Category Archives: Fourth Amendment

Florida’s “Red-flag” Law Taking Guns Without Due Process

Thursday, 07 June 2018 05:00

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, June 6, 2018:

After the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, it didn’t take long for Florida’s “red-flag” law to be implemented. The Florida legislature enacted the law on March 9, apparently deciding that the ends justified the means, i.e., that judicial processes in place since the founding of the Republic were just too cumbersome and took too long. So they did an end run around the Fourth Amendment, and the law now allows a family member or a member of law enforcement to ask a judge to issue a warrant to seize an owner’s firearms, lowering the constitutional bar from “probable cause” to “reasonable cause.” The new law also prevents the intended victim from knowing his accusers, or from confronting them in a court of law. If he is later deemed innocent, he must petition the court to regain possession of his confiscated firearms.

In simple terms, under Florida’s “red flag” law — presently in place or being considered in more than two dozen other states — a person is guilty until proven innocent, and he must bear the costs of proving his innocence.

Consider, for example, the case of Broward County Sheriff’s bailiff Franklin Joseph Pinter, age 60,

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Parkland High School Survivor Questioned After Going to a Shooting Range

Monday, 30 April 2018 05:23

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, April 27, 2018:

When Kyle Kashuv, one of the more prominent figures in the ongoing debate about what to do to reduce high school mass shootings, went to a shooting range with his father last Friday, the first thing he did was post some pictures and some pro-Second Amendment comments on Twitter.

He should have known better. With the pain still fresh from the massacre that took place there on Valentine’s Day, he shouldn’t have been surprised at the response. A few of his fellow students at Marjory Stoneman High School took umbrage and reported his Twitter pictures and comments to school authorities. Kashuv explained what happened next:

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Trump Softens Gun-control Plan, Enrages Anti-gun Liberals

Tuesday, 13 March 2018 05:09

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, March 12, 2018:

Senator Chuck Schumer

Senator Chuck Schumer

So much softer were the president’s gun proposals released Sunday night than were expected that liberals started howling immediately. They were expecting President Trump to push for a raise in the age to purchase rifles, possibly a ban on so-called assault rifles, support for universal background checks, and the NICS “fix” promoted by Senators John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). Instead they got this tweet from the president: “Very strong improvement and strengthening of background checks will be fully backed by White House. Legislation moving forward. Bump Stocks will soon be out. Highly trained teachers will be allowed to conceal carry, subject to State Law. Armed guards OK, deterrent!”

Sorting it out, the president’s “gun plan” consists of

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Red Flag Warning: States Confiscating Guns by Ignoring Fourth Amendment

Monday, 12 March 2018 09:37

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, March 12, 2018:

An assortment of new restrictions on the Second Amendment in Florida also launched an attack on the Fourth Amendment, as well. As The New American noted last week, Florida’s new “red flag” law abrogates the Fourth Amendment on the way to violating the Second Amendment:

Simply put, someone who thinks someone else might be a danger to himself or others can present his arguments to a judge who then, based upon those arguments, is free to decide whether the state (police armed with guns and badges) can forcibly remove privately and legally owned firearms from that person’s possession. The “red flag” provisions do not allow the person charged to defend himself or even to know who his accuser might be. Further, he must prove his innocence in order to get his confiscated firearms returned to him. He is “guilty until he proves himself innocent.”

All in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Jonas Oransky, deputy director of Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety, was delighted, calling the adoption of such laws a “new frontier” in the long war against private gun ownership in America:

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The Minority Report is Now a Reality

Monday, 12 March 2018 09:27

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, March 12, 2018:

Cover of "Minority Report [Blu-ray]"

Cover of Minority Report DVD

Movie buffs will remember the 2002 science fiction film Minority Report based on a short story written by Philip Dick. Set in 2054 in Washington, D.C., a division of the local police department called PreCrime would arrest individuals based on crimes that they were going to commit. The precriminals were targeted by three psychics called “precogs.”

That “PreCrime” unit is now called the Crisis Response Squad, is part of the Seattle Police Department, and is now arresting precriminals based on testimonies from family members, friends, former wives or husbands, and even former roommates. This isn’t 2054, but 2018.

Here’s this from Seattle.gov, dated March 2, 2018:

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Florida Republican Legislators Turn Backs on Second, Fourth Amendments

Saturday, 10 March 2018 07:09

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, March 9, 2018:

Official photo of Florida Governor Rick Scott

Florida Governor Rick Scott

In 1970, Florida’s legislature officially adopted “The Sunshine State” as the state’s nickname. It was designed for the tourists: beaches, warm weather in the winter, and so forth.

