SAF ASKS COURT TO DECLARE HANDGUN BAN FOR YOUNG ADULTS UNCONSTITUTIONAL

BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation today filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in West Virginia, challenging the federal prohibition on handgun sales to young adults ages 18-20, and is asking for a declaratory judgment and injunctive relief.

Joining SAF in this legal action are the West Virginia Citizens Defense League and two private citizens, Benjamin Weekley and Steven Brown. Defendants are the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, ATF Director Steven Dettelbach and Attorney General Merrick Garland, in their official capacities. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia. The case is known as Brown v. ATF.

Weekley and Brown, both being in the affected age group, were unable to purchase handguns from a West Virginia sporting goods store earlier this year. According to the lawsuit, “The Handgun Ban impermissibly infringes upon the right to keep and bear arms of all law-abiding, peaceable individuals aged eighteen to twenty,” and further asserts the ban “is flatly unconstitutional under the Second Amendment” and Supreme Court opinions in the 2008 Heller case and 2022 Bruen decision.

“There is no historical evidence supporting an arbitrary prohibition on purchase and ownership of handguns for young adults over the age of 18,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “Indeed, history goes the other direction, with young adults considered mature enough for militia service, duty in the armed forces and in today’s world being able to vote, run for public office, start businesses, get married, enter into contracts and enjoy the full protections set down in the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth amendments.

“Yet these same young adults are hampered by a politically selected age limit that prohibits them from purchasing handguns from licensed firearms dealers,” he added. “This makes absolutely no sense. This handgun ban for young adults is an unconstitutional infringement of their rights s protected by the Second Amendment.”

EU Chief Calls Nord Stream Attack “Sabotage”, Warns of “Strongest Possible Response”

Update (1910ET):

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen confirmed the Nord Stream pipeline system leaks were caused by “sabotage,” and warned of the “strongest possible response” should active European energy infrastructure be attacked.

CDC Walks Back COVID Guidance Again, Finds Lasting Post-Vaccine Heart Problems in Young Adults

The CDC continues to erase distinctions by COVID-19 vaccination status in public health guidance as ongoing global research — including its own — documents the mediocre performance of COVID vaccines and their unexpectedly high rates of lasting harm in some groups.

Vaccination status is no longer used “to inform source control, screening testing, or post-exposure recommendations” for healthcare personnel, the Friday update to their CDC guidance says.

The agency “[c]larified” that healthcare facilities, including nursing homes, have discretion on whether to screen-test asymptomatic personnel. It also now says asymptomatic patients “in general” do not require “empiric use of Transmission-Based Precautions” after exposure to an infected person.

A CDC study of 12-29 year-olds with heart inflammation following mRNA vaccination, published last week in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, found that 1 in 6 still had not “fully recovered” at least 90 days after myocarditis onset, including 1 in 100 who hadn’t improved at all.

Myocarditis has increased so markedly among youth since vaccines were authorized for them that an Ivy League-affiliated hospital started running TV ads this month for its treatment in children. New York-Presbyterian marked the ad’s Sept. 6 YouTube video private less than two weeks later, following criticism that it was trying to “normalize” a vaccine-induced condition.

Continue reading “”

An Open Rant Aimed at Those Who Would Repeal the Second Amendment

Talk is cheap, but persuading Americans to surrender their rights will be expensive, difficult, and time-consuming.

Editor’s Note: We are re-posting this 2015 piece by NRO editor Charles C. W. Cooke in light of retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens’s call to repeal the Second Amendment. 

A few hours after yesterday’s shooting hit the news, the comedian Rob Delaney penned this tweet:

The @NRA & the politicians they own must not know this T. Jefferson quote. The 2nd Amendment is a ******* BOY’S COAT. pic.twitter.com/cKR0Nk4Uwm

— rob Delaney (@robdelaney) August 26, 2015

For ease of viewing, here is that Jefferson quotation in full (it’s adapted from a July 12, 1816, letter to Samuel Kercheval):

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.

As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.

