BLUF
Note: Readers might recall Garland’s response last week came in the same press conference in which he claimed that questioning an AG or the DoJ is the same thing as undermining democracy. Now we can glimpse a reason for Garland’s panicked hyperbole; the whistleblowers are exposing the truth about Garland’s corrupt administration of the DoJ.

Hunter prosecutor: IRS whistleblower is … telling the truth?

And here we thought the State Department report on Joe Biden’s disgrace in Afghanistan was the long-holiday Friday night document dump. That turned out to only be an appetizer, however. US Attorney David Weiss, the man behind the very lenient and very convenient plea deal for Hunter Biden, finally responded to House Judiciary chair Jim Jordan’s demand for an answer to whistleblower accusations that he and Merrick Garland misled Congress on the extent of his authority and independence.

Weiss rebutted that claim by, er … admitting to it? Read for yourself:

Relevant portion transcribed below:

As the U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, my charging authority is limited to my home district. If venue for a case lies elsewhere, common Departmental practice is to contact the United States Attorney’s Office for the district in question and determine whether it wants to partner on the case. If not, I may request Special Attorney status from the Attorney General pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 515. Here, I have been assured that, if necessary after the above process, I would be granted § 515 in the District of Columbia, the Central District of California, or any other district where charges could be brought in this matter.

That matches up a lot more closely to the claims from IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley et al than to what Merrick Garland told Congress and the public. A week ago, Garland insisted that Weiss had already been granted that kind of authority (via Twitchy, see note at end):

Continue reading “”

July 2

1494 – The Treaty of Tordesillas is ratified. This divided newly discovered lands outside Europe between the Portuguese and the Spanish along a meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands in the Atlantic Ocean.

1776 – The Second Continental Congress adopts a resolution offered by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, severing political ties with the Kingdom of Great Britain.

1881 – Charles J. Guiteau shoots and fatally wounds President Garfield, who dies of complications on September 19.

1890 – The U.S. Congress passes the Sherman Antitrust Act to regulate free competition in commerce.

1897 – British-Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi obtains a patent for a radio transceiver in London.

1900 – A lighter than air ship designed and constructed by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin of Germany makes its first flight on Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen.

1921 – President Harding signs the Knox–Porter Resolution formally ending the war between the United States and Germany.

1937 – Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan disappear over the Pacific ocean on their flight around the world.

1962 – The first Walmart store opens for business in Rogers, Arkansas.

1976 – Communist North Vietnam annexes the former South Vietnam to form the unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

1990 –  1,400 moslim pilgrims are suffocated to death and trampled during a stampede in a pedestrian tunnel from the ‘tent city’ of Mina into Mecca.

1994 – USAir Flight 1016,  a McDonnell Douglas DC-9, crashes near Charlotte Douglas International Airport, North Carolina, killing 37 of the 52 passengers, and injuring the other 20 passengers and crew on board.

2001 – The AbioCor self contained artificial heart is first implanted in patient Robert Tools who lives for another 151 days.

2002 – Steve Fossett becomes the first person to fly solo around the world nonstop in a balloon.

2008 – Íngrid Betancourt, a member of the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia, is released from captivity after being held for six and a half years by FARC.

2013 – The International Astronomical Union names Pluto’s 4th and 5th moons, Kerberos and Styx.

We’ve let these schools raise up a generation or two of snowflake pansies.

If you need therapy after a court rules against you, you shouldn’t be a lawyer.

Make SCOTUS great again: Boston University law students offered therapy after recent rulings.

The work week ended with monumental rulings from the Supreme Court. The hot takes coming from the media are heavy with doom-and-gloom vibes because most of them are liberals.

There is no denying the rulings on the three big cases that deal with affirmative action, religious freedom, and student debt forgiveness, will “re-shape America for generations to come,” as one CNN anchor said this morning. A Washington correspondent for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said the rulings were made “strictly along ideological lines.” Another anchor noted that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, opined that the rulings show that it may be time for “re-shaping the Court.’

The drama. The Supreme Court is following the Constitution and the liberals are emotionally distressed. They have become so accustomed to the Court randomly making law instead of following the Constitution, like Roe v Wade back in 1973, that justices who are originalists are seen as oddities of the right. For example, Joe Biden, who has been humiliated by the rulings, especially the one on student loan bailouts, said the Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution wrong. Imagine the ignorance and arrogance of Biden, who barely graduated from law school, saying the Supreme Court just didn’t understand the Constitution.

