Archive for the 'Second Amendment' Category

David Codrea.

“Donald Trump Jr. launches gun rights group, vows to fight Democratic gun control proposals,” Fox News reports. “The Second Amendment Task Force plans to build its operation around Trump’s high social media visibility and following, as well as his national media appearances.”

“The Second Amendment Task Force is the first advocacy group that Trump has launched and been directly involved with,” the report elaborates. “The group plans to make a push in the upcoming midterm elections this year, especially in the voter registration sphere.”

Except it’s not the first. Remember that “Second Amendment Coalition” his father announced and made him chairman of back in 2016?  The one he co-chaired with fired NRA-ILA honcho and bump stock “regulator” Chris Cox? If you don’t recall that group, it’s probably because it didn’t actually do much of anything and the webpage was taken down a half-a-year later.

As for “plans to make a push,” it’s fair to ask for whom. His father’s Mehmet Oz pick comes to mind. Are there any other candidates gun owners may have concerns about?

[ … ]

It would be greater to see him using his New York City concealed carry permit as a springboard to highlight how unjust and un-American it is to limit such permits to the sell-connected elites and to lead the charge for demanding change. For someone presuming to be a leadership voice for gun owners, it would be not just appropriate, but crucial for Trump Jr. to also explain in principle and detail:

• If he agrees his father has been flat-out wrong on bump stocks;

• Where he agrees with his father on which gun laws should be enforced;

• Why he didn’t weigh in on “red flag laws” when his father said “Take the guns first, due process second”;

• If he agrees with his father on raising the gun purchase age to 21; and

• How he differs from his father’s White House position on where the right to bear arms comes from (see photo, above).

David goes on to say, “The object here is not to attack him or start a feud with dad.”

I don’t mind doing so.  Trump will always trumpet his permit as something glorious, when the rest of the peasants who can’t afford highly paid lawyers in NY are left with nothing.

He should be ashamed at heralding his permit as something to be proud of rather than an example of something that should be changed.  Far from being a sign of support for gun rights, it’s a sign that he has no idea what gun rights means.

I don’t mind saying it at all.  I don’t trust anything Trump is involved with pertaining to 2A rights.

He can go pound sand.

He does a rundown of Maryland’s argument on why the Supreme Court should not take up this case, but rather, allow the ban to stay in place.

Frankly, I’m tired of hearing the so-called “common use” argument.  That has nothing to do with anything and certainly wasn’t in the minds of the founder when they told the FedGov to stay out of the business of regulating weapons.  Common use is entirely a fabricated phrase to assist the controllers.

Second, I’m tired to death of hearing the phrase “assault weapons” (which is also a fabricated phrase) and the routine response by gun rights advocates that “assault weapons” don’t meet the three rules for considering them an “assault rifle” (which based on DoD definition, includes (1) intermediate cartridge, (2) select fire capable, and (3) mild recoil).

It doesn’t matter since in order to make that argument, gun rights advocates stipulate up front that civilians have no right to own such a firearm (e.g., select fire).  In other words, it makes no sense to contrast “assault weapon” and the formal definition of “assault rifle” unless you admit at the outset that the very difference itself is justification for being able to own a semi-automatic version of the same weapon, which in fact, I don’t admit at all and thus do not use that argument.

Eh, whatever.  I really don’t care whether the SCOTUS takes this case up or not.  If they do and come to a good decision, states like Maryland and New York will have to allow the firearms to be owned, but it won’t change the fundamental nature of the state.  If they SCOTUS makes a bad decision, it won’t change the fact that these weapons will still be legal in S.C., N.C., Ga., Miss., La, Tenn, W.V., and on and on the list could go.

In other words, this is all a continuation of the Balkanization of America, with some states racing left, while others pass constitutional carry.

It isn’t policy on firearms that is ripping America apart at the seams.  Firearms is just a symptom, not the cause.

David Codrea.

