Category: Rights

Legislation proposed to make Ky. Second Amendment sanctuary state

FRANKFORT, Ky. (KT) – Kentucky would become a Second Amendment sanctuary state if legislation being proposed for the 2022 General Assembly is enacted.

The measure, which will be sponsored by Rep. Josh Bray, R-Mt. Vernon, would bar state and local law enforcement agencies from enforcing federal restrictions on the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms. It would also prohibit local governments and other public agencies from allocating public resources or money in the enforcement of federal firearm bans. It includes firearms themselves, ammunition and firearm accessories.

“President Biden has declared gun control a priority for his administration, and we know that if he doesn’t get what he wants from Congress, he will abuse his executive authority through rulemaking,” said Bray, who represents all of Garrard and Rockcastle counties and a portion of Madison County. “This sends a clear message that Kentucky is a Second Amendment sanctuary and that there is no question we will defend the Second Amendment against any attempt to infringe upon it.”

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Dangerous, Threatening Rhetoric is the Tactic of Tyrants

Only tyrants threaten the use of force against their own people. On Wednesday, President Biden remarked,  “If you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”

This is reminiscent of California’s infamous Chinese-spy-bedding Congressman, Eric Swalwell’s threats via Twitter back in 2018, when he said about a hypothetical war against gun owners, “And it would be a short war my friend. The government has nukes….”

Both references to nuclear weapons is designed to do one thing: to intimidate America’s  armed populace.

 

Drilling down, the core question is why do these politicians distrust the people with the arms the Constitution guarantees their right to keep and bear? What are they doing, or planning, that makes civilian disarmament a priority? If civilian gun ownership isn’t a threat, why are lawful gun owners constantly conflated with criminals, scapegoated for crimes they didn’t commit, and their rights under incessant, incremental attack?

The reason is the power of an armed civilian populace is not to be underestimated, and they know it.

All men have the potential to be tyrants. As Aristotle warned . . .

The three aims of the tyrant are, one, the humiliation of his subjects; he knows that a mean-spirited man will not conspire against anybody; two, the creation of mistrust among them; for a tyrant is not to be overthrown until men begin to have confidence in one another — and this is the reason why tyrants are at war with the good; they are under the idea that their power is endangered by them, not only because they will not be ruled despotically, but also because they are too loyal to one another and to other men, and do not inform against one another or against other men — three, the tyrant desires that all his subjects shall be incapable of action, for no one attempts what is impossible and they will not attempt to overthrow a tyranny if they are powerless.

Wednesday’s speech was a prime example of attempts to humiliate, foment mistrust, and lay the foundation for plans to render popular action ineffective, just as Aristotle described. Biden’s ham-handed remarks about the government’s arsenal of F15s and nuclear weapons were intended to mock and humiliate anyone who believes she is free citizen, not a subject. Anyone who believes her life if worth defending against those who wish her harm. Anyone who subscribes to the historic values enshrined in our Constitution.

The second tactic was intimidation, the use of divisive language, stoking fear and mistrust amongst our fellow citizens by scapegoating gun owners. He all but blamed us for higher crime rates rather than looking at other, more politically inconvenient factors such as defunding, demonizing, and demoralizing police forces throughout the nation.

Biden tried to stoke fear of modern sporting rifles, of which there are about 20 million in common use in the United States. Attempting to ban them over arbitrary, mostly cosmetic features defies all logic. If it wasn’t so clearly tyrannical, it would almost be humorous.

Finally, Aristotle recognized that tyrants desire to render their subjects incapable of acting. In Biden’s case, through civilian disarmament. How would one actually accomplish this? Enter Biden’s ATF Director nominee and current gun control lobbyist, David Chipman. The man refused to identify what constitutes and “assault weapon” because he knows it will be far more convenient to let that definition be whatever the tyrants want or need it to be.

In the end, Biden’s speech was embarrassing and his empty threats pathetic. America’s gun owners will not be intimidated. If gun-grabbing politicians didn’t fear the people, they wouldn’t spend so much time, energy, resources, and linguistic wrangling attacking Second Amendment rights.

