Category Archives: Right to keep and bear arms

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A junior judge takes a stupid decision

Just in case I couldn’t thing of a good subject on which to write today, my good friend Robert Stacy McCain gave me some direction!

Judge dismisses gun charge against convicted felon; ruled as unconstitutional

by Natalia Martinez | The Ides of March, 2024 | 11:47 AM EDT

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) – Prohibiting a convicted felon from possessing a gun is unconstitutional, according to a Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge’s ruling.

Judge Melissa Logan Bellows filed the order this week, dismissing the possession charge against a convicted felon and persistent felony offender, Jecory Frazier.

The motion to dismiss was filed by Louisville Attorney Rob Eggert in October on behalf of his client. Eggert claimed the state’s law does not trump the Second Amendment. Bellows agreed, making the first ruling of its kind in Jefferson County.

Trisha Lister, an attorney at Eggert’s office, wrote the motion.

She believes Bellows’ opinion was well-written.

She told WAVE News Troubleshooters the Second Amendment does not single out convicted felons. She said the charge has been not been equally enforced and is used as a way to keep people of color from having guns. Lister stated over 70% of those prosecuted on that standalone charge are minorities.

And there we have it: the attorneys for the defendant were concerned that “over 70% of those prosecuted on that standalone charge are minorities,” so naturally, the lawyers assumed that such a statistic was generated by racism rather than the possibility that “over 70% of those prosecuted on that standalone charge are minorities” because over 70% of the violations of KRS §527.040 were committed by minorities. That statistic is not addressed in Judge Bellows decision.

The .pdf file of Judge Bellows decision is here, and it is fairly brief, only eight pages.

The Judge based her ruling on District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), which established that the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, not one restricted to the militia, and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022), which set the standard that restrictions on our Second Amendment rights must have a significant history based on the original understandings of our rights, rather than something novel.

The Court held that “when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct” and the Government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

The Judge then launches into an argument I find strained:

In Heller, the Court stated that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons . . .” 554 U.S. at 627. The majority opinion in Bruen makes no mention of Heller’s reference to felon in possession laws. Instead, the admonition appeared in a concurring opinion. 142 S. Ct. 2162 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring).

A curious argument, given that Heller specifically stated that felons could be barred from owning weapons, and Bruen did not overturn that part, because Bruen made no mention of that particular part, the Court must not have meant for it to continue. This alone is a point of contention that I suspect the Commonwealth will appeal.

But, to me, the oddest part of the Judge’s argument is that, other than one sentence in which she noted that the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, she ignores it completely. Perhaps the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Jefferson County did not bring it up, even though it is through the Fourteenth Amendment that the Court ‘incorporated’ the individual right to keep and bear arms to the states, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010). The Fourteenth Amendment specifically states, in part:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Emphasis mine.

It’s simple: the Fourteenth Amendment specifically allows the states to deprive a person of his constitutional rights if due process of law is followed, and the felony convictions of Jacory Frazier were obtained through the due process of law.

Let me state clearly here: I am not an attorney!

So, who is Judge Bellows? She was elected Judge of the Kentucky Circuit Court for Circuit 30, division 7, in 2022, in a non-partisan race, to an eight-year term. People unfamiliar with the Bluegrass State’s judicial system might jump to the conclusion that she was appointed by either Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) or the evil President Trump, but neither is the case.

Defense Attorneys make all kinds of outlandish arguments to try to get their clients off, and in most cases, those arguments don’t work, even though judges do have to take such arguments seriously. In this case, a junior judge took an outlandish argument very seriously, and actually agreed with it.

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In the wake of two shootings when students were boarding SEPTA buses, Jenice Armstrong wants fewer criminals put in prison

My good friend Daniel Pearson — OK, OK, we’ve never actually met, but we’ve interacted on Twitter, so that should count! — tweeted yesterday that he believed “the single most effective way to keep Philadelphia’s children safe would be passing common sense gun control measures.” An editorial writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Mr Pearson is a liberal Democrat, but he’s not the far-left whacko type, and you can peacefully and politely interact with him.

Mr Pearson’s tweet follows the news in the City of Brotherly Love as twice this week, as twice bullets rang out at SEPTA stops where students were catching bus rides home from school: the shooting at the “Five Points” intersection of Rising Sun and Cottman Avenues in the Burholme section of Northeast Philly left eight students from Northeast High School wounded, while Dayemen Taylor was killed, and four others injured at another bus stop shooting, this time on Ogontz, also in North Philly.

Naturally, all of the Powers That Be in Philly are upset, appalled, aghast, and spewing a lot of words. Philly’s softer-than-Charmin-on-crime District Attorney, Larry Krasner, said that the Ogontz shooting brought him to tears, and promised “swift justice,” saying, “This is an absolute outrage. It will be solved, and those responsible will be vigorously prosecuted.” Yeah, uh huh, right. Odds are that, when the suspects are identified, it will be determined that they had previous ‘contact’ with the criminal justice system, and they suffered almost no consequences.

For now, police are focused on recovering more evidence and chasing down tips, (Deputy Police Commissioner Frank) Vanore said. Investigators believe the three shooters were likely juveniles, he said, which makes it all the more concerning that they each had a handgun.

