Category Archives: Second Amendment

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, March 8, 2022: 

Indiana’s General Assembly is likely to pass “constitutional carry” legislation this week, perhaps as soon as today, making it the 23rd state to do so once Republican Governor Eric Holcomb signs it into law.

The law would allow any Hoosier aged 18 and older to carry a firearm without first having to obtain government permission. It’s called “constitutional” as it reflects the Second Amendment guarantee that exercising such a right may not be “infringed” by government.

The bill’s author, Representative Ben Smaltz, said his bill “levels the playing field” by allowing the state’s citizens to carry openly or concealed, adding:

House Bill 1077 gets us to a place where the law-abiding citizen is not required to go through a process of asking permission, submitting to government investigation, supplying their fingerprints to enjoy a right that is constitutional at the federal level and constitutional at the state level.

On March 5, the Georgia Senate passed a similar bill, removing the need for Georgians to obtain a permit before being able to carry a firearm in public.

Alabama’s Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill last week that would grant the state’s citizens the freedom to carry a firearm without first obtaining permission. It now heads to the full Senate for approval and then on to Governor Kay Ivey’s desk for her signature.

On March 3, Ohio’s General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a bill eliminating the need for Ohioans to get a concealed-carry permit — the House by 57-35, and the Senate by 24-8. That bill now heads to Governor Mike DeWine for signing into law.

The momentum is all in favor of such legislation. Vermont has never had any such requirements thanks to its carefully worded Constitution. A synonym for “constitutional carry” is “Vermont carry.”

In 2003, Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski signed a constitutional carry bill into law; Arizona followed suit in 2010. Wyoming passed similar legislation in 2011, followed by Maine and Kansas in 2015. Four more states passed constitutional carry laws in 2016: West Virginia, Idaho, Mississippi, and Missouri. New Hampshire and North Dakota joined the lengthening list of states removing the permission requirement in 2017, while South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Kentucky followed suit in 2019.

Arkansas joined the constitutional-carry crowd in 2020, followed by Utah, Montana, Iowa, Tennessee, and Texas in 2021.

CNN took note of the accelerating move toward constitutional carry, noting that similar legislation is now pending in Wisconsin, South Carolina, and Nebraska. Michigan and Louisiana are also lining up behind the move toward permitless carry. CNN complained that such a law somehow “protects criminals,” claiming further that such freedom will lead to a rise in violent gun-related crime.

Not so, wrote John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. In fact, those carrying firearms are much less likely to be convicted of a gun-related crime than even police — 12 times less likely, in fact:

Permit holders nationwide are incredibly law-abiding. Police officers are extremely rarely convicted of firearms-related violations, but it still happens, at a rate twelve times more often than for permit holders.

The case for constitutional carry is persuasive:

The people who benefit the most are those who live in high-crime urban areas;

 

None of the states which have passed constitutional carry laws have reconsidered them, or even held a single hearing questioning the decision;

 

The citizens resisting tyranny in Ukraine provide unassailable evidence of the efficacy of the private ownership of firearms; and

 

Where firearms are prevalent violent crime predictably and consistently declines.

The Second Amendment is overcoming its status as a “second-class” right. Next on the agenda must be repeal of the oppressive Gun Control Act of 1968 and then the National Firearms Act of 1934.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, March 4, 2021:  

New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who called the National Rifle Association (NRA) a “terrorist organization” with a “poisonous agenda” during her election campaign in 2018, was rebuffed in her attempt to have the group dissolved altogether.

Judge Joel M. Cohen chided AG James for overreaching:

The Attorney General’s claims to dissolve the NRA are dismissed.

 

Her allegations concern primarily private harm to the NRA and its members and donors, which if proven can be addressed by the targeted, less intrusive relief she seeks through other claims in her Complaint.

 

The Complaint does not allege that any financial misconduct benefited the NRA, or that the NRA exists primarily to carry out such activity, or that the NRA is incapable of continuing its legitimate activities on behalf of its millions of members.

 

In short, the Complaint does not allege the type of public harm that is the legal linchpin for imposing the “corporate death penalty.”

