Tag: Second Amendment

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general freedom privacy Second Amendment rights

Second Amendment Privacy Act

gun control, Second Amendment, self defense, surveillance state

If you live in Georgia and have recently bought a gun or are about to, good news!

Governor Kemp has signed the Second Amendment Privacy Act to protect the financial privacy of persons buying guns and ammo. Georgia is the fourteenth state to enact such legislation.

According to Lawrence Keane, a lawyer with the National Shooting Sports Foundation, this means no more collusion between financial companies and the government to spy on the private finances of gun owners.

At least not in Georgia.

States must institute these protections because enemies of our right to bear arms have started using financial transactions as way to penalize gun owners. It would be nice if the federal government enacted equivalent protection. But given our present federal regime, the chances of that happening anytime soon are slim.

The main thing the Act does is prohibit financial institutions from requiring that a firearm code be associated with purchases of guns and ammo that you make using a credit card. When banks flag your purchase in this way, it’s easy to target you for sanctions like cancelling your account or maybe adding you, without any good reason, to a government watch list.

The Second Amendment Privacy Act also prohibits using existing firearms codes to discriminate against gun owners. So it protects people whose purchases have already been code-​flagged, not just people who buy a gun now.

It’s progress. Thirty-​six states to go.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom national politics & policies Second Amendment rights

The CDC on Self-Defense

CDC, gun control

This April, a Nashville homeowner shot an intruder intent on burglary.

Also this month, a St. Louis apartment dweller shot an intruder who threatened to kill his family.

A Newport Beach homeowner recently shot an intruder as well.

Aside from the obvious, what do such incidents, often in newspapers, have in common? The government is hiding research about them.

In December 2022, Fox News reported that to appease gun control activists, the Centers for Disease Control had deleted reference to a study on how often guns are used in self-​defense from its published research.

The CDC-​commissioned study by Gary Kleck showed that “instances of defensive gun use occur between 60,000 and 2.5 million times” annually. But in 2021, after being lobbied by the gun control activists, the CDC pretended that Kleck’s study didn’t exist.

Kleck said: “CDC is just aligning itself with the gun-​control advocacy groups.… ‘We are their tool, and we will do their bidding.’ And that’s not what a government agency should do.”

CDC’s conduct was not new. In 2018, Capital Research had asked why the agency was “Hiding Its Defensive Gun Use Statistics.”

For decades, we’ve had abundant data on how gun owners defend themselves from violent bad guys. CDC, which investigates something or other related to this subject, won’t share all that it knows.

We can’t legally require the media to stop hiding critical information. But we should be able to require our government to stop doing so.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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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Common Sense First Amendment rights national politics & policies Second Amendment rights

Free Designs

3d printing, gun, gun rights, Second Amendment, First Amendment, gun control

The relationship between the First and Second Amendments is closer than commonly believed.

This is especially clear in the 3D gun printing story, the subject of yesterday’s Common Sense, “Progressive Designs.” As I finished the copy, a news story broke: U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik “muzzled Defense Distributed with a court order,” as Declan McCullagh puts it. 

And then, as McCullagh goes on, a mirror site appeared. Though Cody Wilson, the man behind Defense Distributed, immediately took his plans offline, “the Calguns Foundation, the Firearms Policy Coalition, and other civil rights groups” published plans for “AR-​15, AR-​10, Ruger 10 – 22, Beretta 92FS, and other firearms” on their sites.

This made my footnote especially relevant, for it was there that I noted that “plans like this have been available on the not-​exactly-​easy-​to-​access Dark Web for some time.” And now Cody Wilson’s precise “freely downloadable computer-​aided design (CAD) files,” though “dark” on his site, are bright elsewhere.

McCullagh admits that though it is certainly “possible that Defense Distributed may lose this legal skirmish and be prevented from returning its instructions to the DEFCAD site,” since such plans are now everywhere, and not easily stoppable, constitutionally, the “Second Amendment, it turns out, is protected by the First.”

Which is, of course, natural enough — for the Second Amendment’s protections of self-​defense has held power-​lusting politicians at bay, keeping Americans freer than citizens anywhere else. What other country has better free speech protections?

All freedoms help each other, reinforce each other.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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crime and punishment education and schooling general freedom ideological culture responsibility Second Amendment rights too much government

What to Do

guns, gun control, second Amendment, school shooting,can we do nothing?

Another school shooting — more dead and injured, many more terrified by the violence. And, in its wake, more demands for 

  • gun control,
  • schools as hardened targets, and
  • mental health initiatives.

Oh, and finger-​pointing at video games, too. 

So what should we do?

  1. Stop publicizing the names of these school shooters and plastering their faces all over the media. 

I’m specifically not calling for any new law or government regulation. These criminals’ names must be publicly available. Let’s not reduce transparency in government one iota. Instead, let’s demand that our favorite media do the public-​spirited thing: don’t make these killers personally infamous. I’ve written about this danger, which even the ancients recognized, before.

  1. Fix the background check database. The main system for preventing bad people from getting guns relies totally on checking gun purchasers against a database that is full of holes.

Late last year, a man convicted of domestic violence and with documented mental health issues passed the background check to purchase the weapon he used to murder 26 people in a Texas church. The Air Force had failed to transmit his criminal record to the FBI. If our elected officials, on both sides of the “gun control” issue, are serious about saving lives, they will concentrate first on making certain the background check database is complete, and systematically updated.

  1. Give students greater choice. 

Being a teenager isn’t easy. The more choice they have in the schools they attend and the type of bullying education they receive, the better — not only for their education, but for their mental well-​being, too. 

Let’s face it: we cannot prevent all future acts of violence. And should be wary of those who claim they can. Still, we can take action. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability crime and punishment education and schooling ideological culture national politics & policies responsibility Second Amendment rights

Cowards All Around

Scot Peterson, Parkland, police, pension, Broward County, Florida, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, guns, gun control, second amendment

Just-​retired Scot Peterson is a millionaire, thanks to the generous taxpayers of Broward County, Florida.

You know Peterson as the sheriff’s deputy assigned to protect students at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, who, instead of entering the building where the shooter was mowing down 17 unarmed students and teachers, protected himself by waiting outside.

Peterson claimed “he remained outside the school because he didn’t know where the gunfire was coming from,” noted BuzzFeed. But “[r]adio transmissions from the day of the shooting have since contradicted Peterson’s defense …”

Following the cowardly non-​performance of his duty, Peterson promptly retired and began drawing his pension. As the Sun Sentinel newspaper reported Tuesday, his monthly check is for $8,702.35 — an annual salary of $104,428.20.

Should the 55-​year-​old live to the age of 75, he’ll draw more than $2 million.

In fact, the cowardly Peterson is being further rewarded with a $2,550 annual raise — earning more in retirement than he was earning while actually working.

I use the word “earning” and the phrase “actually working” loosely.

Reacting to the news, the father of one of the murdered students called Peterson’s lavish pension “disgusting” and “outrageous.”

Recoil at the thought of this derelict policeman raking in such mega-​moolah during decades of retirement — but that isn’t the only outrage.

How can Broward County afford to pay even their bravest police officers millions of dollars in retirement?

They can’t … for much longer.

Regardless, elected officials dare not do anything about it. They fear incurring the wrath of public employee unions … and risking their own pension windfalls.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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