Archive for the 'Second Amendment' Category

Source.

On Oct. 8, the justices will take up a dispute over ghost guns — firearms that can be assembled and lack serial numbers. It will be the second day for the justices after they return from a three-month recess to kick off the 2024-25 term.

The Biden administration asked the justices to review a case in which a federal appeals court struck down a regulation governing the sale of kits to make ghost guns, saying it stretched the definition of “firearm” found in the Gun Control Act of 1968.

Justice Department lawyers say ghost guns have turned into an end-run around federal gun control laws, allowing “anyone with access to the internet to anonymously buy a parts kit or partially complete frame or receiver that can be assembled into a working firearm in as little as 20 minutes.”

Gun rights advocates say if the government wants to regulate the sale of ghost guns, it must pass a new law, arguing the feds can’t stretch the 1968 legislation that far.

TTAG is also covering this.

The case, VanDerStok v. Garland, challenges the Department of Justice’s 2022 Final Rule that redefined important legal terms dealing with guns, including “firearm,” “receiver” and “frame,” making the longstanding American tradition of building personal firearms pretty much a thing of the past. Back in April, the court voted 4-3 to consider the challenge.

At issue is whether the DOJ and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) overstepped their bounds in promulgating the Final Rule. Plaintiffs in the case argue that the rule is just another example of the bureaucrat-run agencies ignoring the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) and overstepping their bounds by making laws instead of enforcing them.

That was, in fact, what the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled last November, upholding an earlier district court decision on the matter. In the ruling, Judge Kurt Engelhardt, who wrote the majority opinion, agreed in no uncertain terms that ATF overstepped its bounds in making the Final Rule.

“ATF, in promulgating its Final Rule, attempted to take on the mantle of Congress to ‘do something’ with respect to gun control,” Judge Engelhardt, a Donald Trump nominee, wrote in the opinion. “But it is not the province of an executive agency to write laws for our nation. That vital duty, for better or for worse, lies solely with the legislature.”

The sad thing about all of this is that the judgment was made purely on procedural grounds. The FedGov violated the rules for promulgating new rules.

But the core issue here is the constitutionality of the FedGov regulating the self-manufacture of firearms to begin with. Self-manufacturing of firearms has a very long and respected tradition in America. And so it should remain. The founders wouldn’t have countenanced a law that forbade firearms manufacture and sales without the government knowing and approving.

If the supreme court refuses to tackle the issue of constitutionality, it will leave the door open to future attempt by Congress to pass such a law. This would then need yet another challenge in court, one much less likely to succeed than VanDerStok.

Here is his paper at the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.

Here is him explaining it in summary fashion.

The Reload.

In its first official platform since 2016, the Grand Old Party (GOP) slashed all mention of its gun policy positions.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) Platform Committee voted 84-to-18 on Monday to adopt the new 2024 platform language after skipping the process entirely in 2020. The finalized document leans into former President Donald Trump’s “America First” outlook and parrots many of his stances on issues ranging from immigration to trade. However, it also minimized the party’s emphasis on gun policy compared to its previous platform.

The entire platform discusses gun rights just once, in a preamble statement about the party’s dedication to defending “our fundamental freedoms, including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to keep and bear arms.” The final product omits any discussion of tangible gun policy ideas.

The Republican Party platform’s downplaying of Second Amendment issues comes as the gun-rights movement finds itself in a precarious position politically. As guns have become increasingly polarized along party lines, gun-rights supporters have found themselves reliant on Republicans for political support. President Joe Biden has made gun control a fixture of his tenure in office and is already campaigning on even more sweeping proposals, including a ban on sales of the popular AR-15, in a potential second term. At the same time, while the GOP’s current standard-bearer has continued to seek the support of the National Rifle Association and make promises in speeches to the group, he has been fickle on gun policy at times. His felony convictions also mean he can no longer legally own or possess firearms.

The 2024 platform’s cursory discussion of gun policy priorities marks a significant departure from the party’s 2016 platform. The party previously dedicated an entire section to the Second Amendment. In it, the GOP listed specific pro-gun policies it wanted to enact, as well as gun-control measures it opposed.

“We support firearm reciprocity legislation to recognize the right of law-abiding Americans to carry firearms to protect themselves and their families in all 50 states,” the 2016 document reads. “We support constitutional carry statutes and salute the states that have passed them.”

“We oppose ill-conceived laws that would restrict magazine capacity or ban the sale of the most popular and common modern rifle,” the section continues. “We also oppose any effort to deprive individuals of their right to keep and bear arms without due process of law. We condemn frivolous lawsuits against gun manufacturers and the current Administration’s illegal harassment of firearm dealers. We oppose federal licensing or registration of law-abiding gun owners, registration of ammunition, and restoration of the ill-fated Clinton gun ban.”

