Well, Trump has nominated Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court.  He is an apt replacement for Scalia, and as best as I can tell is more like him than not, and in fact may have exactly the same jurisprudence.  Scalia had a high view of police powers, and it appears that Neil Gorsuch does too.

I’ve made my views known about his concurrence in Rodriguez.  I don’t like that part of his jurisprudence.  But assuming that his view wins the day and LEOs are determined to have the right to disarm innocent handgun carriers because it makes the LEO “feel” safer, this raises a whole host of questions for LEOs.

When do you ask the driver to present his weapon to you?  Under what circumstances?  Do you do that, or do you put your own hand on his firearm?  If you do, what information do you need to know about the firearm?  What if he is appendix carrying?  Do you risk a negligent discharge that destroys his femoral artery and thus kills him as he bleeds out before help arrives?

Do you sustain any risk by asking the carrier to put his own hands on his weapon?  How do you know intent?  How does he know your intent?  What if the individual doesn’t want to put his hand on his weapon in the presence of a LEO?  What do you do then?  Do you cuff him?  Does that violate his rights against illegal search and seizure?

Listen to me if you’re a LEO.  You had better think about these things.  As I’ve said before, I think it’s profoundly stupid to put your hands on another man’s weapon, and I think it’s profoundly stupid to ask him to do that.  But if you’re hell bent on doing that because it feels good, you’d better think through this thing.  This has the chance to get dicey.

So in this post I discussed teaching by humiliation using the example of Pat Rogers, who apparently used patches to reward shooters who failed to properly seat their magazines.

This started the comments as if on queue about how I had it all wrong, was disrespecting dearly beloved and dearly departed Pat, and so on and so forth.  You can go read the comments for yourself, I won’t delete them.  But I have banned the commenters for a number of reasons that are too numerous and involved to outline here.  For one thing, I don’t write for low information, non-thinking readers.  I write for thinking men and women.

But if you start at the beginning and read the post before the comments, and then start at the beginning of the comment thread, you’ll see several things.  First of all, the article was intended to refer to beginner shooters, or beginner competitors, not those who were well versed and highly experienced as shooters.

I didn’t know Pat and don’t need to.  But the intent of the article was clear.  Giving patches out to beginners to demarcate their failure is bad pedagogical strategy.  One commenter said this.

I’ve been drilled and grilled by Pat, Steve Fisher, Jeff Gonzales, cops in classes, and students that were friends. I’m no gunfighter, but I know I never will be if they don’t take the time to drill in to me what I need to know. I’d rather have that than some gentle “hey buddy, do you need a hug? How can I help you get better, little guy?” bullshit.

When I go in to classes, I know that I better put on my big boy pants and toughen up for the shit storm that’s gonna hit me if I fuck up. This isn’t tennis. People fucking die if they get this shit wrong.

Well aren’t you big shit?  This is stated from the perspective of an experienced shooter, and if he wants to be big shit and get grilled by someone, consider my son when he was a Marine preparing his boots for deployment after he received them from SOI into the fleet.

He didn’t use patches.  No, with the entire chain of command watching, up through Lt. Col., he practiced his boots at the range until they scored “expert” on the range (iron sights, 500 yards).  When they failed, he would take the butt of his gun, slam it into the back of the Marine who failed (still prone), and then tell them to do it again.  If you want punitive encouragement, I doubt you could do much better than that (although there are other times I can’t tell you about).  This process was repeated until every one of the boots under his responsible charge scored expert.

There are no snow flakes in the U.S. Marine Corps.  This is clearly NOT what I am talking about in the linked article.  I’m sure of it.  I was discussing being an evangelist for shooting, and it was clear enough that commenters Fred, Blake and Archer clearly understood what I was saying.  On to be sure, we ridicule all sort of folks around here, most especially cops who have negligent discharges.  I even confess to errors from time to time.  Recently I confessed to sending 200-300 rounds down range, poorly, only to figure out that my EOTech was loose.  I had failed to check my dope before I started – perhaps I’ll use green Loctite before I start next time.

