You say floating dock, I say sitting duck

My expertise in life is rather limited.

In fact, the only things I’m really well versed in are dental care, raising a family, and pouring a beer just so into a frozen mug resulting in a perfect, frothy one-inch head.

That being said, you’ve got to be out of your freakin’ mind to consider building a floating dock into Gaza for the purpose of delivering humanitarian aid.

Of course, our practically petrified puppet in the White House is out of his freakin’ mind as his senile dementia proceeds apace.

But my point is, if you build it — the floating dock, not a practically petrified puppet — a certain number of Americans are going to die.

And they’ll die in the service of a population that hates America and Israel in equal measure, and whose Hamas brethren would like nothing better than to do to U.S. soldiers what they just did to more than a thousand innocent Jews.

Even if we created a temporary military base, complete with an airfield, on the land side of the dock, some Americans would still die (see Kabul Airport, bombing and U.S. Cole, bombing). I mean, they don’t call Hamas ‘terrorists’ for nothing.

But as that well-meaning, elderly man with a bad memory yelled out during his State of the Union harangue, there will be no American boots on the ground!

The poor souls tapped to serve this mission will be the very definition of sitting ducks. And their Navy and Air Force protectors will be, as Sleepy Joe’s puppet master might say, leading from behind. They will get involved only after missiles, RPGs, drones, and God knows what else, rain down death and destruction upon our servicemen and servicewomen.

Can you imagine Hamas dragging American corpses around the Strip for the edification of their Gazan supporters? Or Hamas sending out videos of female American soldiers being gang-raped, tortured, and killed?

I can.

And after this past October 7, most sentient beings — which precludes the dried-up turnip in the White House — also can.

How best to relieve the suffering of the Gazan civilians, I don’t know. But this cockamamie floating dock idea, created simply to assuage Muslim voters in Michigan, is just about the stupidest and most dangerous idea I’ve ever heard.

If implemented, it’s bound to end in U.S. blood and tears. That, sadly, I do know

Undaunted By Court Losses, Cali Lawmakers Push More Anti-Gun Measures

As California’s restrictive anti-gun laws continue to be deemed unconstitutional in the courtroom—the latest being a district court earlier this week striking down the law restricting purchase of handguns and semi-auto rifles to one every 30 days—the state legislature is pushing on, considering even more measures curtailing the rights of lawful citizens.

In recent weeks, courts have struck down a law that permanently denied Second Amendment rights to people who have had felony convictions vacated, set aside or dismissed, and their rights to possess firearms fully restored, a law allowing frivolous lawsuits against the firearms industry and the state’s on-again, off-again ammo background check law. You might think anti-gun legislators in the Golden State would finally back down, but alas they refuse to do so.

Now, California lawmakers are pushing a handful of restrictive measures that would further infringe on citizens’ Second Amendment rights.

Two such measures are scheduled for a hearing in the Senate Public Safety Committee on March 19. SB 1038, by Democrat state Sen. Catherine Blakespear, would cut the amount of time gun owners have to report lost or stolen firearms to 48 hours, down from five days. Such a law would make victims of theft repeat victims if they failed to meet the reporting requirement.

The other measure, SB 902, by Democrat state Sens. Richard Roth and Anthony Portantino, would add “animal mistreatment” to the list of misdemeanors that would result in a 10-year prohibition of firearms possession. Since the measure doesn’t include a clear definition of what is considered “animal mistreatment,” such a law could place California’s lawful gun owners at risk of losing their right to keep and bear arms.

Two other measures are scheduled to be heard by the same committee on April 2. SB 1160, by Sen. Portantino, would require gun owners to re-register their firearms each year and pay a yet-undetermined fee each time they re-register their guns. And SB 1253, introduced by Democrat Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez, would prohibit Californians from possessing a firearm without a valid Firearm Safety Card, with the requirement to renew the card every five years.

But wait, there’s more!

Two other measures are also under consideration, but have yet to be assigned to a committee. AB 3067, by Democrat state Assemblyman Mike Gipson, would force homeowner and rental insurance companies to ask applicants how many firearms they have in their home, along with how and where they are stored. And lastly, SB 53, again by Sen. Portantino, would ban firearm possession in the home unless the firearms are stored in a DOJ-approved locked box or safe that would deny access to anyone other than the owner.

If these measures are passed by lawmakers and sent to the desk of gun-ban advocate and still-presidential hopeful Gov. Gavin Newsom, it’s nearly certain that they will be signed into law. And if they become law, it’s likely we will hear about some of them again when pro-gun advocacy groups take the state to court over these unconstitutional restrictions.

