Who Wants to Tell California AG Bonta that Access to ‘Weapons of War’ as a Check Against Tyranny is a Core Tenet of the Second Amendment?

I spent much of the last week assisting my brilliant colleagues in preparing their supplemental brief in Duncan v. Bonta. This is the magazine-capacity case that kicked off the now-famous “freedom week” in California in 2019. Our win in district court was affirmed on appeal by a 3-judge panel, but then was reversed by the Ninth Circuit sitting en banc.

Thankfully, the Supreme Court acted on our appeal by vacating the en banc decision and remanding the case for further proceedings in light of Bruen.

Back in the district court, the Attorney General Rob Bonta submitted an overlong brief making all sorts of inane arguments, which our brief responds to quite well. However, one throwaway line from the Attorney General bugged me immensely . . .

In neither Heller nor Bruen did the Court find that the Second Amendment’s protections were grounded in the need to bear arms for militia service…or as a “check against tyranny”. In fact, Bruen repeatedly confirms that self-defense (and not militia or military service) is the “central component” of the right protected by the Second Amendment.

Personal self-defense is certainly a critical aspect of the Second Amendment, but both the founders as well as the generations immediately after them considered one other purpose paramount: a final defense against a tyrannical government that attempts to overthrow our constitutional order.

This idea, once accepted as common knowledge, has become controversial. It has been derided by modern day gun control advocates as the “insurrectionist theory” of the Second Amendment that was invented by the NRA in the 1970s.[1]

Yet it certainly wasn’t invented by the NRA, nor is it some tinfoil hat theory. It instead goes to the very core of what the Second Amendment was intended for, as the historical record is indisputable on this point.

Embarrassing as it may be to admit for some polite society academics of today, the Bill of Rights was written by people who just finished violently overthrowing their former government. Based on that experience, they were obviously very fearful of the new government they were forming becoming tyrannical, and so they included the Second Amendment, in part, as a failsafe.

You don’t need to take my word for it – the Founders said so themselves. James Madison tried to assuage fears of a tyrannical federal army running roughshod over the people in one of his many Federalist Papers:

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Observation O’ The Day

One of two scenarios is possible:

1) Katherine Clark is lying about her child’s experiences to stoke hysteria around climate change for political gain.

2) She aggressively instilled unjust fear into her child, causing them to lose sleep over a political talking point.

We hope it’s the former for the sake of the child. Sincerely.

Indeed, but door number two is a distinct possibility:
Progressives Against Progress. [from the summer of 2010!]

The rise of environmentalism poisoned liberals’ historical optimism. “Crankery, in short, became respectable. In 1972, Sir John Maddox, editor of the British journal Nature, noted that though it had once been usual to see maniacs wearing sandwich boards that proclaimed the imminent end of the Earth, they had been replaced by a growing number of frenzied activists and politicized scientists making precisely the same claim.

In the years since then, liberalism has seen recurring waves of such end-of-days hysteria. These waves have shared not only a common pattern but often the same cast of characters. Strangely, the promised despoliations are most likely to be presented as imminent when Republicans are in the White House. In each case, liberals have argued that the threat of catastrophe can be averted only through drastic actions in which the ordinary political mechanisms of democracy are suspended and power is turned over to a body of experts and supermen.”

–Ed Driscoll

My thoughts exactly. It’s another version of “Baffle them with BS”

BLUF
If the end goal is to chill the lawful commerce of arms, then the more purchases flagged as “suspicious” the better, and despite Gillibrand’s claims that law-abiding citizens have nothing to worry about when it comes to these reporting standards, the skepticism and doubt on the part of many gun owners is well-founded.

Gillibrand demands more action from Biden administration on merchant credit codes for gun stores

The establishment of a new merchant category code for firearm retailers poses all kinds of challenges for both retailers and credit card companies (not to mention privacy concerns for gun buyers). One of the biggest issues; the requirement that credit card companies and financial institutions report all “suspicious” transactions that could involve money laundering, human trafficking, terrorist financing, and other criminal activity to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

With the new merchant category code for firearm retailers, gun control activists and anti-gun politicians want to now expand that reporting requirement to the millions of transactions that take place at FFLs across the country every month. How exactly does a financial institution determine whether a particular transaction is suspicious, particularly when the new merchant credit code for gun stores doesn’t detail what exactly is purchased, only the dollar amount and the location? Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and the head of the anti-gun bank that helped to spearhead the effort to establish the new MCCs were awfully short on specifics when they held a news conference on the matter on Sunday, but the bottom line is that they believe the Biden administration could be doing much more to scrutinize retail sales at gun shops.

