Washington Times:

A federal judge has upheld a package of strict firearms regulations that went into effect in Maryland last year.

In a 47-page opinion issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake said the law “seeks to address a serious risk of harm to law enforcement officers and the public from the greater power to injure and kill presented by assault weapons and large capacity magazines.”

[ … ]

Judge Blake, appointed by President Clinton, agreed with lawyers for the state, who held that assault weapons and large-capacity magazines “fall outside Second Amendment protection as dangerous and unusual arms.” She also pointed out that the plaintiffs could not produce a single example in which an assault weapon or more than 10 rounds of ammunition were “used or useful” in an instance of self-defense in Maryland.

The opinion cites statistics showing that ownership of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines is comparatively rare and yet they are “disproportionately represented in mass shootings” as well as the murders of law-enforcement personnel.

“Upon review of all the parties’ evidence, the court seriously doubts that the banned assault long guns are commonly possessed for lawful purposes, particularly self-defense in the home, which is at the core of the Second Amendment right, and is inclined to find the weapons fall outside Second Amendment protection as dangerous and unusual,” Judge Blake wrote.

These things simply aren’t true.  See my mass shootings research.  These incidents are primarily done with guys toting multiple firearms (usually handguns, but shotguns have also been used) and multiple magazines.  Reloading is quick and easy, as mass shooters know.

Furthermore, I can point to Mr. Stephen Bayezes for an incident where an AR-15 and multiple magazines had to be used in self defense.  This was South Carolina, but if the judge had turned to the pages of American Rifleman every month, she would have seen the multiple reports of people defending themselves using all sorts of firearms.  There are many examples in Maryland.

But this isn’t about self defense.  It’s just a continuation of the same sort of fabricated reasoning that grips our judicial system on guns.  The second amendment has to do with self defense only insofar as it pertains to amelioration of tyranny.

These are scary words for collectivist judges like her.  None of this matters.  She won’t get any of our guns, and if you are an owner of a weapon capable of holding more than ten rounds in the magazine, keep it.  If you turn it in, you are siding with the collectivists.  Maryland will pay for their sins.

Jim Hoft:

Protesters are chucking bricks from an Interstate 270 overpass. Police have shut down the interstate in north St. Louis County.
Police are moving people out of Ferguson

We’ve seen this before in Iraq.

More than one third of all Soldiers and Marines continue to report being in threatening situations where they were unable to respond due to Rules of Engagement (ROE).  In interviews, Soldiers reported that Iraqis would throw gasoline-filled bottles (i.e., Molotov Cocktails) at their vehicles, yet they were prohibited from responding with force for nearly a month until the ROE were changed.  Soldiers also reported they are still not allowed to respond with force when Iraqis drop large chunks of concrete blocks from second story buildings or overpasses on them when they drive by.  Every groups of Soldiers and Marines interviewed reported that they felt the existing ROE tied their hands, preventing them from doing what needed to be done to win the war …

This was eventually changed and our men were allowed to fire on insurgents throwing blocks from bridges and overhead passes due to the danger.  I am just wondering – to what degree would we allow that for ordinary American citizens who are under threat from blocks thrown from overhead passes?  Would we tie their hands more than we tied the hands of our Soldiers and Marines in Iraq?  If so, why?

Glenn Reynolds recently linked an article at World Net Daily where Christians are being told to weapon up and fight back against jihadist fighters in Nigeria because the government won’t protect them against Boko Haram and others who intend them harm.  This kicked off a conversation between me and my son over the response of the Christian church worldwide, a church I have variously called weak, pathetic, pitiful, disgusting and repulsive (I have that right because I’m a Christian).

I have [previously] asked when is the last time a reader had even heard a prayer in worship for Christians being slaughtered across the globe? (This week was the first indication that anyone cares, with a note from Leith Anderson, head of the National Association of Evangelicals, to pray for Iraq, after Christians have been slaughtered and driven from their homes for more than three years (and the church in Mesopotamia having disintegrated).  What?  No imprecatory prayers at all?  We’re too busy trying to disarm each other to pay attention to the suffering of Christians rather than our own comfort.  My son, in disagreement (of course) with the anemia of the global church, demands to know why we aren’t arming Christians across the world from the offering plate.