Second Amendment Roundup: Delaware’s “Assault Weapon” Ban Argued in 3rd Circuit
Likelihood of prevailing on a constitutional claim may suffice for a preliminary injunction.

The Third Circuit heard oral argument on March 11 in a challenge to Delaware’s ban on so-called “assault weapons” and ammunition magazines that hold over 17 rounds. Three overlapping cases were consolidated for argument on appeal from the denial of a preliminary injunction. Before the Court got into the meat of the Second Amendment dispute, Judge Stephanos Bibas raised a question about the preliminary injunction standard as it applies in Second Amendment cases: do the plaintiffs need to show that every preliminary injunction factor weighs in their favor, or is it enough to show they are likely to succeed on the merits?

The Supreme Court refers to the preliminary injunction as “an extraordinary remedy” that requires plaintiffs to make a “clear showing” on four factors before being granted: (1) likelihood of success on the merits, (2) that they face irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction, (3) that the balance of the equities favor them, and (4) that the public interest would be served by the injunction. The plaintiffs in Delaware focused on the first point—that they were likely to show the laws they challenged violate their Second Amendment rights. Judge Bibas questioned whether that was enough.

It should be. In fact, while there are putatively four factors to be considered in granting a preliminary injunction, in litigation against the government over the constitutionality of a law, in practice they tend to collapse. In such cases, “likelihood of success” is “the first among equals” and is typically dispositive,   L.W. by & through Williams v. Skrmetti (6th Cir. 2023), and the third and the fourth factors, the public interest and the balance of the equities are considered as one. Nken v. Holder (U.S. 2009). Furthermore, if plaintiffs show that the law they challenge violates the Constitution, then those final factors necessarily weigh in their favor, because “the enforcement of an unconstitutional law vindicates no public interest.” K.A. ex rel. Ayers v. Pocono Mountain School District (3d Cir. 2013).

The same should be true for irreparable harm as well, as the Ninth Circuit recognized in its Second Amendment decision in Baird v. Bonta (2023), where it explained that “in cases involving a constitutional claim, a likelihood of success on the merits usually establishes irreparable harm, and strongly tips the balances of equities and public interest in favor of granting a preliminary injunction.”

Irreparable harm was the focus of Judge Bibas’s questioning in the Delaware argument. It is black-letter law, as the Supreme Court held in 2020 in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, that “[t]he loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.” There is every reason to think the same is true for the Second Amendment. “Irreparable harm” is an injury that cannot be easily measured in (and therefore compensated by) monetary damages. Some circuits have recognized that any constitutional right deprivation is necessarily “irreparable.” Melendres v. Arapaio (9th Cir. 2012). And the Third Circuit has extended it at least to cover Fourth Amendment rights, noting that “[p]ersons who can establish that they are being denied their constitutional rights are entitled to relief, and it can no longer be seriously contended that an action for money damages will serve to adequately remedy unconstitutional searches and seizures.” Lewis v. Kugler (1971). As the Supreme Court made clear in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), the Second Amendment deserves equal treatment with the other protections in the Bill or Rights.

In alignment with this, the Seventh Circuit in Ezell v. City of Chicago (2011) answered Judge Bibas’s question well when it noted that “[t]he loss of a First Amendment right is frequently presumed to cause irreparable harm based on the intangible nature of the benefits flowing from the exercise of those rights. . . . The Second Amendment protects similarly intangible and unquantifiable interests. Heller held that the Amendment’s central component is the right to possess firearms for protection. Infringements of this right cannot be compensated by damages.”

The limited scenarios in which a constitutional injury does not entitle a litigant to injunctive relief—in the Fifth Amendment takings context, for instance, where the proper remedy is money damages—supports the line the Seventh Circuit drew between “tangible” and “intangible” (but nevertheless real) injuries. Where plaintiffs show a likelihood of success in proving such an intangible injury, it follows that their injury is “irreparable” in nature.

At the Delaware argument, one of the attorneys defending the law argued that an injunction should not be the automatic result in a case showing likelihood of success in proving a constitutional violation, pointing to the Purcell principle. The Purcell principle, named after the Supreme Court case Purcell v. Gonzalez (2006), is the rule that courts should ordinarily not enjoin challenged election laws shortly before an election is set to occur, out of concern that such an injunction could result in voter confusion. But the Purcell principle is the exception that proves the rule—it speaks only to a very narrow circumstance where an injunction should not enter immediately (though to be sure, election laws can be enjoined immediately after the election upon a showing of constitutional infirmity) because of unique concerns about the fairness of elections. That the Delaware law’s defenders would look to such a dissimilar context shows how little they have to support their position.

