Numerous gun rights supporters packed the Texas Capitol to express support for constitutional carry, an issue that the House Homeland Security Committee debated through the night that continued past 5 a.m. Friday.
The hearing came a few days after the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on gun control after a Syrian migrant shot and killed 10 people in Colorado on Monday.
The Republican Party of Texas, Gun Owners of America, Young Americans for Liberty, Texas Gun Rights and many Texas gun owners have advocated for more than a decade during a Republican-controlled state legislature that a bill be passed to allow constitutional carry.
Constitutional carry laws allow individuals to carry a firearm without a restriction in place by their state government. In a constitutional carry state, no licensing or training is required to legally carry a firearm. Some states with unlicensed carry have implemented certain policies to restrict who can carry and how. Some states have an age restriction, requiring carriers to be 21 years old or older, to be a resident of the state, or only allow concealed or open carry. ConcealedCarry.com lists the regulations related to constitutional carry by state.
I figure every knows about Ted Nugent’s pro-gun political stand. It’s interesting that more rockers are out there with more or less the same point of view.
Upon re-sharing a video by Instagram user GunDrummer, which shows him drumming and shooting along to System of a Down’s “BYOB,” Malakian wrote, “Guns are essential tools for self-defense! And they make great percussive instruments as well!”
The end of his caption contained several hashtags, including “2nd Amendment,” “Defund Gun Control” and “Guns are Loaded,” which is a song by Scars on Broadway. See his post below.
All That Remains’ Phil Labonte said, “Any gun laws are infringements. That’s the definition of infringe. The justification for the law is ‘it will reduce murders’ but it clearly does not. So there is no good justification for violating the constitution.”
With the exception of the two songs they released in the fall, the members of System of a Down spent the majority of 2020 going back and forth about their American political beliefs — particularly frontman Serj Tankian and drummer John Dolmayan. Tankian admitted that it is frustrating being in a band with his “political opposite” on American issues, however they completely see eye-to-eye on Armenian topics.
In referring to the so-called ghost gun loophole, Steve Henshaw called the right to purchase nonfirearm materials for the purpose of manufacturing arms a travesty (“Tighten law on DIY guns,”Reading Eagle, March 20). The only travesty is the belief that others do not have an inherent right to self-defense, and that the right extends to the home manufacture of firearms, an activity that predates the American Revolution itself.
The only historical bases for banning individuals from possessing firearms and related products, e.g. gunpowder, were when those who would be or were in possession were a demonstrable threat to the safety of others, or where they were perceived as a threat due to their status as a racial minority, slave, or freedman — an actual travesty.
There is simply no constitutionally supported basis from precluding the manufacture of firearms — when the Supreme Court issued its decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, it specified that the test for determining the constitutionality of gun laws was whether the law was supported by text, history and tradition; “ghost gun” bans are supported by none of them. People who are spooked by “ghost guns” perhaps should look behind the veil and address the actual crimes which they are being used to support, if any.
Yesterday, the Wyoming Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously passed legislation that enhances Wyoming’s Permitless Carry laws, House Bill 116. The measure now heads to the Senate floor for further consideration.
House Bill 116 expands Wyoming’s permitless carry law, which has been in effect since 2011, to all law-abiding adults, not just Wyoming residents who have resided in the state for at least six months. This ensures that visitors and new residents have their right to self-defense without government red tape or delays.
Appears that ‘Neanderthal thinking’ is turning out pretty well. But I doubt SloJoe will ever have anything to say about Texas’ success.
After two weeks of lifting its mask mandate and allowing businesses to open at full capacity, Texas is not seeing a surge of new COVID-19 cases.
Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, issued an executive order (pdf) that went into effect on March 10 to loosen COVID-19 restrictions. Although the government’s statewide mask mandate was lifted, individual businesses were still able to “limit capacity” or impose mask mandates at their own choosing.
But in Austin and Travis County, residents 10 years or older still have to wear a mask outside their home after a district judge refused to grant Attorney General Ken Paxton a restraining order that would have ended a mask mandate enforced by Travis County and Austin city officials. The trial is set to take place on March 26.
Texas had been witnessing a downward trend in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations prior to Abbott’s announcement ending the restrictions.