We rest easy knowing our constitutional foundations, and the pre-existing rights codified therein, have brought us to this. Not to disappoint the President, but we know that the Supreme Court has already ruled that we have an individual right to possess arms in common use. That’s a feature, not a bug as this very moment was thoughtfully crafted and designed by the Framers. Our duty and responsibility is to uphold the Constitution.

 

F-15S & NUCLEAR WEAPONS: BIDEN SHRUGS OFF 2A IN GUN CONTROL SPEECH

Just over a week before the country’s Independence Day celebrations, President Biden delivered a speech on gun control in which he ridiculed the meaning, feasibility, and intent of the Second Amendment.

In an event meant to be the kickoff for another round of anti-gun legislation and executive actions for an Administration just 155 days in the White House, Biden tried to frame the Constitutional gun rights argument to justify his proposed efforts.

“The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn’t buy a cannon,” he said.

While the first part, about the Amendment “limiting the type of people,” is somewhat true– for example, the gun rights of enslaved and in some cases even freed blacks were often denied in the Southern States from the earliest days of the Constitution despite the Second Amendment– Biden fails the fact check on cannon ownership. As we have covered before, anyone with the desire and extra cash could acquire their own battery of fully functional cannon without any government paperwork or permission until 1968. 

With that being said, modern breechloading artillery is still available in the “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave,” provided it is registered with the federal government and properly taxed. Still, legacy artillery systems such as muzzleloading black powder field guns, do not require tax stamps.

Biden also went further into the woods against what the Second Amendment protects, arguing the enumerated right had something to do with hunting, although many in the gun rights community point out that Washington didn’t cross the Delaware to get to a duck blind.

“No one needs to have a weapon that can fire over 30, 40, 50, even up to 100 rounds unless you think the deer are wearing Kevlar vests or something,” he said, although magazine capacity restrictions have only been adopted in nine states– and have been recently found to be Constitutionally suspect by a federal court. Further, industry data suggests consumers in the U.S. own at least 230 million detachable magazines, with about half of those able to hold more than 10 cartridges, the traditional threshold for a “large-capacity magazine” in restricted states.

Then, Biden seemed to paint the Second Amendment’s potential check against tyranny, a concept that dates to the days of Constitutional framer James Madison, as ludicrous in the days of modern warfare, notwithstanding the realities of multi-domain modern insurgency.

“Those who say the blood of lib- — ‘the blood of patriots,’ you know, and all the stuff about how we’re going to have to move against the government. Well, the tree of liberty is not watered with the blood of patriots. What’s happened is that there have never been — if you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons,” he said.

The quote Biden ramblingly alluded to, drawn a 1787 letter from Founding Father Thomas Jefferson– author of The Declaration of Independence and later third U.S. President– to William Smith, John Adams’ secretary, can be argued to be directly related to the right to keep and bear arms and was penned at the time of Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts.

We have had 13 states independent 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure.

It is not the first time that Biden trotted out the Jeffersonian quote in relation to his view on gun policy. In February 2020, while on the campaign trail for the Democratic nomination for President, he argued at a town hall event in New Hampshire that, “Those who say ‘the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots’ — a great line, well, guess what: The fact is, if you’re going to take on the government you need an F-15 with Hellfire Missiles. There is no way an AK-47 is going to take care of you.”

BLUF:
The cold civil war is being fought in civic meetings. The battles are local and the battle maps cover streets rather than continents, but it is a conflict driven by the impetus of revolutions and civil wars in which one people, as Jefferson wrote, seeks to part ways with another, not to rule over them, but to be free of their thievery, their abuses, and their tyrannical rule

The Small Secessions of the New Civil War: Neighborhoods secede from cities, cities from counties, and counties from states.

That a battle over Atlanta would play nearly as pivotal a role in the country’s second civil war as it did in the first might have surprised few historians. What might have surprised them is that the battle would involve civic meetings rather than bullets. There are plenty of bullets in Buckhead, a part of Atlanta coping with runaway crime under the pro-crime rule of Mayor Keisha Bottoms, and those bullets have inspired local residents to secede and form their own police force.