One other point of interest from this argument. The Third Circuit panel showed some concern that the plaintiffs were pointing to information that was not technically in the preliminary injunction “record” of evidence submitted to the trial court. Judge Bibas asked the attorney for Delaware whether it was appropriate to look at such evidence because it went toward proving certain “legislative facts.” The attorney’s responded, “The very fact that they are citing expert declarations that plaintiffs in other cases chose to submit to those courts, but that for whatever reason, these plaintiffs chose not to submit here, is precisely evidence that these are adjudicative facts. . . . [and] that this is for trial courts to deal with on the record that is presented before them.” That betrayed a serious misunderstanding of the legislative facts that are crucial to Second Amendment (and a lot of other constitutional) litigation.

Legislative facts, as opposed to adjudicative facts, are not the sort of facts typically “found” through trials; they are not case specific but instead are general facts about the world. For instance, whether a plaintiff in a Second Amendment case desires to acquire an AR-15 rifle is an adjudicative fact; it is a fact specific to the plaintiff. Whether AR-15 rifles are in common use for lawful purposes, on the other hand, is a general fact about the world and therefore a legislative fact. The distinction matters because the rules of evidence only constrain courts with respect to adjudicative facts—as far as legislative facts are concerned, a court can find them based on record evidence, or it can find them based on its own research, or by reviewing law review articles and social science papers cited by the parties in their briefs.

And importantly, when a district court makes a decision based on legislative facts, its “findings” do not receive deference from the appellate courts. This makes sense, given that legislative facts are frequently the sort of facts that are used as the foundation for legal rules. That some legislative facts might be found in expert reports (or found in the sources an expert might otherwise cite) does not matter at all to their classification or to whether other courts can consider them without an expert submission of their own.

Take, as a particularly relevant example, the fact that the handgun is the most preferred firearm in America for self-defense is a legislative fact. Regardless of whether the district court received evidence on that question, and irrespective of what it might have purported to “find” about the topic, the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) was free to make its own decision, as the court of last resort in deciding constitutional questions, handling a legislative fact of relevance to constitutional reasoning. And that’s what makes Delaware’s whole argument so strange. Not only was Heller unrestricted by lower court findings on this issue, there actually were no such findings. Heller was working with a blank canvas. In that case, and in Bruen, the district court had disposed of the case without building any record at all. And yet, both Heller and Bruen made all sorts of factual assertions about firearm use, features, and history, all issues of legislative facts presented to it through the parties’ briefs, amicus submissions, and through its own research. It did not matter one whit that there had been no findings on those issues and in fact in both cases it declined to remand for development of an evidentiary record.

If the Third Circuit is considering constraining parties to a narrow “record” in resolving constitutional claims, it will have to look somewhere other than the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment caselaw to justify such a rule.

Appeals Court Ruling Poses Danger of Confiscation of All Firearms

An Obama-appointed judge in Rhode Island authored an exceedingly dangerous opinion last week, rejecting arguments that the state’s ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds was unconstitutional. Instead, Judge William Kayatta, a graduate of Harvard Law School, built the case cleverly, declaring that LCMs (large capacity magazines) weren’t protected under the Second Amendment and, by implication, neither are the firearms they feed.

At issue was the law passed in 2022 — HB 6614 — banning the possession of LCMs, with violations being declared a felony and violators facing five years in jail upon conviction. In other words, law-abiding citizens would lose not only their firearms, but their freedoms as well.

Lawsuits brought by pro-Second Amendment advocates were rejected at the district level and, when appealed, the lower court’s decision was affirmed. But Judge Kayatta went further — much further — to build a case that anti-gunners around the country will likely seek to emulate.

The plaintiffs, Ocean State Tactical, doing business in the state as Bear Hunting and Fishing Supply, and four individual gun owners, complained that Rhode Island’s law violated their Second Amendment rights, the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

In reviewing and affirming the lower court’s decision denying their complaints, Kayatta wrote that the plaintiffs “failed to prove that LCMs are ‘Arms’ within the meaning of the Second Amendment,” that the Takings Clause in the Fifth Amendment (“No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation”) was not violated by the state law, and that it further “posed no problems under the Fourteenth Amendment.”

There were several pieces of the puzzle Kayatta put together to avoid the demands of Bruen, namely that the state had to provide historical analogues to the infringements in order for them to stand.

