According to the December 10 report from the New York Times, Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun organization Everytown for Gun Safety is pushing Joe Biden to enact a raft of gun control by executive fiat. As much as Everytown and their would-be autocrat benefactor might wish, the U.S. Presidency is not a dictatorship. The executive actions Everytown contemplates implicate the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners and are not moored in a credible reading of federal statute.
The article noted that the group has targeted three areas for executive action. Everytown is urging Biden to further restrict the private transfer of firearms between non-dealers, force Federal Firearms Licensees (gun dealers or FFLs) to notify the FBI whenever they complete a firearms transfer following the FBI’s failure to complete a background check within three days, and further regulate unfinished firearm frames and receivers – sometimes referred to as 80 percent frames or receivers. Continue reading “”
The public display of “woke” sensitivity is certainly contagious, and this virus has infected all levels of academic and corporate worlds. There are no issues too trivial to be affected, including team mascots and logos. Marietta College, a small liberal arts college in Ohio, has recently announced to its alumni that the College’s Pioneer mascot and logo are “under review” in light of “recent events.” This “review” is a symptom of a much larger story.
It is not too difficult to figure out just what are these “recent events,” as manifested by the current war on the name Redskins and on the monuments that include those of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. The name Pioneers may soon join the forbidden ranks of Redskins. Apparently, any respect for those of European ancestry who first ventured into the Ohio River valley may now be unacceptable for a college that once proudly referred to itself as the Pioneers.
In and of themselves, any team’s nickname, logo, and mascot, are not very important. Who really cares if the team is called the Pioneers or whatever? Unfortunately, this proposed “review” by the College has a much broader, nationwide context, and is being driven by those who would radically transform and thereby diminish American society.
Stalin may have been a crude mass murderer, but he was cunningly perceptive. He recognized that an important element for the domination of the present is the control of the past. A ruler simply rewrites the past as necessary, airbrushes the pictures, turns persons into non-persons, all in a manner that justifies the agenda, no matter what or how brutal. This is an especially useful tactic if you accept the fantasy that history is necessarily progressive, and that there is “a right side of history” as Barak Obama used to assert.
The American Left has learned Stalin’s tactic well. Delegitimize the American past as incurably evil, convince people that there was nothing admirable in American system, fill the textbooks and lectures with the pathological dishonesty of Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, and any defense of contemporary American institutions and practices becomes next to impossible for those who don’t know better. Continue reading “”
The Washington Post is reporting that Apple, Inc. has engaged lobbyists to try to soften language in the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act., which passed the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly in September.
It’s not known exactly what Apple wants to be altered in the bill. But given Apple’s past support for the Chinese Communist regime, one wonders exactly what they’re objecting to.
China has been brutally oppressing the Uyghurs in recent years, putting more than a million of them in concentration camps while trying to snuff out their culture and religion. But it’s also been reported that China was using the Uyghurs as slave laborers in some factories, leading Congress to act. The bill would prevent companies from relying on Chinese factories that use forced labor. Continue reading “”
Some say Andrew Cuomo is the worst governor in the United States, but I strongly disagree. Andrew Cuomo is the worst human being in the United States, if not the entire world.
The list of stupid things this absolute failure of a man has said and done in 2020 is too long for a mere blog post, but you can now add this complete lunacy. Bernadette Hogan, NY Post:
Gov. Andrew Cuomo is having a hard time getting sheriffs across the state on board with enforcing his 10-person limit on Thanksgiving dinners — his latest effort to suppress the Empire State’s rising coronavirus rate.
“I don’t believe as a law enforcement officer you have a right to pick and choose what laws you will enforce,” Cuomo told reporters Wednesday during an Albany-based press conference.
But a slew of upstate sheriffs have already declared they won’t be checking up on gatherings come Turkey Day, arguing limited resources and other public safety priorities trump “counting cars” in driveways and “investigating” how much turkey and dressing a household may purchase.
What are they supposed to do, go house-to-house? Bust down your door and throw open all your closets and cupboards? Maybe shove around some of the older relatives Cuomo hasn’t killed yet? “Hey, maybe there’s an 11th guest hiding in the attic!” I mean, what are we talking about here?
Cuomo keeps ranting about “the law,” but his edicts aren’t laws. That’s not how laws work. He’s not a dictator. He can’t just ban Thanksgiving by fiat and expect everybody to sieg heil.
