Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

-Ephesians 5:11-13

Category Archives: Second Amendment

Politicians’ Canards Promoting Passage of Assault Weapons Ban

Monday, 08 August 2022 16:27
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, August 8, 2022:  

Hoping to ride the momentum from passage of the first major anti-gun legislation in 30 years — the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — Joe Biden and various anti-gun politicians are pushing the Senate to pass another anti-gun House bill, this one banning all “assault” weapons.

And they’re using the same lies and exaggerations.

Said Biden in July:

Assault weapons need to be banned.

 

They were banned. I led the fight in 1994.

 

And then, under pressure from the NRA [National Rifle Association] and the gun manufacturers and others, that ban was lifted in 2004.

We won’t waste readers’ time correcting the errors in this statement, but instead will focus on what he said next:

In the 10 years it was law, mass shootings went down.

 

But after Republicans let the law expire in 2004 and those weapons were allowed to be sold again, mass shootings tripled.

 

Those are the facts.

This was echoed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “We know that an assault weapons ban can work because it has worked before.… we witnessed gun crime with assault weapons drop by up to 40 percent.”

Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Federation, told The Epoch Times:

Supporters of the bans are calling their assertions “facts,” in an effort to mislead the public. Many of the Democratic Members of Congress were purposefully misleading in their assertions that the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban reduced crime.

 

This level of willful ignorance would be comical if … what they are trying to do wasn’t so blatantly unconstitutional.

John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, agreed: “The number of murders with rifles actually increased slightly when the ban went into effect.” He pointed out that the percentage of all firearm-related murders with any type of rifle was 4.8 percent prior to the ban, and remained essentially constant during the ban. After the ban expired in 2004, rifle homicides dropped to 3.6 percent of all gun-related homicides.

Reuters reported that Biden, Pelosi, and other opponents of the Second Amendment used a 2021 study from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine to promote the bill. When this writer attempted to obtain a copy of that study, however, he found that it was not readily available to the public.

However, in its summary review of the study the university provided this highly revealing disclaimer about the study’s results:

In conclusion, with a few exceptions, there is a surprisingly limited base of rigorous scientific evidence concerning the effects of many commonly discussed gun policies. This does not mean that these policies are ineffective; they might well be quite effective. Instead, it reflects shortcomings in the contributions that scientific study can currently offer to policy debates in these areas….

 

[N]one of the policies we examined would dramatically increase or decrease the stock of guns or gun ownership rates in ways that would produce more readily detectable effects on public safety, health, and industry outcomes.

 

The United States has a large stock of privately owned guns in circulation—estimated in 2014 to be somewhere between 200 million and 300 million firearms (Cook and Goss, 2014).

 

Laws designed to change who may buy new weapons, what weapons they may buy, or how gun sales occur will predictably have only a small effect on … homicides … which are affected much more by the existing stock of firearms.

Let’s recap: this study is one that House Speaker Pelosi and others used to promote the bill that is now headed to the Senate. But other studies are much clearer: The 10-year ban on semi-automatic rifles didn’t reduce gun violence by any scientifically measurable amount.

In fact, in 2013, after reviewing all the available data, FactCheck (funded by the left-wing Annenberg Foundation) noted that it is “premature to make definitive assessments of the ban’s impact on gun crime.”

Research done by Criminology & Public Policy in 2019 found that the ban “didn’t appear to have much of an effect on the number of mass shootings.” The group reported a year later, in January 2020, that such bans “do not seem associated with the incidence of fatal mass shootings.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said its own studies on the issue were “inconsistent” and concluded that “evidence was insufficient to determine the effectiveness of the 1994 ban.”

The Congressional Research Service concurred: “Public mass shootings account for few of the murders … related to firearms that occur annually in the United States.”

And so, when someone like Biden or Pelosi, or even hard-left Democratic Representative Lloyd Doggett representing Austin, Texas (who sports an “F” rating from the NRA), spouts off with something like this:

[Assault weapons are] easier for a teenager to get than to buy a beer. We’ve turned our churches, our schools, our shopping centers, our entertainment venues, almost any place into a battleground with one massacre after another…

then we know he’s making it up out of whole cloth, and he likely knows it. Such fabrications hide the true intent: these bills have nothing to do with gun control, but everything to do with people control.

Forbes notes that the most recent bill has little chance in the Senate, where Democrats would need 10 Republican defectors to gain the 60 votes needed for passage.

17 State AGs Sue ATF Over Unconstitutional Expansion of Powers

Friday, 29 July 2022 13:54
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, July 29, 2022:  

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich submitted a complaint on Wednesday against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). Attorneys general from 16 other states, along with some gun-rights groups, joined him in the complaint.

At issue is the ATF’s attempt to prohibit the making of “ghost guns” by private individuals by declaring the parts needed to make them as firearms themselves and therefore subject to ATF regulation.

As Brnovich noted, the ATF seeks to “regulate unfinished, non-functional parts as if they [are] complete firearms.” This move “overshoot[s] the authority granted to it by Congress. The rulemaking is unconstitutional.”

The issuance of the agency’s “final rule,” says the complaint,

unconstitutionally subverts Congress’ authority, exercising quintessentially legislative powers in a manner that could never pass either (let alone both) houses of Congress today, which is precisely why defendants have no intent whatsoever to ask for legislative authorization to take such unprecedented actions.

In other words, the ATF action is another example of the administrative state — the unconstitutional fourth branch of government — run amok.

The complaint makes clear, from the agency’s own words, that its purpose is to eliminate ghost guns altogether by regulating their parts into oblivion:

The Final Rule can be viewed as an effort by ATF to eliminate the market for 80% frames and receivers (and DIY homemade firearms) entirely, through arbitrary standards, intimidation, and threats of criminal charges for vague federal crimes.

 

In fact, ATF admits that the Final Rule “will reduce the overall supply and demand for … firearm parts kits,” and “estimates … that 98% of such companies “will end up dissolving their businesses”….

 

The Final Rule can best be understood as an effort to eliminate entirely the market for DIY firearm parts that can be manufactured into functional firearms by law-abiding, “do-it-yourself” gun owners.

The 161-page complaint declares that

The Final Rule upends existing federal gun law, imposing onerous burdens on federal firearms licensees and private gun owners alike, and creating out of thin air a new federal crime with respect to what ATF terms “privately made firearms,” all in clear disregard for the statutory text that Congress enacted.

To create that “new federal crime,” the ATF first must create a new definition of ghost gun. The new definition reads:

Privately made firearm (PMF): A firearm, including a frame or receiver, completed, assembled, or otherwise produced by a person other than a licensed manufacturer, and without a serial number placed by a licensed manufacturer at the time the firearm was produced.

Under the new definition, any PMF that doesn’t have a serial number (none of them do) automatically becomes illegal to own.

The complaint states that the “ATF does not have the power to create new crimes,” just as the Executive Branch cannot, either through the president or one of its agencies, create criminal statutes. Under the Constitution, only Congress can do that:

Defendants may only exercise the authority conferred upon them by statute, and may not legislate through regulation in order to implement [the agency’s] perceived intent of Congress or congressional purpose behind federal gun control statutes.

The complaint spells out how the Constitution works, and how the ATF works to violate it:

Article I, § 1 of the U.S. Constitution provides that “[a]ll legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”

 

Article I, § 7, Clause 2 of the Constitution mandates that “[e]very Bill … shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate” and “shall … be presented to the President of the United States … before it become a Law….”

 

The [ATF’s] Final Rule violates these provisions, usurping legislative powers. The Final Rule represents an attempt by an administrative agency to implement policy change and enact omnibus federal gun control legislation through bureaucratic regulation, rather than through legislation.

The complaint provides a helpful analogy:

The Constitution protects the corresponding right to sell firearm components, magazines, ammunition, and accessories, just as the freedoms of speech and press protect the right to buy and sell newspapers, books, paper, and ink.

 

Indeed, it would not mean much if there was a right to make a firearm, but no ability to purchase the materials necessary to do so.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court of North Dakota, asks the court to rein in the ATF by declaring that

the Final Rule is unlawful and an ultra vires [“beyond the powers”] agency action and of no force and effect;

 

the Final Rule is an act “not in accordance with law” and of no force and effect;

 

the Final Rule violates the Separation of Powers doctrine embodied in the United States Constitution; and

 

the Final Rule violates rights protected by the Second Amendment and is of no force and effect.

Unfortunately, the complaint doesn’t address the issue of the constitutionality of the ATF itself, or of Congress’ original abrogation of the separation of powers doctrine by granting legislative authority to the ATF in the first place. As the complaint itself states, in its effort to perform an end run around the constitutional limitations built in by the Founders,

ATF has created an informal definition, within another informal definition, within a regulatory definition, within another regulatory definition, within a statutory definition, of a statutory term.

This will continue until such time as the ATF is abolished, or the Second Amendment is abolished by it.