Buckhead is not the first part of Atlanta to try and secede. Sandy Springs had already successfully seceded from Atlanta and a number of cities in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, have tried to break away to form Milton County. These efforts to escape the blight and corruption of Atlanta aren’t new, but Buckhead’s fight to escape Atlanta’s pro-crime government has captured the imagination of millions of Americans from one coast of the country to the other.

The cold civil war is being shaped not by national, but local secessions like the one in Buckhead as neighborhoods try to secede from cities, cities from counties, and counties from states in a powerful struggle by conservative and centrist communities to define their own way of life.

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Yes, Gun Control Did Help Facilitate The Holocaust

The Holocaust is one of the most horrible events in human history. It became the benchmark by which we compare atrocities, and for good reason. Millions of Jews slaughtered. Millions more put through some of the worst abuses a person can visit upon another. It was awful in so many ways.

However, we on the gun right side have pointed out over and over again that if the Jews had been able to have guns, the Holocaust may never have happened.

Unsurprisingly, some people disagree.

But the freshman congresswoman is hardly the only figure in the nation to have manipulated the Holocaust. The National Rifle Association, or at least its modern leaders led by its now embattled CEO, Wayne LaPierre, have long searched for “proof” that gun control is nothing more than a slippery slope to genocide. And in recent years, the NRA has manipulated the Holocaust to claim they finally found it, funding research that has allegedly discovered a new link between gun control and the Holocaust that generations of scholars have yet to find.

In 2013, the Anti-Defamation League said “Nazi Analogies Have No Place In Gun Control Debate” after a half dozen commentators including Sean Hannity and Judge Andrew Napolitano of Fox News out of the blue all raised the matter of gun control and the Holocaust.

“If the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto had had the firepower and the ammunition that the Nazis did, some of Poland might have stayed free and more persons would have survived the Holocaust,” claimed Napolitano.

It’s as if they were all laying the groundwork for the book, “Gun Control in The Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and ‘Enemies of the State,’” published later that year by the Independent Institute, a small think-tank in Oakland. Research for this book was partly funded by the NRA. Its author, Stephen P. Halbrook, is the nation’s best-known pro-gun lawyer. Several years before, during the watershed gun rights case Heller vs. District of Columbia that established that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep arms, Halbrook filed a successful amicus brief on behalf of 250 members of the House of Representatives, 55 senators, and the president of the Senate, then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

Halbrook’s thesis about gun control and the Holocaust is novel at best. Most Holocaust scholars, like Alan E. Steinweis, director of holocaust studies at the University of Vermont, say that the idea that gun control was a factor in the Holocaust is “simply a nonissue.” But Halbrook claims that prior gun control laws during the Weimer Republic, or Germany’s democratic years before Hitler took power, were used to seize firearms from Jews, enough to have helped enable the Holocaust.

Never mind the weak evidence, the NRA’s house organ crowed about the book’s supposed breakthrough.

The problem with this line of “reasoning” is that they’re demanding pro-gun voices provide proof for something that wasn’t allowed to happen.

Did the Weimar Republic ban guns? Yes.

Were the Jews in Nazi Germany armed? No.

As such, were they able to offer armed resistance when herded into concentration camps? Also, no.

No one is saying that the Weimar Republic actively sought to empower those that followed them to commit genocide against the Jewish people. No one is claiming that things proceeded along a set plan all built around the idea of exterminating not just the Jews but also homosexuals and gypsies.

To make that claim, you’d need a great deal of evidence and that evidence likely doesn’t exist.

However, there’s ample reason to suggest that the Nazis could capitalize on the existing laws and take advantage of a disarmed population. In fact, no one disputes the fact they were disarmed and while some claim the Holocaust didn’t happen, I don’t really care about their opinions on much of anything.

Now, let’s also be clear that we can’t be certain that an armed population would have prevented the Holocaust. Even in the modern United States where guns outnumber people, a lot of folks are unarmed by choice. That would likely have been true right up until the Nazis decided to put the Jews in concentration camps. How many would have been able to fight back?

Frankly, we’ll never know.

