Well gee, USA Today, I hope so…
Today in newspaper headlines that make you go: hu?
From USA Today:
Supreme Court may expand Second Amendment rights despite repeal of disputed gun restrictions
Way to make “expand Second Amendment rights” sound like a bad thing.
I forgot, it is.
I’m not thinking under the paradigm where the Supreme Court exists, not to expand Constitutional rights, but justify the expanse of big government by legislating from the bench.
The Supreme Court may be on the verge of expanding gun rights for the first time in nearly a decade. What’s surprising is how it got there.
The Court was petitioned.
The court on Monday will hear a challenge to an obscure New York City rule that set such rigid restrictions on transporting legally owned guns that it was repealed in July.
Obscure only in that Liberals don’t know the gun laws on the books. It’s not obscure for the legal gun owners in NYC that were screwed by it.
But it turns out that wasn’t what they really wanted. Backed by the National Rifle Association and the Trump administration, the challengers to New York’s abandoned restrictions are hoping the high court refuses to declare the case moot. That would give them a chance to win the biggest Second Amendment victory since landmark rulings a decade ago affirmed the right to keep guns at home for self-defense.
It’s a conspiracy to expand Constitutionally protected civil liberties, and therefore tread on the self-granted right of Progressives to oppress those they disagree with.
Faced with a defunct ban on transporting guns outside city limits, the increasingly conservative court majority could render a decision making clear what some justices believe: that the Second Amendment extends beyond the home, and that lower courts should view state and local limits on carrying guns in public with skepticism.
Those dastachrome://bookmarks/rdly conservatives thinking that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” means exactly that. Don’t they know it means the opposite?
“This would be a strange case in which to go big,” says Joseph Blocher, a professor at Duke University School of Law and co-director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law. “Yet the stakes going forward are potentially huge.”
I’m not a lawyer from Duke, but I understand why SCOTUS took this case up. When it comes to civil rights law, especially gun laws, the Court likes “perfect” cases, with little nuance and no hairsplitting. They probably saw this law as so egregious that striking it down would be rather cut and dry.
Gun rights groups were surprised in January when the high court agreed to hear the case. Gun control groups were surprised in October when the justices refused to jettison it, even after the city and state erased restrictions that were likely unconstitutional.
Both actions went against the court’s recent modus operandi when it comes to guns: avoidance. Since its 2008 and 2010 rulings striking down gun restrictions in the District of Columbia and Chicago, the court has refused to hear dozens of cases challenging lesser limits on who can own what types of guns, where they can be taken, what requirements must be met and more.
Those were controversial cases and SCOTUS is made up of cowards who shy away from parsing details.
During that time, lower courts have resolved more than 1,000 Second Amendment cases, ruling more than 90% of the time in favor of gun control measures, according to a study by Blocher and Southern Methodist University assistant law professor Eric Ruben. Since Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 that killed 20 students and six staff members, more than 300 gun safety laws have been passed.
The trend has frustrated gun rights groups as well as conservative justices who say federal and state court judges are not applying a stringent test to most gun restrictions.
Here is to hoping that Cocaine Mitch McConnell and Trump reverse this trend by shifting the makeup of the lower courts.
The court has changed since then. Gone is retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, who signed on to the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller after ensuring it would leave the door open to state and local restrictions.
In his place: Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who dissented as a federal appeals court judge from a ruling upholding the district’s subsequent ban on semi-automatic rifles and its firearms registration requirements. Kavanaugh said courts should analyze gun bans and regulations based on the Second Amendment’s “text, history and tradition.”
Good.
Enter an extreme rule such as New York City’s, which barred licensed handgun owners from taking their guns beyond its five boroughs, even to second homes or shooting ranges. Federal district and appeals courts upheld the 18-year-old rule, but it looked like a goner at the Supreme Court.
Extreme law makes for an easy takedown. A perfect case.
Gun control groups such as Brady, Everytown for Gun Safety and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence feared something else: a decision that would expand public carry rights elsewhere, including in nine states that give law enforcement officials discretion to deny licenses. Those are California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware and Hawaii.
