Category Archives: Right to keep and bear arms

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“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

It was at that point that the Journal included a photo. The speaker shown, Dion Green, has a placard that claims, “Gun laws save lives.” That’s certainly what the left claim, but is it actually true?

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!

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Philly District Attorney who doesn’t enforce existing gun laws wants “bipartisan, common-sense gun control legislation” He wants gun laws that impact law-abiding citizens, not the criminals

I have seen the image at the left used many times, though a site search on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website for “We do not believe that arresting people” yielded zero returns. However we did document something very similar:

District Attorney Larry Krasner, who has reduced prosecutions for illegal firearms possession when the police have made the arrests, said[1]100 Shooting Review Committee Report, page 30 of the document, page 32 of the .pdf file.:

The urgency of Philadelphia’s crisis of fatal and non-fatal shootings will not be met by looking away from shootings. As noted above, City Council has led a valuable “100 Shooter Review,” a title that makes clear what we already know: that shootings are the primary issue. Our efforts must be focused on preventing shootings and holding people who commit shootings accountable, and we should not accept arrests for gun possession as a substitute.

And:

This office believes that reform is necessary to focus on the most serious and most violent crime, so that people can be properly held accountable for doing things that are violent, that are vicious, and that tear apart society. We cannot continue to waste resources and time on things that matter less than the truly terrible crisis that we are facing.

And[2]100 Shooting Review Committee Report, page 30-31 of the document, page 32-33 of the .pdf file.:

Gun possession arrests that involve no violent acts present a secondary and important frontier in curbing gun violence, but must be targeted to distinguish between drivers of gun violence who possess firearms illegally and otherwise law-abiding people who are not involved in gun violence. On the one hand, the cases of people charged with 6105[3]There are two main categories of illegal gun possession cases in Philadelphia: Possession of a firearm by a person who has been prohibited from carrying gun due to a past serious conviction or other … Continue reading (prohibited person in possession of a firearm) are carefully scrutinized to do individual justice, which will usually look like vigorous prosecution. On the other hand, another criminal charge that applies to people who have no felony conviction (carrying a gun in Philadelphia without having obtained a permit in Philadelphia) is only a felony in Philadelphia. The exact same offense in every other county in Pennsylvania (carrying a firearm without a permit to carry) is only a misdemeanor offense.

Why do I bring this up? The District Attorney was in Harrisburg today, shilling for “bipartisan, common-sense gun control legislation.” The obvious question arises: if Mr Krasner and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office is not going to prosecute the gun control laws already on the books, when the malefactors are already in custody, just what good would “bipartisan, common-sense gun control legislation” do?

Fortunately, the state Senate is controlled by Republicans, and the state House of Representatives, which had a bare 102-101 Democratic majority, is now down to a 101-101 tie, after a Democratic Representative resigned. Under House rules, the Democrats will retain parliamentary control, but they can’t run roughshod over the GOP as long as Republicans stay united.

The state House has begun its summer break, and is not scheduled to reconvene until September.

As I write this, The Philadelphia Inquirer has not yet reported the story, so whatever Philly’s George Soros-sponsored, police-hating, former defense lawyer now serving as chief prosecutor means by “bipartisan, common-sense gun control legislation” is unclear, but these things usually boil down to one thing: making it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to buy firearms, while the criminals, who don’t obey the law in the first place, won’t be stymied by new legislation.

Mr Krasner and his office believe that the real problem isn’t bad people, but “systemic racism:”

shootings are far more associated with systemic racism and the disinvestment and poverty that it has caused in Philadelphia than they are any particular criminal profile of a person.[4]100 Shooting Review Committee Report, Appendix 7, page 137 of the document, page 139 of the .pdf file.

That, of course, is pure bovine feces: everybody knows, but no one will admit in public, what “particular criminal profile” the bad guys fit. But to admit that would mean, for the left, the complete invalidation of everything they’ve been pushing for the last several decades.

References

References
↑1 100 Shooting Review Committee Report, page 30 of the document, page 32 of the .pdf file.
↑2 100 Shooting Review Committee Report, page 30-31 of the document, page 32-33 of the .pdf file.
↑3 There are two main categories of illegal gun possession cases in Philadelphia: Possession of a firearm by a person who has been prohibited from carrying gun due to a past serious conviction or other prohibition (18 Pa.C.S. § 6105), and possession of a firearm without a license (18 Pa.C.S. § 6106). The former is generally viewed as the more serious illegal gun possession statute, while the latter is generally viewed as less serious than possession by a prohibited person. Both are non-violent offenses only related to illegal possession of a gun.
↑4 100 Shooting Review Committee Report, Appendix 7, page 137 of the document, page 139 of the .pdf file.
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The ‘Wise Latina’ says the quiet part out loud.

