An in depth look at the 5th Circuit’s ruling today. Also this was not an en banc ruling, so expect it to go there next.

Fifth Circuit Holds People Can’t Be Disarmed Just Based on Civil Restraining Order

Judge James Ho concurs, adding “I write separately to point out that our Founders firmly believed in the fundamental role of government in protecting citizens against violence, as well as the individual right to keep and bear arms—and that these two principles are not inconsistent but entirely compatible with one another.”From U.S. v. Rahimi, decided today by the Fifth Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Cory Wilson, joined by Judges Edith Jones and James Ho:
 

The question presented in this case is not whether prohibiting the possession of firearms by someone subject to a domestic violence restraining order is a laudable policy goal. The question is whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), a specific statute that does so, is constitutional under the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. In the light of N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen (2022), it is not.

The court rejected the view that, under Heller and Bruen, legislatures can disarm anyone who isn’t a “law-abiding, responsible citizen[]”:

There is some debate on this issue. Compare Kanter v. Barr (7th Cir. 2019) (Barrett, J. dissenting), abrogated by Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111, with Binderup v. Att’y Gen. (3d Cir. 2016) (en banc) (Hardiman, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgments). As summarized by now-Justice Barrett, “one [approach] uses history and tradition to identify the scope of the right, and the other uses that same body of evidence to identify the scope of the legislature’s power to take it away.” The Government’s argument that Rahimi falls outside the community covered by the Second Amendment rests on the first approach. But it runs headlong into Heller and Bruen, which we read to espouse the second one.

Unpacking the issue, the Government’s argument fails because (1) it is inconsistent with Heller, Bruen, and the text of the Second Amendment, (2) it inexplicably treats Second Amendment rights differently than other individually held rights, and (3) it has no limiting principles….

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5th Circuit represent.

Fifth Circuit strikes down firearms prohibition under domestic violence restraining order.

The question presented in this case is not whether prohibiting the possession of firearms by someone subject to a domestic violence restraining order is a laudable policy goal.

The question is whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), a specific statute that does so, is constitutional under the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution.

In the light of N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022), it is not.

 

When they write articles like this, they merely indicate the title of their site is incorrect. They are not ‘good men’. And it begs the question: Which right will be the next one they decide the people should not have?

Uttering the Unutterable: Repeal the Second Amendment Now I uttered the unutterable, the ultimate taboo in U.S. political discourse.

I love life, and I love the people of my country far far far more than I value the “freedom” to bear arms. I don’t know if any “reforms” will really solve the problems of gun violence in the United States. In all actuality, I believe, therefore, that we must repeal the Second Amendment now!

There! I uttered the unutterable, the ultimate taboo in U.S. political discourse. But I am not running for public office or reelection. I am not expecting large payouts from the National Rifle Association or from the firearms manufacturers through their lobbyists.

As the horse once served as a primary means of transportation in earlier times, it now grazes and prances peacefully on rich pastures. Possibly during former moments in our history, we may have had reason to enact and enforce the Second Amendment of our great Constitution, but those bygone days have long since passed. Now we must put the Second Amendment out to pasture.

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FACT CHECK: Gavin Newsom Says ‘Permitless Carry Does Not Make You Safer’

CLAIM: In the lead-up to his February 1 push for more gun control, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) claimed, “Permitless carry does not make you safer.”

VERDICT: Partly False.

On June 7, 2017, Breitbart News relayed FBI data published by the NRA that showed two of the earliest permitless carry states, hereafter called constitutional carry states, were Alaska and Arizona. And both states saw their handgun murders decline when their concealed carry permit requirements were abolished.

The date showed Alaska’s handgun murder rate “declined after the state enacted [constitutional carry] in 2003.” Moreover, in the 14 years between the abolition of the permit requirement and 2017 “handgun murders…declined as a percentage of the total number of murders.”

A drop in handgun murders also took place in Arizona after that state abolished its concealed carry permit requirement in 2010.

More recently, the Maine Wire noted that crime fell in Maine after the state abolished its concealed carry permit requirement in 2015.

FBI data shows violent crime beginning a decline in 2016 that continued through 2020.

There are currently 25 states with constitutional carry. When there were only 13–Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming–the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) showed that data from the 13 states showed overall murder numbers fell from 4.49 to 4.31 post-constitutional carry enactment, and that violent crime fell from 331.5 to 318.2.

