This is an important ruling on the Second Amendment.

Federal Appeals Court Rules California’s Ban on High-Capacity Magazines Unconstitutional

A federal appeals court on Friday overturned California’s ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines, ruling that the prohibition violates the Second Amendment.

“Even well-intentioned laws must pass constitutional muster,” Appellate Judge Kenneth Lee wrote for the majority on the three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, adding that California’s ban “strikes at the core of the Second Amendment — the right to armed self-defense.”

That is not the core of the Second Amendment, nor is it a consequence of that amendment in the least degree.

An individual right to keep and bear arms is not and does not entail a right to use those same arms for self-defense.

Just another muddle-headed lawyer, him, reading invisible ink without even knowing it.

And the core of the amendment is anyway the conditionality of the right to keep and bear arms on the falsehood that a militia is necessary to the defense of a free state.

The right is an undetachable consequent, conditional upon that falsehood.

It is a constitutional nullity.

Nor in any case does the restriction on magazines seriously inhibit the use of firearms for self-defense.

It is clearly intended to somewhat diminish the harm they can do used on offense.

At a school, say. Or a church.

One of the judges on the panel dissented, leaving a majority of two who voted to throw out the ban, which Lee wrote was passed “in the wake of heart-wrenching and highly publicized mass shootings.”

Letitia James on Morning Joe

She argued vigorously and well that the pervasive corruption of the NRA required its dissolution.

Not exactly a hostile venue, politically, though.

And not to say this isn't obvious political opportunism on many levels.

Her defenders have to say this chance to kill off a critical enemy organization is a windfall for the Democrats legitimated by the facts.

Legitimate opportunism, so to speak.

Legally, the NRA really should be dissolved.

They have to say.

I hate it when they're right.

The NRA uses routine political methods to defend and advance a somewhat overdone gun rights agenda.

This DA is way out there as to means to advance a gun control agenda that is not, so far as I know, at all extreme.

NRA fights back, files its own suit against NY attorney general seeking to disband organization

President Trump slammed AG Letitia James’ suit against the group, calling it 'a very terrible thing'

The surprise would have been if they hadn't fought back and he hadn't deplored the NY suit.

The National Rifle Association is fighting back against a lawsuit filed Thursday by New York’s attorney general by submitting its own civil suit against the state official, accusing her of defamation and violating its rights to free speech.

The NRA’s lawsuit was filed in the federal court of New York and alleges Attorney General Letitia James “made the political prosecution of the NRA a central campaign theme” when she was running for the AG’s office in 2018, and has not treated the association fairly since.

“Despite hopes that playing by the rules would procure a just outcome, the NRA has not been treated fairly by James’s office,” the 19-page suit states. 

“The New York Democratic Party political machine seeks to harass, defund, and dismantle the NRA because of what it believes and what it says.”

The defamation allegations stem from James' public descriptions of the NRA as a "criminal enterprise" and "a terrorist organization."

“James boasted that she would strike foul blows against the NRA and pound the NRA into submission. She vowed that she would use the NYAG’s investigative and enforcement powers for the precise purpose of stanching political speech (‘deadly propaganda),” the lawsuit states. 

“She has begun to deliver on her campaign promises to retaliate against the NRA for constitutionally protected speech on issues that James opposes. As NYAG, James has regrettably succumbed to ‘individual passions, and individual malevolence.’”

All incontestably true.

While the lawsuit accuses all four men of wrongdoing and seeks fines and remuneration, none of them have been charged with a crime.

In turn, NRA President Carolyn Meadows responded by calling the lawsuit a “baseless, premeditated attack” on the group and the Second Amendment.

“You could have set your watch by it: the investigation was going to reach its crescendo as we move into the 2020 election cycle,” Meadows said. 

“It’s a transparent attempt to score political points and attack the leading voice in opposition to the leftist agenda.”

The New York Attorney General Wants to Dissolve the NRA

Letitia James may have a bigger ax to grind than Paul Bunyan; she ran for the office as an outspoken foe of the organization and called it a “terrorist organization.”