[ … ]

The Trump campaign celebrated the final draft of the platform and emphasized the former President’s personal influence on its contents.

This is excellent reporting and a very informed writeup at The Reload.

They’ve also dropped their vocal support of pro-life policies.

I’m not making this up. It’s in the platform. Of all the people the GOP cannot afford to lose, gun owners are at the top of the list. But this is a “win at all costs” platform focused on soccer moms in the suburbs.

Combine that with support for the bump stock ban, red flag laws, alignment with the ill-fated and obscene NRA, and the GOP has miles to go before they can make up for this failure.

Of course, it’s not as if Cornyn or Tillis paid any attention to the last platform.

Here is Mark Smith on the recent bump stock ban decision.

Here is Stephen Halbrook’s article in Reason. I haven’t read the comments – I never do at Reason because it’s made up mostly of arrogant and argumentative communists who think they know more than they do.

In recent news, the senate took up this matter.

Senate Republicans blocked Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) attempt to move forward legislation to ban bump stocks, reigniting a pre-election messaging battle over gun control measures.

Why it matters: The Supreme Court’s decision to toss a Trump-era ban on bump stocks has given Schumer an opening to put some of the chamber’s Republicans in the position of defending the gun attachment, which was used in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

 Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) asked senators for unanimous consent Tuesday afternoon to pass a bill that would ban bump stocks, but Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) objected, thwarting the effort.

The bipartisan bill had little chance of passing the chamber and was instead introduced to force Republicans to reject it.

I would have proudly rejected it and explained to my constituency why I did so. I would have run on that rejection. The senate republicans had better reject it.

James Reeves runs it down for you. We’ll have to wait and see.

This is just another front in the battle between controllers and free men.

The fight never stops. The controllers will never rest.

Source.

Rep. McClintock directly asked ATF Director Steven Dettelbach, “What do you think is the purpose of the Second Amendment?” Dettelbach responded, emphasizing that the Second Amendment, like all amendments, is meant to protect fundamental rights of Americans, including the right to bear arms.

Perhaps it’s my aging years, perhaps it’s just being crotchety.  After all, Statler and Waldorf are my role models. I don’t know. But I hate it when people use the phrase “begging the question” as a replacement for “Well, that leads me to ask another question,” or “The next sensible question is [so-and-so].”

No. Don’t do that.

Begging the question is a formal logical fallacy of assuming the consequent. In other words, all immediate inferences or syllogisms have presuppositions (or axiomatic irreducibles), and another proposition that follows (or perhaps multiple other propositions that follow). If you can prove (or think you can prove) your presupposition, it isn’t a presupposition. It isn’t your starting point in your system of philosophy and logic. Presuppositions are not amenable to proof.

Begging the question has to do with reasoning in a circle and saying nothing. It isn’t quite what philosophers call self referential incoherence, which is a proposition that refutes itself, but in saying nothing, Dettelbach is very close.

You see, when asked about the raison d’etre for the second amendment, which pertains to the right to keep and bear arms (RKBA), he responded that it exists to protect the RKBA.

He knows the real reason, i.e., the second amendment exists as a bulwark against tyranny. But given his task master(s), he can’t say that. Dettelbach does appear to me to be a particularly ignorant man, but he knows enough to know that he said nothing to the congressman.

And the congressman apparently let him get away with it.

Source.

And here is Mark Smith to explain. But you know, it seems that the conservatives on the court are the only ones that have manners and refuse to consider cases that haven’t been fully decided in the lower courts.

As if that’s a requirement or something. Sotomayor apparently has no problem bossing the lower courts around on her own.

I still think it all comes down to rank cowardice.

I took a few minutes to look at his decision. Based on what I read, it sounds like he wasn’t able to spend enough time as a high school freshman writing papers for his civics class and wanted to make up by doing things completely unrelated to the task at hand, which was to follow the law.

Source.

‘Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York.’

Here she is.

She has a “rich cultural heritage.”

Judge Darkeh is a child of an immigrant father and a first-generation American mother. Her father, George Komla Darkeh, was born and raised in Ghana, West Africa. “He came to New York in the 1960s to attend Columbia University and to work at the United Nations,” she said. Her mother, Shirley Elise (nee Lowe) Darkeh was born in Brooklyn after her family immigrated from St. Vincent and Barbados. Judge Darkeh’s parents met a party in NYC, at the home of a UN diplomat. Two years later they married, started a family and moved to Long Island. 

“I was born in the United States — Brooklyn, New York, in fact — and I am proud to be an American, but I have always understood that America is a rich and vibrant place because of all of the people, from different places, who settled here and who expressed who they are and where they came from in their everyday lives.

But with no respect for God-given rights to self defense or the liberties of a free man. That sort of cultural heritage.