The big affirmative action case where the Court ruled that the admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina “violate the Equal Protections Clause of the 14th Amendment,” was a punch in the gut to those who think discrimination is bad if it is against black and brown students but ok against Asian and white students. That is an over-simplification but it is the core of the system that routinely denied admission to qualified Asian students so that preference could be made for black and Hispanic students. Picking winners and losers based on skin color in college admissions always results in discrimination against someone. We long ago abandoned the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. that his children would be judged on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. In other words, meritocracy is back in college admissions and that is a good thing. Students deserve admission based on merit, not skin color, and the ability to check a box on an application.

Boston University is trying to cope with the fact that we now have a Supreme Court that follows the Constitution.

“The rulings of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS)—in cases addressing the admissions practices at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina—are profoundly disappointing because they take us backward, potentially creating less diverse college campuses and a less just America,” Boston University President Robert A. Brown wrote in a letter sent to the University community shortly after the decision Thursday. “These decisions are antithetical to Boston University’s values and mission.”

Brown added that the University would continue to review the decision “to better understand what it means for our admissions and academic practices and the changes we may be required to make.”

Whenever I think of affirmative action, I am reminded of a line George W. Bush often used in speeches about education – the soft bigotry of low expectations. It is insulting to black and brown students to assume that because of their skin color, they need special consideration. It assumes that all black and brown students come from poverty and few opportunities that others are afforded. Perhaps back when affirmative action first began but not now. There are more middle-class and upper-class minorities now than ever before. Affirmative action was never meant to be a forever policy. It is no longer needed as it once was.

There are ways for colleges to make their own admissions policies, something that Chief Justice Roberts notes. One associate professor at BU School of Law notes the lack of guidance in the ruling.

“It’s hard to say what this means for other colleges and universities because the majority opinion wasn’t all that clear in a lot of important ways,” says Jonathan Feingold, an associate professor of law at the BU School of Law.

“I wouldn’t take this opinion as a reason to take off the table ever considering race again,” Feingold says. “Colleges and universities may just have to do it in a more careful, defined way than what Harvard and UNC did.”

To that end, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, writing in the majority opinion, notes: “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” In other words, “the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race,” he writes.

In order for Boston University law students to be able to cope with a Supreme Court that follows the Constitution, mental health resources are being made available to help them “navigate these times.” The resources are not specialized counseling for students but resources that are already available.

Two of the resources were BU Behavioral Medicine and BU Student Wellbeing. According to its website, BU Behavioral Medicine offers therapy, on-call service for mental health emergencies and mental health diagnoses, among other services.

The student government criticized the decision in 303 Creative LLC. v. Elenis, which gave a Christian web designer the right to deny services to same-sex couples. It also condemned Biden v. Nebraska, which ruled President Biden’s proposed student loan forgiveness plan was unconstitutional.

“These three decisions form part of a lengthy sequence of this court’s ruling which steadily erode the rights of marginalized communities and undermine the very diversity upon which our nation was built,” the SGA argued.

The group that has benefitted the most from affirmative action policies is women. On today’s college campuses, women students often outnumber men. In 2022, for example, there were almost two women attending college for every man. It was the highest recorded gender imbalance favoring women in U.S. college enrollment. To hear the left speak, affirmative action was solely about skin color. That was never true.

It is the Supreme Court of Clarence Thomas now and that is a remarkable change. The correction is long overdue. The left is just going to have to learn to cope with getting back to the Constitution as it was meant to be, not as the left wanted it to be.

Another Financial Attack on Gun Owners

As Americans frequently utilize credit to purchase a wide array of things for everyday living, it should come as no surprise that one anti-Second Amendment congressman has decided that firearms purchases using one form of credit should be illegal. Specifically, it should be illegal for semi-automatic rifles that might fall under the political definition of “assault weapons.”

Rep. John B. Larson (D-Conn.) is attempting to do just this with H.R. 4289, the “Assault Weapons Financing Accountability Act.”

According to the bill’s text, an importer, manufacturer, or retailer selling a firearm under a “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) financing agreement would be subject to a $100,000 civil fine. Likewise, the purchaser of a firearm bought using BNPL would be subject to the $100,000 civil fine.

In a press release touting this proposed legislation, Larson says, “Banning use of instant financing like BNPL options for assault weapons and the ghost gun kits [to make such rifles] is a step toward reducing the instant accessibility of these weapons and preventing the tragedies of gun violence before they occur.”

