A friend was recently contacted to do a funeral. They were told that they were the 12th minister that the family had contacted in an attempt to find a minister to perform the funeral. In this case the person had died and had already been cremated so the funeral was happening in October, a couple of months after my friend was contacted.

What was it that made it so difficult to get a minster for a funeral? Simple, the family has some native american beliefs and they wanted the minister to say a native american prayer during the service. My friend said “yes.” No other minister would do it. The prayer in question wasn’t outlandish. It was a very Christianized version of the original prayer.

Why would so many of these men of faith refuse?

They are right wing extremists.

When you go looking for “intolerant assholes” you don’t have to look much further than christian churches (and can’t speak of other synagogues, I leave that to J.Kb.). We have all heard about the mega-churches where you send your money in order to be saved and anybody that hadn’t been saved was going straight to hell.

It is a trope in movies, videos and books. The religious leader that is intolerant of whatever it is they are currently hating on. Footloose it was dancing. In other cases it was singing, or bright colors. Or who you decided to marry. The Devil’s music has been at the receiving end of intolerant religious assholes, as have computer games and different movies.

It is easy to list these types of intolerances and point and laugh at the “extremist, intolerant right-wing”. It is an easy target.

You can point to the leaders, in my youth it was Jerry Falwell. He of the silent majority and “good christian virtues” that had the ear of politicians trying to ban everything that appealed to the puritanical nature of people.

You can always find the leader of these institutions. I’ve run into them. A preacher gave a surmon and he got a bunch of history flat out wrong. After the service I went to speak to him. I addressed just one part that he got totally wrong. Gave him references outside of the bible and in the bible.

“I went to seminary, we are just going to have to agree to disagree.”

His mind was so closed he couldn’t hear anything he didn’t want to hear. I’ve had much better interactions with other preachers. One asked me why I didn’t come to church. I invited her to visit my church. She came, I took her to a glade on our property about a half mile into the forest. There we sat for a while under the blue sky. We said a prayer.

When we walked out she said “I understand.”

But, this isn’t really about “intolerant right-wing assholes.”

What it is really about is left wing extremists.

During the height of the mostly peaceful protests we had the “black block” and “antifa” and other left wing extremists doing horrible things to our cities and our country. When they were called out the media gleefully claimed that there was no such thing as an antifa organization.

The media lectured us that antifa was working for the good. It was right there in their names, anti fascist. Obviously they were good. Sort of like the “German Democratic Republic” which wasn’t a democracy nor a republic.

The left is a disorganized mob. The Ray Epps of this country play them like a fiddle. They know exactly who they are to hate at today’s 2 minute hate. They are told, but not by some leader. They are told by instigators within the mob.

When Trump was running for the nomination he was getting 100% positive media attention. Every media outlet was more than happy to give him free air time. It was always “Trump is so much better than …” and you would hear the name of whoever the front running was in the primaries that particular day.

And the left wing extremist chanted in unison their love for Donald J. Trump.

My wife was amazed at all the positive attention a Republican was getting. I told her that the positive attention would last until the instant that Trump got the nomination, if he did. At that moment, the media would turn on him with a single mind to attack.

Which is exactly what happened.

The left has many more extremists than exists on the right, they just take their marching orders from a distributed command and control system.

Still, it is worse than just having an extremist on the left. Their intolerance is for people, not ideas, words or even actions. It is of people.

Most Christians will have a “Hate the sin, love the sinner” type of outlook. At least the ones I know. If you are doing something “sinful” then I might hate that sin and still love you. If you do a sinful thing, I might still love you but advocate for you to be put to death.

I hate exactly one person. And it isn’t either of my ex-wives.

The left hates people. If you are guilty of wrongthink, you are evil. If you are evil then you can be a target of hate.

Some left wing extremists shouts at you and that is ok. You say a mean word and you are evil and should be hated.

“These illegal aliens include members of MS-13, a horrific evil group.”

“Trump is evil! Down with Trump.”

It isn’t the idea that we should close the border that they hated, no it was the man that suggested that we do it.

It isn’t the concept of “all lives matter”, it is the person that dares to say it.

Unfortunately for the left, the right is starting to respond. They are responding in ways that scare the left to the bottoms of their evil little hearts.

Have you every considered why the government is so scared of “right wing extremists”? Antifa and BLM attacked the court houses and government buildings in cities around this country with every sort of weapon they wanted. They did not gain entrance.

The right shows up and turns into a mob, the breach security and enter the build. Even as a brainless mob the right is so much more effective than the left. You do not want a bunch of right wing “extremists” deciding it is go time. They will succeed where the left would not.

Just for fun. Enjoy some good instrumentalist.

The other day my lady walked into the liquor store and bought a couple of bottles of wine. They required her to show her ID before they would sell alcohol to her. They didn’t make a record of what she bought and her official ID.

