Archive for the 'Second Amendment' Category

Ammoland.

If we can identify the mentally ill people that are suicidal, I think that is another conversation that is worth having.

I said, “We shouldn’t take some guns from all people; we should take all guns from some people,” but I think an important part of that is that it is the people we all agree shouldn’t have guns. I am not looking to be prescriptive there as much as I am looking to find where that common ground is.

We’re going to have a hard time finding that common ground, Dan.  The problem is that ” … efforts to limit firearm access only for persons with a mental health condition (including substance use disorders) or those who previously attempted suicide would prevent few suicide deaths by firearm.”

It just doesn’t work the way you’re saying it works.  And besides that, if we agree to agree on just a tiny little bit, like say, on a category of prohibited persons, who’s to say you won’t expand that list of prohibited persons to include someone who believes in Jesus, or believes in the RKBA?

No, I think forty years ago that speech would have worked.  It’ll probably work today with Wayne and the other folks in Fairfax.  But history has taught us that the words and meaning of the 2A are unalterable and not up for negotiation.

Via Dave Hardy, this interesting paper made good reading.  Here are a few excerpts.

Does the English right matter to Americans? It is key to our right because every colonial charter promised settlers to the New World that they and their descendants would have all the rights of Englishmen as if born and abiding in England. It was these rights the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve. After 1689 these rights included the rights incorporated in the English Bill of Rights. The dangers of life in the American wilderness made the English practice of an armed citizenry essential. In many colonies all householders were ordered to be armed.  A 1625 law of Plymouth colony, for example, stipulated that “in regard of our dispersion so far asunder and the inconvenience that may befall, it is further ordered that every freeman or other inhabitant of this colony provide for himself and each under him able to beare armes a sufficient musket and other serviceable peece for war . . . with what speede may be.  A similar 1640 Virginia statute required “all masters of families” to furnish themselves and “all those of their families which shall be capable of arms (excepting negroes) with arms both offensive and defensive.” Some colonial laws actually required residents to carry their guns. A Newport law of 1639 provided that “noe man shall go two miles from the Towne unarmed, eyther with Gunn or Sword; and that none shall come to any public Meeting without his weapon.  Virginia laws required “that no man go or send abroad without a sufficient partie well armed,” and “that men go not to worke in the ground without their arms (and a centinell upon them).” They further specified that “all men that are fittinge to beare armes, shall bring their pieces to the church upon payne of every offence, if the mayster allow not thereof to pay 2lb of tobacco.

These early laws were needed in a dangerous new land but Connecticut’s revised militia act, a century later, still ordered all citizens, both “listed” soldiers of the militia and every other householder, to “always be provided with and have in continual readiness, a well-fixed firelock . . . or other good fire-arms . . . a good sword, or cutlass. . . one pound of good powder, four pounds of bullets fit for his gun, and twelve flints.  In 1770, five years before the American Revolution Georgia felt it necessary “for the better security of the inhabitants” to require every white male resident “to carry firearms to places of public worship,” to defend themselves “from internal dangers and insurrections.”  Whether the threat came from slaves, foreigners or native Americans the means of defense was an armed citizenry. There was never a ban on taking a gun outside, on the contrary in many instances it was mandatory. Ordinary precautions that limited storage of gunpowder, shooting guns in crowded areas or carrying a weapon to terrify others were put in place, but the emphasis was on the duty to be armed and a freer use of private firearms than existed in England.

As we’ve discussed before.  But in this day and age, the statists know better, because they are out betters.  We need their protection and wisdom.

I have several observations.

First, the “commander” is an asshole.

Second, they don’t know the law the way they should.

Third, and I’ll say this for the hundredth time, muzzle flagging people like cops do is dangerous to life.

Fourth, listen again to the “commander’s” words.  Any time someone says that they support the second amendment, but … you know they’re lying.

Fifth, it’s good to see folks in Florida challenging the cops.  These 2A audits are becoming a thing.  I like that.  A man has no business telling me how I should carry my weapons.

Arkansas CopWatch gets stopped for open carry.  I thought this was a settled issue in Arkansas?  Anyway, it’s good to see folks conducting 2A audits, and more specifically, open carry audits.

It’s an odd case, but interesting.

