Why we carry:
Category: RKBA
You can go to the link if you want to read the tripe.
Booker Reintroduces Federal Firearm Licensing Act
“If you need a license to drive a car, you should need a license to own and use a gun.”
I wonder what he’d think of this:
While this is pretty much nothing more than the 7th poking their finger in the eye of SCOTUS, the sooner this gets to there, so we know what the words of the 2nd amendment mean to the courts, and thus to law, the better.
On the face of it, Friday’s decision by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn an injunction against enforcement of Illinois’ recently enacted ban on “assault weapons” and “large capacity” magazines doesn’t change circumstances on the ground. The three-judge panel that issued today’s decision had previously stayed U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn’s injunction while the state appealed, so the law has been in effect throughout litigation.
Still, the 2-1 decision does matter, both because it provides an opportunity for some or all of the plaintiffs to appeal on an emergency basis to the Supreme Court and because it will undoubtedly be cited by other anti-gun judges around the country, including those on the Ninth Circuit panel hearing the appeal of Judge Roger Benitez’s decision striking down California’s ban on “assault weapons.”
I won’t have a chance to do a deep dive into the opinion until this weekend, but one thing immediately stuck out to me as I was giving a quick look-over. The three-judge panel concluded that AR-15s (and presumably semi-automatic rifles in general) are not protected by the Second Amendment because they’re too close to machine guns:
Coming directly to the question whether the weapons and feeding devices covered by the challenged legislation enjoy Second Amendment protection, at the first step of the Bruen analysis, we conclude that the answer is no.
We come to this conclusion because these assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are much more like machineguns and military grade weaponry than they are like the many different types of firearms that are used for individual self-defense (or so the legislature was entitled to conclude). Indeed, the AR-15 is almost the same gun as the M16 machinegun. The only meaningful distinction, as we already have noted, is that the AR-15 has only semiautomatic capability (unless the user takes advantage of some simple modifications that essentially make it fully automatic), while the M16 operates both ways.
Both weapons share the same core design, and both rely on the same patented operating system.
If the distinction between semi-automatic and select fire is enough to render modern sporting rifles outside the scope of the Second Amendment, according to the Seventh Circuit, then what does that mean for semi-automatic handguns? Are they too close to machine guns to be protected as well? Note this passage from the majority opinion:
The similarity between the AR-15 and the M16 only increases when we take into account how easy it is to modify the AR-15 by adding a “bump stock” (as the shooter in the 2017 Las Vegas event had done) or auto-sear to it, thereby making it, in essence, a fully automatic weapon.
You can (illegally) attach an auto-sear or a switch to many semi-automatic handguns as well. Is the Seventh Circuit suggesting that the most popular make of handguns, undoubtedly in common use for lawful purposes, is also beyond the Second Amendment’s protection?
It sure sounds like it to me, though the panel didn’t have to address that issue since the state hasn’t attempted to ban the majority of semi-automatic pistols, only a subset it deems to be “assault weapons”. This is actually something that gun control activists have been arguing for a couple of years now, both in civil litigation and in lobbying the Biden administration to reclassify many semi-automatic firearms as machine guns under the National Firearms Act.
If the Seventh Circuit’s twisted logic is adopted or allowed to stand by the Supreme Court, not only would the most popular style of rifle be implicated, but the vast majority of handguns that are in the hands of lawful gun owners across the country as well. The 2-1 decision is bad enough, but the long term implications will be even worse unless and until SCOTUS makes it clear that the Seventh Circuit got it wrong.
An America Without Gun Rights Would Look Like Mexico, Not Australia
Every mass shooting inevitably leads those on the left to call for a ban on “assault weapons,” and this time is no different. Thus begins the barrage of calls for “sensible gun laws” on social media, from network pundits, and via Vice President Kamala Harris herself, using Australia or New Zealand as the models. These unarmed countries, they tell us, prove you can strip citizens of their ability to own firearms and live in a nonviolent utopia. Is that the likely outcome of such a ban in America?
Thought experiment, leaving aside the issue of a right enshrined in the Constitution: If Americans allow their firearms to be outlawed and then confiscated, would we in fact, become like Australia or New Zealand?
