Category: Crap For Brains

Gun control fans won’t like lessons of New Zealand

When the Christchurch massacre took place, New Zealand acted. They responded to what happened the same way American anti-gunners would have us react. They banned AR-15s and went on a rampage of stomping on the gun rights of folks there.

Of course, New Zealand doesn’t have a Second Amendment. There’s no protection of gun rights. In fact, gun rights aren’t even acknowledged as rights there, which is a bit of an issue as well.

However, right now, the biggest issue is how the country tripped over itself passing gun control, yet absolutely none of it worked.

Gun control laws disarm victims, not criminals. That’s common sense to everyone but the politicians who promise peace, rainbows and dancing unicorns if only you’ll give up your firearms.

New Zealand’s gun control advocates — including Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern– remain slow on the uptake of that fundamental principle of life. In multiple gun confiscation drives, the Kiwi government grabbed most of the good guys’ guns. And now, a year after the final confiscation push, gun-related violence has reached new, record levels.

Try to suppress your shock and surprise.

Is it really that bad? Are the good folks over at The Truth About Guns spinning things a bit to make a point?

Actually, no, they’re not.

Rates of injury and death caused by firearms are tracking higher than ever before.

Data released by police under the Official Information Act shows 10 murder or manslaughter deaths in 2022, up until 31 July. There were 11 in total in 2021.

Injuries are also running at a record rate, on track to exceed 300 firearm-related injuries for the first time. In 2021, there were 298 gun-related injuries recorded by police, the highest ever.

Now, the numbers aren’t overly impressive, but we have to remember that New Zealand has a total population of just over 5 million people. If you put all of them together in one city, it would only be the second-largest city in the US by population.

Yet those 5 million are spread out over 103,000 square miles, which is enough to drive down the violent crime rates all by itself.

That said, comparing their numbers to ours is silly. Other countries aren’t the United States and vice versa. When looking at the impact of gun control, one thing you have to look at are the trends from before and after its passage.

Prior to Christchurch, New Zealand’s homicide rate was pretty low. In fact, the 49 people killed in that massacre were enough to produce a nearly 254 percent increase in the homicide rate that year, which is kind of telling all on its own.

Yet since then, we’re clearly seeing homicides increase as well as violent crime as a whole. That’s likely because criminals no longer have much reason to fear ordinary citizens. They can kill as they want with impunity because no one is there to stop them.

Oh, sure, the police may come looking for them, but few criminals believe they’ll be caught. They tend to think that if no one is there to prevent a crime, no one will know who did it. That’s not quite true, as we know, but that’s how they tend to think.

New Zealand gave those criminals a gift.

What’s more, American gun grabbers want to give our own criminals the same gift. However, the carnage here would be orders of magnitude worse by virtue of this country simply being more violent. Take away good guys’ guns and watch how the bodies pile up.

If it’s happening in New Zealand, there’s not a shred of doubt that it would happen here.

And this is what gun control got them.

Even if you dismiss gun control as causing this issue, you cannot ignore that it did nothing to prevent it, which is par for the course and why it’s so infuriating that people still push it.

BLUF
The enemy always gets a vote – and Biden just announced that his enemy is tens of millions of us patriotic citizens. So, in the great AR-15 vs. F-15 hypothetical – and pray it stays hypothetical despite the stupidity of our ruling caste – the smart money is on the numbers. But the truly smart course of action is to not to even go down this road, to re-embrace our Constitution and to stop trying to be butch in order to get some Twitter love from the pinkos. Maybe this ridiculous stooge masquerading as our president should stop running his fool mouth threatening to slaughter other Americans.

F-15 vs. AR-15? Bet on the Guys With the Guns

Father of the Year and alleged President Joe Biden is busy trying to rile up his base of weirdos, adjunct professors, gender studies grads, government timeservers, sexually unsatisfied wine women and their sexually unsatisfying life partners. That’s why Dork Brandon pulled one of my favorites out of his Big Duffel Bag O’ Hack Cliches, the old “Your puny guns are no match against the awesome power of the US military which I will use to kill you for dissenting!” narrative.

