extremely diverse political and ideological beliefs. But one thing I see is very clear. To those women, their right to own and carry a firearm of their choice has nothing to do with Democrats, Republicans, Bernie vs. Biden, or Donald Trump. It has to do with their individual liberty to decide to never to be a victim again. Just like my own political journey that has spanned from Democrat to Republican to whatever I choose to be in the future, I can, as a fellow survivor and an overcomer, fully support that.

Michigan House votes to ban local gun buybacks

Local governments in Michigan wouldn’t be able to buy firearms off of their residents under legislation passed in the Michigan House Wednesday.

House Bill 5479, sponsored by Rep. Annette Glenn, R-Midland, would ban local governments and law enforcement from conducting gun buyback or takeback programs that offer residents compensation for their unwanted firearms. Local law enforcement would still be able to accept and dispose of firearms dropped off voluntarily.

Speaking in support of her bill on the House floor Wednesday, Glenn said it’s not the place of local governments to be buying firearms from residents – she said the buybacks unfairly compete with gun businesses and waste taxpayer dollars.

“While our state and federal constitution guarantees every citizen the right to keep and bear arms, no citizen has the right to sell old firearms to a unit of government at taxpayer expense,” she said.

The measure passed the House 58-49, with Rep. John Chirkun, D-Roseville, joining Republican lawmakers in support. It now heads to the Senate for further review and would need to pass the full Senate and be signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to become law.

House Democrats opposed the bill on grounds that it would interfere with efforts by local governments and law enforcement to keep their communities safe.

BIDEN’S HATRED OF GUN OWNERS CLEAR BY NAMING BETO AS POINT MAN: CCRKBA

BELLEVUE, WA – Democrat Joe Biden made it clear in Texas that he despises American gun owners by declaring former rival Beto O’Rourke, the gun-grabbing former Texas congressman, as his point man on what he called “the gun problem,” the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

“For Biden to embrace Beto should erase any doubt where the former vice president truly stands on gun rights,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Months ago, we vowed to let nobody forget O’Rourke’s brazen threat to take away people’s firearms, and we meant it.”

O’Rourke’s presidential campaign crumbled after he declared during a debate in Houston, “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR15, your AK47.” When nobody else on stage at the time made any effort at all to counter the statement, Gottlieb said Democrats had officially become the “Party of Gun Confiscation.”

Biden told O’Rourke in front of his Dallas audience, “You’re gonna take care of the gun problem with me, you’re gonna be the one who leads this effort. I’m counting on you, I’m counting on you, we need you badly.”

“I’ll tell you what Biden needs even worse than O’Rourke,” Gottlieb responded. “He needs to kiss any credibility he ever had with gun owners a permanent goodbye. Beto O’Rourke represents everything that is wrong with today’s gun ban extremism, and he is one of the worst enemies of the Second Amendment. While he was campaigning, he said gun owners would be given the option of turning in their guns in exchange for cash, or risk being prosecuted. Then he outright threatened to confiscate the firearms of law-abiding Americans.

“We’re not sure how to explain this to Biden,” he added, “but accepting O’Rourke’s endorsement and then vowing to put him in charge of national gun policy, should he win in November, amounts to quid-pro-quo.

“Biden’s mask is completely off,” Gottlieb concluded. “He’s not just a doddering Democrat pushing to become president, he’s an extremist anti-gunner who just promised to put a gun prohibition fanatic in charge of his administration’s gun policy. That’s not just a difference in philosophy, it’s a declaration of war.”

Second Amendment ‘sanctuary’ movement gets some traction in rural Minnesota

CROW WING COUNTY, Minn. — As the debate over tighter gun control regulations heats up in Minnesota, a movement among gun rights advocates to designate Second Amendment sanctuary counties is gaining momentum across the state.

Five northwestern Minnesota county boards — Clearwater, Marshall, Red Lake, Roseau and Wadena — have voted to declare their county as a Second Amendment “sanctuary,” or otherwise dedicated to defending gun rights.

Similar efforts have surfaced in at least two dozen other counties, with some expected to vote in coming weeks. The resolutions are similar, with language saying local resources will not be used to enforce laws believed to infringe on the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Legal experts say the resolutions are symbolic because counties can’t choose not to enforce certain state laws. But in an election year, they are mobilizing rural voters who view gun rights as a critical voting issue.