But she’ll have an easier time justifying her investigation by pointing at members of the NRA’s leadership publicly accusing each other of inappropriate expenditures. 

Back in 2019, LaPierre claimed then-president Oliver North was trying to extort him and pressure him to resign. 

North claimed that LaPierre had charged more than $200,000 of wardrobe expenses to an NRA vendor, and “told the NRA board’s executive committee of other allegations, including hefty travel expenses charged to a vendor and sexual-harassment allegations against a senior NRA official.” 

The National Rifle Association and its primary communications firm, Ackerman McQueen, have been in a lengthy and expensive legal fight since mid-2019, the NRA has been forced to lay off staff this year, and the pandemic forced the cancellation of the 2020 annual meeting. 

In January, LaPierre reportedly told the board that they had spent $100 million on legal fees.

The devil is finding work for many idle hands this summer of love

Gunshots Fired as Rival Militias Face Off in Louisville

Americans are far too stupid and far too angry for the 2nd Amendment.

There Are No Peaceful Protesters In Portland

We are approaching day 60 of the violent riots in Portland, Oregon. 

The media would have you believe that these are peaceful protests highjacked by a handful of violent agitators. 

That is a lie.

At this point none of the 2,000 or so people out of 650,000 who live in Portland who are gathering each night are peaceful protesters, all of them, every single one, are aiding and abetting the destruction and violence knowingly and willingly.

. . . .

Let’s be perfectly clear about this. 

Any single person on the streets giving cover to this violent mayhem is themselves a participant in the rioting and destruction. 

This is not tens of thousands of Americans coming together to have their voices heard and petition the government for better police practices. 

These people don’t even have any discernible demands; there is literally nothing that authorities could do or concede that would make them stop their wanton destruction.

Add Idaho to the list

Of places in America you would never move to.

Rightwing vigilantes on armed patrol after fake rumours of antifa threat

Every day they give us more reasons to abolish the Second Amendment.

Remember that loon who shot up the pizza shop where, per right wing loonies, Hillary and other Democrats were running a child sex ring?

They are all but unimaginably stupid.

Now a hot topic on the right: violent resistance to a mandatory gun buyback

The point seems increasingly made by more or less mainstream sources on the right that the Democrats (or anyway President O'Rourke) would put in place a federal program of mandatory buybacks of so-called "assault rifles" like the AR 15 from all or nearly all American civilians who own any.

And that such a program would be met not only with widespread noncompliance but even with violent resistance.

Some go so far as to predict even organized guerrilla warfare by American militias.

And some people even urge such violence, claiming it would be justified.

Stuff and nonsense

But even if it were not, the allegedly natural and allegedly God-given right to self-defense would neither be nor entail either a right to do so with a gun or a right to own a gun.

Yes, Gun Ownership Is a God-Given Right

Rich Lowry.

So this is now something seriously discussed in political journalism?

Widespread citizen violence against federal efforts to enforce a mandatory buy-back of assault rifles in the face of widespread noncompliance.

Democrats’ Gun Buy-Back Plan Would Backfire Horrifically

Democrats always say this, and it's never true.

And that's why the Republicans pay no price for doing nothing.

Texas Shooting Brings New Urgency to Gun Debate in Congress

Phooey.

These shootings just set off Democrats, or allow them to pretend.

Shooting near Odessa, TX

Nobody really knows anything about it, yet.

Death toll in Odessa shooting rises to 7, a 17-month-old child among those injured

The rampage began after the suspect, in a gold Honda, was the subject of a 3:17 p.m. traffic stop between Midland and Odessa, officials said Saturday. 

The gunman shot the trooper who initially stopped him and continued west to Odessa, where he shot multiple others, according to Odessa Police Chief Michael Gerke.

"The suspect continued shooting at innocent civilians all over Odessa," police said in the statement.

The suspect then ditched the vehicle he was using and took a U.S. Postal vehicle to a local movie theater, Cinergy, where a shootout with law enforcement from multiple agencies took place, he said.

. . . .

Police have not released the identity of the shooter or the victims in the attack.

. . . .