But murder levels can vary for a variety of reasons, and CPRC’s John Lott explains some of the numerous factors that are often at play:

Firearm homicide is not a good measure of the effect of Constitutional Carry laws because murders can be committed with other weapons as well as by hands and fists. Also, gun homicide data include justifiable homicides, including homicides by police in the line of duty. Justifiable homicides are benefits, not costs, and they might understandably increase when more citizens are allowed to defend themselves with guns. The FBI murder rate has neither of these problems and is a better test of the effect of constitutional carry laws. Nevertheless, my analysis finds that Constitutional Carry laws do not increase firearm homicide.

It should also be noted that Lott points out that constitutional carry helps to make the poor safer, by making self-defense affordable.

Lott adds:

Constitutional Carry will make it easier for poor people, who are the most likely victims of violent crime, to be able to defend themselves and their families. Costs matter; just compare the numbers in neighboring states, Illinois and Indiana. In Illinois, the total cost of getting a five-year permit is $450; there is no license fee in Indiana. While only 4% of Illinoisans have a concealed handgun permit, 22% of adults in Indiana already have one, the second-highest number of permits per capita.

Newsom’s claim is partly false.

February 2

1536 – Pedro de Mendoza founds Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1653 – New Amsterdam (later renamed The City of New York) is incorporated.

1709 – Alexander Selkirk is rescued after being shipwrecked on a desert island for over 4 years, inspiring Daniel Defoe’s adventure book Robinson Crusoe.

1848 – The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican-American War, is signed.

1876 – The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs of Major League Baseball is formed.

1887 – In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania the first Groundhog Day is observed.

1913 – Grand Central Terminal rail terminal, often called Grand Central Station, opens in New York City.

1925 – Dog sleds loaded with diphtheria serum reach Nome, Alaska,  inspiring the Iditarod race.

1934 – The Export-Import Bank of the United States, the official export credit agency of the federal government, is incorporated.

1943 – The Battle of Stalingrad comes to an end when Soviet troops accept the surrender of the last organized German troops in the city.

1980 – Reports surface that the FBI is targeting allegedly corrupt Congressmen in the Abscam operation.

1989 –  The last Soviet armored column leaves Kabul, Afghanistan ending the Soviet–Afghan War

2013 – Chris Kyle is murdered at a shooting range near Chalk Mountain, Texas, by a mentally disturbed veteran he was shooting with.

Anti-gun groups press Biden to issue executive action on “assault weapons”

We already know that Joe Biden is going to repeat his call for Congress to ban modern sporting rifles during next week’s State of the Union address. The real question is whether he’ll trot out his stale talking points about deer in Kevlar vests and the falsehood that you couldn’t own cannons when the Second Amendment was ratified.

We also know that a divided Congress is unlikely to implement a legislative gun ban, which is why a coalition of anti-gun groups is demanding that Biden direct the ATF to pursue a gun ban via regulation instead.

In a new letter to Biden, the groups say its time for the ATF to take a look at imported firearms to see if they pass the “sporting purposes” test created by the Gun Control Act of 1998; a move they hope will lead to the ban on the importation of many modern sporting rifles produced overseas.

And though the president doesn’t appear to have the votes for an assault weapons ban in Congress, the groups argue that Biden has tools at his disposal to further limit the proliferation of these guns in the U.S., including by fully enforcing the importation ban of foreign-made assault weapons that do not have a “sporting purpose.”

As Giffords notes in its memo, the ATF, which oversees the importation of guns in the U.S., “has not conducted a comprehensive review of semi-automatic assault rifles and handguns under the sporting purposes test” since the Clinton administration.

Giffords and the other gun control groups don’t want the ATF to merely conduct a review of currently imported firearms, but to “issue new criteria” to enforce the sporting purposes test. In doing so, however, they could be opening up a Pandora’s Box that leads to the demise of the “sporting purposes” test altogether.

In Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, the Supreme Court has made it clear that the fundamental purpose of the right to keep and bear arms is self-defense, not sport. Our ability to hunt, compete, or even recreate with a firearm is ancillary to our ability to use a gun to protect human life. Does the GCA’s “sporting purposes” test infringe on that right to keep and bear arms by prohibiting the importation of arms that are identical in nature to some of the most commonly-sold firearms in the United States, or does it merely impose a regulation on gun companies without directly impacting would-be gun owners?

