Truckers File Lawsuit Arguing They Shouldn’t Lose Second Amendment Rights Just Because They Cross State Lines.

Do rights granted under the U.S. Constitution end at the border of one state when a citizen enters another? Generally speaking, no. The privileges and immunities clause of Article IV, Section 2, of the Constitution says that citizens of one state are “entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens” in other states. This includes the right to travel for employment and recreation. However, there are limitations.

The scope of the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms for self-defense across state lines is the issue at the heart of a case filed on January 7, 2025, against Bob Jacobson, in his official capacity as commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.

The complaint challenges Minnesota’s refusal to recognize lawfully issued firearms permits of other states, including those held by plaintiffs David McCoy and Jeffrey Johnson in their home states of Texas and Georgia, respectively. Johnson also holds a permit from Florida, where he used to live.

The plaintiffs are professional long-haul 18-wheel truck drivers who crisscross the country, 300 days a year. According to the complaint, both maintain firearm competency with safety courses and memberships in various firearms organizations. Each regularly passes background checks required by their employment. Neither has any history of violence, felony convictions, or class one misdemeanors. Their backgrounds include experience as firefighters and emergency medical technicians.

The men consider themselves good Samaritans, their “personal ethos” impelling them to “make the road a little safer” by “helping stranded motorists, coming to the aid of accidents, assisting law enforcement and emergency workers.”

While driving, McCoy and Johnson regularly carry firearms for the purposes of self-defense, as well as defense of others, their home, and cargo. But whenever they reach the Minnesota border, Minnesota law requires them to unload their firearms and stow them in a closed, fastened container, rendering them not readily accessible. Other states have analogous restrictions.

Continue reading “”

Trump Skips Guns in Flurry of Day One Executive Orders

Gun policy did not factor into the new President’s immediate priorities.

Shortly after President Donald Trump officially swore in for his second term on Monday, he quickly signed dozens of sweeping executive orders to walk back several Biden-era policies and fulfill multiple prominent campaign promises. His actions included declaring a “national energy emergency,” a bid to end birthright citizenship, withdrawal from the World Health Organization and Paris Climate Agreement, a full pardon for roughly 1,500 January 6th defendants, and more.

Left out of the policy blitz was anything having to do with advancing gun-rights priorities or rescinding the Biden Administration’s gun-control policy achievements. The Trump Administration also left the Second Amendment and gun policy off of its revamped “priorities” page on the White House website.

The omission of any gun policy action comes despite the President pledging speedy reversals of former President Biden’s executive orders to gun-rights supporters on the campaign trail earlier this year.

“Every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated my very first week back in office,” Trump told a crowd of NRA members at the group’s Great American Outdoor Show last February.

His decision not to do so on day one places him on the clock to make good on those promises to gun voters the same way he did to immigration hawks and other key MAGA constituencies. If he chooses not to, it could be another sign that guns are low in the pecking order amongst the second Trump Administration’s prerogatives.

For instance, though some of the President’s Day One executive orders were sweeping representations of longstanding Trumpian concerns, others were relative novelties, including directives to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Denali mountain and promote beautiful architecture. 

At the same time, some of the moves Trump pledged to gun-rights advocates were already accomplished by the time he got to the Oval Office on Monday. During a speech at the NRA annual meeting last May, he promised NRA members he would fire Steven Dettelbach, Biden’s chosen director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), on “day one.” Before he could do so, however, Dettelbach preemptively tendered his resignation effective January 18.

Others may be happening without any formal publicity. Shortly after his reelection in November, the National Shooting Sports Foundation called on Trump to dismantle the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, an executive body created by his predecessor to promote gun-control measures. Though he did not issue any public directive on the matter, the office’s website appears to have been taken offline shortly after his inauguration. Although, many other sections of the White House website also appear to be down and it’s unclear what the status of the office is today.

The Trump White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Still, the President appears yet to have taken action to spur some of the more far-reaching instances of rolling back Biden’s gun policies. These more closely-watched options could include orders directing the ATF to rescind agency regulations that banned so-called ghost gun kits, reclassified pistols equipped with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles, and expanded criteria for who must be federally licensed to sell used guns adopted under the prior administration that have rankled gun-rights advocates and resulted in prolonged courtroom fights. 