House Committee Seeks Apologies From Gun Makers After Recent Mass Shootings

Friday, 29 July 2022 13:50
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, July 29, 2022:  

The Democrat-laden House Oversight Committee demanded apologies from CEOs of gun manufacturers Ruger and Daniel Defense on Wednesday for selling weapons used by murderers in recent mass shootings.

The chairwoman of the committee, Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), asked the CEO of Smith & Wesson to show up for the grilling as well, but he declined. In her letter “inviting” the three company presidents to the inquisition, she wrote:

The information you provided has heightened the Committee’s concern that your company is continuing to profit from the sale and marketing of weapons of war to civilians despite the harm these weapons cause, is failing to track instances or patterns where your products are used in crimes, and is failing to take other reasonable precautions to limit injuries and deaths caused by your firearms.

She picked on those three companies deliberately, as their products were involved in the Uvalde, Texas, and Highland Park, Illinois, shootings.

This set the stage for her grilling of the two CEOs who agreed to subject themselves and their companies to the attack. The weapons are the offending criminals in those recent shootings and, by clear inference, so were the company executives.

Behind her was a white board showing how much each company made in recent years from the sale of their products.

She began:

The gun industry has flooded our neighborhoods, our schools, and even our churches and synagogues with these deadly weapons.… How many more American children need to die before your compan[ies] stop selling assault weapons?

Each president began to present a reasonable response to such a provocative and intentionally offensive question, but each time Maloney cut them off, citing time limitations. She, of course, had plenty of time to rant but precious little time was granted for any response.

However, Daniel Defense president Marty Daniel was able to declare: “These acts are committed by murderers. The murderers are responsible.”

Ruger’s president, when given a chance to respond to the outrageous question posed by Maloney, refused to answer directly but instead argued that a gun is “an inanimate object,” adding that “it is wrong to deprive citizens of their constitutional right to purchase a lawful weapon … because of the criminal acts of [a few] wicked people.”

He said, “The difference is in the intent of the individual possessing it,” and then added that her committee ought to look at the criminals using the weapons illegally rather than on the makers:

We respectfully submit [that] should be the focus of any investigation into the root causes of criminal violence involving firearms.

A Republican member of the committee, Jody Hice (R-Ga.), called out Maloney for her misleading and offensive questioning: “It’s absolutely disgusting to me and unthinkable … the height of irresponsibility and lack of accountability [by Maloney]. My colleagues seem to forget that the American people have a right to own guns.”

Another Republican on the committee, Clay Higgins (R-La.), called out Maloney and her cohorts: “What my colleagues are doing [here] is unbelievably beyond the pale of anything reasonable or constitutional. Will we have that debate reasonably … through the legislative branch? Or will [the issue] be settled on the front porch of Americans, when the FBI and ATF show up to seize legally owned weapons?”

Happily, the confrontation that Maloney hoped would capture national exposure and attention failed miserably. As of this writing, there were fewer than 5,000 views of the committee’s inquisition that was posted on YouTube.

Delaware “Assault Weapons” Ban Unconstitutional, Declares New Lawsuit

Wednesday, 27 July 2022 10:45
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, July 27, 2022:  

Following the Uvalde, Texas, mass shooting, Delaware’s Democratic Party — which controls the offices of governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and both chambers of the state’s legislature — rushed through nine gun-control bills in response. They largely ignored not only protections guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but also broader protections guaranteed by Article 1, Section 20 of the Delaware Constitution: “A person has the right to keep and bear arms for the defense of self, family, home and State, and for hunting and recreational use.”

And they largely ignored as well the recent ruling by the Supreme Court in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Following that ruling, the high court remanded (returned) pending lawsuits impacted by that ruling to the states to comply accordingly.

On Wednesday, the Delaware State Sportsmen’s Association and several other groups and individuals sued Delaware state officials charged with enforcing the new law, asking the U.S. District Court of Delaware to render the law unenforceable.

The Delaware law makes it illegal to make, sell, purchase, or possess so-called assault weapons, including semi-automatic handguns and semi-automatic rifles such as the immensely popular AR-15 platform. It also bans possession of “large capacity” magazines, arbitrarily defined as containing more than 17 rounds of ammunition.

The law provides a long list of the newly-prohibited handguns and rifles and then, to make sure that if any were not included in the list they would also be banned, defined “assault” rifles as having detachable magazines and pistol grips, a flash suppressor, having a barrel shroud, and — unbelievably — the capability of launching grenades as well.

The lawsuit declares that “the State of Delaware recently enacted in law [a bill] which flouts the fundamental civil rights of Delawareans … by making them criminals — felons — for exercising one of their most exacted rights enshrined in both the Delaware Constitution and the United States Constitution.”

House Bill 450 and its companion Senate Bill 68 were signed into law on June 30 (the Uvalde shooting occurred on May 24) by Democrat Governor John Carney, who said at the time that “we have an obligation to do everything we can to prevent tragedies like we’ve seen around the country from happening here in Delaware.”

He said nothing about how similar bans have failed to prevent such shootings, nor did he say anything about the mental states of the shooters. It was all about inanimate objects and punishing their innocent owners in order to make a political statement.

From the lawsuit:

When House Bill 450 was signed into law on June 30, 2022, the State of Delaware criminalized possession, transportation and sale of common firearms used by law abiding citizens for lawful purposes — mislabeling them as “assault weapons” — making it a felony for law-abiding citizens to exercise their fundamental right to keep and bear such arms.

The plaintiffs

seek declaratory and injunctive relief not only on the basis that the Regulatory Scheme violates their rights under the Second and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, but also on the fact that the Regulatory Scheme violates their rights under Delaware Constitution, Article I Section 20; their rights to Due Process under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article I, Section 7 of the Delaware Constitution; their right to Equal Protection under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The lawsuit referred to the Bruen decision coupled with the Heller decision (District of Columbia v. Heller, decided by the Supreme Court in 2008) which “assert that the Second Amendment protects the carrying of weapons that are those ‘in common use’ at the time.”

It derided Delaware officials who passed the law, using the phrase “assault weapons” in the text:

The banned semiautomatic firearms deemed as “assault weapons” under the Regulatory Scheme, like all other semiautomatic firearms, fire only one round for each pull of the trigger.

 

They are not machine guns.

 

What is more, the designation “assault weapons” is a complete misnomer, “developed by anti-gun publicists” in their crusade against lawful firearm ownership.

Further, banning such “assault weapons” has historically had almost no impact on mass shootings:

According to a widely cited 2004 study, these arms “are used in a small fraction of gun crimes.” See Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control [for] evidence [that] indicates that “well under 1% of [crime guns] are ‘assault rifles.’”

More recent data confirms Kleck’s 2004 conclusions. FBI crime statistics found that of the average of 14,556 homicides committed annually for the past decade, rifles typically account for just 314 of them. And in 2019, the latest year for which records are available, Delaware suffered 48 homicides, with none of them attributed to a rifle.

Of the five judges currently sitting on the U.S. District Court of Delaware, two were appointed by President Donald Trump, one was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, and the other two were appointed by Presidents Obama and Biden.

The New American will keep its readers advised of developments in the case.

LAPD No Longer Enforcing “High-capacity” Magazine Ban Thanks to SCOTUS Ruling

Friday, 22 July 2022 15:29
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, July 22, 2022:  

Reverberations from the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen holding that both the Second and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self defense outside the home reached Los Angeles on Wednesday.

Ernest Eskridge, assistant commanding officer for the LAPD’s Detective Bureau, announced suspension of enforcement of the city’s ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds, effective immediately.

He saw the writing on the wall. After ruling in Bruen in June, the high court also disposed of a number of other related lawsuits, including one challenging the Los Angeles magazine ban, Duncan v. Bonta.

“Due to this ruling,” wrote Eskridge, “Department sworn personnel shall not investigate, detain, or arrest any persons … [in] possession of firearm magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.”

The city’s ban was authored by LA City Councilmember Paul Krekorian, and enforcement began in November of 2015. Krekorian celebrated the event at the time:

The City Council banned the possession of large-capacity magazines to give law enforcement another tool to keep people safe and get these dangerous devices off the streets.

 

Starting next week, Los Angeles wilI start enforcing and upholding the ban. I urge anyone currently in possession of these illegal magazines to dispose of them legally at an LAPD station before enforcement begins.

That a limit on magazine capacities would somehow “keep people safe” is another gun-control myth used to justify infringing on the Second Amendment. The argument goes like this: A higher “rate of fire” from a firearm with a “high-capacity” magazine allows perps to kill more people in a shorter period of time.

In his book Countering the Mass Shooter Threat, author Michael Martin examined the evidence by looking at the actual rates of fire from recent mass shootings:

 

The cowardly Newtown shooter fired at a rate of fire no faster than the 150-year-old lever-action Henry rifle [used during the Civil War] — even though he had ten 30-round magazines and an AR-15.

 

The despicable Fort Hood shooter was one-third slower than that, while the mass murderer at Virginia Tech was 50 percent slower.