What we were CLEARLY discussing isn’t bravado like “shitstorm” and people “fucking dying if they get this stuff wrong.”  What we were CLEARLY discussing was new shooters and the encouragement and instruction they need.  I’ll tell you what.  You go to public ranges and start throwing your crap around about people dying and “shit storms” if people screw up, and watch (a) all those women take back their pink and purple pistols to the gun store and ask for their money back, and (b) those same women walk into the voting booth and vote to make your guns illegal.

Now to be sure, the fact that my guns suddenly become illegal doesn’t mean that I lose them.  It just means that the bloody civil war we are all trying to avoid is that much closer and maybe even upon us.  The shooting sports are growing, and people who never would have purchased and learned to use a gun (e.g., women) are doing so in huge numbers.

You’ll learn to speak their language, you’ll learn good pedagogical techniques, you’ll figure out how to encourage them, or you’ll lose them because you are stupid.  You act like monkeys and think like idiots, when you need to be thinking men.  To be sure, if you’re taking a class on fire and maneuver and small unit warfare tactics, handgun presentation, rapid target acquisition, and so on, you need to be disciplined.  Patches don’t do it.  And to be sure, we all need to make sure that the issues about gun safety are taught with the utmost diligence and without sugar coating anything.

But that’s a world apart from failing to seat a mag in the mag well for a brand new shooter who is scared even to be out on the range with you or me.  Besides, if you are experienced shooters you shouldn’t need that anyway.  And if you’re cops, you have no business as militarized SWAT teams.  Put on a uniform and act like a peace officer.  Or if you want to play warrior, join up go across the pond and do it for real.  I have no patience for tacticool cops.

In the mean time, I make no apologies for telling my readers they need to consider encouraging instructional methods for new shooters.  This is how we win friends and converts, and if it’s possible to win the political battle before us, this is how we avoid a bloody civil war.  You want hell on earth?  Go without power for two years after the electrical grid has been destroyed.  Watch as the entire city of New York goes without water for a month after the Catskill Aqueduct has been destroyed.  None of us wants that, and I specifically advocate against that.  It’s much cleaner to win the political battle.

For all of the new commenters here from Facebook (God, I hate Facebook), think before you write.  And take a course in literature.  Perhaps if English wasn’t a second language to you it would have been clear that the article was about evangelizing new shooters.  Because … that’s what I said in the article.

We previously discussed the terrible, no good, very bad ruling the Fourth Circuit recently handed down on Robinson and how it differed 180 degrees from their decision in Black.

Neil Gorsuch, who is apparently in consideration for the Supreme Court of the U.S., concurred in a ruling that was just as bad as Robinson and very similar.

The facts of the case are these.  A New Mexico policeman observed Mr. Rodriguez, a convenience store clerk, carrying a concealed handgun.  Carrying a concealed loaded handgun is illegal in New Mexico without a permit but legal if one has a license to do so.  The officer, upon seeing a Rodriguez’s handgun, detained him, then – acting first and asking questions later – forcibly disarmed Rodriguez.  After finding out that Rodriguez did not, in fact, have a license to carry and, indeed, was a convicted felon, the officer placed him under arrest.

Of course, hard cases make bad law.  But the precedent from the Rodriguez opinion will affect police-citizen relations in New Mexico, and possibly elsewhere in the Tenth Circuit, for many years to come.  Not bothering to figure out the legality of Rodriguez’s firearm before detaining and disarming him, the officer’s initial actions would have been the same even if Mr. Rodriguez had been a lawful gun owner.

According to the 10th Circuit’s opinion, the police are justified in forcibly disarming every armed citizen based on nothing more than the presence of a concealed firearm.  This allows the police to treat every law-abiding gun owner like a criminal – which, in many cases we have seen, includes rough treatment such as grabbing him, twisting his arm behind his back, slamming him down on the ground, and handcuffing him.  Far too many police officers do not like anyone to be armed other than themselves and have taken it upon themselves to intimidate those who dare to exercise Second Amendment rights.  Under the Rodriguez decision, only after being forcibly disarmed and detained would a citizen be entitled to demonstrate that he was lawfully exercising his Second Amendment rights.

