Tag: gun control

Not Tired of Winning

The title of a Wall Street Journal op-ed by lawyers Paul Clement and Erin Murphy, “The Law Firm That Got Tired of Winning,” is not strictly accurate.

As reported there and in an accompanying Journal editorial (“You Won Your Gun Case. You’re Fired”), the law firm Kirkland & Ellis did tell Clement and Murphy to quit their Second Amendment clients or quit the firm. But not because it was pushed past the edge of exhaustion when these attorneys won a major U.S. Supreme Court decision affirming the Second Amendment right to carry a concealed firearm.

Of course, the op-ed title is ironic.

We all know that it’s the terror of the vituperative left that’s got Kirkland & Ellis suddenly gun-rights-shy and welshing on a prior agreement. In 2016, when the firm recruited Clement, he required as a term of employment that he be able to retain clients involved in Second Amendment litigation.

Clement and Murphy write that it is no novelty for lawyers to represent controversial clients and no virtue to abandon them for light and transient causes. Moreover, the Constitution “isn’t self-executing”; it depends on lawyers willing to take on controversial cases and judges willing to hear the best arguments for both sides.

So, rather than abandon clients of long standing, they’ve left Kirkland & Ellis.

Kirkland & Ellis has every right to run its affairs this way. But prospective clients should think thrice before entrusting their fate to such a firm.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom Second Amendment rights

Dis-Armoring the Public

According to the government of New York State, it should be as easy as possible for a mass shooter to do the job.

No, this is not the stated goal of the “landmark legislative package” signed by Governor Hochul. It is merely what the result will be . . . to the extent that these new laws further prevent innocent persons from arming and armoring themselves.

You see, determined killers have no qualms about evading gun-control laws, or much difficulty evading them. In New York, these laws now include a prohibition on selling body armor to anyone not a member of “specified professions” like the military and law enforcement.

Lawmakers and the governor ignore the slew of categories of other people who may have reason to especially protect themselves in public: unpopular people, famous people, wealthy people, people living in crime- or riot-ridden areas, and nervous people who, in the judgment of somebody else, may be going overboard.

All have a right to protect themselves.

But that’s a right not now defended in New York, whose politicians prefer to enact silly “performative” legislation banning “devices incapable of offensive use.” New Yorkers are just not supposed to notice that, in preparing to commit their crimes, bad guys do often use many of the same tools used by good guys to defend themselves . . . or just to eat steak (knives have been used to commit crimes) or go to the store (as cars can kill on purpose as well by accident).

It seems unlikely that governments will one day also restrict sales of steak knives and four-wheeled vehicles to members of specified blessed professions. But the dictates of mere common sense provide no assurance here.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Spree Shooter Shot Dead

handgun, self defense, freedom, 2nd Amendment

We need to be reminded every now and then that shooting rampages can often be stopped as soon as they start — if only a good guy with a gun is on site and willing to use it.

Or good gal.

Dennis Butler, a 37-year-old with an “extensive criminal history,” recently targeted the attendees of a party in Charleston, West Virginia.

Earlier, someone at an apartment complex had asked Butler to drive more slowly because there were children around. This made him feel explosive rage. So he fetched a semi-automatic weapon that he owned illegally and started firing into a crowd of party-goers at the complex.

A woman with a gun and presence of mind happened to be at the party.

“She’s just a member of the community who was carrying her weapon lawfully,” says police spokesman Tony Hazlett. “And instead of running from the threat, she engaged with the threat and saved several lives.”

No one in the crowd was reported to be injured.

I hope that if this heroic woman had been carrying her weapon unlawfully, relevant authorities would have cut her some slack. But it’s good that she didn’t have to deal with such a complication.

Butler is dead — shot multiple times by the woman with a gun. Police haven’t reported her name.

Just as well. We wouldn’t want her to become a target of gun-control groups upset that she used a pistol rather than sharp words to dissuade Butler from killing everybody.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Not Saving Lives

Virtue signaling won’t stop a mass shooter.