The other day I picked up meds for my wife. At the drive through window I gave her name and date of birth and they handed me some controlled substances. They didn’t even ask for my ID. Last spring I had a cold, I purchased some cold meds from that same pharmacy. I had to show my ID before they would sell to me. They did record it so that they knew how much cold medication I was purchasing.

If you walk into a store to purchase a firearm they require you to show your official identification, answer questions that extend beyond “are you a prohibited person”, fill in your current address (which must match what’s on your ID) and then the FFL records the make and model of everything you purchase. If you purchase more than two pistols (or assault weapons?) within a week he is required to file a multi-gun purchase report with the BATFE.

The form 4473 must be kept for 20 years. If the FFL retires during that time the 4473s are transferred to the ATF where they are suppose to just be kept but today they scan into a searchable database.

What law in 1791 required that you identify yourself before you purchased a firearm?

What tradition of gun laws in 1791 required a shopkeeper to keep records of who purchased what?

Is the GCA unconstitutional as it currently exists? We’ve already seen one judge strike down one part of the GCA. Is there more coming?

Thursday my daughter came to me to warn me that one of her chickens had been attacked. It was separated living quarters on the porch but that the food that had been in the bin was now not in the bin. Don’t be surprised if I hear the chicken moving around.

Sure enough, that night I heard something on the porch and it sure as heck wasn’t a chicken. A quick glance at the cameras shows that there is another racoon on the porch.

Rather than just plug my ears with ear plugs I put on my good ear muffs with the active cancelation. I can hear so clearly with them on that I forget I’m wearing them.

I grab the 30-30 Winchester and head out to the porch. Mr trash pirate heads down the steps with me covering him. Waiting for him to move where it is safe to fire. While tracking him I hear trash pirate number 2. I turn to find a BIG arse racoon.

BOOM. Again, one dead ‘coon. A work the lever and go out after number 1, calling for daughter and lady to come deal with the dead ‘coon.

I track halfway around the house and no racoon. I’m heading back towards the porch and I hear the now familiar refrain “He’s not dead!”

Since I know that I got a good center of chest shot in to ‘coon number 2 and that ‘coon number 2 was not moving when I moved out the door, something is up. I immediately start looking for racoon number 3.

Sure enough, the damn thing is hiding behind the leg of the table, his beady little eyes tracking me. I can’t put a shot into his chest. No clear shot.

There is a good shot into the T of his head.

As I start to bring the rifle up I see out of the corner of my eye both lady’s put their hands over their ears. I’m taking a bead at the center of the T. It is a target about 1 in in diameter. I check backstop again before pressing the trigger. The racoon spasms and goes into his death throes. I feel like shit. I must have missed and now the damn thing is in pain and bleeding out.

My lady says to my daughter “Its not in any pain, it is just death throes” so I’m stuck. I really can’t do anything about it.

I step off the porch and carefully bring the hammer back down.

I have had ONE unintentional discharge in my life. I was at our back yard range letting the hammer down on a Marlin 30-30 lever action with a scope. The hammer had a side extension and as I was lowering the hammer it slipped and BANG. Into the ground about 10 feet in front of me.

I swore there would never be another.

My current method is to put the thumb of my off hand between the hammer and the back of the firing pin. Then using my strong hand I hold the hammer back and press the trigger. Holding the trigger back I slowly let the hammer down. When the hammer is resting on my off thumb (or nearly so) I slip my off thumb out of the way and continue lowering the hammer.

Regardless, I lowered the hammer and continued my search for trash pirate number 1. No joy.

When I return to the porch it looks like there was a blood bath there. We removed the first dead ‘coon to process him.

We went to take care of the second and found that half his head was missing as well as his left jaw. I felt so bad. Until my lady, while picking “stuff” up picks up a piece of racoon and says “Well this is a first for me, brains.”

So it was instant death for them both.

In the mean time we’ve got one more out there. I’m sure he’ll be in the freezer soon.

What do you do if you hate armed citizens and the Supreme Court of the United States as just told you to suck it up, the right to keep and bear arms belongs to every citizen, in their homes and out? You immediately attempt to infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms in new and even more offensive ways.

Lawmakers in NJ have submitted a bill that would require people wishing to carry to get accidental discharge insurance and to have non-family references. All part of that “good moral character”. They have also increased the cost of applying for permission to exercise their rights.

Of course they have a huge list of “sensitive places” where you are not allowed to carry.

“The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year stripped away the right for states to regulate who is able to carry concealed weapons in public,” said Senate President Nicholas Scutari (D). “This bill, ensuring gun owners prove a legitimate reason for carrying concealed handguns in public, is a promising step in the right direction.”