Okay, fine. Let’s go over this again for the knuckleheads who think that they prevail if they step outside the “use your words” paradigm they grew up with in their sissy private schools. You lose if you idiots provoke a real civil conflict – not the kind of low-intensity urban conflict of the Seventies where you cheered on the Weathermen and Cinque’s SLA, and not the kind where a bunch of mutants riot under the protection of leftist municipal governments in leftist municipalities, but a real one. One where the people you want to crush under your Birkenstocks fight back. With AR-15s.

I discuss this in great detail in my new non-fiction book We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America, and not from the perspective of half-wit daughter-showering goofs but from the real down and dirty of how this terrible course of events would actually unspool. And it would go poorly for a largely unarmed, untrained, urban-centered population of smug geebos whose primary weapon system is a snarky tweet.

The doddering moron shared his tactical insights with his audience at a rally in Pennsylvania for Heart Attack Shrek. He said, thinking he was super-clever, “For those brave right-wing Americans… if you want to fight against the country, you need an F-15. You need something little more than a gun.”

Hmmmm, but do they? Really?

Grandpa Badfinger’s premise is that all you tens of millions of semi-fascists out there with your AR-15s would have no shot stopping the woke military, which would eagerly crush you with their potent force package of F-15s and esoteric pronouns. It is a flawed premise on more grounds than one column can cover (hence my book), but we need to focus and that means we will need to overlook some important questions. These important questions include:

– Why do you imagine your sorry band of socialist creeps who treat the Constitution like Jerry Nadler treats his boxers constitutes “the country?”

– The useless senior officer corps aside, why do you believe the normals who make up the vast majority of America’s combat forces will gleefully butcher their friends and family for the amusement of a bunch of Chardonnay-swilling blue checks?

– Have you ever heard of Afghanistan?

Let’s focus on his key sound bite. Gun vs. Jets…who ya got?

I’m putting my money on the guns. You dumb progressives can go for the jets and the points.

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FAKE WOKENESS: Two New Junk Science ‘Studies’ Suggest Racism, Fears of Blacks Drive Opposition To Gun Control.

Remember the RAND study that found only 123 of 27,900 gun control studies actually used the scientific method to come to their conclusions? Well, gun control advocates have trotted out two fresh, steaming new “studies” and the flies are already swarming. The University of Wisconsin has promoted a new finding that whites own guns and oppose gun control because of racism and a fear of blacks.

And within days of squeezing out that specimen of woke clownishness, the American Psychological Association published their own “study” that — you guessed it — whites who support gun rights are racist.

Interestingly the same study showed that when whites support gun control they’re racist too! So you’re racist. I’m racist. We’re all racists! To the uber-woke racists at the APA, if you’re white, you must be a racist.

Meanwhile, here in the real world, gun owners and gun rights supporters — whatever their color — are some of the most open-minded, tolerant and welcoming people in our communities. Contrary to what the racial hucksters, the Grievance Industry and critical race theory practitioners are selling, most Americans aren’t racist. And frankly, most Americans oppose racist gun control laws, too.

Most normal people rightfully reject claims of inherent racism in whites (or anyone else), or any of the other woke, social justice nonsense peddled by the gun-hating left in America.

In fact, plenty of black gun owners would dismiss this Wisconsin Badger junk science (or the APA’s trash “science”) as nothing but poppycock.

The folks over at The Federalist have the deets on these new “studies” . . .

White people own guns — and oppose gun-control legislation — because they are racist and fear black people. Two new studies advance this dangerous narrative building among our academic elites. While such rhetoric is perhaps unsurprising among political pundits or celebrities, otherwise serious academics are now ascribing racist motives to gun ownership and opposition to gun control. These studies are not only based on a slew of bigoted assumptions, but also bad science.

The University of Wisconsin recently promoted a new study contending that in U.S. counties where black people were enslaved in 1860, gun ownership is higher today. In fact, gun ownership, they say, is correlated to the number of slaves formerly in each county. To support this more-slaves-means-more-guns theory, the authors construct a historical narrative that whites feared newly freed slaves, bought guns for self-defense, and then this fear somehow trickled down over 160 years.

