Category: Mendacity O’ The Day

Who’s on first?

Biden claimed 9,000 oil drilling permits are unused. That’s true, but all work can’t begin ‘right now’

WHAT WE FOUND

Only about 10% of domestic oil and gas drilling occurs on federal land. The rest happens on private and state property, Ed Hirs, energy fellow at the University of Houston, said. At the end of 2021, there were 9,173 approved applications for drilling permits on federal and tribal lands, according to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

Jennifer Pett with the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), which represents independent oil and natural gas producers, told VERIFY that more than 9,000 approved permits aren’t producing oil and gas right now. Joshua Axelrod with the National Resources Defense Council also confirmed that more than 9,000 approved permits are unused.

However, that doesn’t mean oil companies could just start drilling right now and produce oil and gas.

According to the IPAA, some of these leases are going through a “complex regulatory process or are held up in litigation.” Western Energy Alliance, which represents hundreds of companies involved in the exploration and production of oil and natural gas, says on its website that it is defending more than 2,200 leases in court, most of which cannot be developed while the cases are ongoing.

Hirs explained that a variety of factors can halt the oil drilling process for unused permits.

“Federal leases…are subject to environmental studies. They’re also subject to lawsuits filed by neighbors, by municipalities, by counties and state governments. And so it’s become a more arduous process,” he said.

Companies often need to have separate permits secured for multiple well sites before they can bring in an oil rig, the IPAA says. But just because the government approves the permits doesn’t guarantee the well will produce oil and gas, as some never do. This means approved permits may go unused.

“If you’ve gone, like most companies do, and filed a dozen or two dozen [permits] at a time, and your first well turns out to be a dry hole, you’re not going to go ahead and drill the rest of those,” Hirs said.

It’s true that companies will sometimes sit on unused permits until it makes more financial sense. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that since there isn’t a penalty for not using a drilling permit, some companies wait to begin drilling until oil prices are high enough to make it worth their while. One operator told the GAO that they would add a drilling rig if the price of oil increases and may suspend one if it decreases. Another said a permit may go unused if oil and gas prices are too low for them to turn a profit.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to pose challenges for oil companies, too. Some are facing a six-month waiting period for piping materials needed to drill and are still short-staffed after layoffs spurred by the pandemic-induced drop in demand for oil, Pett said.

No. Next question

Will the Left Ever Learn to Wait Before Blaming the Right for a Mass Shooting?

It’s our thirst to understand “why” someone would carry out such a horrific act that drives our curiosity and animates our search for a political villain in these mass shootings.

Answers are always few and very unsatisfying. Trying to ascribe rational, logical thought processes to someone who is mentally ill is an exercise in futility. It doesn’t matter if he leaves a right-wing manifesto railing against blacks and Jews or swears allegiance to Antifa and claims to want to stamp out “fascism.” “Politics” — a shooter’s limited understanding of it — isn’t a catalyst as much as it is a touchstone to a reality of which he or she is only vaguely aware.

The most recent incident led to a familiar pattern. A man walked into a gay club where a drag queen show was underway. Before he was stopped, five people were killed and 18 were wounded. Given the gunman’s “target,” it was “naturally” assumed that the perpetrator was a right-wing fanatic who was driven to this mass slaughter by conservative politicians and online hate sites (like PJ Media).

A National Review editorial sums up the arguments on the left.

According to the burgeoning conventional wisdom, therefore, the true culprits for the Club Q shooting include Libs of Tik Tok, Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk’s Twitter content-moderation policies, the “right wing moral panic” about drag queen story hours, and — of course — the entire Republican Party.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attributed the shooting to the Right’s “anti-LGBT+ campaign,” writing: “Connect the dots, @GOP.” Equality Florida press secretary Brandon Wolf told MSNBC that “right wing grifters, including politicians like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, they’ve been spewing this vile, hateful rhetoric about LGBTQ people . . . and we warned them that inevitably this would result in violence.”

In the New York Times, columnist Michelle Goldberg argued that the shooting “seems hard to separate” from the Right’s “nationwide campaign of anti-L.G.B.T.Q. incitement.” “Each time these things happen, the right-wing go-to is to blame ‘mental illness,’” Brian Broome wrote in the Washington Post. But “it’s right-wing rhetoric that sparks these nightmares.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center — always looking to fundraise off of a tragedy — weighed in.

The mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, which saw a 22-year-old man charged with hate crimes and murder on Monday, came after years of intensifying anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, acts of violence and intimidation, and discriminatory legislation from far-right individuals and groups, including powerful Republican politicians.

Anderson Lee Aldrich was not influenced by right-wing “hate speech.” He was not “anti-LGBTQ” because he was, in fact, a “non-binary” person who preferred being addressed with the pronouns “they/them.” He had been hospitalized several times for mental disorders. But, apparently, Aldrich was influenced and motivated to kill fellow LGBTQ people by right-wing loudmouths?

