En banc! U.S. 3rd Circuit Court (The Bruen decision strikes again)

TLDR:
Range pleaded guilty in 1995 to committing welfare fraud, a misdemeanor punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment. As we know, GCA’ 68 bans people convicted of crimes punishable by more than a year and a day in prison – which are usually felonies – from buying guns.
Range sued the government in 2020 saying the ban violated his 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.
The appeals court – en banc – ruled that since there were no text, history or tradition of restrictions like this when the 2nd and the 14th amendments were ratified, the restriction was unconstitutional.

Another scene in the opening act of the end of gun control the goobermint has foisted on us

No Loss of Second Amendment Rights for Welfare Fraud

Range_v_Garland_En_Banc_Opinion

Gun Banners Want to Raise Legal Age for Gun Ownership, But their Logic is Flawed


During an intriguing video discussion between John Lott, founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, and Frank Miniter, editor-in-chief of NRA’s America’s 1st Freedom Magazine, both men dissected the pipe dream by gun banners to raise the legal age for gun ownership to 21. They questioned the basis of the arguments for the increase and noted the implications for the Second Amendment.

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June 6

1755 – Nathan Hale, patriot and Revolutionary War spy, is born in Coventry Connecticut.

1799 – Patrick Henry, American lawyer and politician, 1st Governor of Virginia dies, age 63 at Red Hill Virginia.

1813 – At the Battle of Stoney Creek, a British force under John Vincent defeats an American force twice its size under William Winder and John Chandler.

1844 – The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) is founded in London.

1889 – In downtown Seattle, an accidentally overturned glue pot in the Clairmont and Company cabinet shop in the basement of the Pontius building starts “The Great Seattle Fire” which destroys 25 city blocks, including the entire downtown business district, 4 of the city’s wharves, and its railroad terminals, but only causing 1 known death

1894 – Governor Davis H. Waite orders the Colorado state militia to protect and support the the Western Federation of Miners workers engaged in the Cripple Creek miners’ strike.

1912 – On the Alaskan Katmai peninsula, the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century forms the Novarupta volcano.

1918 – During the Battle of Belleau Wood in World War I, while attempting to recapture the wood at Château-Thierry, the U.S. Marine Corps suffers 1087 casualties, more than it has taken in total before, and its worst single day’s count until the Battle of Tarawa in 1943.

1925 – The original Chrysler Corporation is founded by Walter Chrysler from the remains of the Maxwell Motor Company.

1934 – As part of the ‘New Deal’,  President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Securities Exchange Act into law, establishing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

1942 – During World War II, northwest of Midway island, U.S. Navy dive bombers flying off the carriers, Hornet, Yorktown and Enterprise, attack a Japanese invasion force and sink the Japanese navy cruiser Mikuma and 4 carriers; Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu, which had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor, 6 months earlier.

1944 – During World War II, 155,000 Allied troops begin the invasion of France with landings on Normandy beaches along with airborne parachute and glider assaults further inland.

1971 – Hughes Airwest Flight 706,  a McDonnell Douglas DC-9, collides in midair with a Marine Corps F-4 Phantom jet over the San Gabriel Mountains, north of Los Angeles, killing all 49 passengers and crew aboard the commercial jet and the pilot of the fighter.

1985 – The grave of “Wolfgang Gerhard” is opened in Embu, Brazil. The  remains are later proven to be those of Josef Mengele, Auschwitz’s “Angel of Death”.

2002 – A near Earth asteroid estimated at 10 meters in diameter explodes over the Mediterranean Sea between Greece and Libya. The explosion is estimated to have a force of 26 kilotons of TNT, slightly more powerful than the Nagasaki atomic bomb.

A “compromise” from the gun prohibitionists – you can’t own one, but maybe you can borrow one

Earlier today we reported on the first few hours of the supposed-to-be massive protest outside the Colorado state capitol in Denver, where the group Here 4 The Kids is holding a sit-in to pressure Gov. Jared Polis into signing an executive order banning gun sales and possession in the state. While organizer Saira Rao predicted 25,000 or more would be on hand early Monday morning, the Colorado Sun reports the number was closer to 250 people, and though a few folks have trickled onto the capitol grounds since then there’s nowhere near 25,000 in attendance.

The Sun did manage to speak with a few supporters of the flagrantly unconstitutional executive order proposed by Rao, and it’s fascinating to see how deep the delusion runs with some of these folks, starting with Rao herself.

“Yes, it is in violation of the Second Amendment, and what we are saying is, as a decent human being, at some point, you have to decide that the right to life and our children’s’ right to life must trump anybody’s right to bear arms,” Here 4 The Kids co-founder Saira Rao said Friday.