If we gave up AR-15s and then a mass shooting took place where a semi-automatic handgun was used, opponents of gun rights would take those too — the same with a shooter with a hunting rifle, then a shooter with a shotgun, and on and on. We know where this leads. It can’t end with “military style” firearms. A confiscation of AR-15s would eventually lead to a complete ban on almost every gun. How long would that take? Five years, 10 years? It wouldn’t take very long once the ball is rolling and mass shooters move to handguns and shotguns, which would quickly be banned as the public’s demand for “safety” would be too much for politicians to stand against.
Cut to a Republican senator being interviewed on CNN the day after a mass shooting where a 9mm handgun was used: Senator, just a few months ago you voted to ban AR-15s because scores of children were killed in a school shooting. Today, with more dead children, you won’t support the banning of semi-automatic handguns? How can you tell those parents why the shooter was able to legally obtain a Glock 19 that, like the AR-15s that you voted to ban, allowed the shooter to fire many rounds and reload in a matter of seconds? What’s the difference, senator? Do those dead children think it was better to be shot by a handgun rather than a long gun? Senator?
That lawmaker would crumble, and so would others. What would we be left with? A technical right to keep and bear arms that practically renders that right meaningless.
How do we know this? We know this because we have seen this before in Mexico.
Supreme Court Roundup: Not all History is Created Equal
In a previous post, I wrote about the attempt by Merrick Garland’s Justice Department in United States v. Rahimi, set to be argued before the Supreme Court on November 7, to sidestep the controlling “text and history” interpretative methodology described in District of Columbia v. Heller and in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen. Rahimi is the case challenging the facial constitutionality of 18 U.S.C § 922(g)(8), a federal statute that disarms any individual subject to a state domestic violence restraining order (DVRO). In that post, I explained how the Government is contending, contrary to Bruen, that the established rule is that “Congress may disarm persons who are not ‘law-abiding, responsible citizens.'” That statement is not just incorrect, but a serious distortion of what Heller actually said.
As it turns out, the Government’s recently filed reply brief contains several other important errors about the fundamental principles to be applied when assessing historical analogue laws, which are central to Bruen‘s methodology. Let’s start with an easy one. The Government takes Rahimi to task for allegedly asserting that Bruen limits courts to historical evidence from “near the time of ratification.” Here’s what Rahimi’s brief actually said, after discussing attempts by some courts to boost some dicta in Heller to the level of substantive constitutional law:
[T]he original meaning of the Second Amendment must be determined exclusively using the text and the historical tradition of firearm regulations adopted near the time of ratification—not with assumptions or dicta.
That statement by Rahimi was contrasting the use of actual historical traditions to determine the meaning of the Second Amendment, as opposed to twenty-first century dicta, or assumptions by lower courts regarding what those dicta meant. It was not an attempt to fine tune the period of time with precision.
Yet Rahimi is correct that the time around the adoption of the Bill of Rights must be the principal period to determine the original public meaning of its provisions. Bruen quoted Heller to the effect that “Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them,” before noting that “The Second Amendment was adopted in 1791….”
The Bruen opinion also quoted approvingly a dissent by then-Judge Kavanaugh: “post-ratification adoption or acceptance of laws that are inconsistent with the original meaning of the constitutional text obviously cannot overcome or alter that text.” The six-person Bruen majority also relied on a dissenting statement by Chief Justice Roberts, in Sprint Communications v. APCC Services (2008), that “The belated innovations of the mid- to late-19th-century courts come too late to provide insight into the meaning of [the Constitution in 1787].” The same is true of the Bill of Rights, adopted in 1791.
The Government claims in its brief that “the Court has consulted post-ratification evidence—extending ‘through the end of the 19th century’—’to determine the public understanding of’ the Amendment.” But as Bruen notes, another case made clear that this evidence was reviewed “only after surveying what [the Court] regarded as a wealth of authority for its reading—including the text of the Second Amendment and state constitutions.” Bruen continues, “In other words, this 19th-century evidence was ‘treated as mere confirmation of what the Court thought had already been established.'” See also Justice Barrett’s concurrence in Bruen, quoting Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Revenue (2020) (a practice that “arose in the second half of the 19th century … cannot by itself establish an early American tradition” informing our understanding of the First Amendment); Mark W. Smith, Attention Originalists: The Second Amendment Was Adopted in 1791, not 1868, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy Per Curiam (Fall 2022).
