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2nd Amendment Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 04, 2016 5 Comments
The NRA has a very well-done video series, Freedom's Safest Place. The latest video is Venezuela:
I emigrated from Venezuela—one of the most dangerous countries in the world today. A few years ago, the government came for our guns. We were told we would be safer without them. Of course, the politicians, the rich and famous, their bodyguards and criminals—they still have their guns. Everyone else lives in fear. Mothers and fathers are powerless to defend their families. But the drug cartels and gangs—the colectivos—still have all the guns they want. And 90 percent of murders are never solved.

Posted by Andrew Branca on February 29, 2016 45 Comments
(UPDATED: This post has been updated with the transcript of the oral arguments, at the bottom of this post. h/t Shall Not Be Questioned blog.) In a turn of events sure to shock those who follow the US Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas has broken with his 10-year-long record of declining to engage in oral argument, reports USA Today. Only once in the last 10 years has Justice Thomas made even the slightest remark during oral arguments, and that was merely a one-sentence aside made in jest to Antonin Scalia some three years ago.  Justice Scalia, a close friend of Thomas', passed away two weeks ago. The case which prompted Thomas to substantively engage in oral argument, Voisine v. US, centers on the Second Amendment.  Thomas choosing to break his habitual silence on this Second Amendment case may have been in homage to his friend Scalia, who greatly enjoyed displaying his wit in oral arguments. The recently deceased Scalia was instrumental on crafting pro-Second Amendment decisions by the Supreme Court in recent years, including the acknowledgement of a Constitutional right to keep and bear arms for self-defense in the cases of Heller and McDonald.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on February 28, 2016 22 Comments
Despite numerous efforts to fight the Texas's campus carry law, including a bizarre protest involving dildos, the law stands, and students are free to carry licensed firearms on campus beginning on August 1st of this year. A University of Texas (UT) Architecture dean has declared that the new law is the reason for his decision to leave UT. The Texas Tribune reports:
The University of Texas at Austin's longtime architecture dean announced on Thursday he is leaving, saying the state's new campus carry law played a major role in pushing him out. . . . . The departure is a blow for UT-Austin. Its architecture school has consistently ranked among the best in the nation under Steiner. This year, Architectural Record ranked its undergraduate program seventh.

Posted by Andrew Branca on February 26, 2016 10 Comments
Today marks the fourth anniversary of the fateful day on which Trayvon Martin made the imprudent and quickly fatal decision to viciously beat (as testified to by eye witnesses) an armed George Zimmerman. Presumably coincidentally timed with anniversary, Florida has made or is making a couple of substantive changes in its laws covering some key facets of self-defense. The first change actually made this week is that Florida has removed the crime of aggravated assault from among the gun crimes that fall subject to the state's infamous "10-20-Life" mandatory minimum sentencing requirement. We'll cover that change in this post. (We've previously written on proposals for this change, here: Changes Proposed to Florida’s Infamous “10-20-Life” Sentencing Law.) The second change has not yet taken effect, but is advancing through the legislature.  That is the Florida senate approval of a change to the state's self-defense immunity law that would require state prosecutors to disprove self-defense by clear and convincing evidence in order to deny a defendant immunity from prosecution (and civil suit).  We'll cover that prospective change in a subsequent post. For now, let's take a look at the changes to "10-20-Life" signed into law this week.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on February 24, 2016 14 Comments
While Obama and the progressive left continue their gun-grabbing attempts to leave law-abiding citizens at the mercy of random shooters and terrorists, one business owner in Georgia has instituted a new policy that requires all of his employees to obtain a concealed carry permit so they can be armed in the workplace. WSB-TV reports:
A local business owner with several offices in Georgia is now requiring all of his employees to get a concealed carry license and be armed. After each employee at Lance Toland Associates gets their license, Toland presents them with a gun known as the judge. He says it is one of the most effective self-defense weapons and all his aviation insurance agencies carry them openly in the office. “Everybody has one of these in their drawer or on their person. I would not want to come into one of my facilities,” Toland said. “It's a 5 shot .410, just like a shotgun and you call it hand cannon.
Apparently his employees were eager to meet this new requirement and earn their own 4/10 judge pistol.

