Louisiana to Enact Constitutional Carry in 2024?

Louisiana is likely to pass a Constitutional Carry bill and enact it into law in 2024. The particulars of the bill are unknown. The 56th Governor of Louisiana is John Bel Edwards. Edwards vetoed a constitutional carry bill in June of 2021.

The next governor of Louisiana was elected on October 14, 2023. Louisiana has an unusual primary election, where all candidates are on the ballot. If one candidate obtains more than 50% of the vote in the primary, they are elected governor. On October 14, Jeff Landry (R) won the primary with 51.6% of the vote. Landry is expected to take office on January 8, 2024.

A constitutional or permitless carry bill was passed overwhelmingly in 2021. The vote was 72 to 28 in the House. A similar bill in the Senate passed 27 to 11. There were enough votes to override a veto, but the Louisiana Governor is very powerful. Governor John Bel Edwards had enough clout to veto the bill and make it stick.

Governor-elect Jeff Landry said, before the October election, he would see constitutional carry passed while he is in office.

Representative Danny McCormick has made Constitutional Carry his signature issue. In his 2023 race, he raffled off a Sig P365 9mm pistol as part of his campaign. From shreveporttimes.com:

His said his bill would “restore Second Amendment rights in Louisiana.”

“There’s nothing more unjust than to make citizens pay for a right they already have,” McCormick repeated this week.

McCormick said he has raffled off guns in the past, each time raising thousands of dollars.

The tickets are $10 for a $699.99 Sig P365 Macro pistol that is advertised as “what a concealed carry pistol should be.”

Supporters of McCormick’s legislation refer to it as “constitutional carry” because they believe the Second Amendment already grants that right.

“With your help we will make Constitutional Carry the Law in 2024,” McCormick said in his email to supporters.

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On the morning of November 11th, 1918, American fighter ace Captain Eddie Rickenbacker defied orders, jumped in his airplane, and flew out over the front…to watch the war end.

I was the only audience for the greatest show ever presented. On both sides of no-man’s-land, the trenches erupted. Brown-uniformed men poured out of the American trenches, gray-green uniforms out of the German. From my observer’s seat overhead, I watched them throw their helmets in the air, discard their guns, wave their hands.

Then all up and down the front, the two groups of men began edging toward each other across no-man’s-land. Seconds before they had been willing to shoot each other; now they came forward.

Hesitantly at first, then more quickly, each group approached the other. Suddenly gray uniforms mixed with brown. I could see them hugging each other, dancing, jumping. Americans were passing out cigarettes and chocolate.

I flew up to the French sector. There it was even more incredible. After four years of slaughter and hatred, they were not only hugging each other but kissing each other on both cheeks as well. Star shells, rockets and flares began to go up, and I turned my ship toward the field.

The war was over.

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California-Style Gun Control: Does Not Work as Advertised

California has a well-earned reputation as one of the most anti-gun jurisdictions in the United States, with its state and local codes crammed with virtually every cockamamie scheme to suppress firearm ownership conceived within the last 50 years. The state’s current governor, Gavin Newsom, is not only determined to cement this reputation statewide, he’s trying to bring California-style gun control to the country at large by promoting an ill-conceived amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would impose draconian gun control coast to coast. But actual data shows California holds another dubious distinction that puts a lie to the efficacy of its highly-touted “gun safety laws”:

…it is the state with the highest number of mass murders committed with firearms.

Yet highly-publicized mass shootings play an outsized role in influencing gun control policy in the U.S. because they create the (grossly distorted and exaggerated) impression that ordinary, law-abiding people are at a high risk of being killed with a firearm at the places where they learn, work, and play. They also receive breathless media coverage that seeks to exploit the public’s grief, fear, and outrage over these events to give impetus to hastily-pushed gun control, before details inevitably emerge that show these measures would have been useless in stopping the crime. Where this manipulation prevails, however, it results in overreaching policies that intrude on Second Amendment rights with virtually no effect on either “mass shootings” or the more anonymous forms of firearm-related deaths.

California is a case in point, as revealed by data compiled on the website Statista.com.

The Statista survey looked at data between 1982 and October 2023 concerning episodes of a single attack with a firearm in a public place that resulted in four or more fatalities between 1982 and 2012 or in three fatalities from 2013 onward (definitions that track a database compiled by MotherJones.com).

Those figures show that California had by far the most such incidents during the survey period, at 26.