 

Moreover, dissolving the NRA could impinge, at least indirectly, on the free speech and assembly rights of its millions of members. While that alone would not preclude statutory dissolution if circumstances otherwise clearly warranted it, the Court believes it is a relevant factor that counsels against State-imposed dissolution, which should be the last option, not the first.

In other words, Judge Cohen accused James of massive overreach in her attempt to close down the NRA altogether over the alleged, and as-yet unproven, misbehavior on the part of the group’s top officials.

Not surprisingly, James, on the day she filed suit, claimed that politics or her personal animosity against the NRA had nothing to do with her complaint: “This is not a question of the moment that I’ve been waiting for. This is a question … of following the facts and applying the law.”

Of course.

She began the investigation into the NRA’s alleged misconduct within a month of taking office in January 2019, an investigation involving dozens of lawyers and investigators in her office and costing taxpayers millions of dollars. In August 2020, she filed the infamous lawsuit, 169 pages long, detailing what she and her task force found: that NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre

has exploited the organization for his financial benefit, and the benefit of a close circle of NRA staff, board members, and vendors.

 

Contrary to his statutory duties of care, loyalty and obedience to the mission of the charity, LaPierre has undertaken a series of actions to consolidate his position; to exploit that position for his personal benefit and that of his family; to continue, by use of a secret “poison pill contract,” his employment even after removal and ensuring NRA income for life; and to intimidate, punish, and expel anyone at a senior level who raised concerns about his conduct.

 

The effect has been to divert millions of dollars away from the charitable mission, imposing substantial reductions in its expenditures for core program services, including gun safety, education, training, member services and public affairs.

And then, in a non sequitur, she claimed that La Pierre and his cohorts cost the group millions of dollars, as a result:

During the period 2015 to 2018, the NRA has reported a reduction in unrestricted net assets by $63 million.

In her humble opinion, therefore, she asked the court to dissolve the NRA, use its remaining liquidated assets to reimburse injured parties, and ban the guilty parties from ever running another charity in New York State:

As a result of these persistent violations of law by the Defendants, the Attorney General seeks a finding by this Court that the NRA is liable to be dissolved … based upon the NRA’s pattern of conducting its business in a persistently fraudulent or illegal manner, abusing its powers contrary to public policy of New York and its tax exempt status, and failing to provide for the proper administration of its trust assets and institutional funds; because directors or members in control of the NRA have looted or wasted the corporation assets, have operated the NRA solely for their personal benefit, or have otherwise acted in an illegal, oppressive or fraudulent manner.

 

The Attorney General requests that this Court determine … that the interest of the public and the members of the NRA supports a decision to dissolve the NRA.

James is disappointed in Cohen’s rebuffing of her request, but relishes the opportunity to pursue the defendants: “We are disappointed that the judge ruled against the dissolution portion of the case [but] are considering our legal options with respect to this ruling. We remain committed to enforcing New York law regardless of how powerful any individual or organization may be.”

Her campaign promise to attack the “terrorist organization” with its “poisonous agenda” will continue despite the court’s rebuff.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, January 26, 2022:  

Even after being warned against moving to tax law-abiding gun owners and require them to buy liability insurance, the San Jose City Council voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to move ahead with those infringements.

The city’s mayor, Sam Liccardo, even admitted during the hours-long council meeting that the new measures would do nothing to reduce violent crime: “This won’t stop mass shootings and keep bad people from committing violent crime.” But he justified the move by concern that the availability of firearms in homes somehow risks an increase in suicides. And besides, said the mayor, the cost of gun violence in San Jose costs the city millions and, therefore (by his reasoning), law-abiding gun owners should help defray some of that expense.

The fee would be $25 per firearm (which assumes that the city either already knows where they are and who owns them, or would establish some sort of registry to collect such data), and liability insurance would be required to cover costs related to “accidental use of the firearm, including death, injury, or property damage,” according to the Associated Press.

This ignores the fact that, according to the Crime Prevention Research Center, gun owners are already among the safest, lowest-risk individuals in the country. But the tax and insurance, according to the anti-gun majority on the council, would “incentivize” gun owners to take extra special care of their weaponry, take gun safety classes, and lock up their firearms at home when not in use.