“I think this is clearly what’s driving this concern, among especially people in greater Minnesota, that they need to take some kind of action for protecting what they perceive to be threats to their gun rights,” said David Schultz, a professor of political science and law at the University of Minnesota and Hamline University.

Study Proves Mass Shootings Are NOT Becoming More Common

The researchers also noted that more kids are killed each year in incidents involving pools and bicycles than in all the school shootings combined.

Of course, this study didn’t get a whole lot of attention in the mainstream media. That’s not surprising. After all, they seem to be personally invested in selling the idea that our kids aren’t likely to survive to graduate because of some maniac with an AR-15 is going to kill them all. Yet looking at the average over the last 25 years, it’s easy to see that more students are killed in car crashes than by mass shooters.

So why does everyone freak over these?

For one thing, it’s not about the total numbers. It’s about the number of people killed per incident. It’s not about how many have been killed in the last quarter of a century or what the annual average. If a dozen die in a single incident, that’s an even bigger tragedy but if you spread those deaths over an entire year, it’s a statistic.

That’s what’s fueling much of this nonsense.

Washington “Spring Blade” Knife Ban Repeal Passed by House Judiciary Committee

Knife Rights: Washington state “Spring Blade” (Switchblade) Knife Ban Repeal bill, SB 5782, was reported out the House Civil Rights & Judiciary Committee by a 12-3 vote with a  “do pass” recommendation.  The next step would be a vote by the full House. We will let you know when it is time to contact House members.

Thanks to the hundreds of Washingtonians who used the Knife Rights’ Legislative Action Center to email the committee members. It had a huge impact!.

Knife Rights would also like to thank Committee Chair Christine Kilduff for allowing the bill to come for a vote and Ranking Member Morgan Irwin for his support.

Knife Rights’ has helped enact 16 Switchblade Ban or Restriction Repeals since 2010: Alaska, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin.

Second Amendment supporters attend militia muster call in Campbell County

CAMPBELL CO., Va. (WSET) — Campbell County joins the growing list of localities holding militia muster calls.

At least 300 people showed up to the militia muster call in Campbell County to protect their Second Amendment rights on Saturday.

The muster call was held on Leesville Road in Lynchburg.

Floyd County held the first militia muster in the area in January.

Bedford County followed suit two weeks ago.

Virginia Code 44-1 defines the four sections of Virginia’s militia which includes the unorganized militia.

Anyone ages 16 to 55 can join an unorganized militia, according to Virginia’s code.

Thomas Massie: If Voter ID Is a Tax on Voting Rights, Firearm Licensing Is a Tax on 2A Rights

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) used a Wednesday hearing to suggest that if Voter ID is a tax on voting rights, then firearm licensing is a tax on Second Amendment rights.

Massie made this point while cross-examining Voter ID opponents, contending that their arguments break down if they oppose issuance of ID’s for one constitutional right but look the other way when ID’s are required for the exercise of a a different right.

Fox News reported Timothy Jenkins, a witness in the hearing and board member of Teaching for Change, criticized Massie for bringing up licensing for gun rights during a discussion about licensing for voting rights.

Jenkins said:

Let me tell you this: that the whole business of being able to vote is not intermeshed with the business of bearing arms. You are taking the time that we’re trying to deal with a constitutional right to be a citizen and turning it into something else. Use another forum! We don’t have many opportunities to get a right to vote. We don’t have an opportunity to talk about the whole business of the way in which the Constitution has been distorted. And don’t take us off on some rabbit trail to talk about arms.

Jenkins also said, “Let the record show, that nobody has died because of their being deprived of bearing guns.”

Massie interjected:

What you’re saying, Mr. Jenkins, is absolutely incorrect. I had a staffer … who worked for me. She watched her husband be gunned down in front of her in a gun-free zone, because her firearm — she followed the law and left her firearm in the vehicle. So do not tell me, and do not tell her that nobody has ever died because they were deprived of their right to keep and bear arms.

In a separate but pertinent example, Breitbart News reported Carol Bowne applied for a license to possess a gun for self-defense in April 2015 and was stabbed to death on June 3, 2015, while waiting for the state of New Jersey to issue the license.

The Courier-Post reported Bowne sought state’s permission to have a gun so she could protect herself from a former boyfriend. It was he who was charged with stabbing Bowne to death as she waited for the state to grant her a license for gun ownership

 

Mike Bloomberg’s Campaign Has Fired Up At Least One Group: The NRA and Gun Owners.

Billionaire media mogul Michael Bloomberg’s presidential run helped gun-rights groups light a fire under owners of firearms who grew somewhat complacent in the era of President Trump.