The elitism of it all is rather staggering, as Larson is effectively telling Americans they can’t use credit to purchase lawfully made and lawfully sold products. This legislation is certainly in line with other recent attempts by gun-control proponents to attack the right of citizens’ to purchase firearms some people simply do not like by impeding their access to the financial marketplace.

The anti-Second Amendment founder of Mom’s Demand Action, Shannon Watts, for example, is on record proposing that credit-card companies should be able to block their cards from being used to purchase firearm parts.

Closely related to this idea is the announcement by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that it would create a new Merchant Category Code (MCC) specific to firearm and ammunition retailers—and, in the process, likely create a gun registry.

The ISO announcement followed a petition by Amalgamated Bank to create such a code just for gun stores. That petition was supported by some of the top anti-Second Amendment politicians, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and New York Mayor Eric Adams (D), as well as the anti-gun groups Giffords and Guns Down America.

BNPL financing for firearms is offered by the company Credova. A prospective buyer applies for the BNPL financing as part of their firearm purchase. If the BNPL request is approved, the sale goes through.

Larson falsely stated in the press release that the BNPL financing provides “instant access” to firearms. Even if the BNPL purchase is approved, the buyer of the firearm still must successfully pass the required federal firearms background check, as well as any state-applicable checks and requirements, before a firearm can be transferred.

Like so many of the attempts to strangle Second Amendment rights, Larson and his allies claim that the “Assault Weapons Financing Accountability Act” is needed to reduce “mass shootings,” which they insist are being financed by BNPL even though they haven’t produced any data to support this claim.

Given the current political make-up of the U.S. House of Representatives, this bill is unlikely to gain traction. If both chambers of Congress were in line with the Biden administration’s view of our rights, however, then this could certainly become law.

Victim shoots attacker in self-defense

A man is now facing charges in connection with a violent domestic incident in Somers.
State police responded to a home on Summit Circle back on June 13.
They say they found a man who had been shot in the arm and a resident suffering from head trauma.
Both were taken to Westchester Medical Center.
An investigation determined 66-year-old Raymond Lauda had forcibly entered the residence and assaulted the victim.
The victim then fired a rifle in self-defense.
Laudo is charged with burglary, assault, strangulation, criminal possession of a weapon and menacing.
He was released on $25,000.

Senator: Gun-free school zone law is attack on 2nd amendment

A law that would place restrictions on guns in schools was tabled in the Senate Friday after Republican legislators claimed it was unconstitutional and unfair to law-abiding citizens.

House Bill 201, sponsored by Speaker of the House Rep. Pete Schwartzkopf, D-Rehoboth Beach, aims to enable a police officer to act immediately when they see or suspect a person with a gun in a safe school and recreation zone.

“I don’t understand how this bill keeps the bad guys out,” said Sen. Bryant Richardson, R-Seaford. “Ones that have nefarious objectives are going to enter the schools anyway, so how does this do anything?”

The bill cites that as of April 4, 74 people have been killed or injured by guns in schools in 13 separate school shootings across the country this year.

School shootings hit a record high in 2022 with 46 shootings, the bill states, surpassing 2021’s record of 42 shootings. In 2022, 43,450 children experienced a school shooting.

Sen. Dave Lawson, R-Marydel, said the bill was yet another attack on the second amendment.

“Law enforcement has a right to stop anyone if they believe there’s about to be a crime committed; they do not have to wait,” he said. “They can intercede and violence does not have to happen for them to take action, so this bill really has a false premise.”

Under the bill, the crime of possession of a firearm in a safe school and recreation zone is a class E felony, which means the culprit could face up to five years in prison.

Only police officers, constables or active-duty military personnel who are acting in an official capacity are allowed to have a gun in the school zone, per the bill.

However, it allows holders of a valid license to carry concealed weapons only if the firearm is in a vehicle.

Lawson said the bill puts out the idea that a bad actor has free run at a school.

“There’s no one there to stop them and they’ll have free rein to get to our kids and our teachers with free rein as we advertise this is a gun free zone,” Lawson said. “Look at Sandy Hook. The man drove by the schools that had SROs and went to one where there were no guns, it was a free zone. This is not a good idea.”

There have been several incidents of guns found in Delaware schools in the 2022-2023 school year, which led to many districts re-evaluating their safety policies and even one investing in metal detectors for entryways.

The bill also would require a student who possesses a firearm in a Safe School and Recreation Zone to be expelled for at least 90 day. However, it also would give a local school board or charter school board of directors may, on a case-by-case basis, modify the terms of the expulsion.

