-Ephesians 5:11-13
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, November 13, 2019:
When Connecticut’s Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s ruling last March that Remington Arms was protected from a lawsuit by families of victims of the Sandy Hook shooting, Remington appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Without comment, the Supreme Court on Tuesday turned back the appeal that allows the lawsuit against Remington to proceed.
The essence of the case against Remington is this:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, November 5, 2019:
Jeremy King, a resident of Lithia, Florida, a small town east of Tampa, was enjoying a quiet evening at home last Wednesday night with his wife, who is eight months pregnant, and their 11-year-old daughter. Suddenly, without warning, two masked and armed thugs broke down his back door and started demanding money and anything else of value.
Here’s how it went down, according to King:
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, November 6, 2019:
Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s CEO and Executive Vice President, caught a lot of flak in 2012 when he said, following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that left 26 people dead, that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.” Suggesting that teachers should be allowed to be armed, along with armed security personnel, was “ludicrous,” “an insult,” and “insane,” according to his critics.
What no one said was that LaPierre’s suggestion was “sexist.”
Jeremy King was very happy that his wife could handle a firearm just as well as he could. Not only was she his wife, she was also good with a gun.
King, a resident of Lithia, Florida, a small town east of Tampa, was enjoying a quiet evening at home last Wednesday night with his wife, who is eight months pregnant, and their 11-year-old daughter. Suddenly, without warning, two masked and armed thugs broke down the back door and started demanding money and anything else of value.
Here’s how it went down, according to King:
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, November 4, 2019:
Somehow Oklahoma City Democratic representative Jason Lowe didn’t get the
memo – or, if he did, he’s ignoring it: Oklahomans want full enjoyment of
their God-given rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Simply put,
those citizens want to make their own decisions on when to carry a firearm
for their own protection, and where. They don’t think they should have to
request permission from the government to exercise their rights.
In his first official act as Oklahoma’s new governor, Kevin Stitt
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Sunday, November 3, 2019:
Between 250 and 300 Oklahoma gun owners joined with Oklahoma’s Second Amendment Association in celebrating the state’s newly-minted “Constitutional Carry” law — carrying in public without government permission — in front of the state capitol in Oklahoma City on Friday. The new law became effective that day.
State Senator Nathan Dahm, the author of the bill that had previously been vetoed by former Governor Mary Fallin, exulted:
It’s a great day and a historic day. Throughout this process we faced committee chairmen who refused to hear a bill to restore our constitutional rights, or a Republican governor who broke her word, violated a campaign promise and vetoed the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms….
Today we celebrate being victorious.
In his first official act as Oklahoma’s new governor, Kevin Stitt, signed Dahm’s bill into law earlier this year that had previously been overwhelmingly approved by both the House (70-30) and the Senate (40-6). The previous governor vetoed the bill.
Oklahoma joins 16 other states with similar “constitutional carry” or “permitless carry” laws: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Montana, and Kentucky.
An outline of the state’s gun laws reveals just how free its citizens are to exercise their Second Amendment rights:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, October 28, 2019:
The bill proposed by Tacoma city council member Ryan Mello heads for a final reading tomorrow. If passed, it will start levying a $25 tax on every firearm sold in the city starting January 1, along with two cents per round on ammunition of .22-caliber or less, and five cents per round on all other calibers.
Mello admits that his bill probably won’t do anything about gun violence, but it would raise an estimated $30,000 to study the problem:
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, October 11, 2019:
A boy gives a mouse a cookie. The mouse asks for a glass of milk. He then requests a straw (to drink the milk), a mirror (to avoid a milk mustache), nail scissors (to trim his hair in the mirror), and a broom (to sweep up his hair trimmings).
Next he wants to take a nap, have a story read to him, draw a picture, and hang the drawing on the refrigerator. Looking at the refrigerator makes him thirsty, so the mouse asks for a glass of milk.
The circle is complete when he wants a cookie to go with it.
