Following up reports of secret detention sites by the Chicago Police Department, The Guardian wanted access to this site along with a local politician, and was met by this man.

This man circled around a reporter and photographer for the Guardian twice while waiting for a local politician. Photograph: Chandler West for the Guardian

You cowardly thug!  Law enforcement officers, or better yet, constables or peace officers, should be transparent, their actions, intentions and procedures in the open light of inspection by the community that pays their salaries.  Their actions should be subject to God’s universal laws thus ensuring protections against totalitarianism and abuse.

Wearing tactical gear and face masks while protecting a secret site hidden away from the men and women you serve runs directly contrary to the oath you swore and your sacred duty before God and man.  Take off that mask, you pussy, and announce your name and identity like I do as I write this very rebuke of you and your superiors.

Jerry has give us a very informative video on M855 ammunition and it’s variants.

The Guardian:

The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights.

Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include:

• Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.
• Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.
• Shackling for prolonged periods.
• Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.
• Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.

At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.

Brian Jacob Church, a protester known as one of the “Nato Three”, was held and questioned at Homan Square in 2012 following a police raid. Officers restrained Church for the better part of a day, denying him access to an attorney, before sending him to a nearby police station to be booked and charged.

“Homan Square is definitely an unusual place,” Church told the Guardian on Friday. “It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It’s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what’s happened to you.”

[ … ]

“It’s sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police station visits, this place – if you can’t find a client in the system, odds are they’re there,” said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes.

Chicago civil-rights attorney Flint Taylor said Homan Square represented a routinization of a notorious practice in local police work that violates the fifth and sixth amendments of the constitution.

“This Homan Square revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of the practice that dates back more than 40 years,” Taylor said, “of violating a suspect or witness’ rights to a lawyer and not to be physically or otherwise coerced into giving a statement.”

[ … ]

When a Guardian reporter arrived at the warehouse on Friday, a man at the gatehouse outside refused any entrance and would not answer questions. “This is a secure facility. You’re not even supposed to be standing here,” said the man, who refused to give his name.

One of the hallmark signs of evil, totalitarian societies is secrecy.  Note that the Chicago police didn’t deny the place existed.  On the contrary, they insisted that the place be kept secret from the balance of society so that they could continue with their illegal activities.  Light scatters the darkness, and they desire the darkness rather than the light.  They aren’t scared of being found out, they don’t fear the courts, prosecutors, the justice department, lawyers or anyone else.  They have become a law unto themselves.  They do what is right in their own eyes and dare anyone to try to stop them.

And note that it is a so-called “open secret” among attorneys that this place exists, this place where basic God-given rights are violated.  This isn’t a trivial thing, so don’t look past this to the horror of such a place on American soil just yet.  These attorneys are officers of the court.  They are bound to obey the law and ensure that others do as well, and are obligated to report illegalities.  They know the place and practices exist, and yet they do nothing about it.

The existence of this facility is an affront to God’s law, and thus constitutes cosmic treason against the most high.  Of the protection of God’s law for the individual and the family, R. J. Rushdoony says in his commentary on Deuteronomy 24:10-11:

This law sets down a premise which has had a major impact on Christendom. When, in colonial America, Judge James Otis decreed that “a man’s home is his castle,” he had reference to this law. Intrusion into a man’s house is a violation of his freedom. God’s law protects a man from the malice and interference of powerful men. To protect men’s houses and properties is to uphold God’s order, because God has established the legitimate boundaries of the family’s jurisdiction and freedom.

And this malice and interference of powerful men, this protection of men’s property that doesn’t occur any more in our society, has been illustrated for us in the recent case on which I commented concerning the immorality of asset forfeiture laws.  Even today we learned of more asset forfeiture of guns as a norm in society.

As for the role of presumably free men in all of this, our responsibilities are growing and loom very large.

Madison and Jefferson gave a critical template of how states and local governments should respond when outside threats are used as the pretext by the federal government to curtail the liberty of law-abiding citizens. Both men took up their pens to oppose the Alien and Sedition Acts which violated the First Amendment’s right to free speech and the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause. In response to these unconstitutional edicts, Jefferson and Madison separately drafted resolutions for the individual states to take up in their legislatures to oppose the abusive acts. Jefferson’s work became the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, and Madison’s the Virginia Resolutions of 1798.

In the Kentucky Resolutions, Jefferson stated “that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”

Madison was equally direct. In the Virginia Resolutions, he declared that “the powers of the federal government” are “limited by the plain sense and intention” of the Constitution “and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.”