About the same time, a 4’10” grandmother teamed up with the National Rifle Association (NRA) and, over time, successfully added another nickname to the state: “The Gunshine State.” When the Gun Control Act was passed in 1968, Marion Hammer decided to do what she could to overturn it. She started in Florida. She was the first female president of the NRA, and the rest, as they say, is history. In 1987, she almost single-handedly persuaded the state’s legislature to pass the first concealed carry law in the nation. In 2005, she was inducted into Florida’s Women’s Hall of Fame.

That was then. This is now.

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Utah Nurse Waives Lawsuit, Settles for $500,000 in Patient Privacy Case

Thursday, 02 November 2017 05:40

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, November 1, 2017:

Alex Wubbels, the Utah nurse who was violently arrested after trying to protect her patient’s Fourth Amendment rights last July, received a $500,000 settlement on Tuesday from Salt Lake City and the University of Utah which owns and operates the hospital. She waived any plans to sue, saying: “We all deserve to know the truth and the truth comes when you see the actual raw footage [from the officer’s body camera] and that’s what happened in my case. No matter how truthful I was in telling my story, it was nothing compared to what people [actually] saw and the visceral reaction people experienced when watching the footage of the experience that I went through.”

She is donating part of the settlement to

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Two Fourth Amendment Cases Prove the Constitution Still Works

Saturday, 09 September 2017 06:34

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, September 8, 2017:

A nurse in Utah and a couple in Texas stood up for their rights as guaranteed to them in the Bill of Rights. The Utah nurse hasn’t filed suit, but the Texas couple did, and in both cases law-enforcement officials have been exposed and shamed for their illegal conduct. Both cases were aided with the help of videos taken of the incidents.

The first has caught national attention and has stirred national outrage. On July 26 Alex Wubbels was on duty as head nurse of the University of Utah Hospital’s burn unit when a truck driver was wheeled in suffering from severe burns. He had been hit by a driver fleeing police and was comatose when he arrived in the ER.

Salt Lake City police detective Jeff Payne arrived at the hospital with instructions to obtain a blood sample from the comatose driver to test for elicit substances and ran into nurse Wubbels who knew the hospital’s rules: There would be no blood drawn unless

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Trump’s Pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio Sends a Strong Message

Saturday, 26 August 2017 19:48

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Saturday, August 26, 2017:

President Trump pardoned former Maricopa County (Arizona) sheriff Joe Arpaio (shown), the White House announced Friday evening: “Throughout his time as Sheriff, Arpaio continued his life’s work of protecting the public from the scourges of crime and illegal immigration,″ the statement said. “Sheriff Joe Arpaio is now eighty-five years old, and after more than fifty years of admirable service to our Nation, he is worthy candidate for a Presidential pardon.”

For his part, the veteran sheriff was grateful but called his conviction the result of unceasing efforts by the Obama administration to silence him. In one tweet, Arpaio said:

Thank you @realdonaldtrump for seeing my conviction for what it is: a political witch hunt by holdovers in the Obama justice department!

And in another:

I am humbled and incredibly grateful to President Trump. I look fwd to putting this chapter behind me and helping to #MAGA

Arizona Senator John McCain was ambivalent about the presidential pardon:

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Pew Research: Americans Getting More Comfortable With Firearm Ownership

Saturday, 24 June 2017 05:34

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, June 23, 2017:

Pew Research Center’s latest in-depth report on what it calls “America’s Complex Relationship with Guns” is revelatory. According to the report, released on Thursday, Americans are becoming more and more comfortable with guns and gun ownership, and less and less enchanted with more gun laws to fight perceived gun violence.

When 3,390 U.S adults were polled in March and April, they were asked whether it was more important to protect gun rights or to control gun ownership. In the year 2000, two-thirds of those polled then favored more gun control. Today, that has dropped to less than half,

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Joliet, Illinois is About to Write a Very Large Check to Elijah Manuel

Tuesday, 04 April 2017 05:28

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, March 31, 2017:

Interstate 80 bridge over the Des Plaines Rive...

Interstate 80 bridge over the Des Plaines River near Joliet, Illinois.

Joliet is a pleasant township of about 150,000 souls located on the Des Plaines River 40 miles southwest of Chicago. It describes itself as going through “a modern day renaissance” after having a near-death financial experience. Then-Mayor Tom Giarrante said three years ago this month:

I am proud to once again report that the State of the City continues to be … stable. As mayor, I will continue to work hard to keep Joliet financially sound by controlling our spending. It won’t be easy, and it won’t always be popular, but I will work to keep our checkbook balanced and we will not balance it by raising property taxes.

Three years earlier, the town had a $17 million deficit. It’s about to have another similar experience.

The Supreme Court last week paved the way. In Manuel v. City of Joliet, the court ruled unanimously that Elijah Manuel was free to bring a claim against the city based on Fourth Amendment violations conducted by Joliet police officers back in 2011. The opinion, written by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, gave Manuel the go-ahead:

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Supreme Court Unanimously Upholds Fourth Amendment in Illinois case

Friday, 31 March 2017 05:16

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, March 30, 2017:

English: Elena Kagan, Associate Justice of the...

