Today, January 2

1492 – The truce effecting the surrender of Granada, the last Moor stronghold in Spain, comes into force, completing the 700+ year long Reconquista.

1777 – American forces under the command of George Washington repulse a British counterattack at the Battle of the Assunpink Creek near Trenton, New Jersey.

1788 – Georgia becomes the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution

1791 – Lenape and Wyandot warriors stage an attack at the Big Bottom settlement along the Muskingum river in modern day southeast Ohio, killing several settlers, marking the beginning of the Northwest Indian War.

1920 – U.S. Attorney General Palmer orders a second series of raids that began in November with another 6000 suspected communists and anarchists being arrested.

1942 – Fritz Joubert Duquesne and his German spy ring, the largest in U.S. history, are convicted of espionage.
Manila is declared an ‘open city’ and surrenders to invading Japanese forces during World War II.

1949 – Luis Muñoz Marín is inaugurated as the first elected Governor of Puerto Rico.

1967 – Ronald Reagan is sworn in as Governor of California.

1974 – President Nixon signs the National U.S. 55mph Speed Limit bill into law.

1975 – President Ford signs The Federal Rules of Evidence bill into law.

2004 – The NASA probe Stardust successfully flies past Comet 81P/Wild 2, collecting samples of comet dust that are returned to Earth.

 

PRINCIPLES ARE A GRAND THING – A GUEST POST – BY JOHN RINGO

This was pulled from a long twitter thread on the subject of the PRINCIPLES! Crowd and their insistence that DeSantis shouldn’t have lead a charge against Disney, ‘Don’t call them groomers! That’s naughty!’ because PRINCIPLES!

And I’m going to use Dien Bien Phu as an example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dien_Bien_Phu

At Dien Bien Phu, the French Foreign Legion was slowly surrounded by the Viet Min. The Communists slowly took high ground position after high ground position. At first the French tried occasionally to push them out and occasionally succeeded.

But eventually the Viet had all the high ground with artillery sited on the base.

At first the shelling was a nuisance. Then it got heavier. More and more guns, more anti-aircraft.

Eventually, the French were pounded into surrender.

The Left has been ‘boiling the frog’ for a long time and it has mostly been by weaponizing empathy around ‘cultural issues.’ The Dems have always been win/lose against Republicans but the Left has taken over every major cultural high ground. Academia. Media. Entertainment. Now major corporations.

And the effect has been horrible for conservatives. (And for everyone else I might add.)

‘Practically everyone with a PhD is a progressive! So that shows we’re smarter than you stupid conservatives!’

For decades it has been a major pain in the ass to be a conservative on a college campus. It was bad in the 1980s AT UGA. ‘If you believe in God you’re too stupid to be a scientist.’

If you create a massively hostile environment for people, deliberately destroy their career, you don’t get to then say ‘We’re the smart ones cause we have all the advanced degrees.’

You don’t get to say ‘We’re the only creators because no conservatives can write’ when you deliberately ensure that cons can’t get any awards.

Except that’s exactly what the Left does.

And, remember, lack of a college degree on average cuts long term earnings substantially. Which means less money on the right all things being equal. If you look at the graph of right wing money vs left over time the right has been losing more and more ground. Which is one of the few reasons the Left has been able to advance. It’s sure as hell not their insane, failed, policies.

The Right are the French, being continually bombarded. By Marxists at the least if not communists. The Left has all the high ground. We’re damned near at the point we’re going to be forced to surrender. And we’re at Will To Power. The Left has gotten so powerful, it’s openly defiant of any ‘norms’ or ‘equality’ or even laws.

When the Left burned cities, 99% got a slap on the wrist and rarely jail time. Cons go wandering around the capital and they get a vast panoply of human rights violations against them. Obama was the most corrupt administration in recent history except Biden. But they don’t get investigated. Cons get dragged out of their house in the middle of the night by SWAT teams and shown off to the media over obscure regulations. Trump was investigated repeatedly and illegally for things that were never even CONSIDERED worthy of investigation in previous administrations.

Hillary’s pay to play scams are fine. A conservative gets a parking ticket and they’re destroyed.

Why? Why does the Left get away with all of this? Why does nobody stop them?

James Carville said it recently in the reverse: ‘Nobody is afraid of the Democrats!’

Nobody has been afraid of the Republicans in my LIFETIME. Lois Lerner can laugh at a congressional committee the Republicans are running and gets away with it. Strosz can smirk and preen. Bureaucrats and businessmen flat out lie to Republican leadership and nothing happens.

But they don’t do that to Democrats. Why?

Because if you do, the Left will kill you. They will f’ing DESTROY YOU.

See Joe the Plumber or any number of other examples of ‘nobodies’ that were destroyed for questioning the Left.

So why doesn’t the Right (metaphorically) kill people who disrespect their leadership? Why do the bureaucrats and businesses think they can screw over the Right but not the Left?

PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES!

The PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! crowd has been a Conservative Surrender Chorus for as long as I can remember.

You can’t attack a bureaucracy that is treating Republicans like something under their shoe! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES!

You can’t cut funding to academia just because they’re tweeting #KillAllRepublicans. PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES!

You can’t smack down a company that involves itself, overtly and partisanly, in politics! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES!

Why?

It goes back to Buckley and National Review.

Buckley set out to create a ‘new’ conservative movement after HUAC and McCarthy burned out. They would purge the icky John Birch, anti-communist, Goldwater wing of the party and campaign on PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES!

‘Take the high road.’ ‘If you get into the mud with a pig you get covered in mud and only the pig enjoys it.’