At the annual Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at UC-Berkeley in 2001, Federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Those words were fished out after President Barack Hussein Obama nominated her to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. What can those words mean other than, as a jurist, Hudge Sotomayor would take her decisions, at least in part, based not on the law, but on her race, sex, and ethnicity.

She backed away from that statement in her confirmation hearings, “declaring it ‘a rhetorical flourish that fell flat’ and stating that ‘I do not believe that any ethnic, racial or gender group has an advantage in sound judgment,'” and she was ultimately confirmed, 68 to 31.

Well, today Associate Justice told us, once again, that it isn’t what is written in the law, or the Constitution, that is important, but people’s feelings! In her dissent in 303 Creative v Elenis, she wrote:

The meaning of our Constitution is not found in any law volume, but in the spirit of the people who live under it.[1]303 Creative v Elenis, , page 38 of dissent, page 70 of the .pdf file.

This is rather remarkable. The Justice, utterly horrified by the decision that a Colorado web designer could not be compelled to create a website for a same-sex ‘wedding,’ cited precedent after precedent telling us that the government could, and has, gotten away with both restricting and compelling various forms of commercial speech, along with dozens of citations of laws and court cases concerning equal access to commerce and commercial enterprises. Yet, after all of that long dissent, she broke down and told us that what was written in the law just flat didn’t matter. What mattered, according to our ‘wise Latina,’ is how the people who live in the United States feel about things.

This is a hugely dangerous position, but one which is hardly unexpected. Justice Sotomayor voted against religious freedom in the cases of Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley v. Sisolak and South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, but railed against the decision, this time supporting the freedom of religion and assembly in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v Cuomo. The cases were all about the same thing: the states forcing churches to close, due to the COVID-19 penicdemic, and Justice Sotomayor believed that the virus trumped the Constitution of the United States.

The good Justice also saw nothing wrong with restricting our Second Amendment rights in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen and McDonald v City of Chicago, or upholding equal protection under the law in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. The plain words of the Constitution meant nothing to Justice Sotomayor, or the other liberals on the Court, as they went through all sorts of contortions to say that somehow, some way, the rights guaranteed to us by the Constitution just didn’t matter when it came to liberal policies.

The liberals on the Court are hardly the only ones who want to massage the words of the Constitution to mean something other than what they say. The Editorial Board of The New York Times opined:

In striking down affirmative action in higher education on Thursday, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority said it had to do so because the Constitution forbids any form of racial distinction. With a single opinion, the justices overturned decades of precedents that upheld race-conscious admissions policies as consistent with the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and ignored the reality of modern America, where prejudice and racism endure.

The Editorial Board spend many words telling us why Affirmative Action is so desperately needed, yet never manage to give us a reason as to how it fits under the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Thursday’s ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by all of the Republican-appointed justices, takes a long time to make a simple — and simplistic — point: There is no real difference between the centuries of racial discrimination against Black people and targeted race-conscious efforts to help Black people. Both are equally bad, in this view.

Left unaddressed was one of the Chief Justice’s points, that, in the context of university admissions, which are a zero-sum game, helping black applicants has another effect, hurting white and Asian applicants.

There is so much more that could be said, but, in the end, it boils down to this: the left have programs in mind which elevate the programs of the government over the rights of individuals, and today’s left are fine with that. And that is why sensible people must fight the left, fight for our rights, because the left won’t help us.

References

References
↑1 303 Creative v Elenis, , page 38 of dissent, page 70 of the .pdf file.
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Karen wants to know if you have a gun

It was sometime in 2014, at a physician’s appointment when I still lived in Pennsylvania. The nurse came in to take my vital signs and ask the usual questions about my health. Then she asked me if we had any firearms in the house. I responded that such was none of the doctor’s or her business, and that I found the question offensive.

Now comes this from The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Before playdates, ask about guns at home | Expert Opinion

As a pediatrician and a parent, I approach the question of gun ownership by focusing on general safety. I ask about guns in the same breath as I ask about car seats, pools, and food allergies.

by Katie Lockwood, For The Inquirer | Tuesday, June 20, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

Sending your kid on a playdate at a friend’s house? The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that you ask whether the family has guns at home.

And at this point, I recommend that the American Academy of Pediatrics take a long walk off a short pier.

One out of three homes with kids has guns, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Of those, only one out of five homes lock up their guns and store ammunition separately.

