‘Broken Arrow’: Cities and police ready for election violence

More than most law enforcement officials around the country, Anoka County, Minnesota, Sheriff James Stuart has been up close to the tensions gripping the country this year.

His territory touches Minneapolis, where violence followed the death of George Floyd in May while in the custody of the city police. His deputies are bracing for protests targeting a new pipeline project. And now, he has to get ready for the likelihood of Election Day violence.

“I think 2020 has really defined what law enforcement has to be prepared for and is willing to respond to. Although everybody is tired of the unrest, it’s the reality of this year,” he told Secrets.

“The tragic reality is that we are prepared for any type of unrest situation on a much greater scale in 2020 than we have been in the past. The sad thing is we have to be. The good news is that we are prepared,” said the sheriff, who is planning to increase surveillance of polling areas on Election Day.

Exactly 1,600 miles away, Tampa, Florida, Mayor Jane Castor agreed that 2020 has rewritten rules, including preparing for the election.

Also the city’s former police chief, she said that law enforcement is “preparing for the worst” and that she hopes that President Trump or Democrat Joe Biden win big, “a definitive win,” or else there is “the possibility of some type of violent reaction throughout the country.”

Still, the mayor isn’t expecting violence. She said that elections supervisors have worked out a strong Election Day plan, and the mayor has wooed poll volunteers to help the expected voter crunch, even including staff from the Tampa Bay Rays, the team representing the American League in the World Series.

Team President Brian Auld, in discussing plans to help in the election with Castor on Facebook, said, “Nothing’s more important, we put the Rays World Series right underneath the election coming up.”

Unlike ever before, cities big and small are being warned about the potential of protests and violence from both sides of the aisle.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors has been urging members to prepare for a long period of protests if the election count takes extra days or weeks. “The 2020 election is shaping up to be like no other in our nation’s history. There is significant concern that we may see voter intimidation efforts and protests, some possibly violent, in the days leading up to November 3, on that day, and on the days following,” it said on a webpage dedicated to “election security and safety.”

The National Sheriffs’ Association, meanwhile, is encouraging Americans to accept the election outcome.

“There is no place for violence in our electoral process. And anyone encouraging violence because an/the election fails to meet their personal beliefs makes their action nothing more than mob rule or worse, terrorism. For 244 years, we accepted the will of the people, bending to violence or the threat is contrary to everything this nation was founded upon,” said Jonathan Thompson, NSA executive director and CEO.

Stuart said his office has a three-stage plan, depending on the violence. The most severe is called “’Broken Arrow’ … where everybody is paged out, we roll out all available equipment, [and] all days off are canceled.”

Stuart, who is on the executive board of the National Sheriffs’ Association, which is helping departments prepare for Election Day, added, “Across the nation, we’ve really been forced to re-look at how to prepare ourselves for what could be.”

It’s happening in small towns, too. Culpeper County, Virginia, Sheriff Scott Jenkins said the rural area’s officials have a plan to keep everybody safe.

Still, like his fellow sheriff in urban Minneapolis, Jenkins told us, “On election night, we will follow reporting and intelligence from many sources to prepare for what may come. But let me say this: We will deal swiftly and appropriately with unlawful activity from any individual or group, no matter where they place themselves on the political spectrum. No matter our disagreements, using violence to force another person to your own point of view is unacceptable.”

It’s a lot to ask of the police. “Everybody is just tired,” said Stuart, adding, “deputies and most of the public included.” But, he said, his team “will do what they’ve got to do.”

In Tampa, Castor is sticking with a glass-half-full approach to Election Day while readying for potential disaster. “I always try to find the silver lining in every situation, and with the division we’ve seen here and across our nation, I just hope it brings individuals out to the polls and that we see everyone exercising their right to vote,” she said.

In Championing the Goodness of America, Trump Defines the Choice in This Election. 