“Words matter,” Whoopi Goldberg said on The View. “Words matter and people like Lauren Boebert who, you know, has been in the forefront of dissing LGBTQ+ people, is now saying her prayers and thoughts go with the families. Well, they don’t really need your prayers and thoughts. They needed your votes. That’s what they needed.”

What did people need when a Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer opened fire on a number of House Republicans at a practice for the Congressional baseball game, putting House Majority Whip Steve Scalise in the hospital for six weeks? This came just days after Sanders warned on the Senate floor that if the GOP’s healthcare bill passed, “thousands of Americans would die” — a phrase echoed by most of the Democratic congressional leadership.

In 2017, a Tennessee woman attempted to run a Republican congressman off the road for his support for the GOP’s Obamacare replacement bill. Does violent rhetoric from the left ever matter? Or is it only violent rhetoric from the right?

There have been more than 100 pro-life churches attacked since the Dobbs decision last summer. A man was arrested outside of the private home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh admitting he was planning to kill him. Using the left’s rationale to explain the attacks, we have to assume that left-wing rhetoric is to blame.

But that will never happen. And what’s really, truly frightening is that the left pretends not to see the hypocrisy of its position.

Anti-gunner gets remarkably basic fact wrong

Op-ed writers aren’t usually experts in all the topics they write about. They’re people who are tapped to write about what they think, but they’re usually not experts in all the many topics. They tend to filter an issue through prior understanding to reach new opinions on new issues.

With guns, remarkably few who write op-eds are experts on firearms, gun politics, the Second Amendment, or much else relating to it. That’s fine, in and of itself, but such writers need to at least make sure they get the basics right.

This one makes a bizarre assertion that really has to raise an eyebrow or two.

In other developed countries, gun ownership is considered a privilege and not a right enshrined in their founding documents. Would that it were that way here! But we’re in thrall to those who revere and even fetishize guns. Hence their litany: “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people! The only defense against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun! It’s a mental health problem, not a gun problem.”

Those are all half-truths. The fact remains that people kill people with guns because that’s the easiest and cheapest way for ordinary people to do it. And contrary to what some choose to believe, enacting tighter gun-control measures would not be a slippery slope. There is no conspiracy afoot to disarm law-abiding Americans. But far be it from those beholden to and/or afraid of the NRA to counter such paranoia, much less to advocate for the reasonable gun-control measures most Americans support.

Now, if he’d just said the easiest, I’d probably have let it go. I’d have instead focused on his claim that gun control isn’t really a slippery slope toward more regulation, despite the fact that I have never seen an anti-gunner stop being anti-gun because “we’ve done enough.”

But he didn’t.

He made an assertion that guns aren’t just the easiest way but the cheapest way to kill someone, and it betrays a fundamentally bad understanding of the issue of homicides in this country.

Yes, guns are used to kill more people than any other weapon. However, they’re far from the only weapon and they’re most definitely not the cheapest.

An inexpensive handgun is going to cost you, at a minimum, a little over $170 the last time I checked. That’s for a Hi-Point, which is one of the cheaper brands out there. Now, that doesn’t seem like a lot, and for a gun, it’s not.

But I can buy a knife at Amazon for less than $20. Much less, if I’m not picky about it.

I can buy knives in the grocery store, for crying out loud. These are much, much cheaper and are used in more than enough homicides each and every year that they should be taken seriously. Especially since we know our knife murder rate is higher than Europe’s, even with guns supposedly so easily available.

If the author can’t manage to get such a simple, basic fact correct, why should we listen to literally anything else he has to say?

Especially since, in that same paragraph, he manages to pretend that a legitimate and documented issue–the slippery slope–isn’t happening.

Both of these illustrate just how little the author knows about the issue, and it’s less than most anti-Second Amendment types.

Observation O’ The Day

Hi 97 Percent Team,

Thank you for putting on yesterday’s conference. I am a gun owner and member of the firearm community based in Chicago. I share your desire to decrease gun deaths and find common ground. As a sign of my good faith intentions, I recently put on a Safe Storage presentation with a Moms Demand Action representative for our school community despite vehemently disagreeing with their public policy platform.

I feel that the strongest part of yesterday’s presentation was the Hot Button Topics discussion between Amy Swearer and Fred Guttenberg. I am still shocked that Fred wold be willing to sit down with Amy. More conversations like that need to happen where each side sits down with one another to try and have good faith conversations.

I am writing after watching the entirety of yesterday’s presentation. I watched because I was interested in what the panel, which included elected officials and other policy makers, would put forward as give and take compromises to get the gun community onboard. Unfortunately I feel as if it was a hugely blown opportunity on the whole as zero policy compromises were put forward by any of the speakers except Dr. Seigel.

