That New York Brand again.
Three men slashed at Queens subway station https://t.co/rX4bxxfrip pic.twitter.com/hWgkMSN1C7
— New York Post Metro (@nypmetro) May 14, 2023
The good news is nobody used a chokehold to subdue the attacker before he injured the victims.
New Yorkers are MUCH better off that way.
Catalytic converter theft and violence
The other day I said the anti-gun Left trusts thieves.
If only you give thieves what they want, they won’t hurt you, do there is never any reason to use force to defend yourself during a robbery.
Let’s see how well that actually works.
Man shines flashlight down from window at catalytic converter thieves, only to be shot at
As CBS 2’s Shardaa Gray reported Thursday, Alberto Collon tried to scare off catalytic converter thieves outside his home – only to run into gunfire.
Collon woke up to what sounded like his car being tampered with.
Collon grabbed a flashlight and went to the window. He opened the shades and shined the flashlight toward the suspects – as
Collon thought this would be a harmless gesture he thought would scare off the thieves. Instead, someone started shooting at him.
The thieves trying to steal a catalytic converter were wiling to kill a man over it. He didn’t do anything more than shine a light out a window to see what was going on that made a noise and they tried kill him.
Why would anyone assume that these thieves wouldn’t committ a homicide of they robbed a convenience store or a house?
“Is your property worth killing someone over,” the Left loves to ask.
Why do they ignore that quite often the criminals have already decided that your property is worth killing you for.
Never trust a thief.
Maybe there is a sparkle of hope after all?
From this morning’s local rag:
People kill people. Transform hearts to prevent gun violence
The cycle is predictable. There is a tragic shooting. Guns take center stage once again. Aficionados on both sides emerge, one calling for more gun control, the other to push back against such laws. In the wake of the tragedy, minor changes are made to a variety of gun laws, buildings are made safer, and safety procedures are implemented and practiced. It is tragic beyond belief. And so the cycle goes – that is, until the next shooting.
While we tangentially address the mental or spiritual health of the shooter, we rarely deeply delve into this singular truth – people kill people. I have never known a gun, a knife, a bomb or any othproaches er means of death to act apart from human agency. The reason we avoid the issue of human agency is because it may prompt us to take a deeper look into the human condition, into our own souls.
People kill people. This statement is not an attempt to avoid sensible laws or to hinder sensible safety procedures. I’m all for them. It is to say that when we say that people kill people it requires us to acknowledge that inanimate objects do not kill people; people kill people. Further, it may force us to admit the notion that people are sometimes good, but inherently flawed.
It may even force us to resurrect and deal with such notions as the Judeo-Christian understandings of original sin, noting that humans are sinners by nature, choice and behavior, and are in need of transformation. Call it what you will (sin, mental health issues, psychosomatic issues); there is, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn hinted at in his June 8, 1978, Harvard Commencement speech, “A World Split Apart,” and explicitly noted in “The Gulag Archipelago,” “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, not between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts.”
What does this mean? It means that while sensible safety laws of all kinds are important, addressing the essentials of the human condition – our souls – is necessary. What I’m speaking of is not more economic opportunity or even more educational endeavors. What I’m speaking of are those cultural institutions that shape and point the human heart toward that which is good, not bad, so that angry violence is not an option.
Sadly, while violence is on the rise, the very entities that could help us – a well rounded education that teaches people how to think rather than indoctrinate them in the shallow disciplines of deconstructionism, religious institutions that focus on spiritual transformation, and familial bonds of love that teach the highest of all forms of government (that is, self-government) – are all on the decline or are mocked as insufficient means of change.
Unless we address the spiritual condition of the souls of men and women, no amount of safety procedures or gun safety laws will stem the tide of violence we’re experiencing as a culture. Why? Because, in the end, people kill people. We can outlaw guns, but if it’s not a gun, it will be a knife, a bomb, poison, a hatchet, etc., that will end up being the means of the violence that comes out of a heart that needs transformation.
Kevin Shrum is a pastor and author. He serves Inglewood Baptist Church in Nashville.
People kill people. This statement is not an attempt to avoid sensible laws or to hinder sensible safety procedures. I’m all for them. It is to say that when we say that people kill people it requires us to acknowledge that inanimate objects do not kill people; people kill people. Further, it may force us to admit the notion that people are sometimes good, but inherently flawed.
How long have we been saying this? Decades!
The Games People Play
In talking to my wife this morning, she was telling me how angry she got reading about Judge Easterbrook and Illinois’ continual attack on the Second Amendment. She couldn’t understand why they kept doing what they were doing.
There is no need to delve into the “whys” of it, it is not relevant. The only thing that does matter is that there are people who do not want guns in the hands of The People. With that, the game starts.
History
The starting point is “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
Until the National Firearms Act of 1934This is currently embedded in 26 U.S.C I,
In congress, there were robust arguments about how they could pass a law that was a direct infringement on the right of The People to keep and bear arms. In the end, they decided that the only way that they could limit access to evil guns was by taxing them out of the hands of The People.
Remember, this is at a time when the cost of a silencer was under $10. The cost of the Tax Stamp was $200. It still is $200.
This was not a ban. Anybody with enough money could pay for the tax stamp. Early enforcement was more as an “extra” charge put on a criminal when they were caught with an unregistered NFA item. In numerous instances, if a nominally law-abiding person was found with an unregistered NFA item, they were told to register it and that was the end of their interaction.
Today, the anti-gun people are perfectly happy that a tax has become a de facto ban. The cost of regulations and compliance has raised the cost of legally purchasing a silencer to well over $700. I would love to have a couple of cans. I’d love to have at least one can for my squirrel rifle.
In 1968, the Gun Control Act was passed. Again, this was not an outright ban on anything, it was just the state getting between you and your purchase of a firearm.
