Category: RKBA
Illinois Gun Owners Not Rushing to Register Their Guns Under New Law
Illinois passed a draconian gun control measure last year that, after surviving various legal challenges, has become law.
One of the law’s requirements is that owners of certain kinds of rifles must register them with the state police or risk being arrested. The deadline for registering the guns is January 1, 2024 and let’s just say there’s not a rush to register the firearms.
As of November 21, just 3,439 owners had registered nearly 6,600 guns they owned before those firearms became illegal to possess or sell in Illinois. How many firearms are affected in the state? We know that the registered weapons through November 21 represent less than 0.1% of the 2.4 million firearms in the state.
“We’ll just see how the process continues to work and we’ll share the data as we continue on a daily basis to do so,” Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly said during an unrelated event in Springfield.
“I can tell you, at least for me, that I think all of us take our time sometimes when we know the deadline is 2 ½ months (away), that we’ll find the time eventually to go online, which is what they need to do and to register as they’re required to do,” Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker said. That’s true, except there aren’t 2 ½ months before the deadline for registration. There are a little more than five weeks until the deadline.
People who owned those guns before Jan. 10 but don’t register them with the Illinois State Police by Jan. 1, can be charged with a misdemeanor for a first offense and felonies for subsequent violations.
But earlier this year, some law enforcement officials declared they had no intention of going after those who violate the law. After Pritzker signed the gun ban into law, an estimated 90 of Illinois’ 102 county sheriffs issued letters stating they “believe that (the new gun law) is a clear violation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution” and that they wouldn’t enforce it.
That’s an amazing stand by the sheriffs, many of whom sent an identical letter to state politicians which states “as the custodian of the jail and chief law enforcement officer” of their county, they will not “be arresting or housing law-abiding individuals that have been arrested solely with noncompliance” with the state’s new ban on some military-style weapons and magazines.”
Many of these sheriffs stood their ground against the unconstitutional COVID restrictions as well. Whether the legal theory they are basing their decision on will stand a Supreme Court remains to be seen.
No one needs an AR-15 for protection
Dear Editor: At the front and center of the debate on firearm possession and use is the AR-15 style weapon, where a line of demarcation has been drawn.
One side wants to own and use those guns publicly. The other side wants them banned publicly and for protection purposes. The AR-15 style weapon is essentially a weapon for war. There is no war in our country. No one needs to have those guns for protection.
I ask myself why proponents for owning a weapon of war deride a ban of those weapons. Is there an invisible war? And I seriously doubt they really believe a second ban of the AR-15 style would just be the beginning of a new assault on the Second Amendment. Nor that 77,000 newly hired IRS agents will be coming to take their guns.
This leaves me to think they just do not want anyone telling them what guns they can have, how they use them or the qualifications for possession.
Public safety and gun laws play second fiddle to unfettered want of individual liberty. I don’t know about you, but it sure seems to me the anarchy movement is alive and well in our country.
Bill Walters
Fitchburg
A Reversal in Rahimi Will Be Tougher to Write Than Critics Admit
Courts are “not insensitive to domestic violence” but are “sensitive to the constitutional rights of the accused.
The conventional wisdom is that the Supreme Court will certainly reverse the Fifth Circuit in Rahimi. Indeed I’ve voiced that position myself several times, especially in light of a potential grant in Range. (The New York Times picked up Justice Barrett’s question). But let me challenge that conventional wisdom: an opinion reversing Rahimi will be tougher to write than most critics will admit.
Let’s start with a premise: Rahimi was a faithful application of Bruen. Efforts to “clarify” Bruen are really an attempt to rewrite the precedent. I don’t think anyone seriously doubts this premise. Now the reason why the Court may “clarify” Bruen is because certain members of the Court don’t like the results that it yields: namely, that a dangerous person like Rahimi can possess a firearm. Again, the correctness of the Bruen precedent should be able to stand without regard to how it may be applied in future cases. But that’s where we are. Some members of the Court who profess to be originalists are still motivated by consequentialism. And these concerns came out loud and clear during oral argument.
Still, there is a long time between November and June. A majority opinion has to be written. And that opinion will have to navigate an issue that didn’t get much attention during oral argument: what other constitutional rights should dangerous people lose? Certainly this case can’t just be about guns.
One of my first published articles, The Constitutionality of Social Cost, was published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy in 2011. I had started thinking about the topic in 2009, before McDonald v. Chicago was decided. The basic premise of my article was that there are many dangerous rights, and the Second Amendment was not an outlier. Here is a snippet from the introduction:
Although the Second Amendment has been singled out from its brethren in the Bill of Rights as the most dangerous right, it is not the only dangerous right. The Supreme Court has developed over a century of jurisprudence to deal with forms of liberty that yield negative externalities.
The right to speak freely is balanced with the possible harm that can result from people preaching hate, violence, intolerance, and even fomenting revolution. The freedom of the press permits the media to report on matters that may harm national security. The freedom of association allows people to congregate to advocate for certain types of violence.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures enables the possession of the fruits and instrumentalities of crime with impunity. Inculpatory evidence seized in violation of this right is generally inadmissible during trial, permitting crimes to go unpunished.
Likewise, a violation of a person’s Miranda rights renders certain confessions—even an uncoerced inculpatory confession—inadmissible. Procedural rights during the criminal trial—including the right to grand jury indictment, the right against self‐incrimination, the right against double jeopardy, the right of compulsory process, the right of confrontation, the right of a speedy and public trial, and the right of trial by jury—all make the prosecution of culpable defendants significantly harder.
The Due Process Clause, which imposes limitations on all government actions, places the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt on the prosecution. The right to non‐excessive bail and reasonable fines make it easier for suspects to avoid prison during prosecutions and may allow them to abscond before trial.