Étienne de La Boétie, who graced this planet from 1520–1563, may have died young, but he made his mark, mostly because he was best friends with Michel de Montaigne.
It was Montaigne who helped assure the literary and political immortality of his friend’s most important work, an essay called “Discours de la servitude volontaire” (“Discourse on Voluntary Servitude”).
La Boétie’s curious work has been an arrow in the quiver of anarchists and libertarians as well as classical liberals for centuries. It is an impassioned attack on tyranny, longer, perhaps, on denunciation than prudence but nevertheless a tonic reveille.
Among other things, La Boétie points out that even those who are duly elected can be tyrants, a fact that was pressed home upon me from a recent visit to the state of Michigan, whose governor, Gretchen Whitmer, is the very model of the modern major mandarin.
Whitmer has issued hundreds and hundreds of executive orders that impinge on the quotidian freedoms of the people she was elected to serve (how ironic that sounds: they also serve who only play the scold).
Whitmer was recently upbraided by the Michigan Supreme Court for exceeding her authority.
Her response was to transfer that authority to the state public health establishment, which set about enforcing her edicts about mask-wearing, “social” distancing, communal gatherings, quivering in place, and kindred impositions on liberty.

‘Voluntary Servitude’

“Voluntary servitude”: isn’t that where we find ourselves now? This is no “social contract,” wherein we implicitly pledge allegiance to a regime in exchange for an escape from a sanguinary “state of nature” and entrance to a realm of law and order.
On the contrary, we find ourselves more and more subject to the extraordinary whims of those—and they are legion—who would be our masters, for our own good, we are told, but we can’t help noticing it is also very much for their good, or at least their profit.

Continue reading “”

All the preceding has not been an ‘epiphany’ for me, but more like a confirmation of what I’ve termed the ‘.gov gravy train‘ in the past.
The gubbermint has been turned into a racket, packed with those, and their lackeys and cronies, that have been corrupted with the prospect of amassing a fortune from graft, kick-backs, bribes, outright theft and the ‘crumbs’ that are left on the table afterwards.

I think they truly fear that Trump, not being a politician that has ‘paid his dues’ scrambling up the political power ladder, and also not been subject to the usual blackmail to be extorted into being a good little rubber stamp, is an open threat to slam shut the door and derail that gravy train.
This fear has so rattled TPTB that they’ve pulled out all the stops and apparently don’t care what they destroy, somehow believing they’ll just spend more money to rebuild it all,  just as long as they can get Trump out of the way.

Unfortunately, they’ve not learned from the lessons of history, especially of the 20th Century, that quite often, if a society or culture is messed with too much, what comes afterwards is not what they had before, but something much worse.

The Biden Corruption Scandal Isn’t About Hunter, It’s About Joe.
The Hunter Biden scandal indicates that Joe Biden, while vice president of the United States, knowingly allowed his son to sell access to the Obama administration, then lied about it.

Hunter Biden’s addiction is not the issue. Joe Biden’s addiction is: His addiction to power and money. And it is the evidence of the former vice president’s corruption, and the national security risk our country would face by electing Biden, that is the story of the MacBook hard drive, not the salacious, verified photographs and videos of Hunter Biden…………

Hunter Biden’s addiction, and the fact that tens of thousands of other Americans suffer similar demons, does not atone for the sins of the father. And that is what the email and text scandal concerns: Evidence that Joe Biden, while vice president of the United States, knowingly allowed his son to profit by selling access to Biden and others in the Obama administration, including to Communist Party of China leaders, and then lied about it.

The emails and texts Joe personally received also suggest a cut from Hunter’s influence-peddling. For instance, one email published by the New York Post detailed a deal Hunter Biden pursued with China’s largest private energy company that was “interesting for me and my family.”

Recent news about Hunter Biden’s emails puts our country’s institutions in a harsh spotlight.

Hunter Biden’s laptop, abandoned at a Delaware repair shop, is now the centerpiece of what could potentially be a huge pay-to-play controversy that directly affects the presidential election. The incendiary emails and pictures on the computer detail lucrative business dealings by the former vice president’s son. They were first reported on Wednesday, October 14, by the New York Post, which received them from Rudy Giuliani. More emails are sure to be disclosed between now and the November 3 election.

These emails raise two overriding questions:

  1. Are they real? Or are they a dirty trick by Joe Biden’s domestic political opponents or a foreign enemy?
  2. If the “Delaware emails” are real, do they implicate the vice president himself? Or do they simply detail the dealings of a man who profited enormously from his family name but did so without his famous father knowing, helping or profiting?

Americans deserve to know the answers to both questions. And we need to know now, before Election Day…………….

Since the New York Post story broke last Wednesday, the Biden campaign has been curiously silent. Reporters expected swift denials that the computer was Hunter’s and that the emails were his. Crickets. Crickets, too, about the Cooney emails.