While the road to rescinding those rules will likely be long and bumpy, initiating the process could be as simple as a stroke of the President’s pen–in the same way they were first set into motion.

The maintenance of the right to bear arms is a most essential one to every free people and should not be whittled down by technical constructions.
– State vs. Kerner, 181 N.C. 574, 107 S.E. 222, at 224 (1921)

Study Finds Coffee Linked to Lower Risk of Dementia, But There’s a Catch.

“But there’s a twist to the tale – the association only applies to unsweetened, caffeinated coffee.”

Older people who regularly drink coffee have a lower risk of developing dementia, according to a new study. But there’s a twist to the tale – the association only applies to unsweetened, caffeinated coffee.

The link was found from a study of the health records of 204,847 people in the UK, aged between 40 and 69 at the start of the study period, by researchers from institutions across China. The records included both coffee consumption habits and the diagnosis of dementia cases, over an average of nine years.

“Higher intake of caffeinated coffee, particularly the unsweetened variety, was associated with reduced risks of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, and Parkinson’s disease,” write the researchers in their published paper. “No such associations were observed for sugar-sweetened or artificially sweetened coffee.”

Continue reading “”

Guns Don’t Kill People. Canada Kills People.

Recently, I was reading something interesting from National Review. It looked at some numbers out of Canada that were downright fascinating.

You see, the Great White North has two things many here have long favored – single-payer healthcare and assisted suicide. More people want the former than the latter, thankfully, but enough want both for me to have concerns.

These same people tend to think we should be like Canada on other things, too, such as gun policy. They believe guns kill people.

However, a piece by National Review points out something interesting:

What a debacle. More than 15,000 people died in Canada in one year because they couldn’t access care in the country’s collapsing socialized health-care system. From the Toronto Sun story:

Close to 15,500 people died waiting for health care in Canada between April 1, 2023 until March 31, 2024, according to data compiled by SecondStreet.org via Freedom to Information Act requests across the country.

However, SecondStreet.org says the exact number of 15,474 is incomplete as Quebec, Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador don’t track the problem and Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia only provided data on patients who died while waiting for surgeries – not diagnostic scans.

SecondStreet.org says if it extrapolates the unknown data, then an estimated 28,077 patients died last year on health care waiting lists covering everything from cancer treatment and heart operations to cataract surgery and MRI scans.

Holy cow!

But it gets worse. About the same number of people were euthanized in Canada in 2023. Some asked to be lethally jabbed because they couldn’t access health care in a timely fashion.

So around 30,000 people die waiting for healthcare that never comes or are euthanized by the Canadian government.

In fairness, some of those who die waiting likely would have died no matter what, just as some of those euthanized were likely going to pass away regardless.

However, I’m willing to bet it wasn’t all that many, though we’ll never know.

Meanwhile, how many Americans were killed with a gun in 2023, which mostly lines up with this time period? 13,529.

The United States has more than eight times the population of Canada, and even massive death and destruction brought about by our gun policy pales in comparison to the number of people the Canadian government managed to kill during that period.

Even if you just counted the euthanizations, the death toll is higher not just on a per capita basis but in raw total numbers as well.

Yet, that number is doubled when you count the deaths that were the result of inaction on the part of the Canadian healthcare system.

“But you didn’t count suicides!” someone will argue, but I’m going to reject that right out of the gate. If you’re supportive of Canada’s MAID system, you don’t get to lash out about people taking their own lives here in the US, regardless of what method they use. That’s why I’m only counting homicides.

This is truly disturbing, to say the least.

What we do know for certain, though, is that guns don’t kill people. Canada kills people.

Trump Suspends Security Clearance of 51 Officials Who Protected Hunter’s Laptop.

President Donald Trump signed so many executive orders that I forgot to write about this one.

Trump revoked the security clearances of the 51 intel officials who claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

These people did everything they could to ensure former President Joe Biden defeated Trump in 2020.