This is as much as the combined amount of the next two states with the highest totals, Florida and Texas. It is also more than the combined total of the 20 states with the lowest frequency of such events (excluding states with no such incidents at all).

It is true that California is the most populous (38.9 million) of the U.S. states, so it is not necessarily the deadliest state for mass shootings per capita. But the strongly pro-gun states of Florida (22.6 million) and Texas (30+ million) have a combined population that exceeds that of California by some 13.7 million people. Thus, whatever California thinks it is doing with regard to countering mass public murder committed with firearms, it is working no better at a population level than what is occurring in two of the most gun-friendly states of the Union.

None of this is to diminish the fact that any firearm-related murder is a terrible event, no matter where or how it is committed.

But along with gun control, Gavin Newsom also likes to promote what he insists is a “science-based” approach to “public health.” In that vein, any honest assessment of California’s notoriously strict gun control regime has to acknowledge that the numbers don’t add up to success when it comes to preventing “mass shootings.”

If past history is any indicator, a reprogramming of car computer software for this will just be added on the list of services hackers have.

Massie: Vehicle Kill Switch Amendment Foreshadows Greater Danger to Guns

“The federal government has mandated that all vehicles sold after 2026 must have a kill switch that can disable your vehicle based on your driving performance,” Rep. Thomas Massie “tweeted” Wednesday. “My amendment to defund that unconstitutional mandate failed tonight.”

“Here is the roll call,” Massie added, linking to the House Clerk’s “Final Vote Results” for his Part B Amendment No. 60 to H R 4820, the “Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024.” 19 Republicans joined 210 Democrats to defeat Massie’s amendment:

Gus Bilirakis (FL), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Mike Carey (OH), Chuck Fleischmann (TN), Andrew Garbarino (NY), Mike Garcia (CA), Garret Graves (LA), John Joyce (PA), Thomas Kean, Jr. (NJ), Kevin Kiley (CA), Young Kim (CA), David Kustoff (TN), Mike Lawler (NY), Nancy Mace (SC), Michael McCaul (TX), Zach Nunn (IA), María Elvira Salazar (FL), Chris Smith (NJ), and Glenn Thompson (PA).

Still, this must be a tempest in a teapot, right? After all, didn’t a January USA Today Fact Check conclude, “No, there’s no vehicle ‘kill switch’ in Biden’s 2021 infrastructure bill”? And it then followed up that headline with denial after denial until buried near the end of the piece came a curious admission:

“Whether or not the technology will become a part of the infrastructure bill’s final rule remains to be seen…”

Massie followed up his tweet by addressing the USA Today denials with a copy of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act with an entry in the “Definitions” section circled:

The term “advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology means a system that … can … passively monitor the performance of the driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired; and… prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected…”

Besides, the technology to remotely disable cars has been in development for years. From a 2010 report:

“If you’re crawling through traffic in 2025 and approach a traffic light, IBM hopes it will be able to take control of your car. And according to the patent, you won’t be able to go again until it lets you. …With a laptop and customized software called CarShark, the researchers disabled the brakes of a regular family car and switched its engine off – while it was moving.”

And to show the incremental moves in development:

“In 2008, it became mandatory for all American cars to be fitted with CAN (Controller Area Network), a standard protocol for enabling all the car’s electronics to talk to each other, so there’s one part of the puzzle in place.”

OK, fine, but what does any of this have to do with guns?

But perhaps the most immediate and insidious threat we face from technology comes under the guise of “safety— for the children,” so-called “smart guns” under development and soon to be required in a state near you. Because…they’re also lobbying for another technology they developed to be required on cars— a “shutoff switch” that police can activate by remote control, making the rest of us pay for the infinitesimal fraction of drivers who lead them on car chases.

As writer Vin Suprynowicz warns (and I and some others independently predicted), this technology could be used by the police as “an `electronic master key’ to `disable’ any `smart guns’ in the house,” and be used as a pretext to “ban the manufacture of any gun that ISN’T a `smart gun’.”

So police can turn guns fitted with one “off” and incapable of firing—and that could be mandated. Anybody doubt it will be if remote shutoff technology becomes widespread?

But the legal landscape has changed, some may argue. Such a move would surely fail under the Heller and Bruen tests. No?

