Archive for the 'Second Amendment' Category

I have not seen a significant number of things eye-to-eye with Rob Pincus.  I’ll offer one brief example, i.e., shouldering stabilizing braces on AR pistols.  I recall Rob’s counsel of his viewers and readers not to shoulder stabilizing braces (this was before the latest ATF “interpretation”), and his reluctance (and even refusal) to do videos showing such tactics.

On the other hand, I have long said that you should do what feels natural and what you find necessary.  There are many legitimate reasons for firearms ownership: sporting, range shooting, competition precision shooting, self defense, collecting, and on and on the reasons could go.  It’s no more the business of the state to interest itself in your what firearms you own than what forks you have in your kitchen drawers, or how or why you have them.

But if you have a firearm with which you intend the use of home defense, and it has a stabilizing brace, if you need to shoulder the weapon to best use it, then do so.  Your responsibility is to your own life and the lives of your loved ones, not an ATF interpretation.

So I have had a difficult time trusting Rob, for whatever reason.  This latest commentary at Ammoland adds to that mistrust.  He co-authored a piece on common ground with Dan Gross, Former President of the Brady Campaign.  I will quote extensively.

Although many other issues have understandably dominated the news cycle, we are at a critical moment for guns. Over the last year, gun sales have reached unprecedented levels, as have gun-involved homicides, and the House has recently passed H.R. 1446, The Enhanced Background Check Act of 2021, which is currently being debated in the Senate. Recently, a wave of tragic mass shootings has put the gun issue in national headlines as President Biden has called on the Senate to pass the background check bill, adding that he supports a ban of “assault weapons.”

We are two advocates, activists and leaders from opposite sides of the “gun debate” who have come together because we both believe we are at a make-or-break moment. Suffice it to say, there is plenty that we disagree on, but for anyone with the genuine goal of reducing the number of preventable gun deaths in our nation, we believe we have an opportunity for real impact that has not existed in years and, if we are not able to seize it, it is likely to have negative repercussions for years to come.

Stop there.  This is strong language.  It means that Rob thinks that unless the policy recommendations that we are forthwith to read in the commentary are implemented, there will be negative repercussions.  No one is holding a gun to Rob’s head.  He appears to desire what we are about to read.  There seems to be no other reason to suspect that we need to “seize” the opportunity before us (Biden is president, the senate is split).

To expect meaningful and lasting change, we must first change the entire conversation, from one defined by politics to one defined by our common values and goals. This is not just a matter of deciding whether to call it “gun control,” “gun violence prevention,” “responsible gun ownership” or “gun safety.” It is about advocates, leaders and the media considering, far more than they have in the past, the narrative they are helping to create. It is about those who really care about impact, changing that narrative from one that is too-often divisive and counterproductive to one that genuinely unites the American public and provides the foundation that is necessary for real, lasting and fundamental change.

I have a bit of an issue with the notion of having “common goals” with progressives.  Philosopher Cornelius Van Til flatly debunked the idea that Christians can have a common goal or common starting point with unbelievers.  Now, this isn’t a theological debate, but the point is salient.  One doesn’t come into a conversation with neutrality.  There is always a set of presuppositions involved.  For the progressive, this is it.

The only way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence is to ban civilian ownership of all guns. That means everything. No pistols, no revolvers, no semiautomatic or automatic rifles. No bolt action. No breaking actions or falling blocks. Nothing. This is the only thing that we can possibly do to keep our children safe from both mass murder and common street violence.

Unfortunately, right now we can’t. The political will is there, but the institutions are not. Honestly, this is a good thing. If we passed a law tomorrow banning all firearms, we would have massive noncompliance. What we need to do is establish the regulatory and informational institutions first. This is how we do it.  The very first thing we need is national registry. We need to know where the guns are, and who has them.

This is true at least for the commoner.  For the controller, they want a monopoly on violence.  This is the starting point.  There is no common ground with them.  But we must continue.