Instead,

Given the lack of evidence that LCMs are used in self-defense, it reasonably follows that banning them imposes no meaningful burden on the ability of Rhode Island’s residents to defend themselves.

After discussing the history of states restricting possession of sawed-off shotguns and Bowie knives, he wrote:

In each instance, it seems reasonably clear that our historical tradition of regulating arms used for self-defense has tolerated burdens on the right that are certainly no less than the (at most) negligible burden of having to use more than one magazine to fire more than ten shots.

He then used what he called an “apt analogy” to support the state’s ban: rules on the private accumulation of gun powder. Without mentioning the fact that those state rules were driven by concerns over accidental fires, he wrote:

Founding-era society faced no risk that one person with a gun could, in minutes, murder several dozen individuals. But founding-era communities did face risks posed by the aggregation of large quantities of gunpowder, which could kill many people at once if ignited.

In response to this concern, some governments at the time limited the quantity of gunpowder that a person could possess, and/or limited the amount that could be stored in a single container….

It requires no fancy to conclude that those same founding-era communities may well have responded to today’s unprecedented concern about LCM use just as the Rhode Island General Assembly did: by limiting the number of bullets that could be held in a single magazine.

Indeed, HB 6614 is more modest than founding-era limits on the size of gun-powder containers in that it imposes no limits on the total amount of ammunition that gun owners may possess.

And then he completed the “workaround” he created in order to circumvent Bruen’s demands:

In sum, the burden on self-defense imposed by HB 6614 is no greater than the burdens of longstanding, permissible arms regulations, and its justification compares favorably with the justification for prior bans on other arms found to pose growing threats to public safety.

Applying Bruen’s metrics, our analogical reasoning very likely places LCMs well within the realm of devices that have historically been prohibited once their danger became manifest.

He executed his coup d’etat:

Common sense points in the same direction. It is fair to assume that our founders were, by and large, rational. To conclude that the Second Amendment allows banning sawed-off shotguns, Bowie knives, and M-16s — but not LCMs used repeatedly to facilitate the murder of dozens of men, women, and children in minutes — would belie that assumption.

Accordingly, it should not be surprising that Bruen’s guidance in this case leads us to conclude that HB 6614 is likely both consistent with our relevant tradition of gun regulation and permissible under the Second Amendment.

If this ruling isn’t appealed and overturned, the implication remains: If semi-automatic rifles are similar, if not identical, to military grade M-16s, and the LCMs that feed them can be confiscated and their owners jailed, then it’s a short step to declaring semi-automatic firearms themselves (both rifles and pistols) as contraband, and subject to the same penalties.

Charlotte boy shoots hotel intruder while defending pregnant mother

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police say an 11-year-old boy shot a man to defend his pregnant mother against an attack from a hotel room intruder.

Police have warrants out for the suspect.

Investigators said he broke into a hotel room and started attacking a pregnant mother when her young son stepped in and shot him.

According to CMPD, the break-in and shooting happened late Wednesday, March 13, after 11 p.m. at the InTown Suites just off I-77 in west Charlotte.

Investigators said a man busted into a hotel room and started attacking the 27-year-old pregnant mom, leaving her with bruises and scratches.

Police said the woman knew her attacker, and it was a domestic violence situation.

Detectives said the woman’s 11-year-old son saw his mom getting attacked, and the young boy rushed in and shot the intruder.

The suspect and the pregnant woman were taken to the hospital.

Police said the young boy is not facing any charges.

Investigators have warrants out for the suspect, including assault by strangulation, assault on an unborn child, and false imprisonment.

Biden Tries to Take Questions but Staff Cuts Him Off in Bizarre, Troubling Video

That’s when the person on the porch says that they’re going to take some questions. But the Biden staff cut that off very quickly, telling the press that’s it and telling them they have to go back to the bus.

They didn’t want the press there to hear anything or ask anything. That’s crazy.

If he wants to take questions, how can lowly staff shut him down? I think we all know the answer to that question and that’s incredibly troubling when they are controlling things and not supposedly the “leader of the free world.”

This is also on the press, too. They need to do their job and push back against this and report fully on this problem. They did do a little of that on Thursday, pointing out how it appeared the staff was keeping them from hearing everything Biden was saying during the stop.

 

NYC Straphanger Shoots ‘Aggressive’ Rider in Head After Wrestling Gun Away From Him During Fight: Cops

A fight on a packed Brooklyn train Thursday afternoon took a horrific turn when one straphanger wrestled a gun away from an apparent agitator and shot him in the head, police said.