The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) posted on Twitter yesterday that Texas saw a seven-day average decrease in the daily number of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.
Mar. 24—COLUMBUS — After months of threats, Gov. Mike DeWine’s fellow Republicans in the Ohio General Assembly on Wednesday handed him the first veto override of his administration.
Solely with Republican votes, the Senate voted 23-10 to force into law a bill limiting the power to quarantine individuals in the midst of a pandemic and limiting the life of states of emergency. It needed 20 votes.
The GOP-controlled House then voted 62-35 along party lines to do the same. It needed 60.
Joe Biden is the face of the United States. But Joe Biden no longer looks like Joe Biden. And he no longer sounds like Joe Biden — especially in the long and excruciating silences when he forgets what he’s saying or fumbles for his cue cards.
The United States no longer looks like itself either. The sorry theatrical display of Biden’s first press conference is an accurate image of what has happened to American democracy. A carefully limited number of carefully selected journalists asked carefully vetted questions. A carefully chosen president read carefully written answers off his cue cards, and carefully avoided taking any questions from Fox or Newsmax.
The White House is no longer the home of democracy. It’s a reality TV series in a care home. Biden mused about how the country has lost its way, about how it used to be so much better, but he seemed fatalistically feeble, as if it was all too much and all too late, and he has already given up. As if the nation is in its twilight years.
‘We’ve got so much more to do,’ he said, as he continually does. But he also ad-libbed, ‘I’ve never been able to plan three-and-a-half, four years ahead.’
How funny. How sadly reflective of the senility of American democracy that he thought that was a smart answer. How shamefully embarrassing for the compliant, complicit media that not one of his questioners bothered to ask whether an inability to plan for the future was what the American people need in their president — especially a 78-year-old who says he expects to run, if that is really the word, in 2024, when he will be 82.
It’s true, Biden managed not to fall off the dais, or go completely blank, or fall over his dog. It’s true, he matched the topics on his cue cards to the subjects of the questions. But this press conference was nerve-wracking and enervating to watch. It’s obvious that Biden’s mind often has no idea what his mouth is saying. This press conference was supposed to dampen concerns about his mental acuity. Instead it confirmed that Biden is too old and complacent for the scale of the task.
On my way to my first duty station at Fort Lewis, the first time I saw the name of the town on the interstate highway sign, I knew I was in for it. Was it pronounced ‘Pie-A- Lup’? Pie-A-Loop? My mind boggled when I learned it sounded something close to Phwallop.
Two men were shot by a tenant in a Puyallup apartment complex after three armed intruders entered the residence intending to “commit a burglary or home invasion robbery,” Puyallup police said Wednesday.
Investigators believe that the two men who were shot, along with a third, were armed when they entered a Riverside Park Apartments unit around 10:50 p.m. Tuesday, Puyallup police said.
Once inside the residence in the 3100 block of East Main Avenue, the three men were confronted by an armed 19-year-old who fired multiple rounds at the intruders, police said.
“Officers arrived to find a very chaotic scene with two individuals having been shot and multiple reports of individuals and vehicles fleeing the area. The two individuals who had been shot, both of whom were males in their early 20s, were located some distance from each other,” police said on Twitter.
The two shooting victims were taken to a trauma hospital in serious condition, police said. The third suspect is being sought.
Police said investigators do not believe the incident is random or that there is a threat to public safety.
Puyallup police said the tenant’s self-defense claim will be evaluated to ensure it is within state law once criminal charges are filed against the armed intruders. Police said the 19-year-old is cooperating in the investigation.
Regeneron’s cocktail, a mixture of two drugs, imitates antibodies that the body generates when fighting the coronavirus in order to boost the immune system
The antibody treatment was authorized by the FDA to treat mild to moderate cases of COVID-19 in November
Half a group of 4,500 mild-to-moderate COVID-19 patients at high risk of severe illness were given one of two doses of the drugs
Both doses were found to reduce the risk of hospitalization or death by about 70% compared to a placebo
Recovery time was also shortened, with symptoms only lasting about 10 days in the cocktail group in comparison with 14 days in the placebo group
Spring is in the air and Easter is just a week and a half away, which means we are well past due for an insane new Peeps flavor—but this year, they’re making a splash in soda form.