How would such an ordinance be enforced? The mayor said the liability insurance would be just like car insurance, which he said (without proof) has already dramatically reduced traffic fatalities. Implementation would fall to law-enforcement officers making routine traffic stops, by requiring them to ask drivers if they own a firearm and if they have liability insurance, and to demand to “see proof of that insurance.”

All of this was just too much for Dudley Brown, president of the National Association for Gun Rights and executive director of the National Foundation for Gun Rights. Just before the final vote on Tuesday night, Brown told CNN:

We’ve opposed this ordinance every step of the way, and we will see this through to the end.

If the San Jose City Council actually votes to impose this ridiculous tax on the Constitutional right to gun ownership [the final vote is scheduled to take place at the next monthly meeting in February], our message is clear and simple: see you in court.

That’s what he promised in a letter his foundation had their lawyers send to each member of the council back in July.

From the letter:

This Firm represents the National Foundation for Gun Rights. It has come to our attention that on June 29, 2021, you voted unanimously to have the City Attorney research and draft an ordinance that would impose a mandatory fee on gun owners and require them to buy gun liability insurance. Given that the city’s own press release regarding the proposed ordinance, concedes that “criminals won’t obey these mandates,” the City of San Jose is seeking to impose a tax on a select group of law abiding citizens simply for exercising their right to keep and bear arms.

The letter reminded council members that the issue was settled at the Supreme Court, in two rulings: McDonald v. City of Chicago held that the Second Amendment not only guarantees the right of individuals to keep and bear arms, but also guarantees against infringement by the individual states through the Fourteenth Amendment; and Nordyke v. King held that the Second Amendment is “fundamental and is incorporated against states and municipalities” like the City of San Jose.

The attorneys added:

What you propose to do strikes at the very core of this fundamental right and seeks to punish (though registration and taxation) citizens of your city who have committed no crime or offense.

The attorneys made it sound as if the council members were suffering a temper tantrum: “It is easily understood that the goal of the proposed ordinance is to suppress and discourage the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms … [which is] presumptively unconstitutional.”

The warning by Brown through his attorneys was clear to the San Jose City Council, or should have been:

Please be advised that should you pass the proposed ordinance and blatantly violate the constitutional rights of the residents of San Jose, my clients have authorized our firm to file a lawsuit against the City to protect the constitutional rights of their members. This lawsuit will be brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §1983 for the deprivation of constitutional rights.

 

As such, once we prevail in protecting the residents of San Jose’s constitutional rights, our firm will then seek our reasonable attorney fees under 42 U.S.C. §1988(b).

 

We thereby strongly encourage you to reconsider moving forward with the proposed ordinance.

CNN noted in its coverage of the vote by the city council that the legislation, if passed into law, would be “the first of its kind” in the country. If the San Jose City Council votes in February to approve it, Brown’s attorneys are prepared to make it the last.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, January 25, 2022:  

New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced on Monday a four-step program to reduce violent crime in the Big Apple. Since he took over from former mayor Bill DeBlasio on January 1, five NYPD officers have been shot.

His plan:

Reinstating the Public Safety Teams that were terminated under DeBlasio, calling them Neighborhood Safety Teams;

 

Employing state-of-the-art technology to identify if an individual is carrying a firearm;

 

Increasing funding for the department’s Gun Violence Suppression Division which builds cases against criminals; and

 

Appointing judges with a “demonstrated commitment to keeping violent criminals who use guns off New York City streets.”

Adams is attempting to fulfill a campaign promise to rein in violent crime, saying, “I know how to do this. New York has done it before.”

Without saying so directly, Adams is clearly inferring that he will allow officers in the new Public Safety Teams to infiltrate the highest crime-ridden precincts and reinstitute the controversial “stop, question, and frisk” policies that cost former mayor Michael Bloomberg his job when running against leftist Bill DeBlasio in 2013.

