Tag: guns

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media and media people Second Amendment rights

Self-Defense Is for Everybody

Virginia, guns, 2nd Amendment, race,

Last week, Virginia’s infamous black-face governor claimed to possess “credible intelligence . . . of threats of violence surrounding” Monday’s “Lobby Day” gun rights rally in Richmond, including “extremist rhetoric similar to . . . Charlottesville in 2017.” 

Major media outlets went on a rampage, repeating his linkage between gun rights supporters and “white nationalists” faster than semi-automatic fire.

“Big media and mainstream media be damned,” announced a Virginia man recorded at yesterday’s event, and tweeted by social media entrepreneur Michael Coudrey. 

The unidentified but obviously black demonstrator jested, at first, that he was “out here because I got roped into it by the group of guys you see standing to my right.” But then he explained his opposition to “Governor Northam and the Democrats’ gun control” as well as “every news piece you’ve seen on this this weekend. . . .”

He objected especially to the incessant race angle — “as if it’s nothing but white rednecks and hillbillies out here who care for the Second Amendment. I work at a gun store part-time and I can’t tell you the number of customers I see of all races, all colors, all creeds who care about the Second Amendment.”

His account was corroborated by Julio Rosas, a senior writer at Townhall.com, who tweeted “pictures of people carrying rifles at the #VirginiaRally and more evidence that debunks the narrative that the rally is filled with racists and white supremacists.”

Yesterday, more than 22,000 pro-gun people of all races descended on the capitol in a completely peaceful exercise of First Amendment rights in defense of Second Amendment rights . . . making Richmond the safest city in America. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

NOTE: There was only one arrest at the rally, a woman charged with violating a 1950-era law against wearing face masks (like Hong Kong’s law). Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) voiced her displeasure that there weren’t more arrests.

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Poked, Stoked and Woke

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam

“Let’s have an honest conversation based on fact,” Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam chided in his annual State of the Commonwealth speech before assembled legislators last week. 

“Not fear.”

Last year, fear was more popular. In the frightful aftermath of a Virginia Beach city employee shooting and killing 12 co-workers, Northam was quick to call a special session of the legislature to pass gun control legislation. 

Republicans said no, however, and adjourned.

With Democrats newly in control of both chambers of the state legislature, the governor now runs interference for “a package of eight gun-restricting measures, including universal background checks; banning assault-style weapons; requiring owners to report lost or stolen guns; and a ‘red flag law’” — along with raising the legal age to purchase a gun from 18 to 21. 

“When the General Assembly passes new guns safety laws,” proclaims Attorney General Mark Herring, a Democrat, “they will be enforced, and they will be followed.”

In response, Virginia’s many Second Amendment defenders are stepping up. Already, more than 110 cities and counties have declared their status as Second Amendment sanctuaries.

“These resolutions have no legal force,” informs the AG, adding, “and they’re just part of an effort by the gun lobby to stoke fear.”

Oh, yes, unmistakable stoking has occurred. On January 20, the Virginia Citizens Defense League is organizing a massive lobby day at the capital, where the stoked will politically poke their delegates.

Join us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* You may recall Northam as that fellow whose personal medical school yearbook page contained a photo of a man in black-face next to someone donning a KKK robe. First, the governor apologized, then reversed course, claiming he had no idea how the picture mysteriously materialized into the yearbook — though he acknowledged other instances of wearing black-face in the past. A limited investigation by a law firm hired by the medical school came to no conclusion and the media seemed to move on.

** Herring apologized for his own blackface past.

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Virginia Governor Ralph Northam

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Popular Second Amendment rights Tenth Amendment federalism

Assault on Second Amendment Ricochets

guns, 2nd Amendment, Virginia, Washington, gun rights,

Were gun owners expected to roll over and play dead?

After the November 2019 election, Democrats took over the Virginia statehouse. A slew of gun-control bills were soon in the works, including proposals for expanded background checks, a ban on “assault” weapons, limits on magazine capacity, and seizure of legally owned guns if the owner should be deemed “dangerous.”