A senior law enforcement official briefed on the case and a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety said the shooter had a rifle that may have been a .223 AR-15 style weapon.

Officials were also trying to determine whether the suspect had other weapons on him during the shooting or at his home.

. . . .

The attack, the second mass shooting in Texas this month, prompted a round of calls for stricter gun laws from some hopefuls running for the Democratic nomination for president.

Not clear at all what stricter gun laws they have in mind or how they would have made a difference.

Texas loosens firearm laws hours after the state's latest mass shooting left 7 dead

A series of new firearm laws go into effect in Texas on Sunday, just hours after a shooting left seven people dead in the western part of the state.

The laws will further loosen gun restrictions in a state that's had four of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern US history, including the El Paso shooting last month, when a gunman stormed a Walmart and killed 22 people.

The new measures were all passed during the 2019 legislative session, which ended in June.

None of the measures seem relevant or, to me, objectionable.

They are shocked, shocked!

Five senate Democrats are shocked and appalled that Republicans' readings of the constitution reflect their politics and sometimes favor the interests of Republican constituencies or donors.

And they warn darkly that, if the Supremes don't rule as they desire on a Second Amendment case now before them, the already wavering trust of the American people in the judicial integrity of the court will be further compromised and the public may demand it be restructured to reduce the influence of politics.

They threaten court-packing, in other words.

The opening salvo, the first of many to come, in a barrage of propaganda aiming to soften up public opinion and prepare it for just such a move, that many Democrats, including me, think the Dems ought to do if they can, as soon as they can?

Maybe.

And I suppose it was inevitable that such Dem propaganda would have to pretend, as Republican propaganda about interpretation of the constitution always does, that there is a single reading, or a narrow range of readings, of the constitution that any honest and objective student of the thing would arrive at, sufficient to decide all or damned near all cases or controversies, and especially cases in which the political, social, cultural, legal, or economic stakes are greatest.

But that is a fantasy suitable for children, like Santa Claus and the Elf on the Shelf.

The truth, entirely contrary to that notion, is that the constitution is so riddled with obscurity, generality, and imprecision of language and so undermined by glaring lacunae that nothing at all can get to readings sufficiently lucid and apposite to decide controversies but the political, moral, religious, or other personal and somehow relevant beliefs, commitments, or even interests of the reader.

Even the question whether and how far judges must feel themselves bound by what they admit to be, as there will be in many but by no means all cases, the evident meaning of some key passage of the thing, can be decided on no other basis than these.

And it is also a fantasy that people do not understand all that very well, and that just that is why the parties' choices of not only judicial philosophies or constitutional interpretations but of judges are entirely and necessarily a function of the political, moral, religious, or other somehow relevant beliefs, commitments, or interests of their members, constituencies, or donors.

But the broad masses include the massively stupid and naive.

And so the multiple and manifold lines of propaganda brought forth for this fight must include threads variously addressed to diverse elements of the constituencies involved.

To Save a Bad Gun Law, Democratic Senators Threaten the Supreme Court

It is a bad gun law, by the way.

Update 081819.

It's also possible this will, and may have been intended to, warn off the Supremes from overturning Roe or anything significantly related to it.

Draconian to the point of stupid

De Blasio Doesn’t Get It

Y. C. P. offers a narrow escape hatch from New York’s punitive gun laws, which are among the harshest in the country. 

The state imposes a 3½-year mandatory minimum prison sentence for people who are convicted of the maximum charge for possessing a loaded gun without a license. 

In some states, possessing a gun without a permit isn’t even a crime. 

Other states treat the offense as a misdemeanor or make exceptions for having an unlicensed gun in one’s home. 

But in New York, gun control has taken a form that includes mandatory prison sentences.

The New York Police Department has long credited “Guns = Prison,” as the slogan goes, for much of New York’s amazing crime drop. 

And it is amazing: Crime has fallen steeply in New York over a quarter century, to a level not seen since the 1950s. 

In 1990, there were 2,245 killings in the city. In 2018, there were fewer than 300.

Yes, there is evidence that civil laws requiring gun permits reduce gun deaths. 

But it’s much harder to find the same effect for mandatory prison sentences. 