To this I explained that there are a number of complicating factors in such a proposal.  First of all, arming Christians in Iraq or Nigeria involves export of firearms which falls under a whole gaggle of federal laws.  To avoid that the church would have to find a weapons trafficker to get the arms to the Christians under attack.  In the unlikely event that a pastor anywhere had the stomach for this, the weapons cannot be gotten to the Christians now anyway.  They are surrounded and cut off, or scattered to the four winds as they run for their very lives.

A good summary statement of where the Christians are at the moment might be this: they waited too late to think about self defense.  They waited too late not because of the mistaken notion that the jihadists would have mercy on them, but because there is a basic sickness in the worldwide church.  This sickness, which is the root cause of the problem, is anti-intellectualism and bad hermeneutics.

Christians justifiably hold high regard for what the Scriptures teach.  But failing proper interpretation and application, unlearned Christians are at the mercy of teachers and pastors who have been brainwashed at liberal seminaries in the art of form, source and redaction criticism, and deconstruction.  Many seminary professors no more believe what the Bible teaches than my dog believes in Newtonian physics.

The Bible gets (intentionally) conflated with social action and a thousand other things, and one consequence of this, just to bring this around to the main subject, is that Christians the world over are in large part pacifists.  The honorific title of “Prince of peace” governs the interpretation of words like “My kingdom is not of this world,” “turn the other check,” and “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”  That He can become angry and jealous and full of wrath are seldom discussed.  It’s what theologian John Frame calls an “exclusive reduction” of God to one characteristic, like “God is love” (which is poor hermeneutics) versus an “emphasizing reduction” (which can be temporarily useful for teaching).  Passages are ripped out of context without regard to the rules of hermeneutics or other passages of the Bible and the need for logical consistency.

But despite bad hermeneutics, there is no unmitigated promise from God to protect His people without regard to their foolishness, if they will only trust Him for their provisions.  In order to prove this notion false all one must do is find a single example where Christians were killed en masse.  Such an example isn’t hard to find, as it is estimated that Hitler killed some three million Christians during his evil reign in addition to the millions of Jews, including some half a million clergy.  Another instance of Christians perishing at the hands of evil men can be taken from Stalin’s starvation of the Ukraine, what may be called the holocaust by hunger.  Christians were certainly among the seven million souls who perished in the Ukraine in the 1930’s.  So David’s comment that he has never seen the children of the righteous “begging for bread” (Ps 37:25) must be a normative statement rather than a promise.  In fact, the entire approach to interpretation of the so-called “wisdom literature” in the Bible is different from say, didactic (Romans and Ephesians) or apocalyptic (Revelation) literature.

I am afraid there have been too many centuries of bad teaching endured by the church, but it makes sense to keep trying.  As I’ve explained before, the simplest and most compelling case for self defense lies in the decalogue.  Thou shall not murder means thou shall protect life.

God’s law requires [us] to be able to defend the children and helpless.  “Relying on Matthew Henry, John Calvin and the Westminster standards, we’ve observed that all Biblical law forbids the contrary of what it enjoins, and enjoins the contrary of what it forbids.”  I’ve tried to put this in the most visceral terms I can find.

God has laid the expectations at the feet of heads of families that they protect, provide for and defend their families and protect and defend their countries.  Little ones cannot do so, and rely solely on those who bore them.  God no more loves the willing neglect of their safety than He loves child abuse.  He no more appreciates the willingness to ignore the sanctity of our own lives than He approves of the abuse of our own bodies and souls.  God hasn’t called us to save the society by sacrificing our children or ourselves to robbers, home invaders, rapists or murderers. Self defense – and defense of the little ones – goes well beyond a right.  It is a duty based on the idea that man is made in God’s image.  It is His expectation that we do the utmost to preserve and defend ourselves when in danger, for it is He who is sovereign and who gives life, and He doesn’t expect us to be dismissive or cavalier about its loss.