 

Even the San Bernardino shooters, who carried AR-15s and 30-round magazines, fired at a rate no faster than one round every 3.3 seconds. This is 40 percent slower than the lever-action Henry.

 

The coward who shot up a theater in Aurora, Colorado, fired at a rate no faster than the 170-year-old single-shot Sharps rifle — even though he had a 100-round magazine. Keep in mind, the Sharps rifle has a capacity of one round!

 

Finally, the Red Lake shooter and the Columbine shooters fired at a rate of fire no faster than the 240-year-old, muzzle-loading flintlock Kentucky rifle.

In the real world, Martin explained, large magazines are heavy, make a firearm difficult to handle, and result in a higher incidence of misfires. Take the Aurora, Colorado mass shooting, for example:

The Aurora, Colorado theater shooter brought one single AR-15 magazine with him, which held 100 rounds. Not only did that make his firearm incredibly heavy and unwieldy, the magazine also failed completely after approximately 45 rounds, and his incredibly slow rate of fire (one round every four to seven seconds, no faster than a single-shot rifle) would indicate that he most likely was fighting misfeeds right up until the point that the magazine failed.

In fact, commands that magazines be limited to 10 rounds might actually increase the rate of fire:

Had he been using 10-round magazines, it’s unlikely that any failure would have occurred, and his rate of fire could have been much higher. [Emphasis added.]

Martin concluded:

When politicians who know absolutely nothing about firearms attempt to make firearms policy, they shouldn’t be surprised when their actions don’t have the desired effect.

The effects of the Bruen decision (thanks to originalists nominated to the Supreme Court by President Donald Trump) continue to resonate throughout the land, to the benefit of law-abiding gun owners specifically and the populace in general.

Missouri Sheriff Warns FBI That Demands for Data on CCW Permit Holders Will Be Denied

Thursday, 21 July 2022 14:00
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, July 21, 2022:  

When Scotland County, Missouri, Sheriff Bryan Whitney learned that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was going to be conducting an audit in 24 counties in the state next month, he launched a preemptive strike:

As the sheriff of Scotland County, I want all my citizens to know that I will not allow, cooperate or release any CCW [Concealed Carry Weapons] information to the FBI, even at the threat of a federal arrest.

 

Point Blank, I will go down with the ship if need be.

His defiance of a potential demand from the FBI that sheriffs release information on Missourians with concealed-carry permits was not the only one. Sheriffs in Howard, Gasconade, Camden, Macon, Osage, and Randolph counties also agreed to keep such information away from the FBI.

To back up his letter, Whitney told Fox News, he is preparing to move all that CCW information to a secure location in case the FBI threatens him with a search warrant for it.

Why all of a sudden is this a concern?

Last month there was a massive data breach in California that released the detailed personal information of CCW permit holders that included names, dates of birth, gender, race, driver’s license numbers, and residence addresses, along with any criminal history that might have been included.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta — who is endorsed by the anti-gun group Everytown for Gun Safety while carrying a 0% rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA) — was “deeply disturbed and angered” over the breach and said he would be launching an “investigation” into how it happened.

The breach was far-reaching, and just happened to occur days after the Supreme Court ruled against New York’s gun-control law. It allowed sensitive information about concealed-carry permit holders in the state to be accessed and downloaded.

Additionally, data from other sites was open to public display and access: the state’s Assault Weapons Registry, its registry of Handguns Certified for Sale, its Dealer Records of Sale, its listings of those receiving a Firearm Safety Certificate, and anyone subject to a Gun Violence Restraining Order.

Bonta was terribly sorry but didn’t apologize, and provided no assurance that the promised investigation would actually take place, nor any assurance that such a breach would never happen again.

In addition, Missourians still remember the demand the FBI made of sheriffs’ offices under the Obama administration, wanting to know which Missourians had firearms, supposedly to establish who was “entitled to federal benefits.”

This “plausible” reason was seen for what it was, and the state legislature passed a law making it illegal to share such confidential information with any agency of the federal government.

The FBI, of course, denied that there was anything to worry about. It released a statement that under the planned Missouri audit, “a small sampling of system transactions is to be inspected for compliance and to ensure there is no misuse of the [FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division] systems.” It added, of course, that it was just a “routine auditing program” — nothing to see here, we’re just doing our job.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt exposed the danger and added to Whitney’s defiance. In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray last week, Schmitt wrote:

The FBI has absolutely no business poking around in the private information of those who have obtained a concealed carry permit in Missouri.

 

The Second Amendment rights of Missourians will absolutely not be infringed on my watch. I will use the full power of my Office to stop the FBI, which has become relentlessly politicized and has virtually no credibility, from illegally prying around in the personal information of Missouri gun owners.

He added:

You may wonder why there is such strong suspicion of federal agents here in the “Show Me State.” Simply put, Missourians are hard-working, law-abiding citizens who don’t need a national nanny-state keeping tabs on us.

 

But more than that, over the last couple of years, we’ve seen story after story of incompetence and corruption at the highest levels of the FBI.

Philadelphia Mayor says he Would take Away all guns from Owners if he Could

Friday, 08 July 2022 12:11
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, July 8, 2022:  

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney let slip what he would do if he were dictator: “If I had the ability to take care of guns, I would.” This faux pas occurred during the mayor’s rant that followed the shooting of two PPD officers on Monday night:

It was a chilled back day … beautiful weather.

 

But we live in America where we have the Second Amendment, and we have the Supreme Court of the United States telling everybody they can carry a gun wherever they want.

 

I was in Canada two weeks ago and never thought about a gun. The only people I knew who had guns in Canada were police officers.

 

That’s the way it should be here.

As a result, continued the mayor:

There’s a lot of goofballs out there with guns and they can get them anytime they want, so this is what we have to live with.

What Philadelphians have to live with — a 25-percent increase in gun violence in just the last two years — is a direct result of policies he and the city council have instituted. Those policies include no traffic stops for minor offenses such as expired license tags or inspection stickers or burned-out taillights. These apparently were somehow racist, and something had to be done.

As a result, law enforcement was deprived of a valuable tool that oftentimes turned up illegal weapons during a routine traffic stop.

If Mayor Kenney were serious about reducing gun violence by removing firearms from criminals, he would listen to former Deputy Police Commissioner Joseph Sullivan. Sullivan was relieved of his duties in 2015 after serving the city for 38 years as he “wasn’t needed any longer.”

Said Sullivan:

In Philadelphia at one point … 80% of the illegal guns they took off the street were the result of car stops. Legal vehicle investigations [were] a critical part of … gun violence strategy.

But after the city council, at the behest of council member Isaiah Thomas, passed a bill in October 2020 called the Driving Equality Bill, gun violence began to escalate. The bill decriminalized nearly a dozen traffic violations as data the council relied on appeared to show that Philadelphia police were pulling over a “disproportionate” number of black drivers for minor traffic infractions.

The new law prohibited law enforcement officials from performing a traffic stop unless the violation presented an “imminent and articulable risk of bodily injury to specific person or damage to private or public property.”

It prevented police from performing traffic stops for violations involving the vehicle’s registration, a broken brake light or headlight, illegally tinted windows, or “lack of inspection.” It also barred police from performing stops related to failure to follow traffic signals, stop signs or other traffic lights.

Accordingly, those involved in illegal gun trafficking were all but guaranteed free and unrestricted entry into the city.

The measure was considered to be an experiment. As Jerry Ratcliffe, a former police officer and now a criminology professor at Temple University, expressed it at the time: “This really is an experiment. If we go through with this … it could go either way.”

The results are in. The experiment is over. It failed.

Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) told his members:

The same politicians tying the hands of police and preventing them from putting a crimp in gun trafficking are constantly demanding more laws to restrict law-abiding gun owners. It’s as though liberal city politicians are on the side of criminals rather than cops and honest citizens.

 

[Philadelphia Mayor] Jim Kenney is a perfect example of the liberal urban political mindset. He complained there are “a lot of goofballs out there with guns and they can get them anytime they want.”

 

His administration made that a lot easier with these ridiculous reforms that prevent police from actually intercepting gun traffickers and discovering guns possessed by people who shouldn’t have them, during routine traffic stops.

 

It is because of such policies, and soft-on-criminal prosecutors, that the nation is seeing criminals operate with impunity.

 

When criminals know they’re not going to be vigorously prosecuted, they are simply emboldened to continue committing crimes that often turn violent.

 

Then what happens? Law-abiding gun owners take the heat from self-righteous politicians for crimes they didn’t commit.

If he had the power, Philadelphia Democrat Mayor Jim Kenney said he would solve the crime problem in the City of Brotherly Love by removing firearms from law-abiding citizens while leaving criminals free to bring in firearms without interference by law enforcement.