Which takes us to:
Modern History
In the late 70s moving into the late 90s, the anti-gun movement really picked up speed. The one gun rights organization was more interested in “Keep and bear arms for hunting and sporting” than in “Shall not be infringed”.
It is difficult to really understand what it means to be a lobbyist. It is a full-time job. Furthermore, it requires you to know people, to know who they are, what they like. To know who controls access to whom, and to be able to spend business hours doing nothing but lobbying.
And when the day is done, you get to do some more. Don’t like golf? Tough, learn to play, learn to play well enough to be a challenge but not so good that you make them look bad.
There were people and organizations that had the money to purchase lobbyists. And they were there in the halls of power pushing congress critters towards more and more infringements.
Out of this, multiple infringing laws were passed. These include the AW/LCM ban and all the state and local bans on carrying.
The Courts
There are three levels of courts we are interested in. The District court is the lowest federal court. They report to their Circuit Court of Appeals. In turn, the Circuit Courts report to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court consists of 9 judges. The Circuit courts have at least 9 members and often more.
A District court has a single Judge. They decide the legal questions presented and for all other questions of evidence, a jury is used. The parties can request that the Judge also act as the jury.
The judge decides if the plaintiff(s) have standing. Once that is determined, the case starts moving forward.
The case is documented in the court “docket”. The docket is a record of every official communication between the court and the parties.
Once the case is opened, the defendants will be informed. The defendants then start the process of responding to the accusations. This almost always starts with attacking standing. The goal is to get the case dismissed for procedural reasons.
Here’s the thing, a case dismissed for procedural reasons can be refiled if the procedural error is correct.
This process takes months.
In the simple sequence, the plaintiff (good guys) ask for a Preliminary Injunction with an optional TRO.
The TRO is to stop something from happening until the court can determine if a Preliminary Injunction should be granted. If a preliminary injunction is granted, then that remains in effect until the final opinion is issued. The final order will remove the preliminary injunction and if the plaintiffs win, then a permanent injunction will be put in its place.
The Delay Game
The defendants (bad guys) will often request additional time to brief the case. They will argue about needing more time for experts, and in general, they will drag things out as much as possible. IF there is no injunction against their infringing laws.
If the Preliminary Injunction is requested and the result goes against one party (it almost always will), that party can appeal to the Circuit court for either a Preliminary Injunction, if the District court did not grant it, or a stay, if the District court did grant the injunction.
Cases that are appealed before the final judgement are said to be in an “interlocutory” state. The superior courts do not like to hear appeals of cases that are still in an interlocutory state. They would prefer to wait until all the evidence has been presented and all the arguments and briefs made. The Supreme Court seldom takes up an appeal for a case in interlocutory state.
Regardless, the process of appealing is a great method to create a delay. An appeal to the Circuit court will ask for a stay pending appeal.
So on January 1st, 2020 you file a suit claiming a law infringes on your protected rights.
By the end of January, most of the starting paper work is done, and you’ve moved on to the Preliminary Injunction or Summary Judgement.
The court will schedule arguments. He will give time for the first set of briefings. This seems to be in the 3 to 6 week mark. I’m confident that in more complex cases there is more time given. At the end of that time, there will be time for a response to be filed. About 2 weeks or so, more on larger cases. There is then time for a short response to the response.
There will be time in the schedule for the court to read all the briefings and other submissions. The Oral Arguments will be heard.
At the District level, it seems to take only a couple of weeks before an order is issued.
At this point, you are in late March, mid-April.
Let’s say that the plaintiffs get a preliminary injunction. The state will appeal for an emergency stay from the Circuit court. This request will be evaluated by one judge on the Circuit. Within a few weeks, that temporary stay will be granted.
You are now getting close to May. The Circuit court will then have a three judge administrative panel decide if they will hear the appeal. If they grant the stay on an expedited calendar, that does not mean that there will be an expedited calendar for hearing the appeal.
This was attempted in the Second Circuit court. They granted a stay on an emergency basis. They granted a stay pending the appeal. And then didn’t bother to schedule the appeal. In the normal course of appeals, this could take 6 to 12 months, or more, before the appeal is heard.
During this time, the District case is on hold. There is no reason for them to move forward.
For the first act of the game, you are now into November 2020 when the appeal is heard. After the oral arguments are given, it is going to take months before the circuit court issues the opinion.
Assuming that nobody wants to actually appeal to the Supreme Court, the case is now remanded back to the District court for them to take up where they left off.
You are likely into January 2021 before your case starts moving forward again. In that time frame, massive amounts of papers have been filed by both parties. You might get your case heard by April. The court will then issue its final order a month or more after that.
You are now in it for a year and a half. If the Preliminary Injunction argument is appealed to the Supreme Court, that can take a month or more before they issue their opinion.
And every time a superior court issues an opinion, the inferior court has to start over again. In Duncan v. Bonta, the case was all the way to the Supreme Court. The 9th Cir.’s opinion was vacated, and the case was remanded back to the 9th. There they waited for months before a 3 judge panel decided to vacate the District Court’s order (which was opposite of what the 9th said and what the Supreme Court just vacated.)
The reason for the vacating and remanding is to allow both parties to provide briefs that consider the reason for the case being vacated.
To put this in perspective, we are about 40 days from the one-year anniversary of the Bruen opinion. The current standing is that The People’s ability to get carry permits has gotten better, but the risks in carrying have gone up. Not a single law has been struck down. Not a single case has made its way to the Supreme Court.
Not a single Circuit Court has issued an opinion striking down a weapons ban or a Bruen spasm response bill.
The Seventh Circuit court likely just mooted the need for the Supreme Court to step in on the AW/LCM bans in Illinois.
(more later)