Where a Hispanic Catholic, and a Computer Geek write about Gun Rights, Self Defense and whatever else we can think about.
…….
Queens: 28th Avenue & Ulmer Street, a student at the @NYPDTraining academy, training to become a @NYPDSpecialops unit, snaped his leg after falling from a helicopter while ropping down an unsecured rope. The student was airlifted to Jacobi Hospital. @NYPDnews /@NYPD109Pct pic.twitter.com/59nVYLO260
— NYC Scoop (@NY_Scoop) December 1, 2022
Ouch!
For years now I’ve watched as people lose their Twitter accounts or have their content restricted on different platforms because some woke skold doesn’t like what’s being said.
How many times has Steven Crowder been suspended on YouTube? President Trump was kicked of Twitter over false allegations. Over and over it happened. When conservatives complained that it was happening to them, some left-winger would point to some small time blogger/Twit/YouTuber and say “It’s not just the right, it is everybody and it’s fair.”
Elon Musk has been going through Twitter with the chopping axe. As he described it, he was walking around the office and every time he saw somebody that wasn’t doing anything he would ask “What’s your job?” If the person couldn’t give a good answer, he fired them on the spot.
In addition to those he fired, many quit because Elon was bringing back “hate speech” or some such horrid thing.
So Business Insider is now reporting that “Prominent left-wing activists” have been suspended (or banned). So let’s take a look a look at some of these.
“Chad Loder, an anti-fascist researcher who identified a Proud Boy member involved with the US Capitol Riots” What an interesting turn of phrase “anti-fascist researcher”. Maybe a better description would be “antifa thug?”
Chad claims that his account was suspended due to a “mass reporting campaign”. It seems a group called “Zanting” publish instructions on how to report accounts and listed Chad’s account. Of course when the antifa thug was actually suspended people celebrated.
The problem is that at no point in this article does it say what Chad was reported for doing. And just because it was organized doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right thing to do.
With Elon in charge of Twitter most of the Pedo hashtags have gotten ban hammers. In just a few weeks most of the Pedo tweets have gone away or gone underground.
Mass reporting is a tactic that the left has been using for years. They target some body they don’t like and within a short period of time a bunch of NPCs start reporting the same thing. It is sort of like all the 1 star ratings on conservative books on Amazon which read “The author is a horrible person, I refuse to read his drivel. I’d give zero stars if I could”.
Amazingly enough, Chad seems to know the people that use to run Twitters old “trust and safety” team. Quoted because trust had nothing to do with it and policing speech is never about safety for the speaker.
CrimethInc said in a written statement to Insider: “We have been using Twitter since 2008. We have never so much as received a warning. On November 25, Elon Musk banned us at the request of a far-right troll who has made a career out of targeting those who oppose fascist violence.
See, they weren’t getting warnings prior to Elon taking the helm, so they shouldn’t have been banned. “We’ve been moving around the country for the last decade killing people and nobody has said anything to us. Arresting us for murder without a warning isn’t fair”.
[Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club] said in a written statement to Insider: “Our primary account, like many others, was baselessly suspended after numerous campaigns by right-wing propagandists like Andy Ngo to silence us. The reinstatement of the most vile antisemitic, racist, and transphobic accounts coinciding with the silencing of accounts documenting them is not a coincidence. This is a clear indication of Musk’s interpretation of who ‘freedom of speech’ applies to.”
Consider this paragraph written by Insider:
Musk has described himself as a “free speech absolutist,” and reinstated several right-wing accounts that were previously banned including Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, Kanye West, Babylon Bee and more.
Ok, nothing wrong there, but here is the very next paragraph:
[Chad] said Musk’s free speech campaign is really just about “bringing back a lot of legitimate violent neo-Nazi accounts.” He has “thrown his lot in with far-right extremists and they have his ear,” and he is “in an echo chamber of his own design.”
The normal person reading this is going to read it as if Chad or Insider has said that Trump, Peterson, Kanye, and the Babylon Bee are all new-Nazis. Note that the article in question was written before Kanye was kick back off Twitter.
In 2017 the fourth circuit court heard the case of Kolbe v. Hogan en banc (full court). In that case the court held that “assault weapons” fall outside of the scope of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
In December of 2020, suit was filed again challenging the Maryland AWB. The plaintiffs (good guys) said that they felt that Kolbe v. Hogan was wrongly decided and “should be overturned by a court competent to do so.” The district court agreed with the defendants (state/bad guys) and in a decision in March of 2021 dismissed the case.
Plaintiffs appealed to the fourth circuit which affirmed the judgement of the district court.
The plaintiffs then appealed to the Supreme Court for certiorari.