Fortunately, the policy area with the most synergistic message is also the one that represents what we believe is the greatest potential for impact: Expanded Background Checks. The overwhelming majority of gun owners have already accepted that anyone engaged in the business of selling guns commercially, should be required to conduct a background check. At the same time the two of us believe that many private transfers, such as gifting a gun to a family member or letting a fellow member of a gun club borrow a firearm for a competition or hunting event should be legal and remain a private transaction outside of government regulation. We believe any expansion of the Background Check requirement should be focused on transfers to strangers. Sure, there are some important details to work out around exceptions such as specific definitions of “strangers,” and exceptions that would make it impossible for the government to compile a comprehensive list of gun owners; but we are confident that there are solutions that can make a huge impact if we stick to the principle and message of only keeping guns from the people we all agree shouldn’t have them. This is also how to “walk the walk” in terms of demonstrating that we are not trying to limit gun ownership among responsible gun owners and how to give substance and true credibility to the claim of respecting gun owners and the Second Amendment.

It’s wrapped up in nice words like “Expanded Background Checks.”  It’s padded to reduce the impact.  The claim is made up front that people support it, which if true, would obviate the need to say it all the time.

But make no mistake about it, Rob Pincus has come out in favor of universal background checks.  He, along with the former president of the Brady Campaign, supports it.

Thus Rob has in a single commentary thrown away what little he had left of his credibility as a defender of the RKBA.  I’m sure he’ll go on with his tactical training business, but for me, I do not see him as a credible defender of liberty.

For the record, I support the liberty to conduct person-to-person transfers of firearms of any sort.  We had this discussion at the dinner table a few nights ago, and I laid it out at the beginning by saying that I believe felons have a RKBA.  They have as much right to self defense as I do.

Eyes opened wider, and I explained what we all know to be true.  If a felon cannot be trusted to own a firearm, then a felon cannot be let out of prison to purchase fertilizer at the local Tractor Supply.  Besides which, felons guilty of murder, rape or kidnapping should be executed.

So, I suspect, ends the relationship of the 2A community with Rob.  I hope it was worth it for him.

UPDATE: I see that the editor has found it necessary to “apologize” for printing the article.  A quick note to the editorial staff.  Don’t worry about it.  If you publish enough, you’ll offend someone.  Ask me how I know?  I found this commentary useful even if I didn’t agree with its contents.  It’s useful because I know where Rob stands now.  That means you did the right thing.

Courthouse News Service.

Americans have no right to carry guns in public, a divided en banc Ninth Circuit panel ruled Wednesday, reversing a prior Ninth Circuit decision that struck down a Hawaii firearm restriction as unconstitutional.

“There is no right to carry arms openly in public; nor is any such right within the scope of the Second Amendment,” U.S. Circuit Judge Jay Bybee, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote for the majority of an 11-judge panel in a 127-page opinion.

Looking back on 700 years of legal history dating back to 14th century England, seven judges in the majority found “overwhelming evidence” that the law has never given people “an unfettered right to carry weapons in public spaces.”

The seven-judge majority traced legal texts and laws back to 1348 when the English parliament enacted the statute of Northampton, which banned carrying weapons in fairs or markets or before the King’s justices. It also cited multiple laws from colonial and pre-Civil War America in which states and colonies restricted the possession of weapons in public places.

“The Second Amendment did not contradict the fundamental principle that the government assumes primary responsibility for defending persons who enter our public spaces,” Bybee wrote. “The states do not violate the Second Amendment by asserting their longstanding English and American rights to prohibit certain weapons from entering those public spaces as means of providing ‘domestic tranquility’ and forestalling ‘domestic violence.’”

Writing for the dissent, Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, a Ronald Reagan appointee, said the majority failed to properly interpret the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columba v. Heller, which overturned Washington D.C.’s total ban on handguns and a requirement that rifles and shotguns be kept unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger-lock device.

“The Second Amendment’s text, history, and structure, and the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Heller, all point squarely to the same conclusion: Armed self-defense in public is at the very core of the Second Amendment right,” O’Scannlain wrote.