And he says the cops’ refusal to enforce his imbecilic decree is “frightening to democracy” and “a violation of constitutional duty.” Well, if this wannabe third-world thug wants to bring up the United States Constitution, how does the Fourth Amendment factor into this? Has Cuomo read that one? Is there a coloring book we can give him to explain how it works?
Andrew Cuomo is behaving exactly the way he and his fellow Democrats falsely accuse Trump of behaving. He’s just the sort of tinpot fascist they claim to oppose. Yet all they do is praise him, because he’s a fascist for their team. Continue reading “”
At least 16 gun control bills have already been filed for the upcoming Texas Legislative Session beginning in January, setting the stage for a contentious battle over the gun rights of private citizens.
One of the bills is HB 196, filed by Irving State Representative Terry Meza. Her bill would remove a homeowner’s legal right under the Castle Doctrine to use a firearm in the defense of their homestead against an intruder. Meza believes homeowners are too quick to pull the trigger during a home invasion, and HB 196 would essentially gut that provision from the Castle Doctrine.
“I’m not condoning stealing, it is against the law, “Meza says, “but it’s not an offense that is punishable by death.”
Meza claims she’s already become the target of intense scrutiny online.
“People are already attacking me on Facebook saying I’m against the 2nd Amendment,” she says.
Meza says a homeowner would still be able to defend their life, but using a gun would be illegal, thus placing the homeowner in legal jeopardy.
Critics point to what is often a slow response time from police, and argue that there’s very little time to determine whether a person who has broken into a home is there simply to steal, or to commit acts of violence.
Other gun control bills awaiting the next session include:
HB 152 and HB 245 would ban the private sale of firearms at gun shows;
HB 238 would eliminate the state’s firearm preemption, allowing local governments such as the Austin City Council to pass local gun bans and regulations as they see fit;
HB 201 would ban Campus Carry;
HB 127 would ban the open carry of long rifles;
HB 236 would overhaul the 30.06 and 30.07 signage requirements to make it much easier for a business to ban a legal and licensed gun owner from entering;
HB 118 would eliminate family members from being able to transfer firearms among each other, instead requiring a federal license application to process each transaction “at an undetermined fee”;
HB 164 and HB 395 relate to Red Flag laws, allowing the removal of a person’s firearm without due process;
HB 185 would legally require homeowners to keep all guns locked inside of a safe at all times;
HB 231 raises the legal age required to purchase semi-automatic rifles and shotguns;
HB 172 and HB 241 would ban the transfer or possession of certain “commonly owned semi-automatic firearms”;
HB 178 and HB 234 would ban the sale or possession of any magazine that holds more than ten rounds.
The vast majority of those gun control bills are not expected to pass muster when state lawmakers reconvene.
The LA Times published a story today highlighting a growing divide between two strains of activists in Portland. On one hand you have the mostly white Antifa groups who have adopted Black Lives Matter as their own cause and are holding protests/riots nearly every night. On the other hand you have black activists who sometimes hold their own protests and who increasingly believe the anarchists are doing more harm than good.
But the most revealing thing about this story may be the tone and the timing. For most of the summer, Portland anarchists were cool. But suddenly the LA Times wants us to know that maybe these anarchists are just in it for the wanton destruction:
The day after President-elect Joe Biden delivered his victory speech, telling the nation it was time to heal and unite, a clandestine Twitter account — @safePDXprotest — summoned Portland anarchists…
Word spread through the group that the target tonight would be the local headquarters of the Democratic Party.
Somebody started beating a drum as a chant broke out: “F— Joe Biden!”
Then the anarchists marched into the upscale neighborhood, intent on destruction.
News flash from the LA Times: These anarchists are bent on destruction! Yes, and it’s curious that prior to the election President Trump was saying so and I didn’t see a lot of articles agree with him. I guess this is one of those now it can be told situations. Suddenly the anarchists just aren’t cool anymore:
In the past few days, Democrats and their allies in the #NeverTrump movement have started the ominous practice of compiling blacklists of Trump supporters or those who refuse to immediately trumpet Joe Biden’s contested and as yet unconfirmed victory in the November election. CNN, perhaps afraid of falling behind, ran a report listing every single Republican senator who has refused to congratulate Biden so far. At the bottom on the screen, the outlet singled out the president’s dastardly “enablers” who dared to stand up for Trump’s right to raise legal challenges in response to serious concerns about potential fraud.