With a hat tip to Author Laura Numeroff, the developer of this plot, this is exactly what is happening in California, and should anyone be surprised?
Unless California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoes them by Sunday, all nine gun control bills presently sitting on his desk will become law.
Two of the most pernicious and dangerous concern expansions of the state’s already unconstitutional red flag laws, and illustrate the dangers of passing any such laws in the first place. Once enacted, politicians then find it easier to expand definitions to make them more draconian in their impact on precious rights. It isn’t hard to imagine a time in the very near future when red flag laws, all by themselves, will enable the complete disarmament of every law abiding citizen in the country.
As Steve Byas noted in his article appearing in the latest issue of The New American magazine,
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, October 10, 2019:
Unless California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoes them by Sunday, all nine gun control bills presently sitting on his desk will become law.
Two of the most pernicious and dangerous concern expansions of the state’s already unconstitutional red flag laws, and illustrate the dangers of passing any such laws in the first place. Once enacted politicians then find it easier to expand definitions to make them more draconian in their impact on precious rights. It isn’t hard to imagine a time in the very near future when red flag laws, all by themselves, will enable the complete disarmament of every law-abiding citizen in the country.
As Steve Byas noted in his article appearing in the latest issue of The New American magazine, “Red flag laws are not benign. They are a serious threat to every American’s right to keep and bear arms.”
That threat is about to become reality in California.
At present California’s red flag (extreme risk protection order, or “gun violence restraining order”) law allows
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, September 16, 2019:
Beto’s outburst (Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman, with a Freedom Index rating of 25 out of 100, who is seeking the Democrat Party’s nomination for president) continues to resonate and generate angst and joy days after his performance at the Democrats’ debate Thursday night.
A sound bite from an outburst has already become an unwelcome appellation for the Democrats and a source of encouragement for those in the freedom fight.
When O’Rourke was asked by the moderator if he was proposing taking firearms away from their owners, he answered:
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, September 16, 2019:
The Presidential Medal of Freedom was established by then-President John F. Kennedy in 1963 to recognize a person who has made “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States.”
Who says “Beto” (aka: Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman who is seeking the Democrat Party’s nomination for president in 2020) should get the award? Isn’t he the same Texas congressman who earned an anti-freedom rating of just 25 out of 100 in the John Birch Society’s Freedom Index for his unconstitutional votes while in office? Isn’t he the one who shouted out at Thursday night’s Democrat debate that “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47!”?
Yes, and yes.
Here’s what he said Thursday night in response to the moderator’s question about his “mandatory gun buyback plan”:
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, September 11, 2019:
San Francisco Supervisor Catherine Stefani wanted to teach the NRA a lesson, so she crafted a resolution designed to punish the organization. It passed the Board of Supervisors unanimously last week, declaring that the NRA is a “domestic terrorist organization.” She said that “they continue to stand in the way of gun violence reform and people are dying because of it.” She added:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, September 10, 2019:
The National Rifle Association (NRA) fired back on Monday against the San Francisco Board of Supervisors by filing a lawsuit claiming that the board’s resolution declaring the NRA a “domestic terrorist organization” violated its First Amendment rights to free speech.
A simple declaration by the board would likely have not generated the pushback from the NRA, which supports the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, including the right to free speech. But the board overreached, according to the NRA, when it resolved to “take every reasonable step to limit those entities who do business with the City and County of San Francisco from doing business with” the NRA.
The NRA’s lead attorney, William Brewer, declared that the board’s “action is
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, August 30, 2019:
Seeing the judicial pendulum swinging back in favor of the Constitution, five Senate Democrats chose a pending case to vent their frustration and to issue a threat: Unless you stop the pendulum, we’ll push to pack the court with friendlies.
The case selected is the New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. the City of New York. The Association thinks the city’s new ordinance limiting the transport of firearms to gun ranges outside the city is unconstitutional and sued the city accordingly. The case moved to the Supreme Court, which granted its petition to review a lower court’s ruling. In the meantime, New York City officials modified the offending law, declaring the case “moot.”
