Category Archives: Right to keep and bear arms

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An uplifting story in the Lexington Herald-Leader

It seems that a car thief from the greater Cincinnati area helped himself to an early Christmas present: someone else’s car. What he didn’t realize was that he was in f(ornicate) around, find out territory.

Couple tracks stolen car to Kroger and shoots accused thief, Kentucky police say

by Mike Stunson | December 20, 2023 | 9:01 AM EST

The vehicle into which the stolen Ford Focus smashed. It’s just a Chevy, so it couldn’t have been worth much anyway. Screen grab from WKRC.

An accused car thief was shot outside a Kroger when the car owners tracked their vehicle across state lines, Kentucky police say. Continue reading →

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The only way to end protests which stop traffic is to not stop traffic for protesters.

The Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal came up with an absolutely brilliant idea, but one which will not work:

Tort Law vs. the Anti-Israel Protesters

If DAs won’t prosecute, victims can sue for false imprisonment.

By The Editorial Board | Thursday, December 28, 2023 | 6:49 PM EST

Idiots block traffic near LAX to demand Gaza ceasefire.

Normally we wouldn’t wish trial lawyers on our worst enemy. But as anti-Israel demonstrations grow increasingly lawless, the plaintiffs bar could help. Why not hit protesters who break the law and keep Americans from getting to their destination with a tort liability suit for false imprisonment?

On Wednesday anti-Israel protesters blocked access to JFK and LAX airports in New York and Los Angeles, respectively. The laws of New York and California, like most states, recognize the tort. While there is no precedent applying this tort to road-blocking protesters, it fits the offense. The purpose of these demonstrations is to block the road to keep people from getting to the airport — deliberately and against their will.

Continue reading →

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Israel and the Second Amendment

Armed Israeli police, Via Dolorosa, near the fourth Station of the Cross, November 13, 2022. Photo by D R Pico, may be freely used with proper attribution.

Before the October 7th attacks, Israel had nothing like our Second Amendment. Though not a European nation, Israelis have a very much liberal European attitude toward liberty and social controls, and that includes European attitudes on gun control. The Times of Israel noted:

Gun control in Israel is relatively strict, and firearm licenses are generally only granted to those who can show a need for extra security in their line of work or daily life. Meaning, one of the key criteria for a private citizen to receive permission to own a gun is where they live.

We think of Israel as being a heavily armed nation, replete with images of soldiers carrying automatic weapons, and the near-universal military draft for men and women alike, but that’s not the case. Even in the kibbutz near the border with Gaza, most weapons were kept not in private residences, but central armories, and, hit with a surprise attack, few residents had time to arm themselves, and they were met with torture, rape, and murder. The Times of Israel, just three days after the attack, still put a loosening of gun control laws as a “right-wing” issue: Continue reading →

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Will Russell Rickford fight for that in which he believes?

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 →

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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 →

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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

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

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.
↑2 I use a desktop, not a laptop, because I hate laptops, I despise laptops, I abominate laptops.
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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.

Continue reading →

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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 governor temporarily suspends open, concealed carry across Albuquerque: ‘Violence at every turn’

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.