Eighty percent of New York City’s drop in homicides happened before the strict mandatory sentences for gun possession went into effect in 2006. 

Researchers have failed to find evidence that compulsory prison time for gun possession resulted in a drop in violent crime in Florida, Virginia, Massachusetts and Chicago.

. . . .

Almost everyone who gets locked up for possessing a gun comes home within a few years, less equipped to get a decent job or housing. 

Brooklyn’s willingness to offer an alternative is Y.C.P’s great innovation.

To reduce and someday end mass incarceration, the country is very much in need of models like this one. 

But Mayor de Blasio doesn’t get it. 

“We should not confuse the goal of diversion, which for nonviolent offenses, is a valid tool,” he said, criticizing Mr. Gonzalez’s commitment to Y.C.P. 

“The N.Y.P.D. is doing amazing, amazing work. 

They need the prosecutors to be just as aggressive.”

But that’s not what the people of Brooklyn opted for when they elected Mr. Gonzales their district attorney in 2017. 

He ran on a progressive platform, promising to make Brooklyn safe by making its communities healthier. 

Y.C.P. is part of that mission. 

Mayor de Blasio could distinguish himself — in his city and in the Democratic presidential field — by standing up for it.

Reading "We the People"

EC does advert to rulings concerning the 2nd Amendment.

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.

EC writes that before Heller no Supreme Court had ever stricken down any law for violating this amendment.

"The Court", he says, "always ruled that the Second Amendment was about a right to have guns for the purpose of militia service" (page 8).

Heller struck down a DC ordinance prohibiting private ownership or possession of handguns, 5 conservatives vs four liberals.

Two years later the same majority held the 2nd protects a fundamental right against state and local governments, too, in McDonald.
.
Scalia went there, to incorporation of the 2nd.

Scalia articulates the position of the court that the part of the text before the comma is merely "prefatory" and only the part after it is "operative".

That part, read fairly, says without qualification that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

EC regards the claim that the first part is merely prefatory as arbitrary and in any event cites this case as part of his argument that conservatives only insist upon judicial restraint when it is liberals they want to restrain, and denounce judicial activism when it is liberal judicial activism.

(He says liberals do the opposite).

I mention all this to point out that the conditional view of the text as a legitimate originalist reading seems not to have been considered by anyone, though it fits quite nicely with liberal values as it makes the amendment entirely inoperative.

So to speak.

Jeffrey Deaver is a big, fat liar

Or was just unwilling to look it up.

In The Kill Room, the author asserts "The brief Second Amendment of the Constitution guaranteed the right of militias to keep and bear arms. It didn't specifically say that all citizens had that right."

The second sentence is true, but not the first.

This is the text.

"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."

It guarantees a right of the people.

Judging from the books, Deaver's politics generally seem liberal, and that blatantly silly view of the amendment was once widely supported by liberals.

Maybe still is.

The book contains an equally silly argument between Detective Amelia Sachs and a weapons manufacturer named Walker about gun licensing.

It is in that context that the amendment is so mischaracterized.

Amelia ignores that nobody has a specifically guaranteed right in the Constitution to fly a plane or drive a car to argue from those to the constitutionality of licensing gun owners.

Walker overlooks that point - one might claim it makes no difference - but objects to licensing that it would enable Washington to come in the night and take our guns.

Amelia replies that Washington has nukes, so if it wants to take our guns it will do so despite resistance hypothetically made more effective by the absence of licensing or registration.

That is a shockingly stupid thing to say.

But Walker seems to concede.

Did I say that? I take it back.

If I at any time wrote that the National Guard is a militia within the meaning of the Second Amendment I take it back.

A militia is an organization of persons, civilians or not, keeping weapons of their own in their homes who can participate together in military training or actions using their own weapons as well as others maintained by the organization.

Just because they don't use their own weapons in their training or actual service, nor need they even own weapons, neither NGs nor Reservists are militia per se.

Of course, individual NGs and individual Reservists may also "on their own time" belong to a militia.

And, anyway, the amendment does not guarantee the right of the organization to own and bear weapons, but of the people in general (not only militia members), each as an individual.