Posted by Mike LaChance on February 17, 2016 16 Comments
Jesse Hughes is the front man for Eagles of Death Metal, the band which was performing in the Bataclan theater during the Paris terror attack. The band is returning to finish their show and Hughes gave an interview to a French TV show. When guns came up, things got interesting and emotional. Eric Scheiner of CNS News reports:
Eagles of Death Metal Frontman: 'Did Your French Gun Control' Stop Anyone From Being Killed at Bataclan in Paris? In a recent interview with French iTélé, Hughes said that French gun laws did nothing to help the victims.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 11, 2016 26 Comments
Comedian and actor Carlo Bellario was arrested while shooting a low-budget film in residential Woodbridge, New Jersey last November. Unaware a movie was being filmed, neighbors called the cops. When police arrived on the scene, they learned the film's producers did not have proper permits to film in the neighborhood, nor did they have a permit to film with a prop gun. Because Bellario was wielding a soft-pellet pistol (considered a firearm in New Jersey), he was arrested, charged with weapons possession, and spent four days in jail.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on February 08, 2016 24 Comments
When will Florida Man ever learn? Apparently, never. In Pensacola, Florida, suspect, Jarell Blackmon used a fake pistol to rob a food mart. He cleaned out the cash register and made off with ten cartons of cigarettes before the cashier used a real gun to shoot him. The Pensacola News Journal reported:
A Pensacola man robbed a Beacon food mart store early this morning using a fake pistol. According to a press release from the Pensacola Police Department, the suspect, Jarell Blackmon, 24, entered the store at 1101 W. Cervantes Street at 2:25 a.m., wearing camouflage, at hat and a bandana over his face. The clerk said he told the suspect to remove the bandana, but he refused. Blackmon then came behind the counter and pulled out a pistol which the cashier assumed to be real.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on February 07, 2016 8 Comments
Last year, Professor Jacobson posted about a Texas school posting a sign that the staff is armed, and now, one Oklahoma school district is following suit and allowing teachers and staff to carry and to use whatever force is necessary to thwart potential attacks. The Muskogee Phoenix reports:
New signs posted on the grounds of Okay Public Schools announce an "Armed School Employees" policy in place. The Okay Public Schools Board of Education passed an “Armed School Employees” policy in August. On Monday, the district publicized that policy with signage in front of the school. “The signs are more or less a deterrent,” Superintendent Charles McMahan said. “We don't want to be a soft target.” McMahan said his administration looks for ways to keep students safe and secure, particularly since the Okay Police Department was disbanded in December 2014. Although Wagoner County sheriff's deputies are available, McMahan said it is “seconds, not minutes, that matter.”
Gun-free zones are soft targets; indeed, one former sheriff describes them as a "helpless victim zones." This move in the Okay school district is very likely to serve as a deterrent.  So far, however, there is only one Okay employee currently approved to carry in Oklahoma and now at school.

Posted by Andrew Branca on February 04, 2016 35 Comments
In 2013, Maryland enacted its Firearms Safety Act (FSA). With its passage, effectively banning its residents from owning any of the large majority of semi-automatic rifles owned by American citizens (exceptions were made for retired law enforcement officers). The FSA also imposed other restrictions, such as banning certain standard-capacity magazines. Such laws are common in blue states, of course, and when challenged in the Federal courts on the grounds that they violate the Second Amendment they are typically subject only to intermediate (or lesser) scrutiny. Generally speaking, if the State can articulate virtually any purportedly reasonable basis for the gun law, it survives scrutiny. Merely uttering the words "public safety" is usually sufficient for this purpose. Of course, normally laws that arguably infringe an enumerated Constitutional rights are not subject to mere intermediate scrutiny, but rather they are subject to strict scrutiny. To survive strict scrutiny the law must advance not merely any governmental interest, but in particular a compelling governmental interest. It is perhaps arguable that "public safety" would serve to meet this requirement. In addition, however, the law must also be narrowly tailored to actually achieve that interest. It is this second requirement that almost invariably leads to the law in question being found to be unconstitutional. In a nutshell, then, if intermediate scrutiny is applied to almost any law, the law survives. If strict scrutiny is applied to almost any law, the law falls.

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 31, 2016 31 Comments
Liberals in politics and media love to talk about the so-called gun show loophole. You've heard it a thousand times from Obama, Hillary, Bernie and countless talking heads. If these people are to be believed, anyone can waltz into a gun show and buy an automatic or semi-automatic weapon with no background check. The Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal recently cleared up some of these myths.