Gun groups ranging from the National Rifle Association to Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership are whipping up their members with dire warnings about a potential President Bloomberg.

A former mayor of New York City who leapfrogged to the top-tier in the Democratic presidential race, Mr. Bloomberg has a long record of challenging the Second Amendment from his get-tough policies as mayor to bankrolling a massive gun control advocacy organization.

The National Association for Gun Rights alerted its members on social media to Mr. Bloomberg’s $300 million campaign to “DESTROY the Second Amendment,” calling on them to unite and stop “his anti-gun agenda.”

“Our members are motivated by Mike Bloomberg and have been for a while,” said Dudley Brown, president of the National Association for Gun Rights. “He is a billionaire and one of his main focuses has been spending his own personal money to destroy the Second Amendment. And he has been relatively successful. All of the groups on the left rely on his money.”

The NRA recently penned an editorial detailing the former mayor’s high-dollar push to limit soda consumption through taxes and shut down coal-fired power plants, arguing he will do the same to guns.

“Bloomberg has promised to spend ‘whatever it takes’ from his $55 billion personal fortune to control you from our nation’s capital,” the NRA article warned of his self-funded run for the Oval Office.

Amy Hunter, the NRA’s director of media relations, said Mr. Bloomberg is just like the other Democratic presidential candidates pushing for “registration, confiscation and bans,” but his deep pockets make him a top enemy for legal gun owners.

“His hypocritical desire to strip all Americans of their right to self-defense while he enjoys 24/7 armed security and his willingness to spend billions to destroy the Second Amendment make him a greater threat to those who cherish their constitutional rights,” said Ms. Hunter.

Alan Korwin, a consultant with Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, said the group is convinced Mr. Bloomberg’s goal is gun confiscation.

“He reflects everything that is wrong with the mainstream Jewish population in America. He doesn’t understand why guns are important and he takes a strictly anti-gun rights view. He wants to confiscate guns,” Mr. Korwin said.

Gun Control And Demographics: I

mmigrants Vote Against American Gun Rights

So Virginia gun owners just dodged a legislative bullet in the form of a proposed ban on so-called assault weapons. But a demographic bullet is still aimed right where it can do the most damage: the ballot box. The Great Replacement that Leftists celebrate—even as they call it a racist conspiracy theory—is the primary reason gun rights are in the crosshairs in Virginia and throughout the country. Immigration has consequences, meaning foreign-origin voters, and if the GOP doesn’t figure that out soon, gun rights will go the way of Confederate statues, along with other American rights currently undreamt of.

Consider the most recent near miss: Four moderate Democrats sided with Republicans in Virginia’s Senate to block a ban on semi-automatic sporting rifles such as the AR-15. Magazines of more than 12 rounds were targeted, too.

This provoked some eloquent opposition. “The people of Virginia are demanding that someone, anybody that is in power, please stand up and defend the Second Amendment,” said Sen. Amanda Chase, a gun-rights champion and GOP gubernatorial candidate. “If I am going to continue to do the law-abiding work of the people I am going to have to arm myself, so I went through all the training, got the licensing and all that and I will just tell you—I won’t miss” [‘We don’t need weapons of war’: Va. Gov. Northam reacts to failed assault weapons ban, by Tim Barber, WJLA.com, February 18, 2020].

Senator Chase was right: Real Virginians are indeed demanding that someone defend their rights, as the massive gun-rights rally on January 20 surely showed. But the last election results showed something else: Non-white Third World immigrants in Richmond and Northern Virginia who put the Democrats in power last election are doing their best to take those rights away.

“The 2020 legislative session kicked off shortly after noon with several history-making firsts as women and people of color assumed leadership roles previously held only by white men for the last 400 years,” gloated The Associated Press:

One of the House’s first acts was to elect Del. Eileen Filler-Corn as the new speaker, the first woman to serve in that role. She is also the first Jewish speaker.

Her top deputy, House Majority Leader Charniele Herring, is the first black woman to hold that role, and the House elected Suzette Denslow to be the first ever female clerk. Ghazala Hashmi, who unseated a Republican incumbent to help Democrats flip the Senate, became that chamber’s first Muslim female member.

[Newly empowered Virginia Democrats promise action, by Alan Suderman and Sarah Rankin, January 8, 2020]

The New York Times has published two separate articles that celebrate the immigrant-driven demographic displacement of white Virginians and what it means for those who still “cling to their guns or religion,” as the presidential scion of a Kenyan immigrant famously put it.