Many members of the gun community showed up to watch in the hopes that we may have found a partner where we could work together. Instead we were shown a parade of speakers who have all publically asked for or voted recently for assault weapons bans. Governor Roy Cooper, Rep Moulton, Rep Dean, are all elected officials who have publicly pushed for bans and made clear yesterday that not only are they unwilling to remove these bans (despite the organization’s stated policy as presented by Michael Seigel) but rather they said explicitly that they are just waiting for the opportunity to have the votes to pass it in Congress. Congressman Moulton even threw in the usual talking point about shooting deer with AR-15s and needing better aim. Is insulting comments REALLY how you intend to find common ground with the majority of responsible gun owners who train to use their firearms not for hunting, but to defend themselves and family? Our supposed “voice at the table” Former Rep Walsh put forward no push back but rather spent most of the panel virtue signaling his hatred of the NRA (who we all hate too btw). There was not one word, not one proposal that was put forward as a give-and-take compromise with the gun community. That first panel lost many of us but I continued watching.

Former Schumer aid Emily Amick’s social media is full of video clips demonizing gun owners who own AR-15s, calling for an end to the filibuster to push gun ban proposals, and glowing videos of Congressman Cellini saying “spare me the constiutional right bull sh*t.” How was including her, who again has shown no sign of willing to compromise on any policy, intended on getting buy in from the gun community?

What was the point of allowing WH Assistant Stefanie Feldman to read a 5 minute speech about Biden’s domestic policy, including once again her emphasizing that he wants to ban assault weapons and if you don’t agree with the ban then you don’t actually care about crime? Again not one word about compromises that the administration is willing to make with the gun community.

The gun community has a huge amount of respect for Stephen Guttowski and I am glad you included him in the discussion. Stephen’s method and podcasts, calmly discussing the DETAILS of firearm policy and law should be how 97 Percent moves forward in discussions with the gun community.

Unfortunately I’m not sure your organization will get the chance after yesterday’s conference as much credibility was lost. You simply cannot parade out a bunch of speakers, many of whom are board members, who have publically been strong advocates of gun bans and then ask us to trust your organization because…… your official platform says you don’t want an assault weapons ban? We all remember Conor Lamb campaigning with video of him shooting an AR-15 and then voting to ban them this year.

Richard Aborn (instrumental proponent of 94 AWB), Rep Steve Israel (proponent of AWB and on recent 97% podcast spoke favorable of NY’s Bruen-response bill and explained his idea of compromise as “getting 60% rather than 100%” of gun control policies he wants), and Rep Moulton (who’s service I respect yet again just voted for an AWB), are all prominent members of your board. Why should the gun community trust you???

So when will the gun community trust you? When you come forward with REAL policy compromises as well as fight to overturn abusive laws. We want to stand shoulder to shoulder with you in calling out California’s Handgun Roster or New York’s post-Bruen concealed carry restrictions. We are willing to discuss federal Universal background checks in exchange for national concealed carry reciprocity. A federal license (with training perhaps!) in exchange for not needing FFL NICS checks for transfers. These were the types of discussions we were expecting when we showed up to watch yesterday. The ONLY person who in good faith touched on any of this was Dr. Siegel.

I will end with a humorous fictional story written about someone attending the conference in-person that is circulating among the gun community.

https://hwfo.substack.com/p/ninety-seven-percent

I hope your organization will take this criticism to heart and revamp how you plan on engaging in good faith with the firearm community. Many of us are still willing to talk, but not just about how much we are willing to give up in exchange for nothing.

Best,
David Rice
Chicago

Well, the false front gun control group led by, among others,  Richard Aborn of Handgun Control Inc/the Brady Campaign (name subject to change without notice), has finally gotten off the dime to post their list of tired talking points we’ve seen before

97Percent’s New Research-Based Policy Roadmap Reveals New Path to Dramatically Reduce Gun Violence

97Percent Policy Roadmap
The Policy Roadmap is a research-backed package guided by a simple core principle – gun safety policies should ensure that people who are at high risk for violence cannot access guns while simultaneously respecting the rights of law-abiding citizens. The package includes:

  1. Closing the Violent Misdemeanor Loophole. New federal and state policies would set violent misdemeanor crimes as the threshold for excluding people from purchasing or possessing a gun. The current felony threshold does not capture many violent crimes, including assault, battery, and stalking; lowering this threshold is the single most-effective measure to reduce crime and may reduce overall gun-related homicide rates by as much as 19%. Only four states currently have violent misdemeanor laws.

  2. Implementing State-Level Gun Permit Laws. States would create a gun permitting system with two permits – a general one and one for concealed carry – both of which could be issued at the same time. Permits would be checked using a new background check system, as outlined below, and be valid for a period of years. Only 12 states currently require a permit to purchase a firearm.

  3. Simplifying Universal Background Checks. New, simplified background checks as part of the gun permitting process would utilize both federal and state databases to ensure a potential permit holder has not been convicted of a violent misdemeanor or felony. Currently, only 11 states search state and local records as part of the background check process, even though many violent crimes are only tracked in state databases.