Nor will scoring political points.

If we earnestly want to focus on preventing these horrific attacks, let’s stop wasting everybody’s time advocating new laws that we already know, had they been in effect, would not have stopped the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting.

Or the recent massacre in Buffalo.

Or virtually any other murder spree.

“On the specifics,” Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan asked Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), “how would your federal background check have stopped either of these two shooters in Buffalo and in Texas? Neither of them had criminal records.”

“I just don’t get into the trap of having to write a law for the last mass shooting that captured the nation’s attention,” the senator responded, arguing that “on the same day of the shooting in Uvalde, there were 100 plus other people in this country who died.”

Sen. Murphy was anything but frank, certainly, but it was an admission that his proposal is clearly not geared toward stopping massacres by gunmen.

Americans should ignore the political circus, realizing that the politicians are working on other agendas while these killers have serious and often completely untreated mental health issues. Let’s concentrate public policy — and everyday neighborliness — there.

Lastly, while some dismiss the value of “thoughts and prayers,” I do not. There is a social, emotional, spiritual element that I think we totally discard when all we can talk about is what a bunch of corrupt folks in Washington “must do” to solve our problems.

On the other hand, a return to a culture of mourning, thoughts and prayers might at least sober up those drunk on power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights Second Amendment rights

Students Fight Back

Everywhere, assaults on freedom and free speech are going full blast. Violent True Believers are on the march as others, even if less overtly barbaric, provide cover, an excuse.

For example, the State University of New York at Binghamton has cooperated with left-wing thugs to suppress conservatives.

The mob stole or destroyed posters and the table students were using to promote an appearance by Arthur Laffer, the noted supply-side economist. The same mob also disrupted the lecture itself. A lawsuit brought by the victimized students accuses officials of failing “to take action to defend College Republicans’ constitutional rights” and supporting the “physically abusive actions of the College Progressives.”

Another student under attack is Austin Tong. Recently, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has been going to bat for Tong, a Fordham University student suspended for social media posts.

One is a picture of Tong holding (not pointing) a legally owned rifle, intended to draw attention to the Tiananmen Square massacre. The other shows black police captain David Dorn, who was murdered by looters. Its caption chastises members of the Black Lives Matter movement for apparent indifference to Dorn’s fate.

Before suspending him for “bias” and “threats,” university personnel showed up at Tong’s house to interrogate him about the posts.

Tong is unapologetic, and FIRE says that Fordham has “acted more like the Chinese government than an American university, placing severe sanctions on a student solely because of off-campus political speech.”

Far from isolated cases, unfortunately.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Second Amendment rights

Tulsa Shooter Stopped Dead

Post author By Redactor
Post date April 1, 2020
4 Comments on Tulsa Shooter Stopped Dead

Some killers are easier to stop than others.

The coronavirus pandemic is proving very hard to stop.

But one good guy with a gun and presence of mind can stop a different kind of would-be killer — an active shooter — instantly. This is what happened last week outside of a Tulsa marijuana dispensary.

Apparently angered by some earlier altercation with somebody, a woman started shooting at customers. By the time the Tulsa Police arrived, she was dead. A bystander with a concealed carry permit had returned fire, stopping her before she could hurt anyone. He was questioned and released by police, who reviewed video of the scene.

At BearingArms.com, Cam Edwards decries the under-reporting of the story. One local news station even “completely miss[ed] the fact that an armed citizen saved lives,” instead making it sound as if the guy just walked up to the woman at random and shot her.

“Journalistic malpractice,” Edwards calls it.

It’s easy to see why a story like this might get lost in the shuffle given everything else that’s going on now. But even in (relatively) normal times, many in the media tend to strenuously ignore — sometimes even willfully distort — the facts about how persons bearing arms have used deadly force to stop others wielding deadly force from killing innocent people.

What we always hear is true: guns are not independent agents.

Persons wield weapons for good or ill.

And it is decidedly good when an armed civilian draws and fires a weapon to stop an evil shooter from doing criminal harm.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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