Most of the litigation taking on the ATF’s rules banning bump stocks, re-labeling pistols with stabilizing braces “short-barreled rifles”, and declaring unfinished frames and receives to be “firearms” have avoided a direct challenge to the constitutionality of the Gun Control Act, primarily arguing instead that ATF’s rules violate the Administrative Procedures Act and create new law instead of merely interpreting existing regulations. However, if the Biden administration follows the demands of the gun control lobby and orders the ATF to review existing imports and establish new criteria for the “sporting purposes” test, that would provide a golden opportunity to challenge the legality of the test itself.

There are risks to that strategy for both sides, of course, and I’m not convinced that Biden will acquiesce to these demands. The gun control lobby has also been quietly advocating for the administration to re-classify large numbers of semi-automatic firearms (including many common handguns) as machine guns; an even broader proposal than what they’re publicly calling for in their demand letter to the White House. As I’ve said before, that would be the nuclear option for Biden, and could not only lead to the Supreme Court weighing in on bans on modern sporting rifles, but the underlying statutes being used to implement the unconstitutional actions.

For gun owners, the concern is that the Court might not be ready or willing to nuke the GCA, either in whole or in part, and could even end up upholding the gun grab on the flimsiest of legal theories.

It’s not up to Second Amendment advocates to chart Joe Biden’s course on gun control over the next two years, and frankly, given that the gun control lobby itself hasn’t had much luck convincing him on things like establishing a White House czar on “gun violence”, I don’t know that it’s up to groups like Everytown or Giffords either.

What I do know is that Biden’s anti-gun ideology isn’t just for show or a position he trots out for the press when circumstances dictate. He’s a true believer in banning our way to safety at the expense of fundamental civil rights, and as he sinks further into lame-duck status an administrative gun grab might start to look more attractive. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last week that the administration will “continue to pursue executive actions” in the future, and though she declined to offer any specifics I think we know that there are several options on the table… including the nuclear one

Move to restrict minors with guns gains traction in Missouri House

The legislation is House Bill 301.

JEFFERSON CITY — The gun-friendly Missouri House appears to be settling on one new firearm limit: restricting minors from possessing guns in public without adult supervision.

The limit was included in wide-ranging crime legislation by Rep. Lane Roberts, R-Joplin, following a recommendation by a bipartisan working group appointed by House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres.

“Our state is pretty fanatical in our defense of the Second Amendment, and I certainly don’t want to diminish that, but this kind of conduct is not what the Second Amendment was meant to protect,” Roberts told the House Crime Prevention and Public Safety Committee on Thursday.

The working group, made up of three Republicans and three Democrats, unanimously recommended legislation to prevent minors from carrying guns in public, along with several other measures aimed at public safety.

Democrats on the panel included Reps. Marlon Anderson and Donna Baringer of St. Louis, and Robert Sauls of Independence. Republicans included Roberts, as well as Reps. Ron Copeland of Salem and John Black of Marshfield.

A recommendation allowing for a special prosecutor for high-crime areas such as St. Louis has generated the most attention.

But minors in possession of firearms became an issue following the state’s passage of “constitutional carry” legislation in 2016.

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Today, February 1

1861 – Texas secedes from the United States.

1865 – President Abraham Lincoln signs the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution into effect.

1893 – Thomas Edison finishes construction of the first motion picture studio in West Orange, New Jersey.

1942 – The U.S. Navy conducts the Marshalls–Gilberts raids, the first offensive action by the United States against Japanese forces in the Pacific Theater.

1950 – The prototype of the MiG-17 makes its first flight

1968 – During the Tet offensive; In Saigon, National Police Chief Nguyễn Ngọc Loan summarily executes Viet Cong Captain Nguyễn Văn Lém  for murdering Lt Colonel Nguyễn Tuan along with his mother, his wife and 5 of their 6 children.

1974 – A fire in the 25-story Joelma Building in São Paulo, Brazil kills 189 people and injures another 293.

1979 – Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns to Tehran after nearly 15 years in exile.

1991 – A runway collision between US Air Flight 1493,  a Boeing 737, and SkyWest Flight 5569, a Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner, at Los Angeles International Airport results in the deaths of 35 people, and injuries to 30 others of the total 102 passengers and crews aboard.

2002 – Daniel Pearl, American journalist and South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal, kidnapped January 23, 2002, is beheaded and mutilated by his moslem captors.