If you take the high road, you’re silhouetting yourself and you’re just going to get shot.

If you don’t get in the mud with the pig, it takes you out at the knees and gores nine kinds of stuff out of you.

But PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES!

Which got us to here. Teachers are openly grooming kids and convincing them they’re… something they are not. Children are being permanently chemically castrated for kicks and money. Two weeks to flatten the curve turned into two years of random medical tyranny. The sitting President that most represented the Right, far more than the eGOP, was investigated over a hoax THAT THE FBI KNEW WAS A HOAX.

The list goes on and on.

We’re in the bunkers, being pounded by artillery. Every time some leader on the Right tries to break out, tries to rally the troops, they get bombarded by fire from every direction.

Reagan was constantly bombarded. Newt to the point he was destroyed. Tea Party was taken out by investigations and the IRS refusing to process their paperwork. Then the leadership was audited to death.

We could fight that. We could rally round a flag. But the worst part. The part that is absolutely INFURIATING, is the Surrender Chorus.

YOU CAN’T FIGHT BACK! THAT’S ICKY! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES!

Stay in the bunker. Learn to cope. The dinner parties are loverly.

I’m sick to death of the principles crowd. David French, leader of the Conservative Surrender Chorus, once tweeted “If I supported Trump, I’d never be invited to another dinner party.”

If your politics is based on whether you get invites to dinner parties, you don’t have ‘Principles’. You have the opposite.

We’re in the bunkers being bombarded. We’re Dien Bin Phu. We’re Mariupol. We’re overrun and bleeding to death.

But the worst part. The absolute worst. Is the TrueConservatives that every time we start to take a position quite frankly stab us in the back shouting PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES!

If you’re more worried about PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! than @libsoftiktok being doxed, if you’re more worried about PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! than a mulit-billion dollar supposedly ‘family friendly’ corporation with loads of largesse given to it by the taxpayers coming out, very publicly, in favor of chemical castration of children…

Then you can take those principles and shove them where the sun don’t shine.

And when the Left learns to fear the Right, when the woke corporation boards gulp and go ‘Okay, we’ll stay out of it’, when the bureaucracy comes to heel…

Then you can be nice. Then you can take the high road.

Until then…

DRIVE YOUR ENEMIES BEFORE YOU! TAKE THE TALLY OF THEIR SLAIN AND THE LAMENTATION OF THEIR WOMEN!

And, yes, salt the earth.

When that is done, we can have a discussion about ‘principles.’

Today, January 1

45 BC – The Julian calendar takes effect as the civil calendar of the Roman Republic, establishing January 1 as the new date of the new year.

404 – Saint Telemachus tries to stop a gladiatorial fight in a Roman amphitheatre, and is stoned to death by the crowd. This act impresses the Christian Emperor Honorius, who issues a historic ban on gladiatorial fights.

1502 – The present-day location of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is first explored by the Portuguese.[12]

1700 – Russia begins using the Anno Domini era instead of the Anno Mundi era of the Byzantine Empire.

1773 – The hymn that becomes known as “Amazing Grace”, previously titled “1 Chronicles 17:16–17, Faith’s Review and Expectation”, is first used to accompany a sermon led by John Newton in the town of Olney, Buckinghamshire, England.

1776 – During the Revolutionary War, Norfolk, Virginia, is burned to the ground by combined Royal Navy and Continental Army action.
– General George Washington hoists the first United States flag, the Continental Union Flag, at Prospect Hill.

1781 During the Revolutionary War, 1500 soldiers of the 6th Pennsylvania Regiment under General Anthony Wayne’s command rebel against the Continental Army’s winter camp in Morristown, New Jersey in the Pennsylvania Line Mutiny.

1801 – Ceres, the largest and first known object in the Asteroid belt, is discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi.[31]

1808 – The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807, 2 Stat. 426      Pub. L. 9–22 comes into effect, banning the importation of slaves into the U.S.

1818 – Mary Shelley anonymously publishes the pioneering work of science fiction The Modern Prometheus, commonly known as , Frankenstein in London.

1847 – The Sisters of Mercy from Ireland, found the “Mercy” Hospital  Pittsburgh

1863 – During the War between the states, the Emancipation Proclamation takes effect in Confederate states.

1885 – Twenty-five nations adopt Sandford Fleming’s proposal for standard time (and also, time zones).[45]

1892 – Ellis Island begins processing immigrants into the United States.

1898 – New York, New York annexes land from surrounding counties, creating the City of Greater New York. The four initial boroughs, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and The Bronx, are joined on January 25 by Staten Island to create the modern city of five boroughs.

1902 – The first American college football bowl game, the Rose Bowl between Michigan and Stanford, is held in Pasadena, California.

1914 – The St. Petersburg–Tampa (SPT) Airboat Line becomes the world’s first scheduled airline to use a winged aircraft. Providing service provided service between St. Petersburg, Florida and neighboring Tampa across Tampa Bay

1932 – The United States Post Office Department issues a set of 12 stamps commemorating the 200th anniversary of George Washington’s birth.

1942 – The Declaration by United Nations is signed by twenty-six nations.

1947 – The American and British occupation zones in Allied-occupied Germany, after World War II, merge to form the Bizone, which later (with the French zone) became part of West Germany.

1958 – The European Economic Community is established.[72]

1959 –The government of Cuba, under Fulgencio Batista, is overthrown by Fidel Castro’s forces.

1970 – The defined beginning of Unix time starts, at 00:00:00.

1971 – Cigarette advertisements are banned on American television.