“Guns, that is the most pressing issue for me,” Indian engineer Vijay Katkuri told the Times of his vote for a Democrat. “There are lots of other issues, but you can only fix them if you are alive.” Enthused the NYT, “once the heart of the confederacy, Virginia is now the land of Indian grocery stores, Korean churches and Diwali festivals” [How Voters Turned Virginia From Deep Red to Solid Blue, by Sabrina Tavernise and Robert Gebeloff, November 9, 2019].

The paper gleefully noted that 10 percent of Virginian voters are foreign-born, up from 3.6 percent in 1990, and that the white population in Katkuris’ district has plummeted from 91 percent to 64 percent.

Such is the shift, the New York Times reported in its second tribute to The Great Replacement, that a Muslim woman born in India, Ghazal Hashmi, defeated an incumbent Republican in suburban Richmond:

At the root of this district’s—and Virginia’s—political transition is a slow-moving demographic change, a new kind of suburbanization that is sweeping through national politics. From Atlanta to Houston, this pattern is repeating itself—suburban housing developments gobbling up rural areas and farmland and lifting Democrats to power.

[What Made Virginia Change Its Mind on Guns? by Timothy Williams, January 30, 2020].

Of course, the GOP didn’t help its cause last year by leaving 33 General Assembly races uncontested—10 in House, 23 in the Senate—particularly given that Democrats control the House by a slim two votes and the Senate by 11. Nor can one ignore Michael Bloomberg’s 90-caliber shot at gun rights: $2.5 million that overwhelmed the National Rifle Association’s popgun [Mike Bloomberg’s gun-control group just vastly outspent the NRA to help Democrats win in Virginia, by Lauren Hirsch, CNBC, November 6, 2019].

But demographics are what mattered in the election and will matter long term, as MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough cheerily explained.

Tweeted the ex-conservative:

https://twitter.com/JoeNBC/status/1226906496170102795

Milwaukee Brewery Killings Highlight How Suppressed Information Enables Infringement

“The people are tired of Moscow Mitch’s deadly obstruction,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared in response to the Milwaukee brewery murders in a tweet that has since been taken down and replaced with a longer statement citing “universal background checks” as some sort of solution. “A year ago, we took action in the House to save lives. Every day that he and the Republican-controlled Senate refuse to act, 100 Americans are killed by gun violence.”

Since so little information was released at that time, how any citizen disarmament bill floated by Democrats would have had any impact on saving lives is left unsaid. And that’s intentional.

Michael Bloomberg, the bodyguarded gun-grabber who almost let slip that he had “bought” Pelosi, was quick to slam President Donald Trump and call for “background checks,” per CNN Politics.

Bloomberg’s “seed money” venture, The Trace, wasted no time exploiting the killings to push its agenda. “True” to its journalistic “ethics,” the report aimed at disarming those of us who behave ourselves, was co-written by the “daddy issues”-plagued flack whose father was a mob hitman.

And Vox, ignoring that correlation does not equal causation, played to those who don’t think things through and tried to tie the killing in with Wisconsin Republicans rejecting disarmament laws that ignore due process. That’s hardly a surprise — being disingenuous about guns is SOP for those guys.

We still don’t know much about what laws (besides the obvious) the lunatic may have ignored. Reports citing the police say he had “two handguns, one with a silencer,” but do not mention their “legality.” If his suppressor was owned in accordance with the rules, Pelosi’s background check argument goes out the window. If not, background checks won’t stop black-market transfers anyway. And can you imagine the field day the antis would be having had he used a quote/unquote “assault rifle”? One with “20, 30, 40, 50 clips in a weapon”…?

What deterrents may have been in place are unknown (by me) at this writing. Per Molson Coors Employment Principles:

“Workplace Security Molson Coors is committed to maintaining a workplace that is free from violence, harassment, intimidation and other unsafe or disruptive conditions due to internal and external threats. Security safeguards for employees are provided as needed and will be maintained with respect for employee privacy and dignity.”

How they meet that commitment is unclear. Especially since the facility’s “No Guns” policy was ignored.

When I started gathering links for this article earlier today, his identity had been unannounced, and that was just revealed as I was writing this. That fits right in with what I blogged last night before going to bed, nothing prescient, just a realization of the way these things always seem to be handled:

It’s been hours and we still haven’t been told who the killer is?  No doubt any social media accounts will be shut down before we do, meaning we will be entirely dependent on “authorities” and “Authorized Journalists” for information and unable to find any dots for connecting on our own.