The right against cruel and unusual punishments removes certain forms of retribution from the quiver of the state, thereby limiting the range of punishments for those found guilty of a crime. The right of habeas corpus ensures that a person—however dangerous—cannot be detained indefinitely without proper procedures.
Liberty’s harm to society takes many forms—not just from the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms. These precedents show how the Court balances freedom and the harm that may result from its exercise. Although a “primary concern of every government [is] a concern for the safety and indeed the lives of its citizens,” this concern is not constitutionally sacrosanct.
Not much has changed since I wrote these words more than a decade ago. The Supreme Court, often with lopsided majorities, protects the constitutional rights of very dangerous people. Yet when it comes to the Second Amendment, it’s as if all of these precedents vanish.
Salon Says ‘Guns Are Winning.’ Why That’s a Good Thing
Guns have been part of the American way of life since before this nation was this nation. The American people have had guns for hunting and self-defense as well as defending this land from foreign aggression all that time.
But some people are less than thrilled about this fact.
Today, marks the 60th anniversary of the assassination of JFK. In the wake of that murder, the Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed, in part to prevent someone like Lee Harvey Oswald from being able to get a gun in the manner in which he obtained it.
Yet over at Salon, they have a piece titled, “60 years after the assassination of JFK: The guns are winning.”
Since JFK’s murder, more Americans have died from civilian gunfire than the well over one million American soldiers killed in all of our wars, according to a flyer circulated by the Virginia Center for Public Safety back in January of 2016. A PolitiFact review of the claim noted that the federal Centers of Disease Control and Prevention analysis “of yearly gunfire deaths in the U.S. from 1968 to 2014” all added up to 1.5 million gun-related deaths, greater than the 1.4 million lost to armed conflict since the creation of the nation.
Between 2015 and 2020, the United States had an additional 237,000 gun deaths. In 2021, the United States set a record with 48,830 gun-related deaths, with 54 percent flagged as suicides and 43 percent as murders. Overall, that reflected a 23 percent spike since 2019, according to the Pew Research Center.
It is sixty years after JFK’s murder and the guns are winning with the nation’s children and their families that are increasingly losing.
Maybe it’s just me, but if you’re going to look at total numbers since JFK’s assassination, particularly with regard to guns, then maybe we should look at trends from that time and not cherry pick things to look as scary as possible.
JFK was killed in 1963. The Gun Control Act followed five years later. Not an immediate reaction, to say the least, but looking at the provisions in that law makes it clear it was, in part, a response to the assassination.
And what happened immediately after JFK was killed and continued after the GCA was passed? The homicide rate increased.
That’s from the New York Times. What it shows is an increase in the homicide rate that spiked up in the aftermath of the Gun Control Act and continued to be sky high until the early 1990s and didn’t really get down to the early 1960s homicide rate until around 2010 or so.
During that time, we didn’t see a whole lot of gun control being passed. The Brady Bill was passed in 1993 and we had the now-sunset Assault Weapon Ban in 1994, but violent crime was already starting its downward trend, nearly 30 years after JFK’s assassination.
While the last few years have seen a spike in violent crime, that too is trending downward.
So what happened? Well, during that time period, we also saw the rise of concealed carry. States began empowering people to carry guns for their own protection and people started taking advantage of it. That likely contributed
The Assault Weapon Ban spurred a lot of people to buy AR-15s and similar weapons, creating a demand that still hasn’t been satiated. As these are good weapon for self-defense inside the home, this probably also contributed.
See, the issue with the Salon piece is that it’s blaming recent laws and recent actions from the last 30 years for violent crime that took place in the 30 years immediately after JFK’s death.
As guns have become more popular and people are carrying them more often, the homicide rate has trended downward. Even the spike of 2020 was nothing compared to the murder rates of the 1970s and ’80s.
So, in a way, the premise is right, even if not for the reason the author wants us to think. The guns really are winning. They’re making us safer.
The media might not make it seem that way, especially when you can see all the violence with a few keystrokes, but we’re much better off than we were shortly after JFK’s assassination, and I’m tired of pretending we’re not.
West Michigan town forms militia to protest red flag gun laws
Holton Township in Muskegon County last week voted to declare itself a “Second Amendment sanctuary,” and went one step further than the 50-plus Michigan communities and counties that have passed similar resolutions.
The township of about 2,500 residents also passed a resolution to create a militia and refuse to enforce any gun restriction law passed before 2021.
The resolution was passed days before Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Monday signed legislation that prevents those convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors from owning firearms for eight years.
Holton Supervisor Alan Jager told Bridge Michigan the overwhelming majority of township residents support the move because they fear their rights are slipping away, especially after Michigan adopted a “red flag law” that allows judges to seize weapons of those deemed a danger to themselves or others.
“You just can’t come in and take our weapons away without giving us a fighting chance to stand up for ourselves because we may not be guilty of anything,” Jager said.
“We would just like to see local people stand up and say, ‘You just can’t do this and pass these laws’ because it may be good for the city but not good for rural communities.”
The township tried and failed to pass a similar resolution last year. The new resolution — which was approved unanimously — also creates a militia open to anyone 18, and older who primarily lives in Holton Township.
“ Holton Township will not acknowledge any new laws that are associated with red flag laws, or any other infringement of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. Holton Township will not acknowledge any new regulation that prohibits open carry or concealed carry,” the resolution reads.
Michigan in May became the 21st state to adopt a red flag law, but the measure doesn’t take effect until Feb. 13. The law would allow relatives, current and ex-spouses, dating partners, police and mental health professionals to petition courts for an extreme risk protection order to take away guns from those with mental health issues.
