I will admit to having mocked some of the pro-Palestinian protesters as not being willing to pick up a rifle and go fight for that in which they believe, but I realize that most of them have to finish up their papers for their Diversity, equity, and inclusion classes, or cover their shifts at Starbucks. Those lattés don’t make themselves, you know. But Russell Rickford seems to have plenty of free time on his hands now! Continue reading
Category Archives: Right to keep and bear arms
The left only care about gun control when white people get killed, and heterosexual white men are the killers
It’s perhaps telling that Amanda Marcotte’s Twitter biography photo was taken in a bar, with a “Bud Light” sign in the window.
As we have previously noted, the very lovely Amanda Marcotte, native Texan and later Brooklynite, moved away from the Big Apple to South Philadelphia sometime in late 2018 or early 2019. I have no idea if Marc Faletti, her POSSLQ, and she still live in the City of Brotherly Love, because, at least in her gig with Salon, she almost never writes about the city, but, at least for this article, I’m operating under the assumption that they still do.
Miss Marcotte might not really care that much about Philly, but she certainly does care about guns, or at least she does when a white guy kills a bunch of other mostly white people! Continue reading
Democrats really, really hate our constitutional rights! (Part 2)
We noted, just yesterday, that Democrats really, really hate our constitutional rights! The immediate point of that article was to note how Governor Michelle Cordova[1]While the Governor of New Mexico does not respect her husband enough to have taken his last name, as per The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, we do not show such disrespect to him, and always … Continue reading (D-NM) tried to ban the open or concealed carrying of firearms in the city of Albuquerque and its surrounding county, Bernalillo, including by residents who have gone through the process and obtained concealed carry permits, by executive order.
But Governor Cordova is hardly the only one who wants to take away your constitutional rights under the Second Amendment! Far-left Govenor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) wants to do the same.
Gov. Gavin Newsom Officially Calls for Convention to Change US Constitution
by Richard Moorhead • Friday, September 15, 2023 • 3:19 PM PDT
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is eyeing a change to the United States Constitution.
The state’s legislature on Thursday approved a resolution in support of Newsom’s call for a 28th Constitutional amendment, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The amendment would enshrine a list of Democratic gun-control policy priorities into federal law.
Can we tell the truth here? The “list of Democratic gun-control policy priorities” is really the bare minimum away with which the left believe that they can achieve under the Second Amendment. The left would like nothing more than to implement the New York law invalidated by the Supreme Court in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen 597 U. S. ____ (2022), laws which virtually prohibited the private ownership of firearms, even for self-defense, unless government officials judged that you had a good enough reason to be issued a permit . . . and living in a crime-ridden area wasn’t a good enough reason.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States ought to be easy to understand:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
But, of course, there are always those, including those who are themselves guarded by armed men, who do not want Other People to be allowed to keep and bear arms. And thus we’ve had the Second Amendment violated for more than 200 hundred years, as various states passed laws to restrict Americans from owning firearms. In United States v Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876), the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment only prohibited the federal government from banning private ownership of firearms:
The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second Amendment means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress, and has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the National Government.
That the First Congress, which wrote the Second Amendment, would have thought that the right to keep and bear arms could ever be limited by governments, federal or state, when the first battle of our Revolution was fought because patriots in Massachusetts were resisting Royal Governor Thomas Gage’s firearms confiscation orders, and when many Americans were living on the frontier, needing guns to hunt for game, and to defend themselves from the Indians.
Under the ridiculous Cruikshank decision, states, counties, and municipalities could ban the private ownership of firearms. It took until District of Columbia v Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), for the Court to hold that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, and McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010) incorporated the Heller decision to apply to the states. A full 219 years passed between the ratification of the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court finally applying it to the states.
Back to the originally cited article:
California is requesting a Constitutional convention to enshrine the amendment. For the amendment to be considered, two-thirds of state legislatures would have to vote in favor of a convention, according to the Times.
The proposed “Right to Safety Amendment” would limit legal gun ownership to adults 21 and older, enact universal federal background checks on gun sales, create a mandatory “reasonable waiting period” for gun purchases, and ban the purchase of many forms of semiautomatic rifles.
