2 Contradictory Decisions on AR15 Rifle Bans Reflect Clashing Views of Supreme Court Precedents

Last month, a federal judge ruled that New Jersey’s ban on AR-15 rifles is unconstitutional. A week later, a federal appeals court deemed a similar ban in Maryland perfectly consistent with the Second Amendment.

These dueling decisions reflect a basic disagreement about whether the Second Amendment allows the government to ban guns that are commonly used for lawful purposes, as opposed to “dangerous and unusual weapons.” The answer seems clear based on the Supreme Court’s precedents.

The court’s landmark 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which overturned a local handgun ban, noted “the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons,’” which it said did not encompass firearms “in common use” for “lawful purposes like self-defense.” Since handguns are “the quintessential self-defense weapon,” it said, the fact that they are also commonly used by criminals could not justify prohibiting law-abiding Americans from owning them.

The court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen reiterated that point. “Whatever the likelihood that handguns were considered ‘dangerous and unusual’ during the colonial period, they are indisputably in ‘common use’ for self-defense today,” it said. Colonial laws that “prohibited the carrying of handguns,” the court concluded, “provide no justification for laws restricting the public carry of weapons that are unquestionably in common use today.”

AR-15s likewise are “unquestionably in common use today.”

Since 1990, more than 28 million “modern sporting rifles” have been sold in the United States, and as many as 24 million Americans have owned AR-15s or similar rifles for lawful purposes such as self-defense, hunting and recreational target shooting.

Like the law at issue in Heller, U.S. District Judge Peter Sheridan noted last month, New Jersey’s AR-15 ban amounts to “the total prohibition (of) a commonly used firearm for self-defense … within the home.” And under Heller, “a categorical ban on a class of weapons commonly used for self-defense is unlawful.”

Sheridan highlighted testimony showing that “AR-15s are well-adapted for self-defense.” When it upheld Maryland’s AR-15 ban last week, by contrast, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit declared that such rifles are “ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense.”

Where Richardson sees self-defense advantages, the majority sees features that make AR-15s especially deadly in mass shootings.

These clashing perspectives illustrate the folly of trying to draw a legal distinction between guns that are suitable for legitimate purposes and guns that supposedly are good for nothing but killing innocent people. [spoiler alert: there are only guns; no guns are “more legitimate or “more lethal”]

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1 shot during alleged armed robbery in Phoenix

PHOENIX — A teen was shot during an attempted aggravated robbery in Phoenix, the city’s police department said.

Phoenix police officers responded to the area of 35th Avenue and Indian School Road for shots fired just after 5 a.m. on Saturday. When officers got to the scene, they found a man who said he was the victim of an attempted armed robbery.

The man told police he produced his own gun and shot the suspect of the armed robbery, police said.

While police officers searched for the suspect, a teen contacted the police and said he had been shot. Police said the teen was related to the original armed robbery, but did not say in what capacity.

The teen was taken to the hospital for treatment for his gunshot wounds and was released from medical care. The injuries were non-life-threatening.

No arrests have been made and the investigation remains open.

Pro-Hamas Activists Storm Democratic Event in NYC, Clashing With Police and Setting Off Smoke Bombs

While it wasn’t an official Kamala Harris campaign event in New York City, it was in support of her candidacy as local Democrats, including Mayor Eric Adams, arrived to give what’s reported as a pep rally for the vice president’s candidacy ahead of next week’s convention in Chicago, Illinois. There was one significant issue: the rally got interrupted by pro-Hamas activists, highlighting the simmering tension within the Democratic Party base about the war in Gaza (via Politico):

The energy and size of an ebullient rally of elected New York Democrats hyped for Kamala Harris’ candidacy met a massive crowd of pro-Palestinian demonstrators chanting, banging drums and waving banners Wednesday night.

The Democrats’ rally was interrupted repeatedly by the protesters — a reminder of one of the party’s biggest internal divisions.

But like the vice president has on the campaign trail, the speakers took the brief disruptions in stride. …

The gathering, dubbed the “New York City Kickoff” and attended by federal, state and municipal leaders as well as labor union members, delivered Democratic unity at an event space in Harlem. Both Gov. Kathy Hochul and Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) urged the Democrats in solidly blue New York City to canvass in swing states like Pennsylvania for the Harris-Walz ticket and in swing districts around the state for House Democratic candidates.

The event wasn’t officially sanctioned by the Harris campaign, but it gave the feel of a pep rally or sendoff to the Democratic National Convention next week in Chicago.

Muhammad Inspires Jihadis, But What If Muhammad Never Existed?