Schwarzkopf’s bill would include exemptions to the rule. They include if a gun-holder is on private property not part of school grounds; if the firearm is in a locked container or locked firearms rack that is on or in a motor vehicle; or if a gun-holder is engaged in lawful hunting, firearms instruction or firearm-related sports on public lands not belonging to a school.

The bill was laid on the table.

Later, though, it appeared in the house with an amendment from Sen. Brian Pettyjohn, R-Georgetown, to create the offense of possession of a firearm in a Safe Recreation Zone while not changing changing the violation of possession of a firearm as established under the Act.

When it came up in the House, Valerie Longhurst, who knew she was about to be elected speaker of house replacing Schwartzkopf, joked, “This is the last bill of yours I’m running.”

The fate of the bill was the object of curiosity in the House of Representatives, where Schwartzkopf was about to announce he was stepping down from the speaker’s role to spend more time with family.

The Senate also sent bills aiming to prevent child abuse to Gov. John Carney’s desk for his signature.

The threat posed by humans to the natural environment is nothing compared to the threat to humans posed by global environmental policy.
— Fred L. Smith

July 1

1097 – The army of the First Crusade under the command of Prince Behemond of Antioch, defeats the army of Sultan Kilij Arslan at Dorylaeum near modern day Eskişehir, Turkey.

1431 – Forces of King John of Castile engage those of Sultan Muhammed of Granada at La Higueruela scoring a minor victory during the Reconquista of Spain.

1523 – Jan van Essen and Hendrik Vos, the first Lutheran martyrs, are burned at the stake in Brussels.

1770 – Lexell’s Comet, named after the man who computed its orbit – Anders Johan Lexell – is detected as passing closer to the Earth than any other comet in recorded history to that time, approaching to a distance of 0.0146 astronomical units, 1,360,000 miles.

1782 – During the Revolution, the US privateer, Captain Noah Stoddard of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, commanding the 16 gun schooner Scammel, and other privateer vessels raid the British settlement at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, following maxim #1; Pillage, then Burn, as they first loot, then destroy the town.

1855 – Under the terms of the Quinault Treaty, the Quinault and the Quileute indian tribes of western Washington state cede their lands to the U.S.

1862 – The Battle of Malvern Hill, near Richmond Virginia, takes place; the last of the ‘Seven Days Battles’ of the Union Virginia Peninsula Campaign during the Civil War.

1863 – The Battle of Gettysburg begins

1870 – Having been signed into law on June 22nd, the act forming the United States Department of Justice comes into effect.

1874 – The Sholes and Glidden typewriter, the first commercially successful model, goes on sale.

1881 – The world’s first international telephone call is made between St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, and Calais, Maine.

1898 – The Battle of San Juan Hill is fought in Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish-American War.

1908 – SOS  ··· – – – ··· is adopted as the international distress signal.

1916 – On the first day of the Battle of the Somme during World War I, 19,000 soldiers of the British Army are killed and 40,000 wounded.

1922 – The Great Railroad Strike of 1922, by 7 of the 16 railroad labor organizations existing at the time, begins in the U.S.

1931 – Wiley Post and Harold Gatty successfully complete their flight of circumnavigation in a single-engined monoplane aircraft.

1942 – The First Battle of El Alamein begins during World War II

1946 – As the start of Operation Crossroads, off Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, the MK3 Nuclear bomb “Gilda“, identical to the one dropped on Nagasaki is dropped from B-29 Dave’s Dream of the 509th Bombardment Group, one of the photographic aircraft on the Nagasaki bombing mission, as the ‘Able’ shot during the first series of nuclear weapon tests after World War II.

1959 – The specific values for the international yard, avoirdupois pound and derived units, e.g. inch, mile and ounce, are adopted after agreement between the U.S., the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries.

1963 – ZIP codes are introduced for United States mail

1968 – The United States Central Intelligence Agency’s Phoenix Program, to destroy the Viet Cong operating in South Vietnam, is officially established.

1979 – Sony introduces the Walkman.

1984 – The PG-13 movie rating is introduced by the MPAA.

1991 – The Warsaw Pact is officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague.

2002 – The International Criminal Court is established at The Hague to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression.

2020 – The United States Mexico Canada Agreement – USMCA, replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement – NAFTA.

Residents shoot back at home intruders during robbery attempt in Seattle

SEATTLE — Seattle police say the victims of a home-invasion robbery turned the table on the suspects during an exchange of gunfire Monday morning.

According to police, the robbery happened around 3:30 a.m. near 5500 23rd Ave South in the Beacon Hill neighborhood.

