Archive for the 'Second Amendment' Category

Via Insty, this quote (because I don’t quote information from behind a paywall).

Minneapolis residents in some areas still recovering from rioting and unrest are forming community watch and security groups, some bearing firearms, to fight a surge of crime in the wake of the George Floyd killing in May. At least one neighborhood has put up barricades to keep away outsiders.

The moves come as the city council on Friday approved its first permanent cuts to the police budget, amid calls to defund the department and generally lower tax revenue due to the economic strain caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The $193 million police budget will be cut by $10 million, including making permanent some temporary spending measures—including a hiring freeze—put in place in June. Around $1 million from the police budget is being shifted to a program called Cure Violence that tries to prevent things such as retaliatory shootings through community engagement. . . .

Police say the increase in crime follows a pattern seen in Ferguson, Mo., and other places where there have been high-profile officer-involved deaths and protests. Police say that, while some in the city seem to believe police have given up, officers remain on patrol throughout the city.

As riots played out across the city in late May and early June, a group of Black gun owners responded to a call from the local NAACP and patrolled the mostly African-American West Broadway business district for 10 nights, keeping the area free of looting or arson without firing a shot, said Jamil Jackson, a leader of the group called the Minnesota Freedom Fighters, which advocates for Black gun ownership. . . .

Council member Linea Palmisano said armed neighborhood patrols, or even efforts to just keep unfamiliar people out of a neighborhood, opens a Pandora’s box.

“We are lurching for solutions,” she said, noting she doesn’t support the idea of doing away with the police department but supports the idea of letting residents vote on it.

With the neighborhood patrols, “you could very easily create the same things we rally against,” she said.

In late June, residents near a commercial strip that had been looted, and the 3rd Precinct station that was abandoned and burned, were seeing a surge of shooting and drug-related crime on their block.

“It got to the point where crime had no consequences,” said Tania Rivera, 30, who runs a child-care center with her mother. “It was being done deliberately out in the open. Drive-through drug dealing, drive-through prostitution, everything from gunshots to assaults to sex out in the public. Everything you didn’t want your neighborhood to look like.”

So after a number of community meetings, neighbors began constructing a barrier to close off two blocks of their street, first with trash cans, then debris. For a while, a boat on a trailer protected one intersection. Eventually, a nearby iron maker constructed a permanent gate. Police gave their approval as long as emergency responders could get through if requested by the neighborhood.

Neighborhood men also began an armed patrol, kicking out anyone who didn’t belong on the block after dark.

And thus it will be in the future, everywhere.

If the current communist revolution in America has done nothing else, it seems to have convinced people of the truth concerning police, i.e., [1] they are beholden to and controlled by the local political powers and will do their bidding, and [2] they were never really there to protect people to begin with.

Regular readers already know, based on Castle Rock v. Gonzales and Warren v. D.C., that the police aren’t there to provide protection anyway.

Now, the mask has not just slipped down, but completely off.  Men must protect their families, legally and morally.  It’s the righteous thing to do.

It sounds pretty good, right up until the last part.

It shall be the duty of the Sheriff of Anderson County to determine whether or any federal or state regulation of firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition violates section (a) herein; provided, however, that nothing contained herein prevents the Anderson County Sheriff from enforcing any federal or state law found to be constitutional by a court of competent jurisdiction.

You see, there’s the rub.  The .gov will always be able to find a corrupt judge who will say just about anything is constitutional and righteous when it is neither.

Therefore, the resolution is toothless.  The good people of Anderson County should remedy this situation by [1] throwing the bums out, and [2] crafting a resolution that is not obviously written by the county attorney.

The number of times I’ve seen baiting of 2A supporters to come “help” the rioters are too numerous to link.  Those bait traps have been ubiquitous of late.

reddit/Firearms has yet another response to this nonsense.

Some brief but insightful comments:

Denigrate firearm owners for years
>Realize concerns for tyranny are legitimate
>Whine and cry halp-halp
Lol FOH

It’s funny because the left has always been free to arm themselves. All of a sudden, we’re some free group of mercenaries being baited to fight for daddy soro’s marxist movement.