This same sort of thinking can be applied on a larger scale to states and nations as so expertly done by professor Darrell Cole in Good Wars (First Things), relying on the theology of both Calvin and Aquinas.  But this is a bridge too far for some Christians who are just now dealing with the notion that they might be in danger.

And danger it is.  If it isn’t out of control SWAT teams in wrong address raids or home invasions by felons, Christians might begin to think about the possibility that jihad will show up on our own shores (jihad version 4.0 includes mass executions, burying people alive and beheading of children).  And if it isn’t that, consider that illegal immigrants have been seen walking armed and in military fatigues in tactical formation (“Ranger file”) across Texas farmland.

But the most pressing danger isn’t ISIS, or felons, or illegal immigrants.  The most pressing danger is the intransigence of the global Christian church in refusing to weapon up and defend themselves.  The Christians in Iraq waited too late, have lost their homes and all of their belongings, and are on the run or sitting on a mountain top thirsting to death (and thirst is a bad way to perish).  I just don’t how to say it any clearer than my favorite actor, Sam Elliot.  If you won’t listen to me, listen to him.

Prior: Christians, The Second Amendment And The Duty Of Self Defense

Arizona Daily Sun:

Police cannot frisk someone they stop and question absent some “reasonable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot,” the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

In their unanimous decision affirming the right to carry a gun without interference, the justices rejected arguments by prosecutors that a simple belief someone is armed and dangerous is enough to justify a frisk, even without any evidence of criminal activity. They said the U.S. Constitution dictates otherwise.

“The Fourth Amendment protects the right of people to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures,” wrote Justice Rebecca Berch.

“When officers consensually engage citizens on the street without having any evidence of wrongdoing, the mere presence of a weapon does not afford officers constitutional permission to search weapons-carrying individuals,” she said. “To conclude otherwise would potentially subject countless law-abiding persons solely for exercising their right to carry a firearm.”

Berch said police still can ask people if they are carrying a weapon. And they remain free to ask that person to hand it over while they are talking.

But she also said those individuals remain free to walk away.

Good for them.  There is no prima facie reason that police should be any more concerned about their own safety than ordinary citizens should be about theirs, and no one has given the right to citizens to demand that police give up their weapons during conversations (although something like that would have saved many lives).

It also doesn’t surprise me one bit that the police and state argued otherwise.  I would expect them to.  To someone who knows more about the law than I do, please weigh in if you can explain this to me.  But it seems that we’ve covered this ground before, and to at least some extent this (warrantless searches) is a recapitulation of things decided in Arizona versus Gant.

David Codrea:

A former lieutenant and a current sheriff, each implying the other is lying, doesn’t cut it. Whichever way it falls, the public deserves to know the truth.

You mean to tell me that a LEO is lying?  Say it ain’t so!  Actually, while this idea is not popular among the “only ones” and their gun control advocates who talk incessantly about them being trained to handle firearms and react under pressure, a friend (former captain of a large PD) tells me that most officers pull their weapons once per year at qualification and no more.

Mike Vanderboegh on the men we left behind in North Vietnam.  I had always suspected that.

Mike Vanderboegh on Kevlar helmets and their capabilities.  Worth reading this post.

This incident shows that you should always be ready for a gun battle in situations of self defense.

Vega was armed and tried to defend his family. There was a dramatic gun battle that reportedly involved the mortally wounded agent telling his father, “Keep shooting, Dad.” At one point Vega’s mother grabbed an AR-15 and fired away at the killers’ fleeing car.

Two million new Latino voters will swamp the GOP.  And now you understand again why Obama is doing what he’s doing.

News from Florida:

A Hillsborough County detention deputy was arrested after he pointed a gun at another man during an off-duty road-rage incident Tuesday morning, the Sheriff’s Office said.