If you live in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, and Dr Lockwood, “a pediatrician with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and associate professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania,” must either live in Philly or at least reasonably close by, and ought to know that Philadelphians have sought concealed carry permits in huge numbers due to the terrible murder rate, and if you have a firearm for family or personal protection, the last thing you are going to do is “lock up (your) guns and store ammunition separately.” When some crazed junkie is trying to break in, or the gang-bangers are out shooting up the street and perhaps your home, when seconds count, the last thing you’ll find practical is having to unlock a safe for your weapons, or go to another room to get ammunition.

Yet the question often goes unasked because we don’t know how to broach a potentially awkward conversation. Others may assume their friends don’t own guns or, if they do, know how to store them safely.

So how do you ask the question? And what do you do if they have guns?

If people “don’t know how to broach a potentially awkward conversation,” could it possibly be because they realize that it’s none of their f(ornicating) business?

As a pediatrician and a parent, I approach the question of gun ownership by focusing on general safety. I ask about guns at the same time as I inquire about car seats, pools, and food allergies:

“Without judgment, wondering if you have any guns in your home? If so, I would ask that they are locked up and stored safely. Also, we don’t have any food or pet allergies. Looking forward to getting together!”

If I was a parent with a minor child in the City of Brotherly Love, I would not take my child to see Dr Lockwood. When a physician or his office inquires about firearms, they are entering the information into your medical records, and, with the HITECH Act of 2009, which mandates that medical records be digitized, ostensibly so that other physicians can access your records if needed, it also creates a record that the federal or state government could search, a backdoor way of instituting gun registration. Pennsylvania does not maintain a firearms registry, and under Pennsylvania 18 § 6111.4, neither the state, nor any local government, nor any law enforcement agency in the Commonwealth can maintain a firearms registry.

And if pediatricians are asking children about whether their parents have firearms, without their parents present, those pediatricians should be sued into penury.

Of course, you can’t trust the government when it comes to firearms. William Teach noted, on June 18th, that:

armed IRS agents rolled into Great Falls’ (Montana) Highwood Creek Outfitters Wednesday and seized dozens of boxes of ATF form 4473s, the background check form containing information on gun purchasers.

The agents hit the store prior to regular business hours, KRTV reported.

Store owner Tom Van Hoose said, “At 7:30, I came in and they pulled in behind me with 20 heavily armed agents.”

Van Hoose believes his store is targeted because he sells guns the White House opposes: “I can only assume that it’s because of the style of weapons that we have and the press that’s so against them. The current administration seems to be hell-bent on getting those guns out of the hands of average Americans.”

The ATF form 4473 has a gun purchaser’s name, address, birthdate, state/city of birth, gender, social security number, and the serial number of any guns purchased in the store. The information is perfectly suited for use in a registry or registry database.

Montana neither requires the registration of firearms nor a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

As for asking parents of your kids’ friends, it’s pretty laughable. “Without judgment, wondering if you have any guns in your home?” Of course she’s exercising judgment; her entire article is an exercise in judgment. The only surprising thing is that her first name isn’t Karen. When Dr Lockwood continues, if someone answers affirmatively that they have a firearm, “I would ask that they are locked up and stored safely,” she’s telling the person asked, ‘If your weapons are not locked away to where they are useless, my kid ain’t coming to your place!’

Before hosting a playdate, I volunteer this information, hoping to destigmatize and normalize asking:

“Hello! Just so you know, we are a smoke-free, gun-free home with a dog and two cats. We don’t have a pool, but bring some boots for muddy play in the creek with adult supervision. Looking forward to seeing you soon.”

I doubt many of the bad guys read the Inquirer, so Dr Lockwood is almost certainly safe, even after having told everybody that there are no firearms in her home. But her statement, if it’s spoken in person the way she wrote it in her OpEd piece, sounds just so darned pretentious.

Dr Lockwood is, of course, a free human being, with the same freedom of speech as anyone else, and if she wishes to stick her nose into other people’s business ask other people if they own firearms, she is perfectly within her rights. But I, too, am a free human being, with my own free speech rights, and it is my right to urge people to react negatively to the question she wants other to ask.

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The left just don’t understand economics If liberals really understood economics, they wouldn't be liberals anymore

The American left just love to argue that certain things are “basic human rights.” Not things like our freedom of speech or religion, things which the Constitution of the United States recognizes as something we have as part of ourselves, but things which the left believe that other people should be required to provide for us.