These remarks are on point but too brief as is the nature of reddit.  Here are mine.

It’s laughable that anyone on the communist side has had the stupidity to come up with anything like the idea that 2A supporters should be helping them.

First of all, these are the very people who voted to disarm people, and would disarm you in a heartbeat if they had the chance.  They don’t want an armed populace – that is at odds with everything the communists believe in.

Second, 2A supporters aren’t violent and murderous people like the communists.  The 2A community will fight back against confiscation (among other things), but not at innocent lives who had nothing to do with the abuses.

Third, 2A supporters would have nothing whatsoever to do with the destruction of property of innocent people who were trying to earn an honest living, as is the case with the communists.  In short, we care about people and their lives, the communists don’t, and see everyone as a steppingstone to the next goal on their agenda.  It makes no sense for a 2A supporter to side with communists because communists are the very people who want to steal from others, while 2A supporters are generally hard working, honest Americans.

Fourth, the communists side isn’t righteous.  It isn’t righteous to want to implement the very tyranny they are fighting.  The communists would overthrow tyranny only to implement a worse one.  God hates controllers and communists.

This list is far from complete, and readers can add to it.  The bottom line, if you are one of the communists who have stumbled upon this post, is that you and I are on different sides.  We are enemies.

No one fell for your stupid antics to get some “help.”  You can be imprisoned or die on your own for your sins.  Imprisoned or die – it matters not to me.

UPDATE: See what I said?  Via Glenn Reynolds, this reply from Larry Correia’s response to the same thing.  I just think my response is more expansive.

This first video post-dates the second one I’m embedding.  It’s Massad Ayoob’s answer to the second video I’m embedding.  I’m interested in reader reactions to Massad’s advice.  I’ve already told you what I think in the post title.  And while we’re at it, take careful note that this is ground that smarter people that Ayoob have covered in detail.

David Codrea.

“I’m a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson,” Salon columnist and novelist Lucian K. Truscott IV wrote in a Monday opinion piece for The New York Times. “Take down his memorial.”

[ … ]

At least in his case, Truscott claims “I grew up in an Army family, and … I never saw a goddamned human silhouette target until I was on a United States Army firing range with an Army-issue M-16 in my hands.” His Salon bio further reveals he is “a graduate of West Point.” Neither qualification claim brings up an earlier admission that he  “got a general discharge under other than honorable conditions, generally known as a ‘bad discharge’” (not quite enough to “legally disqualify” him for gun ownership, but enough to get a foreigner “denaturalized”)

Blah, blah, blah.  This sounds sort of like “I’ve been in the military, and let me tell you something about those awful guns …”  To be precise and clinical, it’s called the genetic fallacy, and it revolves around an appeal to authority.

I grant no authority to someone who has been in the military and who now wants to jettison his oaths and vows, especially one who wasn’t honorably discharged.

I’d also mention that this appeal to authority based on genetics isn’t restricted to the military.

“My name is Robert Lee IV; I am a descendant of Robert E. Lee, the Civil War general whose statue was at the center of violence in Charlottesville. We have made my ancestor an idol of white supremacy, racism and hate. As a pastor it is my moral duty to speak out against racism, America’s original sin. Today, I call on all of us with privilege and power to answer God’s call to confront racism and white supremacy head-on. We can find inspiration in the Black Lives Matter movement, the women who marched in the Women’s March in January and especially Heather Heyer who died fighting for her beliefs in Charlottesville.”

I really couldn’t care less about who he can cite as his lineage.  Lineage is as much or more ideological as it is blood.

These men have shamed their heritage, and thus shamed themselves.

From a reader, Diana West.

In his memoir, Reminscences, General Douglas MacArthur provides an illuminating account of the Bonus Army riots in the summer of 1932, which, as Army Chief of Staff, he would help quell after District of the Columbia requested assistance.

MacArthur’s account highlights some striking similarities with recent Black LIves Matter/Antifa rioting in the nation’s capital, especially when it comes to his overview of the tense situation in these final months of the Herbert Hoover administration.