“The people who have been elected to office have to choose if they will choose children’s lives over guns,” said Rao, a former lawyer who unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in the 2018 Democratic primary and then moved to Virginia. “That’s the fundamental choice. And if he’s saying he will not, he is making a choice that will put him on the wrong side of history.”

Change doesn’t happen without major shifts, she said. Americans had to amend the Constitution to abolish slavery, which was considered radical and unthinkable to many in 1865, at a time when slavery was the foundation of the American economy, she said.

“Imagine if people were just like, ‘We can’t do it.’ Indeed, they can, and they did, and now we have the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery,” Rao said.

Rao’s not trying to amend the Constitution. She’s trying to get Polis and other Democrat governors to ignore it, which isn’t going to go well. As we’ve seen from states like New York and California, anti-gun Democrats would prefer to pay lip service to the Second Amendment while violating the fundamental right to keep and bear arms rather than explicitly rejecting the right altogether, which would cause even courts that have been traditionally hostile to our Second Amendment rights to step in put a halt to their attempt at prohibition.

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Oregon Measure 114 gun law faces federal court test Monday

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A federal trial over Oregon’s voter-approved gun control measure opened Monday in Portland, marking a critical next step for one of the toughest gun control laws in the nation after months of being tied up in the courts.

The trial, which is being held before a judge and not a jury, will determine whether the law violates the U.S. Constitution.

It comes after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment that has upended gun laws across the country, dividing judges and sowing confusion over what firearm restrictions can remain on the books. It changed the test that lower courts had long used for evaluating challenges to firearm restrictions, telling judges that gun laws must be consistent with the “historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

The Oregon measure’s fate is being carefully watched as one of the first new gun restrictions passed since the Supreme Court ruling last June.

The legal battle over in Oregon could well last beyond the trial. Whatever the judge decides, the ruling is likely to be appealed, potentially moving all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Frightened Politicians Leave Students at Risk

How good is good enough when it comes to protecting our children in school? One extreme view says that Superman who stops bullets with his bare hands is barely qualified to protect our children. The opposite extreme says that anyone who isn’t in jail should be qualified to act as an armed guard for our kids. One argument asks for quality while the other asks for quantity. While we are busy debating, mass-murderers are still stalking our children at school. We can stop mass-murderers if we’re willing to face a few truths.

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The Complete Book of Tokarev Pistols

The Tokarev saga is a long and amazingly interesting one. The story began in the 1920s and spans nearly 100 years. It is fair to say that the Tokarev pistol was born out of the advances in small arms that were occurring at the turn of the 20th century, especially the trend of military forces in many countries to replace revolvers with semiautomatic pistols. While the Tokarev has links to the past, its use continues to the present day. The geographic distribution of the Tokarev is worldwide, as it has migrated from the soviet union to numerous countries around the globe. The Tokarev has been used for so long by so many countries that it is almost universally recognized. It has attained a longevity rivaled by few other pistols. 8.5×11; 1550 color photos/illustrations.

Gun Controllers’ Real Goal Revealed

Though gun controllers often hide behind the ever-shifting goalposts of what they claim are “common-sense solutions,” sometimes their true goals slip right out into the open.

Such a case occurred when former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.), in a recent interview with Time, made the true goal of the gun-control group Giffords clear when she said, “No more guns.”

An aide tried to clarify that the former congresswoman means “no more gun violence. But Giffords interjects with, “No, no, no. Lord, no,” pauses for half a minute, then continues with, “Guns, guns, guns. No more guns. Gone.”

An aide then tries to clarify that Giffords was referring to Australia, “where gun sales were outlawed,,,and existing weapons were purchased by the government.” But even that is not even remotely accurate, While the civilian possession of semi-automatic firearms in Australia was largely banned in 1996, the country did not ban all firearms. Furthermore, the bans that were enacted have had trouble being enforced and, beyond that, they have also had little to no effect on violent crime.

“Several reports from the early 2000s estimate that only 20% or so of the banned firearms had been confiscated,” Amy Swearer wrote of Australia’s gun-control efforts for America’s 1st Freedom. “Moreover, while firearm suicides dropped in Australia after the confiscation effort, there was little meaningful effect on the overall suicide rate. Another evaluation found no effect on homicides or accidental deaths, despite claims to the contrary.

Despite the overwhelming evidence of its ineffectiveness, Australia’s gun-control efforts are still often praised by anti-Second Amendment advocates. This is not to mention that such bans would certainly be unconstitutional stateside.