1979 – The Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations and Taiwan Relations Act enter into force. Through the Communiqué, the United States establishes normal diplomatic relations with China and guarantees military support for Taiwan.

1983 – The ARPANET officially changes to using TCP/IP, the Internet Protocol, effectively creating the Internet.

1984 – The original American Telephone & Telegraph Company is divested of its 22 Bell System companies as a result of the settlement of the 1974 United States Department of Justice antitrust suit against AT&T.

1985 – Eastern Air Lines Flight 980, a Boeing 727, on a scheduled international flight from Asunción, Paraguay, to Miami, Florida, while descending towards La Paz, Bolivia, for a scheduled stopover, crashes into Mount Illimani, killing all 29 people on board.

1988 – The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is formed, creating the largest Lutheran denomination in the United States.

1989 – The Montreal Protocol comes into force, stopping the use of chemicals contributing to ozone depletion in the atmosphere.

1993 – By mutual accord, Czechoslovakia is divided into the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic.

1994 – The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) comes into effect.

1995 – The World Trade Organization comes into being.

1998 – Argentinian physicist Juan Maldacena publishes a landmark paper initiating the study of AdS/CFT (anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory) correspondence, which links string theory and quantum gravity.

1999 – The Euro currency is introduced in 11 member nations of the European Union.

2011 – A bomb explodes as Coptic Christians in Alexandria, Egypt, leave a new year service, killing 23 people.

2024 – A 7.5 Mww  earthquake strikes the western coast of Japan, killing more than 500 people and injuring over 1,000 others.
– Disney’s copyright protection on Steamboat Willie and the original Mickey Mouse expires as they enter the public domain.[118]

2025 – In New Orleans, Louisiana, 14 people are killed and 35 others injured during a vehicle-ramming and shooting attack by a moslem man inspired by the terrorist group ISIS, who was killed in a shoot-out with police.

More of Sun-Tzu’s advice to know your enemy

This is what passes for ‘liberal’ these days.
A wanna-be tyrant with a minimal IQ who somehow believes he’s  discovered an as yet never postulated way to achieve his goal.

The Second amendment is not, and never had been, a permission to allow the People to do anything. It ‘gives’ nothing. It is in no way a ‘the people may’. It declares rights and restricts goobermint power over those rights.
The People already have the right not just to keep and bear arms, but to also make them, right along with the accoutrements and ammunition necessary for their use.
Even this latest ‘ghost gun’ regulation by the bureaucraps at BATFE does nothing to stop a person from making their own guns.

The Second amendment is, as clearly stated by the Bill Of Rights own preamble – quoted below – is a restriction on goobermint power, not on the rights of the people

The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.

The author’s mindless idea is that of the ignoramus who was never taught, or slept through their course in, U.S. Civics. That also goes for many of the people commenting there. Either that, or they have an ulterior motive, a disarmament agenda for their political enemies, because unless they disarm them, they can’t deal with them the way all tyrants want to.

Read Second Amendment Literally: Ban Making and Selling Guns

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

A fully contextual reading of the Second Amendment tells us that the Founding Fathers protected the right to bear arms for the sole purpose of supporting a well-regulated militia to keep America free and secure. But various gun cranks and judges have dismissed that prefatory clause and read all sorts of non-original intent into the right to bear arms—self-defense, shooting government officials we don’t like, yadda yadda.

So let’s ignore the preface and focus strictly and literally on the operative clause, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. (I’m also going to ignore that erroneous comma—a comma should never separate a subject and a predicate unless there is some intervening descriptive phrase or dependent clause.)

The Second Amendment says we may have guns. It says we may carry guns.

The Second Amendment does not say we may make guns.

It does not say we may sell guns.

It does not say that we may box up a gun and mail it across state lines.

We could shut down every gun factory and store and dealer in America today and not violate the Second Amendment. We already have 393 million firearms, more than enough to allow every living American to carry a gun. If you have a gun, you can keep it. You just can’t buy any more or sell the ones you have.

Ah, but what if your gun breaks and you want another one? Or what if you grow up in a household that chooses not to bear arms but then decide when you grow up, you want to be a hero like Kyle Rittenhouse? You can’t exercise your Second Amendment right if you can’t get your hands on a gun? To keep and bear an arm, don’t you have to be able to buy a gun or build your own from bamboo, charcoal, sulfur, and diamonds?

Well, if governments are instituted among men to secure our rights, then the government can secure our Second Amendment right by producing arms—just contract Sig Sauer to crank out a few million more M17s and M18s—and distributing them at local police stations or Army recruiting offices to every citizen willing and able to carry one.  No right is absolute, of course: the government can and should decline to hand free guns to people who are drunk, crazy, angry, or elsewise identifiably dangerous. But if the government ensures that every able-bodied and responsible American who desires to keep and bear an arm can get an arm, then there is no need for private, extra-constitutional gun-running.

The Second Amendment has been perverted by profit-seekers. The Second Amendment does not protect gun commerce. End gun commerce, and we’ll defuse the fear– and machismo-stoking marketing that drives our destructive gun culture.

Use These Five Easy Tricks to Identify the Marxist in the Room.

People are waking up to the Marxist onslaught facing our nation. If you still don’t see the pile of bolshie we are up against, I suggest you read this brilliant four-part series by Larry Alex Taunton on Klaus Schwab, his not-at-all secret commie plans for global power, and, more importantly, just how close he is to succeeding.

Communism comes disguised as virtue. Rarely does a despot announce, “I’m here to control every aspect of every life I chose not to murder,” though Schwab is pretty upfront about his planned fascism. Actually, Hitler was too.

