March 13, 2024
Spoiler Alert: ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban ~ Government Must Prove That Weapons Are NOT In Common Use
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Bianchi v. Brown issued an important order that is likely to backfire on the anti-gunners.
The court directed the parties to submit supplemental briefing addressing the following two questions:
- (1) does the determination of whether a weapon is “in common use” occur at the first or second step of Bruen’s text-and-history methodology, and
- (2) who bears the burden of establishing that a weapon is in common use. Heller and Bruen provide explicit answers to the questions posed by the Fourth Circuit, and those answers favor the protection of our Second Amendment rights.
Bianchi challenges the constitutionality of Maryland’s “assault weapons” ban, which seeks to outlaw the AR-15, among other semiautomatic firearms.
Tellingly, the original Fourth Circuit panel in Bianchi seemed poised to issue a pro-Second Amendment ruling, but before that occurred, the Fourth Circuit took the case en banc likely to avoid the possibility of such an outcome.
Bruen instructs that the constitutional inquiry starts with the text of the Second Amendment. This means that, at the outset, a lower court must determine whether the object of a firearm’s regulation is an “arm.”
At this first step, Bruen instructs that the burden is on the party challenging the firearms regulation to show that the item being banned is an “arm.” Heller defined “arms” as “weapons of offense or armor of defense.” There is no doubt that AR-15s and other semiautomatic rifles subject to the Maryland ban are “arms,” which means that the burden shifts to the government to show that the arms it seeks to ban are not “in common use” by Americans for lawful purposes (or are dangerous and unusual).
Things Just Got a Lot Worse for Joe Biden
Last month, the Hur report found that Joe Biden willfully retained, mishandled, and disclosed classified information but determined that he was essentially too senile to stand trial. According to the report, Biden struggled to remember details, and he couldn’t remember when his son Beau died.
Joe Biden angrily defended his memory in his unplanned address and attacked Special Counsel Robert Hur for bringing up Beau during his interview during the investigation, which managed to make things worse for him.
“There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died,” Biden said. “How in the hell dare he raise that? Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business.”
Except that Hur didn’t bring it up. Biden did. PJ Media has reviewed a copy of the transcript of the interview, and it proves that Biden lied when he claimed Special Counsel Hur brought up his son Beau.
“So during this time when you were living at Chain Bridge Road and there were documents relating to the Penn Biden Center, or the Biden Institute, or the Cancer Moonshot, or your book, where did you keep papers that related to those things that you were actively working on?” Hur asked during the relevant portion of the interview.
“Well, um… I, I, I, I, I don’t know,” Biden replied. “This is, what, 2017, 2018, that area?”
“Yes, sir,” Hur told him.
“Remember, in this timeframe, my son is — either been deployed or is dying, and, and so it was — and by the way, there were still a lot of people at the time when I got out of the Senate that were encouraging me to run in this period, except the President,” Biden answered. “I’m not — and not a mean thing to say. He just thought that [Hillary Clinton] had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did. And so I hadn’t, I hadn’t, at this point — even though I’m at Penn, I hadn’t walked away from the idea that I may run for office again. But if I ran again, I’d be running for President. And, and so what was happening, though — what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30th—”
“2015,” Rachel Cotton from the White House Counsel’s Office interjected.
“Was it 2015 he had died?” Joe Biden asked.
“It was May of 2015,” an unidentified speaker said.
“It was 2015,” Biden repeated.
“Or I’m not sure the month, sir, but I think that was the year,” Biden’s personal Robert Bauer said.
Marc Krickbaum of the Special Counsel’s office added, “That’s right, Mr. President. It—”
“And what’s happened in the meantime is that as — and Trump gets elected in November of 2017?” Biden asked.
That’s right. Joe Biden didn’t even remember what year Donald Trump was elected president. Two people then jumped in to correct Biden by saying it was 2016.
“’16, 2016. All right,” Biden said. So — why do I have 2017 here?”
“That’s when you left office, January of 2017,” Edward Siskel from the White House Counsel’s office said.
So in the same exchange, Joe Biden not only brought up his son Beau — contradicting what he claimed last month — but he couldn’t remember the year Beau died and didn’t even know the year that Donald Trump was elected president.
Ouch.
Gun Rights Groups Drawing a Bead on Illinois ‘Assault Weapons’ Law, Taking Issue to Supreme Court
On Monday, the pro-Second Amendment group Gun Owners of America and their affiliate, the Gun Owners Foundation, filed a petition for certiorari with the United States Supreme Court to forward their challenge to Illinois’s restrictive “assault weapons” law.
