Anti-gun politicians aim for private property gun ban

From Hawaii to New Jersey anti-gun officials are scrambling to adopt sweeping restrictions on the right to carry modeled after New York’s latest infringement on our Second Amendment rights. That includes a de-facto ban on concealed carry on all private property, despite language in the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen that made it clear broad and expansive “sensitive places” don’t comport with a general right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense.

On today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co we’re taking a look at a couple of the latest indigo-blue locales to adopt New York’s model legislation; Hawaii County and the state of New Jersey. Both places have long been hostile to the right to keep and bear arms, and in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the “good cause” requirement that the jurisdictions have used to deny almost every applicant in years past, the goal is to now restrict where folks can carry as much as possible in addition to continuing to impose as many barriers as possible to all those who want to exercise that right.

Hawaii County council member Aaron Chung says Supreme Court “opened the door” for his exhaustive list of places where concealed carry may soon be banned by not explicitly defining the limits of ‘sensitive places”, but he’s ignoring what Justice Clarence Thomas actually had to say about trying to broadly define most places open to the public (including all private property by default) as off-limits to the exercise of our Second Amendment rights; “expanding the category of ‘sensitive places’ simply to all places of public congregation that are not isolated from law enforcement defines the category of “sensitive places” far too broadly. Respondents’ argument would in effect exempt cities from the Second Amendment and would eviscerate the general right to publicly carry arms for self-defense.”

The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not “a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.”

We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need. That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self defense.

I don’t know of any other right that’s de-facto forbidden on private property unless it’s explicitly authorized in writing by the property owner either. I’ve never once encountered a sign on a business that said “Freedom of Speech Welcome Here”. Then again, I’ve also never run across a law charging people with a felony for unlawfully uttering their opinion in someone else’s home without prior permission as New York’s de-facto ban on concealed carry on private property does.

The glaring constitutional issues with this language isn’t worrisome to anti-gun politicians like New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, however. He’s still hellbent on criminalizing the right to carry in almost all circumstances by adopting the New York model.

Murphy issued an executive order shortly after the court ruling, requiring state agencies to review their statutes and regulations and determine whether they could designate gun-free zones. But so far, no legislation barring guns from public spaces in New Jersey has been introduced.

On Tuesday, Murphy said churches, entertainment venues and even private property “unless you the homeowner explicitly says otherwise” would be designated as gun-free areas under a proposed bill.

We need that now based on the actions of this very right-wing U.S. Supreme Court,” he said.

He said action hasn’t come more quickly for “mostly benign reasons here” — due to other legislative activity and because the Legislature only recently came back into session.

“I don’t want to speak for [the Legislature], but I’m confident this ball will be rolling, and God willing, will get something sooner than later,” he said.

God willing, the courts will have shut down the expansive list of “sensitive places” by the time New Jersey’s legislature gets to work on its own list of gun-free zones. If that doesn’t happen, then the state will be facing another lawsuit just like New York; one I’m confident it will ultimately lose. We still have plenty of challenges ahead of us, but these anti-gun politicians are on the wrong side of history and the Constitution and we aren’t going to rest until we’ve secured our right to keep and bear arms from their authoritarian power grabs.

Joe Biden Trashes Italy’s Giorgia Meloni in Massive Self-Awareness Fail

As a massive hurricane slammed into Florida on Wednesday evening, the President of the United States attended a fundraiser for the Democratic Governor’s Association. That followed a banner day where Joe Biden asked where a deceased congresswoman was at an event and got confused trying to exit a stage later at the White House.

The optics of Biden hobnobbing with his party’s elite while people’s homes while devastation descended on the Sunshine State wasn’t lost on many observers. So what did the president talk about?

If you guess that he ranted about threats to “democracy,” which is basically the one-note Democrats continue to desperately play over and over this election cycle, pick up your winnings at the window. But it was who Biden cited as an example that raised eyebrows. Apparently, he attacked Giorgia Meloni’s rise, insinuating that what “happened in Italy” illustrated the destruction of “democracy” around the globe.

For those keeping score at home, we are now at the point where Democrats will quite literally claim that a democratic election, voted on by the people, is actually a threat to democracy if the “wrong” people win. In this case, Meloni’s right-wing coalition won an overwhelming victory after Italy’s left ran the country into the ground.

The lack of self-awareness here is so thick you can cut it with a knife. It is self-evident that you can’t claim that “democracy” is in danger if you yourself don’t respect the results of democratic elections. Is Biden suggesting that Italy’s election was rigged? Or is he really saying that any outcome that goes against the globalist left is illegitimate on its face?

Whatever the reason, what Biden is promoting is not “democracy.” It’s authoritarianism wrapped in meaningless fluff disguised as respect for freedom. Real democracy can’t exist if voters aren’t able to choose the representatives without condemnation and hyperbolic proclamations from their supposed betters, of which Biden is decidedly not. The World Economic Forum and the like doesn’t get to decide who governs the people. The people do.

In short, it is not Italy’s Meloni and her coalition that are a threat to free and fair governance. Rather, it is the global left that seeks to cram down its ideology at all costs, even if it means spitting on the choices of voters that go against their wishes.

The backlash that happened in Italy is just the beginning. The left has destroyed so much that so many people held dear, and while Biden lashes out at Meloni, he’s got the same problem at home as his own Democratic Party falters. In the end, outcomes matter, and no amount of squealing about “democracy” is going to keep convincing people to vote against their own interests, whether in Europe or in the United States.