Now, reddit/Firearms gives us good reason to try her for treason.

Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 94 S. Ct. 1683, 1687 (1974) Note: By law, a judge is a state officer. The judge then acts not as a judge, but as a private individual (in his person). When a judge acts as a trespasser of the law, when a judge does not follow the law, the Judge loses subject-matter jurisdiction and the judges’ orders are not voidable, but VOID, and of no legal force or effect. The U.S. Supreme Court stated that “when a state officer acts under a state law in a manner violative of the Federal Constitution, he comes into conflict with the superior authority of that Constitution, and he is in that case stripped of his official or representative character and is subjected in his person to the consequences of his individual conduct. The State has no power to impart to him any immunity from responsibility to the supreme authority of the United States.”

Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 78 S.Ct. 1401 (1958). “No state legislator or executive or judicial officer can war against the Constitution without violating his undertaking to support it.” The constitutional theory is that we the people are the sovereigns, the state and federal officials only our agents.”

Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 78 S. Ct. 1401 (1958) Note: Any judge who does not comply with his oath to the Constitution of the United States wars against that Constitution and engages in acts in violation of the supreme law of the land. The judge is engaged in acts of treason. The U.S. Supreme Court has stated that “no state legislator or executive or judicial officer can war against the Constitution without violating his undertaking to support it”. See also In Re Sawyer, 124 U.S. 200 (188); U.S. v. Will, 449 U.S. 200, 216, 101 S. Ct. 471, 66 L. Ed. 2d 392, 406 (1980); Cohens v. Virginia,19 U.S. (6 Wheat) 264, 404, 5 L. Ed 257 (1821).

28 is U.S. Code § 454. Practice of law by justices and judges

Any justice or judge appointed under the authority of the United States who engages in the practice of law is guilty of a high misdemeanor.

(June 25, 1948, ch. 646, 62 Stat. 908.)

The USDC are legislative courts typically proceeding in legislativemode. See American Insurance v. 356 Bales of Cotton, 1 Pet. 511, 7 L.Ed. 242 (1828) (C.J. Marshall’s seminal ruling); Balzac v. Porto Rico, 258 U.S. 298, 312 (1922) (the USDC IS NOT a true United States court established under Article III!); and 28 U.S.C. §§ 88, 91, 132, 152, 171, 251, 458, 461, 1367.

Legislative courts are not required to exercise the Article III guarantees required of constitutional courts. See Keller v. Potomac Electric Power Co., 261 U.S. 428 (1923); Federal Trade Commission v. Klesner, 274 U.S. 145 (1927); Swift & Co. v. United States, 276 U.S. 311 (1928); Ex parte Bakelite Corporation, 279 U.S. 438 (1929); Federal Radio Commission v. General Electric Co., 281 U.S. 464 (1930); Claiborne-Annapolis Ferry Co. v. United States, 285 U.S. 382 (1932); O’Donoghue v. United States, 289 U.S. 516 (1933); Glidden Co. v. Zdanok, 370 U.S. 530 (1962); Northern Pipeline Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., 458 U.S. 50 (1982).

But all of that relies on good men doing righteousness, and that isn’t going to happen in New York. If the SCOTUS had any guts, they would have dealt with this sort of denial of the 2A long, long ago, and would be dealing with it currently with the AWBs in Illinois and Maryland. But they have no guts. They have run scared of this issue for a very long time.

Funny, that. Sotomayor has no problem telling the lower courts off when she wants to. It seems that everyone else on the supreme court is a coward.

It would be good if the SCOTUS had a way of censuring lower courts and judges, and perhaps they do. But they would have to actually exercise that prerogative, and it takes more than cowards to do that.

Finally, this touches fingers with the whole issue of immigrants and immigration, and how they don’t bring the same value system to America. They bring the value system from the country they left. This is especially dangerous when it’s a judge. It will just take more time to work its way through the process with immigrants who vote.

See the point?

Source.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) announced on Tuesday he vetoed 30 bills relating to gun control measures that were passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature earlier this year.

Youngkin vetoed a range of gun control bills, including one measure that would have banned the sale, transfer, or purchase of an “assault firearm” after July 1, and classifying the acts misdemeanor crimes. The Virginia governor expressed concern over the constitutionality of the measure.

“The Constitution precludes the Commonwealth from prohibiting a broad category of firearms widely embraced for lawful purposes, such as self-defense. Despite this, certain members of the General Assembly have pursued legislation banning most contemporary semiautomatic firearms and specific ammunition-feeding devices,” Youngkin said in a veto statement.

Congratulations to the good folks of Virginia for electing Youngkin. He stands between you and tyranny. Sometimes tyrants act in groups, as did the VA legislature.

This is a big win.