Instead, the Biden campaign has maintained strict radio silence, like Allied ships traversing the North Atlantic during World War II. Loose lips might sink Biden’s ship of state. So far, the former vice president’s only public comment has been to snarl at a CBS reporter who dared raise the question. It was all a “smear,” Biden said. Other reporters didn’t even bother to ask or questioned the story’s sources and moved on. George Stephanopoulos of ABC News conducted a 90-minute town hall with Biden after the Post story broke and never raised the issue. Nor did Biden himself raise it so he could swat it down as false. The mainstream media has buried the story, as have the country’s two social media giants. Twitter initially blocked links to the New York Post story before eventually changing tack and allowing it to be shared. The company has still blocked the Post’s Twitter account until it withdraws the links to the story, which it has so far refused to do. Meanwhile, Facebook publicly flagged the Post story for review, which normally reduces readership by 80%. Attempts to smother a major political news story like this, published in a major newspaper, are unprecedented.

One major Biden ally has come forward to defend his party’s candidate. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who chairs the House Select Committee on Intelligence, says flatly that the Delaware emails are a Russian disinformation campaign. Other Democrats have backed him up. Prominent mainstream news outlets haven’t gone that far, although they have dropped hints to support Biden and Schiff, saying the “FBI is investigating” whether the emails are Russian disinformation. The implication is, “It’s questionable.”

Is there any basis for these claims of fraud and disinformation? None, so far.

Carson City man jailed after homeowner shoots him in foot for alleged attempted break-in

A 24-year-old Carson City man was arrested early Saturday for suspicion of felony home invasion after being shot in the foot by a homeowner who had attempted to scare the suspect away, according to a sheriff’s office booking report.

Moses Aristides Sandoval was arrested at 5:14 a.m. in the 300 block of Corbett Street. According to the booking report, deputies were dispatched to the area for a report of a home invasion in progress. The homeowner informed dispatch they had the suspect on the ground at gunpoint and that they were in the backyard………..

Female homeowner shoots one of three armed intruders

A second arrest has been made in a Monroe Louisiana home invasion that left one of the assailants injured.

Rodney Darrell Mitchell, 21, of Tallulah, was arrested Tuesday and booked into Ouachita Correctional Center on a charge of aggravated burglary and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Mitchell was identified as one of three armed men who forcefully entered a Monroe home on Oct. 11. Two men reportedly threatened the male resident, demanded money and hit him with their guns. The female resident woke up, grabbed her firearm and shot at the burglars after one reportedly pointed a gun at her………..

Armed robber killed during home invasion, three others injured

BATON ROUGE – Authorities say a 20-year-old man was killed and three people were injured during a home invasion late Monday night.

According to a representative with the Baton Rouge Police Department (BRPD), 20-year-old Marcus Hayes Jr. was allegedly committing an armed robbery at a home in the 900 block of West McKinley Street around 11:10 p.m., Monday.

Six people were apparently home during the incident and police say one of them grabbed a gun and shot Hayes.

Officials say Hayes died at the scene of the crime.

An attempted robbery ends with the robber killed

A 38-year-old Montgomery Alabama man who police accused of committing a robbery was fatally shot during the robbery attempt early Friday, according to a Montgomery police news release.

Police have launched a death investigation after Timothy Rollins was shot in the 5900 block of Monticello Drive, according to the news release. Medics and investigators found Rollins after a report of a robbery and a man shot about 3:47 a.m.

He was taken to a hospital where he later died.

 

Facebook Demonetizes Satire Site Babylon Bee, Claims Monty Python Spoof ‘Incites Violence’

Facebook Demonetizes Satire Site Babylon Bee, Claims Monty Python Spoof ‘Incites Violence’

Facebook is demonetizing the Christian, political satire page “The Babylon Bee” after they published an article satirizing Sen. Mazie Hirono’s comments during the Amy Coney Barrett hearings in a fictional depiction.

The Bee’s CEO Seth Dillon announced the demonetization on Tuesday in a tweet, claiming that the big tech company pulled down the article based on a “regurgitated joke from a Monty Python movie.”

“So after a manual review, Facebook says they stand by their decision to pull down this article and demonetize our page. I’m not kidding,” he wrote. “They say this article ‘incites violence.’ It’s literally a regurgitated joke from a Monty Python movie!”

 

Dillon pointed out the absurdity of Facebook’s critique.