We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

We should be absolutely clear about what Delaney is arguing here: He is a) agreeing with Jefferson that “laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind,” b) contending that “progress” suggests that the individual right to keep and bear arms is now counterproductive, and c) concluding that it is time therefore to make a “change in law and constitution” — in other words, to repeal the Second Amendment. This, it is true, is not a mainstream position on the American Left — at least, it is not one that is argued openly.

But it is a reasonably popular one on social media, it has strong support   within the more leftward-leaning parts of the political commentariat, it is often implied by the casual manner in which progressives such as President Obama refer to “Australia” and other heavily regulated nations, and it enjoys indirect approval from around one quarter of the American public. When the likes of Rob Delaney and Bill Maher and Keith Ellison say that we need to get rid of the Second Amendment, they are not speaking in a vacuum but reflecting the views of a small but vocal portion of the American population. And they mean it.

That being so, here’s the million-dollar question: What the hell are they waiting for? Go on, chaps. Bloody well do it.

Seriously, try it. Start the process. Stop whining about it on Twitter, and on HBO, and at the Daily Kos. Stop playing with some Thomas Jefferson quote you found on Google. Stop jumping on the news cycle and watching the retweets and viral shares rack up. Go out there and begin the movement in earnest. Don’t fall back on excuses. Don’t play cheap motte-and-bailey games. And don’t pretend that you’re okay with the Second Amendment in theory, but you’re just appalled by the Heller decision. You’re not. Heller recognized what was obvious to the amendment’s drafters, to the people who debated it, and to the jurists of their era and beyond: That “right of the people” means “right of the people,” as it does everywhere else in both the Bill of Rights and in the common law that preceded it. A Second Amendment without the supposedly pernicious Heller “interpretation” wouldn’t be any impediment to regulation at all. It would be a dead letter. It would be an effective repeal. It would be the end of the right itself. In other words, it would be exactly what you want! Man up. Put together a plan, and take those words out of the Constitution.

It’ll be tough explaining to suburban families that their established conception of American liberty is wrong. You might even suffer at the polls because of it. But that’s what it’s going to take.

This will involve hard work, of course. You can’t just sit online and preen to those who already agree with you. No siree. Instead, you’ll have to go around the states — traveling and preaching until the soles of your shoes are thin as paper. You’ll have to lobby Congress, over and over and over again. You’ll have to make ads and shake hands and twist arms and cut deals and suffer all the slings and arrows that will be thrown in your direction.

You’ll have to tell anybody who will listen to you that they need to support you; that if they disagree, they’re childish and beholden to the “gun lobby”; that they don’t care enough about children; that their reverence for the Founders is mistaken; that they have blood on their goddamn hands; that they want to own firearms only because their penises are small and they’re not “real men.” And remember, you can’t half-ass it this time. You’re not going out there to tell these people that you want “reform” or that “enough is enough.”

You’re going there to solicit their support for removing one of the articles within the Bill of Rights. Make no mistake: It’ll be unpleasant strolling into Pittsburgh or Youngstown or Pueblo and telling blue-collar Democrat after blue-collar Democrat that he only has his guns because he’s not as well endowed as he’d like to be. It’ll be tough explaining to suburban families that their established conception of American liberty is wrong. You might even suffer at the polls because of it. But that’s what it’s going to take. So do it. Start now. Off you go.