Analysis: Federal Judge Charts Path to Upholding Felon Gun Bans

We now have a new framework for how the federal prohibition on felons owning guns could be constitutional.

District Judge David Counts of Western Texas upheld the conviction ban this week. That’s despite the fact that he struck down the federal ban on people indicted for felonies receiving firearms just a few days beforehand. And he did it under the Supreme Court’s Bruen standard, making him among the first to apply it to federal law.

His logic will sound familiar to anyone who followed his opinion in the indictment case. After calling into question the constitutionality of the indictment ban under Bruen’s text-and-tradition standard, he did the same for the conviction ban.

“Whether this Nation has a history of disarming felons is arguably unclear—it certainly isn’t clearly ‘longstanding,’” Counts said in that ruling, dismissing a claim made in the Supreme Court’s landmark Heller decision.

However, he also outlined how he believed the conviction ban could be constitutional under the Bruen test even without a historical gun law as an analogue. Instead of relying on gun laws, Counts argued, it is better to look at how groups have been excluded from the political rights afforded to “the people.” Those historical examples provide a better guide, he said.

And now, just a few days after laying out his hypothetical test for the convicted felon prohibition, he has applied it in practice. He relied on the fact that governments in the early days of the republic prohibited people from voting if they had been convicted of certain crimes and those inciting people to violence could be prohibited from assembling in public.

“Indeed, there was a ‘longstanding’ historical tradition from the time of ratification that those convicted of a crime could be excluded from the right to vote,” Counts wrote. “For example, one year after the Second Amendment’s ratification, Kentucky’s Constitution stated, ‘[l]aws shall be made to exclude from… suffrage those who thereafter be convicted of bribery, perjury, forgery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.’ Vermont’s Constitution followed one year later, authorizing the removal of voting rights from those engaged in bribery or corruption during elections. As of 2022, only two states and the District of Columbia do not restrict felons’ voting rights.”

This framework is similar in some respects to one used by Justice Amy Coney Barrett in Kanter v. Barr. Barrett argued in her dissent that those convicted of felonies could be prohibited from owning guns (though only if they committed violent felonies) because there was a tradition of barring dangerous groups from gun ownership as evidenced by early republic bans on Native Americans and Catholics owning guns. New York has sought to use the same argument to defend its gun laws in court.

Of course, the main problem with the Barrett approach is it relies exclusively on bigoted gun bans and attempts to generalize and sterilize them as applying to those early Americans considered “dangerous.” But it is highly questionable why the bans presented as evidence for this theory only fell along racial and religious lines. It seems dangerousness was playing a secondary role in those particular bans.

The Counts approach is not as susceptible to that pitfall. Clearly blacks, other minorities, and women were also excluded from protections afforded to “the people” in the founding era. Certainly, they were denied the right to vote in nearly all circumstances, and blacks in particular were denied all of their rights.

In fact, people in the founding era were as likely to be excluded from protections afforded to “the people” as they were to be included in them. So, relying on that approach for justifying modern gun bans has the potential to result in a fairly broad reading of what’s permissible under the Second Amendment.

Still, the Counts approach does at least provide some examples of longstanding rights restrictions that are based on a person’s criminal actions rather than their race or creed. So, it has a bit more to stand on.

Although, there are other weaknesses too. The number of crimes covered under modern felony laws dwarfs the number in the founding era. While the analogue of felons being prohibited from voting seems to fit fairly well with felons being barred from owning guns, the ban on inciting speech isn’t really the same since it isn’t a permanent ban on protesting for the offender.

It’s likely federal courts will refine the Counts approach if they do adopt it as a framework moving forward. His framework isn’t without its problems, and it’s among the first attempt at reconciling federal gun prohibitions with the Bruen standard. But it has the potential to become very influential among Counts’ piers moving forward.

DEMONIZING GUN ADS IS A MISGUIDED WITCH HUNT

Gun control advocates are ready to start grabbing pitchforks and torches in their attempt to drive out firearm manufacturer advertisements. They fear that today’s advertising is running to a tipping point where they need to rally the villagers to chase the monster pieced together by mad gun advertisers out of town.

Today’s gun ads, they claim, are a horrific menagerie of “toxic masculinity,” fearmongering and anti-government militancy. Except none of that is true. Gun control’s efforts are more like a witch hunt, and more like Monty Python’s version of one depicted in the cult classic, “The Holy Grail.”

They’re too busy clanging alarm bells to roust of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to realize that the monster they’re chasing doesn’t exist. The real monsters are the criminals, not the law-abiding gun owners who are lawfully purchasing firearms for self-defense, recreational shooting and hunting.

They want to muzzle and silence our industry so the American heritage and tradition of hunting and the shooting sports is not passed on to the next generation.

Defining Acceptable Ads

Adweek was the latest to weigh in. The advertising trade publication, which regularly highlights efforts by various gun control groups to demonize lawful gun ownership, posted a feature claiming that today’s gun ads are turning America’s children into “extremists.”

The article focuses on an effort by lawmakers to pressure the FTC to abandon their neutrality and deny gun manufacturers the ability to advertise. They say the ads of yesteryear of plaid-clad hunters unwrapping a rifle under the tree are acceptable, but today’s advertising that draws on patriotism and self-reliance is a bridge too far. They want the FTC to burn gun manufacturers at the metaphorical stake and cut out their tongues.