“The suspects were met by the residents who were armed and exchanged gunfire. The suspects were gone by time officers arrived and were not located,” Seattle police wrote in a watch log.

Approximately 15 minutes after the home invasion robbery was reported, a person with multiple gunshot wounds was dropped off at Swedish First Hill hospital. The victim was taken to Harborview Medical Center in stable condition and did not provide information to police about how they were shot.

Seattle police told KOMO News on Tuesday that it has not been determined if the person who was shot was connected to the home-invasion robbery.

Alan Arkin, Oscar-Winning Little Miss Sunshine Actor, Dead at 89.

Alan Arkin, the Academy Award and Tony Award-winning actor, has died at 89.

His death was confirmed to PEOPLE exclusively by his sons Adam, Matthew and Anthony, who jointly offered a statement on the family’s behalf: “Our father was a uniquely talented force of nature, both as an artist and a man. A loving husband, father, grand and great grandfather, he was adored and will be deeply missed.”

I don’t agree that President Trump’s use of DoD funds to build a wall was wrong. The Constitution makes clear in Article 4 § 4 the requirement to protect the states from invasion, and if hoards of illegal aliens coming into the country doesn’t qualify, I don’t know what would.

On CNN of all places…………

Why the Supreme Court got it right on student loans

 Ilya Somin is a professor of law at George Mason University, the Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute and the author of “Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration and Political Freedom.” 

In a lawsuit brought by six state governments, the Supreme Court on Friday ruled that President Joe Biden’s massive $430 billion student loan forgiveness plan is illegal because it was never authorized by Congress, and the Constitution gives Congress – not the president – the power to determine how federal funds are spent. The court made the right decision: If the administration had won, Biden and future presidents would have been empowered to use vague statutes to usurp Congress’ constitutional control over the federal budget. Moreover, because of the context for this case, it also would have allowed the president to abuse emergency powers for partisan ends.

The administration’s loan forgiveness plan, announced in August 2022, would have canceled up to $20,000 for those with Pell Grants (federal grants for low-income students) or up to $10,000 in other federal student-loan debt for single borrowers with incomes under $125,000 per year and under $250,000 for married couples or heads of households. The legal rationale for the plan is based on a provision of the 2003 HEROES Act, a law that was enacted in large part to help people affected by the War on Terror, particularly members of the armed forces who might have trouble repaying loans while deployed abroad.

But the Biden administration was relying on a provision of the act that gives the secretary of education authority to “waive or modify” federal student loan requirements in order to ensure that recipients of financial assistance who have been affected by a national emergency “are not placed in a worse position financially in relation to that financial assistance” because they were affected by the emergency. The administration claimed beneficiaries of the loan-forgiveness plan qualified because they have been negatively affected financially as a result of the Covid-19 national emergency declared by then-President Donald Trump in March 2020.

The Supreme Court on Friday rightly ruled that the HEROES Act’s language comes nowhere near authorizing such a massive loan forgiveness plan. As Chief Justice John Roberts explained in the majority opinion, “The authority to ‘modify’ statutes and regulations allows the Secretary to make modest adjustments and additions to existing provisions, not transform them.” The word “waive” also doesn’t give the government the power to forgive loans on a massive scale, because, as Roberts noted, the government conceded that the term “waiver” as used in the HEROES Act cannot refer to waiving loan repayments.

Continue reading “”

Fifth Circuit panel appears skeptical of ATF pistol brace rule

This has been one of the busiest weeks in recent memory in terms of court hearings on Second Amendment issues. Not only did we have the Seventh Circuit’s oral arguments on a possible injunction against Illinois’ ban on so-called assault weapons and “large capacity” magazines and the Ninth Circuit’s hearing on California’s AB 2571, but another Ninth Circuit panel heard oral arguments in a challenge to the state’s ban on open carry on Thursday, and a three-judge panel on the Fifth Circuit also heard from both sides in a Thursday hearing to determine whether a temporary injunction halting enforcement of the ATF’s new rule on pistol braces should be left in place and possibly expanded to cover more than just the named plaintiffs in the case.

Advocates for the rule point to deadly mass shootings while arguing that the braces make concealable handguns more deadly. Opponents of the rule say the devices make handguns safer to use by making them more stable, comfortable to fire and accurate — an argument noted in questions from appellate panel judges Don Willett and Stephen Higginson at Thursday’s hearing.

“All that to me seems synonymous with safer. Do you disagree with that?” Willett asked administration attorney Sean Janda.