“David Codrea, Scott Heuman and Owen Monroe lawfully owned bumpstocks.1 They relied on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (‘ATF’) repeated express approval of so-called bumpstock-type devices,” a friend of the court brief filed Wednesday in the United States Supreme Court by attorneys Alan Alexander Beck and Stephen D. Stamboulieh explains. “Despite the ten-plus years of approval, the ATF reimagined and redefined terms in an unambiguous criminal statute to outlaw bumpstocks under penalty of prison, fines, and loss of Second Amendment rights.”

Good.  Stephen Stamboulieh is a friend of TCJ and a highly successful lawyer and one of the good guys.  Glad to see this.

Or at least the pretensions of one.

Alabama lawmakers on Thursday advanced legislation aimed at resisting a half-dozen executive actions by President Joe Biden to combat gun violence.

The Alabama Senate voted 24-5 for legislation that would prohibit state and local officials from participating in the “administration or enforcement of any presidential gun control order.” However, the bill includes an exemption if doing so would jeopardize federal funding.

Nope.  Kill the bill.  It’s not good enough, you cowards.

Remove the exemption.

Go back to the drawing board and don’t leave the room before you get it right.

Ammoland.

The special session begins on April 29th.  It could have been sooner and I pressed the governor to push on the legislature more, but this just may be a good tactic.  They are now in “special session” to address certain things.  It may avoid the ridiculous committee blocking of bills that tends to derail pro-gun laws in Florida.

Better late than never.

If you want gun control so bad why don’t you move to Chicago?

It was as if a switch had been flipped. At least ten major U.S. cities hit new murder highs in 2021, but Chicago led the way with 797, the city’s highest number in 25 years.

Chicago’s violent crime epidemic is not limited to murder. The city’s 3,561 shooting incidents in 2021 were up 63 percent over 2019. Expressway shootings in Chicago-Cook County rose even more dramatically, from 51 in 2019 to 130 in 2020 to 273 in 2021. These expressway shootings pushed Chicago’s actual 2021 murder total north of 800.

Expressway killings aren’t counted in the official city numbers because expressways are under state jurisdiction. But try telling that to Chicagoans. “It’s almost like a modern, 21st century form of dueling,” said Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly. “[People get into fights with] each other on social media, they threaten one another and they say . . . ‘Let’s take this out to the expressway.’”

The Chicago Mayor sees the problem as a personal protection issue. Well, she’s right. Of course, she doesn’t care about your personal protection.

Vox.

I reached out to Stephen Gutowski, the founder of TheReload.com and a longtime reporter on the gun beat, for the latest episode of Vox Conversations. Gutowski is pro-gun, but he’s also a good-faith voice in this space, and I was looking for someone who could make his side of the argument intelligible to people who don’t understand it.

We talk about my own ambivalence on this issue, the blind spots on the left and right, how he makes sense of America’s obsession with guns, and if he thinks we can ever find a way out of the scorched-earth debate we seem to be stuck in.

Notice the term categorization and scorched earth policies the writer uses right up front.  Only someone who is willing to compromise is debating in “good faith.”  Second, anyone who likes to shoot, for hunting, or sporting purposes like three-gun, two-gun, precision rifle, or simply range shooting, has an “obsession with guns.”  Or anyone who believes that all gun control laws are an infringement upon liberties is obsessed.

Next in our little survey of this conversation, “pro-gun” Stephen Gutowski makes the following statement.

I think that there’s often a lack of focus on trying to come up with real solutions for gun violence. [The gun-control movement is] often looked at instinctively as attempts to restrict gun ownership or gun rights. But restricting gun ownership is not the only thing you can do to address gun violence. So there’s just not enough focus from the right on all the potential solutions that might make a difference without necessarily impacting individual gun rights.

Take note.  Restricting gun ownership isn’t the only thing you can do to address violent, and also take careful note that in order to be a legitimate and good faith advocate for gun rights, you must engage a debate about things you can do to reduce violence.  Much more on that in a moment.  Next, the “pro-gun rights” guys says this.