An imam in the Vancouver area, Adnan Abyat, recently preached a rousing sermon designed to get his congregation all fired up for jihad. As Muslim leaders all over the world speak of Hamas’ conflict with Israel as a jihad, it’s understandable that this kind of sermon would be common in the Islamic world these days. Abyat, like many others, attributed the jihad impulse to Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Yet there is abundant reason to believe that Muhammad was not exactly what Adnan Abyat and so many others think he was.

Abyat declared: “I attest that Muhammad is Allah’s servant and His prophet who awakened the desire for Jihad and incited the believers, who made Jihad for the sake of Allah the pinnacle of Islam, and the one who said that Paradise is underneath the shades of the swords.”

To be sure, this was a statement of faith, but it was one that was rooted in history. Abyat believes that Muhammad was a real man who walked this earth and made statements that can be known today among his multitudes of followers. As the man whom Allah chose to deliver his eternal message to mankind and whom he designated as the “excellent example” for the believers (Qur’an 33:21), Muhammad’s words carry special weight for Muslims.

Indeed, Muhammad’s words are why jihadis take up the sword, as Abyat went on to explain: “His shari’a [law] elevated the status of the mujahideen [warriors of jihad] and he said that Jihad for the sake of Allah raises a man a hundred levels in Paradise and the distance between levels is like the distance between heaven and earth.”

Yet what if Muhammad really said none of this? What if the stories Islamic tradition tells us about what he said and did are more myth and legend than sober historical fact? Then Hamas and other jihadis all over the world are killing and dying for a fiction. It would be the cruelest of cruel jokes on the jihadis, but if this idea became widely known in the Islamic world, the result could be transformational.

A few years ago, I explored this question in a book titled Did Muhammad Exist? In it, I demonstrated that the earliest available biographical data about Muhammad dates from two centuries after the traditional date of his death. There are a few mentions of “Muhammad” here and there before then, but none of them match what we know, or think we know, about the prophet of Islam.

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BLUF:
Walz isn’t just lying about his military record. He has no problem lying to advance his gun control goals. For someone who frequently says he is a hunter, he knows the statements that he is making about “weapons of war” are a lie.

Behind Tim Walz’s ‘Hunter’ Facade Is A Plan To Take Your Guns

In just a few sentences, Gov. Tim Walz made false claims about assault weapons, background checks, CDC research, and reciprocal carry.

“I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt,” Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., declared in 2018. “I’ve been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment, but we can do background checks, we can do CDC research, we can make sure that we don’t reciprocal carry among states. And we can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are allowed to be carried.” In just a few sentences, Walz made false claims about assault weapons, background checks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) research, and reciprocal carry.

First, take his claims about “weapons of war.” Put aside that Walz never was in war, let alone carried a weapon in war. The term “assault weapon” is nonsensical. Even the Associated Press Stylebook, which carries water for Democrat narratives, recognizes that fact. As the AP acknowledges, the term conveys “little meaning” and is “highly politicized.”

Politicians will continue calling AR-15s “weapons of war” and “assault weapons,” as Walz does. Many seem to think “AR” means assault rifle when it stands for ArmaLite rifle, after the company that developed it in the 1950s. But at least some of the media is now recognizing that “AR- or AK-style rifles designed for the civilian market,” as the AP Stylebook says, are fundamentally different than military weapons.

“The preferred term for a rifle that fires one bullet each time the trigger is pulled, and automatically reloads for a subsequent shot, is a semi-automatic rifle,” according to the AP Stylebook. “An automatic rifle continuously fires rounds if the trigger is depressed until its ammunition is exhausted. Avoid assault rifle and assault weapon, which are highly politicized terms that generally refer to AR- or AK-style rifles designed for the civilian market, but convey little meaning about the actual functions of the weapon.”

AR-15s and AK-47s are frequently called “military-style weapons.” But the key is “style” — they are like military guns in how they look, not in how they operate. The guns are not the fully automatic machine guns used by the military, but rather semi-automatic versions of those guns.

For someone who says he is a hunter, Walz surely knows this. The weapons he wants to ban operate exactly the same as any hunting rifle he would use. The civilian AR-15 uses essentially the same sorts of bullets as small game-hunting rifles. It also fires at the same rate (one bullet per pull of the trigger), the bullet travels at the same speed, and does the same damage. Still, no military anywhere uses the civilian versions of either of these guns.

But hunting isn’t the critical issue here. Semi-automatic weapons protect people and save lives. Single-shot rifles require manual reloading after every round, and people may not have the time to reload their gun when they face multiple attackers or fire and miss.

Most mass public shootings don’t use any type of rifle. Fifty-three percent involve only handguns, and only 17 percent solely involve rifles of any variety.

