Category Archives: Second Amendment

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Sunday, November 3, 2019: 

Between 250 and 300 Oklahoma gun owners joined with Oklahoma’s Second Amendment Association in celebrating the state’s newly-minted “Constitutional Carry” law — carrying in public without government permission — in front of the state capitol in Oklahoma City on Friday. The new law became effective that day.

State Senator Nathan Dahm, the author of the bill that had previously been vetoed by former Governor Mary Fallin, exulted:

It’s a great day and a historic day. Throughout this process we faced committee chairmen who refused to hear a bill to restore our constitutional rights, or a Republican governor who broke her word, violated a campaign promise and vetoed the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms….

 

Today we celebrate being victorious.

In his first official act as Oklahoma’s new governor, Kevin Stitt, signed Dahm’s bill into law earlier this year that had previously been overwhelmingly approved by both the House (70-30) and the Senate (40-6). The previous governor vetoed the bill.

Oklahoma joins 16 other states with similar “constitutional carry” or “permitless carry” laws: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Montana, and Kentucky.

An outline of the state’s gun laws reveals just how free its citizens are to exercise their Second Amendment rights:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, October 28, 2019: 

The bill proposed by Tacoma city council member Ryan Mello heads for a final reading tomorrow. If passed, it will start levying a $25 tax on every firearm sold in the city starting January 1, along with two cents per round on ammunition of .22-caliber or less, and five cents per round on all other calibers.

Mello admits that his bill probably won’t do anything about gun violence, but it would raise an estimated $30,000 to study the problem:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, October 10, 2019: 

Unless California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoes them by Sunday, all nine gun control bills presently sitting on his desk will become law.

Two of the most pernicious and dangerous concern expansions of the state’s already unconstitutional red flag laws, and illustrate the dangers of passing any such laws in the first place. Once enacted politicians then find it easier to expand definitions to make them more draconian in their impact on precious rights. It isn’t hard to imagine a time in the very near future when red flag laws, all by themselves, will enable the complete disarmament of every law-abiding citizen in the country.

As Steve Byas noted in his article appearing in the latest issue of The New American magazine, “Red flag laws are not benign. They are a serious threat to every American’s right to keep and bear arms.”

That threat is about to become reality in California.

At present California’s red flag (extreme risk protection order, or “gun violence restraining order”) law allows

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, September 16, 2019: 

Beto’s outburst (Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman, with a Freedom Index rating of 25 out of 100, who is seeking the Democrat Party’s nomination for president) continues to resonate and generate angst and joy days after his performance at the Democrats’ debate Thursday night.

A sound bite from an outburst has already become an unwelcome appellation for the Democrats and a source of encouragement for those in the freedom fight.

When O’Rourke was asked by the moderator if he was proposing taking firearms away from their owners, he answered:

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, September 16, 2019: 

The Presidential Medal of Freedom was established by then-President John F. Kennedy in 1963 to recognize a person who has made “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States.”

Who says “Beto” (aka: Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman who is seeking the Democrat Party’s nomination for president in 2020) should get the award? Isn’t he the same Texas congressman who earned an anti-freedom rating of just 25 out of 100 in the John Birch Society’s Freedom Index for his unconstitutional votes while in office? Isn’t he the one who shouted out at Thursday night’s Democrat debate that “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47!”?

Yes, and yes.

Here’s what he said Thursday night in response to the moderator’s question about his “mandatory gun buyback plan”:

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, September 11, 2019: 

San Francisco Supervisor Catherine Stefani wanted to teach the NRA a lesson, so she crafted a resolution designed to punish the organization. It passed the Board of Supervisors unanimously last week, declaring that the NRA is a “domestic terrorist organization.” She said that “they continue to stand in the way of gun violence reform and people are dying because of it.” She added:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, August 14, 2019: 

In spite of fading support for universal background checks, as reported by CNN on Tuesday, there are still some in the White House and nearly all of the mainstream media who are deliberately keeping the conversation in favor of background checks going.

According to CNN, lawmakers are reconsidering the political risks of pushing for universal background checks in this highly toxic political environment leading up to elections next year. “It’s a sign of a possible divide between Trump and his party,” wrote CNN, and that many Republicans “have appeared skeptical” about Trump’s belief that he needs to “do something meaningful” following the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio last week. It added that “several conservative allies and Republican lawmakers have privately voiced opposition to his push for [universal] background checks.”

This hasn’t fazed the New York Times in the slightest, declaring that

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, August 12, 2019: 

Once the media hype dies down, the present push for more infringements on the rights of law-abiding gun owners will fade away as well. It is helpful to remember what is perhaps the single most important legacy of the Trump administration: the outing of the mainstream media as nothing more than howling dogs barking at each other over the back fence. They have been exposed as mouthpieces for the Deep State. They are like the Boy Who Cried Wolf: if you always tell lies, people will eventually stop believing you; and then when you’re telling the truth for a change, when you really need them to believe you, they won’t.

It’s also helpful to remember that the president has no ideological foundation rooted in the Constitution. He’s the ultimate pragmatist, a businessman seeking only to solve problems the most expeditious way possible. He also would like very much to get reelected next November.

Put all that together then, and the New York Times is right: Said the paper, the president’s past “flip-flops” on background checks “raises questions about his real commitment to legislation that would improve the background check system.”

Liberal Politico agrees:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, August 9, 2019: 

During Friday morning’s free-ranging meeting with the press, President Trump once again reiterated his determination to pass “meaningful,” “common sense” background checks and red flag laws.

When asked about resistance from the National Rifle Association, Trump quipped, “They’ll come around.” (After all, following Trump’s demand that his ATF ban bump stocks, there was nary a puff of resistance from the NRA.)

This is the opening that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is using to demand that President Trump call back the Senate from summer recess to vote on further infringements of the Second Amendment.

Pelosi referred to that opening in her demand letter:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, July 18, 2019: 

Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the 650,000-member Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), endorsed the Safe Students Act of Representative Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) on Wednesday. In his endorsement, Gottlieb noted that the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, an act that made schools into gun-free zones and that would be repealed by the Safe Students Act, has been an unqualified failure:

The Gun-Free School Zones Act was passed by Congress in 1990, and it’s been a disaster. It has not prevented a single tragic school shooting, but instead has given students, teachers, administrators, and parents a false sense of security that evaporates the moment some madman ignores the law and invades a school campus to commit mayhem.

 

By declaring schools to be “gun-free,” the law has simply turned schools into risk-free, target-rich environments for disturbed people willing to harm innocent children and teens.

On the other hand, Massie’s bill, if it becomes law, would allow local and state jurisdictions the freedom to decide on the issue for themselves. Said Gottlieb:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, April 18, 2019: 

It’s unlikely that Joe Thoele, a member of the board of Effingham County, Illinois, had any idea that his unhappiness over Springfield’s anti-gun measures would spark a national resistance movement. A year ago all he wanted to do was send a message to the anti-gun politicians in his state’s capitol: “I would just like to send a statement to Springfield that I don’t want them to be infringing on our Second Amendment rights as legal gun owners.”

Thoele persuaded six of the seven other members of the board to pass a resolution declaring his county (population 34,000) a “sanctuary” county. After all, if political entities such as counties and states could declare themselves sanctuaries for illegal immigrants, why couldn’t they declare themselves sanctuaries for legal gun owners?

Effingham County’s resolution not only targeted a number of anti-gun proposals and laws emanating from Springfield, but also