First, look at the “rules” that ATF and edicts Democrat strongholds have passed that are obviously nothing more than in-your-face challenges to the Supreme Court on devices, semi-autos, magazines, “sensitive areas,” prior restraints and denials of due process—look at how they have virtually unlimited war chests of tax plunder to drag complaints on for years. Then pray the Republicans don’t blow it in ’24 and enable a Democrat president and majority to alter the composition of the court and achieve whatever reversals and outcomes they desire.

Back to the list of Republicans who voted against Massie’s amendment, and there are enough that they could have turned it: We see some familiar names, like Brian Fitzpatrick, Giffords’ poster Vichycon who never saw a gun he didn’t want to grab. We see others, like Gus Bilirakis, assigned an A-rating by NRA-PVF along with the assurance that he’s “a staunch defender of the Second Amendment and has earned your vote by protecting your fundamental right to self-defense from those who attempt to eradicate it!” Then there are the “moderates” from states like New York and California whose endless “compromises in the spirit of bipartisanship” exemplify the reason why so many refer to the GOP as “the Stupid Party.”

If you see your representative siding with the Democrats (or is one of the five Republicans who did not vote), what would it hurt to take the amount of time it takes to post a comment here and contact them to ask, “What the hell?”

Observation O’ The Day:
I remember when “serious” figures on the right mocked some of us for our alleged obsession with media bias. – Glenn Reynolds

Propaganda Works

Have you noticed that Republicans have been losing a lot lately?

This, in an environment where most Americans think that Democrats are screwing up the country. Why do you think that is?

Sure, hatred of Trump has something to do with it. Abortion politics has something to do with it. A lot, actually. Each of you can name an issue where Republicans are in bad odor with ordinary people, but add them all together and one thing becomes clear: propaganda works.

Why is Trump so unpopular? Was it because things got worse under his presidency? Uh, yeah, no. Things got immeasurably better, and even a lot of people who hate him will say that.

Is abortion such a drag on Republican prospects because people don’t agree that late term abortions are immoral, except in extreme circumstances? That’s not what the polls say.

Why do people think Republicans are all-in on banning books? Has anybody suggested making the publishing of any books illegal? Of course not. Democrats actively campaign to prevent the publication or sale of books they don’t like, but Republicans don’t.

So what is it?

It is the steady drumbeat of propaganda portraying Republicans as Nazi White Supremacists who want to force 11 year-olds to birth babies, schoolmarms who hate gays, and White Supremacists who hunt minorities in the dead of night. We wanted to kill grandma and deserved to be put in camps:

You can’t escape the propaganda. It is everywhere. In the schools, in the classrooms, on every university campus, and in the MSM.

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I think Mr Lowy has merely found a new higher paying grift with no higher management to take a cut.

Gun Control Activists Claim Second Amendment Violates Human Rights

The parents of a student killed in the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida have teamed up with Brady’s former chief litigator to file a “first-of-its-kind” complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleging that “US gun policy violates basic human rights law” and deprived the Joaquin Oliver of his right to life.

Jonathan Lowy, who left Brady to start the group Global Action on Gun Violence, is spearheading the lawsuit with help from the head of George Washington University Law School’s Civil and Human Rights Clinic, and unlike most litigation involving Second Amendment issues, this one was launched with a slickly-produced ad campaign crafted by Zulu Alpha Kilo.

Lowy, you might recall, is also heading up the Mexican government’s lawsuit against most major U.S. gun manufacturers. While a U.S. District Court judge tossed out the case, the First Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments over the summer about whether or not to reinstate the suit.

In this case, Lowy and plaintiffs Manuel and Patricia Oliver, who founded the anti-gun group Change the Ref after their son was murdered, aren’t asking a U.S. court to rule that the Second Amendment is a violation of human rights. Instead, they’re taking their argument to an international body that has no real jurisdiction over the United States.

The fact that this lawsuit was launched with its own public relations campaign is telling, because the whole thing looks to be one big PR stunt. The complaint itself is a laundry list of strident anti-gun talking points, including the oft-repeated claim that there is no real right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment.

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was understood for over two centuries to only concern the “well-regulated militia” which the Framers intended to protect and therefore mentioned in the text, not private gun ownership.

But in 2008 the Supreme Court of the United States created a new right to handguns for self-defense which was not mentioned by the Second Amendment’s Framers or in the text, and then the Court vastly expanded that right in 2022, requiring historical precedent for gun laws and making public safety considerations of little relevance in determining the constitutionality of gun laws.