The groups, representing Illinois gun owners, argue the law imposes an unconstitutional, sweeping ban on hundreds of commonly owned and lawfully used rifles and ammunition magazines.
“GOA has been at the forefront of this challenge since before the bans even took effect, and while our goal was never to have to end up before the Supreme Court, we were fully prepared to do so,” said Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America.
“We urge the Justices to hear the pleas of millions of Americans in Illinois and several other states nationwide who cannot purchase many of the commonly owned semiautomatic firearms available today because of the unconstitutional laws passed by anti-gun politicians,” Pratt said.
The constitutionality argument is especially interesting, coming as it does after the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, which is generally regarded as having recognized the original meaning of the Second Amendment and has been the cause of much rewriting of laws around concealed carry. Even before Bruen, concealed-carry laws had been on a liberalization trend for some years, in fact since Florida passed the first “shall-issue” law in 1987.
Illinois, not surprisingly, has one of the most draconian “assault weapons” laws in the United States.
The strict gun control law, signed by Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker last year, carries penalties for anyone who, “Carries or possesses… Manufactures, sells, delivers, imports, or purchases any assault weapon or .50 caliber rifle.”
Those who legally possess a banned weapon under the law must register it with the Illinois State Police.
The law also includes statutory penalties for anyone who “sells, manufactures, delivers, imports, possesses, or purchases any assault weapon attachment or .50 caliber cartridge.”
The law appears to have sparked considerable non-compliance, and deliberate civil disobedience may be part of that trend.
Of the over 2.4 million Firearm Owner Identification (FOID) cardholders, there have only been 112,350 disclosures filed as of Dec. 31, 2023, according to state police data. Another 29,357 disclosures were in the process of being completed as of Jan. 6.
Gun rights activists previously told Fox News Digital that apparent high rates of noncompliance came from a mix of ignorance of what the law requires and civil disobedience.
Alleged burglar shot by homeowner ID’d
A 28-year-old Hernandez man is dead after being shot early Saturday morning by a homeowner who caught him in his garage.
A call was received at the E-911 Dispatch Center around 4:20 a.m., from a woman who told the dispatcher that her husband shot someone they caught in the garage. She said her husband shot the man, later identified as Pablo Hinz, because he attacked the couple and pushed the caller over. The names of the homeowners were not released.
According to a press release from the Española Police Department that was circulated later in the morning on Saturday, EPD officers were dispatched to the 500 block of Middle San Pedro Road regarding a burglary in progress.
“Upon arrival, officers learned, an elderly home owner confronted a burglary suspect within their residence,” the press release said. “During the incident there was a struggle resulting in the home owner shooting the burglary suspect at least one time.”
The press release said Hinz, whose name had not been released until Monday afternoon, succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene. His name was being withheld pending next of kin notification, which was done Monday, EPD Chief Mizel Garcia said.
“He was well known to law enforcement in the area for commission of burglaries,” Garcia said about Hinz.
March 12, 2024
‘The Purge’ Comes to Pittsburgh
“The Purge” is coming to Pittsburgh between the hours of 3 a.m. and 7 a.m., and if that works out well enough for the city’s criminal class, maybe they’ll expand those hours.
For those not in the know, “The Purge” is a series of dystopian thrillers — the first was decent, but the four sequels proved increasingly unnecessary — set in a near-future United States where, for one night each year, all crime is legal. Whatever it is you want to do, from shoplifting to killing your mother-in-law, it’s all good.
Maybe the changes being made to the Pittsburgh Police Department’s rules and hours aren’t quite that extreme. But from my vantage point, it looks like city officials saw how organized crime rings had taken shoplifting to entirely new levels in under-policed cities like San Francisco and said, “Hold my donut!”
Under the new rules that went into effect at the end of February and were just given nationwide attention by End Wokeness on Twitter/X, there will be no Pittsburgh police at the city’s six police stations between the hours of 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. More ominously, police will no longer respond to calls “that aren’t considered in-progress emergencies,” according to WPXI-11 News. “That means calls like criminal mischief, theft, harassment, and most burglary alarms will all be handled by an ‘enhanced’ telephone reporting unit.”
Just not, you know, by an actual police officer. I don’t care how “enhanced” a telephone reporting unit might be, it’s still just a fancy answering service.
Police Chief Larry Scirotto explained, “We don’t have very many crimes of violence in those periods of time.” Maybe not. But announcing a four-hour window with minimal policing certainly incentivizes criminals to work the overnight shift that police won’t.
