As I was reading Justice Thomas’s wonderful Bruen opinion, I noticed the phrase “protected by the Second Amendment”. This is something he says throughout the opinion.

When I started looking for it, I found that when legal people were talking about the Second Amendment, they often (always?) said, “Protected by the Second Amendment” or “Second Amendment protected rights”. Over and over we see this language.

Our rights are endowed upon us by our creator. They are not granted to us by the State. If the state can grant us a right, the state can remove that right. Almost all arguments about constitutionality revolves around the absolute values of those rights.

The left argues that my right to free speech ends when they are offended. They call it “hate speech”. The sheep and leftists argue that my right to self-defense ends when I might harm somebody else. Listen to the comments on any shooting, and there will be calls for the punishment of the victim because they “didn’t have to kill.” or they “didn’t have to injure” the attacker.

Can you cry “Fire!” in a crowded theater? ABSOLUTELY! You can even do it if there is no fire. You have an absolute right to do so. On the other hand, if your actions cause harm to others. Real harm, not just emotional duress, then you might be liable for those damages.

I.e., if you cry “Gun!” in a crowded theater, and it causes a panic among the people trying to escape and some are injured or killed, you will be held responsible for those injuries and deaths.

Why “absolute”? Because rights have no value if they are not absolute. I absolutely have the right to keep and bear arms. I don’t have the right to murder people with arms. This is the balancing of rights. Their right to live vs. my right to keep and bear arms.

The law works at balancing the rights of the people. They fail most of the time. I have a right to my property. He has a right to life. He loses that right when he attacks me to take my property. (Notice that it isn’t just propriety here, there is violence directed at me).

Which takes us back to blowing Mrs. AWA’s mind this morning.

I said something like, “If the Second Amendment was repealed, it would not affect my rights.” Her response was, “But those are your Second Amendment rights, they would be gone.”

“What rights does the Second Amendment give us?”

“The right to keep and bear arms.”

“Nope, try again.”

“Ahhh, the right to have guns and use them”

“Still wrong.”

“It says it right there, the right to keep and bear arms”

“Yes, it does. But the Second Amendment gives us no rights.”

“Umm”

“Read what it says, “the right of The People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”, this is protection for a preexisting right.”

“No. It says it right there.”

“Our rights come from our creator. We are endowed by them when we are created. The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms, or armed self-defense, which was endowed upon us by our creator.”

“Because it exists outside the government’s wishes and control, they cannot remove it. They can remove the protections, but not the right.”

“Mind. Blown.”

Mrs. AWA was so conditioned to hear “Second Amendment rights” that she lost sight, if she ever had it, of the simple fact that our rights exist outside the Constitution.

Now go forth and remember, they are Second Amendment protected rights, not given rights.

NYC cabbie savagely beaten on street fumes at ‘horrible system’ and Eric Adams: ‘Tell him die with the shame’

A struggling immigrant cabbie and married dad of two who was savagely beaten by a group of brutes in Midtown told The Post on Friday he’s appalled that two suspects were let go with a slap on the wrist.

Taxi driver Afzal Butt, 60 — who suffered chest, neck and face injuries in the shocking Manhattan caught-on-camera beat-down — blasted New York’s lenient bail-reform laws as a “horrible system” after a pair of his alleged assailants were issued a desk-appearance ticket and allowed to walk free.

“If they’re not going to put them behind bars, this is a horrible system,” fumed the cabbie, who emigrated to the US from Pakistan and has been driving a taxi since 2004. “I am hopeless and helpless with this system.”

Butt said the city is going to hell in a handbasket regarding crime.

“Send the mayor the video and tell him die with the shame,” the cabbie said.

He’s pissed.  I don’t blame him though.

Here is a news report that shows some of the beating.

Five people beat one man and the attackers go virtually unpunished.

The people of New York City need to be able to defend themselves.

That’s why Bruen was decided by SCOTUS the way it was.

That states like New York have failed to make good on that decision is a travesty.

I guess the only conclusion is that New York values its criminals mote than its law abiding, tax paying citizens.