That is a pretty big leap to suggest that Americans – even youth – exposed to firearm ads will poison their minds. Guns have been advertised for decades, even guns offered in youth models. Mechanix Illustrated ran an ad in 1954 for a Remington .22-caliber rifle, featuring a youth holding a rifle he received as a Christmas present. Sears Roebuck listed firearms in their catalog in 1897, featuring a shotgun for $7.95 and would even deliver a revolver to a mailing address.

Clearly, government regulations restricted that years ago. Even toy guns, like Mattel’s #2 M-16 were featured in 1967 with “braap, brra-a-a-a-ap, brap, brap,” sounds were advertised. None of that turned America’s youth into murderers. In fact, recreational shooting, including the scholastic shooting sports, ranks among the safest sporting activities. Golf, walking and tennis report more injuries than hunting and trap and skeet shooting reports just 0.1 percent of injuries.

Intellectually Dishonest

That is because the shooting sports are heavily supervised. Basic foundational safety rules are a must and are drilled into every gun owner. Children are admonished to only handle firearms under the direct supervision of a responsible adult.

Critics of lawful firearm ownership are being intellectually dishonest when they say it is advertising that is causing out-of-control crime rates or horrific murders. They know this is not true. It is not as if these are individuals who are not academically accomplished. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was once a professor at Harvard University. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) was Yale Law School graduate who also served as Connecticut’s attorney general. They are not uneducated. They are just being dishonest.

They do not want to admit that the soft-on-crime policies they espouse are not making our communities safer. They would rather latch onto every gun control notion they can and mispresent to America that the societal ills are the fault of the firearm industry that they have made a career demonizing. It plays well to their voters when they do not have to admit their policies are failing. It is easier to cast blame and malign an industry, tell America that murderers are not individuals with craven hearts who couldn’t care less about the law, much less the value of human life. It is easier to ignore that the responsible firearm industry offers Real Solutions® than admit law-abiding gun owners are invested in safe and responsible ownership.

Do not believe their false and misleading claims that the firearm industry is evil. They are the ones selling pitchforks and torches.

Trial Date Set for Washington’s Ban on High-Capacity Gun Magazine Sales

A federal judge in Seattle has scheduled a trial to start more than a year from now regarding the legal challenge to Washington state’s new restrictions on high-capacity gun magazines.

Judge David Estudillo of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington set Dec. 4, 2023, as the opening day for what is scheduled as an eight-day bench trial regarding the Second Amendment Foundation’s lawsuit against the state’s ban on sales of new large-capacity magazines for handguns and rifles.

The law, which took effect on July 1, prohibits the sale of gun magazines with a capacity of more than 10 rounds, along with the manufacturing, distribution or import of such magazines in Washington.

Any high-capacity magazines owned as of July 1, 2022, are unaffected by the law.

“We’re asking the court to declare Washington’s ban on original capacity magazines to be unconstitutional under the Second and Fourteenth amendments,” Alan M. Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Bellevue-based SAF, said at the time the lawsuit was filed.  “We want an injunction against the state because this ban criminalizes something that is common in a majority of states, and also leaves law-abiding Washington citizens more vulnerable to attack by ruthless criminals.”

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the right to keep and bear arms, while the Fourteenth Amendment, in part, reads “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process.”

The complaint alleges the law will negatively impact Washingtonians’ self-defense options.

“The State of Washington has criminalized one of the most common and important means by which its citizens can exercise their fundamental right of self-defense,” the lawsuit reads. “By banning manufacturing, importation, distribution, and sale of standard-capacity firearm magazines that can carry more than 10 rounds of ammunition (‘standard capacity magazines’), the State has barred law-abiding residents from legally acquiring common ammunition magazines and deprived them of an effective means of self-defense.”

Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson has publicly promised to “vigorously defend” the law.

Scheduling the trial more than a year out could be influenced by the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, in which the majority held that Americans have the constitutional right to carry firearms.

That ruling has opened the door for another look at cases against high-capacity magazine bans that previously failed in lower courts.

The nation’s highest court vacated a ruling in a San Diego case that upheld California’s ban on magazines holding more than 10 bullets, sending it back to the lower court to reconsider following its Bruen decision.

The court also booted a case challenging New Jersey’s ban on high-capacity magazines back to a lower court for review in light of Bruen.

That means either case could end up being decided before Washington’s case, known as Sullivan v. Ferguson, goes to trial.

According to the schedule, discovery must be completed by next July 10, all motions for dismissal must be filed by next Aug. 7, and a pretrial conference will be held on Nov. 20, 2023.

Seems someone may have read Solzhenitsyn and decided to apply this passage:
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? “
The article doesn’t mention it; merely the number of protestors killed, but that’s never affected the mullahs before. So, the title of the article is accurate and it’s highly likely that the ‘morality police’ have taken a significant number of casualties as well?

Iran’s morality police disappear from streets after dozens killed in protests

The white-and-green Guidance Patrol vans, used by Iran’s morality police to monitor and arrest women who defy the Islamic dress code, have in recent days disappeared from the streets of Tehran. For the past decade a symbol of the Islamic republic’s crackdown on women, the vans are not even visible outside the morality police centre in central Tehran.

Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman of Kurdish ethnicity, was this month bundled into one of these vehicles. She later died in custody, triggering the biggest street protests across the country since the 2019 unrest over fuel prices. At least 41 protesters have died, according to state television. Hundreds of people have been arrested, local agencies report, including political activists and journalists.

Such is the outrage over her death that people from across the Iranian political spectrum have called for an end to the official policing of women’s clothing. “Guidance Patrol will most probably be withdrawn from the streets,” said Saeed Laylaz, a reformist analyst. “The Islamic republic will have a major setback over the hijab in practice and will have no other choice but to give more social freedom to the urban middle-class youth.”

For more than a week, young protesters, many the same age as Amini, have poured on to the streets in towns and cities across the country chanting anti-regime slogans such as “We don’t want the Islamic republic” and “Death to the dictator”.

University students have demonstrated on campuses and female protesters have burnt their scarves. Others faced riot police without wearing their hijab, showing little fear. While the protests have now subsided, Iranians on social media still share pictures of women killed during the protests.

For young people struggling with massive economic problems such as poverty and inequality, these patrols had become a lightning conductor for their rage, Emad Afrough, a sociologist told the state news agency IRNA. “We have launched something which has no human, moral, logical and even legal justification,” he said. “The way a [police]man throws a woman into the car is inhuman and un-Islamic.” The wearing of the hijab is one of the defining images of the theocratic regime.

In the wake of the Islamic revolution in 1979, revolutionaries forced women to wear scarves in public. In 1983, the hijab officially became obligatory for women. The violation of this rule was punishable with up to 74 lashes. Later, jail sentences and fines replaced flogging. Hardliners under former president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad made the police responsible for “promoting social security” in 2006 when they launched the Guidance Patrol — a label later changed to Moral Security Police, though people continue to refer to them as the Guidance Patrol.

Many police officers were loath to assume this responsibility because they said it was not their job to deal with women’s hair and clothes. The enforcement of the rules on the hijab have intensified in the past year since, with the election of Ebrahim Raisi as president, hardliners took over all arms of the state. They hoped that the stronger enforcement of the rules over the hijab could slow the modernisation of Iran, an increasingly secular society. But, noted Jalal Rashidi Kouchi, a member of parliament, “the police have been damaged because of the Guidance Patrol” with “no results but losses for the country”.

The women they arrest have to give written commitments not to violate the law again and to attend hour-long classes on morality. Car owners also receive text messages to go to the morality police centre if there are women in their cars without scarves. Their cars are then impounded for up to two months.

It is unclear how many police officers work in Guidance Patrol but their presence, in busy squares, parks and outside metro stations, makes women feel insecure. Amini was arrested in a park shortly after she got out of a nearby metro station in central Tehran. Her family allege she was beaten up in the van. The authorities deny this and say she had a pre-existing condition.

It is unclear what comes next, though the Islamic republic is not expected to revoke the law on the hijab. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not commented on the latest protests but two months ago he defended the obligation to wear the hijab. The fact that Iranian women occupy half of university seats, he said, makes clear that the Islamic hijab is not an obstacle to women’s progress.

Conservative organisations have however called for an end to the police’s role in enforcing the rules. “How can a force in charge of order and security be in charge of holding hijab classes?” asked the Headquarters to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice. “Religious beliefs are not created by batons, arrests and Guidance Patrol. We cannot force people into paradise,” Gholamreza Nouri Ghezeljeh, a reformist member of parliament, told Shargh daily newspaper. But he was dismissive about the introduction of fines. “As if one can decide about paradise and hell with money,” he said.

GOA IMMEDIATELY SUES PHILADELPHIA OVER UNCONSTITUTIONAL EXECUTIVE ORDER

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 28, 2022

Philadelphia, PA – Yesterday, lame-duck Mayor Jim Kenney signed an executive order prohibiting individuals from lawful carry at all City of Philadelphia recreational facilities. The mayor’s actions are in clear violation of Pennsylvania law prohibiting these types of local gun restrictions. Within hours of Mayor Kenney’s signing ceremony, Gun Owners of America (GOA) filed a lawsuit to enjoin enforcement of this illegal gun regulation.

“Mayor Kenney knows this executive order is pointless: law abiding gun owners aren’t the people committing the violent crime and murder in Philadelphia,”  said Dr. Val Finnell, Pennsylvania Director for GOA. “Instead, Mayor Kenney is trying to deflect attention from his failing policies and failing City by enacting more ‘feel good’ regulations that scapegoat guns for the crisis of crime in Philadelphia. Rather than take responsibility for city policies that created two years of record homicides, Kenney is attempting to capitalize on the tragic deaths of Philadelphia residents to disarm more people and create more victim-only, ‘gun-free’ zones. All this executive order does is put a bullseye on the back of every person at Philadelphia recreational facilities, because they know that Mayor Kenney won’t let you defend yourself there.”

“The lack of respect for taxpayer money is appalling,” said Andrew Austin, attorney for GOA and the plaintiffs in this lawsuit. “Pennsylvania law is clear here: Philly is not allowed to make gun regulations. Every appellate court in Pennsylvania has made this clear multiple times. Yet, they continue to waste taxpayer money by attempting to enact these illegal laws.”

Gun Owners of America will be seeking to enjoin enforcement of Mayor Kenney’s Executive Order in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. In addition, GOA has previously filed several other lawsuits in Philadelphia in the last two years in pursuit of Second Amendment rights, and will continue to fight as long as necessary to ensure every citizen has the ability to defend themselves, particularly in lawless cities such as Mayor Kenney’s Philadelphia.