The officers will cruise high-crime precincts in unmarked vehicles and will wear street clothes. When confronting a suspect, under Terry Stop rules, they will identify themselves as officers by wearing jackets similar to those used by the FBI when they conduct raids. The new technology could amount to “a no-contact (no frisk) version” of the Terry Stop, said Nolan Hicks of the New York Post.

The Terry Stop, based upon the 1968 Supreme Court ruling in Terry v. Ohio, reduced the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated … but upon probable cause” to “reasonable suspicion.”

Under Mayor Bloomberg, the policy resulted in major pushback from liberal groups who complained that it was enforced out of all proportion in black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

Bloomberg tried to explain his way out of the dilemma in 2015:

Ninety-five percent of murders — murderers and murder victims — fit one M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16-25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city … and that’s where the real crime is….

 

[We] put all the cops in minority neighborhoods. Yes, that’s true. Why do we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is.

The impact on violent crime in New York City apparently was inconclusive, and Bloomberg lost his reelection bid to DeBlasio, who shut down the effort.

The new mayor faces a daunting task: selling the resurrected team as a way to fight violent crime to hard-core leftists who are opposed to it. They include Keechant Sewell, Adams’ newly appointed police commissioner, who failed to show up at Adam’s announcement ceremony. Observers will remember that when Sewell accepted her appointment, she did so with a poster featuring cop-killer Assata Shakur behind her. Shakur was charged in 1977 with the murder of New York State Trooper Werner Foerster, escaped from prison in 1979, and now lives in communist Cuba.

Adams also faces resistance from Adrienne Adams, the newly elected speaker of the New York City Council. Her resume includes being a “long time member of the NAACP and the National Action Network (NAN).” The NAN was founded by tax-evader and race-baiter “Reverend” Al Sharpton. In June 2021, the NAN and the NAACP joined forces in a march down Fifth Avenue calling for an end to stop-and-frisk.

Also on the City Council is another hard-core leftist, Tiffany Daban, who, upon learning of Adams’ plans to reduce violent crime, said, “Much in the Mayor’s plan is cause for deep concern.… [It’s] built on a foundation of surveillance and punishment, which are ineffective and dangerous.”

There are other solutions to New York City’s spiraling violent-crime rate, such as allowing constitutional carry among its citizens. At present, the proposed reinstatement of stop and frisk is likely to go nowhere, and violent crime in the Big Apple will continue to increase.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, January 6, 2022:  

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp announced his support for constitutional-carry legislation on Wednesday. The announcement was made at Adventure Outdoors, which touts itself as the “World’s Largest Gun Store” in Smyrna, outside Atlanta. Kemp was joined by other Republicans supporting the move.

Constitutional carry refers to the carrying of a handgun, either openly or concealed, without requiring its owner first to obtain government permission, through a license or a permit, to do so.

Said Kemp,

In the face of rising violent crime across the country, law-abiding citizens should have their constitutional rights protected, not undermined.

 

And while this position has recently become popular for [22 other states] as we enter the campaign season, my position has remained the same: I believe the United States Constitution grants the citizens of our state the right to carry a firearm without state government approval.

According to Georgia’s constitution, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but the General Assembly shall have the power to prescribe the manner in which arms may be borne.”

State Senator Jeff Mullis plans to introduce just such legislation next week, and other legislators are preparing similar bills. Both chambers of the General Assembly, along with the governor’s office, the secretary of state, and the state’s attorney general are in Republican hands. So, if Mullis’ bill, or one like it, is passed by the General Assembly, Kemp will sign it into law.

However, Kemp’s commitment to protecting the right of Georgians to carry according to the Second Amendment has wavered in the past. The Associated Press noted that Kemp failed to mention the issue in his 2019, 2020, or 2021 State of the State speeches “when governors urge their top priorities on lawmakers.”

Kemp is arguably more interested in retaining his position as governor. He is up for reelection this November, and he has some serious competition, including former Senator David Perdue, whom Donald Trump has endorsed instead of Kemp.

Kemp got sideways with the former president over the November 2020 presidential election results. Trump believed there was significant fraud in the election process in the state, giving Biden a razor-thin victory with just a one-quarter of one percent margin — less than 12,000 votes out of nearly five million that were cast — over Trump.