From their frothing mouths to God’s ears. C’mon 50 state CCW reciprocity.
Rather than fight it out in court, the city repealed the rule, and the state replaced it with a statute that permits the previously banned transportation of firearms. The two liberal-dominated governments felt that would end the case.
Remember how hard the fight was to change NYC gravity knife laws to stop the NYPD from arresting construction workers for carrying folding box cutters despite every civil rights group and union in the city arguing for the repeal?
So if NYC repealed a gun law, you know they know how bad it was.
The biggest issue left unresolved by the Heller decision was the right to carry firearms, either concealed or openly. When that case was decided, about 40 states already permitted it, but some big ones – notably California and New York – had major limitations. They still do.
“For too long, lower courts have stubbornly controverted the Supreme Court’s ruling in D.C. v. Heller,” says Jason Ouimet, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action. “The nation’s highest court should defend all Americans – and its own precedents – in a manner that vindicates the fundamental nature of the rights enshrined within the Second Amendment.”
If conservatives have their way, the court could extend Second Amendment rights beyond the home, or simply require that lower court judges demand more specific justifications for state and local restrictions.
Yes, yes they could, and if they do, it will be glorious.
Hannah Shearer, litigation director at the Giffords Law Center, notes the dispute before the court involves “a law that only existed in New York City and currently exists nowhere – it looks like a small issue, but they’re making very sweeping legal claims.”
Did someone say Roe or Obergefell? When the court makes broad sweeping changes that are pro-Left-leaning positions, it’s not a crisis. It’s not so much fun for them when the shoe is on the other foot.
Buoyed by recent victories, gun control groups and their allies worry that what the justices write when deciding the New York case could influence lower courts to strike down other restrictions.
“The court doesn’t have to look like it’s making a big change,” says Adam Winkler, a UCLA School of Law professor and Second Amendment expert. “It can make a big change by setting the foundations for future cases.”
The word is “Precedent” and it will be great if that’s in our favor.
I will be paying attention to the news closely to see how this case goes.
The Court stands to expand civil liberties and that is driving the Left to panic.
I am no longer member of Florida Carry.
I could no longer be a member of Florida Carry. Not in good conscience anyway. It is my belief that the group no longer represents the gun owners of the Sunshine State but cater to a selected and very clannish subsection of armed Floridians who are not in for the rights but for the posing in Social Media and the massaging of their elevated egos.
I have no idea what happened to the young committed people I meet at the GRPC in Orlando in 2012, but the group now is dedicated only who those who Open Carry AR15s in piers for “fishing” the deluded dream that it will somehow convince legislators to pass an Open Carry bill next week. So far it has not come to fruition, in fact the opposite is true. Meet Senate Bill 634 – The Florida Carry Bill or Thank You For Making Open Carry More Illegal.
(h) A person engaged in fishing, camping, or lawful hunting
or going to or returning from a fishing, camping, or lawful
hunting expedition. A lawful activity under this paragraph may
not be conducted within 1,500 feet of the real property
comprising any school, house of worship, government building, or
guarded beach.;
I believe that an enterprising Florida county will find a way to use this bill (if passed) as a way to also restrict hunting unless the hunter can shoot from inside the rifle or shotgun case. And yes, once taken to court, the arrest will probably be vacated, but the person will be out several thousand dollars.
But back to the original point: When you are a Gun Rights organization, the idea is not to help add more gun control bills or get the people against Gun Owners, but just the opposite. This seems to have been lost among Florida Carry overseers who seem to be more interested in “shocking the Normals” than actually advance good legislation.
When tried to make this points, I was pretty much branded as impure,
unerwünscht and a traitor for not accepting that there is only one answer: No Gun Laws at all and now. Any other consideration will be verboten. Incrementalism is a bad word for them. An 80% goal achievement is considered 100% failure and akin to treason that should not be tolerated. As much as I commune with the general principle, experience has taught me that there is a pragmatic way to see things, and that philosophy is neither strategy nor tactics. That 10% left unachieved in the present is to be the next goal, not the excuse to bring everything down and remain in the same spot we started. The Clique in Florida Carry calls it compromising with the Enemy (treason) and want nothing to do with it. That kind of insane purity test should have been stopped long ago but it seems it is now part of the DNA of the group and that is reason one why I am leaving.