  4. Implementing Red Flag Laws with Strong Due Process Protections. State-level laws would allow family members or law enforcement officials to petition a court to remove firearms from a person who is a threat while including strong provisions protecting gun owners’ due process. Only 19 states have red flag laws and only 12 allow family members to petition for a protective order.

Bloomberg’s propagandists now blame gas stations for Philadelphia murders

The anti-gun activists at The Trace — the propaganda arm of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s vast anti-gun empire — have created a new bogeyman for their ongoing war against our gun rights: Killer Gas Stations.

In a story published Monday titled “Gas Stations Become a Magnet for Violence in Philadelphia,” the author would have you hold your breath, suspend all disbelief and actually accept that mom-and-pop gas stations somehow play a role in the escalating gang violence sweeping the city, even though the author’s own data does not support such a claim.

According to the story, there were nine killings at Philadelphia gas stations during all of 2021 and 2022 — nine homicides in nearly two years. However, citywide over the same time period there were 1,021 murders — 562 during 2021 and 459 in 2022. To be clear, gas station murders made up less than one-percent of Philadelphia’s total homicides.

And who would a young anti-gun activist turn to in order to buttress his false claim that service stations are somehow culpable for murder? How about a local attorney who has filed lawsuits against nine gas stations because people were shot in their parking lots.

“I don’t think the public is aware of this because they may think of shootings usually happening at bars or nightclubs, certainly not at gas stations,” said attorney David P. Thiruselvam, who has filed nine lawsuits against gas stations. “But it’s becoming an epidemic, and the gas station industry is aware of it because it’s in the news all the time. But they are not doing anything about it.”

Not only is the gas station industry not doing anything about this “epidemic,” the City of Philadelphia didn’t leap into action either.

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The Dirty Secrets inside the Black Box Climate Models

The world has less than a decade to change course to avoid irreversible ecological catastrophe, the UN warned today.” The Guardian Nov 28 2007

“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Yogi Berra

Introduction

Global extinction due to global warming has been predicted more times than climate activist, Leo DiCaprio, has traveled by private jet.  But where do these predictions come from? If you thought it was just calculated from the simple, well known relationship between CO2 and solar energy spectrum absorption, you would only expect to see about 0.5o C increase from pre-industrial temperatures as a result of CO2 doubling, due to the logarithmic nature of the relationship.

Figure 1: Incremental warming effect of CO2 alone [1]

The runaway 3-6o C and higher temperature increase model predictions depend on coupled feedbacks from many other factors, including water vapour (the most important greenhouse gas), albedo (the proportion of energy reflected from the surface – e.g. more/less ice or clouds, more/less reflection) and aerosols, just to mention a few, which theoretically may amplify the small incremental CO2 heating effect. Because of the complexity of these interrelationships, the only way to make predictions is with climate models because they can’t be directly calculated.

The purpose of this article is to explain to the non-expert, how climate models work, rather than a focus on the issues underlying the actual climate science, since the models are the primary ‘evidence’ used by those claiming a climate crisis. The first problem, of course, is no model forecast is evidence of anything. It’s just a forecast, so it’s important to understand how the forecasts are made, the assumptions behind them and their reliability.

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Op-Ed blows it on Second Amendment history

The Deep South is, for the most part, a safe haven for the Second Amendment. It’s not unique to here, mind you, but it’s definitely a big part of the culture down here and has been for ages.

And yet, for many, that’s indicative of…something. In particular, guns are about racism, and gun owners are, in essence, racist.

Yeah, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, either, but an op-ed in the LA Times is the latest to try and make that connection.

There are a lot of guns in America — this nation has collectively more civilian-owned guns than we have citizens. Unlike the rest of the developed world, firearms ownership in America is broadly held, with an estimated 40% of American households owning at least one gun; and unlike the rest of the world, gun-owning Americans tend to think of their weapons not as something dangerous, but as something that keeps them and their families safe.

Two-thirds of American gun owners say that they own their gun at least in part for protection — this despite data showing having a gun in the house doubles the likelihood that someone in the household will die by homicide, triples the likelihood that someone in the household will die by suicide, and provides little or no defense against assault or property loss.

Where does this unique set of beliefs about the protective power of a gun come from?

I don’t know. Facts, maybe?

Let’s remember that the data he links to has serious problems. For example, the study saying having a gun in the house doubles your chance of dying by homicide has been widely and repeatedly debunked. The other link uses information from the National Crime Victimization Survey, which also has problems that have been widely discussed.

But don’t worry. The author knows where our beliefs really come from.

Americans have not always felt this way: Historians suggest that for a large portion of this country’s existence, firearms were more often thought of as tools for hunting and pest control, with a purpose that was not primarily to keep a household safe. Guns, when advertised, were often displayed in the same pages as household goods such as farm implements, with similar language promoting both.