Once Biden won, though, no one could contain the truth: The laptop belonged to Hunter, and everything on it belonged to him.

Well, all 51 of the officials refused to apologize for their letter. The officials helped themselves by crafting the letter to make it easy to shed any responsibility.

They said they had suspicions about it coming from Russia, but they never provided confirmation.

They no longer have security clearances. The list includes James Clapper, Leon Panetta, Jeremy Bash (ex-husband of CNN’s Dana Bash), John Bolton, and John Brennan.

The executive order stated:

Section 1. Purpose. In the closing weeks of the 2020 Presidential campaign, at least 51 former intelligence officials coordinated with the Biden campaign to issue a letter discrediting the reporting that President Joseph R. Biden’s son had abandoned his laptop at a computer repair business. Signatories of the letter falsely suggested that the news story was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

Before being issued, the letter was sent to the CIA Prepublication Classification Review Board, the body typically assigned to formally evaluate the sensitive nature of documents prior to publication. Senior CIA officials were made aware of the contents of the letter, and multiple signatories held clearances at the time and maintained ongoing contractual relationships with the CIA.

Federal policymakers must be able to rely on analysis conducted by the Intelligence Community and be confident that it is accurate, crafted with professionalism, and free from politically motivated engineering to affect political outcomes in the United States. The signatories willfully weaponized the gravitas of the Intelligence Community to manipulate the political process and undermine our democratic institutions.

This fabrication of the imprimatur of the Intelligence Community to suppress information essential to the American people during a Presidential election is an egregious breach of trust reminiscent of a third world country. And now the faith of Americans in all other patriotic intelligence professionals who are sworn to protect the Nation has been imperiled.

National security is also damaged by the publication of classified information. Former National Security Advisor John R. Bolton published a memoir for monetary gain after he was terminated from his White House position in 2019. The book was rife with sensitive information drawn from his time in government. The memoir’s reckless treatment of sensitive information undermined the ability of future presidents to request and obtain candid advice on matters of national security from their staff. Publication also created a grave risk that classified material was publicly exposed.

To remedy these abuses of the public trust, this Order directs the revocation of any active or current security clearances held by: (i) the former intelligence officials who engaged in misleading and inappropriate political coordination with the 2020 Biden presidential campaign; and (ii) John R. Bolton.

A Rifle Behind Every Blade Of Grass: Why The Taiwanese People Must Arm Themselves Like Americans

Communism is the most murderous ideology in recent history. Communists around the world killed close to 100 million people; that’s more than 5 times the number killed by the Nazis. Of those 100 million, the Chinese Communist Party is culpable for 65 million dead.

Luckily for the world, communism was dealt a decisive defeat last century. Within a few years of the Berlin Wall coming down, communism imploded across Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. There were other unforeseen benefits: with its Soviet benefactor gone (and with other economic triggers), India had to roll back democratic socialism. Billions of people suddenly experienced freedom like never before.

There was hope that the Chinese regime would also suffer the same fate as other communist governments. But they managed to hang on to power, crushing dissent with tyrannical, barbarous force.

Despite the persistence of the Chinese Communist regime, the end of the Cold War marked a victory for liberal democracy. The 1990s were a time of optimism, as the world enjoyed a peace dividend.

All of this resulted in a belief that communist China could be wooed and charmed into what seemed like the future: a peaceful, liberal global order, with free enterprise, free trade, and open engagement among the peoples of the world.

The United States, Europe, and Japan opened up trade and travel with communist China. Entire industries were offshored with the belief that as the Chinese people engaged with liberal democracies, the communist regime would loosen its grip on them, like how Augusto Pinochet eventually ceded power and Chile became a democracy.

Unfortunately, the opposite occurred. The Chinese Communist Party remains entrenched, having transformed China into a surveillance state. The 26-year old Great Firewall of China looks quaint as compared to their modern Black Mirror-like dystopian social credit system. They’ve leveraged technology to create an authoritarian regime unprecedented in history. Rather than adopting liberalism, China is exporting illiberalism. (As an example, see how western governments imitated the harsh Chinese COVID lockdown model, instead of going the way of Sweden.)

Continue reading “”