And don’t stop there. No, no. There’ll still be a lot of work to be done. As anybody with a passing understanding of America’s constitutional system knows, repealing the Second Amendment won’t in and of itself lead to the end of gun ownership in America. Rather, it will merely free up the federal government to regulate the area, should it wish to do so. Next, you’ll need to craft the laws that bring about change — think of them as modern Volstead Acts — and you’ll need to get them past the opposition. And, if the federal government doesn’t immediately go the whole hog, you’ll need to replicate your efforts in the states, too, 45 of which have their own constitutional protections.
Maybe New Jersey and California will go quietly. Maybe. But Idaho won’t. Louisiana won’t. Kentucky won’t. Maine won’t. You’ll need to persuade those sovereignties not to sue and drag their heels, but to do what’s right as defined by you. Unfortunately, that won’t involve vague talk of holding “national conversations” and “doing something” and “fighting back against the NRA.” It’ll mean going to all sorts of groups — unions, churches, PTAs, political meetings, bowling leagues — and telling them not that you want “common-sense reforms,” but that you want their guns, as in Australia or Britain or Japan. Obviously, the Republicans aren’t going to help in this, so you’ll need to commandeer the Democratic party to do it. That means you’ll need their presidential candidates on board. That means you’ll need to make full abolition the stated policy of the Senate and House caucuses. That means you’ll need the state parties to sign pledges promising not to back away if it gets tough. And if they won’t, you’ll need to start a third party and accept all that that entails.
And when you’ve done all that and your vision is inked onto parchment, you’ll need to enforce it. No, not in the namby-pamby, eh-we-don’t-really-want-to-fund-it way that Prohibition was enforced. I mean enforce it — with force. When Australia took its decision to Do Something, the Australian citizenry owned between 2 and 3 million guns. Despite the compliance of the people and the lack of an entrenched gun culture, the government got maybe three-quarters of a million of them — somewhere between a fifth and a third of the total. That wouldn’t be good enough here, of course.
There are around 350 million privately owned guns in America, which means that if you picked up one in three, you’d only be returning the stock to where it was in 1994. Does that sound difficult? Sure! After all, this is a country of 330 million people spread out across 3.8 million square miles, and if we know one thing about the American people, it’s that they do not go quietly into the night. But the government has to have their guns. It has to. The Second Amendment has to go.

You’re going to need a plan. A state-by-state, county-by-county, street-by-street, door-to-door plan. A detailed roadmap to abolition that involves the military and the police and a whole host of informants — and, probably, a hell of a lot of blood, too. Sure, the ACLU won’t like it, especially when you start going around poorer neighborhoods. Sure, there are probably between 20 and 30 million Americans who would rather fight a civil war than let you into their houses. Sure, there is no historical precedent in America for the mass confiscation of a commonly owned item — let alone one that was until recently constitutionally protected. Sure, it’s slightly odd that you think that we can’t deport 11 million people but we can search 123 million homes. But that’s just the price we have to pay. Times have changed. It has to be done: For the children; for America; for the future. Hey hey, ho ho, the Second Amendment has to go. Let’s do this thing.

When do you get started?

BLUF
The fact that so many things once deemed “conspiracy theories” have turned out to be true harms the credibility of the scientific community, especially those working in or in league with the federal government. To turn that around, there needs to be honesty and transparency. You aren’t going to get that from the Biden administration, though.

Another COVID-19 Vaccine Claim Collapses, No Apologies to Be Found

Over the course of the last several years, there have been a series of claims about the COVID-19 vaccines that have collapsed in light of various studies.

Most infamously, the idea that the vaccines stop the transmission of the virus permeated all the way to the highest levels of government, including the President of the United States. Those false assertions then formed the basis of federal mandates, including a vicious campaign against the “unvaccinated” that never made any scientific sense.

Unfortunately, there’s another example to add to the list after it was revealed that prior claims about mRNA not being transferred through breast milk were false. That despite “fact-checks” back in 2021 asserting that wasn’t possible.

Here is the summary of the study, which gives the nod to the vaccines before noting that breastfeeding mothers were never tested by the CDC to see what was being transmitted.

Continue reading “”

Yes

Should We Train for the Trends or the Outliers?

The world of self-defense is defined by extreme positions; in particular, when dealing with the use of the handgun for personal protection, most take their sides on what we should be training for. The majority of concealed carriers will regale the troupe of “three yards, three shots, three seconds.” There is some validity to this mantra; most civilian-oriented defensive shootings are resolved quickly, with only a few rounds fired, and take place at close range. The problem is, however, that this is a common theme but hardly a rule. There are numerous examples of incidents that demanded far more rounds fired or happened at far greater distances than this.