Defenders of the right to keep and bear arms expect that the precedents lawmakers are working to establish would soon be expanded. And not without reason. After all, many advocates of gun control regard all private ownership of guns as “dangerous.”

In response, more than 100 Virginia counties have passed resolutions declaring themselves Second Amendment Sanctuaries, with many sheriffs voicing their support. In response to the response, the gun grabbers pledge to call in the National Guard if law enforcers don’t grab guns on command. 

The state’s attorney general has declared the Second Amendment resolutions null and void.

This sanctuary movement began before November’s election. Indeed, it began elsewhere.

Last January, I wrote about sheriffs in 25 out of Washington State’s 39 counties that have pledged not to enforce a citizen-passed gun control measure while it is being challenged in court. David Campbell, on the board of Effingham County in Illinois, reports that his county was among the first in the country to pass a Second Amendment Sanctuary resolution — in April 2018. Seventy Illinois counties have also passed such resolutions. Kentucky counties are following suit. Locales in Colorado, Oregon, and New Mexico are also on board.

Something has started.

As with state nullification of federal marijuana laws, the story isn’t over: a major  constitutional conflict approaches.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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guns, 2nd Amendment, Virginia, Washington, gun rights,

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judiciary national politics & policies Popular Second Amendment rights

Packing

Beto

“Are you proposing taking away their guns?” 

“I am,” replied former Texas Congressman Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke to ABC World News Tonight anchor David Muir’s question. If, anyway, “it’s a weapon that was designed to kill people on a battlefield.” 

“Hell, yes,” he added, later in last week’s Democratic presidential debate.

“We’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”

Yesterday, I noted that U.S. Senator Kamala Harris seemed oblivious to any consideration of the constitutional rights of citizens to “bear arms.” Today, consider the constitutional work-around both Democrat presidential contenders support. You see, when they talk about confiscating your guns, they do not intend to go to all the hard work of changing the law of the land. They plan, instead, merely to change the High Court — something the president, with a majority of Congress, can do — and have the new justices re-visit the legal interpretation.

O’Rourke “spoke openly after launching his run,” informs Politico, “about expanding the high court to as many as 15 judges.” Fox News reported that he “is open to making drastic changes to fundamentally reshape the Supreme Court — essentially court-packing, with a twist.”

The “twist” is the scheme that I wrote about in March. In a bizarre nod to bipartisanship, O’Rourke would have Republicans select five justices, Democrats select five more, and then have those ten judges select yet another five. 

Only tradition and public opinion have kept the highest court in the land from previous hijackings.

Is Republican opposition all that stands in the way now?

Gives a whole new meaning to the question: Are you packing?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Beto

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education and schooling Second Amendment rights

Finna Be Lit?

safe2tell, tip, guns, gun control,

On the face of it, it seems like a good idea. 

After the horrific Columbine school shooting spree of 1999, “Safe2Tell” was invented to provide students, parents and schools a telephone/online interface (including iOS and Android) to report suspicious gun-related behavior.

But the devil is in the . . . ideas ricocheting in the heads of the people doing the implementing.

A student of a Loveland, Colorado, high school posted to social media his excitement about going shooting with his mother, with photos of several handguns and an AR-15. He expressed his enthusiasm with “Finna be lit,” which, Jay Stooksberry of Reason explains, means “going to have a fun time.”

Somebody anonymously alerted the Safe2Tell system, and the police stopped by the lad’s home while he was still out shooting. 

Was the anonymous notice earnest? Or was it, instead, something far more ominous? Kids have dubbed the alert system “Safe2Swat,” referring to “swatting,” which, The Complete Colorado explains, “is a term that is used when someone deceptively sends police and other emergency services to another person’s address through false reporting of an emergency or criminal action.”