Posted by Anne Segal on January 23, 2016 19 Comments
Common Core education standards, which use the "Race to the Top" grant program to enjoin states to adopt national education standards, is the mechanism through which the federal government is taking control over K-12 curriculum. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) recently referred to it as the "Obamacare of education." From Cato's Neal McCluskey:
...While Washington did not outright order states to adopt the Core, it did require that they promise to adopt standards common to a majority of states — a description fit only by the Core — to get maximum points in the $4 billion Race to the Top competition, held at the nadir of the Great Recession. After the vast majority of states had made that promise — but many had not won money — the Obama administration declared that, to get waivers from the hated No Child Left Behind Act, they would have to either adopt the Core most had already promised to use, or standards certified “college- and career-ready” by a public university system. Washington also selected and paid for Core-aligned tests — including the Smarter Balanced assessment used by California — that would be plugged into NCLB’s testing requirements.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 11, 2016 21 Comments
Wow. Just Wow. This January 9, 2016 Letter to the Editor in The Boston Globe is just amazing, To the man I sat next to on the train: I am the gun owner you hate:
TO THE man I sat next to on my way in to Boston: When I boarded the commuter rail, you were already in the midst of a spirited phone conversation and didn’t seem to care about how loud you were talking. You were talking with someone about the Paris train attack and the growing epidemic of gun violence in America. You spoke about the “murderous NRA” and “bloodthirsty gun nuts” who were causing our schools to “run red with blood.” You spoke profanely of the Republicans who opposed President Obama’s call for “sensible gun control,” and you lamented the number of “inbred redneck politicians” who have “infiltrated Capitol Hill.” I found myself amazed at the irony of the situation. While you were spewing your venom, I sat quietly next to you with my National Rifle Association membership card in my wallet and my 9mm pistol in its holster. You were only 12 inches away from my legally owned semiautomatic pistol. I suppose I didn’t look like the “bloodthirsty gun nut” you thought I should be. It apparently didn’t register to you that I could so cleverly disguise myself by wearing a fleece coat, Patriots hat, and khakis.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 10, 2016 9 Comments
After years of claiming to be pro-Second Amendment, Hillary Clinton has changed her tune and is now attacking Bernie Sanders on his one weakness with progressives / socialists: guns. ABCNews reports:
Following a week in which the president outlined his planned gun control actions, Hillary Clinton is hitting her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, on his record -- and Sanders and his campaign are responding in full force, portraying the former Secretary of State as a flip-flopper. “When it really mattered, Senator Sanders voted with the gun lobby and I voted against the gun lobby,” Clinton told Chris Matthews on “Hardball” tonight.

Posted by Mike LaChance on January 08, 2016 26 Comments
Obama's "Guns in America" town hall event on CNN last night was a quiet event with plenty of respectful questions from the invitation only audience but failed to present any new ideas for dealing with gun violence short of making it harder for people to buy guns. Within the first 15 minutes, Obama complained that every time he tries to do something on guns, his message is distorted by his critics. ABC News reported:
Obama Slams Charge That He's Taking Away Guns as 'Conspiracy' The president quickly emphasized that he has "respect" for people who want a gun for hunting and sportsmanship, but it "makes sense to keep guns out of hands of people who would do others harm." Obama and moderator Anderson Cooper pointed out that the National Rifle Association was invited to participate in the forum, but declined to attend. Still, the president said he was "happy" to meet with the NRA to discuss his proposals.

Posted by Mike LaChance on December 28, 2015 35 Comments
Virginia had an election in November which Democrats, including governor Terry McAuliffe, hoped would give them control of the state senate. They campaigned in part on gun control and lost, but that hasn't stopped them from pushing their agenda. After failing to achieve their goals through the democratic process, top Democrats are enacting gun control measures at the executive level. The Washington Post reported:
Virginia to stop recognizing concealed carry gun permits from 25 states

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on December 22, 2015 16 Comments
Last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel received a rockstar reception at her conservative party CDU's annual convention in Karlsruhe. Merkel received a nine-minute-long standing ovation from the party delegates for a speech in which she refused to put a fixed limit on migrant intake. Germany is expecting to take as many as 1.5 million migrant this year. With each migrant expected to bring 4-8 family member in the short-term, the real number for 2015 alone could be well over 7 million. However, some odd 30 party delegates dared to question Merkel's stand on mass migration -- out of roughly 3000 attending delegates. That's 99 percent approval by the party cadre for Merkel's open border policy. Even Stalin-era purges didn't East-German dictators that level of support. The British newspaper Independent reports:
[I]n her keynote address to more than 3,000 Christian Democrat (CDU) delegates at a party congress in Karlsruhe, Ms Merkel effectively threw down the gauntlet to the rest of Europe and insisted that it share the burden in helping to solve the problem. “We face the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War,” she told the party faithful. Appealing to other EU members for help she called for solidarity, saying that Europe faced a “historic test” and insisting: “The fight for a unified Europe is worthwhile – of that I am deeply convinced.” Ms Merkel conceded that overcoming the problems facing Germany, which has accepted over a million migrants in 2015 alone, amounted to a “giant task”. But the Chancellor flatly refused to accept demands from within her own ranks to set an “upper limit” on the migrant influx, or for the installation of Berlin Wall-style fortifications and controls on Germany’s borders.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on December 22, 2015 32 Comments
The 9/11 terror attack changed the way Americans think about and law enforcement / the feds treat hijacked airlines, and San Bernardino and Paris are changing the way that Americans think about "active shooter" situations in the gun-free zones in which they tend to occur. Previously, office workers were taught to hunker down and hide (under a desk, for example) if they could not get away from the building.  This is a bad plan.  Now, however, "active shooter training" for office workers does not recommend hiding, which was often in plain sight; instead, the recommendation is to fight back—with books and other objects that can be used to "distract" a terrorist or assailant. The Washington Post reports:
Spooked by a year of high-profile rampages, hundreds of companies and organizations like NeighborWorks are racing to train their workers how to react to a shooter in their workplaces. And after decades of telling employees to lock down and shelter in place, they are teaching them to fight back if evacuating is not an option. The idea: Work as a team to disrupt and confuse shooters, opening up a split second to take them down.
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