Category Archives: Constitution

Massive Noncompliance to Boulder, Colorado, Assault Weapons Ban

Friday, 07 December 2018 06:24

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, December 6, 2018:

In May, in a fit of righteous do-goodism, the Boulder, Colorado, city council unanimously banned the sale or possession of so-called assault weapons along with high-capacity magazines and “bump stocks.” As a sop to those among the city’s 100,000 residents who already owned firearms, current possession of such items was grandfathered in. All that was needed was that, by December 27, a firearm owned prior to passage of the law would need to be “certified” by the local police department. A fee would be charged per weapon, and a background check run on the owner.

If the owner cleared the background check, and his check cleared the bank, he would then be issued two “certificates of ownership” showing the particulars of the firearm and the date it was issued: one to be kept with the firearm, the other to be kept somewhere safe, just in case the first one was lost or misplaced.

The city council promised

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Kent State “Gun Girl” Wins First Round in Suit Against University

Tuesday, 20 November 2018 18:36

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, November 20, 2018:

Those hoping that Kaitlin Bennett would simply go away and leave the Kent State University campus when she graduated in May 2017 have been sorely disappointed. As The New American reported at the time:

The day after she graduated from Kent State, Kaitlin Bennett celebrated not only the event but her freedom from her school’s restrictions on her Second Amendment rights. She posted provocative photos — she was wearing a short white dress — on her Facebook page showing her carrying an AR-10 semiautomatic rifle and her graduation mortar board, which was inscribed with the words “Come and Take it!”

She explained:

Now that I graduated from Kent State, I can finally arm myself on campus. I should have been able to do so as a student — especially since four unarmed students were shot and killed by the government on this campus [in 1970].”

Not surprisingly, the combination of her pose, her posture, and her position caused her Facebook entry to go viral. On Tuesday [May 15, 2017] she added:

I have no apologies for my graduation photos. As a woman, I refuse to be a victim & the Second Amendment ensures that I don’t have to be.

After graduation, Bennett took a position with a local gun shop and continued her pro-gun activism. She has scuffled on social media with David Hogg, tweeting “I have a challenge for you. Let’s arm wrestle. If I win, we get to keep the 2nd Amendment. If you win, we turn in our guns. Deal?” When Hogg failed to respond she tweeted, “It’s alright guys, the 2nd Amendment is safe.”

But her high-profile activities have caught the attention of Fox and Friends, NRATV, and Alex Jones’ InfoWars, as well as protesters who have hounded her both on social media and in person. In July, Bennett tweeted:

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Resistance to Red Flag Laws Cost This Gun Owner His Life

Thursday, 08 November 2018 06:48

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, November 7, 2018:

Trekkies will remember the Borg as cybernetic organisms that live in a hive mind called “The Collective.” They co-opt technology from other species and gain such power that “resistance” to them “is futile.”

Gary Willis, a law-abiding gun owner living in Ferndale, Maryland, resisted, and paid for it with his life. Local papers covered the incident. Willis was asleep early Monday morning when two officers from Anne Arundel County knocked on his door. A law-abiding gun owner, Willis answered the door “with a gun in his hand,” according to a police department spokesman. They were there to serve him with an “extreme risk protective order” and remove his legally owned firearms.

According to the spokesman, Willis put his firearm down to read the ERPO but then, apparently recognizing that it wasn’t a legal search warrant issued by a judge in accordance with protections guaranteed to him by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution but instead was issued by a local judge under Maryland’s newly minted “red flag” law, he retrieved his firearm.

The spokesman said that Willis “became irate.” In the melee that followed, one of the firearms carried either by one of the officers or by Willis, went off. One of the officers then pulled his own sidearm and shot Willis dead.

Family members told Capital Gazette reporters that a distant relative had requested the ERPO the day before, due to an “incident” that occurred at his residence. The details of the “incident” remain unclear at this writing, but the backpedaling by the police chief began almost immediately.