Though the police were quick to dismiss the worry, the local school was not. “The following morning,” as Stooksberry tells the tale, the lad’s mother “received a voicemail from the Thompson Valley School District, stating that, until further notice, her son was not allowed to return to school.”

While the administration finally relented, its handling of the situation led to the student being harassed at school by other students.

Who may have “swatted” him in the original report.

Not a fun time — “finna be NOT lit”?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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partisanship Second Amendment rights

The Word Is

Inigo Montoya

“You keep using that word,” said Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride. “I do not think it means what you think it means.”

He might as well have been talking to David Hogg — not Vizaini — and young Hogg’s March For Our Lives gun control advocacy group. 

The word?

Partisan.

“On Wednesday,” writes Christian Britschgi at Reason, “the group released its Peace Plan for a Safer America with the ambitious goal of reducing gun deaths and injuries by 50 percent in 10 years.”

Among the issues their plan — a sort of “Gun New deal” — aims to tackle is the Supreme Court’s make-up of justices who support a common sense reading of the Second Amendment, which Hogg & Co. characterize as the result of “partisan political influence and interference.”

Favoring the right to bear arms or opposing socialized medicine isn’t “partisan” any more than favoring gun control and “Medicare for all.” We use the word “partisan” when members of parties behave in ways that align with their respective parties for little reason other than power, or when they cannot muster or even try for bipartisan support for their legislation.

When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama pushed through “Obamacare” without one Republican vote, that was partisan only because the Democrats could not muster any support across the aisle, quite astounding for a major new program.

Regarding the Supreme Court, we should remember that the standard for judgment is neither party nor policy, but constitutional law.

March for Our Lives wants a “national conversation” on restructuring the Supreme Court.

A better conversation would deal with actual partisan perversity.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Inigo Montoya

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general freedom ideological culture

The Atrocity Exhibition

atrocity, exhibition, shooting, violence, guns, control, 2nd Amendment, boy, white,

News commentary can seem like a race, commentators reacting as if to the crack of the starting-gun, scrambling to make sure they do not come in last.

Yet, in stories like this weekend’s round of mass shootings, being last to comment might be something to aspire towards. 

As I have argued before, mentioning perps’ names has a tendency to encourage further mass murders, spree murders. But in cases of outright terrorism — as the El Paso shooting was immediately classified — the frenzy to comment is pretty much the same thing as using names. 

How?

Well, terrorism is the use of violence to effect political change. The old anarchists and syndicalists called it “propaganda by the deed.” And, in a mass- and alt-media drenched democratic society, the aim is to get people to go into alarm, in part by getting tongues tapping and keyboards clattering.

Focusing on terrorist murders does feed the idea that terrorism somehow works.

So, when Democrats immediately talk about racism and the need for gun confiscation (both seen on Twitter immediately after the El Paso event, of course) and Republicans leap to the “mental health” issue and . . . video games (as I saw inching across the news chyrons) . . . my urge to comment dissipates dramatically. 

But here I am.

Politicians can demand new laws to restrict firearms, or video games, but those laws won’t prevent future mass shootings. 

Nor do I hold any hope that we can perfectly police against white nationalists like the manifesto-writing El Paso killer or lewd socialists such as the Dayton shooter. 

Our best hope is to save kids from growing into angry, disaffected, violent adults.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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MSNBC Goes Caracas?

Venezuela, guns, 2nd Amendment, self defense. socialism, rights,

Expressing the surprise in some quarters that Venezuelan despot “Maduro is hanging on,” MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell went to reporter Kerry Sanders to make sense of the tense situation in Caracas, that nation’s capital.

“Not only hanging on, but he appears to still control the military,” Sanders replied, explaining: “You have to understand, in Venezuela gun ownership is not something that’s open to everybody. So, if the military have the guns, they have the power, and as long as Nicolás Maduro controls the military, he controls the country.”

Oh, I certainly understand. In fact, I’ve never heard a more clear, concise and irrefutable argument for the importance of our Second Amendment right to bear arms. 