On the opposite extreme of the “three rounds, three yards, three seconds” crowd is the “carry as much gun as possible” crowd that tends toward carrying full-size guns with lights, optics, and spare magazines. Of course, in my experience, many who claim to only carry a full-size pistol simply don’t carry any gun much of the time because the full-size gun is more difficult to conceal under many circumstances. Many such practitioners select gear based on the outlier event, such as active shooters with rifles at long distances. Being prepared for the worst may make good sense, but how much more challenging is it to carry such gear and is it worth the effort? And, pertaining to training, should the citizen focus on the trends or the outliers?

There are a number of noted and respected professionals in the field that think little if any, specific credence should be granted to dealing with the outlier event that is the active shooter. As is reasonable, they argue that the chances of being in such an event pale in comparison to the far more likely street-level robbery. While there is no doubt that, statistically, the armed citizen is more likely to be robbed on the street or in a parking lot than being caught in an active killer event, all the statistics don’t matter much to the individual who finds themselves there. Is being in an active killer event likely? Not at all. Is it possible? Sure. Therefore, should time be spent on the more complex problem that is the active killer outlier, or are armed citizens better off focusing on what is more likely?

Continue reading “”

BLUF
It’s about those “weapons of war” the violence monopolists are trying to swindle the people into turning their backs on and surrendering. It’s about tricking Americans into thinking it’s all about hunting (which they then regulate through licensing, restrictions, and lead ammunition bans that are extended to the non-sporting gun owner population). And by appointing known prohibitionists and masking their affiliations, the Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Council is doing its part to help spread the deception.

Hunting Council Masks Hostility to Founding Intent with Gun Banner’s Appointment

U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “The Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Council’s purpose is to provide recommendations to the Federal Government, through the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture, that (a) benefit wildlife resources; (b) encourage partnership among the public; sporting conservation organizations; Federal, State, Tribal, and territorial governments; and (c) benefit fair chase recreational hunting and safe recreational shooting sports,” the Council declares on its website.

A name included among primary council members raises a red flag, particularly in how it is presented:

“Ryan Busse (Unaffiliated) representing shooting sports interests”

“The appointment of Ryan Busse to the Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Council, a federal advisory committee, is a farce and demonstrates the contempt the Biden administration holds for lawful gun owners who hunt on America’s public and private lands,” Mark Oliva, the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Managing Director of Public Affairs tells AmmoLand News. Busse was listed as ‘unaffiliated,’ but that is not true. He is not an unaffiliated shooting sports interest expert.”

“He is an advisor for the Giffords gun control group and has openly advocated the ban on the most popular selling centerfire rifle in America – the Modern Sporting Rifle (MSR),” Oliva explained. “He has published a book advocating radical gun control policies.”

“Glaringly absent, however, is any representative from the firearm and ammunition industry even though the industry is responsible for the vast majority of conservation funds through the Pittman-Robertson excise tax,” Oliva continued. “To date, the firearm and ammunition industry has provided over $15.3 billion to wildlife conservation since 1937 and over $1.1 billion of the conservation funds apportioned to the states last year was directly tied to taxes paid by firearm and ammunition manufacturers.”

“The Biden administration has politicized this advisory council to legitimize Busse and the far-left gun control policies he and the gun control group he represents,” Oliva concluded. “This is a sham and doesn’t come close to representing the interests of lawful gun owners who hunt and are faithful stewards of the precious wildlife resources our nation enjoys.”

Readers here are well aware of Busse and the danger he represents to the right to keep and bear arms. Once a highly compensated industry insider, he now masks his (that is, his Giffords benefactors’) citizen disarmament goals with the obligatory big “but” qualifier:

I believe in the Second Amendment but…

Continue reading “”

About 3 1/2 years ago, Judge Benitez ruled that California’s magazine ban was unconstitutional and enjoined the state from enforcing the ban. That injunction was in effect for about a week before the 9th circuit reversed it.
During that week anyone could  -legally- buy, and retain, magazines that had been previously banned. It was called ‘Freedom Week’.
What this did, in effect, was make possession of all previously banned magazines legal in California since there is really no way for the state to prove someone didn’t buy them during that week
The case, still at the 9th circuit, was remanded back to him last week with the instruction to rehear the case, taking SCOTUS’ Bruen ruling into account.
So the Judge made his original injunction effective again. Heh heh heh heh.