It is only relatively recently that Americans came to widely believe that guns keep a person safe and secure. My research with Jessica Mazen suggests that the crystallization and propagation of these beliefs happened largely in the former slave states in the aftermath of the Civil War.

There we go. The whole “racist” thing, right?

Well, not necessarily. I might be a bit worked up over this one.

Now, the author does go into the fact that those former states of the Confederacy were pretty lawless during Reconstruction and there was a widely held perception that the government in place had no interest in protecting former Rebel soldiers, thus precipitating people feeling the need to protect themselves.

However, even there, he’s missing a key aspect of gun ownership that predated the Civil War.

In particular, that guns had long been a part of self-defense measures, even if they weren’t necessarily marketed as such.

From the time of Jamestown and St. Augustine, the North American continent was a pretty rough place. Wild animals were an issue, but so were the Native American tribes that called this land home for eons prior. While many were friendly with the settlers and were willing to trade, others saw the Europeans as invaders.

This became even clearer after the settlements grew.

Indian attacks were a thing.

In fact, the earliest school shooting on American soil, if not in the world, took place in 1764, more than a century before Reconstruction. Four Lenape warriors slaughtered 11 people and wounded one other in the Enoch Brown school massacre, part of Pontiac’s Rebellion.

Such attacks were at least semi-common, particularly for those who lived outside of the protection of the town. Those who lived and farmed in these areas knew that their guns were key to their survival, not just for getting game during lean years, but also to fight back from these attacks.

The Founding Fathers were well aware of such attacks when they penned the Second Amendment.

“But advertisements…”

Honestly, I don’t want to hear a thing about advertisements. Advertisements are about what they think will sell a product but don’t represent the totality of how people view the product.

Even looking at the Founding Fathers’ words, it’s difficult to imagine that no one viewed guns as mere hunting tools rather than an item essential to self-defense and the defense of this nation.

Plus, if guns were for hunting, then why do we have flintlock pistols for private sale? Surely no one was using a pistol to hunt bears back in the day.

In fact, look at the wording of the Second Amendment itself for a moment. It begins with the controversial clause, “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state” before anything else. There’s no “hunting being important for putting food on the table” or anything of the sort. The militia clause clearly articulates that this is about defending our nation and, by extension, ourselves.

No amount of pretending otherwise is going to change it.

Another episode of ‘Joe went off teleprompter again! Rollout the walkback!

KJP Claims Biden’s Exact Words on Coal Are Being ‘Twisted’

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre released a statement Saturday afternoon in an effort to walk back President Joe Biden’s remarks Friday.

During a campaign stop in California, Biden said, “We’re gonna be shutting these plants down all across America, and having wind and solar.” Jean-Pierre claims Biden’s words, which have simply been quoted and replayed, are being “twisted.”

“The President’s remarks yesterday have been twisted to suggest a meaning that was not intended; he regrets it if anyone hearing these remarks took offense. The President was commenting on a fact of economics and technology: as it has been from its earliest days as an energy superpower, America is once again in the midst of an energy transition. Our goal as a nation is to combat climate change and increase our energy security by producing clean and efficient American energy,” the statement says. “He is determined to make sure that this transition helps all Americans in all parts of the country, with more jobs and better opportunities; it’s a commitment he has advanced since Day One. No one will be left behind.”

The statement comes just hours after Democratic Senator Joe Manchin blasted Biden’s remarks as “disgusting” and “outrageous.” He also demanded an apology.

“President Biden’s comments are not only outrageous and divorced from reality, they ignore the severe economic pain the American people are feeling because of rising energy costs. Comments like these are the reason the American people are losing trust in President Biden and instead believes he does not understand the need to have an all in energy policy that would keep our nation totally energy independent and secure. It seems his positions change depending on the audience and the politics of the day. Politicizing our nation’s energy policies would only bring higher prices and more pain for the American people,” Manchin released in a statement.

“Let me be clear, this is something the President has never said to me. Being cavalier about the loss of coal jobs for men and women in West Virginia and across the country who literally put their lives on the line to help build and power this country is offensive and disgusting,” he continued. “The President owes these incredible workers an immediate and public apology and it is time he learn a lesson that his words matter and have consequences.”

Always read articles at the Duke University blog using this simple key:
Judge strikes down gun law -> Wrong decision, confusing, it’s Bruen’s fault
Judge upholds gun law -> Right decision, they did their best to make sense of Bruen

Federal Judge Strikes Down New York’s Ban on Firearms in Places of Worship

On October 20, a federal judge in the Western District of New York issued a decision in Hardaway v. Nigrelli granting a motion for a temporary restraining order and enjoining New York’s ban on carrying firearms in “any place of worship or religious observation.”  Notably, the decision by District Judge John Sinatra reached an opposite conclusion about this specific piece of New York’s sensitive-places list than an earlier decision by Judge Glenn Suddaby of the Northern District in Antonyuk v. Hochul (Judge Suddaby’s decision was appealed to the Second Circuit and is stayed pending that appeal).