Dr. Val Finnell, or another GOA spokesperson is available for interviews. Gun Owners of America is a nonprofit grassroots lobbying organization dedicated to protecting the right to keep and bear arms without compromise. GOA represents over two million members and activists. For more information, visit GOA’s Press Center.

-GOA-

Judge Issues Time Limits for Briefs in California Magazine Ban Case

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)-– Judge Benitez found California’s ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition to be unconstitutional on its face. On March 29, 2017, Judge Benitez issued an injunction preventing the enforcement of the ban. In the week that followed, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of magazines were sold to California residents who had been deprived of their Second Amendment rights.

The week of March 29, 2017, to April 5, 2017, has become known as Freedom week.

The name of the case changed as the name of the California AG changed.

Subsequent court actions reversed the injunction, upheld Judge Benitez’s opinion, reversed the three-judge panel with an en banc hearing, and appealed the en banc hearing to the Supreme Court. On June 22, 2022, the Supreme Court issued its decision on the Bruen case. On June 29, the Supreme Court vacated the decision by the Ninth Circuit en banc on Duncan v. Bonta and sent it back to the Ninth Circuit to be re-decided.

The Ninth Circuit sent the case back to Judge Rodger T. Benitez. Judge Benitez is now following proper procedure. He is not allowing delays. On September 26, 2022, Judge Roger T. Benitez of the District Court for the Southern District of California issued an order as to the timing for briefs on the now Duncan v. Bonta case.

From the District Court for the Southern District of California, Judge Roger T. Benitez:

On June 29, 2017, this Court preliminarily enjoined enforcement of California Penal Code § 32310 (c) & (d) requiring persons to dispossess themselves of magazines able to hold more than 10 rounds lawfully acquired and possessed. The preliminary injunction was affirmed on appeal. Duncan v. Becerra, Appeal No. 17-56081 (9th Cir. July 17, 2018). On March 29, 2019, on summary judgment, this Court concluded that California Penal Code § 32310 is unconstitutional. On April 4, 2019, this Court made the preliminary injunction on subsections (c) and (d) permanent but stayed, pending appeal, the injunction of § 32310 (a) & (b).

This Court was again affirmed on appeal. Duncan v. Becerra, Appeal No. 19-55376 (9th Cir. Aug. 14, 2020). The Ninth Circuit granted rehearing en banc, vacated its opinion, and entered an opinion reversing the judgment of this Court.Duncan v. Bonta, Appeal No. 19-55376 (9th Cir. Nov. 30, 2021). The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari and vacated the opinion of the Ninth Circuit and remanded for further consideration. Duncan v. Bonta, No. 21-1194, 142 S. Ct. 2895 (June 30, 2022). The Ninth Circuit now remands the case to this Court for further proceedings in light of New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022) and the mandate has issued.

This Court hereby spreads the mandate upon the minutes of this Court. 

The Defendant shall file any additional briefing that is necessary to decide this case in light of Bruen within 45 days of this Order. Plaintiffs shall file any responsive briefing within 21 days thereafter. This Court will then decide the case on the briefs and the prior record or schedule additional hearings.

The previously entered preliminary injunction enjoining enforcement of California Penal Code § 32310 (c) and (d) for magazines able to hold more than ten rounds shall remain in effect for all those who previously acquired and possessed magazines legally (including those persons and business entities who acquired magazines between March 29, 2019 and April 5, 2019), pending further Order of this Court. Dated: September 26, 2022 

The 45 days to file briefs ends on November 10th, by my calculations; the time given for response briefs ends on November 30th.

The Miller v. Bonta case briefs will have been in and responded to about a month earlier, at the end of October.

Miller v. Bonta and Duncan v. Bonta are closely related cases about restoring Second Amendment rights.

FPC Files for Injunction Against New York “Sensitive Location” Handgun Carry Bans

BUFFALO, NY (September 28, 2022) – Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced today that it has filed a motion for preliminary injunction in Boron v. Bruen, its lawsuit challenging New York’s “sensitive location” handgun carry bans in public parks, public transportation, and all private property without express consent. The motion can be viewed at FPCLegal.org.

“Under S51001, ‘ordinary, law-abiding citizens,’ like and including Plaintiffs, are again prevented from carrying handguns in public for self-defense in almost all corners of the State, except in what Governor Hochul said were, ‘probably some streets,’” argues the motion. “S51001 makes a mockery of the Supreme Court’s holding in Bruen, which reaffirmed that personal security extends to more than just ‘those . . . who work in marbled halls, guarded constantly by a vigilant and dedicated police force,’ but also emphatically extends to include ordinary, law-abiding Americans ‘outside the home.’”

“The New York Legislature appears to think that when the Supreme Court closed the door on New York’s may issue permit regime it opened a window for equally onerous location restrictions,” said FPC Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack. “Today’s motion for preliminary injunction is the opportunity for the Court to remind New York lawmakers that those windows are nailed shut by the Constitution.”

Individuals who would like to Join the FPC Grassroots Army and support important pro-rights lawsuits and programs can sign up at JoinFPC.org. Individuals and organizations wanting to support charitable efforts in support of the restoration of Second Amendment and other natural rights can also make a tax-deductible donation to the FPC Action Foundation. For more on FPC’s lawsuits and other pro-Second Amendment initiatives, visit FPCLegal.org and follow FPC on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube.