The article as cited here included a photo of Governor Newsom behind a podium with the heading “Gun Safety Laws Work,” but unless the gun laws include the total prohibition of firearms, they really haven’t worked. As we noted yesterday, Governor Cordova stated:
We’ve passed common-sense gun legislation, including red flag laws, domestic violence protections, a ban on straw purchases, and safe storage laws; dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars to a fund specifically to help law enforcement hire and retain officers; increased penalties for violent offenders and provided massive support to intervention programs,
yet she decided that those “common-sense” gun laws were not enough, as New Mexico, which has the third-highest firearms mortality rate in the nation. Chicago, which has strict gun control laws, is one of our nation’s leaders in homicides. And, as we have previously documented, in Pennsylvania, where the gun laws are uniform throughout the state, Philadelphia, with 12.08% of the Commonwealth’s population, had over half the homicides in the Keystone State. The numbers don’t lie.
The Democrats don’t want to look at the actual causes of violence, and have reliably informed us that criminals people only break the law — racist laws which were passed by white supremacists, I would like to point out — because they have been poor, disenfranchised, and condemned to live in disinvested-in neighborhoods segregated by redlining, and are struggling just to survive. Instead, they mostly ignore crime in the inner cities, and react only when an innocent is shot and killed, as Mrs Cordova did, as Mr Newsom did, because it is wholly politically incorrect to look into the actual causes of crime, the actual causes of shootings and killings.
It’s not as though the Democrats don’t know the truth; it’s that they can’t handle the truth, the truth that most crimes, and most shootings, and most killings do not occur because the laws are lacking, but because there are cultures in our larger cities which enable crime in those areas.
References
| ↑1 | While the Governor of New Mexico does not respect her husband enough to have taken his last name, as per The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, we do not show such disrespect to him, and always refer to married women by their proper names. We do not, however, change the direct quotes of others. |
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Democrats really, really hate our constitutional rights!
Vacations are wonderful, but for a blogger, they do have a downside. When I heard about the executive order by Governor Michelle Cordova[1]While the Governor of New Mexico does not respect her husband enough to have taken his last name, as per The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, we do not show such disrespect to him, and always … Continue reading (D-NM) to ban the open or concealed carrying of firearms in the city of Albuquerque and its surrounding county, Bernalillo, including by residents who have gone through the process and obtained concealed carry permits, I really, really, really wanted to write about it, but, alas!, I didn’t have my computer with me.[2]I use a desktop, not a laptop, because I hate laptops, I despise laptops, I abominate laptops.
Mrs Cordova said, from the very beginning, that she expected legal challenges, but she waxed wroth when Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen, stated that his department would not enforce her order, because it was unconstitutional.
New Mexico governor’s gun ban draws bipartisan backlash
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s suspension of concealed and open carry gun rights in the Albuquerque area ignited opposition from Democrats and Republicans alike.
By Zoë Richards | Monday, September 11, 2023 | 7:28 PM EDT
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is facing harsh criticism from both sides of the aisle over her recently issued order suspending certain gun rights in Albuquerque and its surrounding county.
Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, on Friday announced a 30-day ban on the right to carry open or concealed firearms in public in an effort to curb gun violence and illegal drug use in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County. State police were tasked with enforcing the order, which carried fines for violations.
The announcement prompted a string of lawsuits and ignited opposition from Democrats and Republicans alike.
Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen, a Democrat, said Monday he would not enforce the ban, which he called “unconstitutional.”
This order will not do anything to curb gun violence other than punish law-abiding citizens from their constitutional right to self-defense,” Allen said at a news conference.
It’s unconstitutional. So there’s no way we could enforce that order,” he added.
It wasn’t just the Sheriff who saw the Governor’s order as unconstitutional; as reported by William Teach, both here and on his website, Federal District Court Judge David Urias issued a temporary restraining order:
blocking key parts of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s executive order suspending open and concealed carry across Albuquerque and the surrounding Bernalillo County for at least 30 days.