A judge would have up to 24 hours to rule on the petition. If granted, police would notify the gun owner, who then has up to 24 hours to turn over their weapons before they are confiscated.
In Michigan, at least 53 of 82 mostly rural counties have passed resolutions declaring themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries. While some law enforcement have questioned how the red flag law would be enforced, the sanctuary resolutions are nonbinding, since county and township officials can’t direct sheriffs or police to flout the law.
“This is all political grandstanding for the far-right gun extremists,” said Ryan Bates, executive director of End Gun Violence Michigan, an organization dedicated to passing gun violence prevention laws.
“We’ve seen this in other states, where gun-sense majorities have passed laws like safe storage, like extreme risk protection orders, like protection for domestic violences survivors.”
In Illinois,68 of 102 counties are Second Amendment Sanctuaries, while over a dozen counties in Indiana have also passed similar resolutions.
“At the end of the day, most law enforcement officials understand that laws aren’t suggestions or guidelines, they are laws,” Bates said.
Harvard Poll: 6 in 10 Voters Say Owning a Gun is a Necessary Part of Self-Defense Against Crime
A Harvard/Harris poll conducted November 15-16, 2023, shows six in ten voters believe owning a gun is a necessary part of protecting themselves from criminals.
Poll researchers asked: “Do you think crime and safety in your community is getting better, worse, or staying about the same?”
Forty-two percent of voters said “worse,” versus 21 percent who said better. (Forty-nine percent of independents were among those who said crime is worsening.)
Researchers asked, “Do you think you need to have a gun today in case you are attacked by criminals, or do you think owning a gun is unnecessary?”
A majority of voters across the board–whether Democrat, Republican, or independent–answered in the affirmative.
Broken down by party affiliation, 54 percent of Democrats said owning a gun is necessary, 77 percent of Republicans, and 56 percent of independents.
Moreover, a majority of American voters believe “woke politicians” are a driving force behind crime in the United States.
Fifty-five percent of voters concurred that “Woke politicians are to blame for rising crime,” while 45 percent disagreed. An even larger majority of voters–67 percent–support “removing DA’s who are soft on crime.”
Nebraska has state preemption of gun control laws. This is simply virtue signaling and will result in a waste of taxpayers money
Omaha Mayor Signs Ban on ‘Bump Stocks,’ Gun Kits
Omaha, Nebraska, Mayor Jean Stothert signed two gun-control measures this month, one that bans “bump stocks” and the other that bans gun-building kits.
Nebraska’s elections are nonpartisan, but Stothert identified as Republican “in her filing for the 2017 election,” Ballotpedia reported.
The Nebraska Examiner noted that Stothert signed the ban on “bump stocks” Thursday, and she signed the ban on gun-building kits November 9.
The gun controls signed by Stothert appear to be leading to legal challenges against Omaha. Those readying the legal challenges point to legislation Gov. Jim Pillen (R) signed earlier this year removing the “local charter authority” Omaha had used to pass stricter controls than exist at the state level.
In the spring of 2023, Stothert issued an executive order prohibiting concealed carry in “every building owned or leased by the city,” according to WOWT. She did this in response to Nebraska’s shift to constitutional carry.
Huge: Fourth Circuit Declares Maryland’s ‘Handgun Qualification License’ Unconstitutional
A decade ago, Maryland lawmakers imposed a new burden on residents hoping to exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear a handgun by creating a “Handgun Qualification License.” Before any would-be gun owner can take possession of a pistol, they must first jump through several state-mandated hoops, from submitting fingerprints as part of a background check investigation to taking a four-hour-long “firearms safety training course” that includes the firing of at least one live round of ammunition. After waiting 30 days or more for approval, the would-be gun owner then has to go through another background check and an arbitrary seven-day waiting period before they can take possession of their pistol, though they must run another bureaucratic gauntlet before they’re actually allowed to carry the sidearm in self-defense.
On Monday a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded what Second Amendment activists have been arguing for years; the Handgun Qualification License is an unconstitutional barrier to exercising a fundamental right. In a 2-1 decision, the majority declared that the “plaintiffs challenge must succeed”; reversing a district court opinion and delivering an important victory to the Firearms Policy Coalition, Maryland Shall Issue, the Independence Institute, Atlantic Guns, and several individual residents who’d sued over the permit requirement.
The challenged law restricts the ability of law-abiding adult citizens to possess handguns, and the state has not presented a historical analogue that justifies its restriction; indeed, it has seemingly admitted that it couldn’t find one.
Under the Supreme Court’s new burden-shifting test for these claims, Maryland’s law thus fails, and we must enjoin its enforcement. So we reverse the district court’s contrary decision.
Applying the Supreme Court’s “history, text, and tradition” test to the Maryland statute, the Fourth Circuit panel determined that there are no historical analogues to the modern-day gun control law. Importantly, the panel ruled that while the HQL doesn’t directly deal with either keeping or bearing arms, but rather their acquisition, the gun control law still directly implicates and imposes on the Second Amendment rights of residents.
The answer is not complicated. If you do not already own a handgun, then the only way to “keep” or “bear” one is to get one, either through sale, rental, or gift. And the challenged law cuts off all three avenues—at least, for those who do not comply with its terms.
That brings us to the next wrinkle: The challenged law does not permanently prohibit Plaintiffs from acquiring or carrying handguns. Instead, it imposes certain requirements that they must meet before they can obtain a handgun. And those requirements rely on “objective” criteria, which Plaintiffs admit that they can satisfy. Once they do so, the law commands that the state “shall issue” them handgun-qualification licenses.