“In what universe does a fictional quote as part of an obvious joke constitute a genuine incitement to violence?” he asked. “How does context not come into play here? They’re asking us to edit the article and not speak publicly about internal content reviews. Oops, did I just tweet this?”

Continue reading “”

Bottom line here, she’s holding her state hostage. No Biden, no end to lockdown. This is someone who ought to be impeached from office and swiftly thrown out.

Gretchen Whitmer admits it:
No release from lockdown without a vote for Joe Biden

For the past 200 days, Democratic governors have been commanding their states to go on lockdown, and ordering nursing homes to be seeded with COVID patients.

The result has been the twin disaster of broken economies and high COVID death tolls, way out of proportion to the rest of the country. And incredibly, they’re blaming President Trump for all of the bad consequences of their own acts, and reaping big political hay from it.

They do all the harm, Trump gets all the blame, they take all the glory.

What power-mad leftist wouldn’t want a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose setup like that? Torture your state, blame Trump, win big.

So it’s natural to expect that the worst of them might just keep holding their states on lockdown as a hostage act, at least until election day, to beat their citizens into submission. After that, the mask can come off.

Far-left Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, though, didn’t want to wait.

According to Red State:

Whitmer told host Chuck Todd that lockdowns and COVID restrictions can end, if Americans just vote for Joe Biden. The governor, who has become one of the faces of hypocritical lockdowns for the Left over the last few months, insinuated that Trump doesn’t care that 220,000 people have died so far from COVID, and that 8 million positive COVID tests have been logged so far.

…and…

She also insinuated that the real victims of the lockdowns are the heroes who are staying closed and staying home indefinitely, and that Trump and anyone who wants to get back to living their American lives are, in fact, inciting violence.

“Every moment that we are not focused on the fact that there are 220,000 Americans who have died from this virus is good for him. So in that sense, as he incites additional violence against people who are just trying to save one another’s lives. It’s good for him. And that’s why I don’t want to talk about him endangering public servants lives. I want to talk about what he hasn’t done and that’s his job. The Trump virus response is the worst in the globe. I mean in the world, it’s the worst 8 million people have been have contracted covid-19, 220000 dead. We’ve got people in food pantry line who never would have imagined that they be there and no light on the horizon because our numbers keep going up.”

The mask is off. The secret slips out. She’s been holding them hostage all along. Facts, or even taking care of her own tax base, don’t mean a thing to her. Who needs a tax base when you’ve got Joe Biden in a position of power? Continue reading “”

BLUF:
The fact that ordinary citizens couldn’t even get their applications looked at is a scandal in and of itself, but thanks to California’s subjective and discriminatory concealed carry permitting law, county sheriffs have broad discretion in approving or denying applications. The opportunity for bribery as well as discrimination would disappear if lawmakers in Sacramento were to adopt a “shall issue” licensing system, but since that would prompt a flood of applicants in Los Angeles, San Diego, and the Bay area, the anti-gun legislators in Sacramento will never take that step. They prefer a system where the rich and powerful have access to concealed carry licenses (even if they pay for the privilege), while the average gun owner is routinely denied their right to bear arms.

Two More Guilty Pleas In CA Concealed Carry Scandal

So far Santa Clara County, California Sheriff Laurie Smith has avoided indictment in a scandal over the issuance of concealed carry permits that emanated from the top levels of the sheriffs department and directed tens of thousands of dollars towards an independent campaign organization supporting her re-election efforts, but two more individuals connected with the bribery scandal have plead guilty to their role in the scandal.

KPIX-TV in San Francisco reported on the Monday guilty pleas by AS Solution, Inc. managers Martin Nielsen and Jack Stromgren, who followed CEO and founder Christian West in acknowledging their role in the bribery scheme.

Prosecutors said the defendants are accused of conspiring to engineer a $90,000 bribe — $45,000 of which allegedly went to support Sheriff Laurie Smith’s re-election in 2018 — to obtain concealed firearms permits.

Nielsen was charged with three misdemeanors: conspiracy to solicit the acceptance of a bribe, conspiracy to file CCW license applications with false statements and making a campaign contribution in a false name.

Stromgren was charged with a misdemeanor count of conspiracy to file CCW license applications with false statements.

Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Captain James Jensen is the only employee of the sheriff’s office that’s been charged in the bribery scandal, though D.A. Jeff Rosen has said the investigation continues. Sheriff Smith was called to testify before a grand jury this summer, but repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination even when asked  basic questions about her time as sheriff.