The violence on a rush-hour northbound A train erupted when a 32-year-old man was confronted by an “aggressive” 36-year-old rider after boarding at the Nostrand Avenue subway station at 4:45 p.m., NYPD Chief Michael Kemper said at a press conference.

What started as a verbal argument quickly escalated as the 36-year-old man flashed what’s believed to be a knife or razor before pulling out a gun, Kemper said.

‘Blood Money’: House Panel Launches ‘Government-Wide’ Investigation Into Chinese Communist Subversion of U.S.

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) on Thursday launched a “government-wide” probe into the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ongoing attempt to “target, influence, and infiltrate every sector and community in the United States.”

The probe comes in the wake of Peter Schweizer’s new book, Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans. Blood Money landed at number one on the New York Times bestseller list one week after its release by HarperCollins.

Among several bombshells, Blood Money revealed how the Biden family bagged $5 million from the business partner of the “White Wolf,” the head of a gang involved in the drug trade. It also exposed how China is involved in the fentanyl crisis throughout North America. In addition, the book uncovered how the CCP uses TikTok as a “modern day Trojan Horse” to push propaganda into the United States.

“I’m thrilled that Chairman Comer is launching a major investigation on this,” Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and a Breitbart News senior contributor, exclusively told Breitbart News. “I look forward to helping the committee in their efforts.”

Comer’s probe will demand federal agencies provide information on how the United States is combatting the CCP’s warfare that influences several significant sectors:

  • Education
  • Agriculture
  • Critical infrastructure
  • Research
  • Energy
  • Business
  • Space
  • Technology sectors

“Without firing a single bullet, the Chinese Communist Party is waging war against the U.S. by targeting, influencing, and infiltrating every economic sector and community in America,” Comer said in a statement:

We know that this coordinated influence and infiltration campaign by the CCP threatens U.S. military readiness, the technology sector, financial markets, agriculture industry, education systems, and intellectual property. The lives and security of all Americans are affected.

“The Oversight Committee has a responsibility to ensure the federal government is taking every action necessary to protect Americans from the CCP’s ongoing political warfare,” Comer added. “Actions taken by the Committee today are just the beginning and I look forward to full cooperation from agencies as we work to thwart China’s efforts to influence and infiltrate the United States of America.”

Former President Donald Trump expressed interest in Blood Money’s revelations. On Truth Social, he posted a Breitbart News story on Schweizer’s report about how the Biden family bagged $5 million from the business partner of the “White Wolf,” as Breitbart News previously reported:

While Joe Biden was vice president, the Bidens developed a business partnership with a Chinese tycoon named Ye Jianming, the chairman of CEFC China Energy Co., which had strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Throughout Ye’s relationship with the Bidens, he “showered” some members of the Biden family with money, Schweizer reported. Hunter Biden received a three-carat diamond worth $80,000; and in July 2017, Ye’s company gave the Bidens a $5 million, interest-free, forgivable loan.…

Hunter spoke to Ye on a “regular basis” and Ye helped Hunter “on a number of his personal issues” including unspecified “sensitive things,” Hunter explained in emails. Joe Biden also attended a meeting with Hunter, additional business partners, and Ye, Hunter’s business partner Rob Walker told U.S. House of Representative investigators in 2023. “I don’t remember the exact time, but I remember being in Washington, DC, and the former vice president stopped by. We were having lunch,” Walker testified.

But Ye also enjoyed a partnership with the former leader of a Chinese triad called the United Bamboo Gang (UBG), Schweizer detailed in Blood Money.  Ye’s partner’s name was Zhang Anle or, as he is commonly known, the “White Wolf.”

It is. Letting unelected, nearly unaccountable, bureaucraps decide, all on their own, what’s illegal is the essence of tyranny. Lazy judges are who allowed ‘deference’ to bureaucrap’s decisions become “law” so they wouldn’t have to stir themselves anymore than they absolutely had to.

The Atlantic Worries Bump Stock Case About More Than Bump Stocks

After the Route 91 massacre, the ATF reclassified bump stocks as machine gun parts. This was done, at least in part, to try and stave off legislation that would have banned not just bump stocks but a whole lot of other things–including, arguably, aftermarket triggers.

But regardless of why it happened, it wasn’t the right decision. The bump stock doesn’t change a semi-automatic into a full-auto weapon; not based on the NFA definition of a machinegun which is a weapon that is capable or can be easily made capable of firing more than one round with a single pull of the trigger. Bump stocks just let you pull the trigger faster, which is perfectly legal, even now.

Over at The Atlantic, they worry that this case may end up being about more than just bump stocks.