Update, 6/29/2020.

Perhaps one reason it is so widely maintained that the NGs are indeed militia is that the constitution expressly allows the states to have and train militias but forbids them to have their own troops in peacetime.

So it cannot be admitted that the NGs are actually troops and not militia.

Tada.

Repeal the Second Amendment

'Liberty or Death': rightwing protesters march against alleged leftwing violence in Seattle

More than 100 rightwing demonstrators marched with firearms through the streets of downtown Seattle on Saturday afternoon, in an event billed as a protest against an alleged tide of leftwing violence.

Many demonstrators at the “Liberty or Death” rally wore camouflage, body armor, helmets and insignia of the “Patriot Movement”. 

Many had handguns at their waists, large semi-automatic long guns strapped to their backs, or both.

. . . .

A counterprotest organised by a coalition of leftist and community groups drew at least double the crowd.

But it also contained demonstrators openly carrying firearms. 

Most were members of the Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club, a group named for a 19th-century antislavery campaigner which says it carries out “liberatory community defense”. 

It had around a dozen members at the rally.

. . . .

The rightwing event was co-organised by the Washington state Three Percenters, and the Vancouver, Washington-based rightwing protest group Patriot Prayer. 

The Three Percenters are a paramilitary organisation which, according to monitoring group Political Research Associates, “pledges armed resistance against attempts to restrict private gun ownership”. 

Members of other branches have been involved in confrontations with federal government agencies in Nevada, Oregon and Montana.

Patriot Prayer, led by Republican Senate candidate Joey Gibson, has staged street protests in liberal cities on the US west coast for more than a year. 

They have been especially active in Portland, Oregon. 

Two rallies the group held in that city June culminated in extensive street violence. 

One on 30 June was declared a riot by Portland Police Bureau (PPB).

Talk about a loophole

A 3D printed gun is downloadable death

Imagine this: the convicted domestic abuser next door tries to buy a gun. He's turned down because he fails his background check. 

When he gets home, he opens up his browser, and in half an hour he's printing out his own undetectable, fully functional plastic gun, with no background check and no record of his purchase.

As of August 1, it will be a reality in America -- unless we are able to stop it.

Due to a settlement between the State Department and Defense Distributed -- a Texas based designer of 3D guns -- felons, domestic abusers, terrorists, those adjudicated too mentally ill to own guns and any other person unable to legally purchase firearms will be able to print one at home. 

Depending on the printer, they can be untraceable and plastic, or they can be metal. 

People will be able to make anything from novelty guns to AR-15s. And we will never know -- until it is too late.

It gets worse: this requires a legislative fix immediately, and the House of Representatives session adjourned for August recess on Thursday. 

In other words, there won't be a fix this month.

. . . .

This is part of the larger problem of ghost guns. 

These guns are made from DIY kits, which have no serial number, require no background check and are currently fully legal due to loopholes in our laws. 

An internet search on ghost guns tells a terrifying tale: headlines of gangs stocking up on these untraceable weapons. 

Of states with strict gun laws like Massachusetts confiscating hundreds of these guns. 

Of a tide of guns we don't know are out there and we don't know how to trace.

. . . .

Gun violence prevention organizations -- Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Everytown for Gun Safety and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence -- filed a lawsuit to get an injunction to keep these downloadable guns from becoming legal, but on Friday a judge denied their motion to halt the sale of these deadly weapons.

Partnered with The Newtown Action Alliance and Fred Guttenberg of Orange Ribbons for Jaime, the No Rifle Association (NoRA), my organization, is helping to build a coalition of state attorneys general to also fight in court. 

We hope that we will be able to keep us safe long enough to enact a permanent legislative solution to this menace.

But without the public electing a Congress with the backbone to stand up to the gun industry and drawing a line in the sand at guns on demand for everyone, anytime, it's unlikely to happen.

10 killed, 10 wounded in Santa Fe, Texas, shooting

Seen on Morning Joy moments ago:

A white guy maybe in his thirties in a tee shirt and bermudas, carrying an American flag, wearing a MAGA hat and a holstered semi-automatic pistol, approached the high school on foot.