On Aug. 3, from a witness stand at the old Santa Clara County Superior Courthouse, Sheriff Smith almost immediately began taking the Fifth.

When Deputy District Attorney John Chase asked her what she does for a living, Smith told him she’s worked for the Sheriff’s Office for 47 years. Before he could even get to asking about the gun permits, known as CCWs, she invoked her constitutional right over an innocuous request to summarize her law enforcement career.

“Sir, under Article 1 of the California Constitution, Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution—excuse me,” she said, cutting herself off abruptly.

Though absent from the transcript, witnesses to the proceeding say that’s when Smith, visibly overcome with emotion, paused to collect herself and wipe tears from her eyes.

“That’s fine,” Chase assured, allowing her a moment to regain composure. “Take your time, sheriff. There is no rush here. We are not in a rush.”

Smith picked up where she left off

“… and Evidence Code 940,” she continued. “I assert my privilege against self-incrimination. Therefore, I’m declining to answer your questions.”

The San Jose Mercury News has called on Smith to resign her office, noting that the sheriff was either aware of the bribes in support of her re-election efforts or was clueless about how her top deputies were handling concealed carry applications. Either way, the editors opined, Smith’s invocation of the Fifth Amendment was “unacceptable” to citizens demanding answers. Continue reading “”

We Have Only Ourselves to Blame

David Codrea-

I am disappointedly surprised at the number of supposedly activist gun owners I see concluding the Honey Badger Intolerable Act is the fault of people “flaunting shouldering.”

First off, as I quoted here, ATF itself advised a Colorado police department:

“[W]e have determined that firing a pistol from the shoulder would not cause the pistol to be reclassified as an SBR,” ATF’s Firearms Technology Branch Chief replied. “Generally speaking, we do not classify weapons based on how an individual uses a weapon. FTB has previously determined that the firing of a weapon from a particular position, such as placing the receiver extension of an AR-15 type pistol on the user’s shoulder, does not change the classification of a weapon. Further, certain firearm accessories such as the SIG Stability Brace have not been classified by FTB as shoulder stocks and, therefore, using the brace improperly does not constitute a design change.”

Actually, that should be second off. I shouldn’t need to tell anyone here what first off should be.

I really needed to restrain myself from indulging in a stream of obscenities in this one.

Yep. NFA’34 & GCA ’68 work soooo well

Feds indict Youngstown man for having converted machine gun

It is Black’s third charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm since 2016 and second within a year

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) — A federal grand jury has indicted a Cambridge Avenue man for having a converted machine gun.

Marlin Black, 27, faces charges of possession of a machine gun and possession of an unregistered firearm.

The indictment was issued Friday but unsealed Monday in the U.S. Northern District Court Of Ohio.

The indictment said Black had a 9mm Glock 17 semiautomatic pistol in his home July 31 that was found after police responded to a call for a fight with weapons.

His girlfriend and mother of his three children told police she was arguing with Black over carrying his fourth child when she drove to the house.

She said she tried to talk to Black through the home’s surveillance system but when she got no answer, she went to drive away and heard shots.

When police got there, Black tried to run out the back door but went back inside, reports say. He later surrendered to police and told them they could check for a gun.

Officers went inside and found a revolver, drugs and cash. They waited for a search warrant before looking further, at which point they found three rifles, a revolver reported stolen out of Jefferson Township, more drugs and $80,845 in several vacuum-sealed bags throughout the house.

The Glock 17 is a handgun but the indictment said Black had a device attached to the gun that allowed it to fire like a machine gun. It is not uncommon for handguns to have high capacity magazines attached that allow them to fire as many rounds as a semiautomatic rifle. Continue reading “”

Voter-registration patterns give Trump an edge invisible to polls: JPMorgan
Voter registration favors Republicans in many key battleground states, the bank’s analysis says

The 2020 presidential race may be closer than the polls suggest, according to an analysis of voter registration trends by JPMorgan Chase.

Changes in the number of voters registered to each of the major parties have proven to be a significant variable in election outcomes in the past, according to strategists at the New York-based bank, which analyzed trends in some of the battleground states that will be crucial to an electoral college victory.

Former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Trump by 9.2 points nationally, according to an average of polls compiled by RealClearPolitics, but his lead is at a tighter 4.9 points in hotly contested states.

Four years ago, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also outstripped Trump in national polling and won the popular vote by nearly 3 million, only to lose the electoral college, where she took just 227 votes to Trump’s 304.