The president likes to say that no amendment is unlimited, and, frankly, he’s right there.

Next up, here’s that time-honored tradition of asserting that a piece of metal can change human psychology.

How much training is enough? I’m a veteran; I was trained to use a pistol and a rifle, but that was 20 years ago. I’ve barely fired any guns since I left the service. I don’t think I’m prepared to walk around town with a gun on my hip. And that’s not because I can’t shoot, it’s because possessing a gun can change the dynamics of an otherwise trivial confrontation and not being prepared for that responsibility is dangerous, and I worry that most people have even less training than I do.

[ … ]

My worry is that having a gun increases the likelihood that a bad interaction will escalate needlessly. There are a lot of people who think they’ll be safer with a gun, and in some cases, they surely will be, but often pulling a gun in order to neutralize a situation only intensifies it.

Sure, a potential rape victim is only intensifying the situation if she pulls a gun.

To give you an example, I was in the grocery store a few weeks ago in southern Mississippi, and there was a guy in line in front of me with a 9-millimeter on his hip. I’ll be charitable and say he didn’t look trained. But the point is that I don’t get what’s going on there. Carrying a concealed gun is one thing, but this guy wanted everyone to see it. To me that’s inviting aggression or it’s just dumb posturing. I don’t buy that he’s seriously scared of being assaulted in the produce aisle.

What am I missing here?

Let me explain what you’re missing here, and then the reader can go read the rest of this silly conversation as he wishes.

When people make the decision to carry and take it seriously, as one might have car insurance or health insurance or life insurance, or carry an emergency suction device for choking victims (I read just recently about a child who was choking on her food and saved by a stranger who just happens to carry such a device as part of their planning for emergencies), they are making the decision to be disciplined about it.

That means carrying even when you don’t like it.  I hate carrying things on my person.  I don’t wear jewelry, I don’t wear watches, and even hate carrying my phone around and won’t do it if I don’t have to.

But in this case, I will carry a firearm because of [we’ll call it] “The practice of discipline.”  For those who are in that category, they may just hate to carry IWB.  It sweats the weapon and corrodes it, it’s uncomfortable, and it’s unnecessary.  No, we’re not trying to prove something.  It’s just the way we choose to carry.  And finally, there was a time in American history when it was considered unlike a gentleman to carry a weapon concealed.  No gentleman, it was thought, would conceal his weapons.  Open carry was the order of the day.  And it’s easier for men to conceal than women.  Men can hide weapons in our girth.  It’s much more difficult for most women to do that.

So let’s get the root of the problem here.  The constitution isn’t a source of rights.  It is a contract and covenant.  The bill of rights constitutes limitations on governmental overreach.  The root of the problem is that no matter what these writers feel about the limitations on amendments, rights (and duties) come from the Almighty.  We’ve discussed this before.

But if you wish for more direct evidence of ownership of weapons in the Scriptures, look no further than what Jesus commanded in Luke 22:36.  Let’s look at the cultural context for a moment.

… for some evidence, see Digest 48.6.1: collecting weapons ‘beyond those customary for hunting or for a journey by land or sea’ is forbidden; 48.6.3.1 forbids a man ‘of full age’ appearing in public with a weapon (telum) (references and translation are from Mommsen 1985). See also Mommsen 1899: 564 n. 2; 657-58 n. 1; and Linderski 2007: 102-103 (though he cites only Mommsen). Other laws from the same context of the Digest sometimes cited in this regard are not as worthwhile for my purposes because they seem to be forbidding the possession of weapons with criminal intent. But for the outright forbidding of being armed while in public in Rome, see Cicero’s letter to his brother relating an incident in Rome in which a man, who is apparently falsely accused of plotting an assassination, is nonetheless arrested merely for having confessed to having been armed with a dagger while in the city: To Atticus, Letter 44 (II.24). See also Cicero, Philippics 5.6 (§17). Finally we may cite a letter that Synesius of Cyrene wrote to his brother, probably sometime around the year 400 ce. The brother had apparently questioned the legality of Synesius having his household produce weapons to defend themselves against marauding bands. Synesius points out that there are no Roman legions anywhere near for protection, but he seems reluctantly to admit that he is engaged in an illegal act (Letter 107; for English trans., see Fitzgerald 1926).