But interestingly enough, just last month, National Public Radio ran a story on how black people are the fastest growing group of gun owners. If gun ownership is a product of white people being racist, then this is quite curious.

The University of Wisconsin study suffers from a series of flaws, even apart from its poisonous premise that white people believe or feel certain things because they are white. You’d never say the same about other races, and we shouldn’t give a pass to academics who traffic in the same type of racism…  

A few days after the release of the slavery-predicts-gun-ownership study, the American Psychological Association (APA) released another study contending that whites support gun rights because they are racist, and when whites oppose gun rights, that’s also racist.

Rest assured, gun control advocates will try to use these junk studies — like thousands that came before them — to paint patriotic, gun-loving Americans of all colors and persuasions as racists no matter their race, sex or religion.

And why not? Using pseudo-scientific hokum to support claims that gun control laws prevent criminal misuse of guns is actually less scientifically accurate than claiming drinking milk causes car accidents. But they have no fear of anyone in the media debunking the junk science on which they base their calls for civilian disarmament.

Plus most politicians and low-information types will probably believe it…so they keep pushing the politicized garbage to further their disarmament narrative. And so it goes.

BLUF
Back in the United States, American Farm Bureau Federation Chief Economist Dr. Roger Cryan estimates that a Sri Lankan-style move would cut domestic grain crop production by about 50 percent within two to four years of implementation, leading to massive price hikes and acute shortages of basic commodities……

Should California – or the nation –  take the path of most destruction and implement restrictions or even fertilizer bans, the social and economic impacts would be catastrophic and could hearken back to the conditions during the Great Depression of the 1930s – except this time there wouldn’t be any bread lines because there wouldn’t be any bread.

From Sri Lanka to Salinas

Ah, Sri Lanka.

In 2020: a beautiful, agriculturally self-sufficient island nation full of tea and tourists and holder of the highest “Environmental, Social, and Governance” (ESG) investor rating in the world.

And then, as part of the larger “green” effort spurred on by international Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), woke capital, and, seemingly, a desire to sit at the big table at the various and sundry global initiative conferences, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa banned the use of manufactured fertilizer in order to create a more climate-friendly sustainable farming sector.  In April, 2021, the country went all-organic overnight.

What could possibly go wrong?

By the end of last year, Sri Lanka became unable to feed itself, prices for food (especially rice) and fuel and other daily basics skyrocketed, the tea crop – and the hundreds of millions it earns in international trade – was decimated.  The nation defaulted on its foreign debt, had rolling power blackouts, the tourists are staying away in droves, and Sri Lanka,  already wracked by corruption and COVID, spiraled out of control.

The public’s response?  Even though the fertilizer ban had already been partially rolled back, just last month Rajapaksa’s presidential palace was stormed by thousands of everyday Sri Lankans and he had to flee the country – last word was that he was holed up in Singapore.

(Side note to Nancy Pelosi and Liz Cheney – this is what an actual insurrection looks like:)

It seems Kermit was right – it ain’t easy being green.

But, considering the state’s claim to be the global leader in fighting climate change, can California – with its extremely powerful “climate lobby” that was able to ban the future sales of new gas-powered vehicles, a concept that would have been unthinkable a very few years ago –  be far behind?

California’s commitment to confronting climate change cannot be underestimated., as proven by the 86 different climate partnerships, or “bilateral and multilateral agreements with national and subnational leaders” the state as entered into.  (The list can be found here:  https://www.energy.ca.gov/about/campaigns/international-cooperation/climate-change-partnerships .)

Additionally, a quick tour of state department websites finds numerous examples of “green,” “sustainability,” and “climate” pages and plans; even the state’s prisons get into the act with its climate change plan: https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/green/cdcr-green/climate-change-adaptation/ .