In maintaining that the states were “duty bound, to interpose,” Madison was standing on a long legal tradition dating back to the Magna Charta when England’s nobles demanded that King John honor the rights of Englishmen or be deposed.

In this case, the offending authorities are the local ones, but anyone who believes that the federal government would step in to ensure rights against illegal search and seizure is foolish.

Every law enforcement officer who knows about this illegal and immoral site and doesn’t shed light on its existence and practices may as well be a perpetrator of said practices.  There are no guiltless parties, from the LEOs to the attorneys who keep this “open secret” to judges and city managers who allow it to happen.  They will all be held accountable.

The U.S. has become a banana republic.  It isn’t on the horizon somewhere, we don’t have actions we need to take to ensure that it doesn’t happen.  It has already happened.  It is past tense.  Since this is cosmic crime against God’s law, it would be cosmic justice if this facility burned to the ground, every one of the LEOs who participated in these activities held to account, and every attorney and judge who knew of this facility disbarred and sent to prison.

David Codrea:

Washington State liberty activist Anthony Bosworth was arrested Wednesday outside a federal building for openly carrying a firearm, an announcement on Bosworth’s Facebook page reports. Within hours, he had been released with no criminal charges, his wife informed supporters.

Liberty advocate Kit Lange has fleshed out further details of the arrest on the website for The Patrick Henry Society. The “co-organizer of Arms Expo 2015 was arrested this morning outside the federal courthouse in Spokane as he attended a states’ rights rally with his family,” Lange reports.

Bosworth was arrested in front of his wife and children by agents for the Department of Homeland Security, who “claimed that Bosworth was in violation of federal law by open carrying a firearm on federal property.”

Read the rest of the report at Examiner.  I won’t be the first one, but I’ll certainly join the chorus and call bull shit on this one.  There is no such law that prohibits firearms on “federal property,” as if all property is subject to a single law.  For example, firearms are certainly allowed in national parks and have been since 2010.  A military base is technically considered a federal reservation, and firearms are allowed there (even personal ones with approval).  The arresting officer just made that one up.

Read Mike Vanderboegh’s take on this.  ” I was particularly interested that the FBI was particularly interested in talking to Anthony about me. Nice to know I’m living in their heads rent-free as well. (Maybe they can get with Gottlieb and split the cost.) The FBI, it seems, is particularly interested in the national armed civil disobedience movement. It really must flummox them. We don’t fit any pattern they’ve seen recently …”

David Codrea:

Setting the state up for massive gun owner civil disobedience along the lines of what has occurred in California and is currently happening in New York and Connecticut, Democrat State Senator Jacqueline Y. Collins filed the Firearms Registration Act with the Secretary of State on Friday. The act was then presented for first reading and referred to the Democrat-dominated Assignments Committee.

Collins’ measure “[p]rovides that every person in the State must register each firearm he or she owns or possesses in accordance with the Act,” the official synopsis declares.

It’s easy for people to file legislation that someone else has to enforce.  So send in the enforcers, Ms. Collins.  See what happens then.  Perhaps you can go on one of the raids yourself, no?

Kurt Hofmann:

But Dr. Alan Delamater says even exposing young teens to this environment is dangerous.

“It’s another family gaming activity, right? Wrong. I don’t think it’s just another activity. I think this is something that can seriously affect child development and not in a good way,” Dr. Delamater said.

Delamater does not clarify whether or not “exposing” these young men and women–some of whom will in a few short years be serving in the military–to all firearms represents a problem for “child development” (whatever that unspecified “problem” is), or if the danger is restricted to fully-automatic firearms.

What does the man want, for boys to play with dolls and learn how to self actualize each other?  Every man needs to know things like engine building, guns, and farm animals.  If you don’t, buy a gun and learn to use it, tear an engine down, and volunteer your time at a ranch training horses.  And stay away from Dr. Delamater while he wets his pants.

Kurt Hofmann:

They’re refusing shipment until they know more about how it will be regulated–a pretty strong indicator that they know it’s not regulated now.  As Wilson says, there is absolutely no reason for FedEx to be concerned about legal issues, because there are no legal issues with shipping CNC milling machines. Wilson also points out that FedEx ships actual guns and ammunition, both of which are heavily regulated under federal and many states’ laws, and that hasn’t stopped them.

Read the rest of Kurt’s analysis.  I think Kurt is right.  There has been some dirty dealing going on behind closed doors on this one.