Dawsonville attorney John Monroe—a founder, board member and corporate officer of GeorgiaCarry who represents Evans—said he is confident that a careful review of the garden’s lease with the city will make it clear that the garden is prohibited by state law from banning guns on its premises.

“We never argued it as a Second-Amendment issue,” said Monroe, who said he helped to write the 2014 amendment that forms the basis for the high court’s reversal. “It was really about an interpretation of state law. … The idea was, if you are going to lease public property, you should not have the same right that private property owners have to exclude firearms.”

Monroe said the 2014 amendment is in keeping with a separate state law barring cities and counties from introducing or enforcing their own gun regulations.

GeorgiaCarry sued the botanical garden five years ago after one of its members twice visited the venue in 2014 while openly carrying a gun in a holster on his waistband. On his second visit, police escorted member Phillip Evans from the premises. GeorgiaCarry subsequently filed suit challenging the garden’s gun ban. A Fulton County judge dismissed the case, but the high court reversed, claiming the dismissal was improper.

I’d never thought about this before, but it makes perfect sense.  Someone who leases property doesn’t own the property, and therefore doesn’t have the right to forbid perfectly constitutional and legal activities on that property.  Only the owner does.

News from Oklahoma.

Gun control advocates say they’ll spend October distributing “firearms prohibited” window stickers to Oklahoma business owners who don’t want untrained and unlicensed consumers carrying guns into their establishments.

The effort marks gun-control advocates’ next effort to thwart the new controversial gun law, which takes effect Nov. 1.

“We know that our businesses are allowed to prohibit guns on their property,” said Kay Malan, of Tulsa, who volunteers with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

In recent weeks, the gun-control group also participated in a citizen-led ballot initiative that sought give voters a say on whether to accept or reject the legislation. The effort failed to garner enough signatures to get the issue before voters.

The legislative measure allows anyone at least 21 years old without a felony conviction or other criminal records to carry with no permitting, licensing or training. The bill does not allow people to brandish firearms nor does it change where Oklahomans can legally carry. For instance, people would still be prohibited from carrying on college campuses.

So let’s make a prediction and see how accurate it was later on, say, a year from now.

There will be blood running in the streets because of this.  Or not.

The Cornell Daily Sun.

Charles’s Duke biography states he joined the Center for Firearms Law as executive director after practicing in the appellate group at McGuireWoods LLP, where he briefed cases in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth and Ninth Circuits as well as in numerous state intermediate and high courts.

“I am here to convince you that an assault weapons ban would not violate the Second Amendment,” Charles said. “This is a fraught and contentious debate, and the people and their representatives — not lawyers in robes — should be the ones to decide whether an assault weapon ban best serves the public interest.”

Charles gave three reasons as to why an assault weapon ban would not violate the Second Amendment: history does not support the right to own an assault weapon, current constitutional doctrine does not impede an assault weapons ban and there are no good normative reasons to suppose that there is a constitutional right to own assault weapons.

In the title of the article, he’s called a “firearms expert.”  Very well, Jacob.  Can you supply us with a lecture on the controlling mathematical models and formulae for ballistics coefficient and sectional density?

I didn’t think so.  Some expert.

Note how in a speech on the constitutionality, he defers to the will of the people rather than whether ownership of weapons is constitutional.  This isn’t by mistake.  His philosophy is one of instrumentalism (Dewey), utilitarianism (Mills), or something else, but he would recoil in horror is you suggested that we pass a law that requires sacrificing someone named Jacob to Baal on alternating Thursdays.  So Jacob is an inconsistent philosopher at best, or perhaps he’s never really thought about any of this.

But his main arguments are all deeply flawed.  His training has all been without philosophical foundation, and thus he would defer to the rule of the majority for notion of rights rather than immutable law.

As we’ve discussed many times before, God is the author of rights and obligations, and the Almighty decides how to deal with His creatures and how they must live.  The constitution is a covenant between men, not a source document for rights.  Obedience to the covenant brings blessings and peace, while disobedience brings curses, both from men and God.  Just as God will never bless a spouse who cheats on covenant marriage vows, He will never bless a stiff-necked people who refuse to honor agreements they have made to live together.

The constitution clearly stipulates not that we may posses firearms of our own choosing, but rather that the government may not interfere with our choices.  As for that silly, juvenile notion that history doesn’t support this (e.g., the founders couldn’t possibly have imagined semi-automatic firepower), we’ve also seen how clearly incorrect that is.