It should be stressed that California is not above shooting itself in the foot when it comes to climate issues. Thursday, the legislature passed a bill mandating 3,200-foot “buffer zones” around all – new and existing – oil and gas wells, a move which would practically eliminate the industry – and its 13,000 jobs – in the state.

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Never Forget. SloJoe may be a senile dolt, but that speech was precisely what the demoncraps think about you.
As Joe Huffman says ‘Prepare Accordingly’

BLUF
So he just wants us to pretend he didn’t say it and ignore everything he said last night? What kind of ridiculous administration is this? They can’t even do evil oppressive government right, they’re that messed up.

But you know what a failure this all was when he immediately has to backtrack from it the next morning.

You Know It Backfired Badly: Biden Now Desperately Trying to Backpedal His Despicable Speech

Joe Biden is getting all kinds of backlash from the despicable speech he delivered last night at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, attacking millions of Americans who want to “Make America Great Again” and supporting President Donald Trump.

We covered some of the hot takes, with many people comparing his unprecedented attacks to Communist or Nazi-like tactics, Biden acting like the fascist he was accusing others of being. They also hit on the visuals with the improper use of the Marines and the evil blood-red backdrop.

Among the hot take was Trump who chastised Biden for essentially threatening Americans and saying if Biden doesn’t want to make America great again he shouldn’t be representing America. Trump also called going after Americans like that insane.

Even CNN bashed Biden for the use of the Marines in such a speech. On the other hand, CNN also reportedly softened the look of the visuals so it didn’t look as bad.

But now Biden seems to be trying to walk it back a bit. Or maybe he just can’t even remember what he said the night before. Now he’s trying to say he was only talking about people who called for “violence.” That of course was a lie, that is not what he said during the speech or the whole prior week. It means he knows now that he screwed up and went too far.

“I don’t consider any Trump supporter to be a threat,” Biden said to Fox’s Peter Doocy. “I do think anyone who calls for the use of violence and fails to condemn violence when its used, refuse to acknowledge an election when it’s been won… That is a threat to democracy.” Oh, so you mean like the Democratic reaction to when Trump won in 2016, when they tried to suborn electors, boycotted his inaugural, when Democrats refused to accept he won, and leftists rioted in the streets on Jan. 20, 2017? When have the Democrats ever called out any of that? Biden didn’t condemn any of that, indeed, he encouraged the perception that Trump was not a legitimate president.

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I Am a ‘Clear and Present Danger’ to the Biden Regime (And So Are You)

“Clear and present danger” aren’t words any president should use lightly because that’s when the big guns used to come out against the First Amendment — and might again.

Set aside for a few minutes the vaguely Nurembergesque optics of Thursday night’s historically divisive speech by Presidentish Joe Biden so we can concentrate on the content.

“MAGA Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger,” Biden angrily declared. “They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow lies together.”

“That’s why respected conservatives, like Federal Circuit Court Judge Michael Luttig, has called Trump and the extreme MAGA Republicans, quote, a ‘clear and present danger’ to our democracy.”

Ben Shapiro called it “the most demagogic, outrageous, and divisive speech” he’s ever seen from an American president because Biden “essentially declared all those who oppose him and his agenda enemies of the republic.”

Biden’s speech came just two days after he not-so-implicitly threatened [VIP link] millions of law-abiding Americans with military action. “For those brave right-wing Americans,” he sneered, “if you want to fight against the country, you need an F-15. You need something little more than a gun.”

Ricochet’s Jon Gabriel said that Biden’s word choice was as “deliberate as it was divisive,” reminding readers that the C&PD doctrine was “created by the Woodrow Wilson-era Supreme Court to curtail the free speech of Americans.”

Biden, warned Gabriel, “floated a legal pretext to silence Republicans heading into the midterm elections.”

Already, social media giants like Facebook and Twitter have been revealed as willing stooges for government end-runs around the First Amendment, as our own Stacey Lennox noted just today:

On the heels of shocking comments by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the FBI’s role in censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story, initial e-mails related to a lawsuit filed by Schmitt and Landry show even more evidence that the Biden administration is using Big Tech to do what it is not, allowed to do according to the Constitution.

