Tag Archives: #SecondAmendment

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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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Teri Carter wants “common sense gun legislation”, but that will only inhibit the law-abiding Criminals will still get firearms, because they are one of the tools of their trade

Teri Carter, of Anderson County, Kentucky, describes herself in her Twitter biography as a “Kentucky Columnist — Fighting for common sense gun laws — Rescue dogs rule”. She tweeted at 9:14 AM EDT on Thursday, August 10, 2023:

I’m going to a conference to discuss common sense gun legislation. But I can’t tell you where I’m going for safety reasons. I didn’t even know where I was staying until a few weeks ago, which I have to keep private.

What kind of civilized society lives like this?

Naturally, I asked her just where she was going to this conference, because I rather doubt it would be held someplace in which she would be in any real danger. After all, even if this conference is in Chicago or Philadelphia or Washington, it’s unlikely to be in any of the combat zone areas. Not a lot of nice hotels and conference centers in Tioga-Nicetown!

I further asked Mrs Carter:

Just what do you consider to be “common sense gun legislation”? Remember: the vast majority of shootings are being committed by people already legally prohibited from owning firearms due to their age or a past felony conviction.

Whether she’ll answer my questions I do not know. I wouldn’t be surprised if she blocked me on Twitter, but since she states that she is also a columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, a newspaper to which I subscribe, I’ll be able to see whatever she publishes there.

As of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, August 10th, there have been 258 ‘official’ murders in Philadelphia in 2023, and if that seems like a horrible number, it’s actually down from the past three years, and Philly might actually see fewer than 500 homicides this year. Lexington has seen 13 murders as of July 25th, which is just half of the number at the same week in 2023.

I would note at this point that the Lexington Police are not including in that number the murder of an unborn child, even though Rigoberto Vasquez-Barradas, 24, is charged with Fetal homicide, first degree. (KRS §507A.020), which is a capital offense.

Just after noon on Thursday, Captain Joseph Busa of the Philadelphia Police Department’s 39th District reported that his officers had arrested a 13-year-old for attempting to carjack a vehicle and in possession of stolen firearm. We noted on Monday that 15-year-old Rasheed Banks, Jr, had been arrested for the attempted carjacking which resulted in the murder of 50-year-old Michael Salerno in South Philly. Those boys were legally prohibited from possessing handguns, but did anyway, and at least in one case, the weapon in question was stolen.

So, what “common sense gun legislation” does Mrs Carter believe would have stopped young Mr Banks, or the unnamed 13-year-old, who were not only in possession of firearms they were legally barred from having, but willing to use them to try to steal someone else’s car?

It seems so simple, so simple that even the most kind-hearted leftist could understand it: criminals don’t obey the laws! They don’t care if it is illegal for them to have firearms, because firearms are one of the tools of their trade, and something they find necessary to have to ply their trade.

What will “common sense gun legislation” do if passed? Such would make it more difficult for law-abiding Americans to purchase firearms, while doing virtually nothing to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals.

But that’s all part of it: today’s left, which abhor the notion that ordinary citizens can own firearms, know that there’s virtually nothing that new legislation can do to stop the bad guys from getting weapons, but feel that they have to Do Something, so they’ll try to pass laws which will disarm the people who do obey the laws. The quaint notion that the best thing that could be done to reduce crime is to prosecute crime to the fullest extent of the law, and incarcerate criminals for as long as the law allows, seems not to have occurred to people like the George Soros-sponsored, police hating prosecutors who have been elected in some of our major cities, though, to be fair, I do not know if Mrs Carter feels that way.

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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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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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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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