On Tuesday, CNN published a list of 49 Republican senators guilty of the unspeakable crime of waiting for the final confirmed election results. The chyron screamed, “TRUMP’S DEFIANCE FUELED BY ENABLERS LIKE BARR, MCCONNELL, FOX.”
President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team leader for US-owned media outlets wants to redefine freedom of speech and make “hate speech” a crime.
Richard Stengel is the Biden transition “Team Lead” for the US Agency for Global Media, the US government media empire that includes Voice of America, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Stengel, an Obama administration alumnus, wrote last year in a Washington Post op-ed that US freedom of speech was too unfettered and that changes must be considered.
He wrote: “All speech is not equal. And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails. I’m all for protecting ‘thought that we hate,’ but not speech that incites hate.”
Stengel offered two examples of speech that he has an issue with: Quran burning and circulation of “false narratives” by Russia during the 2016 election.
“Even the most sophisticated Arab diplomats that I dealt with did not understand why the First Amendment allows someone to burn a Koran. Why, they asked me, would you ever want to protect that?” Stengel wrote.
“It’s a fair question. Yes, the First Amendment protects the ‘thought that we hate,’ but it should not protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against another. In an age when everyone has a megaphone, that seems like a design flaw.”
Stengel wrote that “our foremost liberty also protects any bad actors who hide behind it to weaken our society,” adding, “Russian agents assumed fake identities, promulgated false narratives and spread lies on Twitter and Facebook, all protected by the First Amendment.” Continue reading “”
It seems antigun billionaires think there’s nothing a few dollars and manipulation of government data can’t fix. Arnold Ventures, ran by former Enron trader John and Laura Arnold, is a billionaire philanthropy organization that wants to save us from ourselves through their deep pockets. More specifically, they seek to restrict the freedom to keep and bear arms
Arnold Ventures wishes to paint a grim picture that firearms are an epidemic much like political activist and gun control billionaire Michael Bloomberg. John and Laura Arnold have commissioned the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago to construct and convene a panel of medical professionals to organize a wishlist of dangerous and overreaching proposals. These demands are detailed in the Blueprint for a U.S. Firearms Data Infrastructure. With major changes possible in Washington, D.C., it is crucial to not only examine the large, sweeping gun control proposals but also to look at the less attention-grabbing proposals, like changing how the government collects, shares, and presents data. Gun control advocates in Congress are already turning to items on this wish list in their latest proposals, including the misleadingly titled, “ATF Improvement and Modernization Act.” Continue reading “”
Well, if you haven’t figured it out already, there’s a simple solution for her and her komrades. I’m not saying it’s an easy solution, just a simple one.
One of the things I try not to do is make the same mistake the other side made. The Establishment blew off Donald John Trump only to watch with jaw agape as he was sworn into office on January 20, 2017.
Let’s not blow off Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. You may not see her appeal, but millions of Democrats do. She is the soul of the soulless Democrat Party.
AOC’s danger is that unlike Obama, Manchin, and the rest of the 50 and older crowd in the Democrat Party, she does not seek power. She seeks a revolution.
Oh, that does not mean she won’t pocket campaign contributions. She sees them as overdue tributes owed by the White Patriarchy that has kept her down for 31 years. Under 50 (year old) Democrats view theft as reparations.
As comical as some of her beliefs may be to us, they are very valid to the majority of Democrats. Regulating cow farts is a joke made by conservative skeptics of the global warming concoction. The AOC crowd has no sense of humor. If CO2 must be regulated then so must methane, which means cow farts.
When it comes to taking her racist and anti-capitalist dogma seriously, AOC is not kidding around.
Her call for a “Trump Accountability Project” is mainstream Democrat thinking because theirs is a religion, and we are all infidels unworthy of any rights. Robert “Third” Reich — Clinton’s labor secretary — forwarded last month the idea of blacklisting and punishing President Trump’s supporters. Continue reading “”
This is the ‘revenge politics’ the demoncraps want. It’s exactly the same thing that the marxist/socialist dictators have done since the early 1900s.
As biased as they already are, I’m actually surprised twitter did this
Twitter has removed a tweet from the Lincoln Project that exposed the contact information of two attorneys who are currently representing President Donald Trump, a practice known as “doxxing,” the Washington Examiner reports.