Highland Park Shooting: Calls for More Gun Control Miss the Point

Tuesday, 05 July 2022 15:09
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, July 5, 2022:  

The shooting began at 10:45 a.m. on Monday, July 4 — Independence Day in Highland Park, Illinois. The lone gunman, using what police called “a high-powered rifle,” killed six parade watchers and wounded at least 30 others, was captured eight hours later.

On cue anti-gunners polished their scripts. First was Nancy Rotering, Mayor of Highland Park:

Obviously, we have a problem in this country if we have weekly mass shootings involving these weapons of war, and it’s important for us to talk about how to provide … protection on a broader scale, whether it’s statewide … whether it’s nationally.

Right behind Rotering was Illinois Governor JP Pritzker:

If you’re angry today, I’m here to tell you, be angry. I’m furious. I’m furious that yet more innocent lives were taken by gun violence. And I’m furious that their loved ones are forever broken by what took place today.

 

I’m furious that children and their families have been traumatized. I’m furious that this is happening in communities all across Illinois and America. I’m furious because it does not have to be this way. And yet we as a nation, well, we continue to allow this to happen.

Pritzker then zeroed in on guns:

There are going to be people who say that today is not the day, that now is not the time to talk about guns.

 

I’m telling you, there is no better day and no better time than right here and right now.

 

It’s the Fourth of July, a day for reflection on our freedoms. Our founders carried muskets, not assault weapons. And I don’t think a single one of them would have said that you have a constitutional right to an assault weapon with a high-capacity magazine.

Behind Pritzker was the current occupant of the Oval Office whose staff posted a statement over his name on the shooting:

I recently signed the first major bipartisan gun reform legislation in almost thirty years into law, which includes actions that will save lives.

 

But there is much more work to do, and I’m not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence.

The most telling and relevant of all statements came from an attendee of the parade who survived the shooting. Said Angela Sendick: “It’s just crazy [that] no one can figure out how to put a stop to all this.”

More gun laws certainly aren’t the answer. Highland Park is a gun free zone that bans “assault weapons” and “large capacity” magazines.

Illinois, according to Mike Bloomberg’s anti-gun Everytown for Gun Safety, is the state with the most stringent gun laws in the country. It has a red flag law, a waiting period to buy a gun, a law requiring gun owner licensing, “open carry” limitations, among others.

Just purchasing a firearm in Illinois involves the following process:

• Buyer must possess a valid FOID (Firearm Owners Identification) card;

• Buyer must show knowledge of local firearm ordinance requirements;

• Buyer must display a valid FOID card to FFL (Federal Firearms License) dealer prior to handling firearm;

• Buyer must complete Federal Form ATF 4473;

• FFL notifies the Illinois State Police (ISP) to perform a background check in accordance with state and federal laws;

• FFL receives an “Approval” from the ISP to transfer the firearm;

• Buyer must abide by the State of Illinois waiting period before taking possession of the firearm (the waiting period for a long gun is 24 hours and 72 hours for a handgun);

• Upon taking possession of the firearm, the firearm must be unloaded and enclosed in a case to transport.

Police have reported that the shooter obtained his firearm legally.

Conservative Christian radio host Erick Erickson nailed it:

Evil is the absence of God. God does not cause evil. Evil is just that state wherein there is no God of all Creation. Mankind, left to his own devices, is evil….

 

Another young man, white, young, no real family life, lots of warning signs — another in the ongoing pattern of collapsed nuclear families and societal failures — takes a gun and fires into a crowd killing many….

In the absence of any internal moral compass or restraint, says Erickson, “the solution is to take guns away, of course, or whatever fits the political agenda of the loudest voices on television — it’s always guns, never anything else.”

The Founders knew the true nature of man. John Adams said that “our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

James Madison, the primary author of that document, concurred with Adams:

[Our Constitution requires] sufficient virtue among men for self-government. [Otherwise] nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.

Those chains are continuously being forged following every incident like this one. Without an internal moral compass or restraint the state will apply them externally, and the people will happily trade their former freedom for their newfound security. Princeton professor Robert George, who is also senior fellow at the Witherspoon Institute, put it well: :

People lacking in virtue could be counted on to trade liberty for protection, for financial or personal security, for being looked after, for being taken care of, for having their problems solved quickly. There will always be people occupying or standing for public office who will be happy to offer the deal.

Unless the foundations that originally rested upon individual responsibility and internal moral restraints are restored, then it’s just a matter of time before external tyranny replaces internal restraint.

Biden Signs Gun Control Bill After 29 Republicans Sell Out

Monday, 27 June 2022 13:41
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, June 27, 2022:  

With the assistance of 14 Republicans in the House and 15 Republicans in the Senate, the present occupant of the White House signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law on Friday.

The Senate passed the bill, S. 2938, by a vote of 65-33 on Thursday, with 15 Republicans voting aye to break the 60-vote filibuster threshold that otherwise would have kept the bill from moving forward. Later that day the House rubber-stamped the bill, 234-193, supported by 14 Republicans, before sending it to the Oval Office.

Biden read this from his teleprompter:

From Columbine to Sandy Hook, to Charleston, Orlando, Las Vegas, Parkland, El Paso, Atlanta, Buffalo, Uvalde, and for the shootings that happen every day in the streets … how many times have we heard that, “just do something, for God’s sake just do something”?

 

Today, we did.

What he did was something that wouldn’t have happened if those Republicans had kept their oaths of office to support and defend the Constitution. Instead, they looked the other way and voted aye.

The fourteen House Republicans who voted for the bill include: Steve Chabot (Ohio), Liz Cheney (Wyo.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Penn.), Tony Gonzales (Texas), Anthony Gonzalez (Ohio), Christopher Jacobs (N.Y.), David Joyce (Ohio), John Katko (N.Y.), Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), Peter Meijer (Mich.), Tom Rice (S.C.), Maria Elvira Salazar (Fla.), Michael Turner (Ohio), and Fred Upton (Mich.).

Of those 14, five are retiring at the end of their terms, and Congressman Rice just lost his primary.

The fifteen Senate Republicans who voted for the bill included Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), along with Roy Blunt (Mo.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Bill Cassidy (La.), Susan Collins (Maine), John Cornyn (Texas), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Rob Portman (Ohio), Mitt Romney (Utah), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Pat Toomey (Pa.), and Todd Young (Ind.).

Four of them are leaving office this year (Portman, Blunt, Burr, and Toomey), while all but two (Murkowski and Young) aren’t up for reelection until 2026 (except Romney, whose election is in 2024).

The law now allows the U.S. Treasury, with the assistance of the Federal Reserve, to create billions in new digital currency in order to fund it. The law contains many onerous and unconstitutional programs, including funding for state mental-health services and school security.

It targets the so-called “boyfriend loophole,” which allows those convicted of domestic abuse to have guns unless they have been married to, lived with, or had a child with the victim.

But the most egregious is the camel’s nose into the tent: $750 million to bribe states without red flag laws to pass them.

The attempt to appease so-called Republican gun rights supporters to go along with the travesty included this hat tip to the Constitution in the bill:

[State red flag laws must include] pre-deprivation and post deprivation due process rights that prevent any violation or infringement of the Constitution of the United States, including but not limited to the Bill of Rights, and the substantive or procedural due process rights guaranteed under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as applied to the States, and as interpreted by State courts and United States courts (including the Supreme Court of the United States).

 

Such programs must include, at the appropriate phase to prevent any violation of constitutional rights, at minimum, notice, the right to an in-person hearing, an unbiased adjudicator, the right to know opposing evidence, the right to present evidence, and the right to confront adverse witnesses.

First, there is no assurance that states accepting the bribe and creating red flag laws will include such niceties as respecting the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Second, as a practical matter, judges presented with a demand that they issue immediately an “extreme risk protection order” (ERPO) or else a potential killer might run loose will issue one first and worry about following the law afterwards.

Thirdly, nothing in the law requires states already able to flag their citizens with ERPOs to reinstate the Fourth Amendment’s demand that “no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause” in place of the much lower “reasonable suspicion” presently enacted.

Fourth, there is no assurance that red flag laws will have any impact on gun violence. New York has a red flag law in place and it failed to prevent the Buffalo shooter from wreaking havoc. Texas doesn’t have such a law in place, but it has similar laws available to law enforcement that failed to prevent the massacre in Uvalde.

As this writer declared last week:

The “bipartisan” act is an indirect but effective attack on the Second Amendment. It has nothing to do with stemming gun violence. It has everything to do with confiscating, under the color of law, every firearm from every gun owner in the country, thus paving the way for the imposition of a communist dictatorship on the once-free United States of America.

Supreme Court Upends New York’s Gun Law, Confirms Right to Carry in Public

Friday, 24 June 2022 15:43
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, June 24, 2022:  

The Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen — aka Bruen — released on Thursday gave Second Amendment supporters more than they hoped for. The high court not only tossed New York’s requirement that a citizen applying for a concealed-carry permit show “proper cause,” it also made crystal clear that citizens may not only “keep” firearms at home but may also “bear” them in public.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the six-justice majority, ruled that New York’s demand that an applicant show “proper cause” in order to obtain permission to carry a concealed firearm is unconstitutional:

New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defense.