Lennox wrote that “Further disclosures could demonstrate that Big Tech and the government are conspiring to censor information related to any number of issues.”

But back to Thursday night’s demagoguery.

MSNBC’s Eugene Robinson approvingly described Biden’s speech as an “urgent, wartime address.”

Well, with whom is Biden at war? Biden has met the enemy, and he is us.

Many on the Right, including my friend and colleague Stephen Kruiser, believe that Biden’s speech was a display of weakness, “the panic and flop sweat of every Washington power player inside the Beltway.” I don’t necessarily disagree, but let’s at least consider that it might have been something else: A display of dangerously hubristic overconfidence in the administration’s own power.

Their power not to govern but to rule.

What else is there to call it when the Biden regime goes from surreptitiously silencing critics via social media back channels to openly floating a Wilson-era pretext for jailing us?

If this scheming mediocrity believes he can use his signature to transfer up to a trillion dollars from blue-collar Americans into the wallets of lawyers, doctors, and Trans Deconstructive Lit Theory majors and call it “debt relief,” why wouldn’t he think he can use the coercive power of the state to silence his critics?

I’ve been writing for PJ Media for over 15 years, but this is the first time I ever felt like the company, all of these voices, might not be here tomorrow.

I don’t know if the Swamp cabal running the White House will get away with it, but I’m sure as hell not going to be quiet about it ….

Forget “democracy” — our republic might depend upon it.

FEDERAL JUDGE FINDS NEW YORK’S NEW CONCEALED CARRY LAW TO BE PATENTLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL, BUT ALLOWS IT TO TAKE EFFECT

Washington, D.C. – Late yesterday, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, Chief Judge Glenn T. Suddaby issued an opinion and order denying GOA’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the State of New York’s poorly named “Concealed Carry Improvement Act.”  Although going into detail about how just about every aspect of the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA) is unconstitutional, the judge concluded that none of the plaintiffs had standing to challenge any aspect of the law.

This bad news comes after Gun Owners of America (GOA) and its nonprofit legal arm, Gun Owners Foundation (GOF), filed suit to challenge the constitutionality of the legislation in July. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a GOA member from Schenectady County.

Among other alarming provisions flouting recent Supreme Court precedent, this law, which is in effect as of September 1, requires concealed carry permit applicants to:

  • Display “good moral character”
  • Disclose their social media accounts for review
  • Have in person interviews with law enforcement
  • Provide four “character references”
  • Undergo 18 hours of combined training, a tremendous increase from the existing 4-hour requirement
In spite of his dismissal of the case, thankfully, Judge Suddaby understood, took to heart, and applied the clear edict from the U.S. Supreme Court in June, when the High Court instituted a “text and history” test for judges evaluating the constitutionality of restrictions on Second Amendment rights.

Shockingly, the anti-gunners defending the law in court elected to cite historical precedents such as the disarming of Catholics and Native Americans in the colonial era, as well as the slave codes of the antebellum South, to defend the legislation under the new “text and history” test requirement.

Erich Pratt, GOA’s Senior Vice President, issued the following statement:  

“Despite the judge’s dismissal of the complaint, his opinion contains a silver lining for New Yorkers and the nation, as the robust precedent laid out by the Supreme Court in June is clearly making headway.  GOA looks forward to continuing the fight against clear violations of the Second Amendment, as we work to restore the rights of all Americans.” 

Sam Paredes, on behalf of the Board of Directors for the Gun Owners Foundation, added:  

“Thankfully, Judge Suddaby rejected the bigoted historical laws that New York cited as justification for this highly restrictive law. We look forward to continuing our efforts to fully dismantle this law and sending a second clear message to Albany: ‘shall not be infringed.’” 

Just to point out for those who may not know.

DoD Instruction 1334.1, “Wearing of the Uniform,”

1.2. POLICY.
a. The wearing of the uniform by Service members of Active and Reserve Components, retired Service members, cadets, midshipmen, auxiliary members, and members of organizations authorized to wear a military uniform by the respective service, is prohibited under any of the following circumstances:

(2) During or in connection with furthering political activities, private employment, or commercial interests, when an inference of official sponsorship by DoD or the Military Service concerned for the activity or interest may be drawn.