New Jersey continues to be a leader on gun safety with laws that help keep our communities safe. This bill will help prevent gun violence with common-sense standards to require training, promote gun safety and prevent firearms from being carried into sensitive locations. https://t.co/M79Vq0350G

— Senate President Nick Scutari (@SenPresScutari) October 13, 2022

Scutari & Coughlin Announce Major Gun Safety Initiative

As always, more infringements against people that follow the law which will do nothing to stop those that are criminals.

Democratic state lawmakers rewrite gun carry laws to require insurance, non-family references to carry a gun

H/T to Pistoleer Birdog357

First, I am not a lawyer. This is my understanding as an outsider that has studied this stuff for way to many years.

We are going to start with a paraphrased incident that happened a number of years ago.

A young man got into an argument with his step-mother. He was very upset. It was the end of the line for him. So he told his parents “I’m out of here”. He packed up and was heading to a friends place that had space for him.

The last thing he did before he left is he transferred his firearms from “safe storage” in the house to the trunk of his car.

He left on a two hour trip, a two hour trip. As he was driving to his new home, he gets a call from the NJ state police. He answers. The officer on the phone is with his step mother. She is very concerned about him. Seems that she is reporting that he is suicidal and that the cop just wants to make sure that everything is OK.

Young man says “yep, I’m on my way to my friends place. Everything is OK, I’m just done with her.”

The young man terminates the conversation.

Cop calls back. Cop will just not let it go and insists that the young man return for a “wellness check”.

Having been convinced that this would just take a few minutes the kid turns around and drives back to his parents place. When he gets there the cop and he have a conversation. Cop is friendly and seems to indicate that everything is fine now that he has had a chance to talk to the kid in person. Then says “Your mother says you have some guns?”

“Yeah, they are in the trunk. I’m not going to leave them here.”

“Can I see them?”

“Sure.”

Cop opens the trunk, find the guns, properly stored. Then proceeds to arrest the kid on a firearms violation.

The cop claims the kid is in violation of NJ laws on transporting firearms because he wasn’t going to the range, going hunting, or on his way to his home.

The kid is in a world of hurt. Ends up in prison all because of a wellness check and some fucking unconstitutional laws.

At trial, the kids lawyer claimed that the kid was protected by the 18 U.S. Code § 926A – Interstate transportation of firearms and that the law was unconstitutional.

The court ruled that since it wasn’t interstate transportation it wasn’t protected. They then ruled that since the 2nd amendment only applies to the militia and not to individuals the law was constitutional.

The judge made the ruling regarding constitutionality based on rulings from the 3rd circuit court.

In the US, courts are layered. At the bottom is the district court, above that is the circuit court (appeals court) and above them is the supreme court. The rulings of the supreme court cover all courts. The rulings of a circuit court covers only those courts within that circuit, and a district court’s rulings can only be used as supporting arguments. When using a district court’s rulings, it is better if that court is in the same circuit.

Decisions in other circuit courts make their way into district level decisions all the time.

One of the reasons gun rights kept losing was because of a couple of opinions issued by anti-gun circuit courts.

The circuit courts said that building on United States v. Miller which said:

The Court cannot take judicial notice that a shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches long has today any reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, and therefore cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees to the citizen the right to keep and bear such a weapon.

This wording was taken as mean that the 2nd amendment did not guarantee to the citizen the right to keep and bear any weapon

This case was cited by different courts in the 1960’s and later to deny standing to people. The gist is that if you do not have the right to keep and bear arms, that it only applies to the militia, then you can’t have had your rights infringed, thus you have no standing, case dismissed.

There is a huge difference between “case dismissed” and a ruling being made. You have the right to appeal a ruling, you have no right to appeal the dismissal of your case.

This meant that every law that limited your right to keep and bear firearms was constitutional in the eyes of many many courts. The government worked hard to keep it that way. There were multiple times when the government was willing to take a loss on an individual, district court, case rather than have it move up the appeals process toward the supreme court.

It wasn’t unusual to have a state fight tooth and nail for a decision at the district and circuit court levels and then refuse to appeal to the supreme court, if there was a chance of loosing. Even when the supreme court was stacked to the left, there was always the possibility that the court would decide in favor of our rights over the governments wants.

What this lead to was laws that got that young man. The laws in NJ said it was legal to transport a firearm directly to and from your home. The fact that the kid turned around and drove back to talk to the cop meant that he wasn’t going directly. If the place he returned to was his home, then when he left he was in violation of the law. If his new home was the new place, when he returned he was in violation of the law.

His only option under the state’s law would have been to continue to his new home and leave the guns there. BUT, because of everything else, he could have been found in violation of a number of “you must obey the cops” type laws. They kid was screwed the moment his step mom called the police.

