Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

Govovnor, and traitor to freemen, Bill Lee, officially called his special legislative session on the 8th of August 2023 in an effort to usurp your God-ordained duties. The session is scheduled to start on the 21st.

Mental health major theme of Lee’s legislative package

Lee pledged to specifically support mental health reforms, a mental health coverage waiver and promoting safe storage of firearms, though he is blocking any legislation that would implement penalties related to safe storage laws.

“As our nation faces evolving public safety threats, Tennessee remains vigilant and is taking continued action to protect communities while preserving the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens,” Lee said in a statement.

“In the months leading up to the public safety special session, we have listened to Tennesseans and worked with members of the General Assembly to identify thoughtful, practical measures to strengthen public safety across our state, including steps to support law enforcement, address mental health, prevent violent crime and stop human trafficking. I thank the General Assembly for its continued partnership and look forward to achieving meaningful results for Tennesseans.”

Lee’s administrative package includes:

• Codifying his executive order dealing with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and background checks. The proposal requires reporting of accurate, complete and timely records from court clerks to the TBI within 72-hours and requires electronic submissions of dispositions and expungements to the TBI.
• A TennCare mental health coverage waiver to allow federal matching funds for Medicaid to cover mental health and substance abuse services;
• Budget initiatives prioritizing hiring and retaining mental health professionals in the state;
• Eliminating certain practice requirements for psychiatric nurse training to expand access to mental health treatment;
• Greenlighting DNA collection at the time of arrest for felony crimes;
• Directing TBI to report on the state of human trafficking in Tennessee;
• Eliminating taxes on firearm safes and other safe storage initiatives.

“The Governor has requested and informed the General Assembly of the call for special session on Aug. 21,” House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, said in a joint statement with House Majority Leader William Lamberth, R-Portland, and House GOP Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison, R-Cosby. “We look forward to the opportunity to strengthen public safety and mental health resources without infringing on the rights of law-abiding Tennesseans.”

Congratulations Trump.  Amy Coney Barrett votes with the communists.  Yet another failure.  You could have chosen Judge Don Willett instead.  This is on you.

As you likely know, Justice Alito has given the federal government until Tuesday, or in other words, extended the stay on Judge’s Reed O’Conner’s vacatur of the new ATF rule to serialize incomplete lower receivers.  Of course, we don’t know where this is all headed.  The SCOTUS could remand this for decision consistent with Bruen, or sustain the vacatur for parties involved, or they have other options.  Since this emergency appeal by the DOJ has been accepted by the SCOTUS, doing nothing is now not possible.  They will do something, but we’ll have to wait until Tuesday to find out (or perhaps Wednesday).

Below, professor Mark Smith does a service by reviewing the history of firearms serialization in both the U.K and America.  There is basically no history of serialization in America, and certainly no history of requiring firearms to be serialized at the time of our founding.  In other words, there is no analogue law to which the DOJ and ATF can turn.  It isn’t enough to say that firearms loaned to the militia by the government were serialized.  That was for a different purpose, i.e., tracking government property.  The ATF rule pertains to privately owned firearms.

Watch all of Mark Smith’s presentation.  But before you get to that, remember that the founders toted long guns to school with them in order to hunt on the way to and from classes.  Those were either purchased from a smith (with no serialization) or self-made (of course, with no serialization).  The founders would have opposed such schema.

In 1 Samuel 13:19f, we read this.

Now no blacksmith could be found in all the land of Israel, because the Philistines said, “Otherwise the Hebrews will make swords or spears.” So all Israel went down to the Philistines, each to sharpen his plowshare, his mattock, his axe, and his hoe. The charge was two-thirds of a shekel for the plowshares, the mattocks, the forks, and the axes, and to fix the cattle goads.

This is considered by commentators to be a great evil.  Matthew Henry comments, “See how politic the Philistines were when they had power; they not only prevented the people of Israel from making weapons of war, but obliged them to depend upon their enemies, even for instruments of husbandry. How impolitic Saul was, who did not, in the beginning of his reign, set himself to redress this. Want of true sense always accompanies want of grace. Sins which appear to us very little, have dangerous consequences. Miserable is a guilty, defenceless nation; much more those who are destitute of the whole armour of God.”  In Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, we read this.  “Now there was no smith found throughout … Israel—The country was in the lowest state of depression and degradation. The Philistines, after the great victory over the sons of Eli, had become the virtual masters of the land. Their policy in disarming the natives has been often followed in the East. For repairing any serious damage to their agricultural implements, they had to apply to the neighboring forts.”  John Gill remarks “this they did to prevent their having arms, and the use of them, that they might not rebel against them, and fight with them, and overcome them; it was a piece of policy to keep them subject to them.”