“To tell people that you’re not going be protected at certain hours of the day, that doesn’t make any sense to me when I heard it. I don’t know what the rationale of that is, and I think that’s something the chief has to explain,” District Attorney Stephen Zappala told WPXI.
“We are nimble and fluid enough that when one of those emergencies occurs that we respond with rapid deployment with the right amount of personnel to keep the community safe and officers safe,” Scirotto claimed.
While police say they will respond to ongoing emergencies without any cops on call late during late night hours, they also request that you schedule your emergencies during regular business hours from 7 a.m. through 3 a.m.
I’m kidding about the scheduling request. Everything else is true.
On the other hand, it isn’t like anyone has ever depended on the police to respond instantly to an ongoing break-in or violent crime. “When seconds count, the police are minutes away” is an old adage for good reason. What should be only seconds away is whatever weapon you keep (and train with) for home defense.
So maybe the best that can happen is that the worst won’t quite happen. Still, I miss the days when “The Purge” didn’t feel quite so much like non-fiction.
COOKING THE BOOKS: 11 Out Of Last 13 Jobs Reports Have Been Revised Downward.
11 out of the last 13 jobs reports have been revised down from the original headline-generating numbers.
The regime is cooking the books. pic.twitter.com/et1hbGRTkT
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 8, 2024
¡Grupos de Autodefensas Comunitaria Para Mi y Tu!
And when the Police won’t, or can’t do their job……
Armed citizen patrols start in Hartford amid violence concerns.
A new controversial armed citizen patrol has launched in Hartford.
Organizers say the people will be legally carrying as they walk around parts of the city where violence has taken a toll.
Though some – including the city’s mayor – are raising concerns about the effort.
In Hartford’s North End on Saturday, a group of people looked to patrol and clean up Garden Street.
“It was important to come out here because we believe that we have to keep the community safe, keep the community clean. And we’re doing this by being out here for a few hours, clean up the community, pick up the trash,” said Marcus Long, of Hartford.
“We are legally armed and we are patrolling,” said Cornell Lewis, the founder of the Self-Defense Brigade. “The people on Garden Street came to us and asked us for help.”
While there did not appear to be open carry – which is banned in Connecticut – organizers previously told us those armed would be licensed and have concealed weapons.
They were part of Minister Cornell Lewis’ Self-Defense Brigade.
“We are not vigilantes. We are a group of people that are disciplined and trained. We go to the shooting range,” said Lewis.
The effort faces opposition including from an anti-violence group and the Hartford mayor.
Mayor Arunan Arulampalam wrote in part:
“Our community has seen so much pain and trauma, and what we need is for those who love this city to do the hard work of healing that pain.”
The mayor added that the city did not need people being trained to walk the streets with guns and trying to take the law into their own hands.
Earlier, there was a talk about gun rights including how to get a permit, safe storage and carry and personal use.
The founder of the brigade says they plan to do the patrols a few times a week. “We’ll be patrolling at night. So it’s not just a one-time thing. It’s going to be on a consistent basis,” said Lewis.
Organizers argue the patrols are needed and they have plans to expand them to other parts of the city.
This tells you why US Volunteer Military recruitment has tubed🤦♂️⬇️
"The fact that we’re reduced to hoping suicide bombing, human shield using Hamas will care about the welfare of the Palestinian people, tells you how bad the idea is to begin with." https://t.co/Gu46cWfnMb
— Trent Telenko (@TrentTelenko) March 11, 2024
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Director Steven Dettelbach joined CBS’s Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan to talk about violent crime committed with firearms and the tools he wants from Congress. The problem is those requests have already been rejected by Congress for good reason. Those tools would violate federal law and would chip away at the rights of those who obey the law without actually addressing the problem of crime.
“I was in Baltimore a few weeks ago with the law enforcement there, and it’s like, almost a 20 percent drop in homicides, but looks to me the caveat is that for many years in this country, we’ve had a very serious gun crime problem,” Director Dettelbach explained. “And we are the outlier among almost all Western modern nations, and not the outlier in a good way.”
He added later, “Well, I look at — look, I mean, data doesn’t lie.”
Juxtapose that with Director Dettelbach repeating the verifiably false claim that firearms are the leading cause of death among children. That’s just not true.
False Narrative
“The leading cause of death of children in the United States is firearms violence, right,” Director Dettelbach said. “Not cancer, not cars. Guns.”