All of this takes us to two interesting cases, for us. The first is a case out of West Virginia. During a traffic stop the police found that Randy Price was in possession of a firearm with an “altered, obliterated or removed” serial number. As a convicted felon he was a prohibited person.

In a criminal trial, the defendant can use a number of defenses. One of those defenses is to claim that the law under which the defendant is charged is a violation of the defendants rights.

This is what Prices lawyers did. Since it was clear from the evidence that Price was in possession of the firearm, and that the firearm had its serial number “altered, obliterated or removed” if the law was constitutional then he was guilt and on his way to prison.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin ruled that the part of the GCA of 1968 as changed in 1986 was unconstitutional.

The government argued that the requirement that a firearm have a serial number and that it can’t be defaced is a “commercial regulation” and as such does not infringe one ones right to keep and bear arms.

A firearm without a serial number in 1791 was certainly not considered dangerous or unusual compared to other firearms because serial numbers were not required or even commonly used at that time. While I recognize there is an argument,
not made by the Government here, that firearms with an obliterated serial number are likely to be used in violent crime and therefore a prohibition on their possession is desirable, that argument is the exact type of means-end reasoning the Supreme
Court has forbidden me from considering. And the founders addressed the “societal problem” of non-law-abiding citizens possessing firearms through “materially different means”—felon disarmament laws like Section 922(g)(1). Bruen, 142 S. Ct.
at 2131. Under Bruen, this is “evidence that [the] modern regulation is unconstitutional.” Id.

The burden falls on the Government to “affirmatively prove that its firearms regulation is part of the [or analogous to a] historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.” Id. at 2127. The Government has not done so here, and I have no choice but to find 18 U.S.C. § 922(k) unconstitutional.
— Judge Joseph Goodwin

This case does not directly affect any of us. We are not Mr Price so it does not bear on us. It doesn’t even bear on people in the same circuit court. This is because district court rulings are not binding on any other case or court.

The government could appeal this, they will not. They will not because if this case is heard at the circuit court level and the circuit court agrees with the district court, then 18 U.S.C. § 922(k) become unenforceable for all states within that circuit court.

Normally we would say “it would become unconstitutional” That is not the language I choose to use because I agree with Judge Goodwin, the law is unconstitutional and is thus no longer law.

This little case is a first step in the dismantling of the GCA of 1968, the changes made in 1986, the crime bill of 1990 and the NFA of 1934.

We are highly likely to see this same reasoning in other courts.

Of note, Judge Goodwin was appointed by Clinton.

The second case we are watching is the CCI case(s) in NY state. The reason why this case is so important is that all of the possible loopholes in the Bruen decision are in this infringement. Every single thing that we were worried about, “sensitive places”, “good moral character”, “training requirements”, “in person interviews” and a host of other requirements are in this pile of steaming bullshit.

Unfortunately for the state of NY, the suit has been filed against them, it is not a criminal case against a single (or group) of people. If it was a criminal case, the state could fight tooth and nail and then not appeal if they lost. This would allow them to keep the law in place and every person would have to fight it individually. Because it is a suit against the state they have to fight. If they lose, they CCI will no longer be law. If they appeal they could get a win which would be appealed to the supreme court. There is a high likelihood that the court would grant certiorari, vacate and remand the case right back to the circuit court.

There really isn’t a winning path for the state of NY in the CCI. Their only hope is to delay the process as long as possible.

Bottom Line

These cases in states where we don’t live do have ramifications for us. These are the sorts of cases that lead to bigger outcomes than we expect. These are the sorts of cases that lead to removal of all permitting requirements. Or national repreprocity, or the NFA being overturned.

We live in a good time and place for gun rights.

United States v. Randy Price
Judge rules federal law banning guns with serial numbers removed is unconstitutional
Guns & Gadgets YouTube Page

Some states are just anti-gun. Some states are pro-gun. But some states go out of their way to be nasty to gun owners.

New York is my vote for the nastiest of the states right now, what with their Concealed Carry Improvement act.

The CCI was challenged and the case was dismissed for lack of standing.

The case was re-filed with multiple people saying “I’m in violation of this law.” so it has standing.

The judge ruled that it was obvious to him that at least parts of the CCI were unconstitutional so issued a temporary injunction.

The state appealed to the 2nd circuit claiming, among other things, that the temporary injunction would cause confusion for gun owners.

The 2nd circuit ruled that the temporary injection is held (not allowed to happen).

The case is going forward before the district judge.

We can expect the state to appeal. The question is how long it will take before it is ruled unconstitutional and sticks.

So my question for you all:

Do you want to hear about the status of cases like this? It is all over my feeds, I’m more than willing to pass it on but it sometimes feels like everybody else is already talking about it, what’s this blogger’s opinion really going to add?