2003 – Unknowingly damaged during launch, Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry of mission STS-107, killing all 7 astronauts aboard.

2004 – In a stampede at the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, 251 moslems are trampled to death and another 244 injured.

So, those who want to ban guns from the citizenry are liars.
Yes, we know that.

Fact-Check: Mass Shootings Actually Increased During Federal ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban

A widely cited study used to push for more state ‘assault weapons’ bans is flawed and does not show that the 1994 federal ban saved lives.

“Assault weapons” ban proponents say that such bans will save lives. A recent opinion column published in the Chicago Sun-Times claims that the risk of dying in a mass shooting was 70 percent lower during the 1994-2004 federal assault weapons ban. The column was published while the Illinois state legislature was debating a state-wide assault weapons ban, which passed a few weeks ago.

The study on which that claim was based is flawed and its conclusions unreliable. Yet gun-control advocates such as the Giffords Law Center, Everytown for Gun Safety, and Sandy Hook Promise continue to use the study as they push for more assault weapons bans like the one in Illinois. Legislators, media reports, and opinion writers have cited the study, and the column published in the Chicago Sun-Times has appeared in several media outlets.

The study was produced by Charles DiMaggio, lead author; Michael Klein, the opinion column’s author; and seven other medical professionals. It examined data from three open-source mass shooting databases. The study identified 44 mass shootings from 1981 through 2017 in which four or more fatalities were reported (not including the shooter), resulting in 501 fatalities. It determined that 34 of these shootings were committed with so-called assault weapons, which accounted for 430 (86 percent) of the fatalities.

The study found that mass shooting deaths decreased during the years the federal ban was in effect. It claimed that had the federal ban been in effect for the entire period from 1981 through 2017, it might have prevented 314 of the 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the non-ban years.

Defining ‘Assault Weapons’

Measuring the effect of the federal assault weapons ban requires distinguishing mass shootings with assault weapons from mass shootings with non-banned weapons, such as handguns. After all, the point of an assault weapons ban is to reduce mass shootings with the banned firearms.

There is no consistent legal definition of “assault weapon,” so one must look to how each law banning such firearms defines them. An “assault weapon” under the 1994 federal ban included both specific firearms by name and any semiautomatic firearm capable of accepting a detachable magazine and having two or more features such as a folding or telescoping stock, pistol grip, barrel shroud, flash hider, or threaded barrel. Subsequently enacted state and local bans typically require only one such additional feature.

To identify whether a mass shooting occurred with an assault weapon, the DiMaggio study’s authors made no attempt to determine whether the weapons used actually met the 1994 ban’s definition of “assault weapon.” Instead, they simply searched the databases’ text for “AK,” “AR,” “MCX,” “assault,” and “semiautomatic.” (Klein claimed in his column that the authors “chose to use the strict federal definition of an assault weapon,” but this methodology belies that statement.)

Although all assault weapons are semiautomatic, not all semiautomatics are assault weapons. A semiautomatic firearm fires only one round with each pull of the trigger and automatically loads the next round after firing. The federal ban did not apply to all semiautomatic firearms, as the study’s authors assumed, but only to those with detachable magazines and two or more of the specified features. The vast majority of semiautomatic handguns do not have the additional features required by the federal ban.

Study Includes Non-Banned, Common Handguns in Statistics

Using “semiautomatic” as a search identifier vastly overstated the number of mass shootings committed with so-called assault weapons. The study’s weapon data set for the 34 incidents shows that in at least 20 (almost 60 percent) of the shootings, non-banned semiautomatic handguns — in 9mm, .45, and other popular calibers — were wrongly identified as assault weapons. This obviously skewed the study’s results.

Common semiautomatic handguns should never be confused with “assault weapons.” No federal or state assault weapons ban has ever included such handguns.

Perhaps the study’s authors were confused about what constituted an “assault weapon.” This is unsurprising. The term “assault weapon” was popularized in the late 1980s not to address a particular problem, but to enliven a waning gun-control movement by confusing and scaring the public about firearms. A report from gun-control advocacy group The Violence Policy Center explains:

Assault weapons—just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms—are a new topic. The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.

The study’s misidentification error was pointed out in a public letter to column writer Klein and his study co-authors by University of Massachusetts Professor Louis Klarevas, a well-known academic expert on mass shootings and author of “Rampage Nation: Securing America from Mass Shootings.” After reviewing the study’s data set, Klarevas challenged the study’s conclusions based on this “large number of misclassifications.”