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Court Vacates, Remands Ban on Sale of Semi-Auto Rifles to Adults Under 21

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has vacated and remanded a lower court decision in the long-running challenge by the Second Amendment Foundation and National Rifle Association of provisions in gun control Initiative 1639, passed in November 2018, that prohibits the sale of semi-auto rifles to anyone under age 21, and also prevents sales of such rifles to residents of another state.

The announcement came Dec. 2. Joining SAF and NRA in the February 2019 lawsuit were firearms retailers Daniel Mitchell of Vancouver and Robin Ball of Spokane, and three private citizens in the prohibited age group. The case is known as Mitchell v. Atkins.

According to the tersely-worded order, the motion was unopposed.

“The district court’s judgment is vacated in its entirety, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with the United States Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen.”

The court action further underscores the far-reaching importance of the Bruen ruling, which did away with a “means-end scrutiny” strategy created by the federal courts following the McDonald ruling in 2010 that allowed states to essentially get around the Second Amendment by considering whether a challenged regulation promotes an important government interest.

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New study by frustrated anti-gun researcher doesn’t tell the whole story

by Lee Williams

More than 1 million Americans were killed by firearms from 1990 to 2021, and firearm deaths increased markedly during the pandemic, according to a study published Tuesday by the Journal of the American Medical Association network titled: “Trends and Disparities in Firearm Fatalities in the United States, 1990-2021.”

Firearm deaths reached their lowest point in 2004, and then increased more than 45% by 2021 — a 28-year high — the study claims. Black males were most at risk for homicide, and white males over 70 had the highest suicide rates.

The authors analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and used “key statistics” from the anti-gun group Brady United.

Despite its flaws, such as a reliance on biased statistics and a lack of causal factors, the report has been embraced by the legacy media and has proliferated across the internet.

The authors’ conclusion was rather simple: “This study found marked disparities in firearm fatality rates by demographic group, which increased over the past decade. These findings suggest that public health approaches to reduce firearm violence should consider underlying demographic and geographic trends and differences by intent.”

The study’s lead author, Dr. Eric W. Fleegler of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Pediatrics, has written numerous anti-gun studies and editorials. Gun-rights experts were quick to point out there was a lot missing from his most recent work.

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A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. — Alexander Tyler

Suspect killed man in Phoenix neighborhood in self defense,

PHOENIX – An argument in a neighborhood near Bell Road and 32nd Street ended with a man being shot and killed on Friday, Phoenix police said.

Investigators say the shooter was defending himself when he killed 45-year-old Jorge Rodriguez, and he was not arrested.

The incident happened at around 5:30 p.m. on Dec. 2 after Rodriguez reportedly began arguing with the suspect, who was working in the area at the time.

The suspect told police that Rodriguez took out a gun and pointed it at him.

“The suspect took out his own handgun and shot the victim,” police said.

The case is still under investigation, and the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office will determine if any charges will be filed.

WUHAN DID IT

America’s National Institutes of Health funded a group called EcoHealth Alliance, on multiple occasions, to collaborate on research done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. At least one project consisted of gain of function research on bat coronaviruses. Because of concerns about the dangers of such research, NIH shut it off in 2014, but re-started funding gain of function in 2017, largely at the instance of Anthony Fauci.

From 2014 to 2016, Dr. Andrew Huff worked for EcoHeath Alliance, the latter two years as vice president. He has written a book, which comes out on Monday, titled The Truth about Wuhan: How I Uncovered the Biggest Lie in History. Dr. Huff is not given to understatement.

The Sun writes:

In his new book – The Truth About Wuhan – whistleblower Dr Huff claims the pandemic was the result of the US government’s funding of dangerous genetic engineering of coronaviruses in China.

The epidemiologist said China’s gain-of-function experiments – carried out with shoddy biosecurity – led to a lab leak at the US-funded Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“EcoHealth Alliance and foreign laboratories did not have the adequate control measures in place for ensuring proper biosafety, biosecurity, and risk management, ultimately resulting in the lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he said in his book, an exclusive pre-release copy of which was provided to The Sun Online.

EcoHealth Alliance had been studying different coronaviruses in bats for more than ten years with funding from the National Institutes of Health – and developed close working ties with the Wuhan lab.