In an episode of Blue Bloods, fictitious New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan said that the freedom of the press applies to those who own one. I’ve been on this world for seventy years now, and I do not recall anyone ever saying that if I did not own a printing press, that my constitutional right to freedom of the press meant that someone — meaning: the government — should somehow be required to provide one for me, or that The New York Times or National Review were somehow obligated to provide publication space for me. My constitutional right to keep and bear arms has never been held to mean that the government should be required to furnish a 30.06 for me to defend my farm from the critters in the neighboring Daniel Boone National Forest.

This internet thingy that Al Gore invented has provided millions more Americans with a new form of the press and has been a blessing, but yeah, I still have to pay for the internet service to use it, and the web hosting for The First Street Journal. While I have also been invited to publish on the American Free News Network, and do not pay for that, other private individuals are paying for it, of their own free choice. Given the conservative nature of AFNN, I’m pretty sure that the left wouldn’t believe that the taxpayers should have to subsidize its publication!

But they sure love declaring other things as “basic human rights,” for which other people have to pay!

Water is a basic human right. So why is Philly resuming shutoffs May 24?

The amount of money collected by shutting off service to customers who can’t afford to pay is a drop in the bucket compared to the incredible damage that shutoffs cause.

by Christina A. Roberto, Laura A. Gibson, and Robert W. Ballenger, For The Inquirer | Tuesday, May 16, 2023 | 6:00 AM EDT

During the chemical spill last March that imperiled the city’s biggest water treatment plant, nearly one million Philadelphians feared losing access to safe drinking water. Most residents are not used to living with such a threat. But many of our fellow Philadelphians will experience that fear and uncertainty every year — not because of contamination, but because of poverty.

Water security — the ability to reliably access safe water — is recognized by the Pennsylvania Constitution as a basic human right, yet tens of thousands of Philly residents have their water turned off every year because they are unable to pay their bills.

So, what does the state Constitution actually say about this? From the link provided by the authors:

The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic, and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.

So, it states that it is the responsibility of the Commonwealth to insure that the air, water, and land resources should be kept clean; it does not say that it is the duty of the Commonwealth to provide water being pumped into everyone’s homes.

Imagine if it did. That would require the state of Pennsylvania to provide the plumbing infrastructure to every mountainside home in the most remote and rural parts of the state.

We understand that the city needs to collect money from residents to maintain its water infrastructure. But the amount of money collected by shutting off service to customers who can’t afford to pay is a drop in the bucket compared to the incredible damage that shutoffs cause.

Without running water, people can’t wash their hands or their dishes, or prepare their food. They have limited use of toilets and bathing. Something as critical as a baby’s infant formula becomes highly stressful to prepare. What’s worse, water shutoffs can destroy families — unaffordable utility bills and utility service terminations are the most common housing issues requiring children to be placed in foster care. As debt accumulates from water shutoffs, it can lead to financial ruin and a downward spiral to homelessness.

Do the authors really recognize what they say they do? From their brief bios at the end of the OpEd piece, we can see that they are all ‘elites,’ professors at the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania, and an attorney, and people who earn plenty of money.

More, their argument that “unaffordable utility bills and utility service terminations are the most common housing issues requiring children to be placed in foster care” isn’t something which would be confined to water service; the same would apply to natural gas service, which many Philadelphians, especially in older homes and rowhouse neighborhoods use for heat and cooking, and electricity, which is also used for heating and cooking. More, most non-electric heating systems — natural gas or heating oil — also require electricity for activation and some for pumps.

The Water Department is seeking approval to increase the typical residential customer’s bill by about 21% over a two-year period. Without access to assistance, this proposed increase will place more families at risk for shutoffs.

So, someone has to pay for water service, right? Even the authors recognize that, yet if service terminations for non-payment were to be ended, as they advocate, then those people who can and do pay their water bills will have to pay more, because water service costs money to maintain and operate. Perhaps that doesn’t mean that much to Ivy League professors and an attorney who is also an alumnus of that private school, with estimated annual costs of $89,028 per year for undergrads, or a mere $73,494 if a local resident who can live with their parents, but a lot of working Philadelphians are living paycheck-to-paycheck, and while the 21% increase certainly reflects the inflation this country has suffered under the Biden Administration, those bills would have to go up even more if some people were, in effect, granted water service without having to pay for it.

Water shutoffs for debt collection are set to resume on May 24, posing a serious threat. Based on data from the Water Department, we estimate tens of thousands of Philadelphians lost water in a typical year before COVID-19.

Translation: the city, which also prohibited other utility service shutoffs and evictions for non-payment during the three years of the panicdemic — not a typo; panic is absolutely the proper word to apply to the country’s response — had thousands upon thousands of Philadelphians living without paying for their housing and utilities. And that raises the obvious question: if utility shutoffs for non-payment are banned, as the authors want, why would those who could pay their water bills do so?