That’s patently false. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris like to trot out the line in their gun control speeches even though it’s been proven to be false. The Washington Post, hardly a firearm-friendly news agency, admitted the narrative is false. To make the claim, The White House and now Director Dettelbach include people age 18 and 19. The problem is, 18 and 19-year-olds are adults, not children.
“When you focus only on children — 17 and younger — motor vehicle deaths (broadly defined) still rank No. 1, as they have for six decades,” The Washington Post reported. “In the interest of accuracy, it would be better for White House officials to refer to children and teens when citing these reports. When all motor vehicle accidents are counted, then motor vehicle deaths continue to exceed firearm deaths for children — defined as people under age 18 — whether or not infants are included.”
NSSF has blasted this twisting of data to arrive at the heated talking point. The claim in question came about as a result of a faulty study published by the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention in April 2022. That study included Americans aged 18 and 19 years old – adults – in the data set as well as manipulated motor vehicle crash data to assert firearms became the “leading cause of death among children and adolescents” in 2020. NSSF debunked the study when it was published in April 2022.
Like Director Dettelbach said in his Face the Nation interview…data doesn’t lie.
Meet The Group Threatening Americans’ Freedom You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
If you were to ask 20 of your smartest friends, co-workers, and family members what they know about the Uniform Law Commission (ULC), it’s unlikely any of them would have much, if anything, to say. Most Americans have never heard of the ULC, even though the organization has become one of the country’s most influential groups.
If you were to call your state lawmakers, however, you’d likely get an entirely different reaction. Virtually every legislator in America is familiar with the ULC, and most — Democrats and Republicans alike — have a positive opinion of the group. That’s largely because the ULC has a long history of working closely with legislators to develop and revise the Uniform Commercial Code, a complex state law passed in all 50 states.
The purpose of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) is to ensure that commercial and financial activities are regulated as similarly as possible throughout the United States. Without the UCC, conducting business in multiple states would be extremely difficult and costly.
Because the Uniform Commercial Code is so complicated, legislators have trouble understanding and altering it. They depend on the Uniform Law Commission, which is mostly composed of lawyers and academics, as well as the ULC’s partner organizations, to help them. As a result, the ULC has become so important to state lawmakers that it receives much of its funding from state appropriations. That means you, the taxpayer, are footing the bill for the ULC.
For much of the 20th century, the ULC played an important, nonpartisan, uncontroversial role in helping states adopt uniform laws. But in recent decades, the group has become increasingly more radical. It now regularly pushes policymakers to adopt legislation that undermines the rights of individuals and enhances the power of governments, large corporations, and financial institutions.
Take, for example, the disturbing model bill titled the Public-Health Emergency Authority Act (PHEAA). The ULC drafted and formally approved PHEAA in 2023, and it’s now asking legislators to pass it into law.
In the event that a “public health emergency” breaks out in the future, the PHEAA would effectively turn governors across the country into all-powerful quasi-dictators.
Under the ULC’s public health emergency bill, governors would have the right to seize control of virtually every part of their citizens’ lives. They could, for instance, regulate the “zoning, operation, commandeering, management, or use of buildings, shelters, facilities, parks, outdoor space, or other physical space, and the management of activities in those places.”
They would also have the authority to single-handedly regulate public-health-related “testing, isolation, quarantine, movement, gathering, evacuation, or relocation of individuals.”
Governors could further kill, relocate, and manage plants and animals in the state, as well as suspend “a provision of any statute, order, rule, or regulation if strict compliance would hinder efforts to respond to the public-health emergency or pose undue hardship or risk.”
The ULC would also grant governors the right to conduct unlimited “surveillance, monitoring, or assessment of the public-health emergency or any of its effects.”
And although the ULC’s bill suggests establishing a time limit on the initial duration of a declared “public health emergency,” its bill would also allow governors to renew an emergency with minimal oversight from legislatures, and to do so for an infinite number of times.
Emergency power isn’t the only troubling part of the ULC’s agenda.
Youngkin Vetoes First of Many Gun Control Bills Across His Desk
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) has vetoed the first of a series of proposed gun control bills to land on his desk from the Democrat-led Senate and House. Among the legislation vetoed were two bills aimed at restricting gun rights on people accused of domestic abuse and one masked as firearm safety, but really a move to push anti-gun propaganda through the state’s public school system.