Stopped by police and newsies, he explained he was there "to offer support".

And then he walked away.

Texas, of course, is an open carry state.

These are the people whose man is in the White House.

Time to repeal the 2nd Amendment.

Federal, state, and local authorities will then be free to outlaw firearms types and legally restrict, or even forbid, civilian ownership of firearms, as well as impose gun safety and registration requirements.

Meanwhile, people who want gun control are shoveling bullshit in large quantities, trying to increase alarm and outrage by using ludicrous criteria for identification in order to pump up the number of school shootings so far this year, all the while knowing perfectly well that the audience will take them to be referring to mass shootings of students or school personnel by people who went to the school purposely to carry them out.

Proving the lack of scruple and respect for decency in politics is not confined to one side.

Politifact is among those far too indulgent toward these both laughable and egregiously, intentionally misleading ways of counting.

As to the shooter in Santa Fe, he told police his purpose was to kill some people he didn't like.

No indication of religious, political, or racial motivation.

Naked shooter in the Tennessee Waffle House

‘No credible sightings’ of Waffle House shooting suspect as manhunt continues, police say

Police continued their intensive search Monday for the 29-year-old suspected of opening fire at a Tennessee Waffle House and killing four people one day earlier.

The Metro Nashville Police Department said early Monday that “there have been no credible sightings” of the suspected gunman, Travis Reinking, after an overnight search by local, state and federal law enforcement officers. 

Reinking, police said, was last seen Sunday morning behind his apartment complex.

. . . .

Months before Reinking became the target of a manhunt, authorities arrested him for trying to breach a barrier near the White House and later seized his guns.

Among the four weapons they took from Reinking was the AR-15 semi­automatic rifle that police say he used in the Waffle House on Sunday. 

One of the other weapons — a pistol — is missing from Reinking’s apartment, police said.

Reinking was trying to meet President Trump when he attempted to cross a security barrier at the White House complex in July, federal authorities said. 

After an investigation by the FBI office in Springfield, Ill. — near where Reinking lived at the time — state and local officials confiscated Rein­king’s guns and revoked his firearm license.

The guns, however, were later returned to Reinking’s father, who has acknowledged he gave them back to his son, officials said.

Under Illinois law, certain confiscated guns can be released to a family member, but Reinking could not lawfully possess the weapons in that state. It’s unclear whether possessing the weapons was illegal in Tennessee.

. . . .

Authorities say the gunman, wearing nothing but a green jacket, opened fire at the Waffle House restaurant in Antioch, Tenn., a suburb southeast of Nashville, just before 3:30 a.m. Sunday.

He had been sitting in his pickup truck at the Waffle House for a few minutes, looking around, before he got out and immediately began shooting at customers in the parking lot, Metropolitan Nashville Police Department spokesman Don Aaron said.

The man kept shooting as he walked inside, shattering the restaurant’s glass windows. 

At one point, he stopped, presumably to reload. 

That’s when police say a customer, James Shaw Jr., lunged at the gunman, wrestled the weapon away from him and tossed it over the counter.

. . . .

The gunman fled the scene, cursing, Shaw said. 

Police said he took off the only article of clothing he was wearing less than a block from the restaurant. 

Two magazines were found in the jacket’s pockets.

. . . .

“You balance the rights of people to have this privacy, but on the other hand, there needs to be a coordinated effort, especially in terms of mental health issues, to make sure that weapons don’t fall into their hands,” Metro Nashville Police Chief Steve Anderson told reporters at a news conference Sunday. 

He added that police suspect mental issues may have played a role in the Waffle House shooting, although the motive remains unknown.

Ya think?

USA Today says he's a "sovereign citizen".

Perfect.

So it's true? Liberal gun controllers are just girls and girlie-men afraid of guns?

GOP Rep. Brandishes Loaded Gun At Gun Violence Event: 'I'm Not Going To Be Gabby Giffords!'

We are supposed to be shocked and appalled at this stunt.

Exactly the scaredy-girl reaction the guy wanted.