In the most unlikely collaboration since Ed Sheeran and Andrea Bocelli, Peeps has partnered with Pepsi to create Marshmallow Cola, which comes in a three-pack of cute little 7.5-oz. cans. Sadly, these won’t be available on grocery store shelves this year, but fans can enter the sweepstakes to win some by hashtagging “#HangingWithMyPEEPS” on their social media photos.
More specifically, the prompt tells you to share photos enjoying your favorite springtime activities—”in a safe, socially distant manner,” of course.
The cans come in blue, pink, and yellow, although there is no difference in flavor. We got a first taste of the drink and can confirm that it does, in fact, taste like marshmallows—with a flavor that’s vaguely reminiscent of Lucky Charms.
“Rahm Emanuel, call your office. You said it—‘Never let a serious crisis go to waste!’ And we got one, baby—twowhite supremacists shooting up the joint in Atlanta and Boulder. The president’s into it already. Bye-bye assault weapons and those thousand round mags Hollywood lefties love to show off in their movies. We might even get ‘im to ban cap guns by executive order. … What? He wasn’t a white supremacist? His name was Al-what? … Like Al Ky-Duh? … They wiped his page off Facebook? … Why’d they do that? … Zuck must’ve had a good reason. Anyway, what about the guy in Atlanta? He was offing Asian girls in a massage parlor. What’s more white supremacist than that? … Yeah, yeah, Harvard and Yale. They’re the real ani-Asian racists but … Sex addict? … Sex addict! … Andrew Cuomo didn’t kill anybody … or did he?”
You get the idea.
That might be the beginning of a stand-up act bya conservative comic, a tryout anyway, in a provincial city, but these are the days we are living in—more insane by the minute.
It is, however, the very moment we must stand up for the Second Amendment more than ever.
Gun control activists are growing increasingly frustrated with the fact that even with Democrats in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, their agenda is still in doubt on Capitol Hill. A new piece at POLITICO highlights the palpable sense of desperation starting to emanate from anti-gun organizations like Everytown for Gun Safety and its affiliate Moms Demand Action, where activists know that their window of opportunity to put new restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms is closing. The razor-thin Democratic majority in the House and Senate could very well disappear after the 2022 midterms, and activists
For the gun reform movement — a centerpiece of the Democratic Party’s agenda for at least a quarter century — the question this week has become, if not now, when?
… It’s a pivotal moment for gun politics. The history of midterm elections suggests Democrats are at risk of losing the House next year, shrinking their window for legislative victories.
“The time is definitely now,” said Peter Ambler, executive director of the gun-control group Giffords. “We can’t wait.”
There’s a muddled message coming from the anti-gun advocates. On the one hand, they say that now is the time, knowing that they’re likely to lose ground in next year’s elections, but they’re still trying to spin their movement as one that’s growing in popularity across the country.
Tom Sullivan, a Colorado state lawmaker who sought elected office after his son, Alex, was killed in the Aurora theater shooting in 2012, said the climate surrounding gun legislation has “obviously” shifted — as evidenced by his own election and those of other survivors of victims of gun violence, including Rep. Lucy McBath of Georgia, whose teenage son was shot to death in 2012. Gun control was a winning issue for Democrats in some congressional swing districts nationally in the midterm elections in 2018.
“We can run on this issue, and we can win elections on this issue,” Sullivan said. “Quite obviously, the tone has changed.”
Sullivan’s comments ignore the fact that, despite spending tens of millions of dollars in states like Iowa, Minnesota, and Texas in an attempt to flip state legislatures into anti-gun majorities, the 2020 elections actually resulted in Republican gains at the state level. Republicans in Iowa just sent a Constitutional Carry bill to the desk of Gov. Kim Reynolds, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has called for (and is likely to receive) a Second Amendment Sanctuary measure from lawmakers in Austin.
At the federal level, Democrats and gun control activists lost ground in the House, and were it not for the absolute sh*tshow in the Georgia Senate runoffs, Republicans would still be in control of the U.S. Senate. The gun control movement didn’t receive a mandate in the 2020 elections, but they have to act like they did because they know that they’re likely to be in an even worse position after the midterms.