So Rahimi is right. A court must look principally to the Founding era to determine the meaning of the Second Amendment. It can look at later evidence only for confirmation, not to change the original understanding.
We Will Not Comply: Only .1% of Illinois Gun Owners Have Registered Their Newly Banned Guns So Far
According to Illinois State Police data, 2,415,481 gun owners call the Land o’ Lincoln home. Earlier this year, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the so-called Protect Illinois Communities Act into law which banned the most many of the most popular guns used for self-defense. Under the law, existing owners of these now verboten firearms must register their guns by January 1, 2024 or face felony charges.
Four weeks into the gun registration window, exactly 2430 of those FOID holders have registered their guns, accessories, or .50 caliber firearms. That works out to .1006%, or about one in a thousand.
What’s even more remarkable is the number of FOID holders choosing to comply has fallen with each passing week.
In other words, Illinois gun owners have declined to participate in the state’s gun ban.
Despite the failures that are being discovered that led to the Lewiston, Maine shooting, the Gun Control Industry is, as usual, pointing at the state’s allegedly lax regulation of guns. Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun agitprop outlet The Trace asked, Will Maine’s Permissive Gun Laws Change After the Lewiston Shooting?
It’s certainly possible. Democrats are in full control of state government, so the odds are in their favor in that regard. That doesn’t mean, however, that there would be any merit to changing Maine’s gun laws. Not given the laws they’re talking about.
It’s becoming clear that they see this as a “grab bag” opportunity to enact more gun control laws in the Pine Tree State. They aren’t just talking about laws that could plausibly have made a difference in this case, either. They want to crack down on gun rights in general.
Maine doesn’t have restrictions on AR-style rifles, like the one apparently used by the Lewiston gunman, nor does it regulate high-capacity magazines.
If the killer had used a Mini-14 with a ten-round magazine, would the death toll have been lower? That seems a tenuous claim, considering how fast reloads actually happen when someone knows what they are doing (as this veteran and firearm instructor did, sadly). And it was reported that the Parkland shooter used 10-round magazines on purpose because they fit better into his backpack. Yet he managed to kill and wound a similar number of people.
…a measure requiring the prompt reporting of lost or stolen firearms…
This is one of the rare gun laws I do support, so long as it provides a fair amount of time to comply, and conditioned on when you become aware of a lost or stolen gun. If you become aware you lost a gun or had one stolen, tell the police about it ASAP. But such a law, of course, wouldn’t have done anything to stop the Maine shooting if it had been on the books.
But [Bates College professor Michael] Rocque said the state’s “inconsistent” rules around guns — which require residents to take a safety course and exam to qualify for a hunting license but don’t require anything of concealed handgun carriers — are in dire need of an update.
This is where the push for more gun control after a tragedy really becomes something of a loot-fest, trying to take full advantage of the situation while it’s still in the news. Carry permit requirements are completely irrelevant to mass shooters. They obviously aren’t going to be concerned in the slightest about not having a carry permit when their intention is to commit mass murder.
It’s an utterly absurd argument that, again, would have had no impact at all on what Robert Card did.
Even outside of the mass shooting context, Professor Rocque’s implication is that the lack of a permit requirement is inherently unsafe. That’s an extraordinary claim, given that Maine has one of the lowest homicide rates in the nation. Maine’s homicide rate is so low that more people were killed in Lewiston in this one incident than are usually murdered in the state in an entire year.
The Trace article concludes that while other gun control pushes aren’t possible under the state’s rules until next year, they can still try to enact universal background checks in January.
Again, that would have had zero impact on the Lewiston shooter. The Lewiston killer bought his guns legally. When that happened or whether or not he lied about his history of mental illness at the time isn’t yet clear, but he did undergo a background check.