That these shutoffs will occur during the city’s ever-hotter summers is a recipe for disaster. A healthy adult would struggle during a 90 or 100-plus-degree day with no drinking water. Imagine how it will affect children, older residents, and the seriously ill. The city’s poor neighborhoods without trees can be 15 to 20 degrees warmer than leafy areas in Chestnut Hill. Do we really want to inflict this kind of suffering on our most vulnerable citizens?

And there you have it: “Do we really want to inflict this kind of suffering on our most vulnerable citizens?” In the original on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website, that’s repeated as a ‘pullquote,’ roughly six inches across and two inches wide. But as someone who grew up in the South, who was graduated from a 1937 WPA/CCC high school without air conditioning, and who has lived more than half of my life in places without AC, I recognize that hot weather is simply a part of life, and if uncomfortable, is still part of the environment. We noted, just yesterday, that several of the city’s public swimming pools will not be opened this year as well, because, in one of our nation’s most heavily taxed cities, there simply isn’t the money to repair and open them all.

This is the part that so many on the left just don’t understand: everything costs money, and for one person to receive something he did not make himself for free, someone else has to pay for it.
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Killadelphia: Campaign canvassers for Helen Gym Flaherty prove the futility of gun control laws

As we noted on Tuesday, two ‘progressive’ campaign canvassers in Philadelphia, both carrying concealed weapons, got into a shootout on Monday. The Philadelphia Inquirer had more on the story late on Tuesday:

Family mourns loss of canvasser, as gun violence intersects with a common campaign practice

The shooting, which remained under investigation, underscored the relevance of the most important issue in the election: the city’s ongoing gun violence crisis.

by Jesse Bunch, Sean Collins Walsh, and Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, May 9, 2023 | 9:41 PM EDT

Eddie Brokenbough was struggling to make ends meet.

The 46-year-old, whom relatives described as a dedicated father of 10, experienced difficulties finding a good-paying job because, like many Philadelphians, he had a criminal record.

To supplement his income as a construction flagger, Brokenbough sometimes worked as a political canvasser, knocking on doors for organizations trying to get out the vote.

On Monday, Brokenbough was fatally shot while canvassing for the progressive group One PA by another canvasser from the same organization after the two men had an altercation.

The previous Inquirer story reported that Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom, the head of the Police Department’s homicide unit, said that the two men “had always had a beef” with each other, though what that “beef” was about has not been reported.

The shooting also underscored the relevance of the most important issue in the election: the city’s ongoing gun violence crisis. Both men involved were armed, police said, and the shooter, 22, told investigators he was acting in self-defense.

The unnamed 22-year-old shooter, with whom Mr Brokenbough apparently had an ongoing dispute, was licensed to carry a concealed weapon, and claimed that he only fired in self-defense after Mr Brokenbough drew his weapon first.

Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore stated that all of the interviews have been submitted to the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, and that office said the incident was still under investigation. Thus far, no charges have been filed, and the shooter has been released. He had a permit to carry, so there is no gun charge against him.

But next comes the real beef — pun most definitely intended — of the story:

One PA said guns are not permitted in its offices or during canvassing, and it has temporarily suspended its canvassing efforts.

Brokenbough was prohibited from legally carrying a firearm because of an earlier conviction on charges of aggravated assault and illegal gun possession, after he shot a man in the arm for speaking to his girlfriend in 2012, according to court records.

He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 11 ½ to 23 months in prison, plus five years’ probation. His conviction prohibits him from possessing a gun.

So, what happened? Mr Brokenbaugh, a previously convicted criminal with an illegal gun conviction in the past, was legally barred from owning a firearm, but did so anyway. One PA, a ‘progressive’ organization, prohibits its employees and contract canvassers, yet both of the campaign workers were carrying firearms. In a setting in which neither man, at least before they ran into each other, should have had any need to be armed, and one of which was committing a felony by carrying a weapon, both were.

Mr Brokenbough knew that he was breaking the law, and chose to do so anyway. The unnamed 22-year-old, who wasn’t breaking the law, was still violating the rules of the organization which hired him.

So, if both the convicted felon, and the law-abiding citizen, were violating the rules, why would anyone believe that passing more gun control laws would stop anyone who wanted to own and carry a firearm? And remember: these weren’t evil reich-wing Republicans here, but men working for a hard-left, socialist organization, canvassing for Helen Gym Flaherty!

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“Progressive” campaign workers, both packing heat, get into a shootout in Philly Nope, they weren't evil, reich-wing Republicans.