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Dumb, Disarmed and Diseased
Dumb, Disarmed and Diseased

Have you noticed how the elite is bent on creating the perfect serf? From ensuring we are unarmed to pushing pot – yeah, America needs more of a drug that makes people lazier and less interesting – to hyping the pandemic, everything the ruling caste has been doing lately seems focused on turning us into drones. And far too many people are just letting it happen.

And now the US government will be pimping BLM to foreigners. Great. How could that go wrong? Our nonpartisan government is now fully partisan – weren’t norms important just a few months ago?

Building The Perfect Serf

With a hat-tip to Aaron, whose tweet alerted me to the painfully dumb meme of the commie gov of Pennsylvania, the campaign to change Americans from proud, industrious citizens into submissive, dependent subjects is going full-throttle. The governor, recently rebuked by the citizens who voted away his dictatorial flu powers in a welcome bit of push-back, decried the fact people can buy guns from each other without his permission but can’t have dope without a medical ID card – I guess requiring ID for getting high is as onerous as it is for voting. So, in his optimal universe, people can’t get arms to protect themselves unless he thinks it’s okay and grants them a dispensation to do so, but it should be open season at the dope dispensary. And, of course, they have to be masked while doing it, at least until they wrap their lips around the bong.

Being able to defend yourself: Bad.

Being stoned on a couch watching Scooby-Doo: Good.

Being masked all the time: Better.

Guns allow people to break the monopoly on force held by the government, creating a limit to what the government can do. No wonder liberals hate that. This right gives people the impression that the consent of the governed matters. Bunch of wicked “insurrectionists” they are, daring to think they should possess some sort of ultimate veto power over their betters!

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Why is the Postal Service, which can’t seem to do its actual job, functioning as an internal security agency surveilling American citizens?

Report: USPS ‘Internet Covert Operations Program’ Is ‘Much Broader in Scope Than Previously Known’
The program ‘includes analysts who assume fake identities online, use sophisticated intelligence tools, and employ facial recognition software.”

Last month, Yahoo News ripped the lid off of a government surveillance program run by a division of the USPS. The program monitors, scans, and collects information on social media postings considered “inflammatory” enough to pass along to other government agencies. It includes posts promoting the coordination and planning of upcoming political demonstrations.

The program’s existence came out after the news outlet obtained a copy of a March USPS bulletin that was “distributed through the Department of Homeland Security’s fusion centers.” It warned of the possibility of violence at upcoming protests though they acknowledged they had no reliable intelligence to suggest any alleged threats were legitimate:

“Analysts with the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) monitored significant activity regarding planned protests occurring internationally and domestically on March 20, 2021,” says the March 16 government bulletin, marked as “law enforcement sensitive” and distributed through the Department of Homeland Security’s fusion centers. “Locations and times have been identified for these protests, which are being distributed online across multiple social media platforms, to include right-wing leaning Parler and Telegram accounts.”

[…]

“No intelligence is available to suggest the legitimacy of these threats,” it adds.

The bulletin includes screenshots of posts about the protests from Facebook, Parler, Telegram and other social media sites. Individuals mentioned by name include one alleged Proud Boy and several others whose identifying details were included but whose posts did not appear to contain anything threatening.

“iCOP analysts are currently monitoring these social media channels for any potential threats stemming from the scheduled protests and will disseminate intelligence updates as needed,” the bulletin says.

The report about the previously unknown iCOP sparked an outcry among Congressional Republicans. A House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing was held a week later where a USPS official confirmed its existence without going into a lot of detail:

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This 9-0 SCOTUS Ruling on Guns Shows Just How Extreme (and Dangerous) the Biden Administration Really Is

Did you hear that Joe Biden’s Department of Justice wanted the Supreme Court to rule that police could search Americans’ homes for firearms — and confiscate them — without a warrant?

In the case of Caniglia vs. Strom, this issue was in play. Had SCOTUS ruled that police could do that, your Second Amendment rights would have been in grave jeopardy.