This year’s campaign may be won or lost in some of the same battlegrounds as that race, which has made them focal points for politicians, pollsters and observers alike.

In Pennsylvania, for example, a blue-leaning state that Trump won by 44,292 votes in 2016, the Republican Party has since picked up nearly 200,000 voters.

JPMorgan says the gains suggest Trump could win the state by a margin of more than 240,000 in the upcoming election.

Similar progress in battlegrounds Florida and North Carolina suggest Trump may take those states by a larger margin than in his first campaign as well.

JPMorgan also believes a surge in the number of registered Republicans will tighten the race in New Mexico, but that the state will still go with Biden. On the flipside, a growing number of registered Democrats in Arizona will make the state close, but Trump should prevail.

While voter registration is encouraging for Trump and the GOP, it is “only one variable in determining the election outcome,” the JPMorgan quant team led by Marko Kolanovic wrote, noting that the results should not be used to predict a state’s outcome.

A number of other issues that don’t show up in the polls also offer encouraging signs for Trump, according to a Wells Fargo report released last month.

The firm noted Trump outperformed the polls in all of the key battleground states in 2016 and also suggested his recent Supreme Court nomination, gun ownership trends and a stronger backing from African-American voters are all playing into Trump’s hands.

Off-campus learning due to COVID-19 and a smaller independent vote also favor the president, the analysts said.

Burglar shot to death by neighbor after breaking into 4th floor apartment

SAN ANTONIO – A burglar was shot and killed by a neighbor after breaking into a South Side apartment.

The deadly shooting happened around 11:30 p.m. Sunday at The Flats at Big Tex Apartments on the 400 block of Blue Star near Probandt Street.

Police said a man climbed onto the fourth-floor balcony of the apartment then broke in through the door.

The man who lived inside the apartment called his neighbor for help and ran to safety.

The neighbor confronted the suspect in the doorway of the apartment and shot him several times.

The suspect died inside the hallway that connects all the apartments in the building. Police said the suspect was carrying a firearm.

The neighbor was taken in for questioning by police, but will most likely not face any charges.

Nobody else was hurt.

Victory for gun rights advocates challenging Seattle’s safe storage law

Gun rights advocates are celebrating after a lawsuit challenging Seattle’s safe storage law got new life in an state appeals court decision Monday.

It’s been over two years since Seattle passed its safe storage law requiring gun owners to safely store their firearms or face fines up to $10,000 should they fall into the wrong hands and be used in a crime, or hurt or kill someone intentionally or otherwise.

The new rules were nearly immediately challenged in court in a lawsuit filed by the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation, the NRA and others who claim it violates the state’s pre-emption law. The law bars local municipalities from enacting gun restrictions that go beyond current state law.

A King County Superior Court judge tossed the lawsuit in Oct. 2018, citing a lack of standing on the part of plaintiffs. Because of that, the question of whether the safe gun storage law violates Washington state law remained undetermined in a court of law.

The plaintiffs appealed and the state appeals court heard arguments over a year ago. On Monday, the state appeals court reversed the lower court ruling, finding the plaintiffs did have standing. Continue reading “”

Reich is no ‘lightweight’ troll. If you’ll remember, he is a Berkeley professor  who served in the administrations of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. He is a former Secretary of Labor and was a member of President Obama’s economic transition advisory board. This is not the first time he’s posted such tyrannical, authoritarian BS. And it should be a warning of just how close we are to the edge of a national nightmare if people like regain power.

First I’d change ‘rather than ‘ to ‘as well as those suitable for‘ individual self-defense’.

Second, a point that can be made from that last sentence is that Tench Coxe’s  “...every terrible implement of the soldier are the birthright of an American” means exactly that.
The NFA’34 & GCA ’68 restrictions, regulations and bans on automatic and destructive device firearms, among others, are unconstitutional

The State’s Monopoly of Force and the Right to Bear Arms

In debates over the Second Amendment, the conventional view is that the government ought to possess a monopoly of legitimate force, subject to the right of individuals to act in emergency self-defense. Many treat the non-defensive circumstances in which our system decentralizes force as holdovers from days of nonprofessional police and soldiers. When it comes to the Second Amendment, many believe that the only legitimate reason individuals may bear arms today is for individual self-defense against isolated criminal violence (e.g., an occupied home invasion).