But even though Maryland’s law does not prohibit Plaintiffs from owning handguns at some time in the future, it still prohibits them from owning handguns now. In order to get a handgun, Plaintiffs still have to follow all of the law’s steps. And, although they will be able to complete each one, it is impossible to do so right away.
Plaintiffs can’t receive a license to legally acquire a handgun until the state reviews their applications, which can take up to thirty days. So, no matter what Plaintiffs do, there will be a period of up to thirty days where their ability to get a handgun is completely out of their control.
In other words, though it does not permanently bar Plaintiffs from owning handguns, the challenged law deprives them of that ability until their application is approved, no matter what they do.
As the panel reasoned, there’s nothing in the language of the text of the Second Amendment or the Bruen decision that suggests the amendment protects “only against laws that permanently deprive people of the ability to keep and bear arms.” A right delayed is a right denied, and the “temporary deprivation that Plaintiffs allege is a facially plausible Second Amendment violation.”
Anti Constitutional Carry Study Assumes Gun Laws Stop Criminals
A John Hopkins study critical of constitutional carry rests on the assumption that gun laws and/or regulations deter criminals from being armed in the commission of crimes.
The study was conducted by researchers at the John Hopkins/Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions.
Researchers began the presentation of their study by pointing to various means of concealed carry permit issuance, specifically “may issue” and “shall issue,” noting that a “may issue” scenario allows a local sheriff or other issuing authority the discretion to deny a concealed carry permit even if the applicant has no criminal record. On the other hand, in a “shall issue” state, the issuing authority must approve a concealed carry application if the applicant has no criminal or mental health history preventing issuance.
The researchers note certain requirements/regulations tied to “shall issue” that they view in a positive light:
Some states require applicants to undergo live firearm training, requiring a certain number of hours at a firing range and/or proficiency (e.g., applicants must hit a designated target with 70% of their shots). These provisions ensure all CCW permit holders have demonstrated that they can safely discharge a gun prior to carrying a loaded handgun in public. Other shall issue states prohibit those with violent misdemeanor convictions from obtaining a CCW permit.
The researchers then make the leap and, in the second paragraph of the study, reveal their belief that gun laws and/or regulations deter criminals from being armed: “In the absence of a state law prohibiting the purchase or possession of guns by violent misdemeanants, these provisions serve as the only legal means from keeping previously dangerous individuals from carrying a loaded handgun in public spaces.”
There are immediate problems with the researchers’ assumption. One such problem is that the state with the most stringent gun control–California–is also the state that had the most “active shooter incidents” in 2021. Moreover, it is the state in which over 17 percent of annual firearm deaths in the United States occur.
Additionally, CNN noted that California had four mass shootings during one week in January 2023.
The gun violence in California appears to counter John Hopkins researchers’ assumption that gun laws deter criminals from using guns.
How to Fix Damage Done to 2nd Amendment by Joe Biden
The Biden-Harris administration has done more harm to the Second Amendment than all previous administrations combined. Biden and his unelected, behind-the-scenes shot-callers have been methodical in their multifaceted war on our civil rights.
The next administration — if it’s one that actually respects the law and its citizens — will have a lot of work to do to restore the Second Amendment to what the Framers had in mind. It will be a daunting task. The Biden-Harris administration has hammered law-abiding Americans with dozens of infringements — aided and abetting by the legacy media and a variety of anti-civil rights groups, some of which received taxpayer dollars.
What follows is a list of suggestions for how to restore our civil rights. The list is neither complete nor comprehensive. It’s more of a starting point and, unlike the Constitution, a living document. It includes actions that can be taken immediately and long-term goals that may require Congressional support.
Side bar news flash, all firearms can be used to inflict mortal wounds.
Sugarmann Still Twisting the Narrative as Anti-Gun Groups Attack Ruger
As Second Amendment supporters, we may not have heard it all, but we sure have heard a lot. And by what I’m speaking about is the bovine excrement served as rhetoric from the anti-civil liberties camp. Josh Sugarmann is about as deceptive as they come concerning verbiage used to damage the Second Amendment. Sugarmann is the force behind so-called “assault weapons,” noting an ignorant public won’t be able to discern the difference between semi-automatic firearms and fully-automatic firearms. Recently Sugarmann went on a deceptive tear against Ruger, and the other anti-civil liberty vultures followed suit – or perhaps coordinated.
Two weeks ago in Lewiston, Maine, we saw once again the horrific price our nation pays as the gun industry relentlessly innovates for lethality—and mass shooters repeatedly use military-bred semiautomatic assault weapons for the exact purpose for which they were designed.
Soon after this most recent attack, the VPC released a 13-page backgrounder on the Ruger assault rifle reportedly used in the shooting, which one gun magazine describes as “easy to carry, fast to the shoulder, and packing the punch of an old school .30-caliber battle rifle.”
The report’s release is just one way in which the VPC continues to focus attention on America’s unregulated gun industry and works to hold it accountable for the deaths and injuries that result from its products.
At the same time, nearly 134 Americans die each day in gun suicides, homicides, and unintentional deaths.
As illustrated above, Sugarmann continues to use the term he coined, “assault weapons” pairing the descriptor with the modifier “military-bred” – whatever that is. The 13 page “backgrounder” referenced is worth a gander if you have the stomach for garbage. The report lists alleged mass shootings that were conducted with Ruger manufactured firearms.
BLUF
Post-Bruen, just as what happened after Heller, many federal courts are trying to stymie the obvious results of the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment decisions. A continued effort by Second Amendment advocates will be required to ensure proper enforcement of these landmark rulings.