Firearms Policy Coalition (firearmspolicy.org), a 501(c)4 nonprofit organization, exists to create a world of maximal human liberty, defend constitutionally protected rights, advance individual liberty, and restore freedom. FPC’s efforts are focused on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and adjacent issues including freedom of speech, due process, unlawful searches and seizures, separation of powers, asset forfeitures, privacy, encryption, and limited government. The FPC team are next-generation advocates working to achieve the Organization’s strategic objectives through litigation, research, scholarly publications, amicus briefing, legislative and regulatory action, grassroots activism, education, outreach, and other programs.

FPC Law (FPCLaw.org) is the nation’s first and largest public interest legal team focused on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and the leader in the Second Amendment litigation and research space.

New study contradicts “More Guns = More Crime” theory

Do increased gun sales lead to increased crime rates? According to gun control activists, the answer is “yes,” but a new study published in the Journal of Surgical Research finds no connection between firearm purchases and the number of crimes. I’m very pleased that Dr. Mark Hamill, a trauma surgeon and associate professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center who was a primary author and researcher for the new study, could join me on today’s Cam & Co to discuss his findings and the current state of “gun violence” research in the medical community.

For this particular study, Hamill and his associates used both national and state-level data on crime rates between 1999 and 2015 as well as NICS reporting data over the same time period as a reasonable proxy for gun sales. Hamill hypothesized beforehand that there would be no correlation between gun sales and crime rates, and as it turns out, that’s exactly what researchers found.

Nationally, all crime rates except the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–designated firearm homicides decreased as firearm sales increased over the study period.

Using a naïve national model, increases in firearm sales were associated with significant decreases in multiple crime categories. However, a more robust analysis using generalized estimating equation estimates on state-level data demonstrated increases in firearms sales were not associated with changes in any crime variables examined.

Robust analysis does not identify an association between increased lawful firearm sales and rates of crime or homicide. Based on this, it is unclear if efforts to limit lawful firearm sales would have any effect on rates of crime, homicide, or injuries from violence committed with firearms.

This study follows on previous research released by Hamill and others back in 2019 that examined concealed carry laws and crime rates; looking to see if changes to a state’s concealed carry laws resulted in more crime overall. Just as in this most recent study, the data found no significant association between “shifts from restrictive to nonrestrictive carry legislation on violent crime and public health indicators.”

As Hamill says, the results make sense. Most people who legally purchase and lawfully carry firearms are never going to commit a violent crime, so increasing the number of those who are legally exercising their Second Amendment rights shouldn’t result in more violent crime. As for gun sales and crime rates, while the number of firearms sold might vary from year to year, the number of privately-owned firearms in the United States continues to increase. If more guns equated to more crime, then we’d expect to see a steady rise in criminal offenses year after year. Instead, a graph of violent crime rates going back to 1900 shows that crime tends to ebb and flow in waves that can last for decades.

Note, by the way, what happened to the homicide rate in the years after the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968. While homicide rates had been fairly flat throughout most of the 1960s, there was a sharp increase starting around the time the GCA became law, and a steady decline didn’t begin until more than two decades later in the early 1990s.

That crime decline generally continued until 2020, when shootings and homicides soared in the midst of the COVID-19 shutdowns, disruptions to the criminal justice system, riots, and a pullback from proactive policing strategies. Gun sales also exploded in 2020, but despite the assertions of some gun control activists that the increase in gun purchases must have played a role in the increased violence, there isn’t much evidence that was the case, as even some anti-gun researchers have acknowledged.

Dr. Garen Wintemute of the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis investigated a possible relationship between 2020’s gun sales and the increase in crime and found none.

“Instead, [researchers] concluded that unemployment, economic disparity and physical distancing exacerbated by the pandemic were far more potent predictors of increased violence,” the FiveThirtyEight article notes.

Hamill’s study comes at a time of heightened interest in the gun control debate within the medical community, including a special issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association dedicated to examining “gun violence” and advocating for a host of new gun control laws. Hamill says that unfortunately there does seem to be a bias towards gun control among many researchers, and described how this most recent study was actually rejected by another journal; not because of any issues with the researcher’s methodology, but because the journal’s editor didn’t like the results.

Thankfully this new paper found a home at the Journal of Surgical Research, and I would encourage you to not only read the paper but share its findings far and wide. More guns does not equal more crime, and we’ve got the data to prove it.

The Perils of America’s Woke Military
The high – and destructive – cost of Marxism’s infusion into our Armed Forces.

Last week we shared the disturbing news that the Sergeant Major of the Army recommended our soldiers apply for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), aka food stamps, to keep up with the growing inflation. I find it unconscionable that we are sending billions of dollars to foreign nations, but our troops are being told to sign up for assistance to afford food.

But this is just a small example of what is happening for our military. The perilous infusion of cultural Marxism into our Armed Forces is far more dangerous.

Recently, the Department of Defense Chief of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Kelisa Wing, who self describes herself as a “woke administrator,” made some very disconcerting comments towards white Americans…or folx as she asserts. I have to ask, how much is this racist person being paid while our soldiers are being told to apply for food stamps? But even more troubling is that such a radical individual is allowed access to our military? How can we have an effective, cohesive fighting force when you have a radical Marxist disparaging one demographic of our military force? Cultural Marxism has no place in our Armed Forces and the last thing we need is an office of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our Department of Defense, a cover for enabling these radicals.