U.S. District Court Judge David Urias issued the order on Wednesday, blocking the portion of the order that prohibits lawful gun owners from carrying their guns in public for 30 days, ruling that it’s not enforceable.
“The violation of a constitutional right, even for minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury,” Urias said during the hearing.
State Attorney General Raul Torrez, also a Democrat, informed Governor Cordova that his office and he would not defend her order in court, saying that it was both unconstitutional, and wouldn’t have any meaningful impact on public safety. Plainly put, the Attorney General said what everyone ought to understand: the people shooting up Albuquerque aren’t the ones who go through the legal process to obtain concealed carry permits in the first place. Criminals are criminals precisely because they don’t obey the laws!
Naturally, the Governor was highly, highly upset that Sheriff Allen dared to defy her Führerbefehle:
“I don’t need a lecture on constitutionality from Sheriff Allen: what I need is action,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement in response to a request for comment.
Translation: the Governor doesn’t care if her diktat is actually constitutional, she expects the Sheriff to carry out her orders!
“We’ve passed common-sense gun legislation, including red flag laws, domestic violence protections, a ban on straw purchases, and safe storage laws; dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars to a fund specifically to help law enforcement hire and retain officers; increased penalties for violent offenders and provided massive support to intervention programs,” she added. “We’ve given you the tools, Sheriff Allen — now stop being squeamish about using them. I will not back down from doing what’s right and I will always put the safety of the people of New Mexico first.”
Translation: the Governor believes that what she claims will increase the safety of the people of the Land of Enchantment trumps their constitutional rights!
Is Mrs Cordova saying that Sheriff Allen is not enforcing the “red flag laws, domestic violence protections, a ban on straw purchases, and safe storage laws,” as violations come to his attention? Have there been ‘red flag’ warnings in which law enforcement did not investigate and take action is warranted under that law? Have ‘domestic violence’ violations not led to arrests or prosecutions?
If there’s one thing the Democrats really hate, it’s the Constitution of the United States, and the enumeration of our rights. Benjamin Franklin, a man who dared to sign his name to our Declaration of Independence, said, “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately,” had something to say about people giving up their rights for a little bit of temporary safety, but, in reality, what Governor Cordova and many other Democratic politicians want to do, to Do Something about crime, will do virtually nothing about crime. Governor Cordova stated that New Mexico had “passed common-sense gun legislation, including red flag laws, domestic violence protections, a ban on straw purchases, and safe storage laws”, yet she also claimed that those things had simply not done enough. I have previously noted how a Lexington man didn’t care about an “emergency protection order/domestic violence order, and possession of a handgun by a previously convicted felon,” obtained one anyway, and wound up shooting and killing his estranged wife. The gang bangers in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, about whom I’ve expended a significant amount of bandwidth, haven’t been stopped from getting guns and shooting people by laws banning minors and previously convicted felons from having firearms, or people without permits from carrying them on the city’s mean streets.
Safe storage laws? When people buy firearms because they fear for their own safety, the last thing that they want is to have to unlock their firearms when bad guys are breaking into their homes!
But the Democrats don’t care about any of that! They want to be seen as Doing Something, even if it is unreasonable. When even the left-wing e-zine Slate says that she’s doing it wholly wrong, you know it’s bad:
Last week, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham declared a public health emergency over gun violence in her state and imposed a 30-day ban on public carry in Albuquerque. Lujan Grisham’s diagnosis of the problem is surely correct; her proposed solution, however, is astoundingly misguided. The governor has leveraged an emergency health law to suspend a right protected by state statute, the state constitution, and Supreme Court precedent. Whether that right should exist is beside the point; it does exist in New Mexico today, pursuant not only to court decisions but also democratically enacted laws. By suspending it unilaterally, Lujan Grisham has claimed an alarming new power to revoke well-established individual rights by executive order. And she has done so in the most blundering way possible, ensuring a backlash that will only empower citizens, activists, and politicians who view all firearm restrictions as an existential threat to personal liberty.