Now, the Marines in attendance at that political activity were almost assuredly under direct orders to attend that ‘speech’, but that doesn’t excuse them, or their commanders, from what they did (for they should know better), nor the politicians who abused the public trust, and the non-politization of the military, by inferring that the military would, or will ‘back up’ Biden’s rant by having them on stage. The only time uniformed military service members are permitted to attend a political activity is  as a member of a joint Armed Forces color guard at the opening ceremonies of the national conventions of the Republican, Democratic, or other political parties
(DOD Directive 1344.10 -§ 4.1.2.15)

What Biden and his handlers have done is make a direct threat to his political opposition by showing that he feels he has the power to use the military for partisan political purposes.

Banana Republic, we have arrived.

U.S. Forces Ordered to Stop Using Gender Pronouns to Improve ‘Lethality’
Pacific Air Force base bans references to gender, age, and race

A division of the U.S. Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), the branch tasked with confronting China, has ordered its senior leaders and commanders to stop using gender pronouns in written formats, saying the shift to more neutral language will help improve the fighting force’s “lethality.”

“In accordance with the Diverse PACAF priority, ‘We must embrace, promote and unleash the potential of diversity and inclusion,” states a May email sent to senior leaders and commanders at the Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, which operates under the Pacific Air Forces, according to a partial copy of the order obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

A spokesman for the Anderson Air Force Base confirmed the authenticity of the email, telling the Free Beacon that the Air Force is shifting “to a narrative writing format for awards and performance reports.” The ban on “pronouns, age, race” and other written descriptors is “intended to eliminate any information that could identify the nominee’s name, gender, age, or race so that all members had a fair and equal chance at winning.”

The Andersen air base, the spokesman said, specifically “developed local quarterly award guidance to ensure each nominee was considered without the potential of unfair biases.” Leaders at the base are “continually working to remove barriers and [are] dedicated to ensuring all members have the opportunity to excel.”

The email goes on to list “authorized” and “unauthorized” examples of pronoun use.

The “unauthorized examples” include: “He/She did,” “Best male/female,” “Youngest/Oldest,” and “Sergeant Murray.” The list of “authorized examples” include: “This sergeant,” “This NCO [Non-commissioned officer],” and “This member.”

“Unleashing the potential of diversity and inclusion at all levels is a Pacific Air Forces’ priority and something we strive for at Andersen,” the spokesman said. “Diversity and inclusion are force multipliers and warfighting imperatives that enable our competitive advantage against near-peer adversaries.”

Rebeccah Heinrichs, a defense policy expert and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank, told the Free Beacon that the Pacific Air Forces’ intense focus on pronoun issues is “a giant sucking waste of time.”

Military leaders who should be focused on defending the United States from an ever-increasing array of threats—particularly in the Pacific, where China is flexing its military might—are instead spending valuable time thinking about rules on proper pronoun use.

“It is painful to think about the amount of time servicemen have already spent writing these rules instead of figuring out how to beat China,” Henrichs said. “Somebody needs to remind DoD leadership that they’re in the business of preventing and winning wars and not in the Oberlin lounge.”

Birmingham mayor calls for gun ban

The city of Birmingham, Alabama isn’t exactly Chicago or New York City when it comes to size, but it’s not exactly Lotsee, Oklahoma (population: 6) either.

Because it’s a good-sized city, it tends to have a lot of the problems one would associate with a larger city. That obviously includes crime.

In fact, now the mayor is using that crime rate to demand stricter gun control laws.

Since January 1, Birmingham Police have investigated 90 homicides to date in the city with 83 of those by guns, according to Mayor Randall Woodfin during Tuesday’s city council meeting.

This, as he reports that over 700 firearms have been taken off the streets in that same amount of time.

Woodfin is calling for stricter gun laws to get those weapons off the streets, while asking for more help from the community.