The process of getting the Supreme Court to grant certiorari is complex. Papers are filed requesting, this is countered by other filings that say don’t. The court discusses the different cases and then either grants or denies cert. But in this case they didn’t grant or deny, instead they left the case in limbo.
Instead they granted cert. to New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen which was decided with a beautifully written opinion by Thomas. This struck down New York’s “good cause” and at the same time restated the Heller decision on text and history as the ONLY way to adjudicate a claim of second amendment infringement.
After that opinion was issued, SCOTUS issued a series of Grant, Vacate and Remand (GVR) in cases that had been in limbo. One of those cases was this one, Bianchi v. Frosh. So now the fourth circuit court has been told “you got it wrong, fix it.” and the state is scrambling to keep the AWB in place.
So the state presenting the issues as:
The state then spends 7 pages telling the court how “extraordinarily dangerous” “Assault Weapons” are and how the state responded with gun safety legislation.
Under Bruen none of this matters. The starting point is “does it infringe” and the ending point is “is there text and tradition for the infringement?”
In the 2017 decision in Kolbe v. Hogan the fourth came up with the bizarre idea that the most common rifle in use in the United States isn’t covered by the Second Amendment, ignoring the Supreme Courts opinion in Heller which was decided 9 years before. The reasoning in Kolbe was that the AR-15 “… are firearms designed for the battlefield.” and because they are so lethal that they are not covered by the Second Amendment.
This ignores the Miller opinion from back in the ’30s where the court said that weapons for the battlefield were covered by the second amendment and that a sawed off shotgun was not within the scope of the second amendment because nobody had told the court that they had any military use.
Again, NONE of this makes any difference post Bruen because how deadly or lethal an arm is doesn’t change its status of being an “arm” and thus part of “the right to keep and bear arms”.
The Kolbe case hinged on the fourth misreading Heller to mean that military weapons could be banned (NFA) and that the M-16 and the AR-15 are the same (except that tricky little fourth hole) and because M-16s can be used in semi-auto mode and the military and police teach their people to use semi-auto the AR-15 is just like an M-16 and ergo can be banned like an M-16.
Under Bruen it is unclear if the ban on post 1986 machine guns is constitutional and we should look forward to a lawsuit challenging all of the NFA in the not distant future. Along with country wide right to carry. Invisible lines should not make felons.
The state is arguing that even thought SCOTUS GVR (you got it wrong, dunces) the fourth actually got it right and that their decision should stand.
But if the court might decide to find for the plaintiffs, they should first send the case back to the district court. Adding another year before the case is heard at the district level and another year before it is heard at the circuit level. All the while leaving the AWB in place.
A long time ago in a school far far away I was told to write a paper. I did and got a poor grade on the paper. The teacher, correctly, pointed out that I made lots of claims in my paper but didn’t back up any of my claims with actual references or facts.
Does this sound similar:
Finally, Maryland’s assault-weapons ban is supported by the Nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation. The historical record demonstrates a tradition of regulating extraordinarily dangerous weapons (and their modifications) that pose heightened risks, are ill-suited for self-defense, and have a strong connection to criminal uses. Because the assault weapons banned by Maryland’s law are the types of weapons that fall within this tradition, the Firearm Safety Act’s prohibitions do not offend the Second Amendment.
So we now get to the nitty gritty, what laws support the ban?
1647 and 1650 (not 1791) Maryland law banning guns in the legislature), 1874 Georgia’s 1870 ban on weapons in court, and a Virginia 1786 ban on guns in courthouses. This might support courthouses as being a sensitive place. BUT it doesn’t matter, sensitive places are not in question.
And here we get to the crux of the states argument “Third, the most relevant time period for the historical inquiry centers on 1868 and the ensuing decades—when the Fourteenth Amendment made the Second Amendment applicable to the States and state officials familiar with those requirements adopted firearms regulations.”. But Heller says that 1868 laws can only be used to confirm laws from 1791, not to introduce new gun control laws.
Even with all that wordsmithing, the state declined to list any laws that support an AWB.
They then argue that laws against booby-traps allow them to ban “assault weapons.” The gist being that they banned booby-traps because they made weapons “deadlier” (they didn’t) and that means that “deadlier weapons” can be banned.
SUPPLEMENTAL BRIEF OF APPELLEES (Frosh)
The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) filed a Supplemental Opening Brief as well.