It is the second time this year that a Hillsborough County sheriff’s deputy has faced charges over pulling out a gun during a roadway dispute.

Deputy Reginald J. Migues, 54, got into argument with Arthur Langley, 41, of Tampa over something that happened near the intersection of U.S. 92 and Williams Road, the Sheriff’s Office said. The agency did not disclose the nature of the dispute. A Sheriff’s Office report indicates Migues and Langley pulled into a parking lot at 5520 Carmack Road around 10:30 a.m. Officials said Migues walked toward Langley, who started getting out of his vehicle.

Migues pulled a personal Glock .40-caliber handgun, chambered a round and pointed it at Langley, who got back into his vehicle and called 911, officials said.

But remember kids, only trained, properly screened law enforcement officials can be trusted with firearms.

EAG.news:

HOLMES BEACH, Fla. – An 80-year-old Florida woman grabbed her gun and called 911 during a home invasion. While the burglars were breaking a window to her residence, the police dispatcher told her to “put the gun down.” Huh?

As N.J. Logan was upstairs resting from recent hip replacement surgery in her Holmes Beach, Fla. home, she heard a racket coming from the main level, according to MyFoxTampaBay:

Now contrast this silly counsel with my advice.  During a home invasion, get your gun.  For me it’s easy since it is always with me.  Shoot intruders dead without delay.  Ignore silly advice to put your gun down from immoral government workers who do not have your best interest at heart.

For the poor lady who suffered the home invasion, consider yourself properly counseled.  For the 911 operator, consider yourself corrected.

Fox Carolina:

INMAN, SC (FOX Carolina) –

A Spartanburg County business owner is upset after he says SunTrust Bank closed his business accounts because he runs a pawn shop.

Even as a boy, Morris Williams often had a gun in his hands.

“I grew up hunting with my dad,” Williams said.

And now as an adult he sells them at the Inman Gun and Pawn.

“This business has been here since the early 90s,” Williams said.

Not only are there guns, but there are guitars, movies and chainsaws for sale. But he said SunTrust Bank cut him off and asked him to close two checking accounts he opened for his business.

“We have an excellent relationship. We have ample funds in the account to do anything we needed to do,” he said.

Williams said he’s a target of bank regulations influenced by the federal government because he’s a gun owner.

“We thought everything was just wonderful until we received this letter,” Williams said.

The letter states, “Under the Rules and Regulations for Deposit Accounts, and as a result of our recent decision, we must ask you to close the below listed SunTrust accounts.”

“The only thing that they will tell us is that we have been deemed a prohibited business type,” Williams said.

Some examples of what could be considered prohibited businesses are weapons, porn products, bankruptcy lawyers and psychic services businesses.

Sun Trust is lying through their employees and spokesmen.  Let’s be clear first of all that Operation Choke Point is a brainchild of Mr. Obama and Mr. Holder.  But Sun Trust is doing this voluntarily.  There is no legal prohibition on doing business with any particular gun dealers.  The CEO or the board of directors has made a decision, and a bad one at that.

They lied again when they said that “we must ask you to close the below listed SunTrust accounts.”  They didn’t have to do that.  They chose to do that, so again, the action is entirely voluntary on their behalf.

If the folks at Sun Trust are proven liars, on record saying things that are manifestly untrue, I wouldn’t want to do business with them anyway.  I recommend in the strongest possible terms that gun owners close their accounts with Sun Trust and open them in a more friendly – and honest – bank.  After all, do you want your money to be under the watch and “protection” of liars?

David Codrea:

But Lanier and D.C. government didn’t just give up and fold. While these department-protective steps were being taken, legal staff was moving quickly to stall things. The city filed a request for a 180-day stay.

They didn’t have long to wait for a decision.

Judge Scullin ordered a 90-day stay, reflecting an agreement between plaintiff and defense counsels that “plaintiffs do not oppose a 90-day stay—starting immediately.”

MPD was quick to pounce.