Said Anne Arundel County police chief Timothy Altomare:

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Law-abiding gun Owner Killed During Red Flag Confiscation Raid

Wednesday, 07 November 2018 06:28

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, November 6, 2018:

Gary Willis, a resident of Ferndale, Maryland, was awakened Monday morning at 5:17 a.m. when two officers from Anne Arundel County knocked on his door. A law-abiding gun owner, Willis answered the door “with a gun in his hand,” according to a police department spokesman. They were there to serve him with an “extreme risk protective order” and remove his legally owned firearms.

According to the spokesman, Willis put his firearm down to read the ERPO but then, apparently recognizing that it wasn’t a legal search warrant issued by a judge in accordance with protections guaranteed to him by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but instead was issued by a local judge under Maryland’s newly minted “red flag” law, he retrieved his firearm.

The spokesman said that Willis “became irate.” In the melee that followed, one of the firearms carried either by one of the officers or by Willis went off. One of the officers then pulled his own sidearm and shot Willis dead.

Family members told Capital Gazette reporters that a distant relative had requested the ERPO the day before, due to an “incident” that occurred at his residence. The details of the “incident” remain unclear at this writing, but the backpedaling by the police chief began almost immediately.

Said Anne Arundel County police chief Timothy Altomare:

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The Judge, the Journal, and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Friday, 02 November 2018 12:20

This article was published at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, November 2, 2018:

Back in January 2013, former New Jersey Superior Judge Andrew Napolitano taught a history lesson:

The right of the people to keep and bear arms is an extension of the natural right to self-defense and a hallmark of personal sovereignty. It is specifically insulated from governmental interference by the Constitution and has historically been the linchpin of resistance to tyranny….

The historical reality of the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to keep and bear arms is not that it protects the right to shoot deer. It protects the right to shoot tyrants, and it protects the right to shoot at them effectively, with the same instruments they would use upon us.

If the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto had had the firepower and ammunition that the Nazis had, some of Poland might have stayed free and more persons would have survived the Holocaust.

The chilling history of the 13,000 Polish Jews who resisted Nazi military forces from April 19, 1943 until they were wiped out by May 19 is told by Marek Edelman, one of the only survivors, in his “The Ghetto Fights.” After efforts to remove the Jews from the Ghetto to transport them to the ovens failed, the Nazis tried a different tactic:

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Wall Street Journal: “How Many Guns Do Americans Own?”

Thursday, 01 November 2018 21:08

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, November 1, 2018:

In an improbable article from an unlikely source, Wall Street Journal writer Joel Eastwood asks an impertinent question, “How Many Guns Do Americans Own?” Eastwood answers the rhetorical question himself: No one knows because of a lack of a central database. “With no central database,” he states, those interested in finding out “are left to make their own tallies.”

Not surprisingly, among those interested making guesses is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Eastwood reported that the agency was forced to make some estimates on how many guns were manufactured here in the United States, how many were imported from abroad, how many were exported, how many have been destroyed or otherwise lost over the years, and then they came up with a number: 405 million firearms are owned by 323 million Americans. Decried Eastwood, that’s “more guns than Americans!”

The question is impertinent for one simple reason: Why would the Journal, or anyone else for that matter, be interested, unless they had intentions to broach or abrogate the Constitution’s Second Amendment. After all, with a national database including the name and address of every American owning a firearm — all in the name of “public safety” of course — the temptation over time would be overwhelming to come and collect them, in the name of “public safety.”

That’s not how it works, according to former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano:

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U.S. Trade Rep Informs Congress of Intent to Restart “Free Trade” Talks With EU

Thursday, 18 October 2018 05:38

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, October 17, 2018:

Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s globalist U.S. trade representative, condescended on Tuesday to inform Congress of his office’s intent to restart negotiations on a “free trade” agreement with the European Union. This would essentially result in the resurrection of the failed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), without directly calling it the TTIP. Following a letter to members of the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, Lighthizer made clear that trade talks were also commencing with Japan and Great Britain (after its exit from the EU next year). In a statement released Tuesday, Lighthizer said, “We are committed to concluding these negotiations with timely and substantive results to American workers, ranchers and businesses.” The goal, he said, is to achieve “fairer, more balanced” trade with these U.S. partners.