The population of Albuquerque, according to the Census Bureau’s July 1, 2022 guesstimate, is 561,008, of whom 49.8% are Hispanic, of all races, 37.4% are non-Hispanic white, 14.1% are biracial, 4.8% are American Indians, and 3.2% are black. Yet, when the Albuquerque Police Department released their 2023 homicide statistics as of July 2nd, they showed 54% of identified suspects as being Hispanic, 23% being black, 7% being Indians, and 16% as being white. If the problem is the gun laws, shouldn’t the problem affect every demographic group at least roughly equally?
The problem in Albuquerque is the culture in Albuquerque, just like it is in Philly, in St Louis, in Chicago, and everywhere else in the United States, but the Democrats can’s say that, now can they? Governor Cordova certainly seems unwilling to say that, so she goes after the people who are not the problem, the law-abiding citizens of the city. She’s rather attack people’s constitutional rights than actually identify and address the problems.
References
| ↑1 | While the Governor of New Mexico does not respect her husband enough to have taken his last name, as per The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, we do not show such disrespect to him, and always refer to married women by their proper names. |
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| ↑2 | I use a desktop, not a laptop, because I hate laptops, I despise laptops, I abominate laptops. |
Federal Judge Temporarily Suspends New Mexico Gov’s Gun Order
Her attorney general refused to support the order. The head of the state police said he wouldn’t enforce it, as did the county sheriff and local Albuquerque PD
New Mexico Democrat governor’s sweeping gun order hits major temporary roadblock
A federal judge in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has issued a temporary restraining order blocking key parts of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s executive order suspending open and concealed carry across Albuquerque and the surrounding Bernalillo County for at least 30 days.
U.S. District Court Judge David Urias issued the order on Wednesday, blocking the portion of the order that prohibits lawful gun owners from carrying their guns in public for 30 days, ruling that it’s not enforceable.
“The violation of a constitutional right, even for minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury,” Urias said during the hearing.
The temporary restraining order will remain in effect until at least Oct. 3, when the next hearing is scheduled.
The judge was appointed by Biden, so, that should tell you how bad Grisham went over the line. Of course, she’s refusing to back down
Lujan Grisham said in a statement on the temporary restraining order, stating that “I refuse to be resigned to the status quo.”
“Today a judge temporarily blocked sections of our public health order but recognized the significant problem of gun violence in this state, particularly involving the deaths of children,” she wrote. “As governor, I see the pain of families who lost their loved ones to gun violence every single day, and I will never stop fighting to prevent other families from enduring these tragedies.”
She wants the legislature to Do Something, and said she intends to “update the public health order with additional measures to address public safety and health shortly.” Well, she won’t be able to appeal, unless she can get a private lawyer, since the AG stated he would not defend the measure. The question here, will Grisham pay a price for her blatant abuse of the US and New Mexico Constitutions? Of denying law abiding citizens their rights? Most likely not, because the Democrats pretty much have a 2-1 margin in the House and Senate. So, unless they see their constituents really having a problem with Grisham, she’s safe. And that’s a big problem: elected officials, and bureaucrats, can so often abuse their office and nothing happens.
Who paid the price for COVID tyranny? Most were re-elected. One of the worst was Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan. People bitched, but, voted her back in.
New Mexico Governor Suspends Law Abiding Citizens From Carrying In Albuquerque
The wacko knows it will face legal challenges, yet, still did it
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, issued an emergency order on Friday suspending the right to carry guns in public across Albuquerque and the surrounding Bernalillo County for at least 30 days following recent instances of gun violence.
The governor said she expects the order to face legal challenges but that she believed she needed to act in response to recent gun-related deaths, such as an 11-year-old boy who was shot and killed outside a minor league baseball stadium earlier this week.
“When New Mexicans are afraid to be in crowds, to take their kids to school, to leave a baseball game — when their very right to exist is threatened by the prospect of violence at every turn — something is very wrong,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement.
The suspension was classified as an emergency public health order, and applies to open and concealed carry in most public places, excluding police and licensed security guards. The restriction is connected to a threshold for violent crime rates met only by the Albuquerque area.