This is a hideously bad decision, and enables LEOs to forcibly violate constitutional protections against illegal search and seizure whenever they feel like it for their own “protection.”  How innocent citizens get their protection from negligent discharges, beatings by LEOs, and violations of their right to privacy is left unaddressed by the tenth circuit because the tenth circuit doesn’t care.

Any man who believes that LEOs have the right to disarm innocent civilians because they feel like it isn’t fit to be on any bench, much less the Supreme Court of the United States.  Neil Gorsuch should resign his post along with his colleagues on the tenth circuit and be replaced by good men who believe in the constitution.

Now let me address something I’ve mentioned before.  If you are a LEO reading this column, if you stop anyone whom you have no evidence is guilty of a crime and you touch their gun, or ask them to touch it thinking that you are actually decreasing risk, you are an idiot.  You are an idiot and your procedures are written by idiots.

This is about configuration management.  The safest possible configuration for the both of you is to leave your gun alone, and leave his gun alone.  Do … not … touch … them.  Do not risk negligent discharges, do not mistake intentions, do not engender suspicions.  Do not touch the guns.

Do not touch the guns.  Do not play with guns, yours or his.  Do not touch the guns.  Do not engage in high risk behavior.  Do not touch the guns.  Leave them the hell alone.  Do not touch the guns.  Keep your finger off the trigger of the guns, do not depress the grip safety, do not put your damn hand on any gun, his or yours.  Do not touch the guns.  Do not touch the guns.

Damn, people.  Just damn.

After embedding the video below.

Bob Owens says the following:

Dearly departed AR-15 guru Pat Rogers had a special patch he would give out to students who failed to properly seat their AR-15 mags and commenced to shooting, only to watch that loaded but not locked magazine hit the dirt.

In other words, teach by humiliation.  Um … no.  If you’re a U.S. Marine you might get beaten up for not doing something right.  But we American gun owners are in a different category inasmuch as we are evangelists for the cause.

The way to add to the roles of new gun owners is to teach them, encourage them, be patient with them, and gently correct their mistakes.  There is no quicker way to eviscerate the ranks of gun owners than to make it an “us-four-and-no-more” boys club of folks who know everything, or think they do, and those who get ridiculed.  If you want to be on the outside looking in with your rights gradually stripped, do just that.  Ridicule those who don’t understand.

I was watching a video of 3-gun competition once with Rob Leatham [Edit: it might have been IDPA or some other competition] shooting and heard him and others ridiculing some participant (behind his back) who was shooting more slowly, wouldn’t have won, and yet was probably learning and having fun.  The thing to do would have been to befriend him and encourage him, not embarrass him.

I was quite turned off at Rob when I heard that.  Really.  I was completely repulsed.  I will have a hard time ever watching another one of his videos for that reason.  Disciples are made, not born.  Teachers who teach by humiliation aren’t teachers at all.  Our community doesn’t need them.

Mona Charen with National Review believes that President Trump is endangering an important relationship.

It’s one thing to stress getting control of our borders. Even those who believe that immigration is a net positive for the nation agree that illegal immigration must be better policed. But cracking down on illegal immigration should mean getting our own house in order. It should mean policing all of our borders, not just the one with Mexico, and it should mean due diligence about visa overstays. Visitors who overstay their visas amount to at least half, and probably closer to 60 percent, of those entering the country illegally now. They arrive at airports, not across the Rio Grande. The great wave of illegal crossings from the south crested in 2007 and has declined steadily since. As immigration hawk Mark Krikorian noted in 2015, “Border crossings really are way down.” Well, some border crossings are way down, others not.

More Mexicans cross the border heading south now than north. In other words, net migration from Mexico is negative. One of the blessings the U.S. has always enjoyed is good neighbors. As Aaron David Miller put it, “The United States is the only great power in the history of the world that has had the luxury of having nonpredatory neighbors to its north and south, and fish to its east and west.”