After the Bruen decision, pretty much all the may issue states freaked out and drafted laws that made shall issue so impossibly onerous as to make it worse than may issue.

New Jersey was one if those states.

The legislature made so many places in New Jersey “sensitive locations’ where concealed carry was prohibited, that it made the state effectively one big gun free zone.

The state is being sued, and the case is Koons v. Platkin.

The Curie County Prosecutor’s Association of New Jersey filed an amicus brief with the court to give their justification why citizens shouldn’t carry guns.

It’s a hoot.

The reason you shouldn’t be able to carry in New Jersey is that the Garden State’s roads and highways are congested dog shit and New Jersey drivers are insane assholes.

It doesn’t matter how good of a person you are, once you experience New Jersey traffic, you’re going to start murdering other drivers because they are insufferable.

Case in point, this amazing anecdote.

See?

How can you, ordinary citizen, be trusted with a gun on New Jersey public roads, when they are so bad, and the other drivers so terrible, that it drove one of New York’s finest into a gun waving rage monster?

You won’t be able to resist the temptation to start blasting other New Jerseyans once you have to deal with them in public.

“People can’t carry guns because everyone is an asshole and the roads are shit and they’ll kill each other on non-stop road rage incidents.”

To be fair, this is probably accurate, but I’m amazed that they would admit to it in court.

This is a follow-up to my post Even if they charged him, they wouldn’t get a conviction.

Texas stolen car owner is a ‘vigilante, not a hero’ after he tracked down and shot dead the man who allegedly took his vehicle – claims the suspected thief’s brother

The brother of a suspected car thief shot dead by the man whose car he allegedly stole has slammed his sibling’s killer, arguing he is a ‘vigilante’, not a hero, for his actions.

The robbery victim discovered his car had been stolen from a Texas shopping center parking lot, but managed to track the vehicle down to a second lot nearby.

He walked up to the vehicle to find a man and a woman sat in the cab, and drew his weapon, ordering the pair to get out of the car and wait for police to arrive.

But the stolen car victim was hit with a bullet when the male thief took a gun of his own out from his waistband and opened fire.

Avoiding serious injury, the vehicle’s owner returned fire, shooting the car thief dead.

But now the car thief’s brother has expressed his anger, arguing that the car owner should never have drawn his gun in the first place and complained ‘my mum, my family, we all have to suffer now’.

‘Whether my brother was wrong or right, he had a gun pointed at him. I guess he took it upon himself to defend himself. The guy who shot him is a vigilante, not a hero.

‘A vehicle is not worth taking someone’s life, I don’t care what kind of car it is. You don’t take the law into your own hands. Now my mom, my family, we all have to suffer and just deal with it.’

Police meanwhile put the shooting down to a simple case of self-defense, arguing that robbery victims have every right to try to find their stolen property and that the car’s owner only shot the thief after he himself was subjected to gunfire.

In every one of these cases, where some criminal gets killed by a CCW, the family cries over the loss of their kin, the family can go fuck themselves.

The family here overlooks the fact that their brother was willing to and trued to kill a man to steal his truck.

The thief shot the truck owner to avoid being arrested.  He was being held for the police.

That’s why the police determined it was the truck owner, not the thief, who acted in self defense.

The family can suffer, because their brother almost made another family suffer.

These people are human garbage.

With a title of Over half of both Second Amendment supporters and Republicans favor universal background checks and gun licensing provisions—Declaration of Independence: A Transcription, National Archives, (last visited Jul. 31, 2023) I had to look deeper. The first thing to know is that this was conducted by a group associated with the U. Penn. It could be a left leaning entity, I’ve not done the research.

YouGov is a site where you can sign up to be paid to take surveys. This means that the bias for the survey is internet savvy. Not a bad bias.

So let’s look at the questions that were asked:

What we see isn’t horrible. Unfortunately, it lacks context.

Consider the question of background checks. The people giving this survey do not get to explain. When I hear “background checks for all firearm sales and transfers” it might mean universal background checks. Or it could mean “transfers at the time of sale” and I might even think of it as when buying from an FFL.