He referred back to two previous key Second Amendment decisions that didn’t answer the question about carrying in public. In District of Columbia v. Heller — aka Heller — the high court held that “the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm … to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.”

In McDonald v. City of Chicago — aka McDonald — the high court held that “the right to keep and bear arms for self defense in one’s home is protected under the Second Amendment.”

These rulings left open the obvious question: What about outside the home? Thursday’s ruling in Bruen answered that question. But in explaining, Thomas also changed significantly the reasoning lower courts must now use in ruling on future Second Amendment lawsuits:

In District of Columbia v. Heller, and McDonald v. Chicago, the Court held that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.

 

Under Heller, when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct, and to justify a firearm regulation the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

In other words, from this time forward, lower courts must use the Founders’ original intent in judging Second Amendment cases.

That, in a nutshell, is the impact that “originalist thinking” by a majority of the Supreme Court justices is having on issues coming before the court.

It is also reflected in the decision announced today in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — aka Dobbs — that overturned Roe v. Wade.

For decades abortion was considered to be murder, with sanctions appropriately applied to those performing them. But the high court erred in 1973 in many ways, including ignoring that past history in “granting” a right for a mother to kill her unborn child.

In Bruen, Thomas reiterates the importance of past history and tradition in determining whether a particular law can pass Constitutional muster:

After reviewing the Anglo-American history of public carry, the Court concludes that respondents [the state of New York] have not met their burden to identify an American tradition justifying New York’s proper-cause requirement.

 

Apart from a few late-19th-century outlier jurisdictions, American governments simply have not broadly prohibited the public carry of commonly used firearms for personal defense.

 

Nor have they generally required law-abiding, responsible citizens to “demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community” [New York state’s license requirement] to carry arms in public.

Thomas recognizes that this decision raises the Second Amendment from a “second-class right” — one that could only be exercised with government permission — to a preeminent one:

The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not “a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.”

 

The exercise of other constitutional rights does not require individuals to demonstrate to government officers some special need. The Second Amendment right to carry arms in public for self-defense is no different.

 

New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms in public.

Lest readers become excessively ebullient over the high court’s ruling in Bruen, Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted that the decision only tossed New York’s requirement that “proper cause” be proven before an applicant can be granted a license to carry. He wrote in a concurring opinion that 43 states use licensing “schemes” that pass constitutional muster, including background checks, firearms training, a check of mental-health records, and fingerprinting.

Nevertheless, the ruling is a major victory for gun-rights advocates, and impacts not only New York but other states that have similar restrictions. Seven states — California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey — each have “may issue” laws which give government officials discretion to deny permits to applicants. Each of them is now scrambling to come up with other ways to prohibit or limit the private ownership and public possession of firearms.

So, while a major battle has been won, the war continues.

Ten Senate RINOs Poised to Sell Out Fourth, Fifth Amendments to Get to the Second

Thursday, 23 June 2022 15:30
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, June 23, 2022:  

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) could hardly contain himself. On Wednesday he rejoiced:

I am pleased Congress is on the path to take meaningful action to address gun violence for the first time in nearly 30 years.

 

This bill is real progress. It will save lives.

He has the support of 10 Republicans (In Name Only):

Senators John Cornyn of Texas, Thom Tillis and Richard Burr of North Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

They all will violate their oaths of office in order to pass what is laughingly called the Bipartisan Safe Communities Act. It should be, and more accurately would be, called “The Bipartisan Fourth and Fifth Amendment Sellout Act to Destroy the Second Amendment.”

For its primary purpose is to bribe states not already inflicting unconstitutional red flag laws on its innocent citizens with federal money — $750 million to start with — so that eventually all of them will accept the bribe — the money along with the strings attached — so that there will soon be in place a de facto federal red flag law.

Such laws, wrote Michelle Malkin at The New American,

empower disgruntled strangers, duplicitous family members, biased police, and ideologically driven judges to disarm [innocent] citizens by labeling them mental health threats to themselves and others.

The unconstitutional nature of red flag laws was made clear by Nikki Goeser, executive director of the Crime Prevention Research Center. In an article co-authored by a Republican congressman who hasn’t sold out his constituents, Kentucky’s Thomas Massie, Goeser said:

These laws allow judges to seize a person’s guns without a trial, based solely on a written complaint that the person might be a danger to themselves or others. All a judge needs is “reasonable suspicion.”

This contrasts with the provisions the Founders of our Republic put in place to prevent such violations of precious rights. The Fourth Amendment requires the much higher standard of “probable cause” instead of the much weaker “reasonable suspicion”:

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. [Emphasis added.]

The Fifth Amendment requires “due process” against such illegal seizures:

No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. [Emphasis added.]

Red flag laws, freed from those constitutional constraints, pose a direct and immediate threat to everyone who owns a firearm. As Malkin explained:

If you stray from the politically correct position on VA incompetence, guns, masks, vaccines, transgenders in sports, Drag Queen Story Hour, election fraud, demographic transformation, Black Lives Matter, or abortion, you and your children can be tagged, flagged and bagged for life.

She understates the threat. The “reasonable suspicion” standard is so low that ultimately anyone owning a firearm could be “tagged, flagged and bagged” for that reason alone.

The “bipartisan” act is an indirect but effective attack on the Second Amendment. It has nothing to do with stemming gun violence. It has everything to do with confiscating, under the color of law, every firearm from every gun owner in the country, thus paving the way for the imposition of a communist dictatorship on the once-free United States of America.

More Black Americans Are Exercising the Right

Wednesday, 15 June 2022 20:41
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, June 15, 2022:  

The sale of firearms to black Americans rose an astonishing 58% in 2020, and that growth is continuing. A recent survey by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) revealed that nearly every gun-store owner in the country has seen growth, especially among black, brown, and Asian-American customers.

One of them, Michael Moody, a black federal employee working in Washington, D.C., drove to Maryland to purchase a firearm and was surprised at the number of black customers in the store. He told NBC News:

You look at Buffalo [the May mass shooting at a grocery store there] and the feeling of “This could have been me” is there.

 

We could be the next target. And when it’s you, what are you going to do? Are you going to run and hide? Or are you going to be able to protect yourself? Protect your family?

 

I didn’t want a gun. I’m not a gun person. But this world has made me get one.

Next, he said, is one for his wife.

The surge is reflected in the growth of the National African American Gun Association (NAAGA). Started in 2015 by Philip Smith, the group has been adding more than 1,000 new members every month since 2020 and now has a membership approaching 50,000. On Facebook it enjoys more than 100,000 followers.

Americans are buying more than 20 million firearms every year, and almost 40% of them are first-time buyers. The reasons include fear that the Biden administration will be successful in passing more gun (people) control laws, including banning the sale, purchase, and possession of the most popular rifle in the country, the semi-automatic AR-15.

There’s also the fear that inflation will drive up the price of firearms (along with everything else) and that government pressure on gun manufacturers will reduce the available supply.

There’s the rising crime, mostly in anti-gun, Democrat-controlled cities. There’s the increasing sense of self-reliance that comes from owning and becoming familiar with a firearm.

And there’s a sense of camaraderie that’s encouraged by local gun clubs. One such is the Freedom Firearms & Safety Gun Club in Phoenix, where divorcee Onnie Brown now serves as vice president. The club’s co-founder Scott Dias said:

It only made sense to me that we should have someone in the forefront that’s a female … [female guests] feel more comfortable and they’re more motivated when they see other women and when they connect with other women.

Along the way, new black gun owners not only learn how to handle a firearm, but likely also learn some true black history concerning firearms. As The Trace pointed out:

Black Americans carried guns before the Founding Fathers gathered in secret to draft the Constitution.

 

They carried them during the Civil War and again afterward as members of the Buffalo Soldiers, established in 1866 as the nation’s first all-Black military regiments.

 

They carried them for protection after their emancipation from slavery, although the Black Codes of the Reconstruction Era tried to put a stop to that.

 

They carried them out West on what was then America’s frontier, in search of greater freedoms.

 

They carried them throughout the South to guard against white lynch mobs.

 

Later, they carried them to protect scions of the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr., who famously preached nonviolence; less well known is that King applied for, and was denied, a permit to carry a gun, and his Alabama home at one point held so many firearms it was described as “an arsenal.”

They’re also likely to learn that the Second Amendment is color-blind, and that the present resident of the White House is no friend of that amendment.

This is likely to have political implications. In the past the Democratic Party could bank on 90% of black voters supporting whomever they put up for president.

Now, however, that present resident is suffering from dismal approval ratings, dragging down that black support. According to a Marquette University Law School poll taken in April, Biden’s approval rating among blacks has dropped from 88% in July 2021 to 56%, a dizzying decline of 32 points.