Lo and behold, once the killer’s identity was released, we’re told his photo  was “taken from a family member’s Facebook page that has since been removed.” Yet despite what appears to be an attempt to bury relevant background information, it was internet sleuths, not “Authorized Journalists,” who uncovered an Elizabeth Warren connection.

The first thing that’s obvious is we’re not talking about one of those “white right-wing nationalists” we’re constantly being warned are the greatest threat we face. If the killer had been one, and if he had social media posts brimming with sentiments that allow “progressives” to dismiss anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders as a Nazi, it would be headline news. It certainly would not have taken this long to release who he was, and odds are good some of his more egregious posts would have survived, at least in screenshot form. As it is, the victims are being blamed for racism, and that’s in spite of a corporate “code of conduct” policy that is now being alleged to work every bit as well as its “security safeguards.”

This in itself is dangerous to freedom. By hiding his identity until they’ve got their ducks lined up, and by ensuring his internet tracks have been swept to only release information supportive of the narrative being told by “the authorities,” our ability to glean public interest information, which is needed to be informed, self-governing citizens, is diminished and effectively deprived.  If our only source of that information is the government, disseminated and amplified through its media mouthpieces, our system becomes no more credible or any less manipulative and tyrannical than China’s or Iran’s.

When that’s the only information out there, demagogues like Pelosi and Bloomberg can say whatever they damn well please without fear of being contradicted, or at least given a reality check. That’s the stuff that influences public opinion and finds its way into legislation with real-world effects on our freedoms.

I’m not sure what the solution is, but it’s one I’d like to see made part of a wider conversation. One can make the case that some information should be withheld pending notification of family members, and other information is temporarily suppressible because public dissemination may have an impact on police investigations, criminal proceedings, national security and the like.

That said, there ought to be a way to find out more about such freaks without government automatically putting their backgrounds on lockdown. Questions about what kind of causes and candidates a killer identified with are unquestionably relevant, not only to protect innocent parties from being blamed and smeared, but to keep political opportunists from circumventing the truth, exploiting ignorance, and imposing more infringements. Significantly, they can only get away with that when key facts are suppressed by those whose mandate should be “to secure the Blessings of Liberty,” and to enforce rights as well as laws.

Gun Owners Cause Peace- the amazing experiment in Richmond, Virginia proves the media wrong.

The mainstream media tells us that guns cause crime. The media shows us night after night that guns are bad. We see it in their “news” and in their Hollywood dramas. We recently conducted another massive public experiment and the results contradict the media’s story about guns. We put tens of thousands of armed men and women on the street in one small area. The rate of crime dropped precipitously when these armed civilians were there. Guns brought peace. Let me show you what happened.

Virginia Capital on Second Amendment Rally Day

Twenty-five-to-fifty thousand people came to the Virginia Capital on one morning to lobby the legislature. Once they filled the capital grounds, they overflowed into the streets in every direction.

A few thousand people deliberately disarmed to enter the capitol building. I can’t prove that everyone else was armed, but the vast majority of them were since this was a second-amendment protest. Judging from the pictures I’ve seen and the people I’ve talked to, for each person who was not armed at the rally, there was another person who carried multiple firearms. Call it one gun per person in round numbers.

Show us your badges- Virginia Gun Owners Rally Day in Richmond

I couldn’t find reports of violent crime in the area of the protests when I searched the news and police records. The protesters even brought trash bags and left the city streets cleaner than they’d found them. The single reported arrest I could find was of a counter-protester.

Video from ground level- https://t.co/NXZPwDxpPG

This peaceful gathering isn’t a surprise once you study the record of legally armed civilians in the US. We’ve seen this phenomenon before and I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I routinely stand in a room with twenty-to-thirty thousand armed individuals. I’ve done that over a dozen times and the results are uniformly boring.

I’ve never seen violence at those sites. I’ll go a step further and say that people are polite and there is very little conflict of any kind. We’ve searched police records and the rate of crime drops in every city when that many gun owners gather together. A public experiment on that scale is a sociologist’s dream come true.

Honest gun-owners bring peace rather than crime and conflict.

It is remarkable when we gather that many gun owners together, and we conduct that experiment for free year after year. You could argue that we conduct a similar experiment every day when these honest gun owners return home and go about their lives.. armed. We are there day after day, but concealed is concealed, and you never see us.