One reason that fewer Mexicans are attempting to enter the U.S. illegally since 2007 may well be that NAFTA has succeeded in improving the jobs picture there. (Another reason is surely that the birthrate has declined, which always reduces emigration.) Fred Smith, founder and chairman of FedEx, estimates that NAFTA makes the U.S. $127 billion richer every year than it would be without it. So the two areas of maximum importance to stability and prosperity in our hemisphere, trade and mutual respect, are both under assault by our president.

It sounds oh so ominous, yes?  Immigration is a net positive for us, and note the reflexive turning to a corporate head, Fred Smith.  $127 billion per year.  In your pockets.  But not really.

Mona is a product of elitist schools and lives the beltway life where it is doubtful she ever gets out of town to see what the dirt people are really thinking or how they are living.  She has neo-conservative proclivities, and supports a globalist agenda whether she knows it or not.

The perspective among the working class is quite a bit different.  We’re told by the writers at The New York Times to remember the Avacado.

The tax would not end up being 20 percent of a $1 to $1.50 avocado, which would be 20 to 30 cents. That is because the import tax would only be on what is known a the dutiable value — the wholesale price of the avocado assessed when it crosses the border.

That does not include the cost of trucking it from the border to a grocery store in the United States, the store’s rent, the store’s bills for air-conditioning and other utilities, or the wages for the store’s staff. None of these costs would be subject to the tax, but can help determine the retail price of the avocado.

For the first 11 months of last year, the average wholesale price of avocados crossing the border was 50 cents apiece.

So a 20 percent tax on that wholesale price at the border would only add a dime to the cost of each avocado.

It takes four or five years for a newly planted avocado tree to bear fruit. If an import tax were to be imposed on foreign avocados, American farmers could not increase production quickly. That means many Americans might have to pay for taxed avocados imported from Mexico and elsewhere for a few years, or potentially do without.

It’s a sad state of affairs, this notion of doing without Guacamole while watching the super bowl.  But sadder still is what middle America sees on a daily basis.  Roofers, siding installers, brick layers, lawn services, janitorial services and other such services routinely beat out competition from American workers.  Builders have to hire Mexicans or go out of business because the home buyers are only going to pay so much for homes.

So hire they do.  And then these same workers are paid in cash – and only cash – in order to live in a cash-based system of life separate from the tax paying workers in America who foot the bill for everything from national defense to the very SNAP payments, welfare and other services used by Mexicans.  Those people who come across the border for “love” sure do love their families, but not America.

The largest cost by far is health care.  For those who make the unfortunate trip to the hospital, they sit in the ER waiting room with hundreds of Hispanics and Latinos who cannot be refused service, and so the Nurse Practitioners in ERs become their primary care physician. They don’t go without medical services.  We all pay.  Since we all pay, the government passed the so-called affordable health care act, which makes it affordable for just about no one and certainly not people who make a wage just above the poverty line.  So in order to get medical care, Americans sustain thousands of dollars in penalties if they cannot afford insurance, and are thrown into the same pool as those who live in the cash-based society and pay no taxes at all.

Moving up the food chain, upper middle class America cannot compete with products made in Mexico (or China, for that matter), except when QA is important and industry has to buy American because the products made overseas or South of the border simply fail.  America cannot compete because that’s the way the government has designed the economic framework.

Sarbanes-Oxley has ensured that products and services cannot be bought without the rigorous process dictated by the law, usually including the final decision that the low bidder always wins.  The fact that the products fail, or the work has to be re-worked by company employees because vendors never do what they say they will do, means that contracting work out is almost always a losing proposition.  This leads invariably to overworked Americans who redo the work that the corporatists think was done right the first time by a cheaper Mexican, Indian or Chinese.

The laws are made to enrich huge corporations like Monsanto (who have the resources to hire lobbyists and lawyers), and so the family farm is disappearing from the country.  Monsanto and similar companies like Archer-Daniels-Midland hire Mexicans to do labor because they can place the costs of medical care for the workers squarely on the backs of the overworked middle class.