In response to Giffords’ remarks, John Lott, president and CEO of the Crime Prevention Research Center, wrote, “Gun control advocates usually don’t call for banning all guns even though that has been obvious to everyone else, but at least they aren’t hiding what they want anymore.”

“The fact that they are pointing to Australia as an example where guns have been banned is depressing because they really believe that a gun ban reduces crime when all gun and handgun bans are associated with increased murder rates and Australia never banned all guns,” added Lott.

Lott also recently sat down with America’s 1st Freedom Editor in Chief Frank Miniter for a pair of videos that can be viewed here and here.

Well, Dad is progressing well. PT already had him out of bed  and eating lunch while sitting in one of those lounge type chairs. Took two aids to get him back into bed, but already one day out of surgery and he’s doing as well as the therapy staff there has seen other people progress, so all’s for the good.

We thank everyone for their kind thoughts and prayers.

NJ is Playing a Game of Chicken with Supreme Court & 2nd Amendment

BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation and its partners in a legal challenge of New Jersey’s “sensitive places” concealed carry statute have filed a response to the state’s motion for a stay in the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The case is now known as Koons v. Platkin.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Renee Marie Bumb granted a preliminary injunction, and the state filed a motion to stay the order pending appeal.

Second Amendment Foundation opposes the stay, arguing the state “did not meet its burden before the district court, and it cannot meet it in this Court. Thus a stay pending appeal should be denied.”

“The state is struggling with all its might,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “in a stubborn effort to retain a literal stranglehold on the rights of New Jersey citizens.

We’re challenging the ban on legal carry in parks, on beaches, and at recreation facilities, publicly owned museums and libraries, bars and restaurants where alcohol is served, entertainment facilities, airports (before TSA security), public transportation hubs, and the presumptive ban on private property.

“There is no established historical tradition that could justify the restrictions included in the new law. New Jersey simply cannot criminalize licensed concealed carry virtually everywhere in the state by designating everything as a ‘sensitive area,’ nor should it be allowed to continue enforcing these restrictions pending appeal.”

SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut said the state is playing a game of chicken with the Supreme Court and the Second Amendment.

“The state is burdened with showing the carry restrictions are consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation, and we don’t see how that is possible,” Kraut said.

“The state has not provided any evidence of Founding era restrictions like it wants to enforce today, and is essentially trying to stall the inevitable for as long as possible.”

June 5

1837 – The city of Houston is incorporated by the Republic of Texas.

1850 – Pat Garrett is born in Chambers County, Alabama

1851 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s serial, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, starts a 10 month run in the National Era newspaper.

1864 – Union forces under General David Hunter defeat a Confederate army at Piedmont, Virginia, taking nearly 1,000 prisoners.

1893 – The trial of Lizzie Borden for the murder of her father and step-mother begins in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

1916 – Louis Brandeis is sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, the first American Jew to hold such a position.

1917 –Under the Selective Service Act of 1917, conscription begins in the United States as “Army registration day”.

1944 – More than 1,000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries on the Normandy coast in preparation for D-Day.

1945 – The Allied Control Council, the military occupation governing body of Germany, formally takes power.

1946 – A fire in the La Salle Hotel in Chicago kills 61 people.

1947 – In a speech at Harvard University, Secretary of State George Marshall calls for economic aid to post war Europe, called the ‘Marshall Plan’.

1967 – The Six Day War begins as Israel launches surprise strikes against Egyptian airfields in response to the mobilization of Egyptian forces on the Israeli border.

1968 – Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles, California.

1976 – The earthen dam on the Teton river in Idaho collapses, killing 11 people in the small towns downstream as a result of the flooding.

1981 – A report by the Centers for Disease Control includes 5 people in Los Angeles, California, having a rare form of pneumonia seen only in patients with weakened immune systems, the first recognized cases of AIDS.

1998 – A strike that ends up lasting 7 weeks begins at the General Motors parts factory in Flint, Michigan.

2001 – Tropical Storm Allison makes landfall on the Texas coastline and dumps large amounts of rain over Houston, causing $5.5 billion in damage, the second costliest tropical storm in U.S. history.

2004 – Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States dies at his home in Los Angeles

2017 – Montenegro becomes the 29th member of NATO.

Alleged Sunday Morning Home Invader Shot And Killed By Homeowner

A Phoenix homeowner reportedly opened fire on a home invader striking and killing him Sunday morning, according to law enforcement officials. Aires Jordan Holmes, age 31, was pronounced dead by responding Phoenix PD officers at the home near 17th Avenue and Buckeye Road with multiple gunshot wounds.