The official Twitter account for the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump political action group created by several former Republicans, posted the phone numbers and emails of two lawyers with the law firm Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, who are both representing Trump, with the message: “Here are two attorneys attempting to help Trump overturn the will of the Pennsylvanian people. Make them famous.”
The Examiner notes that “doxxing” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “to publicly identify or publish private information about (someone) especially as a form of punishment or revenge.”
A spokesperson for Twitter told the Examiner: “The account owner will be required to delete the violative tweet before regaining access to their account.”
When this nightmare is over, we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It would erase Trump’s lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe.
Weaponizing the bureaucraps against political enemies seems to be a time honored tradition with demoncraps.
There’s a bible verse that I think fits: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again”–Matthew 7, 1& 2
Little commie may believe she’s got the power to play games like this? If I were her, I’d think twice about her own words just might come back to haunt her.
Every American should feel threatened when a member of the United States Congress calls for lists and persecution of American citizens based on party affiliation. Frankly, she should be removed from office.
Director David Lugo has a warning for the mainstream media.
Citizen journalists are coming, ready to counter the false narratives peddled by the press.
In a way, Lugo is part of that movement. His new film, “Antifa: Rise of the Black Flags,” captures the threats posed by what one presidential candidate flippantly called an “idea.”
That “idea” has trashed cities across the country, and there’s little indication Antifa will stand down in 2021.
“Antifa,” co-starring conservative pundit/OAN contributor Jack Posobiec, highlights the group’s violence. It also examines its historical underpinnings. The Marxist movement has significant ties to “struggle sessions” and other hard-left practices seen in Communist countries. Continue reading “”
What do we do? The solution is simple. And so self evident it needs no further explanation. Of course, I haven’t said it would be easy.
Smartphones were introduced in 2007; social media soon followed. Whenever I talk to middle school and high school teachers, I hear the same thing: there is nothing that competes with the power of social media to socialize young people (or rather, un-socialize them) — and it is tearing these kids up inside.
That’s young people — but what about the elderly woman who leaves her husband because he voted for Trump? What’s her excuse? What about the man in his twenties to cuts his mother off because she voted for Trump? What about the middle-aged man who turns family members against each other by going to holiday gatherings and not shutting his big fat mouth about how the “Demonrats” are going to be the death of us all?
What do we do about a person like this?:
Bandy X. Lee isn’t some nobody. She is a Yale University psychiatrist and holder of a master’s of divinity degree from Yale. And she believes that Trump supporters can only be persuaded to abandon their support for the sitting President of the United States by having some immense trauma visited upon them, along the lines of the firebombing of Dresden.
How does someone come to believe that their countrymen need to be treated that way — need to see their cities leveled! — because of their politics? Again, I remind you: this isn’t some fringe nut, but a Yale-trained psychiatrist and religious thinker. This is the kind of elite figure who will usher in soft totalitarianism because she does not think her fellow Americans are simply wrong, but evil.
They better be careful, they might get exactly what they’ve asked for.
Only a victory large enough to preclude the theft of the presidency by the Democrats and their minions in the media can forestall their plans for America’s future.
The rioting, physical violence, and destruction of property estimated in the billions of dollars experienced by Americans since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day was merely practice for the left’s coming exercise of power whether Biden wins or loses.
“It cannot happen here” has been the mantra of those blessed by God with the grace of living in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Yet, aphoristically, “past is prologue” and history is replete with the ruins of civilizations whose citizens believed the same.
Democrats thought their long march through the institutions had succeeded in giving them permanent power. They were convinced when Barack Obama pulled off the unique trick of descending from the heavens to ascend to the presidency.
Academia had long become a social justice warrior training ground with the supremacy of critical theory, implicit bias training, and a cadre of professors better than 90% steeped in leftist dogma having provided an army of reliable Democrats.
During the Obama Presidency, media, always biased and comprised of reporters and editorialists politically mirroring that of academia dispensed with even the pretense of “objectivity” to become nothing more than the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. Truth had become a matter of opinion with talking heads providing the opinions.
Intelligence bureaus, the administrative state, top military leadership, and every regulatory agency was purged of anyone not steadfastly liberal.
The left deluded themselves into believing that cradle-to-career indoctrination, deliberate media misinformation, and politically forced demographic change had finally created a permanent Democratic majority. They were “bigly” surprised when they lost more than 1.000 federal, state, and local elections. Donald Trump was the straw that broke the spavined camel’s back.