It was not too long ago that our military was being focused on combat readiness, capability, and capacity to fulfill its mission. Now, we have a Secretary of Defense, with whom I served at Ft. Bragg NC, who is issuing memorandums telling members of our military to get used to troops suffering from gender dysphoria entering shower and latrine facilities with them. Basically, female troops are being told that biological men will be naked, showering with them. Now, if you are an adult and want to play make believe, fine, go ahead, but this should not be happening in our military. As well, the American taxpayer should not be responsible for subsidizing hormonal therapies or surgical procedures for individuals affected by this mental condition…the previous diagnosis of the American Psychiatric Association.

Just this past week, the United States Air Force Academy announced new rules about promoting gender neutral language. Can you imagine that the USAFA now advises against saying such simple things as Mom and Dad? They are advising cadets to inquire about a person’s desired pronouns before making any declarations. A few months ago, the U.S. Navy issued a video about correct pronoun usage. Hmm, I can remember some very interesting names that Drill Sergeants would use, and they did not inquire about pronouns. Matter of fact, knucklehead is gender neutral, along with stuck on stupid. There seems to be a lot of that in our military and its senior leadership at this time.

But what has to be most worrisome for our military has been the illegal, immoral, unethical, and unconstitutional COVID shot mandate forced upon our servicemen and women. Earlier this month, seven cadets at the US Coast Guard Academy were expelled for refusing to take the jab; the same has occurred at the United States Military Academy, West Point. And we are all aware of the countless stories of men and women in uniform who are being persecuted for not taking this shot. There are troops who are being segregated into deplorable living conditions, treated like lepers. They are having their constitutional rights denied, such as religious exemptions. They share their stories with us at the American Constitutional Rights Union’s Committee to Support and Defend, America’s constitutional conservative Veterans organization.

What should cause us concern is that our troops are being treated in such a disgusting manner even as we now know that Dr. Deborah Birx admitted they knew the shot would not prevent being infected with the virus. SecDef Austin, Commander in Chief Biden, and Dr Fauci all contracted the virus after having the shot and boosters. Last week, Joe Biden stated that the pandemic is over, so why are we still punishing our troops and mandating this shot on some of the most physically fit in our country? When you study the objective facts and statistics you will see that the infamous shot has caused more harm than what is being reported. There are countless cases of cardiac issues such as myocarditis. One has to ask, will our troops be able to file lawsuits against those who forced this untested shot upon them? Yes, it was only under emergency use authorization, not full FDA approval.

Will there be legislation passed in the U.S. Congress that will allow our troops to seek legal recompense? Will military members who were discharged from the military be reinstated? Heck, if the GOP is successful in the midterm elections, will the Department of Defense office of diversity, equity, and inclusion be defunded? Will our military find senior leaders who will honor their oath to the Constitution, not to political ideology, certainly not to cultural Marxism?

America’s constitutional conservative veterans’ organization, the Committee to Support and Defend, is taking the lead on these issues. Our U.S. military is being led down the perilous road of “wokeness.” The last thing America needs is a politicized military and kommissars advocating an ideology that is anathema to our rule of law, our Constitution…of which our military members take an oath to support and defend.

Steadfast and Loyal.

 

BLUF
At this point, after multiple ignored corrections, it’s a stretch to pretend that the president’s misstatements are accidental; he obviously doesn’t care about their truth. What’s important to him and his supporters is achieving their policy goals, even if they have to lie to do so.

President Biden Lies About Guns. Again.
Amidst official hysteria over “misinformation,” the president continues to willfully misrepresent the facts on firearms.

Government lies aren’t new; political fibs have such deep roots in history that you could open a museum of official mendacity and have enough rotating exhibits to keep things fresh. But now, amidst much hysteria over “misinformation,” we see a resident of the White House misrepresent facts in pursuit of restrictions on legal ownership of firearms and ignore corrections. President Biden’s claim that bullets fired from AR-15’s are impossibly speedy is only the latest example of his continuing lies about guns.

“There’s no justification for a weapon of war. None. The speed of that bullet is five times that that comes out of the muzzle of most weapons. It can penetrate your vests,” President Biden huffed last week. “What in God’s name do you need an assault weapon for?” he added.

This wasn’t the first time the president insisted on the supposed superpowers of so-called “assault weapons” and especially of AR-15s, which are popular among gun owners.

“Do you realize the bullet out of an AR-15 travels five times as rapidly as a bullet shot out of any other gun, five times—is lighter—and can pierce Kevlar?” he insisted on August 30 while touting his administration’s “Safer America Plan,” which includes tighter firearms restrictions.

Really? Well, no.

“President Biden’s statement that a bullet shot from an AR-15 travels 5x faster than a bullet shot out of ‘any other gun’ is false,” Greg Wallace, a Campbell University law professor who focuses on Second Amendment issues, told The Washington Post early in September. As for bullets fired from AR-15s piercing Kevlar, “that is true of almost all centerfire rifle bullets. Body armor protection against rifle bullets require steel, ceramic, or composite plates.”

“Biden was clearly wrong in his statement this week,” the Post‘s Glenn Kessler concluded.