The more all Americans — including blacks, browns, and Asian-Americans — exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, the more difficult it will be for tyrants, present administration included, to take them away.

Ten RINOs Joining With Democrats in Pushing Red Flag Laws

Monday, 13 June 2022 14:08
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, June 13, 2022:  

Anti-Second Amendment Connecticut Democrat Senator Chris Murphy could hardly contain himself on Sunday. After lengthy discussions over the weekend with several Republican (In Name Only) senators, he tweeted: “We have a deal,” adding:

Today a bipartisan group of 20 Senators (10 D and 10 R) is announcing a breakthrough agreement on gun violence – the first in 30 years – that will save lives.

Murphy was no doubt referring to the dreadful infringement of Second Amendment rights that was passed in 1994, called the Clinton Gun Ban, which banned the manufacture, sale, or purchase of “semi-automatic” firearms. Ten years later, after discovering that the ban had absolutely no impact whatsoever on gun violence, the law was allowed to expire.

Murphy was also touting the “bipartisan” nature of the “breakthrough” agreement, suggesting that Democrats and Republicans had finally repaired their animosity over the issue of gun rights and had come together to infringe further on gun owners’ rights.

However, four of the five Republicans who joined with the Democrats have no fear of electoral retribution from their voters: they are retiring from the Senate this year. Further, none of the other six are up for reelection. So they can safely display their animosity towards the Second Amendment with impunity.

Another RINO, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, joined the 10 in celebrating the victory: “I appreciate their hard work on this important issue. The principles they announced today show the value of dialogue and cooperation.” He added:

I continue to hope their discussions yield a bipartisan product that makes significant headway on key issues like mental health and school safety, respects the Second Amendment, earns broad support in the Senate, and makes a difference in our country.

There is no written text reflecting the agreement. And the clock is ticking: Congress soon breaks for the Independence Day weekend, and any legislation must be written and passed before constituents back home have an opportunity to express their displeasure at their senators and representatives selling them out.

Gun rights groups like Gun Owners of America and the National Rifle Association are already ramping up pressure to keep that insidious legislation from passing.

Murphy admitted as much in his series of tweets touting the anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment (and anti-constitutional) provisions. Last week he told reporters that “we can’t come to agreement the last week we’re here. There are people in the Senate who are no doubt going to use every rule available to them to hold this up and slow it down.”

Those “people” are called “constitutionalists,” using procedural moves put in place precisely to limit a noisy, power-seeking minority from overriding the rights of the majority.

The 10 Republican sellouts are Senators John Cornyn of Texas, Thom Tillis and Richard Burr of North Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

Buried in the bill is the most pernicious attempt to disarm gun owners: pushing for red flag laws by giving federal tax money to states if they pass them. Nineteen states already have the onerous and unconstitutional laws in place, and the remaining 31 are the targets of the Senate’s financial generosity.

In the so-called agreement that Murphy celebrated on Sunday, the phrase “red flag laws” is never mentioned, for fear of raising a red flag over the proposal from those who understand and support the Constitution. Murphy’s “law” refers to “intervention orders” that would apply to “those who are adjudicated as mentally ill” so they cannot purchase or possess firearms.

The NRA urged its members to “take action,” reminding their representatives of their rights and warning them of retribution at the polls in November if they violate them. The bills already passed by the House and being pressed for passage in the Senate

create “red flag orders” that allow for the confiscation of firearms without due process of law. The legislation would directly empower federal judges to nullify Second Amendment rights on a case-by-case basis and issue orders to seize firearms from the named individuals.

 

It would also provide funding to encourage states and localities to pass and enforce laws allowing judges to issue orders to seize firearms.

 

[The House bill] would strip Second Amendment rights of individuals by confiscating firearms without constitutional due process by allowing courts to issue ex parte (meaning the accused is not present) firearm confiscation orders.

 

A person could be forcibly disarmed of otherwise lawfully-possessed firearms before he or she had so much as an opportunity to contest the accusations — this would represent a clear denial of constitutional due process protections.

The unconstitutional nature of red flag laws was made clear by Nikki Goeser, executive director of the Crime Prevention Research Center. In an article co-authored by a Republican senator who hasn’t sold out his constituents, Kentucky’s Thomas Massie, Goeser said:

These laws allow judges to seize a person’s guns without a trial, based solely on a written complaint that the person might be a danger to themselves or others. All a judge needs is “reasonable suspicion.”

This contrasts with the provisions the Founders of our Republic put in place to prevent that sort of behavior. The Fourth Amendment requires the much higher standard of “probable cause” instead of the much weaker “reasonable suspicion”:

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.

The Fifth Amendment requires “due process” against such illegal seizures:

No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

The vacuity of red flag laws is revealed by noting that there is little proof that they work. As left-leaning PolitiFact admitted: “It’s challenging for researchers to determine whether mass shootings are prevented by red flag laws.”

The real purpose of red flag laws is to do an “end run” around the Second Amendment. As Senator Murphy admitted in his series of tweets celebrating and expanding on his “victory”:

Will this bill do everything we need to end our nation’s gun violence epidemic? No. But it is real, meaningful progress. And it breaks a 30 year log jam….

 

Drafting this law and passing it through both chambers will not be easy. We have a long way before this gets to the President’s desk.

As the Senate is deadlocked 50-50, all 10 of those Republican Senators will have to join all 50 Democrats in order to pass the measure. If passed, it will next need to be ratified by the House, and then will be sent to the occupant of the White House for signing into law.

Biden’s Bizarre Statements on Gun Control Walked Back by Press Secretary

Wednesday, 01 June 2022 14:07
0 Comments

This article first appeared at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, June 1, 2022:  

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was forced to walk back and cover for a bizarre rant her boss made on Monday. On his return to Washington following a trip to Uvalde, Texas, Biden said:

[While a senator] I sat with a trauma doctor, and I asked him — I said, “What’s the difference?” I said, “Why are they dying?” And they showed me x-rays. He said, “A .22-caliber bullet will lodge in the lung, and we can probably get it out, may be able to get it, and save the life. A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body.”

He followed this other-worldly comment with another:

So the idea of these high-caliber weapons is of — there’s simply no rational basis for it in terms of thinking about self-protection, hunting.

He tripled down with this:

And remember, the Constitution, the Second Amendment was never absolute. You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed. You couldn’t go out and purchase a lot of weapons.

Ed Morrissey, senior editor at Hot Air, responded to the first canard: “Needless to say, a 9mm round does not ‘blow the lung out of the body.’ That’s an idiotic claim to make on both ballistics and anatomy.”

As for the second, in the last decade, American citizens, exercising their Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms, purchased more than 15 million 9mm handguns. Not for one moment did they consider their purchase irrational, especially in light of the rise in violent gun crime in Democrat-controlled cities.

Thirdly, anyone knowing anything about the human body can safely conclude that Biden’s so-called visit with a “trauma doctor” was conjured for political convenience.

White House Press Secretary Jean-Pierre was only partially successful in covering for her boss. When she was asked, “Would … Biden ever consider a … restriction on handguns here?,” she answered, “He does not support a ban on the sale of all handguns, to answer your question.”

As for the second canard uttered by the increasingly mentally deficient occupant of the Oval Office, she said nothing. But fact-checkers have called out Biden for repeating the third lie about the Second Amendment, earning him Four Pinocchios from the Washington Post and a False label from PolitiFact on three other occasions dating back to 2020. At the time the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution, there was no intention by the Founders to limit possession of any form of firearm.

Such infringements began in earnest with passage of the National Firearms Act of 1934, under the Democrat Roosevelt administration.

To repeat a lie when one knows it’s a lie is a form of mental illness. It’s called “pseudological fantastica” or “mythomania,” a lifelong behavior pattern of making up elaborate stories about oneself; an urge, wrote Dr. Dan Brennan at WebMD, “that [a person] can’t control.”

Oklahoma senatorial candidate Representative Markwayne Mullin said that Biden has “no idea of what he’s talking about,” adding that “the 9mm is the most popular self-defense round in America and the caliber of choice for his own Secret Service.”

Georgia Republican Representative Austin Scott said that Biden’s bizarre claims are “proof that Biden has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about,” while Representative Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) added, “It’s unfathomable that our commander-in-chief is this out of touch with the American people.”

National Media Ignore Mass Shooting Prevented by Armed Citizen

Saturday, 28 May 2022 12:47
0 Comments

This article appeared at TheNewAmerican.com on Saturday, May 28, 2022:  

With the mainstream media in thrall with covering recent mass shootings, they have ignored another one that never happened. The event was covered by MetroNews out of Charleston, West Virginia, on Thursday: “There was a shooting last night in Charleston after a man opened fire at a party at an apartment complex.”

The shooter, Dennis Butler, was stopped by local police for speeding through the apartment complex. He returned later with a semi-automatic rifle and began shooting indiscriminately at a crowd of people celebrating the graduation of a young person in the complex.