Unstated is another goal: to develop the entangling alliances that President Washington first warned about in 1789 that lead to a global government. National sovereignty, being given up piece by piece, eventually would be replaced with unelected bureaucrats beholden only to those who appointed them.

That’s the problem with the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement) masquerading as the new and improved NAFTA and now given a new name in Mexico, T-MEC. As we pointed out at The New American,

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Number Two Senate Republican Doubtful About Passage of USMCA/NAFTA 2.0 Deal

Friday, 05 October 2018 13:35

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, October 5, 2018:

Following last-minute approval of the new NAFTA “free-trade” deal — the USMCA — that now includes Canada, the number two Senate Republican John Cornyn from Texas expressed doubts it could pass Senate muster. Cornyn told reporters: “I know people are still going through the details but it’s not a foregone conclusion that it will get confirmation by the Senate.” He said the earliest the Senate could vote on the NSMCA would most certainly be after the November 6 midterm elections.

There are political considerations, however, in trying to pass the trade deal after the midterms but before the Congress is sworn in in January 2019, during the Senate’s “lame duck” session. Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden said that, given the current political climate in Washington following the harrowing Senate confirmation hearings over the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh,

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Did the Private Citizen with a Concealed Carry Permit Legally Intervene in Last Week’s Shootout in Chicago?

Monday, 17 September 2018 10:02

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, September 17, 2018:

Massad Ayoob wrote the book that put him in the forefront of authors dedicated to teaching others the enormous responsibility that comes with carrying a sidearm for personal protection, In The Gravest Extreme. In it, he wrote:

The man who wears a gun carries with it the power of life and death, and therefore the responsibility to deport himself with greater calm and wisdom than his unarmed counterpart, whose panic or misjudgment in crisis situations will have less serious consequences.

The power of the gun is never ignored, no matter how accustomed one becomes to the weight on his hip. A man carrying a gun for the first time is acutely, even uncomfortably, aware of its presence.

After a time, he ceases to notice both the weight and the responsibility, not because he has forgotten them, but because they have both been assimilated into his bearing and demeanor.

A shootout in a Chicago suburb Thursday evening began during a “routine” traffic stop (experienced police officers will say that there is no such thing as a “routine” traffic stop) when the suspect, rather than complying with orders to pull over, accelerated up an on-ramp leading onto heavily-trafficked southbound Interstate 55. The officers successfully boxed him in and he sprinted away while firing back at the officers. The suspect hit Cicero police Officer Luis Duarte four times.

His partner took off after the suspect on foot.

That was the moment when a nearby motorist, stuck in traffic, saw the incident develop, and intervened. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported,

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Was CCW License Holder Who Helped Chicago Police Justified in Shooting at Suspect?

Monday, 17 September 2018 09:56

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, September 17, 2018:

When individuals obtain their concealed carry permit they take on an enormous responsibility. They carry the power to kill and must apply that power exceedingly judiciously.

Last week a concealed-carry permit holder was commended by police for voluntarily intervening in a shoot-out in a Chicago suburb. The incident raises the question as to when an armed private citizen should intervene — and when he should not do so.

The New American explained how the incident unfolded in our initial report on the shoot-out:

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Nation’s Two Largest Banks Learn That “Turnabout Is Fair Play”

Wednesday, 12 September 2018 18:33

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, September 12, 2018:

When Brandee McHale, head of Corporate Citizenship (i.e., damage control) at Citibank, went to see Louisiana’s State Bond Commission to find out why her bank was frozen out of the bidding on a $600 million highway improvement project near Baton Rouge in August, she was bluntly informed by state Representative Blake Miguez:

I know you’re from New York. This is Louisiana. This is not California. This is not Canada. [Your bank’s policies are] an infringement on 2nd Amendment Constitutional rights in Louisiana.

Miguez was referring to policies instituted by Citi and Bank of America following the Parkland, Florida shooting in February where 17 innocents were murdered by a gunman.

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Louisiana Rejects Anti-gun Banks From Bidding on Highway Projects

Wednesday, 12 September 2018 05:50

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, September 11, 2018:

Citigroup and Bank of America likely figured that since they already handled almost a quarter of Louisiana’s general obligation bonds, they would at least be given an opportunity to bid on the financing of some $600 million in highway improvements near Baton Rouge. But when the Louisiana State Bond Commission met in August, they deliberately and intentionally excluded both banks from the bidding owing to their anti-gun policies.