As is so frequently the case, the Gun Control Industry and politicians seem determined to punish the community of law-abiding gun owners for the inherent failures of the regulatory system they’ve built
As more details are learned about Robert Card, his mental history, and the failures of law enforcement in this situation, the more it becomes clear that Maine’s allegedly lax gun laws did nothing to make the Lewiston shooting possible. And the new laws The Trace and gun control advocates are calling for in response would do nothing to prevent another similar situation.
California Democrats Disarm Synagogues
Here’s a story I missed from September that takes on an even more sinister cast in retrospect.
Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced the filing of a new Second Amendment lawsuit challenging multiple parts of California SB2, which unilaterally declares numerous locations as “sensitive places” where California will now ban the carry of firearms by licensed, law-abiding Californians. The complaint in Carralero v. Bonta can be viewed at FPCLegal.org.
“SB2 restricts where persons with licenses to carry a concealed weapon may legally exercise their constitutional right to wear, carry, or transport firearms. And it does so in ways that are fundamentally inconsistent with the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen,” argues the complaint. “The Second Amendment does not tolerate these restrictions. This Court should enter judgment enjoining their enforcement and declaring them unconstitutional.”
“With Gov. Newsom’s signing of SB2 today, California continues to exhibit its disdain for the rights of Californians, the U.S. Constitution, and the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision,” said Cody J. Wisniewski, FPC Action Foundation’s General Counsel and Vice President of Legal, and FPC’s counsel. “Unfortunately for California, and contrary to Governor Newsom’s misguided statements, the state does not have the power to unilaterally overrule individual rights and constitutional protections. Fortunately, courts across the nation have already struck down laws just like SB2, and we expect the same result here.”
FPC is joined in this lawsuit by three individuals, Orange County Gun Owners, San Diego County Gun Owners, and California Gun Rights Foundation.
If Democrats actually revered the Supreme Court as much as they claim to, Bruen would have ended their attempts to pass Second Amendment infringing legislation. But the goal of disarming the civilian population is only slightly less sacred a Democratic Party cause than taxpayer-funded abortions. So they soldier on trying to thwart the Constitution.
Here is the relevant text of SB2.
This bill would remove those exemptions, except as specified. The bill would make it a crime to bring an unloaded firearm into, or upon the grounds of, any residence of the Governor, any other constitutional officer, or Member of the Legislature. The bill would also prohibit a licensee from carrying a firearm to specified locations, including, among other places, a building designated for a court proceeding and a place of worship, as defined, with specific exceptions. By expanding the scope of an existing crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.
Well, it’s not like any particular houses of worship are under particular threats from particular terrorist organizations, now is it?
Just four years ago on the last day of Passover, a man armed with a rifle burst into a synagogue in Poway, near San Diego, fatally shot one woman and injured three other congregants, including the synagogue’s rabbi.
A year before, an even more horrific attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue left 11 dead.
In the aftermath of the attack on Israel, many American Jews are arming themselves. But in California, not only will Jews and worshippers in other faiths be banned from protecting themselves in their houses of worship, but would-be killers will know that potential victims in “sensitive” areas will be unarmed.
Everywhere in the west, the radical left is protesting to support Hamas, despite (or perhaps because) of the latter’s calls to completely destroy the Jews. Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom and California Democrats are disarming law-abiding Jewish American citizens in their synagogues.
What are the odds?
The Bloody Failed Experiment of Gun-Free “Death” Zones
After watching senseless killings in Gun Free Zones time and time again, logical-thinking people start to consider the fact that deaths occur in these locations because people can’t defend themselves when under attack. Mainstream media, in coordination with the Democrat party, is highly tuned in to this awareness and works effortlessly to counteract that thought process through an endless stream of propaganda, rhetoric, and gun-blaming.
They know that logical-thinking people are aware of their anti-gun fear campaign. Still, they also know that there is a good portion of Americans who can be easily manipulated into believing the anti-gun lies.
We wonder how, if they know that they are putting good people in danger with their false narrative, Gun Free Zones, and dangerous gun restrictions, they can continue this experiment in unnecessary loss of human life?