Given that the only reason that there is a background check is the GCA as amended, a background check is not constitutional.

Question B is at least attempting to be honest. They have explicitly stated that they are talking about the banning of semi-automatic firearms. They didn’t just say “Assault Weapons.”

C is just plain scary. I know that most of us want gun owners to train and learn what they are doing. To be good members of the community. Requiring tests and licenses for both firearm and person is bull shit.

Let’s take a look at two categories.

81% of males support universal background checks, 66% support test, license and registration, 55% support “assault weapon ban” and 48% support eliminating most gun laws.

The sample size is 1000. 468 of which were male. They fudge those numbers to make it 487 to match the actual percentage of men and women in the country. 394 of 487 support UBC. 321 of 487 support Test, License, Registration. 267 of 487 support “assault weapons ban”, and 234 of 487 support eliminating most gun laws.

Ok, the takeaway on this survey eludes me. It looks like there is good support for the Second Amendment, but there is also support for infringements. This feels like people avoiding absolutism. Hagar answers, “What part of shall not infringe, don’t you understand?”

I am also an absolutist, I just am not as vocal about it. I don’t know.

Regardless, my rights, and yours, do not come from surveys or opinions. Our rights are protected by the Bill of Rights. We are endowed with them by our creator.

I often travel with large numbers of guns.

How do I do it safely, legally, and with the security of my guns in mind.

Let me show you my invention.

It’s a Lund, steel, underbody truck tool box.  The kind that is supposed to hang under a semi trailer or a flat bed.

It’s mounted near the tailgate.

It has a key lock just for the box.

This is it with the tailgate down and the box open.

I drilled two holes, one on each side to attach it to the bed tie-down points with 3/8-inch stainless J-bolts.

I used a sandwich of nuts, rubber washers, and fender washers to seal the hole where I drilled through to make it waterproof.  I’ve never had a leak.

Here a mounting point in the bed.

Those are tucked up under the bed rails which makes it difficult to get at with a bolt cutter.

Here is the gap between the door and the tailgate.

This provides double security.  With the tailgate locked, the door can’t be opened.  The tailgate locks when the truck locks, and if a window is broken to unlock the truck from the inside, the alarm will go off.

With guns locked in cases in the box, they are locked outside of the passenger compartment, so covers safe passage requirements.

It’s 48 inches wide, 18 inches deep, and 18 inches high.  It will hold my largest Pelican pistol and rifle boxes.

The door can’t be pried open with the tailgate closed.

I recognize that the J-bolt are a weak point.  I did consider drilling through the box into the bed, but I decided against that.  I really didn’t want to drill into a $50K truck. Any place you drill through becomes a location where rust can start.

Additionally, if I did want to remove this box and go back to stock, I can without a problem.  No permanent holes to worry about.

My other crossover tool box is also held down withJ-hookss for the same reason.

If I did improve the design, I would probably order specialty lifting eye bolts, which are hardened steel and even more difficult to cut through.  I bought these off the shelf at Fastensal.

When not hauling guns, it makes a convenient place to put groceries and other shopping, acting like a trunk, so stuff isn’t sloshing around the bed.  I still have several feet of space between the two boxes for large items.  I also have a second, long bed pickup, so…

Every time I post about gun security, I’d get (or used to before the membership change) countless comments from readers fantasizing about how they would Ocean’s Eleven my guns away with a bolt cutter, angle grinder, fork truck, etc.

Please don’t.

This truck was broken into once already by people looking for guns. They never touched the toolboxes in the bed.  They were defeated by a $30 Liberty pistol box attached to the seat frame by a cable.

They weren’t carrying bolt cutters or angle grinders and they weren’t taking the time to start fucking around with tools.

Besides, the box itself is heavy, and I have tow chain and trailer equipment in there to make it heavier. Without the tailgate down, lifting the whole box out was not something I was able to do.

Would I leave guns in it for a week parked some place rough?  No, absolutely not.