Christian militia takes on ISIS.  I want to be careful and very Christian as I respond to this and provide an assessment  – as a Christian.  Okay, here it goes.  May the Christian militia make the streets run red with the blood of the savages and send them to meet their maker who will send them to hell.  Godspeed to the militia.

The ATF reaffirms the Sig pistol brace is legal after all.  Whatever.  This is all being done by a bunch of worthless lawyers who have never used the thing and wouldn’t know it from a 2X4 if it bit them in the ass.  Ignore them and do what you want to with the brace.  The ATF has turned so paranoid and controlling they have become an undignified, unprofessional, boorish bore, like that uncle who cleans septic tanks for a living, the one with bad breath and creepy looks whom everyone avoids.

Detroit Free Press:

Thomas Williams was alone that November morning in 2013 when police raided his rural St. Joseph County home, wearing black masks, camouflage and holding guns at their sides. They broke down his front door with a battering ram.

“We think you’re dealing marijuana,” they told Williams, a 72-year-old, retired carpenter and cancer patient who is disabled and carries a medical marijuana card.

When he protested, they handcuffed him and left him on the living room floor as they ransacked his home, emptying drawers, rummaging through closets and surveying his grow room, where he was nourishing his 12 personal marijuana plants as allowed by law. Some had recently begun to die, so he had cloned them and had new seedlings, although they were not yet planted. That, police insisted, put him over the limit.

They did not charge Williams with a crime, though.

Instead, they took his Dodge Journey, $11,000 in cash from his home, his television, his cell phone, his shotgun and are attempting to take his Colon Township home. And they plan to keep the proceeds, auctioning off the property and putting the cash in police coffers.

More than a year later, he is still fighting to get his belongings back and to hang on to his house.

“I want to ask them, ‘Why? Why me?’ I gave them no reason to do this to me,” said Williams, who says he also suffers from glaucoma, a damaged disc in his back, and COPD, a lung disorder. “I’m out here minding my own business, and just wanted to be left alone.”

The seizure was allowed under Michigan’s Civil Asset Forfeiture laws, which allow police to take property from citizens if they suspect a crime was committed, even when there is not enough evidence to charge them. Homeowners like Williams have to prove they did not purchase their property with proceeds from criminal activity and then sue to get the property back.

Why you?  You happened to be available when the police needed to raise some revenue.  It’s that simple.  I’m so sorry for this poor man (and let me say here that I couldn’t care less that he had some hemp growing in his house, any more than I care if a man makes some untaxed corn liquor in his back yard), but these laws made by the legislature are evil.

I don’t care what this man did.  There isn’t any reason at all that the state should legally be able to confiscate possessions.  In the worst case (let’s say that a man goes to prison for murder), his possessions could be treated as if he passed away and his will invoked (his children would then inherit his possessions, or whomever was named in his will).  The advantage of this is that if he doesn’t have a will, he can be queried by the court to ascertain who he wants to inherit his belongings.

Readers may have better ideas.  Anything is better than the state taking possession of property, and I see no basis in English common law or the Holy Scriptures for such laws.

Recall that I had some questions for Eugene Volokh here?  Eugene responded thusly via email:

Eugene: To answer your questions, of course if a state decided to order police officers to carry concealed, police officers would have to carry concealed – just as it can tell them what kinds of guns to carry, what kinds of uniforms to wear (or not wear, if they’re undercover), or whatever else.  When the state hires someone to provide armed protection for the public, it can tell prescribe in great detail just how this duty is to be carried out (and how it is not to be carried out).

HPS: Thanks for the response, but I confess that I find it most unsatisfying because you have grounded your answer in contractual obligations rather than whether something rises to the level of being an infringement of basic rights.

Eugene: Well, you asked a question:  “Suppose rather than the rights of an ‘ordinary’ citizen being addressed here it was the rights of law enforcement officers who may need to defend their lives….  Would any court in the land have dared to force LEOs to carry concealed?”  The answers is every court in the land would uphold such a requirement.  (Indeed, I’m pretty sure that many nonuniformed police officers are expected to carry concealed, and are sometimes required to carry concealed.)  Now you say you’re unsatisfied because my answer is based on contractual obligations.  (To be precise, it’s based in the government’s power to fire employees, with or without a contract, who don’t follow its rules on such matters.)  But your own question was premised on “contractual” matters:  The only reason that law enforcement officers are law enforcement officers is that the government has hired them to do the job.  You can’t ask a question about what law enforcement officers – who are called that only because they are a particular kind of employee – can be forced to do (on pain of losing their jobs), and then sensibly object to the answer that law enforcement officers have to follow the rules set forth by their employers.