The plaintiffs in Hardaway are a reverend and a bishop in upstate New York, both of whom have active concealed-carry licenses.  The plaintiffs allege that they consistently carried guns on church property “for self-defense and to keep the peace,” under New York’s prior law which permitted license-holders to carry in most locations, and would continue doing so but for the state’s new law which designated places of worship (among many other locations) as sensitive places where guns are prohibited.  The judge first engaged in a lengthy standing analysis, ultimately finding that the plaintiffs face a sufficiently imminent threat of prosecution, based on statements by New York politicians and law enforcement officials that the new law would be actively enforced.

Moving on to the plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on the merits of their Second Amendment claims, the judge summarized the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence, including Bruen, and applied the Bruen test.  New York cited laws passed by four states and two territories between 1870-1890 “that contained place of worship firearm restrictions.”  Relying on Bruen, the judge held that these post-ratification laws were insufficient to constitute a historical “tradition” because they did not “show endurance over time”—rather, in the judge’s view, the laws were “outliers,” “a handful of seemingly spasmodic enactments involving a small minority of jurisdictions governing a small minority of population” passed long after 1791.  According to the judge, “[t]hese enactments are far too remote, far too anachronistic, and very much outliers—insufficient, then, in the search for an American tradition.”  Emphasizing the continued danger that Americans face outside of the home, the judge found that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claims.

The judge also rejected New York’s argument that churches are analogous to historical sensitive places such as legislative assemblies, polling places, and courthouses.  The judge found that places of worship are unsecured and visited regularly by congregants, whereas the government buildings historically designated as sensitive are heavily secured areas that citizens visit “sporadically.”  The judge also held that “[t]he State’s argument that places of worship are analogous because the exclusion supposedly also minimizes the chance of violence between those with opposing views [was] undeveloped and, in any event, belie[d] the non-confrontational purpose drawing people to houses of worship in the first place.”

Judge Sinatra granted a TRO enjoining New York’s ban on guns in “places of worship or religious observation,” effective immediately with no stay, and set a preliminary injunction hearing for November 3.  There is no indication that the state has yet appealed the decision or requested a stay pending appeal, which would mean that the restraining order is currently in effect.

Hardaway reaches a contrary result to Antonyuk, which just three weeks ago upheld New York’s prohibition on guns in places of worship contingent on the state construing the provision to include an exception “for those persons who have been tasked with the duty to keep the peace.”  In Antonyuk, Judge Suddaby weighed the exact same set of historical laws relied upon in Hardaway:  laws passed between 1870 and 1890 in Georgia, Texas, Virginia, Missouri, and the Arizona and Oklahoma territories.  But Judge Suddaby found that three historical laws constitute a tradition and, applying that threshold, upheld New York’s places of worship prohibition with an added exception for those responsible for keeping the peace in a church.  Judge Sinatra, on the other hand, used some unspecified higher number of laws as the cutoff.  Four state and two territorial laws were not sufficient, in his view, to form a tradition and were all outliers.  It’s difficult to say which approach is more faithful to Bruen, but—given such disparate outcomes at the district-court level—it’s clear that some guidance from the appellate courts is urgently needed.

The Hardaway opinion also highlights an issue lurking within Bruen’s historical test which I’ve written about before: judges seem all too willing to credit “colonial” history, even when that history is much further in time from the Founding than contrary post-ratification history.  Bruen states that “late-19th-century evidence cannot provide much insight into the meaning of the Second Amendment when it contradicts earlier evidence.”  But “earlier evidence” here should only be persuasive to the extent it might illustrate the scope of the right established at the Founding.  The further back in time from the Founding one ventures, the less likely that evidence is to shed light on the meaning of the amendment ratified in 1791.  Both Antonyuk and Hardaway point to early-1600s laws requiring white men to carry guns to church, with Judge Sinatra’s opinion noting that New York’s late-1800s evidence is suspect especially in light of “colonial-era enactments that, in fact, mandated such carry at places of worship.”  The judge cites a 2014 law review article by Benjamin Boyd titled Take Your Guns to Church.

Many of the colonial-era laws Boyd catalogues long pre-date the Founding and ratification of the Bill of Rights (his article cites to other sources for some of these colonial-era laws, including Clayton Cramer’s Colonial Firearms Regulation).  Boyd starts his colonial journey with a 1619 Virginia law requiring weapons to be brought to church on the Sabbath.  Of eight colonial laws summarized in Boyd’s article, six were passed between 1619 and 1643—the other two were passed in 1738 and 1743, respectively.  So, the vast majority of these laws were passed 150 years or more prior to ratification of the Bill of Rights, in British colonies.  Yet, to Judge Sinatra, a law passed in a U.S. state in 1870—80 years after ratification and a mere two years after the 14th Amendment was ratified—is “far too remote [and] far too anachronistic.”  How can that possibly be?  Bruen itself cautioned that a colonial law passed “roughly a century before the founding sheds little light on how to properly interpret the Second Amendment” and noted that “[h]istorical evidence that long predates either date [1791 or 1868] may not illuminate the scope of the right if linguistic or legal conventions changed in the intervening years.”