In March, Biden’s DoJ filed a brief with the Supreme Court in this case. It said:

In its first amicus brief before the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice argued the actions taken by law enforcement to confiscate the petitioner’s firearms without a warrant were “reasonable.”

“The touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness,” the DOJ’s brief stated. “For criminal investigations, this Court has generally incorporated the Warrant Clause into the Fourth Amendment’s overarching reasonableness requirement, but it has not generally done so for searches or seizures objectively premised on justifications other than the investigation of wrongdoing.”

In this case, the police officers’ actions were not reasonable.

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Illinois Supreme Court Weighs Constitutionality Of Cook County Tax On Guns And Ammo

The Illinois Supreme Court this year will decide whether a Cook County tax on firearms and ammunition is unconstitutional on grounds taxes can’t be levied on items that allow people to exercise their “fundamental” rights.

The state’s high court last week heard arguments on a case where Cook County has twice been victorious in lower courts.

In 2012, the Cook County Board of Commissioners passed a $25 tax on firearms, followed a few years later by a per-cartridge tax on centerfire and rimfire ammunition.

The plaintiff in the case, “Guns Save Life”, a non-profit best known for erecting pro-gun signs on the side of highways, argues the intent of the tax was to make it more difficult for Illinoisans to purchase guns and violates their Second Amendment protections.

Prior to oral arguments, Guns Save Life’s plaintiff’s brief referenced various statements made by County Board members when the policy was first passed, to convince the court of bias against firearm purchases in the board’s legislative intent.

“At least we’re going to make it difficult for people to have guns,” County Board Commissioner Deborah Sims said in November 2012. “If you can’t afford it, you won’t buy it.”

Proponents of the firearm and ammunition tax — who won favorable rulings in the lower court decisions — argue the revenue collected goes toward combating gun violence throughout the county.

Martha-Victoria Jimenez, an attorney representing Cook County, referenced the financial strain gun violence has had on public services like the county’s hospital system.

“In 2017 alone, it treated 1,100 gunshot patients, spending anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000 on each,” Jimenez said. “This doesn’t include the staggering expenses borne by the Cook County sister criminal justice agencies that actually have to deal day to day with gun crimes. The taxes at issue are a local solution that was devised by the county to defray these staggering expenses unique to Cook County.”

But plaintiff attorney Pete Patterson argued case law was on Guns Safe Life’s side, pointing out the Illinois Supreme Court had previously ruled against placing taxes on fundamental rights, regardless of whether the tax funds public aid initiatives.

Back in the 1980s, Illinois placed a $10 tax on marriage license fees for counties with a population over one million. Revenue collected from the tax went to the Domestic Violence Shelter and Service Fund.

However, in Boynton v. Kusper (1986), the state Supreme Court ruled the tax unconstitutional.

“The court held that a tax on a fundamental right is not a reasonable way to raise revenue to pay for [a] general welfare program,” Patterson said “We have the same structure here where it’s a tax on a fundamental right meant to pay for general welfare programs.”

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Supreme Court Strikes Down Biden-Backed Police Firearm Seizure Case

The Supreme Court has dealt the Biden administration a defeat on a “caretaking” case. The case tested whether or not police could enter private property without a warrant if an individual was believed to pose a threat to himself or others.

In the case Caniglia v. Strom, the Supreme Court ruled that “caretaking” did not justify entering a man’s home to remove firearms because he was believed to have expressed suicidal thoughts. The man was taken to a local mental health facility for psychiatric evaluation.

“Police entered the home under a ‘community caretaking’ exception that allows entry in cases where doing so benefits the public interest, which has traditionally applied to incidents regarding vehicles but not in homes,” Forbes reported.

“That exception had been favored by the law enforcement in the case and also the Biden administration, whose Justice Department said in an amicus brief that police should be able to enter homes without a warrant in cases that are ‘objectively grounded in a non-investigatory public interest, such as health or safety’,” Forbes’ report continued.

The Supreme Court ruled that such a purported ‘exception’ violates the Fourth Amendment law against unreasonable search and seizure.

“What is reasonable for vehicles is different from what is reasonable for homes,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his opinion. Thomas noted that the “community caretaking” exception did not constitute “a standalone doctrine that justifies warrantless searches and seizures in the home.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling was unanimous.