Is it much more effective than some gun cases in the cab or a trunk where a broken window gives easy access in a matter of seconds?  Absolutely.

Reader Archer was letting his mind wonder:

— Archer.

The first step in analyzing a Second Amendment Challenge is to determine if the proposed conduct implicates the Second Amendment.

For conduct to be implicated, the object must be an arm and the conduct must be “keep and bear”.

If it is an arm and the conduct has anything to do with “keep and bear” then the conduct is presumptively protected under the Second Amendment.

We define the conduct, “I wish to keep and bear ammunition feed devices that have an arbitrary capacity.” The state wants to limit that capacity to ten or less.

Before Bruen the court would presume that this conduct was protected. They would then move to the second stage of the analysis: How much does this infringe the core right of armed self-defense?

Since you can use smaller magazines, different guns, and the state has presented evidence that self-defense events involving civilians rarely use more than three rounds, the infringement is trivial.

The state has also presented compelling “evidence” that big ass magazines allow for more harm when used in mass shooting events.

The court balances how much raping is being done to you verse how much the state really really wants to infringe. The courts almost always came down in favor of the State.

Today, we don’t get that presumption of protected conduct. Instead, we have to prove the conduct does implicate the Second Amendment.

When dealing with a gun ban, Heller controls. If it is a ban and the object is in “common use for lawful purposes, today”, then it is protected under the Second Amendment.

Therefore, the state wants to make the object “not an arm” or they wish to make it “dangerous and unusual”. The state is arguing from both sides in the LCM bans.

On the one hand, they argue it is not an arm. Since it is just a box and there are many differently shaped boxes of different sizes, you don’t need to have this particular size and shape. Further, they argue that a magazine is not an arm because it doesn’t really do anything. It is exactly like a cartridge box, or the box of ammo you buy from the LGS.

Since it is not an “arm” it is not protected under the Second Amendment.

If it is not an arm, it can be banned.

Because the state knows this is a weak argument, they move to the second step, “Even if it is an arm, which it isn’t, it isn’t in common use for self-defense”.

The state is acknowledging that magazines are in common use as defined by Heller and made concrete in Caetano. Heller said possessed. Caetano said that “hundreds of thousands in lawful possession” made it common.

The state knows that if a court rules, correctly, “dangerous and unusual,” then they lose. They can’t make an argument about “dangerous” that has any bearing because it is common. It doesn’t matter if it is the deadliest weapon ever invented by man, if it is in common use for lawful purposes, then it is protected under the Second Amendment.

But back to Archer’s idea. If you only fire 3 shots out of a LCM, then you didn’t really have an LCM because use is …

It doesn’t work.

Having gone through the magic above, the court decides to go rogue. They rule that the LCM is NOT a protected arm. Either they say it isn’t an arm or they say it isn’t in common use, it doesn’t matter, they have allowed the ban to go into effect.

At that point, the state makes it illegal to have an ammunition feed device which holds more than 10 rounds.

The law doesn’t say anything about use, it is mere possession.

The cops show up at your self-defense event. They slap you on the back and congratulate you on surviving the encounter. They take your fire arm, drop the mag and count the rounds in the mag.

You only fired 3 rounds, just like the statistics say you should, there are 5 rounds left in the magazine, this means you had less than 8 rounds in the magazine. Your golden!

Nope. The law isn’t like New York’s (old?) law. The LCM ban said you had to down load your magazines. You could still have your 15 round Glock mag, but you could only put 7 rounds in it, or some such nonsense. In this ban, it is a ban on the possession of LCMs.

So you tell the cop you only fired 3 rounds. He and the CSI folks see three holes in the perp and no others. The witnesses agree that it was only three rounds, and there are only three casings on the ground. Your golden!

Nope, the law does ban using more than 10 rounds, it bans possessing a magazine capable of holding more than 10 rounds.

To wrap this up, consider the cops searching your home with a warrant. They locate a tarball of heroin. It doesn’t matter if you used it, it doesn’t matter if it is pure or cut a thousand times. The mere possession of that tarball is the crime.