Five liberal, anti-gun Democrat Senators — Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York — filed a “friend of the court” brief asking the Court to dismiss hearing the case as the city’s modifications have, in their opinion, rendered the suit brought by the Association as now no longer relevant.
They went further. In that letter they made it clear that if the Supreme Court went ahead to hear the case anyway, and ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, they would move to expand the number of justices on the court to include those more friendly to their cause and their agenda.
They accused outside actors of bringing particular cases before the Court in order to “move the law”:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, August 14, 2019:
In spite of fading support for universal background checks, as reported by CNN on Tuesday, there are still some in the White House and nearly all of the mainstream media who are deliberately keeping the conversation in favor of background checks going.
According to CNN, lawmakers are reconsidering the political risks of pushing for universal background checks in this highly toxic political environment leading up to elections next year. “It’s a sign of a possible divide between Trump and his party,” wrote CNN, and that many Republicans “have appeared skeptical” about Trump’s belief that he needs to “do something meaningful” following the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio last week. It added that “several conservative allies and Republican lawmakers have privately voiced opposition to his push for [universal] background checks.”
This hasn’t fazed the New York Times in the slightest, declaring that
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, August 14, 2019:
Red flag laws are pernicious, not because they are evil (which they are), nor because they’re unconstitutional (which they are), nor because they don’t work (which they don’t). It’s because, says Missouri Representative Tony Lovasco, people who think about them (if they think about them at all) are certain they don’t apply to them. After all, who in their right mind would even dream of shooting up a Walmart?
Lovasco (R-Mo.), writing in The Hill, exposed the danger of the thinking by law-abiding citizens that such laws could never apply to them: “Proponents of gun control (and make no mistake, red flag laws are gun control) want you to think, ‘I’m not like them. This isn’t about me.’ But you are like them, and it is about you. It’s about everyone.”
Every American citizen, gun owner or not, has unalienable rights, wrote Lovasco: “The right to face your accuser. The right to due process. The right to protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. Every one of these rights is explicitly violated under red flag laws.”
Added Lovasco:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, August 13, 2019:
As the hysterical cries continue, demanding that government “do something” about gun violence, more thoughtful advisors and commentators are digging more deeply into the dangers of “doing something.” Especially concerning is the rush to implement major infringements of gun rights, with many politicians using the flawed argument that “If even one life is saved, infringements on the rights of many are justified.”
This is the siren song of tyranny.
Former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke said everyone should take a deep breath and step back from the ledge: “I like to remind people that we should never make sweeping policy changes in a state of hysteria. A wiser course of action would be for elected officials to talk people in off the ledge so we can have a reasonable conversation about the horrific incident after things settle down. Emotion-based policy always turns out to be a lousy policy loaded with unintended consequences.”
One especially grievous black mark in America’s recent history is the rush to judgment about Japanese Americans in the months after Pearl Harbor. President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order forcibly removing more than 110,000 of them from their homes and into “internment” (read: concentration) camps. They were guilty of nothing more than being Japanese. As Colonel Karl Bendetsen (the architect of the program) put it, anyone with “one drop of Japanese blood” would be taken from their homes by force and placed in concentration camps.
The Supreme Court never ruled on the constitutionality of the incarceration of these American citizens, although their Fourth Amendment rights were clearly violated. Modest financial reparations were belatedly made by the federal government to those survivors in 1988, along with an apology.
Tony Lovasco (R-Mo.) exposed the danger of thinking that red flag laws could never apply to law-abiding citizens. After all, most people would never dream of shooting up a Walmart store. Wrote Lovasco, “Proponents of gun control (and make no mistake, red flag laws are gun control) want you to think, ‘I’m not like them. This isn’t about me.’ But you are like them, and it is about you. It’s about everyone.”