“I wake up every day thinking how can we address this?” Woodfin said.

At Tuesday’s meeting he had two police officers take in examples of the types of guns that they have confiscated to people could see what they look like – he says the most common ones are mini-Draco’s and the AR pistol. Woodfin said there is no use for them on the streets but harm.

No, that’s not true at all. There are plenty of uses for them; legitimate, law-abiding uses. Just because criminals are using them doesn’t mean no one else is.

As for Woodfin’s calls for gun control, they’re going to fall on deaf ears, as they should.

Look, Birmingham may be pretty rough, and the crime statistics say that it is, but just what gun control does Woodfin think will suddenly make this end?

It seems he wants to ban them.

“If you can’t support this ban that’s un-American because the whole idea is public safety,” Woodfin said. “Federal tax dollars, state tax dollars, local tax dollars, the root of what we do is public safety first.”

So, it’s un-American to want to uphold the actual Constitution? Seriously?

As for public safety, I took another look at the text of the Constitution. The term “public safety” appears exactly once, and that’s only in reference to suspending the Writ of Habeas Corpus. That’s it. At no other point does it claim any other right can be suspended in the name of public safety, even the Second Amendment rights.

Further, the idea that you can ban these particular weapons and criminals not get their hands on them is absolutely insane.

On one hand, there are already plenty of them running around the state as it is. A ban now would, at best, simply keep law-abiding folks from buying any more of them. It won’t stop criminals from getting them at all. Even if they ran out of guns to steal, they’d just obtain them from out-of-state sources.

Further, these are easy to put together yourself, even without a “ghost gun” kit. How does Woodfin propose preventing that?

Look, Birmingham’s problems are significant, to be sure, and Woodfin isn’t a complete idiot. Yes, he’s calling for gun bans, but he’s also asking for community help. That’s where he should be directing his time and effort because that’s going to accomplish far more than anything else he’s talking about.

In fact, had he not called for the gun ban, I’d be celebrating him for talking common sense. Instead, he wants something he can’t have, then has the cajones to call it “un-American” if you oppose it.

New York Enacts Gun-Carry Restrictions in Rebuke to Supreme Court

The Empire State has made it harder than ever to legally carry a gun.

On Wednesday, Governor Kathy Hochul (D.) signed a series of new restrictions on where licensed carriers can take their guns and who can get a license in the first place. She painted the new measures as a direct response to the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in New York State Pistol and Rifle Association v. Bruen, which struck down a key provision of the state’s previous law.

“[T]he Supreme Court issued a reckless decision removing century-old limitations on who is allowed to carry concealed weapons in our state — senselessly sending us backward and putting the safety of our residents in jeopardy,” Hochul said in a statement. “Today, we are taking swift and bold action to protect New Yorkers.”

The move puts the state squarely back in the crosshairs of gun-rights activists who want to take it right back to the high court. The collection of new restrictions will serve as test cases for feeling out the new limits of gun-carry regulation in the wake of Bruen. The more aggressive restrictions could serve as easier targets for those activists and have greater potential to set new Supreme Court precedents expanding the scope of recognized Second Amendment protections.

Government officials, who can no longer subjectively deny permits based on whether they think an applicant has “proper cause” for one, will be allowed to subjectively deny applicants based on their social media activity and “moral character.” Those who do obtain a permit will be barred from carrying on private property unless the owner posts a sign allowing it and anywhere the state has declared a “sensitive place,” including Times Square and several blocks around it.

The Supreme Court has already cast doubt on the constitutionality of those restrictions in their Bruen decision. Despite Governor Hochul’s claim the state only passed the new restrictions “after a close review of the NYSRPA vs. Bruen decision and extensive discussions with constitutional and policy experts, advocates, and legislative partners,” she has repeatedly made comments suggesting the laws are in direct conflict with the will of the Court.

A concurrence from Justices John Roberts and Bret Kavanaugh said requiring permitting for gun carry based on objective standards, including a background check or training requirement, was presumptively constitutional.

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