Reason 2 is based in something more damaging to Gun Rights: Cop Killing Fantasies. Now, you know and I know that the members of this clique are probably a bunch of keyboard warriors that at the first sounds of incoming fire by a SWAT team, they will probably scream in fear and join Moms Demand to prove they were never like that. But to paint all Law Enforcement as Redcoats that will be taken care of the same way as in 1776 and similar posturing is stupid bravado that will be used against all Florida Gun Owners. It is not hard to be a member of the secret Florida Carry page, just pay the annual $25, get a membership card and ask to be let in. Now imagine if an enterprising member of the Opposition sneaks in and spends couple of weeks collecting screen captures of Florida Carry member spouting this nonsense and anti-cop memes so they can later post all over the internet? Do you think they will be kind enough to say “Hey, this is just a very small minority of malcontents, the majority of Gun Owners are law-abiding citizens.” Not in a million years. We are all gonna be painted as cop killer wannabes and Florida Carry will be providing the tar unless they finally decide that is not appropriate conduct for the Group.
I do believe Florida carry does not comprehend the level of disgust they have among Florida Gun Owners and that is our fault: We were so intent on presenting a united front, we ignored this type of behavior the way a parent tries to minimize and excuse the fact that the young one of the family is killing the neighborhood cats and setting small fires for fun.
We cannot longer afford to ignore this knife at our throats.
The coming Virginia gun fight
Some serious gun-related news has broken over the Thanksgiving weekend in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
First, the Virginia legislature has drafted a bill that has the potential to ban all firearms training, along with any self-defense or martial arts instruction.
Senate Bill VA SB64 states:
Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia:
§18.2-433.2. Paramilitary activity prohibited; penalty.
A person shall be is guilty of unlawful paramilitary activity, punishable as a Class 5 felony if he:
1. Teaches or demonstrates to any other person the use, application, or making of any firearm, explosive, or incendiary device, or technique capable of causing injury or death to persons, knowing or having reason to know or intending that such training will be employed for use in, or in furtherance of, a civil disorder; or
2. Assembles with one or more persons for the purpose of training with, practicing with, or being instructed in the use of any firearm, explosive, or incendiary device, or technique capable of causing injury or death to persons, intending to employ such training for use in, or in furtherance of, a civil disorder; or
3. Assembles with one or more persons with the intent of intimidating any person or group of persons by drilling, parading, or marching with any firearm, any explosive or incendiary device, or any components or combination thereof.
2. That the provisions of this act may result in a net increase in periods of imprisonment or commitment. Pursuant to §30-19.1:4 of the Code of Virginia, the estimated amount of the necessary appropriation cannot be determined for periods of imprisonment in state adult correctional facilities; therefore, Chapter 854 of the Acts of Assembly of 2019 requires the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission to assign a minimum fiscal impact of $50,000. Pursuant to §30-19.1:4 of the Code of Virginia, the estimated amount of the necessary appropriation cannot be determined for periods of commitment to the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice.
Clause No. 3 is new and was seemingly created to ban activities like the infamous Charlottesville Unite the Right rally.
It would be a felony for a bunch of white supremacists or alt-righters to march with tiki torches.
Theoretically, this could also be used to break up Antifa in Virginia, but as one of my regular readers likes to remind me:
It is not the action being taken by the person that causes offense, it is the political affiliation of the person taking action that causes offense.”
So I have a feeling it won’t be.
What should scare the hell out of all of us is Clause No. 2:
Assembles with one or more persons for the purpose of training with, practicing with, or being instructed in the use of any firearm, explosive, or incendiary device, or technique capable of causing injury or death to persons, intending to employ such training for use in, or in furtherance of, a civil disorder
Reading this as liberally as possible, any firearms, martial arts, or defensive training could be considered a felony.
Most people would think “intending to employ such training for use in, or in furtherance of, a civil disorder” means “going out and starting some shit.”