Dr Huff, who worked at EcoHealth Alliance from 2014 to 2016 and served as vice president from 2015, worked on the classified side of the research programme as a US government scientist.

The army veteran, from Michigan, said the organisation taught the Wuhan lab the “best existing methods to engineer bat coronaviruses to attack other species” for many years.

And he claimed “China knew from day one that this was a genetically engineered agent”.

“The US government is to blame for the transfer of dangerous biotechnology to the Chinese,” he said.

Speaking to The Sun Online, Dr Huff added: “I was terrified by what I saw. We were just handing them bioweapon technology.”

In his book, the emerging infectious diseases expert claims “greedy scientists killed millions of people globally” – and goes as far as to claim the US government covered it up.

Former intelligence chiefs and diplomats have already claimed Covid was leaked from a Wuhan lab in the “cover-up of the century”.

I don’t know how credible Dr. Huff is, but I think the evidence that Covid came from a Wuhan lab leak is strong. He is, at a minimum, a voice from inside EcoHealth Alliance, a key player in the Covid story.

Oregon’s attorney general concedes state unable to put permit-to-purchase gun program in place by date Measure 114 becomes law

Two days after telling a federal judge that Oregonians will be able to apply for a permit to buy a gun by the end of this week, Oregon’s attorney general Sunday night acknowledged the state isn’t ready to have a permitting process in place as required by the voter-approved gun control Measure 114.

In a three-page letter to the court filed at 9:14 p.m. Sunday, Senior Assistant Attorney General Brian Simmonds Marshall conceded that local law enforcement agencies have made it clear that “necessary pieces of the permit to purchase system will not be in place” by this coming Thursday, the date the measure is set to take effect.

The attorney general’s concession echoes what gun rights advocates have argued for the past several weeks and have informed U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut in multiple legal briefs filed in pending lawsuits.

The attorney general has recommended the permit requirement be postponed until February while the measure’s other regulations are allowed to go into effect.

“The State’s position that Measure 114 is constitutional on its face remains the same,” Marshall’s letter said.

The voter-approved measure, which narrowly passed with 50.7% of the vote, will ban the sale, transfer and manufacture of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds; require a permit to purchase a gun; and not allow a gun sale or transfer to occur without a background check completed.

The attorney general’s office admitted in its letter to the court that the firearms safety courses that are required before someone can obtain a permit to buy a gun are not yet available.

Oregonians should be allowed to continue to buy guns without a permit during a ‘‘limited window,’’ until the state has a full permitting process in place, the attorney general’s letter recommends. Meanwhile, the state will continue to work to get a process up and running, Marshall wrote.

“The State’s proposed postponement would mean that, while the permitting system is brought online, Oregonians who lack a permit will be able to purchase and transfer firearms. Meanwhile, the State and local law enforcement would continue to work towards implementing Measure 114′s permit provisions. Moreover, Oregonians would be able to begin the application process. When the Court’s order expires, Measure 114′s permit requirement for purchases would go into effect,” Marshall wrote to the judge.

The attorney general’s office pointed to the court declaration by Jason Myers, a retired Marion County sheriff who is now executive director of the Oregon State Sheriffs’ Association. Myers estimated it will take at least another month to prepare an operational permit system.

In a press release, Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum recommended the permit to buy a gun requirement be postponed until February.

“Postponing the permit requirement by approximately two months should give Oregon law enforcement time to have a fully functional permitting system in place. If Judge Immergut agrees to the postponement, then starting in February anyone who purchases a gun in Oregon will be required to have a permit,” Rosenblum said in the release.

Marshall wrote to the court that the state is “committed to working cooperatively with its partners in local law enforcement.”

For the measure to achieve its goal of enhancing public safety, “it is critical that local law enforcement has adequate time to effectively implement the Measure,” Marshall’s letter said.

Under the measure, anyone applying for a permit to buy a gun must complete a training course that includes instruction on state and federal laws related to purchase, ownership, transfer, use and transportation of guns; safe storage of guns including reporting of lost and stolen firearms; how to prevent the abuse or misuse of firearms, including the impact of homicide and suicide on families, communities and the country; and a demonstration that the applicant knows how to lock, load, unload, fire and store a firearm before an instructor certified by a law enforcement agency.

Myers had informed the judge in writing that the sheriffs’ association was unaware of any firearms safety course in Oregon that currently covers all the training requirements.