Look for communism masquerading as morality in the forms of:

  • Black Lives Matter
  • Critical race theory
  • “Trans rights”
  • Climate change
  • ESG–Environmental, Social and Governance

All of these pretend to help the helpless, but in America, no one is defenseless.

Continue reading “”

There is no ‘common ground’ with those who advocate for gun control.

If looking for common ground on guns, this ain’t it

Anti-gunners love to talk about trying to find “common ground” on gun control. They don’t want to just do what we can agree with, they just see that as a starting point. In time, they want to push what’s acceptable to a point that they could never get away with unless they start with something much easier to sell.

So, they start with something they can get passed.

A recent op-ed attempts to discuss that common ground, but folks, this ain’t it.

There can be no debate that what we are doing for gun safety in this country isn’t working. While there is debate over what we can do about it, now is a fresh time to open rational discussions on guns. The clear purpose must be bringing about greater gun safety.

To begin with, only about 30% of gun owners own or have owned an AR-15 or similar assault rifle. These types of weapons don’t represent the typical American gun owner. Their primary purpose is to kill and maim people. Should they be allowed to be carried in public places?

First, 30 percent is roughly a third of all gun owners. When you think of the sheer number of firearms owners in this country, you quickly recognize that this represents millions upon millions of law-abiding citizens. That’s not exactly atypical.

Further, a number of others don’t own such weapons as a matter of choice, but will not support a ban on such a firearm, so even if only a third own such weapons, another large portion aren’t going to roll over and let gun control fans pull this kind of stuff.

That isn’t exactly common ground.

Opinion polls show that gun owners themselves overwhelmingly favor universal background checks. Should a review of those purchasing an assault rifle be as stringent as those required for adopting a rescue puppy?

First, the requirements for adopting a rescue puppy vary from place to place, but almost none require a criminal background check, which most gun buyers actually do undergo.

Further, if someone wants to rehome a puppy, they may or may not make the new owner jump through whatever hoops.

This comparison is beyond stupid and the author should be ashamed for trying to make it.

As for polls showing support for universal background checks, take a deeper look. Most of those polls only ask people if they support background checks on gun sales. There’s no mention of universal background checks at all, and that’s important.

You see, as it stands, the questions may lead many to assume they’re stating their support for the status quo, not a new order of things.

When universal background checks have come up for a vote by the people of a given state, they tend to lose. That’s because the idea of such background checks tends to sound good…for other people. Folks don’t like the idea that they can’t sell a gun to their brother or cousin without getting government permission.

If this were really “common ground,” it wouldn’t be so hard to get voters to pass these measures. That tells us just how useless the polling actually is on this topic.

What law-abiding purpose is served by a 30 shot capacity clip? Should there be any limit? Where should we draw the line? Courts have found that the Second Amendment is not without limits in its application.

Yes, the courts have said the Second Amendment has limits, but this isn’t about the courts, now is it? This is about the author’s supposed search for “common ground.”

Yet he asks what law-abiding purpose is served by a 30-round capacity. Well, the answers are numerous. You see, self-defense may require just that many rounds, if not more. Law-abiding citizens don’t get to pick the nature of their violent encounters, so more ammo is always welcome. No one has ever complained about excess ammunition after a gunfight, after all.

See, all of this is supposed to be about finding common ground, but after a bit, it just becomes the author demanding justification for us maintaining our gun rights. This isn’t finding common ground.

Which is fine, because no such thing exists. The discussion is binary. You either support the Second Amendment or you don’t. It’s just that simple.

Clearly, this author doesn’t.

2022 Closes with A Nation On the Precipice of Ruination

New York – -(AmmoLand.com)- As one more year draws rapidly to a close in these first three decades of the 21st Century, the United States stands precariously at the edge of an abyss.

After a century of sidestepping the issue, the U.S. Supreme Court established, in three precedential case law decisions, what had been visibly plain in the language of the Second Amendment itself all along if one would only look.

All three cases were handed down in the first three decades of the 21st Century. They include:

District of Columbia vs. Heller in 2008, McDonald vs. City of Chicago in 2010, and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association vs. Bruen in 2022.

These three cases, together, stand for the following propositions, now black letter law:

  • The right of armed self-defense is an individual right unconnected with one’s service in a militia
  • The right of armed self-defense is a universal right, applicable to both the States and the Federal Government.
  • The right of armed self-defense applies wherever a person is, inside the home or outside it.

These three legal axioms are, together, the singular Law of the Land.

But for this Law, the Republic would have fallen into ruin, this Century.

There would be nothing to rein in a rogue Congress, a rogue Biden Administration, or rogue jurisdictions like those around the Country: New York, New Jersey, Illinois, California, Washington State, Washington D.C., Oregon, Hawaii, and several others.

The rot from those State jurisdictions and from the Federal Government would eventually infect many other states.

Forces inside the Government and outside it, both here and abroad—wealthy and powerful, malevolent and malignant—constantly machinate to destroy the right to armed self-defense. These forces will not tolerate an armed citizenry. The existence of an armed citizenry contradicts their end goal of a neo-feudalistic world government. The armed citizenry precept deviates from their plan of world conquest.

Their goal for the 21st Century is a return to the political, social, and economic feudalistic construct operating in the world of the 5th through 15th Centuries—the Middle Ages.

These ruthless elements have declared——

  • The United States can no longer continue as a free Constitutional Republic;
  • The American people must be subjugated; and
  • Any thought of an armed citizenry must be erased from the collective memory of the American people.