They refused to accept the condign defeat of all they worked so hard to trick or treat Americans into believing. What followed was four years of one confected attempt after another to execute a slow-motion, multipronged coup concluding with a failed impeachment on grounds so slim, had it been tried on a President Biden, it would have elicited a collective “C’mon man” from the variegated components of not only the leftist machine but the American population as well.
Fair-minded Americans are not only cognizant of the rules, but willing to obey them. Not so afflicted, the left follow rules only when winning — when they lose, the rules must change.
We saw this with redistricting, a tactic Democrats used for decades to maintain control of the House of Representatives, as well as state and local governments. When the Republicans started beating them at their own game, the process became “unfair,” “unconscionable” even.
A constitutional republic with an Electoral College system and equal representation of each state in the Senate worked fine until they decided it prevented them from ruling all 50 states from the left coast and the Acela corridor. Then, the notion of strict majority rule in all things became popular.
The courts for years were stacked by Democrats with judges willing to bypass the legislative process and enact laws from the bench. They used the filibuster prodigiously to prevent conservative judges from being seated but were outraged when it was used against Obama’s nominees. So, Harry Reid waved “Bye-Bye” to the judicial filibuster.
The seating of Amy Coney Barrett as an Associate Supreme Court Justice, done strictly in adherence to the constitution, Democrats have threatened “consequences and repercussions” including eliminating the filibuster in all things, admitting new states to guarantee more Democrat Senators and Representatives, and a new “balanced” Supreme Court — at whatever number of justices necessary to ensure a liberal majority.
The result is an election that only a Trump landslide can prevent the left from stealing using what Biden called in a Freudian slip, the “most extensive voter fraud organization” in history. Nothing short of overwhelming electoral triumph for Trump will stymie their machinations.
The Democrats already have a plan in place to flood the streets with “mostly peaceful” riots before, during, and after November 3. A Trump landslide will open Americans’ eyes to the left’s usurpation of the nation and perhaps provoke action.
To expedite post-election thievery, riots will again become endemic. Every judge that might rule against the Democrats’ lawfare efforts to steal the presidency will be doxed and confronted. Their families will be terrorized in their homes. Special care will be taken to threaten members of the Supreme Court.
Leftist agents will confront congressmen and senators at their homes, offices, and out in public with their families. If need be, they will block them from returning to Washington D.C. and resuming the functions of government. The same will be done to governors and mayors, lest they try to use the National Guard to regain control.
Cabinet members, military leaders, and their families will also be doxed and intimidated.
All these tools will continue to be used by a Biden Administration to implement their Green New Deal agenda, killing the oil industry, gun confiscation, raising taxes, open borders, and citizenship and Medicare for all.
To have a chance of preventing this, Trump must win reelection by a margin so huge it will be impossible to steal in the courts or on the streets.
A landslide will prompt outraged citizens to fight back and confront the left’s revolution in the cities and towns during the days, weeks, and months after the election. To paraphrase the Declaration of Independence, in the course of these events, good people of our free and independent states have the full power and the right to rise up and prevent the left’s attempt to steal our country.
Trump must win by epic proportions so that this rebellion may be defeated.
A top gun-control group has blanketed Virginia airwaves with a new ad, but its missive is missing one key word: guns.
Brady PAC, which advocates for increased gun control, released an ad attacking Virginia Republican congressional candidate Nick Freitas on health care policy. The ad, for which Brady and the House Majority PAC paid, does not mention gun issues at all.
Brady’s turn away from gun-control messaging comes after Everytown, the largest gun-control group in the country, also abandoned the issue in election ads.
The change provides further evidence that Democrats and liberal interest groups do not view gun control as a winning issue in 2020—a year that has seen record gun sales and an influx of new gun owners.
George Mason University law professor Joyce Malcolm told the Washington Free Beacon that gun-control groups have lost faith in their core message and believe focusing on other issues is the best way to get their allies elected.
“The gun-control issue is a loser at this point,” she said. “So, the gun-control groups are pushing the health care issue in hopes of helping the election of Joe Biden.”
“If Biden wins, the gun-control folks expect to be in the driver’s seat,” Malcolm said. Continue reading “”
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”— Sun Tzu
So, here’s to knowing the enemy. And as you can see from his first words, you can figure out what sacred cow of his is actually being gored.