Mona turned to the CEO of FedEx for an assessment of immigration and his version of “free trade.”  It isn’t surprising that the corporatists like it.  But it’s important to remember that free trade, fair trade and the open market isn’t equivalent to corporatism.  It isn’t free and fair when China, Vietnam or Mexico makes products free from the onerous downward pressure on business of the SEC, EPA, OSHA and other alphabet agencies, while the American worker has to waste a day on migratory bird training once per year in order to learn about the more than 800 species of protected birds in America and what procedures their company has in place to deal with that law.  It isn’t free trade or fair competition when American power production must comply with the clean air act, while China can pollute the atmosphere with unmitigated and reckless abandon, that same pollution sent to the atmosphere and brought to American shores via the jet stream to be dumped on the homeland.

The American worker is smart enough to know when he is given the short end of the stick.  It’s one thing to oppose collectivist arrangements like labor unions, which I have before while hailing the wonderful evolution of gun manufacturing to the South out of the Northeast.  It’s another thing entirely to believe that the beach and mountain homes of the corporate executives and boards of directors proves that American is wealthy or prosperous, or benefiting from immigration.

There is also the matter of the difference in world view brought into the country by Hispanics and Latinos.  I’ve dealt with this before.

“For historical reasons to do with the nationalisation of the land under Lázaro Cárdenas and the predominant form of peasant land tenure, which was “village cooperative” rather than based on individual plots, the demand for “land to the tiller” in Mexico does not imply an individual plot for every peasant or rural worker or family. In Mexico, collectivism among the peasantry is a strong tradition … one consequence of these factors is that the radical political forces among the rural population are on the whole explicitly anti-capitalist and socialist in their ideology. Sometimes this outlook is expressed in support for guerilla organisations; but struggle movements of the rural population are widespread, and they spontaneously ally with the most militant city-based leftist organisations.”

One of the reasons for this reflexive alignment with leftism has to do with the the mid-twentieth century and what the Sovient Union and allied ideologies accomplished.  South and Central America was the recipient or receptacle for socialism draped in religious clothing, or in other words, liberation theology.  Its purveyors were Roman Catholic priests who had been trained in Marxism, and they were very successful in giving the leftists a moral platform upon which to build.  This ideology spread North from South and Central America into Mexico, and thus the common folk in Mexico are quite steeped in collectivist ideology from battles that were fought decades ago.

Thus it is no surprise that Hispanics and Latinos favor gun control by a large margin as we’ve shown here, here, here and here.  Even if American really did benefit from open borders, it’s quite another thing to reap the rewards of that benefit while destroying the very cultural and religious fabric of the nation that sustains it liberties.

There are other forms of collectivist death wish, for example, the Starbucks CEO wishes to undermine the fabric of the nation using a different vessel.

I write to you today with deep concern, a heavy heart and a resolute promise. Let me begin with the news that is immediately in front of us: we have all been witness to the confusion, surprise and opposition to the Executive Order that President Trump issued on Friday, effectively banning people from several predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States, including refugees fleeing wars. I can assure you that our Partner Resources team has been in direct contact with the partners who are impacted by this immigration ban, and we are doing everything possible to support and help them to navigate through this confusing period.

It may in fact be difficult to maintain that same business model when women are forbidden from going to Starbucks without their husbands, and even then must wear hijabs to go out in public.  Whether Muslim or our neighbors South of the border, the fundamental problem manifests itself, sometimes even accidentally, in the most earnest ways.

On the US side of the border, more Spanish than English can be heard on the streets and in local stores.

Even US border agents speak Spanish as they eat tacos and drink horchata — a milky Mexican drink made from rice or nuts — at a local eatery.

The prospect of Trump’s wall “hurts me because on that side are my people,” said Hector, 52, a carpet cleaner who declined to give his last name. “Those people, like me, come to work out of necessity.”

Now a US citizen, Hector said he entered the United States illegally 12 years ago.