As Dru Stevenson has observed, “eras in the distant past seem closer together in our perception than recent events separate[d] by the same amount of time.”  This is a documented phenomenon in psychology known as “temporal compression.”  Researchers have found “evidence that memories are [] logarithmically compressed with time: the farther from the present the memory, the less discriminable it is from an earlier memory.”  It stands to reason that historical analysis is susceptible to this same fallacy, and that judges and lawyers must guard against it when examining the historical record.  It is tempting to lump all of colonial history together as close in time to 1776—the most salient historical date, the signing of the Declaration of Independence—because that is how our minds naturally perceive history.  But the colonial period, which one might date to the 1607 establishment of Jamestown, stretched for almost 200 years.  Why should a cluster of laws passed in certain British colonies in the early 1600s be more indicative of an American tradition codified in 1791 than laws passed from 1870-1890 (a conclusion that Hardaway and other decisions treat as obvious)?

Moreover, the two “bring your gun to church” laws passed closer in time to the actual Founding, in Virginia and South Carolina in 1738 and 1743, respectively, warrant a closer look.  As Carol Anderson describes in her recent book The Second, Southern militia and gun laws in the 1700s were motivated by “an overwhelming fear among whites of the enslaved’s capacity and desire for retribution” that led certain colonies to pass laws effectively deputizing the white male militia into a slave-patrol force also prepared to suppress any slave rebellion.  And Virginia and South Carolina were the two colonies with the consistently highest slave populations.  By 1710 Blacks outnumbered whites in South Carolina, and, as of the 1780 census, South Carolina was 53.9% Black and Virginia was 41% Black—the highest percentages by far in what would become the original 13 states.  There is little doubt, then, that the Virginia and South Carolina laws requiring militiamen to attend church armed were intended to address concerns about slave uprisings.  Indeed, Professor Anderson describes how the 1739 Stono Rebellion in South Carolina was conducted “[u]nder the cover of the Sabbath.”

These two laws were a direct response to slave-uprising concerns and not a recognition of any kind of widely-accepted right to bring guns to places of worship.  Notably, the very fact that South Carolina’s law was enacted in response to Stono suggests that the idea of having guns in church was not longstanding or deeply-rooted; rather, it was necessitated by the perceived exigency of potentially imminent slave rebellions and the need to keep Blacks enslaved in the colony.

BLUF
Those who spoke against lockdowns and mandates in early 2020 showed that they were willing to stand up for the freedoms and Enlightenment principles for which our forebears fought so tirelessly, even when doing so was lonely, thankless, and hard. For that reason, anyone who did so has reason to feel extremely proud, and the future would be brighter if they were in positions of leadership. That fact is now becoming increasingly clear—unfortunately, even to those who did the opposite. One more reason to keep all the receipts.

Lockdowns: The Great Gaslighting
The lockdowns of 2020 were very real. And few opposed them

More than two years since the lockdowns of 2020, the political mainstream, particularly on the left, is just beginning to realize that the response to Covid was an unprecedented catastrophe.

But that realization hasn’t taken the form of a mea culpa. Far from it. On the contrary, in order to see that reality is starting to dawn on the mainstream left, one must read between the lines of how their narrative on the response to Covid has evolved over the past two years.

The narrative now goes something like this: Lockdowns never really happened, because governments never actually locked people in their homes; but if there were lockdowns, then they saved millions of lives and would have saved even more if only they’d been stricter; but if there were any collateral damage, then that damage was an inevitable consequence of the fear from the virus independent of the lockdowns; and even when things were shut down, the rules weren’t very strict; but even when the rules were strict, we didn’t really support them.

Put simply, the prevailing narrative of the mainstream left is that any upside from the response to Covid is attributable to the state-ordered closures and mandates that they supported, while any downside was an inevitable consequence of the virus independent of any state-ordered closures and mandates which never happened and which anyway they never supported. Got it? Good.

This perplexing narrative was perfectly encapsulated in a recent viral tweet by a history professor who griped about the difficulty of convincing his students that government mandates had nothing to do with the fact that they couldn’t leave their homes in 2020.

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Democrats,  Demoncraps, who have spent years delegitimizing the Supreme Court and rule of law, undermining legislative norms, cheering on unprecedented and blatant executive abuses, and using the DOJ to target their political enemies, among other “democracy”-destroying behaviors, do not occupy any high moral ground. And while “democracy” was once just a transparently silly euphemism for “stuff we want,” it has since evolved into a rhetorical device that denotes a decisively illiberal mindset.