In 1964, MacArthur wrote:

In these days of wholehearted unity, it is hard to believe that thirty years ago the President of the United States lived in danger, and the Congress shook with fear at the sight and sound of the marchers. It is hard to believe, too, that government employees and other citizens of Washington who bore witness to the tawdry street battles cheered the stoning of the Washington police force.

Plus ca change …

The movement was actually far deeper and more dangerous than an effort to secure funds from an already depleted federal treasury. The American Communist Party planned a riot of such proportions that it was hoped that the United States Army, in its efforts to maintain peace, would have to fire on the marchers. In this way, the Communists hoped to incite revolutionary action. Red organizers infiltrated the veteran groups and presently took command from their unwitting leaders. (Emphasis added.)

… plus c’est la meme communists.

Yes, indeed, nearly ninety years ago, “Red organizers” were already using civil strife — in this case, the stress and poverty of thousand of unemployed WWI veterans nearly three years into the Great Depression — to try to spark a violent overthrow of the federal government, or cause as much chaos and mayhem as possible in the attempt while demonizing the anti-communist President Hoover and General MacArthur.

Interestingly enough, the D.C. police commander, Pelham Greenford, was more on the “woke” side than we might expect of law enforcement at the time. Fortunately, the D.C. government and the Secretary of War were clearly on the side of protecting law, order and the White House, and not the agitators — patriotic support President Trump has not enjoyed.

Here’s how events unspooled in 1932. Thousands of “Bonus Army” protestors had camped out in and around the District on federal property since May. After Congress failed to comply with their demands to issue an immediate bonus for their war service, President Hoover was able to get a bill passed providing them with travel fare home. Thousands left the city. Those who remained were increasingly under Communist Party influence and increasingly violent.

After twice advising against providing Army assistance to Washington metropolitan police, MacArthur writes, “on July 28, the crisis was reached.”

A mob 5,000 strong began to move up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Treasury Building and the White House. The police were outnumbered five to one. [Police commander] Glassford was mauled and stripped of his police superintendent’s gold badge, gunfire broke out, and a score or more were badly injured. It was evident that the situation had gotten beyond the control of the local authorities.

A request was immediately made through the Board of Commissioners for the District of Columbia for federal troops.

Note that in 2020, after three days of rioting and looting in D.C., including in and around Lafayette Square during which some 60 Secret Service and special agents “sustained multiple injuries” defending the White House, and St John’s Church was torched, D.C. Mayor Bower was more adamant about fending off  National Guard assistance than fending off protestors. She even went so far as to eject members of the Utah National Guard from a D.C. hotel, and, infamously, permitted 16th Street, NW, to be emblazoned with the words “Black Lives Matter.”

Back to 1932:

Commissioner Richelderfer, in requesting such assistance from the President, “stated that it would be impossible for the police department to maintain law and order except by the free use of firearms. The presence of federal troops in small numbers will obviate the seriousness of the situation, and it will result in far less bloodshed and violence.

The President then conferred with Patrick Hurley, the Secretary of War, who was immediately placed in charge. Hurley issued the following order:

To: General Douglas MacArthur, Chief of Staff US Army

The President has just now informed me that the civil government of the District of Columbia has reported to him that it is unable to maintain law and order in the District.

You will have United States troops proceed immediately to the scene of disorder. Cooperate fully with the District of Columbia police force which is now in charge.  Surround the affected area and clear it without delay.

Turn over all prisoners to civil authorities.

In your orders insist that any women or children who may be in the affected area be accorded every consideration and kindness. Use all humanity consistent with the due execution of the order.

Patrick J. Hurley

Secretary of War

So let’s make it clear from the outset that I am not advocating based on this, nor have I ever advocated, that the U.S. military become involved in the current riots, burnings, lootings, etc.

There is a legal, historical and necessary function for the unorganized militia.  This is just the kind of thing.

If the state of Washington were to have made the call for militias nationwide to come to the aid of their PD, and ten thousand people had showed up with battle rattle and full kit, it would have taken two hours to arrest the ne’er-do-wells, sent the other ones packing, and returned normalcy to the kidnapped property owners inside those six blocks.

I’m just saying.  This is all happening because the communists want it to happen, whether in Antifa or government (and I’m being redundant here, I know).

News from New Mexico.