So, what happens when the crime rate does not go down, because the vast majority of the shootings are by people who do not lawfully own the firearm, meaning no background check. Darn sure haven’t gone through the process of obtaining a concealed carry permit. Who fired the shots at the baseball game? No one knows at this point. No arrests, no person of interest. The only thing they know was that it was road rage and it was a newer black Dodge Durango SRT.
Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen said in a statement Friday night that he has concerns about the order but is prepared to cooperate to address gun violence.
“While I understand and appreciate the urgency, the temporary ban challenges the foundation of our constitution, which I swore an oath to uphold,” Allen said. “I am wary of placing my deputies in positions that could lead to civil liability conflicts, as well as the potential risks posed by prohibiting law-abiding citizens from their constitutional right to self-defense.”
And there will be suits.
State Sen. Greg Baca, the Senate’s top-ranked Republican, denounced the governor’s firearm suspension.
“A child is murdered, the perpetrator is still on the loose, and what does the governor do? She … targets law-abiding citizens with an unconstitutional gun order,” Baca said.
Even a victim right’s advocacy group is unimpressed. Why not crack down on the criminals?
Miranda Viscoli, co-president of New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence, praised the governor’s order as necessary in order to reduce gun violence.
“If it saves one life, then it’s worth doing,” Viscoli said.
Will it save one life? Because most shootings are not from people who acquired their firearms lawfully. This sounds more like a test run for long term restrictions on law abiding citizens, all while criminals run rampant under softish on crime Democrat policies.
The Islamic Terrorists are still a threat Philly teenager arrested for trying to produce terrorist bombs, in contact with Syrian terrorist group.
Screen capture of The Philadelphia Inquirer, part of Page B-1, August 15, 2023.
One would think that a 17-year-old being arrested in the City of Brotherly Love for attempting to make bombs for terrorist use would make the front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website, but if one thought that, one would be wrong. At least as of 9:48 AM EDT on Tuesday, August 15th, it just wasn’t there. Readers had to look on the newspaper’s specific crime page to find the story . . . if they even knew that the crime page existed.
For those who get and read the print edition? Middle of page B-1!
Philadelphia teen accused of buying and testing bomb-making materials in support of foreign terror group
Authorities did not release the 17-year-old’s name, citing his status as a juvenile but said they would seek to try him as an adult.
by Jeremy Roebuck and Chris Palmer | Monday, August 14, 2023 | 5:46 PM EDT
A 17-year-old from West Philadelphia has been charged with buying and testing bomb-making materials in support of a foreign terrorist group, state and federal authorities announced Monday.
The teen, whom prosecutors declined to name because he is a juvenile, was arrested Friday at his home in the Wynnefield section of the city, said Jacqueline Maguire, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia office.
Investigators say he’d purchased materials including chemicals, wiring, and tactical equipment associated with improvised explosive devices and conducted “generalized research” on potential targets. The teen had also been “taking steps to travel overseas for the purpose of joining or supporting terrorist activity,” Maguire said, though she declined to offer specifics.
The teen faces state felony charges including possessing weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy, arson, and causing or risking a catastrophe — the most serious of which carry prison terms of up to 20 years. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said his office was required by law to charge the teen in juvenile court, but that prosecutors would seek to move his case into the adult system.
There’s more at the original.
Perhaps I am not the smartest person in the room — well, I am at the moment, since, as I type this, I’m the only person in the room! 🙂 — but one talent I have is noticing things. At least in the Microsoft Edge browser that I use, when you hold the cursor over the page tab, it gives you the original page title, which in this instance was “Philly teen accused of building bombs in support of Syrian terror group”, something a bit more specific than the article headline now, “Philadelphia teen accused of buying and testing bomb-making materials in support of foreign terror group,” and the print edition’s “Teen accused of testing bomb parts for terrorism.” Note that, in the headlines used, the newspaper I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. reduced specificity so readers wouldn’t automatically think Muslim terrorists. But once you start reading the names mentioned in the article, you’ll know.
The unusual url for the article is https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-terrorism-qawi-abdul-rahman-katibat-al-tawhid-wal-jihad-20230814.html. Katibat al Tawhid wal Jihad is a Syrian group, designated by the State Department as “a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) pursuant to Executive Order 13224”, so the Inquirer reporters had to have known
So, who is the 17-year-old suspect? His name was not released, because he is a juvenile, though District Attorney Larry Krasner has said that he will move to have the charges brought in adult court.