 

Analysis: The Biden Regime Has Declared War on Trump Supporters
Every American Should Tell Their Representatives In Congress To Stand Up To The Biden DOJ Abuses Of Power.

Since the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol, the Biden administration’s Department of Justice has engaged in what appears to be a pattern of civil rights abuses against anyone who doesn’t accept the woke agenda or is a Trump supporter. Most recently, the FBI raided the home of former Mayor and Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani. In an exclusive interview with Fox News, Giuliani said the government is trying to frame him.

Giuliani said the agents showed him a search warrant that “sought the electronics in my apartment and purported to be about an alleged violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, FARA, for failure to file as a foreign agent on behalf of an unnamed Ukrainian official.”

Giuliani added, “They are trying to find something they can make into a crime, some technical violation, some mistake I made. They’ll take anything.”

Giuliani also accused the feds of illegally leaking information about the probe and described the FBI raid on his Manhattan apartment last week as “out of control.”

“Usually a person who has been a former assistant U.S. attorney, a U.S. attorney, a mayor, the associate attorney general, usually they receive a subpoena — not have their home raided,” Giuliani said. “The only lawyers they raid are lawyers for Donald Trump. I can’t think of another lawyer that has been raided other than lawyers for Trump.”

In an amateurish but potentially dangerous raid on an Alaska homeowner, the FBI conducted a no-knock warrant at the home of a woman who had attended President Trump’s peaceful Jan. 6 rally near the White House.

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leftist tyrants gotta tyrant.

Biden Supports Suppressing Online “Misinformation” Press Secretary Says

President Joe Biden supports efforts to crack down on “misinformation” on Big Tech platforms, the White House said.

“The president’s view is that the major platforms have a responsibility related to the health and safety of all Americans to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation, and misinformation, especially related to COVID-19, vaccinations, and elections. And we’ve seen that over the past several months, broadly speaking. I’m not placing any blame on any individual or group; we’ve seen it from a number of sources,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington……..

Senator Klobuchar Says Facebook’s Trump Ban Doesn’t Go Far Enough

The recent decision by the Oversight Board to uphold Facebook’s decision to indefinitely suspend President Trump reignited calls for antitrust laws against Big Tech companies. But Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who is leading a team that could reshape the country’s antitrust laws, says the ban was not punishment enough.

In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Klobuchar called her political opponent the “ultimate conveyor of misinformation,” adding he should be permanently banned from social media platforms…….

Arizona: Senate Concurs On Frivolous Lawsuit Prevention Bill

[Monday] the Arizona Senate concurred with the House’s amendments to Senate Bill 1382, to protect Second Amendment rights from frivolous lawsuits and to ensure that access to the Second Amendment remains protected during emergencies. It now goes to Governor Doug Ducey for his signature.

Senate Bill 1382 protects firearm dealers, manufacturers, distributors, etc., from frivolous lawsuits for the criminal or unlawful use of their product. While federal law currently has this protection, as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), President Biden has promised to repeal the PLCAA as a main part of his assault on the Second Amendment. Prior to Congress passing PLCAA in 2005, 34 states passed similar laws on their own. With this measure, Arizona can add an additional layer of protection to prevent anti-gun extremists from attempting to bankrupt law-abiding businesses by suing them for the third party, criminal misuse of their legal products.

Additionally, SB 1382 still retains language from the original version that designates firearm and ammunition retailers as essential businesses. This ensures that anti-gun officials and bureaucrats cannot unjustly target them, to shut them down during states of emergencies.

 

BLUF:
Compared to nearly the entire rest of the world, people in the United States have retained the ability to choose to be legally armed or unarmed. Most people in the USA want to keep the option. Nearly all the rest of the world does not have it.

The Case for More Guns, Learn to Think Like The Sheep Who Chose to Be Unarmed

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- People in the gun culture often express amazement about people who want them disarmed. They ascribe the desire to hostility and malice. It may be true for a minority of those who actively wish for a disarmed population.  A significant number, likely a majority, have made a voluntary decision to be unarmed.