In fact, the 5.56x45mm round most commonly fired by an AR-15 (which can be chambered in multiple calibers) is faster than many rifle rounds with a muzzle velocity of roughly 3,100 feet per second, but slower than others (a few exceed 4,000 fps). And speed only partially measures the lethality and utility of a cartridge. Military types, hunters, and enthusiasts are forever debating the issue. So is Biden.

“A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body,” the president improbably claimed in May about the popular handgun cartridge, again while touting gun restrictions. Knowledgeable people had fun pointing out that Biden seemed to have confused the round with a cannon. But Biden lies about cannons, too.

“When the amendment was passed, it didn’t say anybody can own a gun and any kind of gun and any kind of weapon,” Biden insisted with regard to the Second Amendment in February. “You couldn’t buy a cannon in—when the—this—this amendment was passed.”

“As other fact-checkers noted when Biden made versions of this claim at least twice before, nothing in the Second Amendment said that citizens could not own cannons, and there is no evidence that any federal or state laws barred possession of the weapons at the time,” the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org pointed out.

Biden had been called out on precisely that point the previous year, by The Washington Post, and in 2020 when PolitiFact rated his claims as “false.” So, the fibs appear deliberate, not just slips of the tongue. So are his misstatements about legal protections for the firearms industry.

Continue reading “”

If the left wants to try stuff on this side of the pond, we’ve got a remedy we’ve retained since we were still colonies.

HOMICIDAL URGES ON THE LEFT
If you have the feeling that liberals would like to kill you, you aren’t paranoid. You are catching on.

Around the world, we are seeing increasingly violent talk from the Left. All too often, that talk has led to violent action. When Congressman and Senate candidate Tim Ryan says “we’ve got to kill and confront” the movement of “extremist Republicans,” you are right if you think he means you.

This liberal outrage comes from the U.K.: a video game in which you try to kill Margaret Thatcher. The game is endorsed by a former leader of the Labour Party:

Jeremy Corbyn has been pictured playing a video game modified to let players kill Margaret Thatcher.

The former Labour leader was pictured playing the Thatcher’s Techbase game on a console at Left-wing political festival The World Transformed (TWT).
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On Thursday night, Mr Purvis tweeted a photograph of Mr Corbyn, the independent MP for Islington North, using the console and posing alongside it, with the caption: “He liked the game.”

I’ll bet he did. Can you imagine the fallout if someone produced a video game where the object was to murder, say, Barack Obama? No, I don’t think you can. But killing conservatives is all the rage.

A description of Thatcher’s Techbase written by Mr Purvis on its release read: “On Sept 24, Margaret Thatcher will rise from her grave. Only you can send her back to hell.

“Faced with the return of one of humanity’s greatest threats, you have no choice but to head to the 10th circle of hell: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Margaret Thatcher is back from hell, and the lady’s not for returning.”

The cover art for the game pictures Baroness Thatcher, who died in 2013, with devil horns, demon eyes, fangs and a gun for an arm.

Here is Corbyn playing the kill-Thatcher game:

I am afraid that political violence is going to get a great deal worse before it gets better.

Report: China Readying Push Against ‘Global Gun Proliferation’

A report by Global Times, an official Chinese Communist Party propaganda outlet, claims China is readying a focused push against “global gun proliferation.”

The Global Times notes that China’s international gun control push is part of the Firearms Protocol, which was originally introduced at the U.N. General Assembly in 2001. It is a push China is preparing to undertake in earnest now.

“China is fulfilling its domestic legal procedures to ramp up ratifying the Firearms Protocol, a key step in implementing the global security initiative and maintaining international peace and stability amid the global threat of gun proliferation, said Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday,” according to the Global Times,

China is using its internal gun policies as a model in the global push against firearms. The Global Times quoted Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi saying, “China has become one of the safest countries in the world with the least gun-related violent crimes after years of efforts. And China’s strict management of military exports and earnest fulfilling the international obligations have been widely praised by the international community.”

The Firearms Protocol is part of China’s larger Global Security Initiative.On April 21, 2022, Breitbart News pointed out that Chinese dictator Xi Jinping used a speech at the Boao Forum for Asia to urge the world to join the Global Security Initiative to “oppose the pursuit of one’s own security at the cost of others’ security.”

China’s Xinhua News Agency noted Xi used the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine as an example of the kind of conflict that emerges from the continued existence of an incorrect “Cold War mentality.”  Xi did not personally condemn Russian strongman Vladimir Putin for having such a mentality but he did make clear that the objective of the “Global Security Initiative” would be in part to prevent such conflicts.

Xi said, “In today’s world, unilateralism and excessive pursuit of self-interest are doomed to fail; so are the practices of decoupling, supply disruption and maximum pressure, so are the attempts to forge ‘small circles’ or to stoke conflict and confrontation along ideological lines.”

On September 24 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China noted:

State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced when addressing the General Debate of the 77th Session of the United Nations General Assembly that China has decided to launch its domestic procedure to ratify the UN’s Firearms Protocol. This is an important step taken by China to actively implement the Global Security Initiative and uphold international and regional peace and stability. It embodies China’s determination to support multilateralism and build a community with a shared future for mankind. China is fulfilling the domestic legal procedure in accordance with relevant provisions and will endeavor to ratify the Protocol at an early date.

The University of Sydney’s GunPolicy.org categorizes China’s internal gun policies as “restrictive,” noting, “In China, no civilian (private ownership prohibited, Govt.-issued firearms are allocated to those in genuine need) may lawfully acquire, possess or transfer a firearm or ammunition.”