The ashes of a once powerful, respected, sovereign, independent United States are to be commingled with the ashes of other western nations.

The EU and the British Commonwealth Nations are a step in the direction of that world empire.

The neoliberal democratic world order is conceived as——

  • One devoid of defined geographical borders,
  • One absent national government; and
  • One bereft of any defining history, heritage, culture, ethos, or Judeo-Christian ethic by which the people of one nation may easily distinguish themselves from any other.

Continue reading “”

Just to point out; In New York the ‘Supreme Court’ is the same as what others places call a ‘District Court’  or the first court that sits on a case.

NEW YORK SUPREME COURT JUSTICE DEEMS NEW YORK’S RED FLAG LAWS ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL

A New York State Supreme Court Justice ruled last week that New York’s Extreme Risk Protection Order laws, often called Red Flag laws are unconstitutional and declined to issue an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO). As we have written in the past, extreme risk protections have become very popular in anti-gun states and are a way for government officials to take away the Second Amendment rights of individuals who have not committed any crime. Yet, New York’s Red Flag laws were expanded in July of 2022. Justice Thomas E. Moran, of the Rochester based Monroe County Supreme Court struck down these laws in a 10 page decision, in a case entitled G.W. v. C.N., 2022 NY Slip Op 22392 (Monroe County Sup. Ct. 2022).

This particular case highlights everything wrong with Red Flag laws. The Petitioner who filed for the Extreme Risk Protection Order was the estranged boy friend of the Respondent who was a licensed gun owner in New York State. He alleged that his ex-girlfriend was a danger to herself and others and obtained a Temporary Extreme Risk Protection Order. Justice Moran pointed out that the Petition cited a variety of statements that the Respondent allegedly made threatening to harm herself with a gun which the Petition falsely claimed were made within 6 months before the Petition was filed but in fact dated back to 2020 and 2021. The Court also pointed out that there was a Family Court case also going on in which The Petitioner had an Order of Protection against him which among other things barred him from the home that they had shared.

Turning to the Constitutionality of the Article 63-A, which lays out New York’s Red Flag laws and procedures, the Court cited the United States Supreme Court decisions in Heller, McDonald and most recently Bruen and applied the Bruen Standard that when the 2nd Amendment’s text covers a person’s conduct, a law which regulates that conduct is presumptively unconstitutional unless the State can demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the country’s historical tradition of firearms regulations.

The Court also noted that many safeguards of due process that the State had in other analogous situations did not exist in New York’s red flag laws. For example, the Court noted that Red Flag laws and the New York Mental Hygiene Law use the same definition for “likely to result in serious harm”. However, under the New York Mental Hygiene Law, those determinations are made by a Doctor, a person licensed trained and experienced in making such determinations. However, in the case of New York Red Flag laws, most of the authorized Petitioners are not Doctors and are not licensed, trained or experienced in making that determination. Under the Mental Hygiene Law, two doctors are required to make the determination if a person’s liberty is to be taken away for more than 48 hours. No such safeguard is required, not even one doctor is required, before a person loses their gun rights for one year.

Another example cited by the Court is under Article 10 of the Mental Hygiene Law which permits civil detention of certain dangerous sex offenders after they have served their sentence. However, before a Judge can civilly detain someone under this statute, the convicted sex offender is entitled to a Court appointed, free attorney, a state-funded psychiatrist to assist in the defense, a probable cause hearing within 30 days and ultimately a full jury trial before the convicted sex offender’s liberty can be taken away. The Court pointed out that none of those protections exist in New York’s Extreme Risk Protection order Laws.

The Court pointed out that where mental health issues have formed the basis for a loss of fundamental Constitutional rights in the past in New York, the laws have always provided a number of substantive and procedural due process protections none of which are afforded under New York ERPO laws. The Court reiterated a statement from the Supreme Court that Second Amendment rights are not a second class constitutional right.

We should note that this decision, and the Courts reasoning, may form the basis of also striking down many of the Safe Act provisions as they relate to people with past psychiatric issues being prohibited from purchasing or owning guns.

Analysis: What to Expect on Guns in 2023

2022 was a watershed year for gun politics in America.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard and decided its first consequential Second Amendment case in over a decade and recognized for the first time a right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense. It also finally established the specific legal test lower courts must use when reviewing gun cases, a text and history-based standard that many gun-rights advocates hope can be used to overturn restrictive modern gun laws.

At the same, horrific mass shootings like the one at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, created a sudden groundswell of support for new gun laws midway through the year. That ultimately led to the passage of the first federal gun restrictions in nearly three decades, with bipartisan support.

Both sides of the American gun debate achieved significant victories in 2022 and will be looking to capitalize on that momentum in the new year. Here’s a look at what to expect on guns in 2023.

Second Amendment Litigation

The Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen opened the floodgates on legal challenges to all kinds of gun restrictions. Animated by the Court’s new test for gun cases, gun-rights groups filed a bevy of lawsuits across the country in 2022. Expect that trend to continue in 2023.

While it would be nearly impossible to document the several dozen cases expected to arise in the new year, there are certainly some big ones to watch. Those include the ongoing challenges to New York and New Jersey’s Bruen-response bills. The resolution of those cases will determine how far states can push the limits of the Supreme Court’s holding in Bruen. That will impact the residents of each respective state who hope to carry a firearm for self-defense and the expected copycat measure likely coming from California.

The New York cases, in particular, will also test the willingness of the High Court to superintend its own decision. After several injunctions against the New York law were stayed by the Second Circuit, gun-rights advocates filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court to vacate the stays. Justice Sonya Sotomayer, who oversees the Second Circuit, is requiring New York to respond by January 3rd.