Just a few weeks after the Valentine’s Day shooting in Parkland, Florida, where a gunman murdered 17 people, Citigroup announced that the bank would no longer do business with any retailers offering high-capacity magazines for sale, or selling firearms to anyone who hasn’t already passed a background check or is under the age of 21.

In April Bank of America followed suit by stopping its lending to any gun manufacturer making “military style rifles.”

When the banks sent Brandee McHale, the head of Corporate Citizenship at Citigroup, to complain about being excluded from the bidding, she was told precisely why, by state Representative Blake Miguez:

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Ivanka Has Drunk the Washington Kool-Aid

Thursday, 06 September 2018 05:53

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, September 5, 2018:

A White House official described the transformation of the president’s first daughter from a normal, intelligent common-sense individual into a socialist. While on the campaign trail with her father:

She would meet with moms who wanted to support their family but didn’t either have a skill set or wanted to go back into the workforce [but] weren’t sure how to find a job.

She met dads who wanted to earn wages where they could support their families but didn’t have the right skills.

She spent two years on the campaign trail and heard firsthand how people felt like they were the forgotten man or woman and how nobody was looking out for them.

That really resonated with her.

And so, unencumbered with any understanding of or commitment to Constitutional limitations on such things as federally funded job training programs, she pushed her father and members of Congress to take taxpayer money and spend it on those “forgotten” men and women she felt sorry for.

It’s called the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act,

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Senator Jeff Flake’s Replacement Likely to Disappoint Constitutionalists

Thursday, 30 August 2018 05:42

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, August 29, 2018:

The winner of Tuesday’s Republican Senate Primary in Arizona, U.S. Representative Martha McSally, is likely to disappoint constitutionalists and Americanists hoping for an improvement in the next Congress over retiring Senator Jeff Flake’s record.

Beating back challenges from more conservative Republican opponents Kelli Ward and Joe Arpaio, McSally had to move to the right to accomplish the task. In 2016 she did not endorse Donald Trump, nor did she disclose for whom she voted in the presidential election, leading some to conclude that she either voted for Hillary Clinton or didn’t vote at all. But as Trump kept his campaign promises and began to implement his policies, McSally moved to align her votes with him. According to Five ThirtyEight, the opinion pollster which tracks Congressional votes, McSally has voted with Trump’s legislative positions 97.8 percent of the time.

Her victory in the primary on Tuesday was thus understandably greeted with this tweet from the President:

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Trump Impeachment Unlikely, Say Both Democrat Leaders and Likely Voters

Monday, 27 August 2018 05:22

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Sunday, August 26, 2018:

CNN and MSNBC used the words “impeach” or “impeachment” 222 times the day after the president’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort was convicted on charges unrelated to the campaign, and after his former personal attorney Michael Cohen pled guilty to violating campaign finance laws in connection with hush money used to keep the president’s past alleged sexual indiscretions quiet. Yet these liberal media giants had nothing to show for their efforts. A Rasmussen poll of 1,000 likely voters released after the inundation by CNN and MSNBC showed that half of them didn’t think the developments regarding Manafort and Cohen were likely to lead to criminal charges against the president.

Neither do Democrat leaders Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the former speaker of the House, nor Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), the Senate minority whip. Pelosi said

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Ninth Circuit Ruling Could Take Gun-control Debate to SCOTUS

Monday, 30 July 2018 15:00

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, July 30, 2018:

As The New American reported last Wednesday, not only did the three-judge panel’s ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last Tuesday surprise and delight supporters of the Second Amendment, it was the second pro-Second Amendment ruling by that liberal anti-gun court this month.

Tuesday’s ruling declared that Hawaii County resident George Young had his rights violated when he was denied a permit to carry a gun in public for self-defense. The decision overturned a lower court’s ruling that the Second Amendment right only applies to firearms kept at home.