Screen capture from OnePA website, taken at 10:20 AM EDT on May 9, 2023. Click to enlarge.

When people tell you who they are, believe them!

What does OnePA support? They support depriving property owners of their rights by opposing eviction for non-payment of rent. They are, simply put, socialists and a group opposed to law enforcement. And naturally, they support Helen Gym Flaherty!

A Philly campaign worker for a progressive political group fatally shot another canvasser in East Germantown, police say

Both men were canvassing for the city’s upcoming primary election on behalf of OnePA. Police said it was not immediately clear what sparked the shooting.

by Sean Collins Walsh, Chris Palmer, and Ellie Rushing | Monday, May 8, 2023 | 9:44 PM EDT

A 46-year-old man was fatally shot on Monday afternoon in East Germantown while canvassing for the city’s upcoming mayoral primary, police said, in an incident that stemmed from a dispute with a 22-year-old man, who was also canvassing on behalf of OnePA, a progressive-leaning political group.

It was not immediately clear what prompted the 22-year-old to shoot the older man, and police declined to identify either of them.

The tragedy on the campaign trail came one week before high-stakes mayoral and City Council elections that have been defined by debates about public-safety issues amid the city’s ongoing gun violence crisis.

OnePA Executive Director Steve Paul said members of the group were “heartbroken, and our condolences and sympathy are with their family.”

At this point in the article, an advertisement appears, something that stops a lot of readers.

“Today, a One PA team member tragically lost their life,” Paul said in a statement. “We are mourning this senseless loss and continuing to gather the facts and investigate what happened.”

Paul previously worked in the Council office of Helen Gym, who is now a mayoral candidate running in the May 16 primary with the backing of OnePA and other progressive organizations. The group is also canvassing on behalf of Council candidates Seth Oberman-Anderson, Rue Landau, Amanda McIllmurray, Isaiah Thomas, and Erika Almirón.

So, it took Inquirer reporters Sean Collins Walsh, Chris Palmer, and Ellie Rushing six paragraphs to let readers know that the canvassers were canvassing for Helen Gym Flaherty. If a reader’s only news source was the Inky — mine isn’t — wouldn’t he wonder for whom OnePA was canvassing? I sure hope his attention span was long enough to get past the first advertisement!

The 22-year-old — who was in legal possession of his handgun — remained on the scene afterward the shooting and was taken to the homicide unit to be questioned by detectives, according to Chief Inspector Scott Small. The 22-year-old’s car was also still on the street after the crime, Small said, and OnePA pamphlets could be seen in its passenger seat.

Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore said the victim and the man accused of shooting him knew each other and began arguing after they “happened upon each other” on the 2000 block of Church Lane[1]At or near the intersection with Lambert Street, near the Church Lane Food Market, a bodega. around 4 p.m. Vanore was not certain what the argument was about, but said detectives were investigating the possibility that it related to an existing dispute.

Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom, the head of the Police Department’s homicide unit, said that the two men “had always had a beef,” and that when they crossed paths on the street, the 46-year-old pulled out a gun — which was not registered to him — and the 22-year-old then pulled his firearm, shooting the older man once in the armpit.

The shooter claimed that he was acting in self-defense, but the important part to note is that both men were packing heat, one of them illegally, while canvassing, in broad daylight, for Mrs Flaherty. No wonder the guy carrying illegally was part of OnePA, ’cause he certainly seems to support the voting ‘rights’ of felons.

The candidate, of course, prefers sending “non-police mental health mobile crisis units” to reduce the city’s “gun violence” crisis, but perhaps there were no social workers in the canvassing crews.

Mrs Flaherty expressed sorrow, but made it clear that the shooter and his victim were not part of her official campaign.

In a statement issued Monday night, Gym said she was “devastated to hear about the tragic death of a canvasser today.”

“My thoughts are with the family of the victim, the One PA community, and everyone impacted by this irrevocable loss,” Gym said. “Though the canvasser was not part of our campaign, this loss is deeply felt by all of us.”

If Mrs Flaherty, who promises to “Get illegal guns off our streets,” and to “Provide interventions to stop those in the path of violence,” had anything to say about people canvassing for her carrying guns, the Inquirer never mentioned it.