The authors responded: “We make no claim to have retroactively determined whether these guns would have been illegal under the original statutory language.” But both their study and Klein’s column are about the effectiveness of the 1994 federal assault weapons ban.

Ignoring the need for fidelity to what the statute actually banned in determining whether that statute was effective, they claimed that assault weapon definitions don’t really matter, but only the “main message” of the study, which is that “fewer people died in mass shooting incidents during the ban period.”

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Still Need Proof of LGBT Grooming in Schools?

According to Wikipedia, “LGBT grooming” is a conspiracy theory perpetuated by “the far right.”

“Since the early 2020s, conservatives and members of the far-right, mostly in the United States, have falsely accused LGBT people, as well as their allies and progressives in general, of systematically using LGBT-positive education and campaigns for LGBT rights as a method of child grooming,” claims Wikipedia. “These accusations and conspiracy theories are characterized by experts as baseless, homophobic and transphobic, and as examples of moral panic.”

Except, they’re not baseless at all. We’ve been reporting on LGBT child grooming for some time now at PJ Media, and we know it’s not a conspiracy theory. The reason why the radical left opposes the use of the word “groomer” when we discuss Drag Queen Story Hours, transgender closets, and porn in school libraries is because the word is accurate. They don’t want us to believe that it’s happening, but it is.

The latest story comes out of Portland, Maine, where a male middle school substitute teacher who identifies as transgender intentionally shared his highly sexualized TikTok account with sixth-grade students.

According to a report from Reduxx, Chris “Lydia” Lamere “wrote his TikTok handle on the whiteboard at the front of the classroom and encouraged students to ‘check it out.’” Students proceeded to visit his page and started circulating his videos, which were suggestive and sexual in nature.

We know this is not an isolated incident. Stuff like this is happening across the country, and yet, the liberal media and big tech want to pretend that LGBT grooming is a conspiracy we just made up. It would be nice if it were made up. It would be nice not to have to worry about whether degenerates are deliberately exposing our kids to sexual content or trying to recruit them into the trans cult. According to a report from The Maine Wire, the local NBC News affiliate covered for Lamere by falsely reporting that students just happened to “discover” his TikTok account. So, not only are groomers infiltrating public schools, but the media is actually refusing to tell the real story.

I don’t know if this is a response to the previous sophistry, or just an opposite viewpoint, but I like it.

To the editor: As a proud Asian American veteran, I know that evil comes in many forms and in many languages. Evil does not understand reason, only violence.

California has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation. Maybe it’s time to empower the people to defend themselves against evil.

California already requires background checks, waiting periods, testing requirements and more. Repeating the same steps expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity.

John Tor, Los Angeles

So, is it ignorance, stupidity, or simple mendacity?

Letter proves some just don’t get Second Amendment

The Second Amendment sure looks easy enough to understand. Some have tried to make an art out of misreading it, of course, by focusing on the militia clause at the beginning, rather than literally any other part of the text.

Still others don’t even get that far. They know roughly what the amendment is supposed to be about, but they don’t really get that it draws a hard line in the sand on guns.

Like the writer of this letter to the editor:

I understand that many citizens cling to their individual right to bear arms, as guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment. However, there have been many instances in which people have sacrificed their rights or been inconvenienced in order to save lives.

Many people were upset when laws were passed requiring seat belts and motorcycle helmets. After 9/11, there were many policies enacted that effectively restricted some of our freedoms. I remember years ago a man tried to board an airplane with a bomb in his shoe. Because of that, we must remove our shoes to be screened at airports.

The writer, unsurprisingly, goes on to call for gun control.

Look, there’s a big difference between seat belt and helmet laws and gun control. There’s also a huge difference between dealing with TSA and gun control.

None of those laws actually interfere with your rights, particularly with regard to one’s constitutionally protected rights. They might make you do a few things you’d rather not, but you can still generally go anywhere you want.

Gun control is nothing like that at all. This isn’t an inconvenience, it’s the state determining what we can and cannot do with regard to protecting ourselves and our families.

This letter writer starts by talking about the mass shootings in California, but he fails to note the very laws he’s demanding simply didn’t work. They didn’t stop either shooting.