When two police officers arrived, they confronted Butler, who fired a shotgun at them, wounding them and taking them both out of action. A woman carrying concealed confronted Butler, who received fire from her and died at the scene.

Said Police Chief Tyke Hunt: “It looks like the person who fired upon Mr. Butler does not have any reason to prohibit [her] from carrying a firearm lawfully.” Chief of detectives Tony Hazelett added: “Instead of running from the threat, she engaged with the threat and saved several lives last night.”

The incident doesn’t fit the media narrative: That NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre is wrong when he declared in 2012 that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

But, according to numerous sources, incidents such as Charleston’s on Wednesday night happen millions of times every year.

According to the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, armed citizens use guns to defend themselves “at least 989,883 times” every year. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology published a study by scholars Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz that revealed that gun owners use their legally owned firearms to defend themselves an average of 1,884,348 times per year.

Another study, this one by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), estimated “annual defensive gun uses range from about 500,000 to more than 3 million.”

Almost never mentioned in any of the media or in those studies, however, is how often an armed citizen comes to the rescue of a law-enforcement officer who is neutralized in a confrontation with an armed suspect. For instance, in a residential area of Maple Falls, Washington, two sheriff’s deputies responded to a “shots fired” report on February 14. When they challenged the shooter, he shot both of them, knocking them to the ground. Two military veterans heard the commotion and the shots, put their children inside, and confronted the shooter. The shooter was arrested and charged with a felony, and his bail was set at $5 million.

Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo said: “We are extraordinarily blessed that [these] armed citizens came to the deputies’ assistance at the critical moments when they were most vulnerable.”

Last October, in Tonopah, Arizona, a suspect accused of critically wounding a Maricopa County sheriff’s deputy was captured after a homeowner shot him.

Similar instances of armed citizens coming to the aid of law-enforcement officers are reported at length by John Lott’s Crime Prevention Research Center.

Also left unreported by any media is the number of times an individual with criminal intent is deterred not just by the presence of an armed citizen, but by the mere suggestion that the citizen might be armed. As horrific as the recent mass shootings are, one needs to balance the mainstream media’s 24/7 blood-red coverage of those events with the fact that, without armed citizens present, there would be many more such ghastly atrocities being committed.

Court Orders North Carolina Sheriff to Stop Delaying Gun Permits

Tuesday, 10 May 2022 14:06
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, May 10, 2022: 

Using the Covid pandemic and surging gun sales as an excuse, Mecklenburg, North Carolina, County Sheriff Garry McFadden delayed issuing gun purchase and concealed-carry permits for up to a year. On Monday, the judge for the Superior Court ordered him to stop delaying the issuance of those permits:

After considering the pleadings and other sworn testimony of the parties and after hearing the arguments of counsel, the Court finds as a fact the Sheriff and his office have not issued handgun permits in accordance with the time frames set forth in the applicable statutes.

 

As a result, the constitutional rights of the Plaintiffs to bear arms have been infringed and Plaintiffs are entitled to preliminary relief.

Those plaintiffs include Gun Owners of America (GOA) and Grass Roots North Carolina (GRNC), along with individuals whose rights were violated by the sheriff and his staff.

The judge added:

Furthermore, the Court concludes as a matter of law Plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on the merits and are likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of injunctive relief … it is therefore ordered that the Plaintiffs’ Motion is GRANTED.

The motion granted now requires the sheriff and his staff:

1.) to process pistol purchase permit applications within the 14 days required by North Carolina statute;

2.) to process concealed handgun permit applications within the 45 days required by statute;

3.) to request mental health records to process concealed handgun applications within 10 days as required by statute; and

4.) to process fingerprints for concealed handgun permits within 5 business days.

GRNC President Paul Valone celebrated the ruling:

In violation of North Carolina law, Sheriff Garry McFadden has been dragging his feet in processing North Carolina pistol purchase permits and concealed handgun permits, often taking up to a year to issue permits and preventing lawful North Carolinians from buying and carrying handguns for defense of themselves and their families.

 

We believe this order sends a clear message to sheriffs in Guilford, Mecklenburg and Wake counties, among others, that obstructing lawful citizens from exercising the right to keep and bear arms will no longer be tolerated.

 

To ensure compliance by a sheriff who has so far dragged his feet, Grass Roots North Carolina advises anyone whose fingerprints are not taken with five business days of completing a concealed handgun application to contact us immediately.

The ruling fails to address the issue of the infringement built into the statutory law that a citizen of North Carolina be required to get permission in the first place. A person ought to be free to decide whether to purchase, keep, bear, and carry a firearm depending on his own personal circumstances. Where does the Constitution allow or require fingerprinting, a mental-health check, or a “background” check, before a law-abiding citizen can exercise that right spelled out in the Second Amendment?

“This case,” wrote Cam Edwards at Bearing Arms, “is yet more proof that we the people shouldn’t have to obtain a state-issued permission slip before exercising a constitutionally-protected right in the first place.” He added:

Why should our rights be put on hold because our county sheriff is having staffing issues?

 

That’s one thing you never have to worry about with Constitutional Carry.

At present, more than two dozen states allow constitutional carry. Perhaps this ruling in North Carolina will galvanize the state legislature to pass such a measure, make Monday’s ruling obsolete, and take sheriffs of all North Carolina counties out of the picture altogether.

In Blatant Political Move, Biden Administration Demotes Temporary Head of ATF

Friday, 22 April 2022 08:20
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, April 21, 2022:  

With Joe Biden’s poll numbers dropping out of sight and the obliteration of his first nominee to head up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), progressives were screaming for something good to happen.

The New York Times responded, sounding the death knell for the agency’s present temporary head of the agency, Marvin Richardson, back in January, and on Wednesday the White House confirmed his demotion from temporary director to deputy director.

The timing has everything to do with the November elections. Richardson, a 30-year veteran of the ATF, is due to retire next year. His relationship with the gun industry was professional and cordial. But in today’s toxic political environment, even being black couldn’t save Richardson.

From the Times:

In late January, Marvin G. Richardson, the acting director of the [ATF], told a gathering of weapons manufacturers that the rule banning online sales of [ghost gun parts] would not be completed until June….

 

This infuriated some Biden allies….

 

Progressives see Mr. Richardson’s low-key leadership … as part of the problem.

Richardson was just doing his job. The “ghost gun” initiative has generated the largest-ever response to any ATF anti-gun move: More than 250,000 comments were received in opposition to it during the “public comment” period required before the initiative could become active. Richardson was forced to dedicate 30 ATF employees to go through the comments before he could make the rule permanent.

Biden’s first nominee, David Chipman, went down in flames thanks to his odious anti-gun position. Biden’s second, Steve Dettelbach, is cut from the same cloth, and his Senate confirmation is increasingly unlikely.

So, in a signal to progressives, Biden and his handlers decided Richardson was expendable. In an exclusive, Stephen Gutowski, writing for the pro-Second Amendment blog The Reload, detailed what he learned from his contacts inside the agency:

The reshuffling was announced by Richardson on a conference call on Monday, which left many ATF officials surprised and dismayed….

 

“The news that he was being replaced came as a shock to most of us within the agency,” one ATF official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, told The Reload.

Richardson was too friendly with the firearms industry, according to the Times. He had worked hard to maintain cordial relations with the industry for a very good reason: Many good tips on potential violators came from gun dealers. Said one of Gutowski’s sources:

A lot of the tips that we would get on illegal firearms activity from straw purchasers to traffickers came from dealers.

 

The reality is just a very, very small percentage of gun dealers are bad. So, those partnerships are important, and Marvin really did a good job at nurturing those relationships….

 

The fact that he has those relationships may not have sat well with the current administration. And I’m sure that that might’ve helped them push him out.

Indeed, the Biden administration is intending to weaponize the ATF against those very gun dealers, hoping to put many of them out of business for even the most minor infractions of the agency’s rules.

As far back as October 2020, Lawrence Keane, general counsel for the firearms trade association National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), saw what was coming in the event Biden somehow won the White House:

The Biden-Harris ticket will weaponize the ATF against retailers to close them down for even minor errors in inspections….

 

Kamala Harris … has vowed to turn the ATF from an agency which assists family-owned retail businesses to stay within the overwhelming labyrinth of federal and state laws and regulations to one that carries a heavy hammer and will shutter federally licensed retailers for minor administrative errors.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced that the U.S. attorney for the district of Arizona, Gary Restaino, will take Richardson’s place until such time as a permanent director is confirmed.

The move could be costly politically. As Ed Morrissey noted in Hot Air:

Put the optics of demoting one of the few black agency heads there are in the Biden administration, and it’s a recipe for embarrassment and chaos, if not disaster.

Georgia 25th State to Pass Constitutional Carry

Wednesday, 13 April 2022 16:09
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, April 13, 2022:  

When Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed into law Senate Bill 319 — aka the Georgia Constitutional Carry Act — on Tuesday, he said:

SB 319 makes sure that law-abiding Georgians … can protect themselves without having [to obtain] the permission of the state government.