What’s ironic is that Young,

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The Anti-Second Amendment Ninth Circuit Has Just Been Painted Into a Corner

Monday, 30 July 2018 14:50

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, July 30, 2018:

With two pro-Second Amendment decisions coming from the notoriously progressive and anti-gun Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in just the last two weeks, anti-gun liberals on that court have been painted into a corner. If they override by taking either or both rulings “en banc,” it gives the Supreme Court – about to be newly formatted in favor of the Constitution and the Second Amendment by Judge Brett Kavanaugh – a welcome chance finally to clarify and amplify its previous rulings in Heller and McDonald if their decision(s) are appealed.

If they leave in place both decisions, made by three-judge panels ruling on Second Amendment issues in California and Hawaii, the implications across the entire circuit would be momentous.

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Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is Likely to Disappoint

Wednesday, 11 July 2018 19:24

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, July 11, 2018:

Kavanaugh’s credentials are impressive. They’d have to be in order to beat out the other four candidates Trump was considering to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. The top three were so close that it is reported that the president didn’t really make his final decision until just before his announcement Monday night.

Kavanaugh, age 53, holds BA and JD degrees from Yale College. He spent his early years in private practice in Washington, DC before accepting a position as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in 1993. He became associate counsel to President George W. Bush in 2001. In 2003 he was named Assistant to the president and his staff secretary before being nominated to the D.C. Circuit. That nomination was bottled up for nearly three years before clearing the Senate in 2006.

Kavanaugh took significant roles in drafting the Starr Report, which urged the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, and led the investigation in the “suicide” of Clinton aide Vince Foster.

In the last 12 years, Kavanaugh has drafted more than 300 opinions while on the bench of D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Those opinions, by and large, please limited government Constitutionalists and social conservatives. For example

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Trump Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh Relies Heavily on Judicial Precedents

Tuesday, 10 July 2018 13:57

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, July 10, 2018:

After days of consideration, President Donald Trump on Monday night put to rest all speculation about whom he would nominate to fill retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy’s place on the high court. He named a leading light on the highly influential U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia: Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Constitutionalists were hoping that Trump’s pick would be an originalist — someone who believes that the Constitution should be understood on the basis of what it actually says and the intent of the people who drafted it. But although Kavanaugh has stated that judges should not make law, his judicial record shows that he relies heavily on past judicial precedents that have often been in conflict with the clear language of the Constitution.

The president didn’t make up his mind until the very last minute, carefully considering Judges Hardiman and Barrett, whose credentials made them close seconds.

Kavanaugh, age 53, holds BA and JD degrees from Yale College. He spent his early years in private practice in Washington, D.C. before accepting a position as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in 1993. He became associate counsel to President George W. Bush in 2001. In 2003 he was named assistant to the president and his staff secretary before being nominated to the D.C. Circuit. That nomination was bottled up for nearly three years before clearing the Senate in 2006.

Kavanaugh took significant roles in drafting the Starr Report, which

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Politics Reduces Trump’s Picks for Supreme Court Down to Two

Monday, 09 July 2018 19:52

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, July 9, 2018:

With the clock ticking toward the moment when President Trump announces his pick to replace Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy on Monday night, political expediency has narrowed his list first from five to four and now down to two: Judge Raymond Kethledge and Judge Thomas Hardiman.

Amul Thapar, nominated by the president to the 6th Circuit of Appeals in 2017, has largely disappeared from public discussion and private consideration by the president. Judge Amy Barrett, serving on the 7th Circuit Court, has been ruled too risky of becoming a lightning rod over Roe v. Wade while Judge Brett Kavanaugh, considered by many to be the front-runner, has been deemed too risky. Senate Democrats opposed to all of them would see an opportunity to delay confirmation due to Kavanaugh’s 12 years of opinions covering millions of pages which they could use as an excuse for that delay.

The American people are essentially holding five winning lottery tickets — whichever one the president redeems will bring the Supreme Court ever closer to a faithful consideration of the Constitution as intended by its crafters. Each of Trump’s picks has been vetted by the Federalist Society which, as The New American noted last week, “supports a ‘textualist’ or ‘originalist’ interpretation of the Constitution.” The Society’s purpose is

To promote the principles that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.

Said The New American:

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