(S)ources familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the arrest occurred on the 5900 block of Woodbine Avenue at the home of Qawi Abdul-Rahman, a Philadelphia defense attorney who unsuccessfully ran in this year’s Democratic primary for Common Pleas Court judge.
Mr Abdul-Rahman has been publicly reprimanded by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
The Inquirer reported last March that challenges to Mr Abdul-Rahman’s candidacy had been filed, and when it was reported that Philadelphia Undersheriff Tariq El-Shabazz had been representing criminal defendants, in an apparent violation of regulations, and someone who ran unsuccessfully for District Attorney in 2017, the newspaper stated:
In January 2022, El-Shabazz entered an appearance in another gun case being prosecuted by the Philly DA’s Office. In December, a new lawyer took over the case, Qawi Abdul-Rahman. Abdul-Rahman’s law office address and phone number are the same as El-Shabazz’s.
While the newspaper did not state or imply that the suspect is Mr Abdul-Rahman’s son, Philadelphia Magazine reporter Victor Fiorillo, who is certainly no evil reich-wing conservative, wrote:
Several sources have alleged that the person arrested is the son of Abdul-Rahman. On Monday, just after the press conference, I asked Abdul-Rahman via text if the person arrested is, indeed, his son. He called me right away. “You wanna find out what I’m really about?” he told me. “Text or call me one more time, and you’ll find out what I’m really about.”
While Mr Fiorillo wasn’t quite able to give us Mr Abdul-Rahman’s voice inflection, that sure sounds like a warning!
Back to the Inquirer. After investigating contacts the suspect made with terrorist groups, more was discovered:
But the investigation into the teen entered a new phase over the past several weeks after he began amassing equipment including tactical gear, wiring, chemicals, and devices often used as detonators, Maguire said.
FBI agents surveilled him as he bought materials to make homemade bombs on Aug. 7, and on Aug. 8, U.S. Customs and Border Protection “provided records revealing 14 international shipments of military and tactical gear” to his house, prosecutors said in a statement. They added that he’d also taken steps toward assembling them into explosives and testing them in recent weeks.
“These purchases quickly escalated this case into a threat and a priority for our office,” Maguire said. “This was now a situation where we believe public safety was at risk.”
As agents descended on his home Friday, they found what Maguire described as a “significant number” of firearms but no completed bombs in the house. She declined to elaborate on whom those guns belonged to or where they were stored.
Let’s be clear here: if the suspect, who might be the elder Mr Abdul-Rahman’s son, but was, at any rate, living in his house, received “14 international shipments of military and tactical gear” to his house, those shipments were received at the elder Mr Abdul-Rahman’s house! Mr Abdul-Rahman is an attorney, and had to know that receiving such shipments was probably illegal.
Did the elder Mr Abdul-Rahman know that there were a “significant number” of firearms in his home?
If the juvenile suspect is Mr Abdul-Rahman’s son, it’s hardly a surprise that a father would be protective of his son. But as an attorney, he must also be aware of the limitations involved in that, and the fact that the evidence recovered was recovered in his own home. Was he stupid? Was he clueless? Was he ignorant of what someone living in his own home was doing?
There’s more to be learned, and revealed in this case, but one thing is clear: Islamist terrorism isn’t somehow restricted to the Middle East!
References
| ↑1 | RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. |
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Teri Carter wants “common sense gun legislation”, but that will only inhibit the law-abiding Criminals will still get firearms, because they are one of the tools of their trade
Teri Carter, of Anderson County, Kentucky, describes herself in her Twitter biography as a “Kentucky Columnist — Fighting for common sense gun laws — Rescue dogs rule”. She tweeted at 9:14 AM EDT on Thursday, August 10, 2023:
I’m going to a conference to discuss common sense gun legislation. But I can’t tell you where I’m going for safety reasons. I didn’t even know where I was staying until a few weeks ago, which I have to keep private.