 

The Constitution of the United States gives us that right, not the government….

 

People don’t have to carry if they don’t want to. But this is a constitutional authority that people have, and they certainly shouldn’t have [to get] a piece of paper from the government to be able to legally carry a firearm.

Kemp also signed into law Senate Bill 218 ensuring that citizens from other states who already have their concealed-carry licenses will also enjoy the same right in Georgia.

The law is effective immediately, and will save gun owners the $75 license fee and the ignominy of having to undergo a mental-health check as well as a background check. This has another advantage: No background check means no entry into the recently revealed national gun registry that the ATF has been keeping under wraps for years.

Georgia’s anti-gun politicians tried to block the bill by using old, outdated, and weak arguments. Democrat State Representative Kimberly Alexander intoned, “This legislation will … allow individuals with a criminal history who purchase a gun through a private sale to legally carry a hidden, loaded weapon in our communities.”

Alexander is correct: once an individual has paid his or her debt to society, their Second Amendment-protected right is restored. She is incorrect by intimating that they will cause an increase in gun violence upon their release, for at least two reasons: They may have reformed their behavior while incarcerated, and the new law would no doubt dampen any enthusiasm they have to return to their old ways simply because their search for a “soft target” — an unarmed citizen — is now going to be much more difficult.

Another anti-gun Democrat, State Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, ranted:

The governor is signing away lives [with] this bill. It is a sad day in Georgia when we have to watch legislation enacted that we know will cause harm, as this will….

 

He wants more guns on the streets, and the shameful outcome of that is more gun violence.

Both complaints are without merit, and John Lott’s research has proved it. The founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center, Lott noted in an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Several dozen peer-reviewed academic studies show there’s no evidence of any uptick in gun crimes linked to concealed carry laws, and most show violent crime declines.

 

Research also shows that murder rates fall even more when states move to Constitutional Carry laws.

When Lowndes County, Georgia, Sheriff Ashley Paulk was asked about the impact SB 319 might have in his county, he responded:

I don’t expect that [it] will have a big impact around here. The criminals don’t care — they’re going to get their weapons anyway — and a law-abiding citizen with a weapon won’t make trouble.

Lott agrees: Firearms violations among police officers are extremely low, as would be expected. But among those “law-abiding citizens” who now are free to carry without first being forced to get permission, firearms violations are one-seventh — 2.4 per 100,000 versus 16.5 per 100,000 — that of the police.

The real change will be in the behavior of criminals already on the streets seeking soft targets. They are now facing an existential question in their line of work: Is my target armed, or should I find another less-risky means of gain?

With half the states in the union allowing their citizens the freedom to exercise their rights under the Second Amendment, just how long will it take for the others to grant the same freedoms to their citizens?

At the moment, Florida and Nebraska are on the verge of passing similar laws, with South Carolina right behind. This is allowing the Second Amendment to occupy the place the Founders of the Republic intended: the anchor securing the others in the Bill of Rights.

Biden to Take Another Shot at Nominating an Anti-gunner to ATF

Thursday, 07 April 2022 13:40
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, April 7, 2022:  

The last time Joe Biden nominated a left-wing anti-gun ideologue to head up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the nominee’s virulent anti-gun position sank his nomination into oblivion.

According to Politico’s inside sources, Biden’s going to try again: same ideology, different name. Politico said that, according to “multiple people” inside the White House, including “one official within the Senate Democratic Caucus,” Biden will officially nominate Steve Dettelbach. He served as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio during the Obama administration from 2009 to 2016.

Dettelbach has the right (i.e., left) credentials: Graduating from Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, he was nominated by then-President Obama in 2009 to his U.S. attorney position. This no doubt was a payoff for his work in Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, for which he provided legal assistance and advice. Following Obama’s election, Dettelbach served as a legal advisor to his transition team.

He was a candidate for the office of Ohio’s attorney general in 2018 and lost, but in the process revealed where he stands on issues relating to private gun ownership: No one should own an “assault-style” rifle, and everyone buying a firearm anywhere from anybody at any time needs to undergo a background check first. That background check would then be added to the recently revealed secret registry that the ATF has been keeping, now totaling nearly one billion records.

If confirmed, Dettelbach would go along with the Biden administration’s stated determination to weaponize the ATF against private gun owners and dealers, especially gun dealers.

Given the labyrinthine minefield of current regulations under which gun dealers operate, there would be no forgiveness even for minor errors, mistakes, or infractions. Lawrence Keane, general counsel for the firearms trade association National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), warned in October 2020:

The Biden-Harris ticket will weaponize the ATF against retailers to close them down for even minor clerical errors in inspections.

 

This is a promise Senator Kamala Harris made from the campaign stage.

 

She has vowed to turn the ATF from an agency which assists family-owned firearm retail businesses to stay within the overwhelming labyrinth of federal and state laws and regulations to one that carries a heavy hammer and will shutter federally licensed retailers for minor administrative errors.

When Biden’s first nominee to head the ATF, David Chipman, went down to defeat, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) tweeted: “His defeat is a win for the Constitution — and a crushing flow for Joe Biden.”

Dudley Brown, founder and president of the National Association of Gun Rights (NAGR), was pleased to learn that the White House had dropped Chipman down its memory hole:

Chipman … could not garner enough support in the U.S. Senate to make it through the confirmation process.

 

David Chipman’s nomination to lead the ATF was a slap in the face to gun owners across the country. Now, thanks to pro-gun grassroots, we’ve put Chipman back where he belongs: at home.

But, warned Brown:

We know … Biden will prop up another anti-gun pawn in the near future.… We [must] stand ready to oppose their unconstitutional actions.

Brown and his nearly five million members, along with Gun Owners of America, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and other Second Amendment supporters, will once again need to push back against Biden’s second effort to weaponize the ATF with another anti-gun radical.

Biden is expected to make the official announcement during National Police Week, May 11-17.

Indiana the 24th Constitutional-carry State. Three More States Right Behind

Monday, 04 April 2022 12:30
0 Comments

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, April 4, 2022:  

Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb signed into law on March 21 his state’s permitless carry bill that had passed both the state’s House and Senate overwhelmingly.

That makes 24. And the third state so far this year.

On March 10, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed a similar bill into law. This was followed by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who signed a constitutional-carry bill into law on March 14.

Georgia is next, as a similar bill passed both state houses last Friday and will arrive shortly on Governor Brian Kemp’s desk for signing.

Said Kemp earlier, “The Constitution should be our carry permit, and I look forward to signing a Constitutional Carry measure this year to enshrine hardworking Georgians’ ability to protect themselves and their families in Georgia law.”

National Rifle Association (NRA) Chairman Wayne LaPierre told Fox News:

The success of the carry movement in America cannot be denied at this point. When Gov. Brian Kemp signs this landmark legislation, half of America will protect the right to carry as an inherent and inalienable right.

Two more states — Florida and Nebraska — are on the brink of passing laws protecting their citizens’ right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment, without first having to get permission to do so.

South Carolina is right behind, with conservative, pro-constitutional Republican majorities in both state houses. Constitutional-carry bills failed to pass last year, but pressure is building on Governor Henry McMaster to urge the legislature to bring such a bill to his desk for signing.

Tennessee already has a “partial” constitutional carry law in place, but it only applies to handguns, and legislators in the Volunteer State are itching to amend it to include long guns. What’s in place, according to John Harris, executive director of the Tennessee Firearms Association, is “not real constitutional carry,” and his group is lobbying to expand the present law.

It should be noted that not a single state has repealed a constitutional-carry law, nor has there been a single move in any state to consider such a move.

It should also be noted that arguments against such laws consist primarily of worries that more firearms will mean more gun violence. But that has simply not been the case. According to the Crime Research Prevention Center (CRPC), firearms violations by police officers are very low — about 16.5 for every 100,000 police officers. For citizens who already have a permit, the rate is even lower: 2.4 per 100,000.

Further research by the CRPC reveals that gun violence drops as private gun ownership increases. As John Lott, founder of the CRPC, noted in an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Several dozen peer-reviewed academic studies show there’s no evidence of any uptick in gun crimes linked to concealed carry laws, and most show violent crime declines.

 

Research also shows that murder rates fall even more when states move to Constitutional Carry laws.

That makes sense, as the people who benefit the most from carrying a firearm are the most likely to be victims: They are “overwhelmingly,” wrote Lott, “poor Blacks who live in high-crime urban areas.”

As states increasingly remove infringements from the right to keep and bear arms, it becomes increasingly difficult for tyrants to turn the American Republic into a dictatorship. To succeed, they must first disarm every private owner of his firearms. At present, the momentum is heading in the other direction.

The Second Amendment was never about duck hunting. It was always about keeping the government in check.

A quote from Adolf Hitler bears repeating:

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms.

 

History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.

Many of the articles on Light from the Right first appeared on either The New American or the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor.
Copyright © 2021 Bob Adelmann