Image

RIGHT-WING COALITION WINS IN ITALY, AMERICAN PRESS LOSES ITS MIND

Italy held its national elections on Sunday, and the results already have the global left seeing red. Exit polls show that the right-wing alliance will win a sizable majority, with a government being formed behind Giorgia Meloni as Prime Minister.

Meloni will be the first woman in the country’s history to hold the position.

So who is Meloni? She’s the leader of the Brothers of Italy party and a populist firebrand. Here’s a 30-second video that provides a good summation of her viewpoints.

“Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology, yes to the culture of life, no to the abyss of death, no to the violence of Islam, yes to safer borders, no to mass immigration, yes to work for our people”

Naturally, someone who has those political views must be evil, at least according to the American press. As election day approached and it looked more and more certain Meloni would triumph, the fearmongering was turned up to the max. CBS News did a report accusing her of being a fascist because that’s the only insult they know.

Meloni does not, in fact, lead a “neo-fascist” movement. Is she “far-right” in the European sense? Sure, she is, but that doesn’t make her a fascist, and as far as I can tell, none of her proposed policies are fascist. They may make those on the left upset, especially regarding immigration and LGBT stuff, but that’s not the standard for fascism.

Ironically enough, American Democrats base their accusations on the fact that Meloni’s party has its historical roots in turn-of-the-century fascism in Italy. Of course, the problem with that is obvious. The Democrat Party was the party of slavery and Jim Crow, and it remains a party of mass death in regard to abortion. So if the assertion is that a political party with a checkered history is unacceptable, then the Democrats might as well close up shop, otherwise, they are just massive hypocrites.

They won’t, though, because they truly believe they are more enlightened than their political opponents. If you don’t want kids being sexualized by the LGBT lobby, then you must be a fascist. If you don’t want unlimited Muslim immigration that is driving up crime rates, then you must be a fascist. We all know how the game is played, and it’s all meaningless at this point. No one takes the left’s rantings seriously.

Regardless, what has been made clear over the last year is that Europe is shifting. Right-wing governments are talking power all over the continent, and that’s because the left overplayed their hand. They thought they could usher in an era of deranged cultural decadence coupled with economic malaise without consequences. Obviously, voters have different ideas.

No training (probably) No Practice (almost assuredly)
Yes, training and practice are nice, and I always advise people to get as much of both as they can, but they’re not necessary, no matter who’s doing the talking, when the time comes you need to TCOB.

Woman who had gun for one day fatally shoots stranger in her Patterson home

A Patterson woman who had gotten a handgun just the previous day fatally shot a stranger who was grappling with her husband Saturday night at the door of their home, the Stanislaus County sheriff’s office said.

In a 911 call at 10:20 p.m., a resident of the Wilding Ranch subdivision on the city’s east edge reported that a neighbor had called and said she had just shot an intruder at her house.

When deputies arrived, they found a dead man near the home’s front entry. The residents — a 50-year-old woman and her 45-year-old husband — said that the apparently intoxicated stranger had tried to force his way into their home.

According to the sheriff’s report, as the husband fought with the intruder near the front door, his wife ran to the bedroom to get a revolver, which she said she had brought home on Friday. Returning to the entry, she fired all its rounds into the intruder.

The husband suffered minor scrapes and scratches to his back.

Investigators said surveillance video from inside and outside the house corroborated the couple’s account. There were no children or other family members in the house.

The dead man was identified as Angelo Santana, 22, of Patterson. The sheriff’s report said interviews indicated he had a history of getting drunk and showing up unannounced at the homes of acquaintances, including some in the neighborhood where the confrontation occurred.

The homeowners are cooperating with the investigation, the sheriff’s office said, and “findings will eventually be submitted to the Stanislaus County district attorney’s office for review of the legality of the homicide.”