We ask this question, coming from a mindset that holds human life in high regard, which is why we can’t understand their motives. Our intent is to see that innocent life is protected, which is why we keep and bear arms. The gun grabbers’ intent seems to be keeping innocent life as vulnerable as possible. Without loss of life, and the vulnerability of American Citizens, the political left has no fuel to drive their anti-gun agenda.
The biggest culprit of unnecessary and preventable death is the Gun Free Zone. It is also becoming quite apparent that the Gun Free Zone is a valuable tool for gun restrictions. At a certain point, the gun-grabbers start to look foolish for continuing dangerous policies with no remorse, but the Gun Free Zone brings with it death, and an excuse to blame guns for human violence. This is the main driver for gun-restriction support.
Don’t believe me? Ask yourself why it is that left-wing media and politicians will start blaming firearms, with total disregard to the suffering families and loss of life before the victims are even removed from the scene.
There are several reasons for this immoral behavior, including the fact that a good portion of our Country values politics over morality.
This could be a result of the demonization of Judaism and Christian values in our society. It could also be the fact that there is a concerted effort to teach people to devalue human life if it doesn’t benefit them.
Anti-Gunners Offer Surface-Level Takes On Shootings
I don’t have an issue with that, even if I also know a lot of people are just going to regurgitate anti-gun talking points.
But there were a number of other shootings that didn’t quite rise to the level of “mass shooting” as most of us think of it.
Yet the anti-gunners are still going to offer surface-level takes.
On the heels of Maine officials confirming that the shooter who killed 18 people in Lewiston earlier this week was found dead, shootings in Florida, Illinois, and Indianapolis early Sunday fueled further calls for action by U.S. lawmakers to reduce gun violence.…
Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said in a statement: “This morning, we are waking up to news of another deadly shooting. Our communities are exhausted… My heart breaks for the victims’ families whose children did not make it home, for the people who were injured in the gunfire, and hundreds of others who ran for their lives in Ybor City last night.”
“Guns turned this night out into a nightmare,” she added. “How many more times do we have to wipe the blood off our streets before action is taken? Once again, we urge Congress to do their jobs and pass responsible gun laws to protect all Americans from gun violence.”
Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts called the incident “the logical outcome of Florida’s permitless carry law, which went into effect in July” and means that “civilians no longer have to have background checks or training to carry hidden, loaded handguns in public.”
Kris Brown, president of the gun violence prevention group Brady, declared in response to the violence in Tampa that “this isn’t normal and we don’t have to live this way,” highlighting that the U.S. gun homicide rate is 26 times that of peer nations.
It’s amusing, in a dark way, because they’re completely ignoring the fact that one of these shootings happened in gun-controlled Chicago.
Moreover, there’s absolutely no evidence that permitless carry had anything at all to do with what happened in Florida or in Indiana.
Senate passes Kennedy amendment protecting veterans’ Second Amendment rights
The Senate passed an amendment introduced by Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., that protects veterans’ Second Amendment rights if the Department of Veterans Affairs steps in to manage their financial benefits.
The Senate voted 53 to 45 Wednesday in approval of the amendment.
“Veterans who sacrificed to defend our Constitution shouldn’t see their own rights rest on the judgment of unelected bureaucrats—but right now, they do,” Kennedy told Fox News Digital on Wednesday.
“My amendment would prevent government workers from unduly stripping veterans of their right to bear arms. Every veteran who bravely serves our country has earned VA benefits, and it’s wrong for the government to punish veterans who get a helping hand to manage those resources.”
Under current law, the Department of Veterans Affairs reports a veteran’s name to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System when they seek help managing their finances in a conservatorship.
“If a veteran who defended this country has to go to the VA and ask for help managing his or her financial affairs, the VA automatically reports that veteran to the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System . . . and that veteran loses his firearm,” Kennedy said on the floor of the Senate Wednesday. “Automatically. No due process.”
The amendment was spearheaded by Kennedy and fellow Republican Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, who championed the measure in June as one that would “would prevent government workers from unduly stripping veterans of their right to bear arms.”