In other words, those “common sense gun control laws” that Mr Pearson advocated were already being broken, in that it is already illegal for juveniles to possess and carry handguns in Philly. Given that they used a stolen, blue Hyundai Sonata, which was later abandoned in Olney, as their getaway car, and that they sprayed more than 30 shots into the crowd, it would seem that the malefactors really don’t give a damn about laws.

But today, Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong decided to tell us that the city shouldn’t be locking up people for gun crimes!

Philly program keeps gun offenders out of prison. I’m all for it.

Over the years, I’ve become more skeptical that incarceration is the answer to all our crime problems.

by Jenice Armstrong | Thursday, March 7, 2024 | 6:00 AM EST

I love a graduation ceremony, and the one I attended last month was no exception.

But this one was a little different. For starters, it took place inside a courtroom at the Juanita Kidd Stout Center for Criminal Justice in Center City. Also, there was no playing of the quintessential graduation song, “Pomp and Circumstance,” no wearing of caps and gowns. The graduates were dressed in hoodies, jeans, work boots, and other casual attire. There were few family members present, although one graduate carried a small daughter on his hip.

Each had successfully met the requirements for a new diversionary program called the Alternative Felony Disposition program. Created in 2021 by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, with input from the Center for Carceral Communities at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Work, the program allows people with no prior criminal record who have been arrested on illegal gun charges to avoid jail time. The current crop of graduates, who began the program in July, had been assigned social workers they met with regularly. They also had been expected to attend group sessions with other defendants.

There’s more at the original.

Miss Armstrong has forgotten one obvious thing: those who are locked up, for gun crimes as well as other offenses, are not out on the streets, stealing Kias and Hyundais to use as getaway vehicles from planned shootings.

I also better understand that crime is a complex problem — one that Philly can’t expect to arrest its way out of. I agree with officials who say the city’s focus should be on the long-standing structural and systemic issues that drive people to arm themselves illegally, such as underfunded schools, government neglect of impoverished and broken neighborhoods, and a bloated justice system that targets poor and Black and brown city residents.

Miss Armstrong just can’t seem to understand, or at least admit it if she does understand, that the criminal justice system “targets poor and black and brown city residents” because the majority of crime in Philly is committed by those ‘people of color.’ Perhaps ‘incarceration isn’t the answer to all our crime problems’, but it’s the answer to the vast majority of them.

It’s an interesting set of messages: Mr Pearson wants more “common sense gun control measures” to fight crime, while Miss Armstrong doesn’t want those who violate existing laws to be punished. How does that work?

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It’s just not possible that Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa committed the crimes of which he has been accused, because gun control laws would have stopped him.

New York state and city have strict gun control laws, even after the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen 597 U. S. ____ (2022), and there is no way that a 15-year-old illegal immigrant ‘migrant’ could obtain a permit to purchase or license to carry a concealed weapon in the Empire State. Therefore, despite the credentialed media stories and accompanying photographs, there’s just no way that this story could be true!

‘Armed and dangerous’ teen migrant from Venezuela cries after arrest over chaotic Times Square shooting that injured tourist

By Joe Marino, Georgett Roberts, Steven Vago, and Olivia Land | Friday, February 9, 2024 | 7:35 PM EST

A 15-year-old migrant suspected of shooting a tourist and firing at a police officer in a robbery-gone-wrong in Times Square was arrested on Friday, authorities said.

The US Marshals Joint Regional Fugitive Task Force and the NYPD tracked Venezuelan teen Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa down in Yonkers less than 24 hours after Thursday’s mayhem at the Crossroads of the World.

Photos obtained by The Post showed the young suspect, wearing a dark T-shirt, jeans and a gold necklace, being taken into custody at around 3:30 p.m. at what sources said was the home of a relative on Saratoga Avenue.

“He was crying. When he was apprehended, he was crying… Here he is committing these adult acts, that’s something you don’t expect a child to do, and then when he’s apprehended, he’s brought out in handcuffs crying,” NYPD spokesman Carlos Nieves told reporters.

At least the wannabe gangstas in Philly don’t cry when they get arrested. They do their best to present a tough guy look.

He will most likely be charged as a juvenile with attempted murder of a police officer, Nieves said, noting the case will then either go to criminal or family court.

Here’s where it gets bad: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is yet another of the liberal prosecutors who don’t believe in seriously prosecuting crimes. This kid needs to be charged as an adult, and locked up for decades, not stuck in the juvenile system, and out by 18. But, whenever he is released, he needs to be immediately deported back to Venezuela, or if Venezuela won’t take him, Antarctica.

Antarctica in shorts and flip flops!

Young Mr Rivas-Figueroa had arrived in September, and housed at a temporary shelter at the Stratford Hotel on West 70th Street. He’s also a suspect in an armed robbery in the Bronx on January 27th, and was involved in shots fired at a park on 45th Street in Midtown two days earlier.

There’s a lot more at the original.

But think about this. Venezuela under the ‘Bolivarian socialist’ Hugh Chavez banned private ownership of firearms in 2012, when this fine young gentleman was just 4 years old. He’s not coming from a culture in which people were able to own guns, and then he becomes a ‘migrant’ in a state in which firearms ownership is as restricted as the Constitution allows . . . if not more. He’s never known a life in which firearms were not restricted, yet he was (allegedly) carrying and using not just any pistol, but a .45. That’s not just falling into a life of crime, but actively planning it.

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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.

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↑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.