Thinking like a prosecutor, “intending to employ such training for use in, or in furtherance of, a civil disorder” could mean “defending yourself against a civil disorder you got caught up in.”
Do you want to be prepared in case you are caught in the middle of a riot or Antifa blocks the traffic on the road you are on? Do you want to be prepared in case you become the victim of mob violence? That’s a felony.
There are a dozen different IDPA stages that I can think of off the top of my head that would be a felony to set up in Virginia if this law passes.
You might have read that on other sites. It gets worse.
Here is part two of the equation, from the Washington Post:
In Virginia, and elsewhere, gun supporters prepare to defy new laws
Families, church groups, hunt clubs and neighbors began arriving two hours early, with hundreds spilling out of the little courthouse and down the hill to the street in the chilly night air.
They were here to demand that the Board of Supervisors declare Amelia County a “Second Amendment sanctuary” where officials will refuse to enforce any new restrictions on gun ownership.
A resistance movement is boiling up in Virginia, where Democrats rode a platform on gun control to historic victories in state elections earlier this month. The uprising is fueled by a deep cultural gulf between rural red areas that had long wielded power in Virginia and the urban and suburban communities that now dominate. Guns are the focus. Behind that, there is a sense that a way of life is being cast aside.
As I said after the Virginia election, it is the new Illinois. The 51% of the population that lives in the two blue bubbles around the state capital and DC are going to stamp their boot in the faces of the 49% of those who live in the rest of the state. Just the way Chicago passes the gun laws for the rest of Illinois.
In the past two weeks, county governments from the central Piedmont to the Appalachian Southwest — Charlotte, Campbell, Carroll, Appomattox, Patrick, Dinwiddie, Pittsylvania, Lee and Giles — have approved resolutions that defy Richmond to come take their guns.
It mirrors a trend that began last year in western parts of the United States, where some law enforcement officials vowed to go to jail rather than enforce firearm restrictions, and has spread eastward. In New Mexico, 25 of 33 counties declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries after the state expanded background checks. In Illinois, nearly two-thirds of its counties have done the same.
The Illinois model is antagonizing people across the country who live in states where one or two blue counties have the population to impose their will on the rest of the state.
“My oath of office is to uphold the Constitution of the United States,” Amelia Sheriff Ricky L. Walker said Wednesday night as he waited for the supervisors to meet in this rural county west of Richmond.
If a judge ordered him to seize someone’s guns under a law he viewed as unconstitutional, Walker said, he wouldn’t do it. “That’s what I hang my hat on,” he said.
Good for him.
Some of the unrest is fanned by gun rights groups, such as the National Rifle Association and the Virginia Citizens Defense League, which have used social media and old-fashioned networking to offer boilerplate language for resolutions. But the movement is speaking to the anxieties of many who are unsettled by a state that has shifted from red to blue with shocking speed.
It’s not a whole state. It’s two or three counties with big cities. This is EXACTLY the same issue that we saw in the 2016 elections. There about two dozen blue cities that made up Hillary’s voters. The rest of American went for Trump.
All of the top leaders in the new Democratic-controlled legislature hail from urban or suburban districts in Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads and Richmond. The liberal suburbs outside Washington have the largest delegation in the legislature. And the status of lawmakers from rural red parts of the state has never been lower.
So the rural red areas get the boot to the face.
“We need to send a signal to Richmond about Northern Virginia. We don’t want their influence to affect us down here. We’re very different people,” said Clay Scott, a 25-year-old construction project manager whose family has lived in Amelia for generations.
This is why we are heading for CW2.0 at breakneck speed. Large swaths of America don’t want to be ruled by some people that live packed into concrete boxes on top of each other in a city far away who do not even remotely share the same culture or values.
The resolutions rocketing around the Virginia countryside all have similar language. Philip Van Cleave of the Virginia Citizens Defense League said he drafted one for Amelia to consider, along with about 30 other counties — out of 95 total — also taking it up. The matter was added to the Amelia agenda too late for it to be advertised so, by law, the board cannot vote on it until next month. Yet, a crowd of 300 or more turned out after hearing about it through word of mouth.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Van Cleave said of the outpouring of interest. “Everything has exploded right now. Gun owners are awake.”