Subjection of others is always the goal.  As I’ve observed before, the desire to control others is the signal pathology of the wicked.  Men who would become the almighty desire to steal the power and authority of the most high God to themselves, and the result is always tyranny.  Those rulers are always fake, a ghost of righteousness, a phantom, unreal, a vapor in the wind.  There is nothing righteous about tyrannical rulers, but the history of tyranny is dark.  In the twentieth century, some 212,000,000 souls were lost at the hands of tyrannical governments across the globe.

The firearms serialization schema is sinful, and points to deeper problems of the soul among those who call for such control over other men.  Control over other men never leads to righteous results.

Never compromise with this wickedness.  Oppose it at every turn.  Take names and hold grudges.

Prior: The American Tradition of Self Made Arms

Source.

FARGO, N.D. (Valley News Live) – Fargo is suing the state of North Dakota over a new law that bans zoning ordinances related to guns and ammunition, continuing a clash over local gun control.

The state’s biggest city has an ordinance that bans people from selling guns and ammunition out of their homes. The Republican-controlled Legislature passed a law this year that limits cities and counties from regulating guns and ammunition. The law, which took effect Tuesday, also voids existing, related ordinances.

The city’s lawsuit says the “stakes are much higher” and gets at whether the Legislature can “strip away” Fargo’s home rule powers. Fargo voters approved a home rule charter in 1970 that gave the city commission certain powers, including the power to zone public and private property.

“As it relates to this present action, the North Dakota legislative assembly is upset that the City of Fargo has exercised its home rule powers to prohibit the residents of the City of Fargo – and no one else – from the home occupation of selling firearms and ammunition and the production of ammunition for sale,” the lawsuit states. “Effectively, the City of Fargo does not want its residents to utilize their homes in residential areas as gun stores.”

The city successfully challenged a similar law two years ago.

North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley told The Associated Press his office will evaluate the complaint. Fargo city spokesperson Gregg Schildberger said the City Commission will discuss the lawsuit on Monday during a regular meeting.

Bill sponsor and Republican state Rep. Ben Koppelman told a state Senate panel in April that the issue came to greater attention in 2016 when, because of the ordinance, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives refused to renew the federal firearms licenses of Fargo dtealers who sold out of their homes.

“What is at issue is whether we want local governments creating gun control or whether we want gun regulations to remain a state-controlled issue,” Koppelman said in April. “Without this bill and in light of the (2021) court opinion, I think local political subdivisions could propose all sorts of local gun control, and based on the anti-gun track record of the City of Fargo Commission, I think we could expect it.”

It’s difficult for me to ascertain where this is for ND and the city of Fargo.  I’m not sure if the article is implying a likelihood of success because of prior protocol (lack of a preemption law), or screwed up judges.

In any case, it’s difficult for me to see any option other than ND law overriding Fargo ordinances.  Cities seem to always be a hotbed of controllers, Karens and HOA committees who like to tell other people what to do.

I support this preemption law as long as the state of ND honors the rights under the 2A.  I oppose any preemption law from a state that strips away rights under the 2A.

I see nothing inconsistent with my position.  Always press towards maximum liberty as long as property rights and noise ordinances aren’t infringed.

Source.

A federal judge on Thursday rejected a gun rights group’s challenge to an assault weapons ban the state of Connecticut adopted after a gunman in 2012 killed 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.

The National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) filed a lawsuit in September, arguing the 2013 ban violated the right to bear arms under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, citing a major U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that expanded gun rights.

That decision, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, was issued by the court’s 6-3 conservative majority and held the Second Amendment protects a person’s right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.

The decision also announced a new test to assess the legality of gun restrictions, saying they must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” NAGR said Connecticut’s law failed to meet that standard.

But U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton in New Haven in a 74-page ruling rejected those claims, saying the group failed to establish that assault weapons and large capacity magazines are commonly bought and used for self-defense.

She got the test wrong.  The test is “for lawful purposes.”

Here is the decision.