How the Court decides to rule in this matter could provide insight into how active it intends to be on gun cases moving forward.

Other significant cases include the ones against Maryland’s assault weapon ban and California’s magazine ban/confiscation law. Both cases were granted, vacated, and remanded by the Supreme Court to be revisited in light of the Bruen decision. The outcome of those challenges will provide test cases for how lower courts previously favorable towards gun bans will respond to the Court’s new test.

Lastly, the state and federal challenges to Oregon’s new gun-control ballot measure will be worth keeping an eye on. The cases could provide the first high-profile test of the legality of permit-to-purchase laws under the Supreme Court’s text and historical tradition standard, an interesting question in light of Justices Kavanaugh and Roberts defending the constitutionality of shall-issue gun-carry permitting in a Bruen concurrence.

State-Level Gun-Control Push

Continue reading “”

Federal Judge Tosses Lawsuit Opposing Concealed-Carry Ban on D.C. Metro, Finding Challengers Did Not Show ‘Any Threat’ of Prosecution

A federal judge threw out a challenge to D.C.’s concealed pistol law after four D.C.-area residents failed to include a basic part of their case. Although the challengers made multiple arguments about the use of guns in 1600s New England, they included nothing to show that they were — or ever would be — personally affected by the statute. Gregory T. Angelo, Tyler Yzaguirre, and Cameron M. Erickson live in the District of Columbia, and Robert M. Miller lives in Virginia. The four hold licenses to carry firearms, and say that they regularly use public transportation including the D.C. Metro. The plaintiffs waged a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of D.C. Code § 7-2509.07(a)(6), which prohibits the carrying concealed firearms in “sensitive areas,” which include D.C. public transportation, and levies a penalty of fine or imprisonment up to 180 days for violators.

In their 35-page complaint, the four alleged that if it were not for the statute, they would carry their concealed handguns on the Metro and buses for self-defense. They said that because of the statute, they now refrain from doing so because they fear arrest and prosecution.

Taking cues from the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen, the challengers pointed to Justice Clarence Thomas’s recently established test that gun laws must be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

The plaintiffs reached back centuries in support of their argument that there is “no basis to label the Metro as a sensitive area,” providing an extensive history of gun law anecdotes going back to the early 1600s in the U.S. and several hundred years prior in Europe. Plaintiffs allowed that, “Public transportation systems did not exist as they do today at the founding of the nation,” but argued that because, “a March 9, 1636 ordinance provided that every person above 18 years of age (except magistrates and elders of the churches) were ordered to ‘come to public assemblies with their muskets,’” that 2022 concealed-carry restrictions conflict with our nation’s founding principles.

The D.C. law, said the plaintiffs, interferes with their Second Amendment right of self-defense and goes far beyond any limits imposed by Supreme Court precedent.

They asked the court to issue either a preliminary or a permanent injunction, restricting enforcement of the statute.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, a Barack Obama appointee, rejected their argument, finding that the plaintiffs couldn’t prove harm. They provided no evidence that the law has been used to prosecute anyone, much less the four of them.

Moss wrote in the court’s 25-page ruling that in order to establish Article III standing, all plaintiffs must demonstrate some kind of “injury in fact.” In other words, it is not enough for a plaintiff to simply disagree with a law — that plaintiff must be actually harmed by the law. That’s where the four plaintiffs fell short.

Moss pointed out that, “No plaintiff in this case has been arrested and prosecuted — or threatened with arrest or prosecution or with the imposition of a civil penalty — for violating the provision of D.C. law at issue here.” Moreover, none of the plaintiffs even alleged that they have either been “singled out” or were somehow “uniquely targeted” for prosecution, said Moss. Without such a showing, the plaintiffs could not sufficiently establish their right to bring the lawsuit.

According to the Moss, the case’s shortcomings went farther. Not only did the plaintiffs fail to show that they were especially at risk of prosecution, but they did not show that anyone was at risk of prosecution.

“Plaintiffs have failed to proffer any evidence relating to any threat or risk of enforcement,” wrote Moss. To underscore the omission, Moss recounted exchanges from oral argument in which the court appeared to prompt the plaintiffs’ lawyer to provide the kind of evidence that could have supported the claim:

Indeed, when asked at oral argument, Plaintiffs’ counsel was unable to identify any case in which an individual licensed to carry a handgun has ever been prosecuted simply for carrying a concealed handgun on a Metrorail train or a Metrobus. Instead, Plaintiffs’ counsel merely speculated that those carrying concealed handguns often pat their sides (to confirm that they have their guns with them) and that, by doing so, they might provide a tell for law enforcement officers and thereby invite arrest.

Moss also called out the attorney for a general response to the specific question of threat of enforcement. Moss said that during colloquy with the court, plaintiffs’ counsel answered that the Metropolitan Police Department “invariably arrests those who violate any of ‘the myriad of firearms regulations’ in the District of Columbia,” but noted that, “Neither statement by counsel, however, is evidence, and the evidence that Plaintiffs have offered says nothing about the risk of criminal or civil enforcement of § 7-2509.07(a)(6).”

Moss denied both requested injunctions.

Counsel for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to request for comment.

They hate us

They hate us. Oh boy, do they ever.
Remember Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, ripping up President Trump’s State of the Union address?
That’s a constitutionally mandated document, by the way, but more importantly, why?
What was in there that was so vile as to justify such an act? Nothing. So, why?

They hate us.