Every American citizen, gun owner or not, has unalienable rights, wrote Lovasco: “The right to face your accuser. The right to due process. The right to protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. Every one of these rights is explicitly violated under red flag laws.”
Added Lovasco:
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, August 12, 2019:
Once the media hype dies down, the present push for more infringements on the rights of law-abiding gun owners will fade away as well. It is helpful to remember what is perhaps the single most important legacy of the Trump administration: the outing of the mainstream media as nothing more than howling dogs barking at each other over the back fence. They have been exposed as mouthpieces for the Deep State. They are like the Boy Who Cried Wolf: if you always tell lies, people will eventually stop believing you; and then when you’re telling the truth for a change, when you really need them to believe you, they won’t.
It’s also helpful to remember that the president has no ideological foundation rooted in the Constitution. He’s the ultimate pragmatist, a businessman seeking only to solve problems the most expeditious way possible. He also would like very much to get reelected next November.
Put all that together then, and the New York Times is right: Said the paper, the president’s past “flip-flops” on background checks “raises questions about his real commitment to legislation that would improve the background check system.”
Liberal Politico agrees:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, August 12, 2019:
Starting early last Monday morning, President Trump began calling his supporters and other policymakers for advice on what to do following the Dayton and El Paso mass shootings.
He spoke several times with Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive officer of the National Rifle Association (NRA). On Thursday LaPierre issued a statement condemning the push for more gun controls, including expanded background checks to include private sales and congressional pressure urging states (along with promises of federal money) to adopt red flag laws. LaPierre stated:
I’m not inclined to discuss private conversations with President Trump or other key leaders on this issue. But I can confirm that the NRA opposes any legislation that unfairly infringes on the rights of law-abiding citizens.
The inconvenient truth is this: the proposals being discussed by many would not have prevented the horrific tragedies in El Paso and Dayton. Worse, they would make millions of law-abiding Americans less safe and less able to defend themselves and their loved ones.
LaPierre added:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, August 9, 2019:
During Friday morning’s free-ranging meeting with the press, President Trump once again reiterated his determination to pass “meaningful,” “common sense” background checks and red flag laws.
When asked about resistance from the National Rifle Association, Trump quipped, “They’ll come around.” (After all, following Trump’s demand that his ATF ban bump stocks, there was nary a puff of resistance from the NRA.)
This is the opening that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is using to demand that President Trump call back the Senate from summer recess to vote on further infringements of the Second Amendment.
Pelosi referred to that opening in her demand letter:
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, July 19, 2019:
Vincent Smith’s petition urging Virginia Beach’s city council to repeal its “gun free zone” ruling is gaining even more momentum. As noted here last month (see Sources below), Smith, a city engineer, saw a gap in the security measures allegedly protecting city employees. He said, “The gap was not allowing employees to carry a firearm … instead, people were forced – like I am every day – to choose between earning a living and saving my life.”
The first time he tried, his effort fizzled. His petition received only 260 signatures. But following the ghastly shooting at Virginia Beach’s Municipal Center (where Smith works, but was absent on the day of the shooting) that resulted in the murder of 12 of his co-workers before police could intervene, he tried again. When this writer checked on June 27, there were 3,179 signatures (his initial goal was 2,500). As this is being written (July 18), Smith’s petition now has 5,366 signatures, and Smith has raised his goal to 7,500.
Said Smith: “I want a real consideration by council and a real discussion about changing the HR policy … what happened [on May 31] could have been minimized.” Once his petition reaches 7,500 signatures, the Virginia Beach city council will have that opportunity.
And so will the House of Representatives if Rep. Thomas Massie’s bill continues to gain traction. His Safe Students Act, which would repeal the federal Gun-Free School Zones Act, just received a massive boost by the 650,000-member Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA). Its chairman, Alan Gottlieb, said on Wednesday that the federal ban on guns in “gun-free” zones has been an unmitigated disaster:
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