We’ve also studied the obligations that the Almighty places on us for protection of home and hearth.  Little more needs to be said, because while feigning independence and scholarship, one thing is clear.  The Duke University Center for Firearms Law is biased, bigoted and certainly not scholarly.

These folks will never be Dave Hardy, Dave Koppel or Stephen Halbrook.  They’ll always play second fiddle to the real scholars.

Oh, one more thing, Jacob.  I’ll be happy to engage in a written debate with you any time over these pages.

American Thinker.

Since 2015, residents of the state of Maine have been allowed to carry a concealed firearm without any special permit, and now the results are in: crime has fallen to the point where the state is now rated the safest in the nation from the threat of crime. The Maine Examiner reports:

When Maine passed a “Constitutional Carry” law allowing Maine residents to carry a concealed firearm without any special permit in 2015, opponents of the law forecast a dangerous future for the state. They said the new law would hurt public safety and put Maine kids at risk.

One state representative who opposed the bill went so far as to say it would give Mainers a reason to be afraid every time they went out in public or to work.

Another state representative suggested the law would lead to violent criminals with recent arrests and convictions legally carrying handguns.

The controllers always say things like that.  They’re all liars and thieves.  The controllers said open carry would lead to blood running in the streets in Texas.  It didn’t happen.  They said that open carry would lead to blood running in the streets in Oklahoma.  It didn’t happen.

And on we could go.  You know the drill.

GOA has sent out an urgent request to call senators, saying this.

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will be voting on Chuck Canterbury, who is the President’ pick to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).

Canterbury headed the Fraternal Order of Police and articulated several anti-gun positions during his tenure there.

Go here to add your name to the pre-written letter (above) which urges Republican Senators to vote against Canterbury as the new ATF head.

This pick to lead the ATF represents another troubling nominee, who has been selected to fill an important position in the administration.

Earlier this year, we warned Republicans Senators that Attorney General nominee William Barr had a long history of supporting gun control, including semi-auto bans.

Apparently, the GOP senators, at least some of them, can do something right for a change.

Chuck Canterbury, President Trump’s nominee to serve as head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, is likely to see his nomination withdrawn due to stringent opposition from Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Washington Free Beacon learned on Thursday.

“Chuck Canterbury does NOT have sufficient support in the Judiciary Committee and is now expected to be held up instead of getting a vote today,” a GOP Senate aide told the Free Beacon on Thursday morning. “Republican members are (1) Concerned about his stances on gun control, and (2) there is still some bad blood for him flipping the Fraternal Order of Police in support of the First Step Act (after opposing the more moderate version), allegedly in exchange for the ATF Director nomination.”

“His 2A views are bad and he’d lose a lot of votes in committee,” a second Senate source told the Free Beacon. “We expect the White House will pull him given lack of support from Republicans on the Judiciary Committee.”

At least one Republican senator, Utah’s Mike Lee, seemed to agree with this assessment when reached for comment.

“Sen. Lee has concerns about Canterbury’s Second Amendment views and is pleased the markup has been delayed,” Lee’s office told the Free Beacon.

We’ll see what Trump does with this.  I hope this is the end for Canterbury.

Prior:

FOP President Chuck Canterbury Picked To Head The ATF

Further Fisking Of Chuck Canterbury’s Second Amendment Credentials

As background for his paper, this makes good listening.

It couldn’t ever have been any other way, really.  As I’ve pointed out before so many times, guns were ubiquitous in colonial America, a tool, a means to survive, a means of defense of home and hearth.  The right was seen as God-given, because it is so.

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

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

Their laws about children and guns were strict: every family was required to own a gun, to carry it in public places (especially when going to church) and to train children in firearms proficiency. On the first Thanksgiving Day, in 1621, the colonists and the Indians joined together for target practice; the colonist Edward Winslow wrote back to England that “amongst other recreations we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us.”

In fact, when congregants showed up to worship without weaponry, it was most often the pastor who collected the tax for going unarmed.  The notion that the founders would have made sure to prohibit the FedGov from interfering with state militias and fail to incorporate that into protection of individuals is preposterous on its face.

In order to understand the second amendment, you must first understand the milieu in which it was written. An understanding of unvarnished and unbiased history is what most “scholars” today lack.