This symposium article attacks the monopoly of force account, justifying the continued relevance of American law’s decentralization of legitimate force. This article argues that decentralization of force remains important for three reasons. First, despite the rise of professional police, American law enforcement still enforces law below desirable levels. Underenforcement of core crimes is particularly a problem in disadvantaged and rural communities and during times of civil unrest. Decentralization of force helps mitigate the underenforcement problem. And decentralization may be a better solution than simply providing more police because many areas where law is underenforced also (paradoxically) suffer from the effects of overcriminalization. Increased police presence could make the overcriminalization problem worse without solving the underenforcement problem. Second, American law has a mismatch between public duties and private rights. While providing effective law enforcement is a public duty, it is not a private right. Individuals, thus, have no effective claim that the government adequately enforce the law or protect them against unlawful violence. And any attempt to create such a private right would create profound separation of powers concerns. Consequently, self-help and private law enforcement are the best remedies when governments undersupply needed levels of police protection. Third, even if the “government” has a monopoly of force, it does not follow that government officers are the only ones in whom the government’s monopoly may be vested. The “government” is an incorporeal entity whose power must be exercised by human agents. Agents do not perfectly carry out the tasks of their principals; some government officers commit malfeasance and nonfeasance. The decentralization of force provides a remedy for such abuses of office.

Ultimately, the article concludes that the individual right to bear arms still has relevance for public defense and security. This fact should warrant consideration when determining the scope of the right, including that the arms protected by the Second Amendment should continue to include those arms whose primary value is public security rather than individual self-defense.

The Second Amendment as a Guard Against Government-Sanctioned Tyrannous Factions

The rioting and looting that occurred in American cities during the summer of 2020 highlights an heretofore ignored aspect of the Second Amendment—the Framers’ concerns about the danger of factions.
The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, through which the Second Amendment applies to the states, witnessed first-hand freedmen and white Republicans being subjected to terrorist campaigns supported or accommodated by local law enforcement which the “Redeemers” controlled politically. Similarly, the riots and looting of 2020 illustrate that even today, local government officials can be complicit in law-enforcement using political, unequal criteria in determining whether and to what extent to preserve and enforce law and order.
Reviewing the events of Summer 2020 suggest that the individual right to self-defense is not only still important, but remains a necessary check on violent factions allied with corrupt local government.

This paper argues that the Second Amendment carries a particular force and has special application when individuals must defend themselves and their property against tyrannous factions that operate with the direct or indirect support of government.
The Second Amendment counters faction in two ways: it protects the individual right of self-defense against violent factions; and it checks the power of government to oppress its citizens through violent factions. Although the Constitution as a whole embodies a concern about faction, the Second Amendment provides unique protections against the abuses of faction by giving citizens the right to defend themselves from criminal aggression when the government will not.

A whine when a well know rule in legal circles rules, that’s been used to the advantage of the proggies for years, gets used by those he disagrees with.

Obscure (no, not really)  court rule sends gun rights cases to one San Diego federal judge, troubling gun control groups

A quirk in a local San Diego federal court rule means one judge is hearing challenges to state gun laws. Gun control groups say that’s wrong

In the past two years U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez has issued sweeping rulings, written in vigorous and sharply-worded prose, in two separate lawsuits challenging California state laws banning high-capacity magazines and mandatory background checks for ammunition purchases.

On Monday Benitez will hold a hearing in his courtroom in the downtown San Diego federal courthouse on another case filed last year that challenges several laws regulating and defining assault weapons in the state.

And he is also overseeing a fourth weapons case — one that challenges the state prohibition on possessing batons, billy clubs and blackjacks — that the plaintiffs say violates the Second Amendment.

In a federal district with more than a dozen judges, Benitez has been able to oversee and rule on a series of challenges to state gun laws. His rulings have wide implications, not only in California but also across the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — a huge section of the nation stretching from Montana to Hawaii and Guam to Alaska.

With a U.S. Supreme Court that is seemingly on the verge of establishing a strong conservative majority where several justices, including current nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett, support an interpretation of the Second Amendment more favorable to gun ownership rights, Benitez’s rulings are drawing scrutiny from gun control groups.

That scrutiny also includes the question of how various gun cases have gone to Benitez. In federal courts, cases are assigned randomly to judges when they are filed.

The reason the cases land in front of Benitez lies in an obscure court rule for the federal court district in San Diego that governs “related cases.” Continue reading “”