These rulings have led courts to strike down numerous gun laws, and may constrain future regulations. The United States appears to be the only nation in the world that has chosen to put gun industry profits over public safety and gun rights over human rights.

See what I mean?

The historical evidence for an individual right to keep and bear arms is overwhelming, as the Heller opinion and a cursory knowledge of U.S. history makes clear. Lowy’s contention that the U.S. has put “gun rights over human rights” may make for a good bumper sticker slogan for gun prohibitionists, it’s another patently absurd claim. Guns don’t have rights (and honestly, I’ve never been a big fan of that phrase for that reason) but people absolutely do, including the human right of self-defense, as my colleague Tom Knighton discussed yesterday. It’s become a standard talking point on the Left that a lack of gun control is a violation of human rights, but strangely these same folks never want to talk about the slaughter of civilians in nations that have very restrictive gun control regimes, or the 20th century death toll in totalitarian nations that disarmed its citizenry.

The petition claims there are several supposed “major flaws in U.S. gun law”, including (but certainly not limited to) a lack of an  “assault weapons” ban, no “investigation or vetting of purchasers” beyond background checks; no “universal” background checks for sales by private citizens; no federal “licensing, registration or vetting for firearm purchases”, “no limits whatsoever on how many guns a civilian may purchase, either in one transaction or in any period of time”, and the protections from civil liability found in the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

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Armed Texas store owner defends self in shootout with would-be robbers

An armed store owner in Texas fought back against a pair of attempted robbers, trading fire with the suspects in a shootout captured on security footage.

Two armed suspects entered a Cash for Gold shop in the 1100 block of N Town East Blvd in Mesquite just before 7 p.m. on Thursday, the Mesquite Police Department said.

Security footage from inside the store shows the owner in the back of the store when the two suspects in hooded sweatshirts enter and draw their weapons. One suspect is seen pointing a gun at the owner.

The owner, however, surprises the suspects by pulling out his own gun and trading fire with the pair, who quickly flee the store.

suspects entering store

Two suspects wearing hooded sweatshirts are wanted in connection with the attempted robbery.

“It’s a quick 3 seconds. No time to think, it’s all reaction,” the owner, who wished to only be identified by his first name, Tien, told FOX4 Dallas-Fort Worth.

store owner draws weapon

The store owner drew his own weapon after the suspects held him at gunpoint.

Police said the victim fired three rounds in self-defense while the suspects also fired back before fleeing.

suspect pointing gun

The suspects and store owner traded fire during the encounter. Police said no one was struck or injured.

“Everything was slow motion to me,” Tien said. “I saw the mask, I saw the hoodie, I saw the gun come out.”

No one was injured during the attempted robbery, according to the department.

No arrests were immediately made and police are working to identify the suspects.

Tien told the station that this was the third time someone’s tried to rob his business in the last five years.

“I think the cash business, the gold business, seems to be an easy target for them, or so they think, but it’s not,” he said.

Photographers Without Borders: AP & Reuters Pictures of Hamas Atrocities Raise Ethical Questions

On October 7, Hamas terrorists were not the only ones who documented the war crimes they had committed during their deadly rampage across southern Israel. Some of their atrocities were captured by Gaza-based photojournalists working for the Associated Press and Reuters news agencies whose early morning presence at the breached border area raises serious ethical questions.

What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas? Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and The New York Times, notify these outlets? Judging from the pictures of lynching, kidnapping and storming of an Israeli kibbutz, it seems like the border has been breached not only physically, but also journalistically.

AP: Photojournalists or Infiltrators?

Four names appear on AP’s photo credits from the Israel-Gaza border area on October 7: Hassan Eslaiah, Yousef Masoud, Ali Mahmud, and Hatem Ali.

Eslaiah, a freelancer who also works for CNN, crossed into Israel, took photos of a burning Israeli tank, and then captured infiltrators entering Kibbutz Kfar Azza.

HonestReporting has obtained screenshots of Eslaiah’s now-removed tweets on X in which he documented himself standing in front of the Israeli tank. He did not wear a press vest or a helmet, and the Arabic caption of his tweet read: “Live from inside the Gaza Strip settlements.”

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November 9

1620 – Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

1780 – In the Battle of Fishdam Ford during the Revolutionary War, a force of British and Loyalist troops fail in a surprise attack against the South Carolina Patriot militia under Brigadier General Thomas Sumter, who later has a fort named after him.

