Tag: guns

The Right to Bear Toy Guns

Post author By Editor
Post date December 23, 2020
4 Comments on The Right to Bear Toy Guns

Elizaveta Zlatkis could be jailed for up to a quarter century.

What heinous crime has she committed? Prepare yourself: she kept a stash of guns in her home.

Well, toy guns . . . used as props.

Not real armaments, pretend armaments.

New York City police confiscated 21 starter pistols and toy replicas that, according to the NYPD’s own lab reports, cannot fire bullets. And “one actual firearm” that the police acknowledge “was rendered ‘inoperable’ because the trigger, hand grip and internal components were all missing.”

“We do videos with them as props,” attests a rapper named Crucial.

“That’s wild,” he says of the prosecution. “They’re fake.”

NYPD cops acted on a tip — standard prelude to many a dastardly home invasion by putative officers of the law — in raiding her home in December 2019.

It’s been a nightmare for Ms. Zlatkis ever since.

She thinks she’s innocent, refusing a plea deal. Meanwhile, the prosecuting attorney, Melinda Katz, won’t drop the charges.

What’s next? Raids of toy stores and movie studio warehouses?

BearingArms.com stresses one aspect of the lunacy: Zlatkis is facing decades behind bars for heaping toy guns while thugs arrested “for actually shooting someone are quickly returning to the streets.”

The guns are fake, and the charges too — if only this story were fake! Unfortunately, it is the believable kind of unbelievable. In the increasingly creedal crusade against guns, the kookier, more cultish element appears to dominate.

The DA and everyone else pursuing this case after the guns had been examined are the ones who should face charges for hounding this woman — not that exercising the right to keep and bear fully functional arms should be a life-destroying offense, either.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people Second Amendment rights

Self-Defense Is for Everybody

Post author By Redactor
Post date January 21, 2020
2 Comments on Self-Defense Is for Everybody

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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Second Amendment rights

Poked, Stoked and Woke

“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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Assault on Second Amendment Ricochets

Post author By Redactor
Post date December 24, 2019
1 Comment on 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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judiciary national politics & policies Popular Second Amendment rights

Packing

“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.

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education and schooling Second Amendment rights

Finna Be Lit?

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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