In that sense, the gun control groups are right that this is the best position for the movement in decades, but that doesn’t mean that they’re still in a great position to get what they want. As long as it still takes 60 votes to pass most legislation through the Senate, the prospects for new gun control laws is murky at best. That’s why you’ll be seeing more calls from gun control groups to nuke the filibuster in the coming days and weeks.
The gun control debate has put more pressure on Democrats to abandon the legislative filibuster in the Senate, broadening the range of constituencies lobbying for the change. Lonnie Phillips, whose daughter was killed in Aurora and who now advocates on behalf of survivors of gun violence, said, “The best thing that can happen right now — the one thing I would give everything up for — is get rid of the filibuster so we can pass some laws.”
If the filibuster goes away, the least of our worries will be the passage of gun control bills like H.R. 8 and H.R. 1446. At that point, Democrats would try to ram through Biden’s gun ban and a host of new infringements on our Second Amendment rights, while also passing legislation like H.R. 1 that’s designed to ensure a permanent Democratic majority in Congress. One party rule is completely antithetical to the very idea of the United States, and it would be nothing less than a legislative coup. I’m not worried about my Second Amendment rights if the filibuster were to disappear. I’m worried about the future of the nation itself.
This past week and weekend, Governor Kristi Noem signed multiple pro-gun and self-defense bills into law. These important measures work to further strengthen and protect the Second Amendment right to self-defense in the Mount Rushmore State. Those measures enacted are outlined below:
Senate Bill 100 provides protections for gun stores, ranges, or any other entity that engages in the lawful selling or servicing of firearms, components, or accessories. SB 100 also prevents the prohibition, regulation, or seizure of citizens’ Second Amendment rights during a declared State of Emergency.
Senate Bill 111 reduces the cost for some types of concealed carry permits.
House Bill 1212 clarifies the use of force under South Dakota’s Stand Your Ground laws. The bill enhances your right to self-defense by strengthening and explaining when justifiable force can be used in defense of person and property, so long as the individual is not engaging in an unlawful activity and is in a place they’re allowed to be.
NRA thanks Governor Kristi Noem for signing these important pro-gun bills into law, as well as the sponsors and legislators that worked to usher them over hurdles and through the legislature. Also, thank you to NRA Members and Second Amendment supporters who continuously contacted their lawmakers, voicing their support of Senate Bill 100, Senate Bill 111, and House Bill 1212.
March 23 (UPI) — Pfizer announced Tuesday it’s beginning a U.S.-based early-stage study of an oral antiviral drug to treat COVID-19.
The antiviral candidate, called PF-07321332, is what’s known as a protease inhibitor and could be prescribed to patients showing the first signs of a COVID-19 infection. The pharmaceutical company said the antiviral clinical candidate might be able to address future coronavirus threats, as well
“Tackling the COVID-19 pandemic requires both prevention via vaccine and targeted treatment for those who contract the virus,” Mikael Dolsten, chief scientific officer and president of worldwide research, development and medical at Pfizer, said in a statement.
As I watched the Senate hearing on gun control this week, I cringed at some of the gun control proposals promoted in the name of public safety. Many people want to “do something” to stop what some call “gun violence.” I call it violence because I realize that violence is a behavior, not an object.
Guns are used every single day in the United States to protect innocent lives. It is a point often overlooked by gun control proponents who choose to ignore justifiable defensive use of guns to protect innocent lives.
GRANGER, Ind. (WNDU) – UPDATE: A police chase that started in Goshen ends with the driver shot by a homeowner in Granger.
Investigators say the driver ditched his car in the area of bittersweet and Cleveland and took off on foot into the 11000 block of Anderson Road.
Sometime after, police say a homeowner found the suspect in an outbuilding and fired one shot at the suspect.
That’s when a short time later, St. Joseph County Police arrived on scene.
The suspect was shot once and taken to a local hospital and is expected to recover, according to investigators.
Officers at the incident scene did not discharge their weapons.
Due to the involvement of the multi-agency pursuit and injury to this individual, per protocol, the St. Joseph County Metro Homicide Unit was activated and is currently handling the investigation.
Columbus [Ohio] police said a resident shot and killed a suspected burglar early Sunday morning when the man entered an apartment on the West Side.