Defendants have submitted persuasive evidence that assault weapons and LCMs are more often sought out for their militaristic characteristics than for self-defense, that these characteristics make the weapons disproportionately dangerous to the public based on their increased capacity for lethality, and that assault weapons and LCMs are more often used in crimes and mass shootings than in self-defense. Defendants also show through the submission of historically analogous statutes and expert declarations that when a modern innovation in firearm technology results in a particular type of weapon or method of carrying being utilized for unlawful purposes to terrorize and endanger the public, the Nation has a longstanding history and tradition of regulating those aspects of the weapons or manners of carry that correlate with rising firearm violence.

[ … ]

Heller explained that it was not “permissible to ban the possession of handguns so long as the possession of other firearms (i.e., long guns) is allowed” because the handgun was the “quintessential self-defense weapon,” “possessing characteristics making it well-suited for self-defense.” Id. at 629. “Whatever the reason,” Heller found, “handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid.” Id. at 629.

Bruen, perhaps recognizing the shortcomings of a purely statistical inquiry into possession, avoided that pitfall by framing the relevant inquiry as being whether the weapons are “‘in common use’ today for self-defense.” Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2134 (emphasis added); see also Heller, 554 U.S. at 594 (discussing the origins of the pre-existing right codified by the Second Amendment as the “right of self-preservation” permitting a citizen to “repel force by force” when “the intervention of society in his behalf, may be too late to prevent an injury.”)

Now, go see Bruen pages 39 and 43.  Her legal clerk got the test wrong.  It’s for lawful purposes.  She also spends significant time exploring whether, in her opinion, the “unprecedented societal concern” associated with ARs.  So she does the balancing test associated with tiers of scrutiny that Bruen specifically disallowed.

And while we’re at it, the very section of Heller she quoted above dealt with handguns because ownership of long guns was already accepted, while handguns were disallowed.  The supreme court wasn’t stipulating what firearms may be owned.

Finally, this literally ignorant prose.

Unlike the broader category of handguns at issue in Heller and Bruen, the record developed here demonstrates that assault weapons and LCMs are suboptimal for self-defense.

So the old battle ax is now an expert in self defense!

Tell her Stephen Bayezes says hello.

This will be overturned, or remanded for reconsideration in light of whatever case they take up (perhaps the Illinois case).

UPDATE: Mark Smith provides a quick analysis.

These folks never stop do they?  They’re pulling out all the stops.  Fortunately, GOA is ready to take the first shot at them.

I’m guessing our buddy Stephen Stamboulieh will be busy for a while on this.

BREAKING: Reports suggest @JoeBiden’s Backdoor Universal Background (Registration) Checks to be published soon.

Gun Owners of America will be filing a lawsuit to block this unconstitutional rule ASAP.

for details ⤵ pic.twitter.com/sxiAM3RaAw

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) August 1, 2023

Four cases, affecting three potential controls were sent back to the lower courts; AR bans, Standard Capacity Mag bans, and Conceal Carry considerations. All of these cases have countrywide implications.

The video is 8 minutes.

That’s the good part.  The unfortunate part is that they remanded the case back to district court to determine the scope of relief (to whom this decision applies).

I do like Don Willett’s concurrence.  I’ve followed him for quite a while.  I wish he had been chosen for supreme court rather than Barrett.  Or Kavanaugh.

He finds some problems and dishonesty.

Americans have a God-given right to make machinery, including machinery that propels a projectile.

If you recall, a federal judge completely vacated the ATF’s frame and receiver rule, and after appeal to the Fifth Circuit to issue a stay on the judge’s decision, the Fifth Circuit told the ATF that they weren’t likely to prevail.  It’s a bit more complicated than that, because there were non-challenged provisions vacated along with the stupid main points of the frame and receiver rule.  But the ATF doesn’t care about that, and neither do the plaintiffs.

Well, the ATF got their panties in a wad over all of that and had a girl-fit, and they have sent this to the Supreme Court.

Here is their paperwork.  Most of it is laughable.  In fact, it’s so stupid that I’m not going to lift prose out of it.  You can read it for yourself.

Let’s rehearse this again.  What the ATF is saying is that they don’t want people to be able to do what the colonialists did back in the days before and preceding the war of independence.  That is, make their own machinery, if said machinery can propel a projectile.

The FedGov wants them all serialized, because guess why?

I’ve said it before.  I consider the entirety of the serialization schema to be immoral and unconstitutional.