Robert Whitmon of the American Patriots of New Mexico, one such group, says they’ve been working with police for years. Regardless of their claims of support for protesters, demonstrators say they raise tension and anxiety, and they’re already concerned about state-sanctioned violence and the possibility of retribution for speaking out.

We hear from Andres Valdez, Selinda Guererro and Amelia Brown. They are among the protesters and organizers of last week’s demonstrations who shared their impressions of the men carrying rifles that showed up to watch protests.

Of course the local PD doesn’t “work with” the local militia, because they don’t understand the purpose of the second amendment and if they did they wouldn’t believe in it.

Contrast that with the ugly goings-on in Seattle.

They’re opposed to YOUR firearms

— Bill (@AngryRetailDale) June 9, 2020

You see, the local authorities are just fine with people conducting self defense and defense of others, as long as the ones being protected and doing the protection are intent on tearing down the cultural history of America.

Reason.

[1.] In all states, you can use deadly force to defend yourself against death, serious bodily injury (which can include broken bones and perhaps even lost teeth), rape, or kidnapping, so long as (a) your fear is reasonable and (b) the danger is imminent (requirements that also apply to the doctrines I discuss below).

[ … ]

But in nearly all states, you can’t generally use deadly force merely to defend your property. (Texas appears to be an exception, allowing use of deadly force when there’s no other way to protect or recapture property even in situations involving simple theft or criminal mischief, though only at night,  Tex. Penal Code § 9.42; see, e.g., McFadden v. State (Tex. Ct. App. 2018).) That’s where we get the conventional formulation that you can’t use deadly force just to defend property.

[2.] This conventional formulation, though, omits an important limitation: In basically all states, you can use nondeadly force to defend your property—and if the thief or vandal responds by threatening you with death or great bodily harm, you can then protect yourself with deadly force. So in practice, you can use deadly force to protect property after all, if you’re willing to use nondeadly force first and expose yourself to increased risk.

[A.] In about half the states you can use deadly force against robbery, which generally includes any theft from the person that uses modest force or a threat: “Even a purse snatching can constitute a robbery if the victim simply resists the effort to wrest the purse away.” Some robbery of course does also create a reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury, but in these states such a fear is not required.

[B.] In some states, there is a rebuttable presumption that you reasonably fear death or great bodily harm—and may thus use deadly force—if the target is (to quote the Iowa statute),

Unlawfully entering by force or stealth the dwelling, place of business or employment, or occupied vehicle of the person using force, or has unlawfully entered by force or stealth and remains within the dwelling, place of business or employment, or occupied vehicle of the person using force.

I think Missouri is like Texas in this regard even though he didn’t mention it.

In the Colonial era, horse theft brought harsh punishment, including branding, torture, exile and even death.  This is so because theft of the means of plowing the ground on the frontier meant relegating your family to death for lack of food.

It’s complicated.  Be sure to know the laws of your state.  For me, it comes down to this: If the person is entering the premises of your home or business with a weapon or intent to commit theft, you simply cannot trust that he will stop there.

There are thousands of instances where a thief took what he wanted and then killed the people who saw him do it.

There is also his article on The Duty To Retreat In The Founding Era.  Read this as well, and as always, none of this constitutes legal advice.  You have to pay for that.

Link. [I cannot make WordPress accept the embed code, so go to the link]

But that’s not the way the international media reported it.  Consider this headline: “Vigilante residents wield their rifles as they block their street in Florida to guard against looters.”  Here is the URL.

The video of the guarding residents was filmed by a family in a passing car.

They are seen driving past them before using a roundabout to drive back the other way.

The group, who number at least 12, are standing next to their cars and some are holding rifles.

One man is wearing a military-style helmet, combat boots and pants and is holding a rifle.

As the family pass the residents, an older woman in the car says, ‘he has a gun in the black shirt’ as she refers to the man in the helmet.

A girl in the car then adds: ‘This is in Belleview.’

As she turns the car back around, the older woman then says: ‘Look at all these white people. Look at them with their guns.’

Although it isn’t clear from the video, she claims a teenage boy is also standing with a gun.

‘Look at that little boy, he’s a young man with a gun. He’s like 16,’ she says.