It should be little wonder that banning “assault” rifles did very little. During the 1994-2004 ban, the number of attacks with “assault weapons” didn’t fall, and there was virtually no change in total mass shootings.

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Deer hunting causes gun violence, researchers claim
Researchers admit their data was flawed, use it anyway.

In what may be the most poorly conceived and horribly researched study ever published by The Journal of the American Medical Association during its entire 141-year history, a trio of anti-gun researchers now claims deer hunting is associated with a substantial increase in firearm violence.

To arrive at their laughable conclusion, the authors used data from the infamous Gun Violence Archive, which has been debunked dozens of times and is well known for its shoddy research and biased statistics.

Even the authors admitted there were problems with the GVA data. “Our study relies on shooting data from a single source, the GVA. Data from GVA have been shown to have a bias toward incidents that receive more media attention and do not include comprehensive counts of firearm suicides,” the report states.

Despite these inherent biases, the researchers used the GVA data anyway. They didn’t allow the facts to interfere with their preconceived and biased narrative.

The report, “Deer Hunting Season and Firearm Violence in US Rural Counties,” which was released Wednesday, was written by Patrick Sharkey, PhD; Juan Camilo Cristancho, BA, and Daniel Semenza, PhD.

Sharkey is affiliated with Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. Cristancho works at the University of California, Irvine’s School of Education, and Semenza is affiliated with the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers University.

The researchers sought to investigate “the association between the start of deer hunting season and shootings in rural counties of the US.”

They compared shootings during the first three weeks of deer season to a week prior to the season opener. The authors claim there was a “substantial increase in shootings” during the start of deer season, which they said calls for additional gun control, of course.

“The findings highlight the role of firearm prevalence in gun violence and suggest the need for focused policies designed to reduce firearm violence in areas with substantial hunting activity during the first weeks of deer hunting season,” the report states.

About the author

Patrick Sharkey, PhD, led the research team.

“Dr. Sharkey had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis,” his report claims.

According to his Princeton bio, Sharkey’s research focuses on “urban inequality, violence, and public policy.” He is also the creator of AmericanViolence.org, a website that claims it provides “comprehensive, updated data on violence from as many of the largest 100 largest U.S. cities as possible.”

AmericanViolence.org, like Sharkey’s recent study, relies upon debunked data. “In the latest iteration of the site we have drawn more heavily on data on fatal and nonfatal shootings published by the Gun Violence Archive, an excellent resource that has tracked all forms of gun violence in the United States over time,” the website states.

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The Ignominy Of Master Sergeant Timothy Walz

If Tim Walz could not be trusted to fulfill the duties he had to his nation in 2005, how can he be trusted to be vice president in 2025?

The last couple of days have been a whirlwind of controversy regarding the military service record of Democrat vice presidential candidate Tim Walz. My X account has seen the most traffic it has ever known as I have discussed this issue at length, and I thought it would be a good idea now to take a deep breath and kind of recap where we are at in this controversy. I know for sure that the veteran community is fired up over this issue, but I sense that many from the non-veteran community do not know what to think given the competing arguments from both sides of the political aisle.

I would like to share my own personal experiences and thoughts as a retired Army colonel and veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan. What I hope for civilians to understand is this: The issue is not the number of years Walz served, or when he submitted his retirement paperwork, or what his final rank was, or even — just as a stand-alone proposition — whether he ever went to combat. No, the issue is the unique and special position of trust he held when he decided to walk away from his soldiers, his unit, and his nation. I’ll explain.

But first, some facts. There are all sorts of facts and disinformation flying around on this matter, so I want to highlight the most basic and most important facts, ones that not even the most rabid Democrat can dispute:

Walz served for 24 years in the Minnesota Army National Guard, retiring at the rank of master sergeant (an “E-8” in the Army).
In the spring of 2005, Walz was serving as the command sergeant major (an “E-9”) of the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery, a Minnesota Army National Guard battalion that is part of the 34th Infantry Division.
Also in the spring of 2005, Walz and his battalion received a warning order that the battalion would be deploying to Iraq. (We know this because Walz’s own congressional campaign told us at the time.)
Knowing that his unit was deploying, Walz nevertheless chose to retire from the National Guard in May of 2005 to pursue his congressional campaign.
Serving members of the National Guard and the Reserve routinely also serve in Congress, and always have. Tulsi Gabbard is an excellent recent example. Walz did not necessarily need to retire to run for Congress. However, an Iraq deployment he might have instead chosen to participate in would, in fact, have prevented him from campaigning.
Walz’s retirement meant he did not fulfill a contractual service commitment he willingly entered into when the Army selected him to attend the United States Army Sergeants Major Academy. As a result, the Army reduced his official retirement rank from E-9 to E-8.
These are facts. Now let’s explain what was so egregious in what Walz did.