In this passage, Jesus is quite literally ordering His disciples to ignore the Roman laws and disobey them, buy weapons, and be ready to use them.  He is turning His disciples into lawbreakers for the sake of having self defense.

At its roots, these are issues of epistemology (your source of knowledge), ontology, and Biblical law.  Neither author gets that.  To assert that the only ones who are debating “in good faith” are the ones willing to compromise, is to assert that we should be willing to negotiate away God’s law and settle for enslavement rather than liberty.  What God has granted, no man can take away.  Why would a man choose enslavement when God has set him free?

And mark this down for your records.  I had only been exposed to “The Reload” once before, and this time it is even more distasteful.  I don’t consider him to be a legitimate defender of gun rights and will never cite him.  Be careful, Mr. Gutowski, who you befriend.

As for having these debates, this is an ongoing process here on these pages.  We just don’t compromise.  If you believe that you have to compromise to have a debate, I don’t think you understand the word “debate” at all.

News from Indiana.

Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb made Constitutional Carry the law in Indiana on March 21.

This will allow any Indiana resident over 18-years-old who qualifies to carry a handgun on their person without a permit to do so.

Vanderburgh County Sheriff Dave Wedding says that it could make law enforcement’s jobs considerably harder.

“Now, if you have maybe three people who shouldn’t possess a weapon inside of a vehicle, and they get stopped by police and there is a weapon,” said Wedding, “they can have some young person, 18-year-old person in the car and just claim, hey, those are my guns.”

So what?  It’s none of your business.  Mind you own business, nosey.  Issue the traffic citation and move on.

Officials say on July 1 no one in Indiana will be required to have a carry permit.

Good.  Constitutional carry comes to yet another state, and here’s yet another prediction.  There won’t be blood running in the streets and regardless of the predictions of chicken little, the sky won’t fall.

Now.  How about South Carolina?

Police1.

“Of course this makes things much more difficult for our officers. It really limits the scope of the effectiveness in which we can do our jobs. If an officer needs to take a firearm from somebody, I can totally see the potential for that situation to escalate if the person isn’t wanting to and thinks that the officer doesn’t have a right to do that,” said Hanceville Police Chief Bob Long.

But at least someone makes some sense of this.

David Nunn, retired law enforcement officer and General Manager of Cullman Shooting Sports, says that the change in the law should result in little-to-no change in an officers day to day operations.

“Any officer worth his salt should already be treating every individual they come in contact with as if they are armed. They should approach people with courtesy and respect, but with the idea they are in possession of a weapon of some kind also.”

Cullman Police Chief Kenny Culpepper agrees for the most part, but says an important tool has been taken away from officers.

“Things shouldn’t look that much different as far as how officers conduct themselves, we are trained to be prepared for that worst case situation, although permits were a useful tool that we could use to make sure the guys that didn’t need to have firearms didn’t have them, and now we don’t have that.”

Oh blah, blah, blah, prattle and blather and drivel.

If someone is breaking the law, then arrest and disarm them.  If they’re not, whether they’re carrying a weapon is none of your business because it’s not against the law to carry without a permit now.  Whether they filled out Form 4473 or bought it in a person-to-person transfer is also none of your business.

See how easily I solved that problem for you?

As for the Alabama cops who are still moaning about this, here’s my message: go pound sand.

And what else would I expect to read at Police1 except blather like this.

Via TTAG, this bit of histrionics.

Owning a gun isn’t a “God-given right.” It’s a slave-owning, misogynistic founding father-given right. I’m not against 2A, but be real – the Constitution was written by people! Today I’m filibustering a bill that would allow concealed carry without training or a permit