The author tapdances around the large body of work surrounding not just the 2nd amendment, but the entire bill of rights. Not just the intent, but the actual framing of the bill of rights is entirely about constraining the federal government from doing certain things. It would be odd if the 2nd amendment was the only one that had specific constraints on people; let alone the fact that you have to torture the text to arrive at that meaning.
His logic is extremely clouded by his bias. The operative clause ‘The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed ” is not contingent upon the descriptor.
A well regulated (kept in proper working order) militia (both the organized and unorganized variants) being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people (not the militia) to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
The second amendment describes the purpose of arms, why they are to be kept, so that an unorganized militia of the people can be mustered to provide for the common defense, which includes self-defense.
An unregulated militia will be of poor form and will lack training and suitable armaments necessary to provide for the common defense, or ideally self-defense.
The part – ‘the right of the people’ – would specifically state ‘militia’ and not ‘people’ if it had specified that militia were to keep and bear arms, and not the people. The framers specifically said the right of the people for a reason, it’s not up for debate.
To keep (possess) in their own arms in their homes or elsewhere, to bear on their persons.
“Pro-life” Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who will almost certainly be seated on the Supreme Court this week, seems to have no problem putting guns in the hands of individual Americans who want to buy them — every Tom, Dick and Kyle. She reportedly takes “an expansive view” of the Second Amendment, writing in her only ruling on gun regulation that it should not be considered “a second-class amendment.”
A number of groups advocating gun control and gun safety, including Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action, and the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence, expressed their deep concerns with Barrett’s nomination in a recent letter sent to leading members of Congress.
The 2008 Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller expanded the meaning of the Second Amendment far beyond militias — regulated or not. And that 5-4 majority opinion was written by Barrett’s mentor, Justice Antonin Scalia.
It might be useful to look back on that ruling to take another look at the “textualist” approach to reading statutes and the “originalist” approach to reading constitutional questions, and to learn what one might then expect of a Justice Barrett.
There are a number of things one might find admirable about Barrett. She was a seriously engaged student at all levels of her education, taking an English degree at Rhodes College and graduating at the top of her law school class at Notre Dame. She’s a mother (of seven) who manages to work in a demanding career. At her gym, she’s apparently known for her commitment to doing pull-ups, for gosh sakes.
Barrett is also a self-proclaimed “textualist” or “originalist” when she looks at statutes or the Constitution. In rendering decisions as a judge, she says she believes in adhering to precedent but also in closely reading the text of an enacted statute or the Constitution, seeking the reasonable meaning of that text, in the context of what most people at the time it was written would consider it to be. Continue reading “”
It comes as no surprise former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris are campaigning on promises “to end our gun-violence epidemic.” The leftward drift of the Democratic Party on most policy questions, including lawful firearm ownership, has been made explicit in its 2020 party platform. The presidential nominee’s campaign “issues page” takes it several steps further, promising to pass or incentivize all manner of gun restrictions.
In addition to the lack of evidence supporting these initiatives and their dubious constitutionality they all share one principal problem: The federal government — the helm of which Joe Biden seeks to occupy — has very little authority in this domain. In order to accomplish these policy aims, state and local law-enforcement agencies would need to be pressed into service.
Biden has already had his wrist slapped in this regard. His website touts his “shepherding” of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. Among other provisions, the bill required that local chief law enforcement officers (CLEOs) perform background checks on prospective firearm purchasers.
Jay Printz, sheriff of Ravalli County, Mont., brought suit against the United States, stating that the federal government had no authority to compel state and local officials to execute federal law. In Printz v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed, holding that despite the increasingly expansive interpretation of the “necessary and proper” clause, Congress cannot enjoin state officials to do its bidding. As a result, the mandate was subsequently ejected from the Brady Bill.
Harris’s understanding of the Second Amendment within our system of federalism is even more stunted. As the attorney general of California, she signed on to an amicus brief claiming that governments have complete authority to wholly ban handguns — an assertion that has been repeatedly rejected by courts and historians alike. During her presidential run in 2019, she promised to enact her preferred elements of gun control via executive orders, none of which were within the realm of executive control. Paradoxically, she is seeking to leave the one body that could enact substantive reform without so much as ceremonially filing legislation to do what she is promising. Continue reading “”