Hector is a U.S. citizen, but his people are South of the border.  Really, not much else needs to be said about that issue.  If you don’t understand the problem, it’s one of perspective and it is irreconcilable.  If Mona Charen is confused, Victor Davis Hansen is a much clearer thinker.

In the eyes of many in the Mexican government mass flight is a safety valve that has alleviated pressures on social services and demands for parity. Illegal immigration into the U.S. has ensured a powerful expatriate community that oddly appreciates Mexico the longer and further it is absent from it. It helps to drive electoral change in the U.S. in ways that Mexico approves. And, most importantly, illegal immigration results in about $25 billion per annum sent to Mexico in remittances (larger than foreign-exchange earnings from its oil revenues) — in many cases from the impoverished whose dependence on U.S. social services subsidizes such cash to be sent home.

The U.S. bears some culpability for open borders. Corporate employers enjoyed cheap labor, predicated on the state’s subsidization of immigrants’ health, legal, and educational needs. The Democratic party believed it could eventually turn the American Southwest blue through illegal immigration and subsequent demographic change. La Raza activists saw advantages in a revolving but permanent numerical pool of disadvantaged Mexican nationals who arrived without legality, English facility, and often a high-school diploma — and thus were in need of collective representation by often self-appointed ethnic leaders. And the American upper-middle classes soon assumed that they, in the previous manner of the aristocracy, could afford “help” and have industrious but otherwise inexpensive laborers tend to their lawns, clean their house, and watch their kids. How we readjust our relationship to resemble something to akin to the northern border where parity between the two countries makes border crossing a mute issue won’t be easy.

No, and it might be very painful and bloody.  Either way, the worst is yet to come.

David Codrea:

“As long as the courts back the coup, any Trump supporters who take to the streets and exercise a very literal interpretation of their Second Amendment rights—to form a militia and fight government tyranny—don’t stand much of a chance,” Pearl asserts, just like he knows what he’s talking about. “The federal government is usually hesitant to use force against armed groups like the Bundys, but those groups never pose an existential threat to the dominant regime.”

“If it were really a high-stakes situation where they thought their regime was at risk, they would’ve been toast,” Pearl’s advisor, University of Chicago law professor Tom Ginsburg assures him.

I’m always astonished at the degree of confidence the progressives have in the government, the ability to maintain order, and the viability of the military and LEOs as stability operations in a country as vast as the U.S., and where every citizen must be assumed to be armed with multiple firearms.

These “scholars” don’t understand the concepts of 4th generation warfare.  So let’s pose a thought experiment.  Suppose someone were to destroy the Catskill Aqueduct, the Catskill/Delaware UV disinfection facility, or New York City water tunnels 1, 2 or 3?  Not the entire thing, but just a portion, thus flooding vast portions of land, possibly urban terrain, collapsing interstitial earthen structures, and preventing water to the approximately ten million New York residents who depend on that route for water supply?

It would take the entire U.S. Marine Corps to conduct viable stability operations to New York, and many of the enlisted Marines would refuse to do it.  This is just New York, not every other major urban center or the rural lands of America.  Note well.  I’m not advocating such a thing.  In fact, I specifically advocate against something horrible like that.  But civil wars and insurgencies are ugly things, and if we’ve learned nothing else from Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ve learned that the counterinsurgency theorists had it all wrong and vastly overestimated their capabilities.

These “scholars” should be careful what they ask for, and if anyone is investigated for sedition or put on any lists, it should be the progs.  They hate America.  We patriots are the most patient and patriotic people around.  But don’t doubt for a minute that the U.S. government always did and even now governs America because the people themselves keep it in power.  The U.S. government only exists by the permission of the American citizens.  The day that is no longer the case will be hellish for everyone.

Athens Banner-Herald:

A sheriff’s deputy late Wednesday reportedly accidentally shot his gun into a neighboring home occupied at the time by two residents at an eastside apartment complex, Athens-Clarke County police said.

No one was injured by the gunshot, which resulted in a bullet passing through a bedroom wall and a TV before lodging in a wall separating the bedroom and living room, according to police.