Immergut held a two-hour hearing Friday morning on the Oregon Firearms Federation’s motion for a temporary restraining order to block the regulations from going into effect as its lawsuit proceeds, contending the measure impinges on their Second Amendment right to bear arms.

Most of the argument Friday, though, focused on the provision banning magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.

When Immergut asked Marshall during the hearing if the regulations will be ready to take effect on Thursday, he pledged that Oregonians will be able to apply for a permit then. State police later in the day issued a news release, saying a permit application would be on the agency’s website on Thursday.

Other suits filed challenging the gun control measure included declarations from the sheriffs’ associations and the Oregon Association Chiefs of Police. They argued that their agencies are unprepared and not staffed or funded to support a permitting program for prospective buyers.

Immergut had said at the end of last week that she would rule by Tuesday on whether to grant a temporary restraining order that would put the voter-approved measure on hold.

The judge has given parties to the pending four federal lawsuits until noon Monday to submit any friend of court briefs in support or against the pending motions for a temporary restraining order.

The Rev. Mark Knutson, one of the chief petitioners behind Measure 114, said Sunday night that the Lift Every Voice Oregon interfaith group that obtained signatures to put the measure to voters “wants the most equitable and just process possible…We want this done right to save lives.”

Kevin Starrett, executive director of the Oregon Firearms Federation, said he’s concerned about the tens of thousands of prospective gun buyers currently waiting to have their background checks completed by state police. “They are not going to clear that backlog quickly,” he said by email.

Since Election Day, gun sales in the state have spiked. As of Friday, state police had 41,160 background checks pending for gun purchases or transfers, Capt. Kyle Kennedy said. On Black Friday, the state police received 6,055 new background check requests, the highest amount since Election Day, he said.

— Maxine Bernstein

Quote O’ The Day
The eight-point boost in favorability between now and then could be the result of people in those states recognizing that living under a shall-issue carry regime is not an apocalyptic scenario but, rather, business as usual as it had been in most of the country.

Analysis: The Popularity of the Bruen Decision Should Not Come as a Surprise

You wouldn’t know it from the reaction of political leaders in states affected by the decision, but the Supreme Court’s holding in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen is very popular among the American public. That’s because a decades-long cultural shift towards concealed carry had already succeeded well before the justices ever took up the case.

A Marquette University law school poll released this week found 64 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Supreme Court’s holding that the “Second Amendment protects the right to possess a gun outside the home.” By contrast, 35 percent say they oppose the decision, with only 16 percent saying they’re strongly opposed.

That such a substantial majority gave a warm reception to the concept of public concealed carry rights should not come as a shock. For nearly all of the country, the Court did little more than affirm the status quo.

When the decision was handed down, three-quarters of the population lived in a state where law-abiding adults faced only limited barriers to carrying a concealed firearm for self-defense. They could do so in 25 of those states without even needing to obtain a government-issued permit.

A tandem of shifting cultural practices and state legislation made that possible. Beginning in 1987 with Florida’s adoption of “shall-issue” concealed carry permitting, where state officials can’t subjectively deny permit applications, a revolution in liberalized gun carry laws began to sweep the country.

Right to Carry, timeline.gif

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Global Warming? Northern Hemisphere Snow Cover At 56-Year High

The COP27 climate change conference wrapped up last month. World leaders flew in private jets to Egypt to discuss how fossil fuels were quickly heating the planet to the point of no return, as humanity was doomed if crucial climate change policies weren’t implemented. But while the climate alarmist leaders met in the desert, November’s snowfall across the Northern Hemisphere was running at rates exceeding a half-a-century average. NOAA and Rutgers University released new data that showed snow cover across the Northern Hemisphere reached the highest level since measurements began in 1967 and are currently above the 56-year mean.

Here’s the Rutgers Global Snow Lab snow coverage map across the Northern Hemisphere.

And another from NOAA with more resolution.

“Extensive snow extent early in the season is an indicator of persistent cold as we head into winter proper,” weather blog Severe Weather Europe said.

Most mainstream media outlets overlooked this data because it is an inconvenient truth for the climate change narrative they’re pushing.

A severe winter for the Northern Hemisphere might complicate power grids for western countries that are hellbent on disrupting energy flows by sanctioning Russia, forcing the world into the worst energy crisis in a generation. Since the US and Europe’s natural gas storage facilities have flipped into withdrawal season, the clock starts as storage levels could quickly wind down if temperatures stay below average, which would continue to boost energy prices.