1862 – Union General Ambrose Burnside assumes command of the Army of the Potomac, after General George B. McClellan is removed.

1867 – The last Shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, hands power back to the Emperor of Japan, starting the Meiji Restoration.

1872 – A fire erupts in the basement of a commercial warehouse at 83–87 Summer Street, Boston and is not controlled until 12 hours later, after destroying 776 buildings and much of the financial district in the city’s downtown, causing over $73 million in damage and killing 30 people died, including 12 firefighters.

1887 – Having earlier acquired rights to the exclusive use of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the U.S. Navy officially takes possession of the area.

1913 – A massive blizzard, the most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the lakes, reaches its greatest intensity after beginning two days earlier, destroying 19 ships and killing more than 250 people.

1917 – The Balfour Declaration,  a letter from Britain’s Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Walter, Baron Rothschild, declaring the British government’s support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in what would become British Mandate Palestine, is publicly published.

1918 – Due to massive civil unrest and mutinies in the imperial navy and army, German Kaiser Wilhelm abdicates the throne.

1935 – The Committee for Industrial Organization, the precursor to the Congress of Industrial Organizations, is founded in Atlantic City, New Jersey, by eight trade unions belonging to the American Federation of Labor. AFL-CIO

1938 – Using the assassination of their diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris as an excuse, the Nazis instigate what is called Kristallnacht for the breaking of the glass windows in many Jewish owned businesses and synagogues in Germany.

1960 – Robert McNamara is named president of Ford Motor Company, the first non-Ford to serve in that post, but resigns a month later to join the administration of newly elected John Kennedy.

1967 – NASA launches the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft, atop the first Saturn V rocket, from Cape Kennedy.

1970 – In the case of Massachusetts v. Laird, the Supreme Court, citing a lack of jurisdiction, refuses to hear the case. Massachusetts’ Attorney General seeking the Court to rule on the passage of a state law granting residents the right to refuse military service in an undeclared war.

1979 –  North American Aerospace Defense Command computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland, detect a purported massive Soviet nuclear missile strike against the U.S. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early warning radars, the alert is cancelled as a false alarm caused by a NORAD technician loading a test tape, but failing to switch the system status to “test”.

1989 – East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall, allowing its citizens to freely travel to West Berlin.

1998 – A U.S. federal judge, in the largest civil settlement in American history, orders 37 U.S. brokerage houses to pay $1.03 billion to cheated NASDAQ investors to compensate for price fixing.

2004 – The Firefox 1.0 internet browser is released.

 

US military strikes Iranian weapons facility in Syria following attacks against troops

The U.S. military conducted an airstrike against what it described as a weapons storage facility used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in eastern Syria.

Two U.S. F-15 aircraft carried out the “precision self-defense strike” on Wednesday, as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin described it in a statement, though he did not comment on whether the strike was successful or if there were any casualties. This is the second time the United States has conducted this type of strike in recent weeks.

U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria that are there to counter ISIS have been attacked via one-way attack drones or rockets about 40 times by Iranian proxies in the region since Oct. 7, the day of the terrorist attacks in Israel that erupted Middle Eastern tension.

Forty-five U.S. troops reported injuries in attacks at al Asad Air Base in Iraq and at al Tanf garrison in Syria on Oct. 17 and 18, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said on Monday. One other person was injured in an attack at Erbil Air Base in Iraq. 25 of those troops reported traumatic brain injuries, while 21 reported nonserious nonhead injuries.

Two troops returned to duty only to be taken later to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, the largest American military hospital outside the United States, for additional care. Both are in stable condition.

The U.S. military conducted airstrikes against an IRGC weapons storage facility and an ammunition storage area in Syria on Oct. 26.

“Let’s be clear: Iran is responsible,” a senior military official told reporters at the time. “I want to emphasize that the United States does not seek conflict, nor do we desire further hostilities; however, the Iran-backed attacks against U.S. forces are unacceptable and must cease. We are prepared to take further measures to protect our people if necessary.”

The U.S. has surged personnel and equipment to the Middle East following the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel and the subsequent war between Israel and Hamas. U.S. defense officials have said the intent is to deter Israel’s adversaries in the region, mainly Iran, from getting directly involved in and expanding the conflict.