References

References
↑1 At or near the intersection with Lambert Street, near the Church Lane Food Market, a bodega.
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Solomon Jones and his very bad timing

Solomon Jones is a columnist for The Phila-delphia Inquirer, and, according to his biography blurb at the bottom of his column, “is the author of ‘Ten Lives Ten Demands: Life and Death Stories and a Black Activistʼs Blueprint for Racial Justice.’ Listen to him weekdays from 7 to 10 a.m. on WURD 900 AM.” Amusingly enough, the amazon.com blurb for his book calls it a “manifesto,” with these demands to “rectify racial injustice.” Copyrighted in 2021, I do wonder if, given the current Democratic candidates for Mayor of Philadelphia, whether he still adheres to his demand to “Defund the police and move funds to trained social workers, mental health professionals, and conflict resolution specialists.” Even Helen Gym Flaherty no longer says that, though I would not be surprised if she didn’t move in that direction if she wins.

Unfortunately for Mr Jones, his latest column is a masterpiece of lousy timing. Continue reading →

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The credentialed media don’t understand their home state! Once again, the Lexington Herald-Leader is out of touch with Kentuckians

We have previously reported how the Lexington Herald-Leader, a McClatchy newspaper, follows the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, and refrains from publishing the photos of black suspects and convicted criminals, and does not refer to race in its criminal reports, though somehow, photos of accused criminals who are white manage to make it into the newspaper.

So, imagine my surprise when reporters Taylor Six and Aaron Mudd wrote this line:

Connor Sturgeon, a white male who police said was live-streaming the shooting, was a former employee at Old National Bank, the site of Monday morning’s shooting.

Naturally, I took the screen shot of the sentence, before it vanishes into the ether.

Authorities identify former Old National Bank employee as Louisville shooter

by Taylor Six and Aaron Mudd | Monday, April 10, 2023 | 4:10 PM EDT | Updated: 9:52 PM EDT

Louisville Metro Police have identified a 25-year-old man as the shooter who killed five people and injured several others before he was fatally shot by police at a downtown bank Monday morning.

Connor Sturgeon, a white male who police said was live-streaming the shooting, was a former employee at Old National Bank, the site of Monday morning’s shooting.

The new details emerged during a Monday afternoon press conference attended by city officials and Gov. Andy Beshear, who said he’d lost a close friend in the shooting.

According to police, officers were dispatched to Old National Bank Monday morning for reports of an active shooter. When they arrived, the shooting was ongoing, but the shooter was reported dead soon after.

Louisville Metro Police Department Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel named him Monday afternoon during a press conference. She said Sturgeon was formerly an employee with Old National Bank and assumed he was a Louisville resident.

According to the police chief, Sturgeon was killed by police gunfire. He was reported to have used a “rifle,” although police did not specifically state what type.

There’s a little more at the original, but nothing that hasn’t been all over the news. The story mentions that the killer was a “former” employee of the bank, but does not state what several other sources have, that he was discharged by the bank.

Naturally, the Herald-Leader’s primary columnist wants gun control:

After Louisville shooting, it’s time to get out our bullhorns. We’re sick of gun deaths. | Opinion

by Linda Blackford | Monday, April 10, 2023 | 12:28 PM EDT

Have we had enough yet?

Exactly two weeks after a deranged shooter killed six people in Nashville, three of them precious, innocent children, a deranged shooter killed four people in Louisville (the shooter also died), and sent eight more to the hospital.

Also see: William Teach, “Gun Grabbers Push Gun Grabbing Immediately After Leftist Nutjob Kills People“

There have been 131 mass shootings — defined as more than four people dead or injured — THIS YEAR alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Almost 10,000 people have died from guns since Jan. 1.

Today made 132. The archive updated its numbers as police gave their final reports.

A tsunami of “thoughts and prayers” from politicians will now roll down, hoping to drown us in distraction from the fact that they could stop this if they wanted to.

If we made them.

After several more paragraphs blaming “the guns,” Mrs Blackford comes up with a statement she has made before, and one she knows is a lie:

But once again, gerrymandered political districts do not represent the will of the people, who are sick of seeing people, children, die for nothing but a perverted misunderstanding of our founding fathers.

“Gerrymandered”? In 2020, Republicans dramatically increased their number of seats in the Kentucky General Assembly, from 61-39 in the state House of Representatives to 75-25, and in the state Senate from 28-10 to 30-8. But those gains happened under the district lines passed following the 2010 Census, when Democrats controlled the state House, and a Democrat was Governor. Republicans did not take over control of teh state House until after the 2016 elections; they did previously control the state Senate, including prior to the reapportionment.

Republicans did increase their seats in the 2022 election, up to 80-20 in the House and 31-7 in the Senate. Interestingly enough, the Democrats never even fielded candidates in 44 of the House districts, so there was no way they could even think about regaining control. In my own district, no serious Democrat ran in the primary, and a perennial kook candidate won the nomination, a candidate so bad that the state Democratic Party disavowed him.