Not so long ago, a case like Cargill would not have come down to whether a court agreed with an agency’s interpretation of a statute Congress had tasked it with enforcing.

Indeed, decades of administrative law, including but not limited to the Supreme Court’s 1984 ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, recognized that agency experts were often in a better position to resolve ambiguities in the statutes that Congress tasked them with enforcing than federal judges were.

Thus, it had long been settled that, so long as an agency’s interpretation of ambiguous language in a statute (like what counts as a machine gun) was reasonable, the agency was allowed to act based upon that interpretation…

That was already worrying enough, but what’s alarming in Cargill is that the Court is in the midst of getting rid of deference to agencies outside of the “major questions” context, too. Thus, instead of debating whether ATF’s reaction to the Las Vegas shooting was reasonable (which it clearly was), the oral argument before the Supreme Court devolved into the justices struggling to understand the exact mechanical function of a bump stock—so that they could decide for themselves whether or not it fits within the statutory definition of a “machine gun.”

As even a cursory perusal of the transcript reveals, this wasn’t a high-minded debate about broader points of law; it was nine neophytes trying to understand the mechanics of something they’ve never touched solely by having it described to them.

One comes away from the transcript with the sense that the argument would have been far more productive had it been held on a shooting range. So instead of debating whether the executive branch overreacted or not, the debate was about what, in the abstract, the justices would have done in its place.

Of course, the author clearly frames this as a bad thing. Apparently, if unelected bureaucrats can’t essentially determine law by decree, then something is inherently wrong with our country.

Yet this kind of “thinking” is a major problem with our nation in the first place.

Yes, I get the concept that experts may well be better at understanding complex issues than elected officials who, frankly, write a lot of laws about things they don’t understand and do a poor job of it.

That’s entirely valid.

The problem is that unelected bureaucrats can unilaterally decide something is illegal just so long as they can come up with some reasoning that sort of looks valid. They do this with all sorts of things, not just firearms, but Cargill is a little different. This is something that was declared perfectly legal to sell, then reclassified as illegal simply because it became politically expedient to do so.

If that doesn’t highlight the issues with the current system perfectly, I don’t know what can.

If the ATF can suddenly decide that this device was legal but now isn’t, what’s the next thing they’ll decide is illegal?

While ignorant politicians are a danger, our system was created with the idea that they’d be the ones coming up with the laws and not bureaucrats. If this case turns out to be about more than bump stocks, then you’re going to have a hard time convincing me that it’s a bad thing.

I’ve got a phone number for him; 1-800-CRY-BABY

Dem mayor howls as pastor leads gun-toting citizen patrol to combat violence, clean up streets

Armed citizens are patrolling the violent streets of Hartford, Connecticut as the Democrat mayor decries people with guns taking the law into their own hands.

Minister Cornell Lewis launched the Self-Defense Brigade after Archbishop Dexter Burke demanded patrols following violent crime breaking out in Hartford. The group of citizens are patrolling the violent areas of the city while cleaning up the streets.

Burke remarked, “We are going to bring an armed security that’s going to walk the streets with individuals, help them to the bus stop. Help them to the grocery store and patrol the area,” the Daily Mail reported.

“We are legally armed, and we are patrolling,” Lewis told NBC Connecticut. “The people on Garden Street came to us and asked us for help.”

Continue reading “”

No charges in Sterling Heights shooting after attack

The Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office said it will not charge a woman who shot two people accused of attacking her, citing self-defense.

A mother and daughter driving a Jeep Compass followed a woman in a Dodge Durango to Carrabba’s Italian Grill off Schoenherr Road on Feb. 27, according to a press release from the prosecutor’s office.

The Durango driver had stopped for a stop sign near the restaurant when the duo got out of their car and began assaulting her, officials wrote.

A witness tried to help the Durango driver but fled when she opened fire, striking both women attacking her, according to the release.

The two women had been trying to attack the Durango driver, a witness who saw the shooting told 911.

Both attackers are recovering from non-life threatening injuries, the prosecutor’s office said.

Sterling Heights police filed a warrant request for charges against the shooter this month. The prosecutor’s office denied charges, as the shooter also had a valid concealed pistol license, according to the release.

The shooter will also not file charges against the two women who attacked her, the office reported.

“Denying charges on the ground of self defense is a recognition of the inherent right to protect oneself when faced with imminent danger,” Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido said in the statement.

Elderly woman fatally shoots suspect during home invasion near Blackfoot

A home invasion turned deadly for the intruder on Wednesday north of Blackfoot [Idaho], authorities said.