“In light of the court issuing a stay of the Palmer v. District of Columbia order, Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier today issued a notice to members of the Metropolitan Police Department rescinding two teletypes related to firearms,” a media release explained. “All laws related to firearms regulation and crimes remain in effect.”

Because neither the judges nor law enforcement (in D.C.) cares about your personal protection.  They’re immoral and only care about themselves.  Contrast that with a Sheriff from my own home state of North Carolina.  One solution is to relocate and leave them to their own devices, as have many gun manufacturers from the North.

David Codrea:

“One thing Manfre said he and many other law enforcement officials would like to see in terms of sensible gun control is a ban on assault weapons,” the PR piece masked as news noted. “’In my opinion, there is no reason to have an assault weapon,’ he said” …

“[O]ne of his former lieutenants — a one-time firearms instructor the sheriff laid off in 2013 — said Manfre has a history of poor performance firing his agency-issued Glock model 17, a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol,” the report explains.

Manfre doesn’t think I should be able to have semi-automatic weapons.  I don’t believe that Manfre should be armed at all because he is dangerous.  There.  We’re even.

Kurt Hofmann:

But it is they, the “progressives,” who hope to keep these most vulnerable members of society disarmed and defenseless. It is they who claim that the best protection for such people is “hate crime” laws, making it “more illegaller” to commit heinous violence against someone if the assailant was motivated by hate for a group his victim is a part of, rather than anything about the victim himself.

With Kurt, I think hate crime laws are an abomination.  It is man trying to control thought rather than punishing behavior.  I may disagree vehemently with the chosen lifestyle of someone, but my disagreement doesn’t in the least remove, obviate or nullify the God-given right to self defense, which is irrevocable.

Fox News:

Should owners of firearms be required to carry gun liability insurance to cover the potential risks their weapons pose?

No.  But I was just wondering whether an insurance company might want to charge higher premiums for someone not armed due to being a higher risk of assault without the proper means of self defense.

Guns.com:

With a recent spike in crime, a North Carolina sheriff is following suit of other law enforcement officials across the country by taking what some consider a controversial stance, encouraging area residents to arm themselves for their own protection, a local ABC affiliate reported.

The once rural area of Harnett County has seen a growth in population and with it, crime and violence have increased as well, with a dramatic surge over the last few weeks. In fact, crime has gotten so bad that some residents admit they’re afraid to leave their homes.

Sheriff Larry Rollins thinks the increase can be attributed to gangs and drugs, and in an attempt to combat the growing problem, about 100 people gathered at a local church for a community meeting Monday evening to discuss possible solutions.

One woman in attendance wants to believe that her faith is enough to give her peace – she goes to church and prays – but admits that she’s still afraid of the growing violence.

“I believe in God, but I am still afraid of what is going on,” said resident Lynda Jenks. “I am afraid to go off very far, for very long. I am afraid of break-ins. I am afraid.”

Sheriff Rollins then gives the most succinct, best counsel I’ve seen from a LEO concerning your own safety.

“When I am out with my family, even though I am a cop, I don’t go anywhere without a gun,” Rollins said during a speech at the meeting. “I mean it’s sad we have to have that attitude, but I am going to protect myself and my family. I want my deputies at your house just as fast as they can when you got a problem, but you better be able to take care of business until we get there if you have to protect your family.”

For the poor lady who is (justifiably) scared, I know it’s tough, but I don’t think that is the best posture for her or anyone else.  I recommend that we remove emotion, fear and even vigilantism from the calculus, and see the need to own and bear arms not it terms of a failure to trust God (she obviously has had some bad teaching somewhere along the line), but rather in terms of positively trusting God.

God has told us that we must be able and ready to defend ourselves and our families, and refusal to do so is a failure to believe in His promises that mankind will face evil until He returns.  In other words, I see things exactly opposite her, and it is my view that she should find liberating and empowering, rather than the pacifist belief that God will protect us no matter how foolish we are.

Good for Sheriff Rollins.