One bill, which sought to enforce stricter regulations on individuals accused or convicted of domestic abuse possessing firearms, was vetoed by Youngkin, not because Youngkin doesn’t agree that domestic abuse victims need to be protected, but in the arbitrary ways the law sought to restrict firearm’s possession by age and on those who were not even subject to a court order, according to the Virginia Mercury. Youngkin emphasized that while it is crucial to address domestic abusers appropriately, the proposed legislation failed to meet its intended goals and needed to be worked on more.
“Make no mistake, Virginia should ensure that domestic abusers are dealt with appropriately, and those who resort to illegal firearm use, especially, should face severe and harsh punishments,” Youngkin said in his veto. “The legislation fails to achieve its intended purpose and is unnecessary.”
Another piece of legislation targeted by Youngkin’s vetoes sought to require school boards to notify parents about gun risks and advocate safe storage laws. It is an echo of a similar recommendation by the Biden Administration earlier this year. The governor, recognizing there are a host of real-life threats the state’s families and young people face, many that the Democrats did not feel the need to be pushed, should be more equitable in what it covers.
The Governor proposed amendments to the bill that would expand the notification to include a broader range of parental “rights” and “responsibilities,” encompassing topics beyond firearms, such as protecting children from sexually explicit material as well as the extreme risks of drug use. These amendments necessitate the bill’s reapproval in 2025 before becoming effective, as reported by WJLA ABC 7.
Youngkin will need to decide on additional anti-gun bills that have been approved by the Senate and House, chief among them an assault weapons ban, restrictions on who can provide training for concealed carry permits and restrictions on carrying a firearm in any establishment that serves alcohol among others.
Youngkin’s actions are indicative of his stance on gun control legislation and suggest potential future vetoes on similar bills. The General Assembly, having concluded its session without addressing the governor’s amendments and vetoes, is set to revisit these issues in a reconvened session on April 17. However, any overrides of Youngkin’s vetoes appear unlikely due to the Democratic majority being too small to achieve the two-thirds vote necessary to counteract the governor’s opposition.
Joe Biden Slammed for Evacuating ‘Four Embassies’ During Presidency.
Representative Mary Miller, an Illinois Republican, slammed President Joe Biden on Sunday for evacuating “four embassies” since he took office.
Miller specifically referred to the U.S. embassy evacuation in Sudan that happened on Saturday when the Biden administration decided to suspend operations at its embassy amid the ongoing fight between rival Sudanese leaders on the ground.
Sudan has been controlled by generals since both military factions participated in a joint effort to oust President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in 2019.
“Joe Biden has had to evacuate FOUR embassies in less than 3 years. The media said Biden & Blinken were ‘experts’ and ‘the adults are back in charge.’ The world has been on FIRE since their disaster in Afghanistan. Pray for our country & the 16,000 Americans Biden left in Sudan,” Miller wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
In addition to Sudan, the United States has also suspended embassy operations in Afghanistan after withdrawing its troops in August 2021 and in Ukraine when Russia invaded the Eastern European country last February. However, the embassy in Ukraine reopened last May. The U.S. has also suspended operations in Belarus—whose President Alexander Lukashenko is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin—due to “security and safety issues stemming from the unprovoked and unjustified attack.”
Meanwhile, Undersecretary of State for Management John Bass said on Saturday that temporarily shutting down the embassy in Sudan was “the only really feasible option for us in this case,” according to CNN.
Why Will Daniel Penny Still Stand Trial When Hochul Has to Send in Natl Guard?
Daniel Penny’s attorney, Thomas Kenniff, said it was past time to address New York City’s crime problem on its subways after Gov. Kathy Hochul deployed the National Guard to NYC subways this week.
“It’s about time,” Kenniff said on “Fox & Friends” Friday. “I just wish it didn’t take this long for there to be a realization, a recognition among our elected leaders that there’s a crisis that’s going on in the subways of New York City.”
Kenniff’s client, U.S. Marine veteran Daniel Penny, is facing charges in the chokehold death of a homeless, mentally ill man, Jordan Neely, who was yelling violent threats at riders on a New York City subway last year. Penny said he did not intend to kill Neely but was trying to protect women and children who were “terrified” of Neely.
“I don’t know if ‘too little too late’ is the right expression but, ‘better late than never,’ perhaps,” he continued.
That drug cocktail they fed him for the State of the Union speech done wore off.
Quip O’ The Day: “Earpiece must have buzzed”
Biden makes the blunder of answering whether and why Hamas would want a ceasefire.
He then notices his terrible blunder in saying the truth, and goes off on a tangent. pic.twitter.com/ypqX7H8D6o
— David Shor (@DYShor) March 10, 2024