What kind of civilized society lives like this?
Naturally, I asked her just where she was going to this conference, because I rather doubt it would be held someplace in which she would be in any real danger. After all, even if this conference is in Chicago or Philadelphia or Washington, it’s unlikely to be in any of the combat zone areas. Not a lot of nice hotels and conference centers in Tioga-Nicetown!
I further asked Mrs Carter:
Just what do you consider to be “common sense gun legislation”? Remember: the vast majority of shootings are being committed by people already legally prohibited from owning firearms due to their age or a past felony conviction.
Whether she’ll answer my questions I do not know. I wouldn’t be surprised if she blocked me on Twitter, but since she states that she is also a columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, a newspaper to which I subscribe, I’ll be able to see whatever she publishes there.
As of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, August 10th, there have been 258 ‘official’ murders in Philadelphia in 2023, and if that seems like a horrible number, it’s actually down from the past three years, and Philly might actually see fewer than 500 homicides this year. Lexington has seen 13 murders as of July 25th, which is just half of the number at the same week in 2023.
I would note at this point that the Lexington Police are not including in that number the murder of an unborn child, even though Rigoberto Vasquez-Barradas, 24, is charged with Fetal homicide, first degree. (KRS §507A.020), which is a capital offense.
Just after noon on Thursday, Captain Joseph Busa of the Philadelphia Police Department’s 39th District reported that his officers had arrested a 13-year-old for attempting to carjack a vehicle and in possession of stolen firearm. We noted on Monday that 15-year-old Rasheed Banks, Jr, had been arrested for the attempted carjacking which resulted in the murder of 50-year-old Michael Salerno in South Philly. Those boys were legally prohibited from possessing handguns, but did anyway, and at least in one case, the weapon in question was stolen.
So, what “common sense gun legislation” does Mrs Carter believe would have stopped young Mr Banks, or the unnamed 13-year-old, who were not only in possession of firearms they were legally barred from having, but willing to use them to try to steal someone else’s car?
It seems so simple, so simple that even the most kind-hearted leftist could understand it: criminals don’t obey the laws! They don’t care if it is illegal for them to have firearms, because firearms are one of the tools of their trade, and something they find necessary to have to ply their trade.
What will “common sense gun legislation” do if passed? Such would make it more difficult for law-abiding Americans to purchase firearms, while doing virtually nothing to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals.
But that’s all part of it: today’s left, which abhor the notion that ordinary citizens can own firearms, know that there’s virtually nothing that new legislation can do to stop the bad guys from getting weapons, but feel that they have to Do Something, so they’ll try to pass laws which will disarm the people who do obey the laws. The quaint notion that the best thing that could be done to reduce crime is to prosecute crime to the fullest extent of the law, and incarcerate criminals for as long as the law allows, seems not to have occurred to people like the George Soros-sponsored, police hating prosecutors who have been elected in some of our major cities, though, to be fair, I do not know if Mrs Carter feels that way.
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
In the Bard’s play, Henry VI (Part 2), Dick the Butcher is cast as a large and powerful man, second-in-command to the anarchist Jack Cade, in the rebellion against His Majesty the King. Dick’s most famous line is, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” I am no anarchist, but one thing is certainly true: lawyers f(ornicate) up just about everything!
The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States ought to be easy to understand:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
But, of course, there are always those, including those who are themselves guarded by armed men, who do not want Other People to be allowed to keep and bear arms. And thus we’ve had the Second Amendment violated for more than 200 hundred years, as various states passed laws to restrict Americans from owning firearms. In United States v Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876), the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment only prohibited the federal government from banning private ownership of firearms:
The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second Amendment means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress, and has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the National Government.
Under the Cruikshank decision, states, counties, and municipalities could ban the private ownership of firearms. It took until District of Columbia v Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), for the Court to hold that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, and McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010) incorporated the Heller decision to apply to the states. A full 219 years passed between the ratification of the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court finally applying it to the states.