So Walz retired when he was allowed to and ran for Congress instead — what’s the big deal, right? Well, had Walz been some slug E-8 holding down some clerical job in the 34th Infantry Division Headquarters, counting his days until retirement, and had he opted to take a lawful retirement rather than go to Iraq, no one would care. But that’s not what happened. Walz was a COMMAND SERGEANT MAJOR (“CSM”), and that makes all the difference in the world.

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Second Circuit Rules Legal Gun Ownership Not Probable Cause for Warrantless Search

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals hasn’t traditionally been a welcoming place for gun owners. This is the same appellate court that originally upheld New York’s “may issue” carry regime before the Supreme Court overturned their decision in Bruen, and since then the court has upheld many of New York’s post-Bruen restrictions on lawful gun owners.

Today, however, a three-judge panel on the court got it absolutely right when it ruled that a Connecticut police officer isn’t entitled to qualified immunity after handcuffing, detaining, and conducting a warrantless search on a resident after he produced a valid handgun permit.

Defendant-Appellant Nicholas Andrzejewski, an officer of the Waterbury,Connecticut police department, appeals from the judgment of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut (Arterton, J.) denying in part his motion for summary judgment on the grounds that his purported conduct was not shielded by qualified immunity.

That conduct, as alleged by Plaintiff-Appellee Basel Soukaneh, is that in the course of a routine traffic stop, Andrzejewski unlawfully and violently handcuffed and detained Soukaneh in the back of a police vehicle for over half an hour and conducted a warrantless search of Soukaneh’s vehicle after Soukaneh presented a facially valid firearms permit and disclosed that he possessed a firearm pursuant to the permit.

On appeal, Andrzejewski argues we should reverse the district court’s denial of qualified immunity because the presence of the lawfully owned firearm in the vehicle gave him the requisite probable cause to detain Soukaneh, search the interior of his car, and search his trunk.

Andrzejewski’s argument is essentially that, by exercising our Second Amendment rights, we give up our Fourth Amendment right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. In fact, he basically maintained that possessing a valid pistol permit gave him reasonable suspicion to search Soukaneh’s vehicle for some evidence of wrongdoing.

After the district court ruled that the officer wasn’t entitled to qualified immunity for his actions, Andrzejewski introduced a new argument in his appeal to the Second Circuit; it wasn’t solely Soukaneh’s gun permit that led him to handcuff the gun owner and search his car, it was the fact that Soukaneh had stopped his vehicle in a “high crime area known for drug transactions”.

As the panel noted, however, “a location’s reputation as a high crime area alone is typically not enough to suggest reasonable suspicion [of a crime], let alone probable cause.” And the court found that Andrzejewski offered no evidence whatsoever that Soukaneh was illegally possessing a gun when he was confronted by the officer. To the contrary, as a matter of fact. Andrzejewski was able to conclusively determine that Soukaneh had a valid pistol permit and lawfully possessed the firearm that he informed the officer he was carrying.

The desire to confirm the legitimacy of the facially valid firearms permit that Soukaneh presented did not—with nothing more—provide Andrzejewski with probable cause for the half-hour or longer handcuffed detention that occurred.

It is uncontested that Soukaneh presented Andrzejewski with a gun license, the legitimacy of which Andrzejewski himself admits he had no reason to question. Moreover, Andrzejewski concedes that he was informed of the facially valid license before Soukaneh told him that he had a gun and specified its location.

Andrzejewski does not allege that the permit appeared abnormal in any fashion or that Soukaneh engaged in any suspicious or threatening behavior. On the facts before us, Andrzejewski does not provide an articulable reason why he, or any other reasonable officer, could conclude that there was probable cause to believe that Soukaneh possessed his firearm unlawfully in violation of Section 29-38(a).

 To find otherwise would consign those validly carrying firearms pursuant to a license to automatic detention because it would effectively presume that gun permits are invalid until proven valid, or that lawfully owned guns are per se contraband until proven otherwise. Such a finding would effectively render armed individuals’ Fourth Amendment rights meaningless when they are lawfully carrying firearms.

As common sense as that position is, it’s still somewhat surprising to see the Second Circuit panel unanimously reach that conclusion… especially since the panel was comprised of two Biden appointees and one judge appointed by Barack Obama.

Andrzejewski could still appeal to an en banc panel of the Second Circuit or take his case directly to the Supreme Court, but I doubt he’s going to find a more receptive audience for his arguments at SCOTUS. The Supreme Court has already declared that the Second Amendment isn’t a second-class right, so I doubt a majority would go along with the officer’s contention that exercising your right to keep and bear arms negates your Fourth Amendment rights altogether.