Vigilantes, they are.  Bad people, according to the media.  She’s too ignorant of American history to know that the vast majority of the fighters at King’s Mountain were under the age of 18.  The “Over Mountain” men were primarily boys.  Their families had to bring in the crops and do chores.  So to families singing hymns through the streets as the left on horseback, they left for an arduous journey over many days and nights to meet up with the loyalists at King’s Mountain and win what might be the most decisive battle of the war of independence, because it demonstrated to Cornwallis that his reliance on loyalists to win his war was mistaken.   But there’s more.

In Indiana, peaceful protesters demonstrating against police brutality and racism following the death of George Floyd were met with vigilante locals who were armed with weapons.

[ … ]

Video taken on Saturday in Valparaiso and posted to Twitter shows a line of protesters marching — as homeowners stand guard along a white picket fence nearby.

The tweet said the protesters were walking back to their cars along a bike trail, as advised by police “because of the amount of people standing by the street with their bats and guns.”

Vigilantes.  They used that word again.

So the thugs who throw bricks, break windows, block streets, liter the roadways, beat people over the head with boards and shoot people, are “peaceful protesters.”  The peaceful citizens who want to protect family, home and hearth, are “vigilantes.”  The vigilantes should wait on protection from the cops and National Guard troops who are taking a knee all around the country.

Light is darkness and darkness is light.  So claims the evil one.

Actually, seeing these pictures of patriot citizens holding rifles and ready to defend home and hearth makes me more confident in the trajectory of America at the moment.

America has been stomped out of its slumber and some of it, at least, seems ready for self defense against the communists.  They meet the definition of militia in the truest sense of the word and concept expressed by the founders, who opposed a standing army.

No, not for the riots, the broken windows, the shootings, the beatings, the theft of property, the bricks that were thrown, the clogging of streets, the litter in the roadways, the unnecessary fires, the overtime we will all have to pay for government workers, and on the list goes.  I’ll send you the itemized bill.  It will be long and large.

But I do have to say that I’ve noticed what others have.  Gun sales are at record levels.

More than 1.7 million firearms were sold in the U.S. last month, up 80 percent compared to last May. That follows a 71 percent surge in April to just under 1.8 million sold, and just under two million guns were sold in March.

Some perspective: The all-time record, following the Sandy Hook massacre and President Obama’s address vowing to make a major push for more gun control, was two million guns sold in January 2013. This chart shows a general trend upward for years. In September 2001, gun sales were only about 750,000, and that was a month when sales surged.

So we’re looking at just a hair under record gun sales for each of the last three months, totaling about 5.5 million firearms sold in 90 days. Presumably June gun sales will also be robust.

Oh, I assure you they will be.  Sales are big somewhere near enough to me, and when I go down to my local Academy Sports somewhere in Gaston County, while there are the various shoppers buying odds and ends – coolers, chairs, and so forth – the main clientele are folks like me headed to the guns and ammo section because we know when the trucks come in.  We know.  Online sales are only so good.  We must supplement.

Whites and blacks are there together, and no one is fighting.  I’ve had many a discussion with black folk wanting protection from the thugs.  The thugs.  You know who they are.  The brown shirts.  Or in this case, the black shirts.  They are white, they are black.  But they are all communists.

Sure enough, it may not come to that and it may only involve fists and such.  But if it does, suburban and rural America is more than ready.

My own chairman of the board of county commissioners recently wrote an article in a local paper and said “You can take my guns out of my cold, dead hands.”  That was right before we became a 2A sanctuary county.

I’ve tried, my colleague gun bloggers have tried, and Lord knows, we’ve tried so hard.  But we haven’t really been as successful as we’d like.

Enter, Antifa.  You created memes.  You made a hero out of folks who disarm you.  You outed your sponsors, you showed what it takes to stop you, and you showed just how bad you are.

I’ve known it all along, me and my readers, the fact that the police aren’t there to protect us.  We knew it from Warren v. D.C. and Castle Rock v. Gonzalez.

But now America knows it viscerally, existentially.  They know it for real, in terms of home, hearth and family.

Congratulations!  You did what I could never have achieved.

For that, I thank you.