A similar resolution that passed Monday in Appomattox County pledged to oppose any efforts to “unconstitutionally restrict” the right to bear arms. It said the county would do this “through legal action, the power of the appropriation of public funds, and the right to petition for redress of grievances, and the direction to the law enforcement and judiciary of Appomattox County to not enforce any unconstitutional law.”
The concept is modeled after the “sanctuary city” stance that some localities have taken in response to federal immigration enforcement efforts. In those cases, local law enforcement officials decline to take voluntary steps to help the federal government detain or deport undocumented immigrants.
And The Washington Post has backed those sanctuary cities to the hilt. Some laws can be violated and some can’t, it just depends on the political alignments of those violating the laws.
“The notion that law enforcement would not follow the law is appalling,” said Lori Haas, a longtime activist with the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “I suspect that many of these counties and their elected officials are posturing in front of certain voters.”
Tell me about all the big city police chiefs who refuse to honor ICE detainers? When do they get sent to jail?
But to many residents in Amelia, any kind of gun restriction feels personal. They’ve heard that some proposals would prevent kids under 18 from owning guns and say people who would ban assault weapons don’t understand what they are.
They feel that way because it’s true.
“I live out here in the country; I’m a rural citizen,” Easter said. “We don’t agree with how Fairfax and Newport News and now even Chesterfield have dominated the state.”
He realizes, he said, that people in those places see guns differently — and that he doesn’t understand their circumstances any more than they understand his. But solving their problems shouldn’t mean changing his way of life, he said.
“What goes on in Fairfax can stay in Fairfax,” Easter said. “We just want to live our life the way we have been raised to live.”
That is a sentiment many people across the country can agree with, just change the name to their local population center.
Add the two parts of this together.
I don’t think the change to VA SB64 being filed when it did was a coincidence.
“Assembles with one or more persons with the intent of intimidating any person or group of persons by drilling, parading, or marching with any firearm, any explosive or incendiary device, or any components or combination thereof”
This is clearly aimed at open carriers who want to demonstrate for gun rights and against Virginia gun control bills.
Every single open carrier who decides to take his AR-15 to a gun-rights rally is going to end up on the ground, in handcuffs, and then become a prohibited person.
This is the ultimate anti-gun 4-D chess, trap.
- Propose a bunch of aggressive gun control laws.
- Get the most chest-thumping gun-owners to commit felonies while protesting said bills and get them banned from life from owning guns.
- Use those arrests and convictions to claim that the gun community is not “law-abiding” and made of a bunch of dangerous criminals justifying the need to pass said gun laws.
VA SB64 is a terrible bill, and if passed into law I know that some gun-rights people will end up becoming prohibited persons because of it.
This is the coming Virginia gunfight, and it’s going to be bad.
This reboot will not generate the sympathy they think it will
If you were a teenager in the mid-1990’s you might remember a TV show called Party of Five.
It was about five siblings who were orphaned when their parents were killed in a car crash, and the eldest, a 24-year-old college dropout had to man up and raise the rest of the kids.
Now, 19 years after the original show ended, it is getting a “relevant” reboot.
When the world forces them apart, they must fight to stay together.
__________@FreeformTV’s new series, #PartyOfFive, premieres Wednesday, January 8th. https://t.co/LfSE6Z0pqx— Party of Five (@PartyofFiveTV) November 26, 2019
So instead of the parents dying, they are deported for being illegals.
I just want to check some facts we can see from the trailer.
For the eldest brother to get legal custody of his siblings, he has to be at least 18 years old, and if they stick with the format of the original show, he’s in his early 20’s.
They apparently live in a decent middle-class house, so they have some money.
The kids are not being deported, so they must be either US citizens or DREAMers.
So… mom and dad have been in the country illegally for 18-24 years and have been financially successful enough to achieve middle-class status, but never went about the process of becoming legal immigrants?
And I’m supposed to have sympathy for them?
No. Sorry, but no.
You don’t get to skirt the law for two decades and then act like victims when you get caught.
The good news is: this looks like very Woke TV, so it will go broke fast.