According to KTAR-FM, Sgt. Robert Scherer said in a press release, “Preliminary information suggests Holmes unlawfully entered the residence at which time there was a confrontation between Holmes and the homeowner. It was during this confrontation that the homeowner shot Holmes.”

As reported by AZCentral, the call was received by dispatchers at approximately 7:45 am. AZFamily reported that the homeowner said he shot a man who broke into the house.

The Arizona homeowner was subsequently interviewed by police investigators and then released according to local sources. The case is to be submitted to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office where a determination will be made whether or not they will be charged.

Arizona’s self-defense laws are a robust combination of an expanded ‘castle doctrine,’ as well as a ‘stand your ground,’ law.

Under the Arizona law ARS 13-411, “A person is justified in threatening or using both physical force and deadly physical force against another if and to the extent the person reasonably believes that physical force or deadly physical force is immediately necessary to prevent the other’s commission of arson of an occupied structure under section 13-1704, burglary in the second or first degree under section 13-1507 or 13-1508, kidnapping under section 13-1304, manslaughter under section 13-1103, second or first degree murder under section 13-1104 or 13-1105, sexual conduct with a minor under section 13-1405, sexual assault under section 13-1406, child molestation under section 13-1410, armed robbery under section 13-1904 or aggravated assault under section 13-1204, subsection A, paragraphs 1 and 2.”

Furthermore, under the statute, Arizonans do not have a duty to retreat and are “presumed to be acting reasonably for the purposes of this section if the person is acting to prevent what the person reasonably believes is the imminent or actual commission of any of the offenses listed.”

Finally, the ‘stand your ground’ portion of the law states it includes, “the use or threatened use of physical force or deadly physical force in a person’s home, residence, place of business, land the person owns or leases, conveyance of any kind, or any other place in this state where a person has a right to be.”

This homeowner utilized his Second Amendment right to protect himself from a violent home intruder. Luckily, the state of Arizona has robust laws protecting the right to self-defense.

Jet fighters chase small plane in Washington area before it crashes in Virginia

WASHINGTON, June 4 (Reuters) – U.S. officials scrambled jet fighters in a supersonic chase of a light aircraft that violated airspace in the Washington D.C. area and later crashed into mountainous terrain in southwest Virginia, officials said.

The jet fighters prompted a sonic boom over the U.S. capital, causing consternation among people in Washington area, in an attempt to catch up with the errant Cessna Citation, officials said.

A Cessna aircraft crashed into mountainous terrain in southwest Virginia around the time the sonic boom was heard in the capital, the Federal Aviation Administration said. A Cessna Citation can carry seven to 12 passengers.

A U.S. official said the jet fighters did not cause the crash.

A separate source familiar with the matter said the Cessna was believed to be on autopilot and did not respond to authorities.

The Cessna took off from Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and was bound for Long Island MacArthur Airport in New York, about 50 miles (80 km) east of Manhattan, the FAA said in a statement, adding that it and the National Transportation Safety Board would investigate.

The crash occurred around 3:30 p.m. EDT (1930 GMT), the FAA said.

According to the flight-tracking website Flight Aware, the plane appeared to reach the New York area and made nearly a 180-degree turn, with the flight ending in Virginia.

Air National Guard F-16s were deployed from Joint Base Andrews, ABC News reported, citing an unnamed U.S. official. At least one military pilot saw that the Cessna pilot had passed out, ABC reported.

While rare, incidents involving unresponsive pilots are not unprecedented. Golfer Payne Stewart died in 1999 along with four others after the aircraft he was in streaked across thousands of miles with the pilot and passengers unresponsive. The plane eventually crashed in South Dakota with no survivors.

In the case of Stewart’s flight, the plane lost pressure, causing the occupants to lose consciousness because of oxygen deprivation.

Similarly, a small U.S. private plane with an unresponsive pilot crashed off the east coast of Jamaica in 2014 after veering far off its course toward southwest Florida and triggering a U.S. security alert that prompted a fighter jet escort.

On Sunday, the sonic boom caused consternation among many people in the Washington area who took to Twitter to report hearing a loud noise that shook the ground and walls. Several residents said they heard the noise as far away as northern Virginia and Maryland.

 

FYI:
Dad went through surgery like a champ

Originally scheduled for yesterday, but a major, multiple fatality, multiple injury accident had higher priority.

Modern anesthesia has progressed so much in the past few years that it has really surprised me, and while still a non-zero danger event is tolerated well by the elderly.

Now that he’s awake, he’s not so much of a happy camper, but as Chief Dan George put it: “That is the way things are.”
The long haul now begins as Dad & I get to find out just what’s involved in recovery and rehab from a hip replacement.