The Bruen decision leads to two important conclusions in this case. First, this Court’s decision in Kolbe v. Hogan, 849 F.3d 114 (4th Cir. 2017) (en banc), is no longer good law. In its principal holding, Kolbe expressly refused to apply the common use analysis that Bruen has now confirmed is dispositive for establishing constitutional protection for types of arms. See id. at 136 n.10. And Kolbe’s alternative holding relies on the “intermediate scrutiny” analysis that Bruen expressly overruled. Id. at 138. Indeed, the Court in Bruen expressly cited Kolbe as an example of the approach it was explicitly rejecting. 142 S. Ct. at 2126–27. Kolbe has thus been expressly abrogated by Bruen, and it can no longer guide this Court’s analysis of Plaintiffs’ challenge.
Second, Bruen demonstrates that Maryland’s ban on certain semiautomatic rifles is unconstitutional. As explained, in the context of outright bans on a type of arms, like Maryland’s ban on semiautomatic rifles here, the Supreme Court has already analyzed the relevant historical restrictions and concluded that the only justification for banning types of arms is that they are “dangerous and unusual,” meaning they are not “ ‘in common use’ today for self-defense.” Id. at 2143; see also District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 627 (2008); Caetano v. Massachusetts, 577 U.S. 411, 411–412 (2016). The rifles banned by Maryland are among the most popular firearms in the country, owned by tens of millions of Americans for lawful purposes including for self-defense and defense of the home. Maryland has made clear that it does not like the people’s desire for these firearms, but that does not change the fact that they are bearable arms that the American people overwhelmingly favor and have a right to possess. Under the Second Amendment, Maryland’s judgment is entitled to no deference at all but the choices of millions of Americans “demand[] our unqualified deference.” Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2131. Bruen thus dooms Maryland’s ban and requires judgment for Plaintiffs.
Whereas the State claims three different issues at hand, SAF says there is only one. “Does the MD AWB violate the Second Amendment?”
SUPPLEMENTAL OPENING BRIEF (Bianchi)
The fourth circuit court will hear oral arguments on Tuesday, December 6th. Docket #21-1255
This is a sad case, but interesting on how many lessons can be learned:
Quick summary: The shooter was a teacher and enraged for reasons (apparently, he had mental issues and was suspended from the school he worked at) and managed to kill 8 people in a welding shop with a shotgun and double ought buck. He arrived and left the scene in a bicycle and was taken out by a civilian with a 1981 Lincoln Continental.
Feel free to share your own lessons and conclusions.
Over the past 2 years we’ve been told that losing and calling into question the results is a threat to democracy. Thank goodness it is a threat to democracy because I don’t live in a democracy. I live in a representative republic.
Of all of the things that a president does, I believe that the most important is appointing judges. Most importantly appointing judges to the Supreme Court. The people that sit on the bench make decisions that affect us all for years, maybe decades, after a president leaves office.
A good choice moves things in the correct direction, a bad choice moves things in the wrong direction.
For the left, the job of a justice is to look at society and make judgements to modify existing law to better match what is best for society or which “most” of society wants. For the right the job of a justice is to follow the law as written.
We call judges making rulings from the bench to overturn laws to fit society “legislating from the bench.” If congress passes a law that says that federal highway funds can not go to a state with any speed limit in excess of 55 MPH that is very likely within their constitutional powers. The power to tax and the power to budget are defined in the Constitution.
The President ordering that Customer And Border Patrol follow the law and apprehend people crossing the border anywhere it is not a port of entry is well within the constitutional powers granted to the President.
We, the people, granted certain powers to the federal government. Those that we did not grant to the federal government are retained by us or the states.
Laws are created in a very well defined way. A bill is created, it is voted on by a chamber, if it passes it goes to the other chamber where it is voted on, if it passes both houses it is sent to the President for him to sign or veto.
But any federal judge can place an injunction on any law extending over the entire country. We saw this with multiple executive orders under Trump and even some laws that were signed by him.
In this case, one man, unelected, gets to decide on what is or is not allowed. One man can look at an amendment to the state constitution and declare that the amendment is unconstitutional by the state constitution.
I really wish we could do that one. “Oh look, they passed an amendment restriction gun ownership to people in the militia which is the federal military. But it is unconstitutional because of the 2nd.” That is not how the amendment process works. If they were ever to pass an amendment affecting the right to keep and bear arms you can be darn sure that anything to do with the 2nd would not be allowed.
So the left lost the Supreme court. Trump managed to get three judges on to the court wich moved the court from the “living constitution” methodology to the “originalist” methodology. As the court has stated, the people had their say in regards to the constitution, when they ratified the original constitution and when they ratified every amendment to the constitution. The people spoke.
Leftist don’t get to say “well we want a do over! Things changed!” THey scream this, but that’s not how it works.
So they are attacking the court has hard as the can. I’m seeing as many as 20 articles a week denouncing the supreme court. People that had no issues with a court decision that split along party lines for the left now have weeping jags and whine that the court isn’t fair when it splits along party lines for the constitution.