Perhaps because of an unintentional misdirect on my part, I think Eugene is missing the broader point I tried to make.  If it isn’t an infringement on rights to force individuals to carry concealed rather than openly, is he in fact not acknowledging the very real delay in presenting the weapon for use with an effective sight picture (carrying concealed means that the weapon can get hung on shirts, pants, and other clothing, and certainly means a delay in presenting the weapon due to the need to remove the offending clothing in order to get to the weapon).

And if this is all true, wouldn’t LEOs point it out if we required them to carry concealed?  And if this isn’t an infringement of rights, then at what point does it become so?  Can the law require us to have one hand tied behind our back?  If seems a silly question, and how about one to which the courts would no doubt be more amenable?  Would it infringe on our rights if the law required us to have our weapons unloaded, regardless of method of carry?  Or would it infringe on our rights if the law required us to have two or more garments covering a weapon in order to ensure that we had no inadvertent flashing of the weapon if we bend over or in a stiff wind?

Eugene has more on open carry.

… it seems to me that, under the First Amendment, the state can’t ban someone from wearing a T-shirt or a large pin saying “I’m legally carrying a concealed handgun” at the same time that he is legally carrying a concealed handgun. The T-shirt or pin wouldn’t be a punishable threat of illegal conduct, because it is specifically referring to legal conduct, and it offers no reason to think that the wearer is going to use the gun illegally. And while wearing such an item might draw police attention, so would legal open carry.

Let’s take this sort of “announced carry” — concealed carry coupled with a statement that one is carrying — a step further. Say that some gun rights enthusiasts start wearing transparent plastic gun-shaped things strapped to their hips, in transparent holsters — something that is obviously not a real gun, but is symbolic of a real gun. (It should certainly not look like these T-shirts with realistic-looking holsters and guns printed on them.)

When asked, the wearers explain that these are symbolic of the fact that they are indeed lawfully carrying a concealed gun. The news gets out, and wearing such a transparent item on one’s hip will become understood as equivalent to a T-shirt saying “I’m legally carrying a concealed handgun.” (Compare how wearing particular ribbons or other symbols becomes understood at times as a particular kind of statement.) I likewise think this can’t be banned; the only reason to ban the holster would be the message that it sends, which would likewise violate the First Amendment.

On balance, the effect wouldn’t be terribly different from open carry …

Well, I think it would, and Eugene doesn’t account for the fact that some of us who open carry are not doing so in order to make a point (although I don’t disparage point-making as a legitimate end).  I consider concealed carry to be intrusive, uncomfortable and inefficient regarding “presentation” of the weapon.

What do readers think?

David Codrea:

It’s also in spite of almost daily revelations corroborating the increasing danger, and not just from the “illegal” side of the equation. Just within the past day, we’ve learned that Muslim immigration is outpacing that from Mexico and Central America, that 40 percent of New Yorkers are now foreign-born and half the residents of New York City speak a language other than English at home. We’ve also seen that the Border Patrol has been ordered to curtail deportations. Both legal and illegal immigration are being exploited by cheap labor Republicans and “earned citizenship” Democrats, both counting on the directed “cultural terraforming” to advance globalist interests and “fundamentally transform” the country.

David and I have been insistent, and for a very long time now, that the most insidious and dangerous threat to America has been and continues to be immigration, both legal and illegal.  The only question that remains is this: have we reached the point of no return?  If so, then we participate in politics in order to give us all more time to prepare for the inevitable dystopia.

David Codrea:

Johnson’s advice, that “public vigilance, public awareness and public caution in situations like this is particularly important” is true enough, but what’s lacking from that counsel is public preparedness to do anything about it if an attack happens, in spite of reassurances and promises of “enhanced security.” That’s because … well … let Mall of America speak for itself.

“At Mall of America, safety is a top priority,” it advises visitors on a Guests & Security page. “Guns are banned on these premises.”

So then you stay off those premises.  Simple.  Let Johnson answer for everything that happens after that.

Jesus invoked in the russian rebel’s war on the Ukraine?  Um, since we don’t know what Jesus looked like, the only real picture I see is of Che Guevara.  And I know Jesus and an egomaniacal communist named Putin have nothing to do with each other.