“All our amendment would do, would be able would be to say: The VA, just because you’ve asked for help with your money, can not automatically take away your firearm or report you to [the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System] unless a judge has ruled that that veteran is a danger to himself or to others,” Kennedy said on the Senate floor Wednesday.
The executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, the gun rights group’s lobbying arm, applauded the amendment’s passage and Sens. Kennedy and Moran for leading the charge on the bill.
“The men and women who volunteer to defend the Constitution deserve to be protected by the same Constitution for which they risk life and limb,” NRA-ILA Executive Director Randy Kozuch exclusively told Fox News Digital Wednesday.
“It is a national embarrassment that anti-gun bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., have gotten away with unilaterally stripping veterans of their rights for decades. On behalf of millions of NRA members, many of whom are veterans, we applaud Senators Kennedy and Moran for leading on this important issue,” Kozuch continued.
Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy argued against the amendment Wednesday, claiming it would arm “mentally incompetent” veterans and lead to “a death sentence for scores of deeply mentally ill veterans.”
The passage comes after Kennedy said last week that he had struck a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on the amendment after holding up the bill funding the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and military construction, the Hill previously reported.
“The original position was they wanted me to pull my amendment down, and I said ‘No,’” he told the Hill.
Georgia Lieutenant Gov Wants To Pay Teachers $10,000 Annually To Carry Guns On Campuses
Georgia Republican Lieutenant Gov. Burt Jones unveiled legislation on Wednesday that would annually pay school teachers $10,000 to carry a gun at school in an effort to increase safety on campuses.
“One of the most critical duties we have as public servants is to protect those who are most vulnerable – including all of Georgia’s children,” Jones said in a news release.
Jones said the legislation would use state funding to ensure Georgia’s school systems and teachers have the option to receive proper firearms training and certification. The plan also calls for stricter guidelines for existing school safety plans and to distribute more money to schools that hire school resource officers with police certification, The Associated Press reported.
“We feel like this is the best way to prepare faculty, but also prepare law enforcement and the system however we can,” Jones reportedly said at Austin Road Elementary School in Winder on Wednesday, adding the state should take more “proactive” measures to prevent school shootings.
Republican State Sens Max Burns and Clint Dixon joined the Lt. Gov. in crafting the 2024 legislative priority to increase school safety, contending that protecting children and their classrooms is their first responsibility.
Mother Jones Gets A Lot Wrong In Its Hit Piece Blaming Makers’ Advertising For ‘Gun Violence.’
Now comes another in the long line of attacks on the gun industry and how it markets its products to customers. The latest is from Mark Follman at Mother Jones. Apparently attempting to blow the lid off of gun makers’ promotional strategies, Follman hangs his hat on a report titled UnTargeting Kids compiled by the Sandy Hook Promise gun control operation.
“Our nation has experienced a tremendous spike in firearm deaths just as gun marketing made a transition from selling firearms for hunting and sporting to marketing highly lethal, military-style weapons to civilians, including children,” the report says. “That marketing is supposedly aimed at adults, but the platforms those influencers appear on, including TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, are largely populated by kids.”
There’s only one problem with that. The Sandy Hook Promise report blames “military-style weapons” for the spike in firearm deaths, even though, according to FBI data, year after year, rifles (of any kind) are used in far fewer homicides than knives.
Follman gets his timing wrong, too. The Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex has been trying to blame gonzo gun ads for increased “gun violence” for more than a decade now. But the surge in gun-related homicides didn’t happen until 2020, thanks to the pandemic, the George Floyd Summer of Love, and the deterioration of so many cities thanks to lax law enforcement and permissive “progressive” criminal justice systems.
The majority of crimes involving guns are committed by people involved in gangs or drugs, mostly using cheap pistols…the same as it has been for decades now. So-called “assault weapons” have been used in a handful of horrific, high profile mass shootings, but they’re not used in a statistically significant number of gun-related homicides.
Follman, however, doesn’t let facts get in the way. Instead, he turns to the Gun Control Industry’s favorite former insider for his insights . . .