Seventh Circuit Strains to Uphold Illinois’ Gun and Magazine Ban
At this point, gun owners and other productive Americans don’t anticipate much good news out of Chicago. On November 3, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit lived up to those expectations when it upheld Illinois’ ban on commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms in Herrera v. Raoul.
In early 2023, Illinois enacted the ill-titled Protect Illinois Communities Act. That legislation, among its numerous anti-gun provisions, prohibits commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms such as the AR-15 and ammunition magazines with a capacity greater than 10 rounds. Current owners of prohibited guns are only permitted to retain their property if they register their firearms with the government. The plaintiffs in the present case challenged Illinois’ statute on Second Amendment grounds.
This may have seemed like an open-and-shut case to some who follow Second Amendment jurisprudence.
In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects ownership of arms “in common use” for lawful purposes. In case there was any confusion about what “arms” that might entail, Heller decision author Justice Antonin Scalia cleared that up in 2015 when he signed onto a dissent from the denial of certiorari in Friedman v. Highland Park. In the dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas explained,
Roughly five million Americans own AR-style semiautomatic rifles. The overwhelming majority of citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful purposes, including self-defense and target shooting. Under our precedents, that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons.
Commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms have only become more common since Heller and the Highland Park case. In 2022, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (the firearm industry trade association) estimated that since 1990 more than 24 million modern sporting rifles (their term for commonly-owned semi-automatic rifles) have entered circulation in the U.S. A 2023 Washington Post poll found that “6 percent of Americans own an AR-15, about 1 in 20.” Given compelling research finding that polling systematically undercounts the number of gun owners in the U.S., that number may be far higher.
The standard capacity firearm magazines Illinois prohibits are not just common, but ubiquitous. Many of the most popular handguns and rifles in America are designed to use magazines with a capacity greater than 10 rounds. Americans own hundreds of millions of firearm magazines with a capacity greater than ten rounds.
If Heller weren’t enough, in 2022 the U.S. Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Justice Clarence Thomas’s opinion made clear that in order for a firearm regulation to pass constitutional muster it must fit within the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment right. As the dissent in the present case noted, “’in common use’ is a sufficient condition for finding arms protected under the history and tradition test in Bruen.” However, for a firearm restriction to be permissible it must meet that further burden.
Specifically, the Bruen opinion explained,
[w]hen the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s “unqualified command.”
Given that the concept of an “assault weapons” ban targeting semi-automatic long guns came about in the 1980s only after gun control advocates failed to ban their preferred target (handguns), such prohibitions have no place in the American tradition.
To uphold the Illinois ban, the Seventh Circuit set about contending that the AR-15 falls outside the definition of “bearable arms” discussed and protected in Heller. According to the Judge Diane Wood,
the definition of “bearable Arms” extends only to weapons in common use for a lawful purpose. That lawful purpose, as we have said several times, is at its core the right to individual self-defense.
Wood contended that firearms that are prominent in military purposes fall outside this definition and are therefore not arms covered by the Second Amendment. Wood then claimed that the AR-15, despite its solely semi-automatic function, resembles the fully-automatic military M16 sufficiently for it to also fall outside the Second Amendment’s protection.
A Well-Outfitted Militia: German Translation of the Second Amendment Offers Insight
There’s a perennial debate in gun politics in the United States. The gun control side makes various specious arguments claiming that the Second Amendment protects muskets and not modern arms, that the right to keep and bear arms belongs to a select militia like the National Guard, not We the People, and that “well-regulated” authorizes the de facto destruction of our rights via regulation.
Those of us who have studied the copious scholarly research on the text and history of the Second Amendment know that those arguments are bunk. We know that the right to keep and bear arms is not dependent on militia service. We know that the right extends to modern arms, much like the First Amendment is applicable to modern forms of communication. We know that “well-regulated” means in proper working order, not choking off that right while pretending to nurture it.
To further support the originalist interpretation of the Second Amendment, there’s insight offered from an uncommon source: the re-translation into English of founding era documents originally translated into German. The following is the abstract from an academic paper published in the American Journal of Legal History:
A Well-Outfitted Militia: German–American Translations of the Second Amendment and Original Public Meaning
By Brandon KinneyThis article seeks to uncover the original public meaning of the Second Amendment by scrutinizing unusual and previously unexamined sources: German–American translations of the Bill of Rights during the Founding Era. Translations offer a unique perspective of political culture, because they served as thoughtful analysis and contextual commentary on the source text.
Using six German–American translations in the Founding Era, this article argues that the public understanding of the Second Amendment during the Founding Era was one that recognized the individual right to own firearms for individual use unconnected to militia service as well as a constitutional endorsement of an armed population as the best bulwark to preserve the liberty of the national people.
Though the exact text of the translations differ across publishers and states, they retain thematic and syntactic similarities that suggest a public consensus over the meaning of the text. The notion that the Second Amendment protects an individual right rather than a collective one is borne out by additional translations well into the mid-nineteenth century.
Printers adjusted their translations of the amendment after the militia as a military institution had fallen into disuse but preserved or strengthened the clause protecting the individual right to arms rather than letting it ‘fall silent’.
There’s a Federal court case in Texas where a man filed a Form1 to make a MG and ATF (of course) denied it. This keeps up and SCOTUS just may get involved, and I’m not the only one thinking that, at the very least, the 1986 ban on new ‘transferable’ guns may get the axe under the “Bruen test” .
Attorney with local ties takes gun rights case to federal appeals court
An attorney and Nixa resident with ties to the area has a case related to gun rights making its way through the federal appeals court system after it was rejected by the U.S. District Court, Western District of Missouri, headquartered in Springfield.
The case has been appealed and will now move to the Eighth District Circuit Court of Appeals, primarily based in St. Louis.