It is important to know your opponent and to understand their motives.

Three years ago, this correspondent wrote an essay on how to understand people who want a disarmed population. It was popular but did not appear on AmmoLand News at that time.

I have updated the essay for current conditions.

There Is An Easy Way To Understand People Who Wish You To Be Unarmed.

It takes a little discipline. You may have a little mental discomfort, but it is not particularly difficult.  For the ability to understand the other side, assume you have deliberately chosen to be unarmed.

Choosing to be armed is more difficult. It requires action. It requires training. It requires an investment in money and time. You think about unpleasant realities and plan for unpleasant possibilities. You devote time and money to be armed. A higher level of responsibility is required.

Once you internalize the decision to be unarmed, arguments on the other side become understandable. The voluntarily unarmed people we are attempting to understand are those who have moved from the decision to be unarmed, to the policy statement “guns are bad”.

Guns are Bad
Guns are Bad

Armed people have a power advantage over unarmed people. People do not want others to have a power advantage over them. It makes them uncomfortable. To prevent this, the voluntarily unarmed often want everyone else to be unarmed.

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Saul Cornell has always been a elitist political hack when it comes to gun control.

Preamble he says?

He’s trying to make people believe ‘A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state’ somehow overrides ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed‘ and thus only the military & the national guard – the elistist/anti-civil rights, wanna-be gun controller’s current definition of ‘militia’ – have a right to have guns.

Of course common English sentence diagraming, taught in grade school, confirms he’s lying.

But – again – Preamble he says?

Well, I’ve got one for him. One that I think he believes he can evade through general ignorance due to the lack of civics education:

PREAMBLE TO THE BILL OF RIGHTS

“THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its (the Constitution’s) powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.”

Bold & parenthesis are mine.

That preamble clearly states that the amendments are to declare certain things that are restricted from the government exerting its powers on them. The Bill of Rights is a list of restrictions on government, not the people, and Mr Saul Cornell knows this.

Cornell: Originalism Means Gorsuch and Barrett Should Rule in Favor of Strict Gun Control

In another of Heller’s odd intellectual moves, Scalia read the Second Amendment backwards, and in the process effectively erased the text’s preamble. To justify this unusual reading strategy, an interpretive approach that Stevens reminded his colleagues on the bench had never been done in the court’s history, Scalia cited legal treatises written decades after the adoption of the Second Amendment. Once again, to obtain his preferred result Scalia rummaged among sources written a half a century after the adoption of the Second Amendment to find evidence of the text’s original meaning.

Such a move only makes sense if one believes that nothing significant happened in American legal history between the adoption of the Second Amendment and the Civil War, a view most historians would find bizarre and erroneous. Curiously, Justice Scalia did not turn to a legal source more readily available that was written at the same time as the Second Amendment. John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and co-author of The Federalist, had ruled on this issue in 1790s.

Jay wrote: “A preamble cannot annul enacting clauses; but when it evinces the intention of the legislature and the design of the act, it enables us, in cases of two constructions, to adopt the one most consonant to their intention and design.”

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U. OF PENNSYLVANIA CAPITULATES; APPROVES HUNTING, ARCHERY, AND SHOOTING CLUB.

PHILADELPHIA, April 29, 2021 — After more than a year in limbo, the University of Pennsylvania’s Hunting, Archery, and Shooting Club is officially a recognized student group.

Under pressure from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and with help from FIRE Legal Network attorney Patricia Hamill, the university relented this week and processed the group’s registration.

On March 17, FIRE called on Penn to stop engaging in viewpoint discrimination and promptly recognize the club.

“We are pleased that Penn finally hit the mark,” said FIRE Senior Program Officer Zach Greenberg. “However, the approval is long overdue. It should not take a year for a university to make good on its promises to uphold students’ rights.”

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Don’t read too much into this. Washington State will almost undoubtedly request an en banc at the 9th Circus, and we all know how that usually ends up. Of course, how the state is actually able to stop internet distribution – of anything – is beyond me.