We say things they don’t like. The truth of our assertions is often admitted by them later. But at the time we say it, we are shouted down. Our speech is censored, which is colossally bad enough. But we lose our jobs. We lose our income. We are called the nastiest of things.
And when it’s proven they have censored us, do they apologize? Are they mortified as they should be? Do they swear to amend their ways?
No. They want to keep on doing it. Why?

Because they hate us, and hating us is not only O.K., it is good. Indeed it is the height of morality. It is good to hate us.

Our problem is that we do not fully realize this. We have only recently even begun to contemplate the truth of this, and we are in shock.
We should be. They are like demons possessed.
What they don’t realize is that in hating us, they are hating themselves, too. They are cutting the branch we all sit on. But they insist on it.

An example is the withdrawal from Afghanistan. To withdraw is one thing. To withdraw so as to weaken us (giving up that strategic airfield near China, giving up so many weapons, deserting our own citizens, not informing our Western allies that also had troops there) is another thing.
And none of this was even marginally necessary. None of it. Did it weaken and endanger us? Yes, and they do hate us, so we should learn to expect this. But it weakened America for all for them, too, but they don’t care.

Indeed, they don’t care at all.

So to think some last-minute consideration of self-preservation shall stay their hand is folly. Remember, they do not only hate your kids, they hate their own, too. Indeed, they hate America.
This is completely different from the way things used to be. For instance, in the Civil War there was an Issue. It was fought over and decided. And, to the great and profound credit of both sides, once it was over, it was over. The sides could then get along, since they were united in so much else.

That was yesterday. Today, they even hate the word, “American.”

Consider the beautiful American federal system, with fifty states being able to have fifty variants concerning most political policies. Prior to the Roe v. Wade decision, each state could adopt the policy choice it wanted concerning abortion. Several were very liberal. Each state could do as it wanted to, and the laws were easy to modify.
But the Left could not abide this, and forced Roe v. Wade, a decision that had no constitutional basis, down everyone’s throat.

There is no live and let live. No where to run, nowhere to hide.

You must say what they wish to be said, and only that. We know now that they used the government and social media to enforce this. It is ghastly, but it means nothing to them, since censorship is good.
They will not leave you alone. They demand compliance, not only in word, but deed. You will wear a mask and like it, you will not go to church, you will not visit the sick, you will not travel, your business will be shut down, you will not require election integrity. You will have no fun and you will not complain.

This is not a cultural war. It is a fanatical religious frenzy bent on extermination of the heretofore unsuspecting, that is, of us, who are considered heretics. Even though it is not we who have changed our beliefs.
What will happen? Are we doomed?

The future is not written in stone. It may go bad, very bad; even apocalyptic.

It may not. So many incredible things have happened recently, and much depends upon unpredictable changes of heart and attitude. Much of human life is built up on things we barely understand, and we know a lot less than we think we do. That is why principles are important, to guide us through the mess. That is why the American system of governance was so wonderful, because it was built on such principles applied to government.

Yet while indeed incredible things have happened, like with the billionaire buying that social media company and revealing what we had said all along must be the case as being so, or with Ukraine unexpectedly fending off the attacker and destroying the heart of its army, nevertheless one often thinks a ‘short sharp shock’ is necessary to be brought to bear upon the Left in order to start a rollback.
Or perhaps in order for things to turn around, our own ranks have to grow to some certain number, of those who understand, among other things, that they hate us.

One thing is certain. This is not a friendly tug of war. It has been to date a raiding party on their part, descending upon a barn dance.
As we await the future, we must at the very least keep this firmly in mind, even though it is far more comfortable to imagine otherwise.

Well, it isn’t often referred to as ‘Peoples Public Radio’ (as in how commie China’s calls everything “peoples”) for nothing. And I don’t like my tax money funding either.

PBS openly pushes gun control agenda

American taxpayers help fund PBS. We don’t pay for all of it, but a non-trivial sum of tax dollars go to the network. Any attempt to cut that funding is met with consternation. “How dare you cut funding to [insert innocuous PBS show here]!”

They ignore that this is a network that continually pushes an agenda. Part of that agenda is gun control, and they’re not even really trying to hide it.

On Friday’s Amanpour & Co., fill-in host Sara Sidner devoted a segment to promoting the agenda of a gun control advocate and made no serious effort to challenge her liberal guest’s claims.

In the pre-recorded interview with Dr. Joseph Safran which aired on PBS and CNN International, Sidner promoted such misinformation as claiming that mass shootings are “uniquely American,” and she also overstated the number of mass killings in 2022.

Sidner misleadingly began the segment:

2022 will go down as the second highest year for mass shootings in the United States on record. That means more than 600 mass killings in the past 12 months alone, according to data compiled by the nongovernmental organization, Gun Violence Archive. The shootings come at a disturbing pace, often too fast to grasp — people going about their day suddenly gunned down in schools, supermarkets, night clubs, movie theaters, in the streets, you name it.

She soon added: “Are these tragedies preventable? And why can’t we stop this uniquely American problem?”

But, according to the website she cited, there have been 36 cases of gun-related “mass murder” in 2022, which would also include killings in private residences in addition to public places. Additionally, there are certainly plenty of other countries where homicide numbers are high.

On the subject of mass shootings in public places, Europe has had a worse problem than the U.S., which, unlike the U.S., has even included fully automatic machine gun attacks.

In other words, this isn’t a “uniquely American problem” and it never has been. We just think that because we tend to be far more focused on what’s happening here than elsewhere in the world. I mean, sure, we know that Ukraine and Russia are at war, but do we know who the major opposition members are in Belgium?