Mark Blount, representing himself, is arguing against the National Firearms Act prohibition on possession of ordinary military weapons manufactured after 1986, with the defendants listed as the United States of America; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF); Merrick Garland acting as Attorney General of the United States; and Bernard G. Hansen, acting as Special Agent in Charge of the ATF Kansas City Field Division.
The case background describes Blount’s complaint regarding the National Firearms Act, the Gun Control Act and the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986, all considered by Blount as unconstitutional, based on his argument the laws collectively infringe upon and deprive him of “ancient, inalienable, private, individual, absolute, ancestral sovereign common law right to keep and bear arms, retained by ancestors, the Founders of this country, and enumerated in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, by prohibiting Plaintiff from possessing machine guns of all descriptions manufactured after 1986.”
Blount specifically complains his constitutional rights are being infringed upon because, according to court documents, he “plans on purchasing an M-16 rifle, M-4 rifle, Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW), or other machine gun which comprises the standard issue equipment of a service member in the United States military, manufactured after 1987, to wit, an ordinary military weapon, or converting the AR-15 rifles that he already lawfully possesses to automatic weapons,” and the acts criminalize his “planned course of conduct.”
The case was dismissed by the District Court, in part, on the grounds that Blount’s argument that his rights were being infringed upon was based on a “conjectural or hypothetical interest” rather than an “invasion of a legally protected interest that is concrete and particularized and actual or imminent.”
In other words, it was rejected on the grounds his argument was based on an illegal act he planned on committing rather than the real possibility of prosecution after committing it, and that he failed “to allege anything beyond a speculative fear of prosecution.”
While the judgment didn’t address Blount’s argument of those laws as unconstitutional, he outlined it in an eight-page document sent to the Quill. In general, he says, the right to bear arms is a constitutional right that has been passed down from the founding fathers, and he describes it, in part, as a fundamental right “upon which rights every other right is based, which rights we had inherited as the lineal, legal, and bloodline descendants of the ancestral class of rights-holders, free Englishmen.”
Blount is a Duke University School of Law graduate. He is married to Ashley Huddleston-Blount, whose family is from West Plains. Huddleston-Blount’s family is from West Plains, and her grandparents owned a small cattle farm in Oregon County and were known throughout the area. She is descended from the Huddlestons who were in the West Plains area as early as the start of the 1820s.
Of Course Gun-Control Fails in Practice, but Does it Work in Theory?
The murderer who attacked children in a Nashville Christian school wrote a diary. Parts of it were published and then taken down. This murderer hoped that she was the only one with a gun and that her victims were unprotected. Many people want the same thing.
In theory, disarming honest citizens makes your country safer. Last month, Israelis again confirmed that gun-control is a failure. Gun-prohibition assumes that murderers and terrorists will obey the law, that they will only buy a firearm through legal channels. In practice, disarming your neighbors gives you all the vulnerability of disarmed victims with none of the benefits of actually disarming murderers. Despite those repeated failures both in the US and abroad, anti-rights politicians want ordinary citizens disarmed. So do academics in both the US and in Israel.
Palestinians killed about 1,200 Israelis during their attack on October 7th. That would be proportional in size to Mexican drug gangs entering the US and murdering everyone in Galveston, Texas. The Palestinian attackers deliberately targeted schools and youth centers.
The real and undeniable advantage of armed citizens is that they are there when the attack happens. They can respond immediately. They also have local knowledge of who the innocent victims are and who are the bad guys that don’t belong. In practice, a government response that takes hours to protect unarmed victims is a unilateral surrender to murderers and terrorists.
Israel asked to import 24 thousand rifles from the United States. Biden said no precisely because some of those rifles might end up in the hands of Israeli civilians. We wouldn’t want civilians to be able to stop terrorists, now would we. Biden also stopped the export of all US civilian firearms for 90 days. I suspect that the Israelis forgot to include another “10-percent for the big guy.”
Please note that this is the same Biden administration that abandoned 83-billion dollars of military equipment in Afghanistan. I’d bet that some of that equipment is now in the hands of Hamas terrorists who are fighting Israel.
The Gun Joe Biden Doesn’t Want You To Have Just Protected His Own Granddaughter
Secret Service reportedly opened fire Sunday night on three suspects attempting to break into an unmarked government vehicle parked in front of the Georgetown home of Naomi Biden, President Joe Biden’s granddaughter. Reports allege that the three offenders fled the scene after the gunfire started.
These types of scenarios are exactly why Americans advocate for the Second Amendment, but unfortunately, not all citizens have the same protection the Biden family is afforded.
The average DC resident does not have protection from the Secret Service, as Naomi Biden does:
– 760 carjackings occurred in 2023
– 65% of those arrested for carjacking are juveniles
– Graves prosecuted only 56% of those arrested in 2023 pic.twitter.com/3atphWS9oS
— Wendell Husebø (@WendellHusebo) November 13, 2023
Residents of Washington, D.C., are forced to navigate an onslaught of regulation and red tape before they can use firearms for self-preservation. According to D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, residents have the “authority to carry firearm[s]” only in “certain places and for certain purposes.” Concealed carry requires a variety of applications and training, while “open carry is prohibited.”
IMAGE CREDITMPDC / DC POLICE DEPARTMENT WEBSITE
State Rep. Dan Caulkins files petition to U.S. Supreme to review Assault Weapons Ban decision
DECATUR, Ill. (WRSP) — State Representative Dan Caulkins (R-Decatur) has petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States to review the Illinois Supreme Court’s decision on Illinois’ weapons ban law on due process, equal protection, and Second Amendment grounds.