That leaves an obvious question unanswered. Ask yourself why the media continues to sell the lie that guns and legally armed citizens cause crime.

 

Support the Constitutional Carry Bill in Louisiana

Maybe Louisiana and Tennessee will be added to the list of permitless carry states this year.

House Bill number 72 is the “Louisiana Constitutional Carry Act of 2020.” H.B. 72 says that you may carry a concealed firearm unless you are a prohibited person under state and federal law. This is commonly called constitutional carry or permitless carry. In short, if it was legal for you to get a permit and carry in public then the bill allows you to carry in public. If it was illegal for you to carry in public, then it remains illegal for you to carry in public.

The usual objection to constitutional carry is that we’ll have more accidents if untrained people carry in public. We have not seen more firearms accidents after constitutional carry when we look at the data. Where we have been able to measure it, we see people take more firearms classes once we remove the minimum state requirements to carry in public. The state permit acted as an artificial floor for training. Gun owners drove themselves to higher levels of training and competence when that floor was removed. It is past time for us to remove the firearms prohibitions that have their roots in the civil war.

Thomas Massie: If Voter ID Is a Tax on Voting Rights, Firearm Licensing Is a Tax on 2A Rights

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) used a Wednesday hearing to suggest that if Voter ID is a tax on voting rights, then firearm licensing is a tax on Second Amendment rights.

Massie made this point while cross-examining Voter ID opponents, contending that their arguments break down if they oppose issuance of ID’s for one constitutional right but look the other way when ID’s are required for the exercise of a a different right.

Fox News reported Timothy Jenkins, a witness in the hearing and board member of Teaching for Change, criticized Massie for bringing up licensing for gun rights during a discussion about licensing for voting rights.

Jenkins said:

Let me tell you this: that the whole business of being able to vote is not intermeshed with the business of bearing arms. You are taking the time that we’re trying to deal with a constitutional right to be a citizen and turning it into something else. Use another forum! We don’t have many opportunities to get a right to vote. We don’t have an opportunity to talk about the whole business of the way in which the Constitution has been distorted. And don’t take us off on some rabbit trail to talk about arms.

Jenkins also said, “Let the record show, that nobody has died because of their being deprived of bearing guns.”

Massie interjected:

What you’re saying, Mr. Jenkins, is absolutely incorrect. I had a staffer … who worked for me. She watched her husband be gunned down in front of her in a gun-free zone, because her firearm — she followed the law and left her firearm in the vehicle. So do not tell me, and do not tell her that nobody has ever died because they were deprived of their right to keep and bear arms.

In a separate but pertinent example, Breitbart News reported Carol Bowne applied for a license to possess a gun for self-defense in April 2015 and was stabbed to death on June 3, 2015, while waiting for the state of New Jersey to issue the license.

The Courier-Post reported Bowne sought state’s permission to have a gun so she could protect herself from a former boyfriend. It was he who was charged with stabbing Bowne to death as she waited for the state to grant her a license for gun ownership.

Gov. Bill Lee’s (Tennesee) permitless carry bill set to bolster penalties for stealing guns

Standing in a building that prohibits guns while surrounded by dozens of Republican lawmakers, Gov. Bill Lee announced Thursday plans to introduce legislation that would let Tennesseans carry handguns without first obtaining a permit while increasing penalties for illegal gun possession and thefts.

The governor’s sudden support for such legislation is a reversal from his previous public statements, a significant departure from his predecessor and a signal of Tennessee’s tilt toward the more conservative wing of the Republican Party.

“The Second Amendment’s clear and concise and secures the uninfringed right of law abiding citizens to keep and bear arms,” Lee said inside the Old Supreme Court chamber at the state Capitol in Nashville. “Today, I’m announcing that we will be joining 16 other states in this nation by introducing a constitutional carry law in the state of Tennessee.”

Lee and his legislative colleagues presented the measure as one that would make Tennessee safer, a claim immediately met with pushback from critics.

The initiative would allow for both open and concealed carrying of handguns for people 21 and older. The permitless carry right would also be extended to military members who are 18 to 20.

The governor said the legislation is aimed at making theft of a firearm a felony, an offense that is currently a misdemeanor in Tennessee. It will also mandate a six-month incarceration sentence for the crime, up from the current 30-day requirement.

If approved, sentencing will be enhanced when a gun is stolen from a car, as well as for providing a handgun to a juvenile and unlawful possession of a handgun by a felon.