Is there gerrymandering? In 2020, President Trump received 1,326,646 votes from Kentuckians, 62.09% of the total, while Joe Biden got only 772,474, or 36.15%. President Teump carried 118 out of the Commonwealth’s 120 counties, losing only Jefferson (Louisville) and Fayette (Lexington). In the same election, Senator Mitch McConnell won 1,233,315 votes, 57.76%, while his well-funded Democrat opponent, Amy McGrath Henderson received only 816,257, 38.23%. Mrs Henderson carried only three counties, Jefferson, Fayette, and Franklin, which included the state capitol of Frankfort.

In 2022, Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian Republican, won 913,326 votes, 61.80%, to Democrat Charles Booker’s 564,311 votes, 38.19%.

Those were statewide elections, which means there was no gerrymandering possible. Mrs Blackford might argue gerrymandering at the margins of the 2022 General Assembly races, but a difference of two or three would hardly matter against the GOP’s overwhelming majorities.

Mrs Blackford called the Commonwealth’s gun laws “a perverted misunderstanding of our founding fathers,” but that completely ignores history. When what became the Second Amendment was written, it was by the generation which had just won a revolution against Great Britain. In 1775, the military Governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Gage, had ordered gun control himself, ordering the confiscation of firearms and ammunition from the wretched colonials. It was to seize reported storehouses of gunpowder and ammunition that General Gage sent the redcoats to Lexington and Concord, resulting in the shot heard ’round the world, and the first battles in our revolution. Does Mrs Blackford seriously believe that the revolutionaries who began that war fighting against gun control by the British would not have meant for individuals to have the right to keep and bear arms.

In 1791, when the Second Amendment was ratified, many Americans lived on or very near the frontier. Does Mrs Blackford believe that the “founding fathers” would have thought the government could ban individuals from owning firearms when they had to hunt for game to put meat on the table, and be able to defend themselves from the Indian tribes? Does Mrs Blackford believe that when her home state of Kentucky was settled by white families, that the “founding fathers” would have believed it acceptable for the government to have the authority to ban individual ownership of firearms when the settlers needed to hunt for food and defend themselves from the Cherokee and Shawnee Indians who already lived here?

There were no telephones in the late 18th century, and homesteads could be pretty far apart. There were no police departments on the frontier. The first organized, publicly-funded professional full-time police forces in the United States were established in Boston in 1838, New York in 1844, and Philadelphia in 1854. If a bad guy was raiding a homestead, would the “founding fathers” have thought that the government could ban the private ownership of firearms by individuals, leaving them unable to defend themselves?

Mrs Blackford’s biography says that she “writes columns and commentary for the Herald-Leader. She has covered K-12, higher education and other topics for the past 20 years at the Herald-Leader.” Twenty years, huh? That means entirely in the 21st century, on computers and word processors, exercising her freedom of speech and of the press via giant printing presses and an internet which allows distribution of her words widely across the Herald-Leader’s service area, which is central and eastern Kentucky, and even around the world if someone chooses to search. These are certainly things of which the “founding fathers’ had no concept! If we were to accept the columnist’s ideas that the “founding fathers” certainly never meant for the Second Amendment to cover what it covers today, then wouldn’t we also have to say that the First Amendment does not cover more than a megaphone or a hand-set newspaper printed entirely by manual labor?

We have previously documented the newspaper’s endorsement history, and how the voters of the sixth congressional district and the commonwealth as a whole almost always vote the opposite from how what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal want.

When I moved away from the Bluegrass State at the end of 1984, the Herald-Leader was a broadsheet publication, and if not the size of Louisville’s Courier-Journal or The Philadelphia Inquirer, still a reasonable newspaper for central and eastern Kentucky. I used to deliver the old morning Lexington Herald and afternoon Lexington Leader in Mt Sterling, and when I returned to the Bluegrass State in 2017, I could see just how far downhill the newspaper had gone. Just a few pages, no longer a broadsheet, and visibly on its last legs. That, too, is freedom of speech and of the press, as, presented with the other news alternatives of television and radio and the internet, the people of the newspaper’s service area have chosen against it.

Perhaps that is why Mrs Blackford personally, and the newspaper’s editors in general, have lost touch with what used to be their service area. They now reflect only the opinions of the state’s second-largest city, and while it’s a significant voting block, it isn’t the majority of even the sixth congressional district. Mrs Blackford may blame it all on gerrymandering, but it’s the newspaper and her which are out of touch with Kentuckians, not the state legislature.
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