From The Wall Street Journal:
Why America’s Gun Laws Are in Chaos
Judges clash over history a year after Supreme Court upended how courts decide Second Amendment cases—‘the whole thing puzzles me’
by David Gershman | Tuesday, August 1, 2023 | 5:30 AM EDT
The Supreme Court last summer sought to clarify its expansive reading of the Second Amendment. Instead, it set off chaos.
The decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen decreed that gun-control laws of today must have a clear forerunner in weapons regulations around the time of the nation’s infancy, regardless of the modern public-safety rationale behind them.
The Journal’s paywall begins to fad out te text at this point, but you can read the entire thing for free here.
The result: Hundreds of gun cases litigated in recent months have become a free-for-all, with lower courts conflicted or confounded about how and where to draw limits on gun rights.
“There’s all this picking and choosing of historical evidence. ‘This is too early. This is too late. Too small, too big,’” Judge Gerard Lynch of the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said during a recent argument about a new law in New York that prohibits guns in sensitive places like parks, museums and bars. “The whole thing puzzles me.”
Associate Justice Clarence Thomas is a brilliant jurist, but somehow, some way, he couldn’t just leave the Second Amendment where it was: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Instead, he created a standard under which the right of the people to keep and bear arms could be infringed, if only we had started infringing upon them early enough. This is what happens when lawyers are involved!
Of course, other lawyers, our federal, state, county, and municipal lawmakers were just never satisfied with a simple statement of rights!
In that case, the right of licensed handgun owners to carry weapons into bars and theaters could hinge on 19th-century statutes that barred drunks from carrying firearms, and outlawed guns and butcher knives in social parties attended by ladies. A case decided last fall held that the federal ban on guns with obliterated serial numbers was unconstitutional because unmarked guns were perfectly legal in the 18th century.
The Bruen case launched the upheaval. In that decision, the Supreme Court said New York couldn’t require concealed-carry applicants to prove a dire need for self-protection. The 6-3 opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas and endorsed by five fellow conservatives, said the restrictive licensing rules violated the Second Amendment right of ordinary, law-abiding citizens to carry handguns for self-defense.
The opinion rejected the practice of lower courts considering the public-safety intentions of gun laws being challenged. The courts often found that the government’s goal of curbing gun crimes and mass shootings outweighed the liberty interests of gun owners.
That practice watered down gun rights, the opinion said. Instead, Thomas wrote, to pass constitutional muster, gun restrictions within the scope of the Second Amendment must be deeply rooted in historical precedent. Governments defending them bear the burden of showing that their laws are similar, or at least analogous, to firearm regulations widely enforced around the time of Second Amendment’s ratification in 1791.
Dion Green spoke to other gun-violence survivors at the Supreme Court ahead of the Bruen case oral arguments in 2021. PHOTO: LEIGH VOGEL/GETTY IMAGES
As we have previously noted, gun laws are almost uniform across Pennsylvania, because state law does not allow local governments to impose legislation on firearms which is stricter than the state law. Yet Philadelphia, with just over 12% of the Keystone State’s population, has suffered slightly over half of the murders in the Commonwealth. If “gun laws save lives,” as the left claim, shouldn’t we see homicide rates relatively even across the state?
There is a lot more at the Journal original, much of it dealing with older laws being contemplated by today’s lawyers and judges, in their attempts to see if yet another gun control law passes constitutional muster. And this is the problem with Justice Thomas’ opinion: he added a standard, one very loosely defined and giving lower courts very little guidance, when the simplest standard is the words of the Second Amendment, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Near the end of the article comes the point I found most important. U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn of East St. Louis, Ill., ruling against the state’s assault-weapons ban, said:
Can the senseless crimes of a relative few be so despicable to justify the infringement of the constitutional rights of law-abiding individuals in hopes that such crimes will then abate or, at least, not be as horrific? Likely no.
That’s the point the gun-grabbers can never seem to address: why would taking away the right of law-abiding Americans disarm criminals, who by definition, don’t obey the law?
Who knows? Perhaps Justice Thomas just could not get the rest of the majority to agree that the Second Amendment simply means what it says, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms should not, shall not, be infringed. In the end, a simple and clear statement of a basic constitutional right has been messed up by lawyers!