Gun prank in Deleware court:

A prank involving two prosecutors, a courthouse bailiff and a pointed gun has led a judge to revoke the ability of bailiffs statewide to carry firearms when working in courtrooms.

The incident occurred the week of Feb. 2 on the second floor of the Sussex County Courthouse, where the county’s Superior Court is housed. A person who works in the courthouse said the prank involved the courthouse’s chief bailiff, Delbert Garrison, opening the door to a side room where lawyers work and pointing his service weapon at a deputy attorney general in the room.

[ … ]

In the wake of the prank, Superior Court President Judge Jan Jurden made a decision to disallow bailiffs from carrying firearms, two sources told The News Journal. The decision was conveyed to attorneys and courthouse staff Wednesday.

David says not much else is needed in the way of commentary.  I don’t know, I wanted to offer up one observation.  Notice in response to this irresponsible act (which no reader of mine would ever perpetrate), the judge engaged in the same thing they always do, i.e., pre-emptive policing and judging, rather than simply holding the perpetrators accountable for their actions.

Politifact:

Would George Washington have been an ally to modern-day gun-rights groups? A social-media meme suggests that he would have.

Around the time of Washington’s 282nd birthday, a reader sent us the meme, which includes a painting of Washington and a quote purportedly written or uttered by the nation’s first president: “When government takes away citizens’ right to bear arms it becomes citizens’ duty to take away government’s right to govern.”

But are those really Washington’s words?

We contacted Edward Lengel, editor in chief of the Papers of George Washington project at the University of Virginia. He said “there is no evidence that Washington ever wrote or said these words, or any like them.” Lengel cautioned that it’s impossible to prove a negative, but he added that he’s “as certain as he can be” that the quote did not originate from George Washington.

This is not the first time a similar claim has popped onto our radar screen.

In December 2012, PolitiFact Texas rated False a claim made two days after the Newtown elementary school shooting. When U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, appeared on Fox News Sunday, he was asked why he believed ordinary Americans should be able to buy semi-automatic weapons designed for military use. Gohmert answered in part, “For the reason George Washington said a free people should be an armed people. It ensures against the tyranny of the government.”

PolitiFact Texas contacted Gohmert’s office to seek details on the Washington quotation but didn’t hear back.

The closest statement they could find was one Washington made in his first State of the Union address on Jan. 8, 1790: “A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined.”

The academic consensus is that Washington was referring to a trained militia to defend the new nation, rather than anticipating citizens seeking to head off perceived governmental tyranny.

Ron Chernow, whose Washington: A Life won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for biography, told PolitiFact Texas that Washington was “talking about national defense policy, not individuals arming themselves, and the need for national self-sufficiency in creating military supplies.”

Some post-Revolutionary lawmakers did expect citizens to own firearms, but Washington does not appear to have been among them, experts said.

“The idea of resistance to tyranny being dependent on a nation of gun-wielding individuals acting at their own behest or even on local initiative would have been anathema to Washington,” Lengel told PolitiFact Texas.

Yes, that’s right.  Per “academic consensus,” the very man to whom the continental congress turned to lead the effort to wage war on their own government was opposed to the very idea of waging war on your own government.  You simply cannot make this kind of thing up.

Let’s forget about a singular quote that may or may not have been properly attributed to Washington.  That clouds the issue, and it allows Politifact to launch into a much deeper presentation for which they cited absolutely no evidence.

The private ownership of weapons was so ubiquitous in colonial America that there is no need to explain that the “militia” purchased, maintained and trained on their guns individually.  As we’ve discussed before:

In the colonies, availability of hunting and need for defense led to armament statues comparable to those of the early Saxon times. In 1623, Virginia forbade its colonists to travel unless they were “well armed”; in 1631 it required colonists to engage in target practice on Sunday and to “bring their peeces to church.” In 1658 it required every householder to have a functioning firearm within his house and in 1673 its laws provided that a citizen who claimed he was too poor to purchase a firearm would have one purchased for him by the government, which would then require him to pay a reasonable price when able to do so. In Massachusetts, the first session of the legislature ordered that not only freemen, but also indentured servants own firearms and in 1644 it imposed a stern 6 shilling fine upon any citizen who was not armed.

When the British government began to increase its military presence in the colonies in the mid-eighteenth century, Massachusetts responded by calling upon its citizens to arm themselves in defense. One colonial newspaper argued that it was impossible to complain that this act was illegal since they were “British subjects, to whom the privilege of possessing arms is expressly recognized by the Bill of Rights” while another argued that this “is a natural right which the people have reserved to themselves, confirmed by the Bill of Rights, to keep arms for their own defense”. The newspaper cited Blackstone’s commentaries on the laws of England, which had listed the “having and using arms for self preservation and defense” among the “absolute rights of individuals.” The colonists felt they had an absolute right at common law to own firearms.