The Bingham County Sheriff’s Office said the elderly female homeowner fatally shot the adult male suspect during the home invasion that occurred around noon at a residence at 134 West 600 North in the Rose area.

The elderly woman suffered injuries during the incident and was transported via ambulance to a local hospital. She’s expected to survive, the Sheriff’s Office said. Her name hasn’t been released.

“She was harmed but protected herself,” the Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.

The adult male suspect was dead when sheriff’s deputies arrived at the scene after the home invasion was reported to the county’s 911 center.

As of Wednesday evening his name hadn’t been released.

The Sheriff’s Office said the area around the house where the home invasion occurred has been cordoned off and the public should stay away until further notice.

The incident remains under investigation and anyone with information about the case should contact the Sheriff’s Office at 208-785-1234.

“This is believed to be an isolated incident with no further threat to the community,” the Sheriff’s Office stated.

Maryland city equity official says she wants US to burn to the ground: ‘MY ideology can rise from the ashes.’

The City of College Park, Maryland, hired a “racial equity” leader to spearhead its mission to eliminate systemic racism in its departments who has made statements defending violence and promoting the idea of a revolution against the United States.

Kayla Aliese Carter supports “Black liberation” through revolutionary means and said she is working with some activists to plan “how we will eat and live and grow after we burn it all down.” She was hired to be a “Racial Equity Officer” under former Mayor Patrick L. Wojahn, who resigned from office after being arrested for child pornography.

According to the city’s website, she assembled a team tasked with implementing a “racial equity” agenda across all city departments, affecting policies, practices, programs and budgets. However, after publication, the city told Fox News Digital that Carter doesn’t oversee an entire team.

“Ms. Carter does not oversee an ‘entire team.’ Ms. Carter does not supervise City staff and her work primarily has been with the City’s Restorative Justice Commission, which has been charged with the development and implementation of a successful process of restorative justice for College Park’s Lakeland community,” the city told Fox News Digital.

Carter was hired after former Mayor Wojahn signed into law “Resolution 20-R-16,” “which renounced systemic racism, declared support of Black lives, and called for the ongoing explicit and conscious confrontation of racism,” in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in 2020.

Kayla Aliese Carter

Maryland city equity officer Kayla Aliese Carter labeled police as White supremacists in 2020.  (TIkTok: @kaylaliese)

The law mandated a systemic review – currently being performed by Carter – of “all current policies and programs” for evidence of bias and “disparate impact… for Black people.”

Carter believes it’s not enough to be not racist, one must be actively antiracist and working to “dismantle this s–t.” Some of her posts contain defenses for violence, asking, “Why do Black people always have to rationalize our violence and anger?

“Remember we are at war against colonialism,” read a post on Instagram from Feb. 2021. She captioned it with, “We can’t forget.”

The header for her X account says the following: “I can’t wait for society to collapse so MY ideology can rise from the ashes!”

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Gun Control Activists Admit They Overreacted to This Concealed Carry Case

Gun control advocates have spent the past two years losing their minds over the Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, a case that affirmed citizens’ right to publicly carry a firearm for self-defense.

One of the commonly repeated criticisms of Bruen has been that the high court’s ruling is dangerous because allowing ordinary peaceable citizens to carry concealed handguns in public would increase rates of gun violence.

In a strange twist of events, some of those same gun control advocates now admit—unintentionally and with no sense of irony—that violent crime rates are actually on the decline in those restrictive gun control states forced by Bruen to recognize the right to bear arms in public.

Giffords, a prominent gun control advocacy organization, previously condemned the Bruen decision as “extremist,” arguing that it would “drastically affect the safety of a large swath of the U.S. population” by “escalating gun violence, leading ever more people to feel unsafe in their own communities.”

Two years later, while retweeting an article that criticizes conservatives for asserting that President Joe Biden’s failed border policies are partially responsible for an increase in crime rates (even though significant evidence suggests that this claim is false), Giffords now highlights a claim that crime rates are actually falling.

Gun control advocates can’t seem to get their story straight. Crime rates often appear to increase or decrease depending on whichever is most useful to the gun control narrative.

The truth is that lawful gun owners—and concealed carry permit holders, in particular—have never been the driving force behind criminal gun violence. At the same time, the right to keep and bear arms in self-defense offers ordinary Americans significant protection against threats to life, liberty, and property.

Almost every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, according to a 2013 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the issue concluded that roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the United States every year.