Ninth Circuit Panel Vacates State AGs’ Injunction Blocking Distribution of 3D Gun Files

 

Making Sense of the Limited Cert Grant in NYS Rifle & Pistol Association v. Corlett

Why did the Court rewrite the question presented in this Second Amendment case?

One week ago, I lamented about Heller‘s sad bar mitzvah. On April 26, the Court denied review in three Second Amendment cases concerning the rights of non-violent felons. And the Court had twice relisted NYS Rifle & Pistol Association v. Corlett. At the time, I assumed the Court had denied review, and Justice Thomas was writing yet another dissent from denial of certiorari.

Once again, the shadow docket threw a curveball. This morning the Court granted cert in the case. But the Court only granted review to a limited question presented:

Whether the State’s denial of petitioners’ applications for concealed-carry licenses for self-defense violated the Second Amendment.

As soon as I saw the grant, I started to scratch my head. Why did the Court rewrite the QP? Here is how Paul Clement framed the issue for the petitioners:

Whether the Second Amendment allows the government to prohibit ordinary law-abiding citizens from carrying handguns outside the home for self-defense.

There are at least five major differences between Clement’s QP and the Court’s QP.

First, the Court’s QP focuses on the state’s decision to deny “concealed-carry licenses” to the petitioners. Clement’s QP challenged the law on its face, and as applied. Is the Court’s decision now limited to an as-applied challenge, rather than a facial challenge? Might the Court leave open the possibility that other may-issue regimes are unconstitutional? Are there some unique aspects of the New York law that would distinguish it from other may issue regimes? Is there the possibility the Court will need to remand for further explication of the regime? Is there some evidence that the state improperly denied licenses to these particular plaintiffs? Might there be some Due Process Clause argument? Then again, the QP references the Second Amendment, so a Due Process issue would not be squarely presented. I see this slippery change as a way for the Court to issue a very, very narrow decision that will leave the issue unsettled.

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High court halts Calif. virus rules limiting home worship

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is telling California that it can’t enforce coronavirus-related restrictions that have limited home-based religious worship including Bible studies and prayer meetings.

The order from the court late Friday is the latest in a recent string of cases in which the high court has barred officials from enforcing some coronavirus-related restrictions applying to religious gatherings.

Five conservative justices agreed that California restrictions that apply to in-home religious gatherings should be lifted for now, while the court’s three liberals and Chief Justice John Roberts would not have done so.

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This is an alternate tactic the gun grabbers have been trying for decades. Getting their econutz shills to sue to ban lead bullets and shot.

Judge Affirms Hunters Can Use Traditional Ammo in NRA Case

On April 1st, a federal judge in Arizona sided with NRA-ILA and Safari Club International and held that hunters’ use of traditional ammo does not violate federal environmental law.

The case dates back to 2012, when a group sued the U.S. Forest Service. The group alleged that by allowing hunters to hunt with traditional lead ammo in the 1.6-million-acre Kaibab National Forest—which is authorized by Arizona state law—the Forest Service was violating the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. That Act was originally passed in 1976, to address the increasing amount of municipal and industrial waste that was being disposed of at the time. But over time, it has been used to attack gun owners and shooting ranges.

On April 1st, the judge held that the Forest Service is not disposing any waste by allowing hunters to hunt in accordance with state laws. But the case had even bigger implications. The Plaintiff was asking the court to order the Forest Service regulate hunting. But the states own the wildlife, even while it is on federal lands. “Each national forest,” the judge said, “is required to cooperate with state wildlife agencies to allow hunting in ‘accordance with the requirements of State laws.”’ A ruling to the contrary would have given the federal government the authority to enter a field of regulation that belongs to the states on lands where hunting takes place. Those implications would be huge because 640-million acres (about twenty-eight percent of the country) is owned and managed by the federal government. Thankfully, the judge sided with NRA-ILA and Safari Club.

NRA-ILA will continue to protect the rights of hunters everywhere to use commonly owned and affordable ammunition to hunt and enjoy public lands.

The case is called Center for Biological Diversity v. United States Forest Service. The National Shooting Sports Foundation also intervened as a defendant in the case.