Not so much.

So, we focus on American mass shootings because they’re closer to home, then delude ourselves into thinking that these kinds of things just don’t happen anywhere else.

We’ve seen numerous mass shootings outside of American borders. Thailand, for example, or Russia. Those are just two right off the top of my head, and I don’t see all such shootings by any stretch of the imagination.

The idea that this is a “uniquely American problem” needs to be challenged, but PBS didn’t. They advanced it. They present it uncritically as if this is so self-evident that it doesn’t require challenge.

Yet it does. It’s not a factual statement, and the fact that it’s treated as such is a big chunk of why we can’t solve the issue.

If people acknowledged that these shootings were far from unusual in places like Europe, they’d be forced to face the facts that gun control isn’t an answer. They’d have to look elsewhere for a solution, and that could be difficult and potentially messy.

So, they blame guns, pretend it isn’t happening in other places, and get PBS to help push that agenda.

Well, this is why some of us want to cut off taxpayer funding for them. You want to keep them afloat? Then you pay for it. I’m sick of it.

Pfizer’s Shots Aren’t Safe and Were Never Shown to Be.

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a member of Pfizer’s data safety monitoring board (DSMB), was previously a paid adviser to Pfizer. DSMBs are supposed to be independent, and aren’t if members have previous relationships with the company
  • German autopsies found “highly unusual tissue inflammation” in people who died shortly after getting the jab, and investigators suspect the inflammation observed would be fatal. They also found spike protein in the tissues of the deceased, but not another key part of SARS-CoV-2. This suggests the actual virus was not part of the problem; the only possible source of the spike protein was the jab
  • Data from the German health insurance provider BKK, which covers about 10.9 million Germans, show 2.05% of COVID jab recipients sought medical care after their jab
  • The largest German statutory health insurance dataset, which encompasses 72 million Germans, show massive increases in sudden and unexpected deaths after the COVID jabs rolled out
  • December 13, 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis petitioned the Florida Supreme Court for a statewide grand jury investigation of crimes and wrongdoing committed against Floridians related to the COVID-19 jabs. He also established an independent Public Health Integrity Committee to analyze and assess federal health guidance before they’re implemented in Florida

Contrary to the official narrative (and hence popular belief), the COVID shots have no demonstrated safety. In Episode 298 of The Highwire, Del Bigtree interviews attorney Aaron Siri about the various lawsuits his firm has brought to reverse COVID jab mandates.

Siri describes a recent deposition of Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a world-leading vaccinologist who sat on Pfizer’s data safety monitoring board (DSMB). This five-member committee oversaw the safety of Pfizer’s jab. A DSMB is supposed to be an independent group of experts, whose responsibility it is to monitor patient safety and treatment efficacy data while a clinical trial is ongoing.

Continue reading “”

Now in court proceedings, all evidence is submitted to the bench for admission into the trial and all parties have access to the evidence. Since this means that, at least the prosecutors had access to the video the jury saw, the continued prosecution, instead of the charges being dismissed, informs us that “justice” has devolved into some other thing.

Concealed Carrying Woman Shoots 2, Killing 1, Acquitted With Video Evidence

DAYTON, OHIO — A woman got to return home for the holidays after shooting two women, killing one, in Dayton, Ohio, last December.

Georgia Jackson, 36, shot these two women Dec. 2021. She was indicted in August on two counts of murder and four counts of felonious assault, according to the Dayton Daily News.

However, it’s apparently been determined that she acted in self-defense. It didn’t hurt that there was video evidence to back Jackson up.

Jackson was reportedly charged following a shooting Dec. 19, 2021 where she shot Ashley Webster, 34 and an unnamed 27-year-old.

The defense reportedly wrote that Webster threatened Jackson and a man with whom she attended a holiday party. Webster then allegedly made four trips to Jackson’s home, during one of which she attempted block Jackson’s vehicle with her own.

She then “attempted to assault the defendant with an object,” the defense wrote according to the Dayton Daily News.

“During this final attempted assault, the defendant, a licensed CCW carrier, invoked her right to self-defense and defense of another.”

Webster died on the scene, while the other woman was non-fatally wounded.

“During this time, the individual responsible for shooting both females called 911, provided her location and was detained,” Dayton police Maj. Jason Hall said according to the Dayton Daily News.

“The initial indications are that the deceased and the suspect were known to each other and had been involved in an ongoing dispute that tragically escalated into gunfire.”

The defense invoked Ohio’s Stand Your Ground law, and Jackson’s charges were dismissed.

“The shooting death of Ashley Webster by the defendant was fully investigated and the police believed this to be a case of murder,” the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office stated.

“At trial, the defendant claimed self-defense and was found not guilty by the jury.”

It sounds like her case for self defense is pretty apparent. It’s a shame so much of her time and pains were taken for crimes she didn’t commit.

Man leaves suspected home intruder with gunshot wound

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) — A man shot an alleged home intruder Wednesday morning, leaving the other man in non life-threatening condition, according to police.

At approximately 7:00 a.m., police responded to reports of a shooting at a home along the 1900 block of Hillside Avenue.

Police said a man called dispatch saying he had shot someone reportedly attempting to break into his residence.

After authorities arrived, they found an adult male suffering from an apparent gunshot wound in the entryway of the residence.

Police provided aid to the man, and TRAA transported him to a local hospital with non life-threatening injuries.

The man who called dispatch is cooperating with police, and the incident remains under investigation by the Fort Wayne Police Department and the Allen County Prosecutor’s Office.