For this reason, The Daily Signal publishes a monthly article highlighting some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read other accounts here from past years)

The examples below represent only a small portion of the news stories on defensive gun use that we found in February. You may explore more using The Heritage Foundation’s interactive Defensive Gun Use Database. (The Daily Signal is the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation.)

  • Feb. 5, Jackson, Mississippi: After arguing over text messages with a contractor for a water utility, police said, a man drove up to the house where the contractor was working and opened fire. The contractor and a member of his crew returned fire, striking the assailant three times. While fleeing, the wounded attacker soon crashed his getaway vehicle. He was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, police said.
  • Feb. 5, Marysville, Washington: Three armed men in a stolen car approached a homeowner as he pulled into his driveway, police said. The homeowner, also armed, engaged his assailants in a shootout, apparently hitting at least one, until they ran away. After an hourslong manhunt involving drones and K-9 units, police detained one suspect with a gunshot wound. Neither the homeowner nor anyone else in the neighborhood was injured, police said.
  • Feb. 6, Philadelphia: A gunman began shooting at a mechanic outside an auto shop, wounding a 12-year-old boy, police said. The boy’s father, who was getting his car fixed and wasn’t the gunman’s intended target, drew his own handgun and fired back to defend himself and his son until the gunman fled. The mechanic was seriously wounded, police said. The boy, who suffered a grazing wound to the head, was treated and released from a hospital.
  • Feb. 10, Tipp City, Ohio: An armed resident fatally shot two pit bulls who wandered onto his property and attacked his own dog, police said. The resident initially tried to scare off the pit bulls by yelling and firing a warning shot from his rifle. As the two pit bulls became more aggressive, however, he used his handgun to protect himself and his dog.
  • Feb. 11, Surprise, Arizona: After an argument broke out between customers waiting in a Taco Bell drive-through, a man got out of his car and threatened the occupants of another vehicle with a gun. A passenger in that car, also armed, fatally shot the gun-wielding assailant, police said.
  • Feb. 13, Houston: A man sleeping in the back seat of his truck used his AR-15 to shoot and kill an armed burglar who broke into the vehicle and tried to rob him, police said. The assailant had already burglarized other vehicles in the same parking lot, investigators said.
  • Feb. 19, Swansea, Massachusetts: A courier depositing money at a bank drop box was accosted by two armed robbers who forced him to the ground and tied his hands behind his back, police said. The robbers tried to disarm the courier, a concealed carry permit holder who had a holstered gun on his hip. When the courier resisted, the robbers pepper-sprayed him. But he was eventually able to free one hand, draw his gun, and fire three rounds at the robbers, causing them to flee in a stolen U-Haul van. A suspect was later arrested and charged with several offenses, including armed robbery with a firearm, police said.
  • Feb. 21, Memphis, Tennessee: A woman shot and wounded the father of her children after he smashed a window, forced his way into her home, and assaulted her, police said. The two had gotten into an argument earlier that day over alleged infidelity, and the woman put his belongings outside for him. When the man arrived, he became confrontational and then violent, police said. The woman fled the house but he followed, prompting her to shoot him once in the leg before asking a neighbor to call police.
  • Feb. 22, Palm Beach, Florida: During a road-rage incident, a man pointed his handgun at another driver who had two children in his car, police said. Fearing for his and his children’s lives, the other driver pulled out his own gun and fired it at the assailant in self-defense. The assailant was arrested and charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, police said.
  • Feb. 27, Nashville, Tennessee: A rideshare driver fatally shot a passenger who became agitated during the ride, then pulled a gun on him and started making threats. The rideshare driver first called 911 by using an “SOS alert” on his smartwatch, which was also connected to his wireless headphones. That call was eventually disconnected because the dispatcher didn’t pick up on the driver’s “quiet hints” about the situation. The driver made a second call about 15 minutes later, after he had apparently been able to access his own gun and shoot the would-be kidnapper.
  • Feb. 28, Atlanta: Police said an armed man confronted his ex-girlfriend and her family outside her home, then fired shots into the air. After he refused to leave, the ex-girlfriend’s mom shot and wounded the man, who was detained by law enforcement.

Even during the “safest” times, we will never live in a society where violent crime ceases to exist, or where law enforcement can protect the innocent from every harm.

The right to keep and bear arms always will remain essential to a free state, and law-abiding Americans always will be the first line of defense for themselves and their loved ones against threats to their life, liberty, and property.

Gun control activists’ reactions to the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision never were based in reality. They were emotion-driven responses designed to evoke irrational fear in people who didn’t know any better.

We’re glad they’re finally willing to admit they got it wrong.