In fact, it may properly be said that the beginnings of the American war of independence was fought over gun control imposed by the British.  As to the private ownership of weapons, it doesn’t stop with the individual colonies declaring that men should be well armed in order to travel, or that they should practice their marksmanship every Sunday.

The Mount Vernon slaves hunted and trapped animals for income, both physical and documentary evidence suggests. Within the past decade, archaeologists working in the cellar of a slave dwelling on the Mansion House Farm came across both gun flints and lead shot in a variety of sizes; remains of small mammals (rabbits, squirrels, opossums, and raccoons); and a variety of wild birds (several types of ducks, coot, grouse, partridge, and passenger pigeon). Contrary to popular belief, slaves could legally own guns under certain circumstances. A Virginia statute of 1785 forbid slaves to keep firearms unless they were either traveling with their master or had written permission from him or their employer to have a gun. Washington clearly knew about and sanctioned the keeping of guns by at least some of his slaves (although no such documents of permission appear at Mount Vernon). He even provided shot on occasion, most likely for hunting game for the Washingtons’ table or for hunting vermin, as on 19 January 1787, when slave Tom Davis received one pound of shot.

In the fall of 1792, Davis and another slave, Sambo Anderson, sold their master eleven dozen birds. Both men were well-known hunters. Davis, who regularly supplied the Mount Vernon household with fresh game, had a “great Newfoundland dog” named Gunner as his hunting companion. Ducks were extremely plentiful along the Potomac in the eighteenth century, and one shot from Davis’s “old British musket” generally brought down “as many of those delicious birds as would supply the larder for a week,” said George Washington Parke Custis, Martha Washington’s grandson. Anderson had been born in Africa and in the 1750s had been enslaved and brought to Virginia, where he became a carpenter. A vivid character, he wore gold rings in his ears and adorned his face with tribal scars and tattoos. After his manumission in 1800 under the terms of Washington’s will, Anderson supported himself by hunting wild game, which he sold to hotels and to “the most respectable families” in Alexandria, according to an 1876 correspondent to the Alexandria Gazette and Virginia Advertiser. He made enough money from this endeavor to purchase and emancipate two members of his family, William and Eliza. Sambo Anderson probably earned money from those same sources while Washington was alive.

Even Washington’s slaves owned weapons.  Do not ever trust Politifact.  And as for that matter, do not ever trust Snopes or Truth or Fiction.  Be better students that they are, and refuse to honor people who perform middle school level research with your visits or your time.  When I do, I visit these sites so you don’t have to.

Washington, like all other founders, viewed gun ownership as a right, and relied upon such ownership to prosecute the American war of independence.

Prior: Politifact Lies About The NRA

By now most readers are aware of the sad case of the poor New Jersey retired school teacher who faces felony charges for ownership of an antique handgun.

Gordon Van Gilder, a 72-year-old retired schoolteacher in New Jersey, faces a 10-year prison sentence for possessing an unloaded 18th-century flintlock pistol in his car.

Mr. Van Gilder, a collector of 18th-century memorabilia, said he had the gun unloaded and wrapped in a cloth in the glove compartment of his vehicle when he was pulled over in November by a Cumberland County sheriff’s deputy for a minor traffic violation, according to a video posted last week by NRA News.

After consenting to a search of his vehicle, Mr. Van Gilder said he alerted the deputy of the pistol in his glove box. The deputy let him go that night, but four police officers showed up at his home the next morning with an arrest warrant, he told NRA News.

“Beware of New Jersey. Don’t come here. Don’t live here,” Mr. Van Gilder said. “Here I am, a retired teacher coming out of his house in handcuffs, who had a flintlock pistol and now I’m charged as a felon. It’s unbelievable. It’s outrageous. It’s an insult to decent people.”

New Jersey’s gun laws explicitly include antique firearms, even though federal laws exempt them.

Evan Nappen, an attorney who specializes in gun law cases and is representing Mr. Van Gilder, says that even a plea agreement that avoids jail time but convicts Mr. Van Gilder of a felony would likely jeopardize his teacher’s pension he spent 34 years earning, Legal Insurrection reported.

Charles C. W. Cooke thinks the law is an ass.