““That this type of marketing has contributed to creating today’s radical violent extremists is inescapable,” former gun company executive Ryan Busse argued in The Atlantic, referring to the 18-year-old avowed white supremacist who used a Bushmaster rifle in May 2022 to murder 10 Black people and injure three others at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.”
Except that you don’t see gun ads anywhere unless you actively seek them out. There aren’t gun TV commercials, there are no gun ads in magazines or newspapers, or on most websites. You only see them if you’re already on gun-related websites, read gun-related magazines, or choose to follow gun companies on social media (and even there, most platforms throttle their content).
Then there’s the inconvenient fact that no one has ever proven that any mass shooter so much as saw one of these allegedly edgy ads, let alone the more extraordinary claim that a gun ad somehow influenced one of them to commit mass murder.
By the way, Mr. Follman, you should reach out to Mr. Busse and get a comment from him to update your article. Now that he’s running for Governor of Montana, he suddenly claims he doesn’t support an assault weapon ban. How does that square with those prior claims of his?
Follman’s article includes the usual hand-wringing about the popularity of video games that include guns. But what limited relationship firearm manufacturers had in that area ended over a decade ago. Now developers use popular guns in their games without permission or payment either to or from gun companies. So Sandy Hook Promise got what it says it wanted a long time ago. Any inclusion today of popular guns in video games today isn’t the fault of gun makers.
So Follman’s piece is riddled with incorrect “facts,” a faulty chronology, and tries to blame gun makers for something they have no control over. That doesn’t make for a particularly effective hit piece. Better luck next time.
The 2nd Amendment is not about Hunting
Paul Revere did not shout “The Deer are Coming” during his Midnight Ride
A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Guy Relford’s show on Saturday was about Indiana University’s symposium “The Courts, the 2nd Amendment, and Public Policy”. The symposium had the provocative subtitle “Just Shoot Me”. Academia, liberal courts, and liberal politicians erroneously misinterpret the 2nd Amendment. The 2008 Heller Decision settled much of the debate. “Militia” does not mean the National Guard. In 1791, when the 2nd Amendment was ratified, “militia” meant the “whole of the body of the people”. Any member of the community was considered a member of the militia. As Guy has mentioned on numerous occasions on his show, “well-regulated” does not mean “regulated” by the government. “Well-regulated” means a “working” and or efficient” militia.
The President and many liberal politicians believe that the 2nd Amendment in regard to private ownership of arms is for hunting. While many colonialists were expert hunters, the 2nd Amendment was not written for hunting. It was written for self-defense, and the defense against tyranny.
As Guy so excellently explains using Paul Revere’s midnight ride,
In riding through the countryside, he (Revere) did not say, “The deer are coming, the deer are coming!”
Revere’s warning was to alert the people to arm themselves against the British “Regulars” who were coming for them. The Founding Fathers, when writing the 2nd Amendment, understood the importance of the people being armed against tyranny. They lived it.
New York City Gun Restrictions Ruled Unconstitutional
Local laws allowing New York City officials to subjectively deny gun possession permits violate the Second Amendment, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge John P. Cronan struck down portions of a New York City law governing when licensing officials may deny permits to own rifles, shotguns, and handguns. Cronan determined that allowing the City to deny licenses to applicants who are “not of good moral character” or when they feel “other good cause” exists allows too much discretion and does not fit with how America historically regulated guns. He found that makes them unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s latest Second Amendment test.
“This case is not about the ability of a state or municipality to impose appropriate and constitutionally valid regulations governing the issuance of firearm licenses and permits,” Judge Cronan wrote in Srour v. NYC. “The constitutional infirmities identified herein lie not in the City’s decision to impose requirements for the possession of handguns, rifles, and shotguns. Rather, the provisions fail to pass constitutional muster because of the magnitude of discretion afforded to City officials in denying an individual their constitutional right to keep and bear firearms, and because of Defendants’ failure to show that such unabridged discretion has any grounding in our Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
The decision, which is likely to be appealed by city officials, may result in more residents of the nation’s largest city being able to legally arm themselves. It also represents the continuing fallout from a landmark gun case ruling handed down by the Supreme Court last year.