Elena Kagan, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

The city of Joliet, Illinois, is about to find out just how costly its miscarriage of justice can be, now that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously last week that it cannot incarcerate an individual while he is awaiting trial, absent probable cause. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan was succinct in delivering the court’s opinion:

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Not All Travel Bans Apply to Foreigners

Thursday, 09 February 2017 06:45

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, February 8, 2017:

Embed from Getty Images

The federal government published the final rules on Monday on just how the Department of Transportation, the Department of State and the Internal Revenue Service, working together, can disrupt one’s plans to travel abroad:

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Court Rules That Those Carrying Concealed Are Presumed to Be Dangerous

Monday, 30 January 2017 17:36

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 30, 2017:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia) ruled last week that an individual carrying concealed gives up essential Fourth Amendment rights under the presumption that since he is armed, he is also dangerous.

The ruling issued on Monday, January 23, United States v. Robinson, reversed an earlier decision by the court’s three-judge panel, claiming that the Supreme Court, in two relevant decisions, concluded that “armed and dangerous” meant “armed and therefore dangerous” rather than “armed” as a fact and “dangerous” based on reasonable judgments surrounding the case.

A tip received by Ransom, West Virginia, police on March 24, 2014 that a man was seen

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Social Security uses “Nuremberg Defense” to Explain Why it Wants to Add Beneficiaries to the NICS

Tuesday, 27 December 2016 07:35

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, December 26, 2016:

The defendants at Nuremberg Trials

The defendants at Nuremberg Trials

The Nuremberg Defense was developed following the Second World War in an attempt to reduce the sentences of those convicted of heinous crimes ordered by their superiors. The Social Security Administration (SSA) used a variation to deflect criticism over its “final” rules regarding adding names of certain beneficiaries to the NICS – the National Instant Criminal Background Check System:

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Social Security Issues Final Rules Removing Beneficiaries’ Gun Rights

Saturday, 24 December 2016 07:37

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Saturday, December 24, 2016:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) announced on December 19 that it had “finalized” its rules regarding who will have their names added to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). This was after the proposed rules published in April received more than 90,000 responses, mostly negative, from the public. The National Rifle Association (NRA) opposed the proposed rules for numerous reasons and urged its members to protest them.

The new rules now allow the SSA to

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The Background Check System is Working Well – at Keeping Guns Out of the Hands of Citizens Without Due Process

Monday, 10 October 2016 19:48

This article was published by the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, October 10, 2016:

The Brady Campaign promised back in 1993 that a properly installed background check system, run by the ever-dependable and reliable FBI, would deny permission to criminals trying to buy a firearm. The latest report from the Inspector General of the Justice Department confirms that the system is working well: from 2008 to 2014, the NICS [National Instant Criminal Background Check System] denied approval of 556,000 requests for permission to purchase a firearm with an “accuracy rate that ranges from 99.3 percent to 99.8 percent.”

But buried on page four of the report was this:

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Closing the Loop on the Surveillance State in America

Thursday, 06 October 2016 05:07

This article was published by the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, October 5, 2016:

English: A surveillance camera at a traffic li...

A surveillance camera at a traffic light (mainly used to watch people)

In 2012 the Wall Street Journal published a 10-page warning about the surveillance state being enhanced through the use of license plate scanners. It showed that, with this final piece of the surveillance puzzle put into place, an individual’s private life can be built, observed, tracked, followed, and, when determined necessary, intercepted by federal agencies. Wrote the Journal:

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Feds Scanning License Plates of Gun Show Attendees

Wednesday, 05 October 2016 04:46

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, October 4, 2016:

As the Wall Street Journal reported, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has has a program in place since 2010 to use license-plate readers to read the license plates of gun show attendees in southern California. The theory was simple: compare those scans to cars crossing the border into Mexico and — voila! — ICE could find potential gun runners who warranted further investigation.

But the ICE didn’t do the scanning.

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Knightscope Robots: Enhanced Safety or More Invasive Surveillance?

Tuesday, 06 September 2016 04:58

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, September 5, 2016:

NXT Robot

Not a Knightscope robot, but close

Knightscope robots — one for inside work, the other for outdoors — have been under development for three years, and have logged 35,000 hours of testing and 25,000 miles of rolling through malls, parking lots, and manufacturing facilities. And yet, within weeks of the K5 outdoor model being released in the Stanford Shopping Center, an upscale shopping mall in Palo Alto, California, one of them couldn’t avoid hitting a 16-month-old toddler and running over his foot.

It was a poor start to Knightscope’s first major public contract with the mall, and they did the best they could to ameliorate the situation:

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