Caulkins believes the issue is the denial of due process under the 14th Amendment arising from Justices Elizabeth Rochford and Mary Kay O’Brien participating in the case despite overwhelming reasons they should have recused themselves.
He feels that both justices received disproportionate contributions from the leaders of the co-equal branches of government in the aggregate sum of more than $2.5 million calling into question their impartiality and independence.
He says that both justices received the endorsement of G-PAC, which states: “Each endorsed candidate supports our #1 legislative priority when the General Assembly is called into session: banning assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.”
Both Justice Rochford and O’Brien received disproportionate campaign contributions, and both made a commitment to support the legislative policy of banning assault weapons,” Caulkins said. “Additionally, the donations to these justices came from Gov. JB Pritzker and House Speaker Chris Welch which calls into question the independence of the judiciary and the separation of powers.
Given the size of the campaign contributions and who gave the contributions, there not only is a question of fairness and impartiality, there also is a question of the independence of the Justices which calls into question the validity of the state court decision.
Caulkins said the due process under the 14th Amendment argument calls into question the fairness of the proceedings at the Illinois Supreme Court, but the petition also asks for a review of the substance of the case which centers on the three readings requirement in the Illinois Constitution, the Second Amendment, and the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
The petition states:
There exists no rational basis to criminalize one person indistinguishable in any manner based on conduct from another immunized from the criminal liability or to speculate that the prohibited present a greater risk for mass shootings than the grandfathered based on the date an assault weapon was acquired.
The grandfathered who are immunized from criminal liability for possession have no greater training than the prohibited merely because the grandfathered already possess an assault weapon. Or, if the grandfathered are presumed to be safe (lawful) to possess assault weapons by mere possession, then the prohibited would satisfy the same safety presumption if allowed to acquire and possess.
The fortuity of time of acquisition bears no connection to safety or danger. The resulting arbitrary classification on the face of the Assault Weapons Partial Ban fails all levels of scrutiny test and should be invalidated on this additional basis.
This petition is about the thousands of plaintiffs who joined my lawsuit and were denied a fair proceeding at the Illinois State Supreme Court,” Caulkins said. “The Illinois Supreme Court does not have an objective standard for recusals. The Court relies on individual justices to determine if there is a conflict. The end result is an unfair process that leads to biased outcomes. We are asking the U.S. Supreme to review this case based on the lack of fairness as well as the merits of our arguments against the weapons ban law.
And on the other hand, there’s a subset of people who understand that when SCOTUS restores fundamental rights as they should be, they follow right along, like they should.
Now, I don’t advise cheating Uncle, or driving while intoxicated, but goobermint needs to stop with restricting rights by any piddly means it can devise.
Judge Nixes Lifetime Gun Ban for Non-Violent Misdemeanor Offense
In a case very reminiscent of Range v. Garland, in which the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Bryan Range’s conviction for lying about his income on a food stamp application decades ago should not have resulted in a lifetime prohibition on keeping or bearing arms, a federal judge in Pennsylvania has ruled that a man’s 2005 DUI arrest and conviction on misdemeanor charges cannot disqualify him from exercising his Second Amendment rights.
Though Edward Williams was convicted of a misdemeanor offense, it was also a crime punishable by up to five years in prison. Williams didn’t serve any time behind bars, however. Instead, he was sentenced to 90 days of house arrest and ordered to receive treatment for drug and alcohol abuse. Since the potential sentence was more than a year in prison, however, the misdemeanor conviction meant that Williams was considered a prohibited person going forward, and he was no longer allowed to possess or purchase a firearm.
Williams first tried challenging the statute in question back in 2017 and was denied, but applied for a re-hearing after the Supreme Court issued its decision in Bruen last year. This time around, in a case argued by 2A attorney Joshua Prince and supported by the Firearms Policy Coalition, U.S. District Judge John M. Younge applied the Court’s text, history, and tradition test to the Williams case, as well as the Third Circuit’s decision in Range v. Garland, and found that Williams cannot be denied access to his right to keep and bear arms as a result of a non-violent misdemeanor conviction, even if it was punishable by years behind bars.
The Government has not met its burden in proving that the prohibition on Plaintiff’s possession of a firearm due to his DUI conviction is consistent with historical firearms regulations.
Finding a historical tradition of similar firearms regulations “requires that the government identify a well-established and representative historical analogue, not a historical twin.”
A modern regulation that would not have been contemplated during the Founding Era can be found relevantly similar to then-existing regulations by considering “how and why the regulations burden a law-abiding citizen’s right to armed self-defense.
That federal law has, over the past century, allowed for the disarmament of certain types of convicted criminals does not satisfy the constitutional issues raised by applying Section 922(g)(1) to all convictions punishable by more than a year of imprisonment.
Instead, the Court must consider more longstanding limitations on firearm possession to “demarcat[e] the scope of [the] constitutional right.”
The historical firearms regulations provided by the Government are not sufficiently analogous to the case considered here to satisfy its burden.
Younge noted that while he remains “quite concerned about the prospect of granting access to firearms to persons who have demonstrably abused alcohol”, he remains unconvinced that “the general dangerousness of drunk driving and of combining firearm use and alcohol consumption establishes that DUIs must therefore be considered sufficiently analogous to historical examples of ‘dangerous’ conduct that have previously served as grounds for disarmament.”
Younge acknowledged the government’s citing of laws that prohibited the carrying of firearms while intoxicated, but argued that none of those regulations “allude to disarmament lasting beyond the individual’s state of intoxication, and none provided for permanent disarmament, as Section 922(g)(1) does.”