Why Biden Wants SCOTUS To Rule Agains Rahimi
I’m going to start this off by saying what we almost have to say when talking about the Rahimi case, that the plaintiff in this case is not a good person. By all indications, he’s a terrible human being and not someone I’d want as part of my life.
But, our rights don’t exist only for those we approve of. They have to be protected for everyone, regardless of whether they’re a good person or not.
And Zachey Rahimi is such a person.
Now, his case is going to the Supreme Court, and a lot of people are blatantly misrepresenting it. They’re saying it’s about keeping domestic abusers disarmed, all while ignoring that the case doesn’t try to take on laws that rule those convicted of such offenses are prohibited from owning guns.
Because Rahimi wasn’t convicted of any such thing when he was charged with illegally possessing a gun. He just had a restraining order against him.
Over at The Federalist, John Lott gets into the real reason the Biden administration is fighting this so hard.
The Last Three Years Prove We Need The Second Amendment More Than Ever
Guns can save your life and your livelihood but only if your right to own them hasn’t been taken from you.
The right to keep and bear arms has long been under attack but now, as violent crime, international terrorism, and grave abuses of government power abound, Americans need the Second Amendment more than ever.
A majority of Americans say they already own or want to own guns in the future. Nearly three-fourths of gun owners polled cited protection as a major reason for retaining their firearms.
For anyone paying attention to the rapid erosion of Americans’ civil liberties over the last few years, pro-Second Amendment sentiments like this shouldn’t come as a surprise.
In 2020, during the height of government-mandated lockdowns, Americans were sentenced to their homes with court-ordered ankle monitors, dragged off of public buses for refusing to wear a mask, and fired from their jobs over a shot that didn’t even do what the government said it would.
Around that same time, crime spiked and race rioters in cities all across the nation dealt billions of dollars worth of damage to civilian and government buildings alike.
Americans were confronted by violent crowds on their streets, at their businesses, and even on their front lawns. The chaos quickly turned deadly but that didn’t stop leftists from pushing a national campaign to defund the armed law enforcement sworn to protect civilians.
The crime problem was only exacerbated when Democrat mayors and district attorneys committed to releasing violent criminals back into the streets in the name of “equity.” Their soft-on-crime policies are almost exclusively responsible for the murder rates in the nation’s top 10 most homicidal states.
Those numbers aren’t helped by the millions of people, including convicted criminals and potential terrorists, who began pouring freely across our open Southern border the moment President Joe Biden took office.
In the last few weeks alone, Americans learned that the FBI targets Trump voters as domestic extremists, judges will gladly overstep their bounds to dictate Americans’ right to free speech, and a former first lady and failed presidential candidate can make public calls for re-education programs for conservatives without scrutiny from her party or the press.
They also learned in the wake of the massacre in Israel that strict gun laws make people vulnerable to surprise attacks that not even trained military can quell quickly enough.
It’s a tough pill to swallow but one that everyone should be thinking about as pro-terrorist, antisemitic, anti-American sentiments brood at home and abroad.
Only the gullible were fooled.
Mask Off! ‘Bipartisan Gun Safety’ Group 97percent’s Executive Director Joins Gun Control Group Brady
97percent calls itself as “a bipartisan group of gun owners and non-gun owners,” and describes their purported mission as follows:
We are bringing gun owners directly into the conversation about gun safety — creating spaces where both gun owners and non-gun owners can have an honest, civil discussion about ways to reduce gun-related violence, while respecting the 2nd Amendment.
How bipartisan is this group, and how seriously do they take the concerns of gun owners? For starters, their website has several instances of the phrase “gun safety” but not a single mention of “gun control.” 97percent’s research (archived links) led them to support violent misdemeanor laws, universal gun registry (i.e., universal background checks), red flag confiscations, and permit requirements to purchase any gun. They want these laws implemented federally, and where the Constitution bars the federal government from doing so, they want the federal government to “incentivize” the states to do it. They have expressed concern over Bruen (archived links) because of its removal of corrupt discretion from the hands of government apparatchiks.