When the former president called Kemp for help, whom he had previously endorsed for the governorship, his plea was ignored.

Trump recalled that conversation with Kemp:

You know you have a big election integrity problem in Georgia. I hope you can help us out and call a special election and let’s get to the bottom of it for the good of the country, for the good of the state of Georgia.

Kemp instead ratified the election results, and Trump retaliated. In a telephone interview with Fox News days after the controversial election, Trump said,

Everything [in Georgia] has to be approved by the legislature, and they had judges making deals, and they had electoral officials making deals, like this character in Georgia [Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger] who’s a disaster.

 

And the governor’s done nothing. I’m ashamed that I endorsed him. But I look at what’s going on, it’s so terrible.

Now Trump has endorsed Perdue in his race against Kemp for the governorship and his endorsement has, according to a recent poll, pushed Perdue into a dead heat with Kemp.

In another poll taken among Georgians, Trump’s favorable/unfavorable image is 84 percent-10 percent, Perdue’s is 79 percent-nine percent, while Kemp’s is just 68 percent-22 percent. In that same poll, 78 percent of Republican voters in the state believe that “significant fraud occurred in the 2020 election” and just 31 percent “believe Kemp did enough to prevent voter fraud in the election.”

While Kemp’s move to free Georgians from state demands that gun owners first obtain government permission to exercise their Second Amendment-guaranteed rights is applauded, his motives for doing so, even before the General Assembly has passed anything for him to sign, must be questioned.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, December 15, 2021:  

In a video message from the White House, President Biden mourned yesterday with the families who lost children in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, nine years ago. He assumed the patina of a sincere close friend familiar with their suffering, claiming that it was “one of the saddest days” during his time as vice president under Barack Obama.

He then turned the memorial service directed to those families into political theater directed to anyone else who might be watching: “We owe all of these families more than our prayers. We owe them action.”

Biden sounded like President Obama when Obama made a televised statement following the shooting back in December 2012. Said Obama at the time, “We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this.” He said he would “use whatever power this office holds” to prevent future such tragedies.

All of which is hyperbole, tiresome repetitions of remedies that have nothing to do with preventing future Adam Lanzas from committing similar mayhem. But those “remedies” have everything to do with continuing the government’s war against private ownership of firearms by American citizens.

Lanza, it will be remembered, had no criminal record. His mother was a law-abiding citizen and owner of a number of firearms which she had purchased legally over time. Lanza’s first crime was theft. He stole a few of his mother’s firearms and used them first to murder his mother and then kill a total of 28 people, including himself. 

Wrote AWR Hawkins, a freelance writer with a Ph.D. in U.S. military history:

All of the guns were lawfully purchased by Lanza’s mother as was all the ammunition. Lanza then bypassed all gun control [laws] by stealing the firearms before using them to carry out his heinous crimes.

 

Because the guns were stolen [gun control laws did] nothing to prevent the crime at Sandy Hook Elementary.

What Biden’s mourning did was reveal once again that the issue wasn’t preventing similar atrocities in the future but continuing the long war on private gun ownership in the United States.

So, the chipping away at the Second Amendment continues. In his message, Biden said he already had “curbed the proliferation of ghost guns, crack[ed] down on rogue gun dealers, and promot[ed] safe storage [rules for firearms].”

And, if history is any guide, Biden is likely to unleash a barrage of illegal executive orders that have nothing to do with preventing future tragedies but everything to do with continuing the war on guns.

Following the shooting in 2012, President Obama issued 23 executive orders that were irrelevant to the shooting, including:

• Directing his Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure that dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks;
• Proposing a rule giving law enforcement authorities the power to run background checks on an individual before returning a seized gun;
• Publishing instructions from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers;
• Directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to research [the causes of] gun violence; and
• Directing the attorney general to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies.

One can see at once how the war is being conducted. Under the cover of the Sandy Hook shooting, that war will be ramped up once again, this time by the Biden administration, not in any attempt to prevent another Sandy Hook shooting, but to continue the steady chipping away at and erosion of precious rights guaranteed by the Constitution.