And this was on MSNBC . . . in broad daylight!

What wasn’t reported on the progressive network, but rather by the Free Beacon, is that Venezuela “banned private gun ownership in 2012 under Maduro’s authoritarian predecessor, Hugo Chavez.” 

“Under the new law,” the BBC noted at the time, “only the army, police and certain groups like security companies will be able to buy arms from the state-owned weapons manufacturer and importer.”

That gun ban was described by the BBC as “the latest attempt by the government to improve security.” Indeed, by disarming the public, the security of the socialist dictatorship has obviously been greatly enhanced.

Later in the day, the Spanish-language La Noche NTN24 tweeted a video of a government armored vehicle running over protesters — or, as MSNBC might remind us: unarmed protesters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Venezuela, guns, 2nd Amendment, self defense. socialism, rights,

Photo credit: Diariocritico de Venezuela

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general freedom ideological culture Popular Second Amendment rights too much government

Il Duce Cuomo

Cuomo, Mayor, New York

A federal judge has ruled that the National Rifle Association has a plausible case against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo; the NRA’s lawsuit, alleging that the organization’s rights have been violated by the governor, is going ahead.

As related by Jacob Sullum in two pieces over at Reason, Cuomo sure looks guilty. 

Indeed, the governor’s own words convict him: “If the @NRA goes bankrupt because of the State of New York, they’ll be in my thoughts and prayers. I’ll see you in court.” 

Precisely.

What has Cuomo done? “I am directing the Department of Financial Services,” he commanded, “to urge insurers and bankers statewide to determine whether any relationship they may have with the NRA or similar organizations sends the wrong message to their clients and their communities.”

Is this just regulatory business as usual, as defenders of Cuomo harrumph? Or is it a real violation of rights?

It can be both. 

This is more than “bully pulpit” power, it is actual, gun-under-the-table power — the kind you give to regulators when you set up regulatory bodies rather than establish general principles under a rule of law.

It is a problem on every level of our society, especially the federal government. But states like New York are obviously not immune.

And it reminds me of Mussolini’s method, of The Leader taking control and bullying businesses and groups to do his bidding. (For the “public safety” and to “end violence” — of course.) The essence of fascism.

It’s good to see Il Duce Cuomo get some legal pushback. 

In this Land of the Allegedly Free.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom judiciary local leaders moral hazard nannyism Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Ought Implies Cantifornia

microstamping, bullet, California, law, guns, gun control

“Strip away the absurdity,” writes Scott Shackford at Reason, “and it’s essentially a very technical ruling.”

Shackford is explaining a bizarre recent judgment of the California Supreme Court.

Politicians in Sacramento had, years ago, passed a gun control measure requiring gun manufacturers to “implement microstamping technology that would imprint identifying information on bullets as they were shot from semi-automatic weapons.” In 2014, Smith & Wesson announced that it would pull some guns from the California market rather than comply. Why? The technology just wasn’t ready yet.*

Since California’s Civil Code contains a section reiterating an old commonsense principle to the effect that the “law never requires impossibilities,” the National Shooting Sports Foundation sued to block the law.

But the group just lost.

The Court did say it could protect citizens from punishment, but it refused to nullify the legislation on constitutional grounds.

Unanimously.

Why do this? Apparently to protect California politicians in their ongoing social engineering schemes.

The dollar costs of trying to comply with impossible demands are huge, of course. But the biggest costs may be more subtle.

In moral philosophy, it is a truism to say that “ought implies can.” In natural law as understood long ago, an impossible law was thought not a law at all, justifiably ignored by anyone and everyone.

In a just state, flouting of maddening regulations like California’s would lead not merely to the defense of the absurdly put-upon citizen — as this court ruling still allows — but also to the nixing of the “impossible” law.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Shackford notes that “a cynic might theorize that this is the law’s actual intent.” I wouldn’t limit that suspicion to folks given to cynicism. Pragmatists and political scientists and almost anyone else would be placing bets on that, too.

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