What we can see here isn’t a cogent statement of reality, but someone who clearly doesn’t understand the Second Amendment at all.

Of course, this is a California resident, likely one who voted for Gavin “Suicide Pact” Newsom, so we shouldn’t expect much from him.

But the underlying problem is the same. This individual isn’t some raving exception who doesn’t comprehend what the masses get. He’s representative of a large number of people who really do think gun control is little more than an inconvenience.

For them, it’s easy to dismiss the bloody history of the 20th century with its genocides as something that simply couldn’t happen here. I’m sure Jews living in the Weimar Republic thought the same thing, or those living in Cambodia prior to the Khmer Rogue taking over, or the Armenians living under Turkish rule. They likely thought nothing would happen to them, and they were correct right up until the moment they weren’t.

Guns in this nation make damn sure we don’t have to be that trusting and hopeful.

Then we have the fact that most guns used on a day-to-day basis appear to be used defensively. Good people use these guns–the very guns the writer wants to see banned–to protect themselves.

Removing those guns? That’s not an inconvenience. Over a long enough time, it’s a death sentence for someone.

Billings woman shoots two men during attack outside residence

BILLINGS – A Billings woman shot two men who attacked her outside her residence.

Billings police said Monday the 25-year-old woman shot the two men, ages 29 and 37, in an apparent case of self-defense.

“As far as the victim using a firearm for self-defense the law is pretty clear on people’s right to use self-defense when they can articulate a threat to themselves or others,” police Lt. Matt Lennick said in a statement about the incident to Q2. “Like all cases of this nature the case will be reviewed by the County Attorney’s Office and they could bring fourth criminal charges against the shooter if they deemed the threat didn’t meet the level of force used.”

The shooting happened at about 12:45 p.m. Saturday in an alley in the 2000 block of Cook Avenue. Police described the incident on social media as a “possible robbery with shots fired.”

“The report indicates the suspects attacked the victim at her car outside of her residence,” Lennick said in the statement. “The victim pulled her concealed firearm and both suspects were shot.”

One of the men who was shot remained at the scene and the other fled the area but arrived later at a local hospital, Lennick said. Neither of the men were armed.

“Due to their injuries, neither suspect was arrested or charged immediately, but the case was sent to the County Attorney’s Office for review and official charges,” he said.

Missoula Attorney Paul Ryan is familiar with Montana’s justifiable use of force laws. He represented Markus Kaarma in 2014 after he shot and killed a German exchange student whom he caught trespassing in his garage in Missoula.

“People think of self-defense or things like that, but the actual legal term is justifiable use of force,” Ryan said in a web interview Monday afternoon. “The law allows you to defend yourself with the same force that they’re coming with, essentially.”

Kaarma is currently serving a 70-year sentence after being found guilty of deliberate homicide. Ryan said all of the facts — especially location — are significant in making decisions regarding such cases.

“There’s different standards depending on location,” Ryan said. “For example, there’s different standards if you’re in your house versus outside your house. There’s different standards if you’re defending property versus your person.”

Montana law says a person is justified in using force, but only if the person reasonably believes the force is necessary to prevent imminent death or serious bodily harm.

The Sky is falliiiinnnggg!!! Blood will flow in the streets! Aauugghh!
What else is new with these mental midgets?

FL ‘Constitutional Carry’ Bill Ignites Anti-Gun Hysteria

Florida anti-gunners moved quickly Monday to attack a proposal that would make the Sunshine State number 26 on the roster of states with so-called “constitutional carry” statutes, following the announcement that Republicans will introduce House Bill 543, which will allow lawful concealed carry without a license.

The measure is being introduced by State Rep. Chuck Brannan (R-Lake City) with a companion bill in the Senate coming from Sen. Jake Collins (R-Tampa). The announcement came Monday morning from House Speaker Paul Renner (R-Palm Coast), surrounded by other officials including several lawmen.

But the gun prohibition lobby almost immediately launched an effort to defeat the legislation. According to WFLA News, Giffords Florida called the measure “reckless” and claimed it will allow almost anyone to carry a gun in public, without any training or background check.”

However, there is nothing in the bill that allows a felon or anyone else disqualified from owning a firearm to carry it concealed. There is also nothing in the proposal about open carry. This is strictly a concealed carry measure.