DEMOCRATS Demoncraps: The Only Way To Save Democracy Is One-Party Rule.
‘Save Our Democracy’ is the new ‘Russia Collusion.’

At this point, it would save everyone time if Democrats could simply point to a policy agenda item that isn’t going to save democracy — if such a thing exists.

If Republicans vote, they are killing democracy. If they don’t vote, they are killing democracy. The only way to “save democracy,” writes The Washington Post’s Max Boot, is to empower one-party rule — a position that probably sounds counterintuitive to anyone with a middle-school education. “Now you need to vote to literally save democracy again,” contends President Joe Biden, or we will lose our “fundamental rights and freedoms like the right to choose, the right to privacy, the right to vote — our very democracy.”

Chilling stuff. But it doesn’t end there. You will remember that by failing to “reform” the filibuster, which would entail authorizing the thinnest of fleeting majorities to shove through massive generational “reforms” without any national consensus or debate, we are also killing democracy. This has been the position not only of left-wing pundits and the New York Times editorial board, but also senators tasked with defending their institution. I wonder if they will support this democracy-saving fix next session, as well?

Then again, if we don’t nationalize the economy to avert a climate crisis, we are also killing democracy. “We’ve got to save democracy in order to save our species,” Jamie Raskin explains. And if we don’t empty the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to temporarily keep gas prices low to help Democrats win in 2022, we are killing democracy. “We find ourselves in a situation, where keeping gas prices low is key to preserving and strengthening the future of our democracy,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes says.

We must allow the president to unilaterally create trillion-dollar spending bills and break existing private sector contracts by fiat. For democracy. We must pack the court to “save democracy.” We must create a Ministry of Truth to help with “strengthening democratic institutions.” We must vote for a Pennsylvania candidate who can’t cobble two consecutive coherent sentences together because the “fate of our democracy” is at stake, says our former president.

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That’s why I don’t really care what 97Percent wants or claims to be about. They’re no different than Giffords, Brady, Everytown, and every other group that wants to annihilate our Second Amendment rights.

Don’t get too excited about “common ground” survey results

For many, the goal is to find common ground on issues relating to guns and gun control. It’s their hope that if they can find enough points of agreement, gun control laws can be passed.

Even if I accepted this premise, though, I know what will happen. Those laws will be passed, only we see no results (at best) so now they want to find “common ground” on still more regulations. Little by little, we’ll see our rights whittled away.

Yet the question remains, does the common ground exist?

According to a recent report, it does.

The majority of gun owners are concerned about gun violence and support policies to reduce gun-related injuries and deaths, according to new research from Tufts University and gun safety organization 97Percent.

Three-fourths of gun owners surveyed said they are concerned about the frequency of school shootings, and 71 percent said the same of mass shootings, according to the research released on Monday. Seventy percent said they also want to help find a way reduce gun-related injuries and deaths.

Most gun owners, including Republican ones, said they support several proposed laws to prevent people with a high risk of violence from accessing guns.

Gun safety organization 97Percent, which touts itself as a bipartisan group of both gun owners and non-gun owners, noted in its report on the research that this defies the current perception that there is an “intractable divide” over gun control in the U.S.

And since 97Percent paid for this study, it’s not surprising that the result was exactly what 97Percent wanted.

It’s part of why all such “studies” need to be questioned vigorously.

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No, we don’t

Gabby Giffords: We need to come together for gun control

Former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was the unfortunate victim of a violent attack targeting her specifically. It was an awful event and one that should never have happened.

Since then, though, the Democrat who tried to position herself as at least somewhat pro-gun has fully embraced gun control, founding her own group to advance just that agenda.

Now, she’s taken to the opinion page of the Fox News website to call on all American gun owners to join with her to advance gun control.

That’s why I founded a coalition within Giffords called Gun Owners for Safety. It’s a community for responsible gun owners to advocate for gun safety laws while standing up to extremists who claim to stand up for freedom — but whose ideas undermine the safety of our schools and communities.

Members of Giffords Gun Owners for Safety have the courage to take action to address the gun violence epidemic. They understand that the right to own guns must be balanced with civic responsibility. They know that gun ownership is not a license to terrorize and harass others with firearms — and they don’t feel understood, heard or represented by gun lobby groups that use fear and extremism to sell more guns.

First, I agree owning a gun isn’t a license to “terrorize and harass others with firearms.” Of course, I’m pretty sure Giffords thinks any sight of firearms counts as terrorization and harassment with a gun whereas I don’t, but that’s just my assumption based on her views. I could be wrong.

The problem, though, is that rather than working on educating gun owners about how to be responsible gun owners or something like that, they’re demonizing the groups that actually work to preserve our gun rights.

That’s because, for Giffords, the only way to advance “gun safety” is to restrict law-abiding gun owners.

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