I agree with Younge that drunk driving is a serious concern, and not something that should be easily dismissed, but the fact is that Williams wasn’t barred forevermore from getting behind the wheel of a car because of his misdemeanor conviction. He can obtain a driver’s license and purchase a vehicle despite his DUI conviction that’s now nearly 20 years old, but he can’t legally purchase or possess a firearm. That’s a punishment that doesn’t fit the crime, as far as I’m concerned.
I’m sure the DOJ will appeal this case to the Third Circuit, but given their decision in Range it’s unlikely that Merrick Garland is going to get the response he’s looking for from the appellate court. By the time Williams v. Garland gets to SCOTUS the justices will have had a chance to weigh in on Bryan Range’s case, and if the Court does adopt a “dangerousness” standard for depriving individuals of their Second Amendment rights in Rahimi, then both Range and Williams have an excellent chance of having the lower court decisions in their favor approved by a majority of Supreme Court justices as well.
There’s a subset of people in the U.S. who hate the idea of RKBA and the Supreme Court’s rulings and will do anything possible to sabotage them
Federal Judge Declares No Right to Acquire a Gun
If we possess a right to keep and bear firearms, it stands to reason that we must also have the right to acquire one, but according to a federal judge in Colorado no such right exists.
U.S. District Judge John L. Kane, an 86-year-old appointee of Jimmy Carter back in 1977, made the eyebrow-raising decision in a case known as Rocky Mountain Gun Owners v. Polis, which challenges Colorado’s newly-enacted three-day waiting period on all gun sales. Kane denied the group’s request for an injunction that would have halted enforcement of the waiting period while the litigation continues, ruling the plain text of the Second Amendment only covers the right to keep and bear a firearm, not to purchase or acquire one for lawful purposes.
Plaintiffs contend that the words “keep” and “bear” in the Second Amendment are implicated by the waiting period required by the Act. In Heller, the Supreme Court examined the “normal meaning” of those words at the time of the Nation’s founding, reviewing definitions from contemporaneous dictionaries. As the Court explained, the 1773 edition of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language “defined ‘keep’ as, most relevantly, ‘[t]o retain; not to lose,’ and ‘[t]o have in custody.’”.
The Court then turned to the word “bear” and determined that it means to “carry.” The Court clarified that, when “bear” is “used with ‘arms,’ however, the term has a meaning that refers to carrying for a particular purpose—confrontation.” So, putting all the pieces together, the Court found that the text of the Second Amendment “guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.”
From this reading of the plain text, it is clear the relevant conduct impacted by the waiting period—the receipt of a paid-for firearm without delay—is not covered. Still, Plaintiffs attempt to equate the words “obtain” and “possess.” But these terms are not equivalent. To “keep,” under the definitions provided in Heller, meant to retain an object one already possessed. It did not mean to receive a newly paid-for item, and it certainly did not mean to receive that item without delay. Likewise, “hav[ing] weapons” indicates the weapons are already in one’s possession, not that one is receiving them.
So you have the right to possess a firearm but not the right to obtain one? Kane’s reasoning would leave the door open for all kinds of restrictions on the acquisition of arms. Why not a six-month waiting period? How about a $500 administrative fee for every firearm purchase, or mandating purchasers come up with a half dozen character references before a gun can be sold. Taken to its extreme, Kane’s position would leave open the possibility of a complete and total ban on gun sales. It’s ridiculous to separate the right to obtain a firearm with the right to keep and bear it, but that’s exactly what the judge did here.
Kane went on to say that even if commercial sales of firearms are protected by the Second Amendment’s language, Colorado’s waiting period is likely to withstand court scrutiny because there were no “Guns-R-Us” outlets at the time the Second Amendment was ratified. It could take days, weeks, or even months for a would-be gun owner to acquire a firearm while they waited for a shipment of muskets to be delivered to their nearest city or town. Of course, there was no law requiring people to wait before purchasing a firearm if one was readily available, nor were there any prohibitions on private transfers of arms. If your neighbor had a fowling piece that you wanted to purchase, you could walk or ride to his farm and make a trade or a cash transaction without the possibility of punishment from the state.
Further, says Kane, though there aren’t any statutes in the historical record that mirror Colorado’s modern waiting period, there are some old laws that he believes are a close enough analogue to allow the state’s three-day waiting period to pass muster; laws forbidding the carrying of firearms while intoxicated.
Perhaps the state could impose a more narrowly tailored requirement, but that is not the inquiry here. The intoxication laws prevented all individuals from becoming intoxicated and engaging in the prohibited conduct. They did not apply only to those people who would have certainly used a firearm irresponsibly while intoxicated. Despite Plaintiffs’ arguments, the “how” and the “why” of the intoxication laws and the Waiting-Period Act are sufficiently similar to demonstrate that the Act is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
The purpose of the waiting period, according to Colorado’s legislature, is to “help prevent impulsive acts of firearm violence, including homicides and suicides.” According to Kane, because the ostensible reason for the waiting period is similar to the rationale on historical prohibitions against carrying while under the influence, that’s enough to make the two laws analogous. Of course, under that theory, virtually any gun control measure could be deemed a part of the historical tradition, so long as lawmakers contend that its purpose is to prevent “impulsive” acts of gun violence.
If the majority in Bruen believed that opinion would put a stop to the Second Amendment shenanigans in the lower courts, it should be clear to them by now that is most certainly not the case. We’ve seen judges declare that commonly owned arms like semi-automatic rifles are not protected by the Second Amendment, wide swathes of public spaces can be deemed “sensitive” and off-limits to lawful carry, and the right to keep and bear arms does not encompass the right to obtain one.
Each of these decisions is a gross misreading of Bruen as well as a green light for fundamental infringement on our Second Amendment rights, but until SCOTUS intervenes these abuses will continue.