 

The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported a group called Prevent Gun Violence Florida is claiming in a statement “Permitless carry laws endanger the public by removing vital safety measures designed to ensure that those carrying concealed weapons have been properly trained and vetted.”

But Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms called such rhetoric “nonsense.”

“The gun prohibition lobby will say anything to convince people permitless carry is an awful idea,” Gottlieb stated. “Remember, they also predicted blood flowing in the streets when they opposed shall-issue concealed carry laws from being passed a generation ago. All they could talk about was minor fender-benders and neighborhood disputes turning into gunfights.

“It’s the same rhetoric and the same nonsense all over again,” he observed.

According to the Tallahassee Democrat, Florida now has 2.6 million active concealed carry licenses. In its report, the newspaper noted, “The permitless carry approach backed by state Republican leaders doesn’t change current laws for buying a gun. But it would lift the need for a state permit with firearms training.”

When and How We Should Teach Our Children About Armed Defense

I write about armed defense every week. We’ve covered many stories where young men and women defended themselves or their family. We’ve talked around the issue of teenagers and guns, but let’s look at it directly. When should we teach our children about firearms? The obvious answer is to teach your children when it is the safest thing to do. There are risks on both sides. Fortunately, we make similar decisions about our children’s education all the time. This article isn’t the last work on any of the issues, but I hope it is a good starting place.

As a responsible parent, we have to teach our children what to do if they see an unsecured firearm. We have to choose when and how to tell our children that we have firearms in our home. We have to establish the rules about when our children are allowed to touch our guns. As they grow older, we have to teach our children to be responsible around firearms. Later, we have to teach them when and how to use a firearm as part of our family’s safety plan. Those are a few of the milestones, but there are lessons in between. Other parents have been there before.

What is new is that many families who have a gun today did not grow up with guns and are entering the firearms culture for the first time. We’ve lived with guns for several centuries so there are many well worn paths. To take some of the emotional heat out of the issue, this isn’t an all or nothing proposition. The alternatives are not ignorance about firearms or having our 15-year olds carrying concealed in public. Teaching and learning about firearms comes in a number of small steps on the way to self-defense. You’ve done things like this with your children already.

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January 31

1606 –  4 conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament, Thomas Wintour, Ambrose Rookwood, Robert Keyes, and Guy Fawkes are executed for treason by being hanged, drawn and quartered.

1814 – Gervasio Antonio de Posadas becomes Supreme Director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata in present day Argentina.

1846 – After a series of reciprocal attacks termed the the ‘Milwaukee Bridge War’, due to differences on how a damaged bridge over the Milwaukee River would be repaired, the towns of Juneautown and Kilbourntown on opposite sides of the river, unify to create the City of Milwaukee.

1862 – Alvan Graham Clark discovers the white dwarf star Sirius B, a companion of Sirius A, while testing an 18.5 inch refractor telescope for the Dearborn Observatory at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

1865 – The United States Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery and submits it to the states for ratification.

1944 – American forces land on Kwajalein Atoll and other islands in the Japanese occupied Marshall Islands.
During the Anzio campaign, the 1st Ranger Battalion is destroyed behind enemy lines, with only 6 out of 767 soldiers escaping being killed, or captured, in battle at Cisterna, Italy.

1945 – US Army Private Eddie Slovik is executed for desertion, the first such execution of an American soldier since the Civil War.

1950 – President Truman authorizes the development of thermonuclear weapons.

1957 – Over Pacoima, California,  8 people; the pilot of the fighter, the 4 crew members on the airliner and 3 students on a school playground where parts of the airliner crashed into, are killed following the mid air collision between a Douglas DC-7 airliner and a Northrop F-89 Scorpion fighter jet.

1968 – During the Tet Offensive, Viet Cong guerrillas attack the United States embassy in Saigon, killing 5 embassy personnel before being killed.

1971 – Apollo 14 Astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell, aboard a Saturn V, lift off for a mission to the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon, to perform the exploration of the aborted Apollo 13 mission the previous year.

1991 – Coalition ground forces begin the final assault to retake Khafji, Saudi Arabia from occupying Iraqi Army troops.

2000 – Alaska Airlines Flight 261, a McDonnell Douglas MD-83, crashes in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Point Mugu, California, killing all 88 passengers and crew aboard.

2001 – In the Netherlands, a Scottish court convicts Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and acquits another Libyan citizen for their part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.

2020 – The United Kingdom officially exits membership within the European Union