Police were called at 1:58 a.m. to an apartment on the 3400 block of Wilson Woods Drive near Wilson Road on a report of a shooting. The suspected burglar, identified as 36-year-old Allen Lester McKinney, was found outside on a walkway unresponsive and suffering from a gunshot wound.
A medic pronounced the North Side man dead at 2:07 a.m. at the scene.
The apartment’s residents — a 24-year-old female and a 23-year-old male — told police that the man had forced entry into their residence before one of them shot him.
Columbus police say McKinney’s death is the 42nd homicide in the city this year.
Homicide detectives are investigating the shooting and will refer their findings to the Franklin County Prosecutor’s office, which may present the case to a grand jury.
Though unquestionably iconic, the original Israeli Uzi submachine gun is an increasingly uncommon sight among Western security forces. However, recently released pictures show that Belgian Federal Police tasked with guarding NATO’s main operational headquarters in Brussels still have access to these guns.
The U.S. military released the images of the Belgian Federal Police personnel training with their Uzis at an indoor range at the Training Support Center at Chièvres Air Base. Chièvres is situated around 12 miles from NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), home of the Alliance’s Allied Command Operations (ACO), in the city of Mons.
US ARMY
A Belgian Federal Police officer cocks their Uzi submachine gun while training at an indoor range at Chièvres Air Base.
The pictures also show officers training with their Smith & Wesson M&P9 pistols. The American gunmaker won a contract to supply these 9mm handguns to the Belgian Federal Police in 2011.
US ARMY
A Belgian Federal Police officer aims their Smith & Wesson M&P9 pistol. Continue reading “”
So 3 television networks, a couple of national news magazines, and a handful of newspapers per big city? amirite?
When Columbia law professor Timothy Wu was appointed by Joe Biden to the National Economic Council a few weeks back, the press hailed it as great news for progressives. The author of The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Ageis known as a staunch advocate of antitrust enforcement, and Biden’s choice of him, along with the appointment of Lina Khan to the Federal Trade Commission, was widely seen as a signal that the new administration was assembling what Wired called an “antitrust all-star team.”
Wu’s appointment may presage tougher enforcement of tech firms. However, he has other passions that got less ink. Specifically, Wu — who introduced the concept of “net neutrality” and once explained it to Stephen Colbert on a roller coaster — is among the intellectual leaders of a growing movement in Democratic circles to scale back the First Amendment. He wrote an influential September, 2017 article called “Is the First Amendment Obsolete?” that argues traditional speech freedoms need to be rethought in the Internet/Trump era. He outlined the same ideas in a 2018 Aspen Ideas Festival speech:
Listening to Wu, who has not responded to requests for an interview, is confusing. He calls himself a “devotee” of the great Louis Brandeis, speaking with reverence about his ideas and those of other famed judicial speech champions like Learned Hand and Oliver Wendell Holmes. In the Aspen speech above, he went so far as to say about First Amendment protections that “these old opinions are so great, it’s like watching The Godfather, you can’t imagine anything could be better.”
If you hear a “but…” coming in his rhetoric, you guessed right. He does imagine something better. The Cliff’s Notes version of Wu’s thesis:
— The framers wrote the Bill of Rights in an atmosphere where speech was expensive and rare. The Internet made speech cheap, and human attentionrare. Speech-hostile societies like Russia and China have already shown how to capitalize on this “cheap speech” era, eschewing censorship and bans in favor of “flooding” the Internet with pro-government propaganda.
— As a result, those who place faith in the First Amendment to solve speech dilemmas should “admit defeat” and imagine new solutions for repelling foreign propaganda, fake news, and other problems. “In some cases,” Wu writes, “this could mean that the First Amendment must broaden its own reach to encompass new techniques of speech control.” What might that look like? He writes, without irony: “I think the elected branches should be allowed, within reasonable limits, to try returning the country to the kind of media environment that prevailed in the 1950s.”
— More ominously, Wu suggests that in modern times, the government may be more of a bystander to a problem in which private platforms play the largest roles. Therefore, a potential solution (emphasis mine) “boils down to asking whether these platforms should adopt (or be forced to adopt) norms and policies traditionally associated with twentieth-century journalism.”
That last line is what should make speech advocates worry.