The 24-year-old deputy was an employee of the Hall County Sheriff’s Office and lived at the Cedar Shoals Drive complex with his girlfriend, who was identified as a rookie Athens-Clarke County police officer who was attending the police training academy.

The rookie cop told police she was outside walking her dog when she heard the gunshot, and upon returning home found her boyfriend “crouched on the floor, obviously upset,” according to a police incident report. When she asked what happened, the deputy said he had a “negligent discharge” of his duty weapon.

The deputy explained the incident occurred as he was putting out his equipment in preparation for going to work in the morning. When placing the gun on a counter. The weapon discharged “either because of the jarring of the gun being put down or because of where he had his hand” on the gun, according to police.

Gosh, I hate it when that happens to me.  I remember the last time I slammed one of my guns down on the table and caused it to fire.  People had to be taken to the hospital, but after it was all over we laughed and laughed and laughed about it.

Actually, I’ve never slammed a gun down on anything and caused it to discharge.  With modern grip safeties, triggers with brush guards, and other safety features, I’m betting it had something to do with “where he had his hand.”  Yep, I’m sure of it.  I’m sure he had his finger inside the trigger guard and he pulled the trigger.

Concord Monitor:

… an individual’s right to bear arms was not clearly stated in the Constitution. It was the Supreme Court in a 2008 decision that decided that the right goes beyond “a well regulated militia” and that it also belongs to an individual (District of Columbia v. Heller). But the Supreme Court also made it very clear in that same decision that this right was not so “absolute” that the federal, state or local government could not make and enforce restrictions. Those like Baldasaro who say their right cannot be “infringed” need to read the Supreme Court’s decision.

The majority decision was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote: “Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on the longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions or qualifications on the commercial sale of firearms.”

The language is a little awkward for a non-lawyer like myself and Justice Scalia obviously cannot be asked for any clarification, but I believe Scalia is saying that a law to prevent firearms in schools is “constitutionally permitted.” In other words, there is no constitutional guarantee of your right to go into a school with a gun. You definitely could lose this “right” simply by walking into a school, if a restriction on this exists. And I would add, this would also apply to guns at polling places, which would be considered sensitive places in our communities.

One clever commenter cites John Cockrum v. State, but he has the quote slightly wrong and misses a few words, important words.

The right of a citizen to bear arms, in the lawful defence of himself or the state, is absolute.  He does not derive it from the state government, but directly from the sovereign convention of the people that framed the state government.  It is one of the “high powers” delegated directly to the citizen, and is “excepted out of the general powers of the government.”  A law cannot be passed to infringe upon or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the law-making power.

This is strong tea, but not strong enough for my tastes.  First of all, we do not derive our authority to bear arms from the sovereign convention of the people, but rather, from God Himself because man is made in God’s image and it is his duty to protect that image.

Moreover, while this statement does pertain to the state of Texas, it doesn’t go to the federal government because it got the very genesis of our rights and duties wrong.  Regular reader Frank Clarke does better when he turns the conversation to what the constitution does.  Our rights are not based in the constitution, but rather it enumerates them in order to prevent the federal government from trespassing those rights.  It delineates what the federal government cannot do, not what we can do.

Finally, I’m uncomfortable with the notion that the constitution or any judicial action or decision “secures” our rights.  It simply isn’t true.  Our rights are secured in heaven, and on earth two things obtain.  First of all, if the covenant(s) within which we live do not reflect God’s laws, they are an abomination and dishonor God.  They are null and void.  Second, to the extent that they do, when we fail to live within the framework of that covenant, man’s covenant itself broken and therefore null and void.

Our rights are secured by the fact that we are armed.  Only armed men can protect themselves from wicked governments intent on doing harm to those men by making them unable to defend themselves or their loved ones.  That’s why men can never wait on judicial action to arm themselves, and can never disarm.  Disarmament is wicked, whether personally or nationally.

Do you want to look like California, or worse? I notice that open carry is dead in Florida and didn’t even make it out of committee. Now this. You have to be more than a keyboard warrior.