Janda argued that regulating the braces is consistent with longstanding federal law outlawing sawed-off shotguns or other short-barreled non-handgun-type firearms.

“That particular combination, Congress has determined, is dangerous,” Janda said.

Well no, Congress has made no such determination about pistol braces. That’s one of the main arguments of the lawsuit; that the ATF has abrogated authority left to Congress in imposing the new rule, which not only reverses more than a decade of previous guidance from the agency but in essence establishes a brand new gun control law created by an executive branch agency, not the legislative branch.

Continue reading “”

SCOTUS accepts case dealing with gun ban for those subject to domestic violence restraining order

In its last conference before heading out for summer recess, the Supreme Court granted cert to U.S. v. Rahimi on Friday; setting up a fight over the scope of the Court’s history, text, and tradition test spelled out in last year’s Bruen decision.

As we’ve written about here previously, the case involves the federal prosecution of Zachey Rahimi, who’s accused of illegally possessing a firearm in violation of a domestic violence restraining order. Rahimi (or rather, his public defenders) challenged those charges after the Supreme Court issued its decision in Bruen last year, arguing that the modern day prohibition on firearms possession for those subject to the civil restraining order falls outside the historical scope of gun control laws and earlier this year the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with that proposition. Continue reading “”

Looking Forward to the U.S. Supreme Court Standing Behind Its Bruen Ruling

“A year ago today, the Supreme Court ruled to strip away the rights of a governor to protect her people from concealed carry weapons. We refused to go backwards,” tweeted New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on June 23.

This tweet—and other statements from Gov. Hochul—is an admission she is obstructing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, an NRA-backed case, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that the Second Amendment protects the right of law-abiding citizens to carry a firearm for personal protection when it struck the “proper cause” requirement in New York’s Sullivan Law.

In doing so, the Supreme Court clearly declared that the government cannot trample on our Second Amendment rights through “abusive” permitting schemes.

Nevertheless, people barely had time to read the Bruen decision before Gov. Hochul and the New York state legislature blatantly stepped all over the ruling with the inappropriately named Concealed Carry Improvement Act.

Although the Concealed Carry Improvement Act doesn’t require citizens demonstrate they have a proper cause to carry firearms, it banned carry almost everywhere with unconstitutional “sensitive-place” restrictions. Also, citizens applying to the state for their constitutional right to bear arms must first take a 16-hour training class, including a two-hour live-fire session. Then they must have an in-person interview with a licensing officer where they must disclose several types of personal information, including all of their social-media accounts. The officer then reviews that information to determine if the applicant has “good moral character,” which is even more subjective than the unconstitutional “proper cause” standard. The licensing officer then has up to six months—unless they want more time, which they will be granted indefinitely—to pore through the applicant’s information to determine if that individual is “eligible” for a license.

When Gov. Hochul was asked where people could carry under the gun-control law, she said “probably some streets.”

As a result, the NRA sued.

The state’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act “replaces one unconstitutional, discretionary law with another unconstitutional, discretionary law,” the NRA lawsuit says. “The [law] contains a slew of burdensome and discriminatory requirements for obtaining a Handgun Carry License—violating the First, Second, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments—and an additional slew of restrictions on where and how Handgun Carry License holders may exercise their right to carry arms outside the home.”

Gov. Hochul’s tweet also admits something else. By saying that, in Bruen, the “Supreme Court ruled to strip away the rights of a governor to protect her people from concealed carry weapons,” Gov. Hochul is blaming guns for crimes. She can’t really believe that guns are acting on their own to commit crimes. She likely knows that people (in this case, criminals) commit crimes. So her job is then to protect law-abiding people from violent criminals, not to disarm good citizens who merely want to protect themselves. Given that simple logic, she should next realize that a lot of criminal law (state and federal) gives law enforcement and prosecutors a lot of tools to arrest and put away felons and other prohibited persons who are carrying firearms. It then seems logical that she should focus state resources on the actual problem.

After all, it seems fair to assume that Gov. Hochul is capable of understanding the basic idea that criminals commit crimes and therefore, to prevent more crimes, the state needs to find and prosecute criminals.

The fact that Gov. Hochul has decided to disingenuously virtue signal about crime—by literally blaming good citizens for the actions of criminals—should be clearly said in New York state’s newspapers and on its local news broadcasts. But it isn’t. Too many in the media are also playing this “blame-freedom, not criminals” political game. And this is a shame, as good policy can only come from open and honest debate.

For this reason, the NRA’s court challenge to this unconstitutional law is doubly important.