What they failed to get is God’s laws.  And so just like that, they declared God’s Holy Scriptures outmoded and irrelevant.

I’ll briefly make another observation.  I consider citations of British laws irrelevant and even ridiculous.  Judges who do that forget that we fought a war over the concept of rights, and forged a new covenant with the body politic based on winning that war.

I couldn’t possibly care any less about old British standards, morays or rules.

News from South Carolina.

A Statehouse proposal aimed at ensuring South Carolinians can keep their weapons no matter what gun-control measures the White House or Congress might take won early backing in the state Senate.

The bill attempts to buffer any future federal gun restrictions by classifying all guns and bullets legally owned by South Carolinians as weaponry of the state’s unorganized militia.

A 2-1 vote March 23 sent the bill to the Senate’s full Veterans’ Services Committee.

State Sen. Kevin Johnson, D-Manning, who cast the lone “no” vote, called the proposal unnecessary nonsense.

The measure, sponsored by Travelers Rest Republican Sen. Tom Corbin, adds language to an obscure 1881 state law regarding South Carolina’s “unorganized militia” — to which all “able-bodied” citizens over age 17 automatically belong.

The governor has the authority to assemble that militia in times of war, rebellion or insurrection, though that’s never happened.

There likely hasn’t been a militia fighting in South Carolina “since Francis Marion and the swamp foxes were shooting at the British” in 1781 during the American Revolution, Corbin told reporters after the hearing.

Corbin sees his proposal, coming some 240 years after those swamp skirmishes, as a way of ensuring South Carolina’s guns are never confiscated.

It would give the state’s “militia” members the right to buy and possess all types of firearms, ammunitions and their components — including magazines and clips — that were legal as of Dec. 30.

“At the end of the day, a federal government cannot disarm a state standing army,” Corbin told the subcommittee.

I’ve bolded the objectionable part of the article, but you already know that.  Only God gives rights, and only God can take them away.

If this has a chance of passing, then please go for it.  On the other hand, if this dog won’t hunt in a short session, then it may be another poison pill, or something to grab attention away from the need to pass open carry.

As for open carry, it appears that the bill stipulates barrel length, so the open carry of long guns may have been made illegal in S.C. with the open carry bill.

Again, it may be imperfect, but problems with it may be able to be fixed in the future.  If those problems can be ironed out in committee between the House and Senate, then do so.

Time is short, so get open carry done.  Focus on constitutional carry next session.

News from S.C.

The South Carolina House gave key approval Wednesday to a bill allowing people to carry guns without concealing them.

Legislators voted 82-33 in favor of the so-called open-carry bill after more than six hours of debate, with some Democrats joining Republicans. The legislation would allow people who already have a concealed-weapons permit to keep those guns visible in public.

The state is just one of five without open carry, joining atypical partners such as California, Florida, Illinois and New York.

[ … ]

“This bill brings us in line with the vast majority of the country,” said lead bill sponsor Rep. Bobby Cox, a Republican from Greenville.

Some of the debate was clownish.

Freshman Rep. Jermaine Johnson, D-Richland, said as a 6-foot, 7-inch tall, 285-pound Black man, having a gun on his side would make him a target.

The bill doesn’t force people to open carry, it only allows it.  If you’re concerned, then don’t do it.  Your objections have nothing at all to do with open carry.  Spend your time trying to reign in law enforcement.  I’ll be right there with you.

Now, it’s time to start on the South Carolina senators, who, I predict, won’t be as enthusiastic as the House.  They’ll gesticulate, hem and haw, vacillate, supply unctuous commentary and prose, and in the end, if South Carolinians don’t move on them, let this die on the floor of the senate with words like, “It’s complicated, we need to study this some more, we ran out of time doing the business of the people,” and such claptrap.

News from S.C.

A day before the South Carolina House is expected to start an hourslong debate over legislation that would allow a permitted gun owner to openly carry, a panel of lawmakers were slated to clear an even more expansive measure that would strike the permit requirement entirely.

The House Judiciary Committee passed a proposal Tuesday in a 18-6 vote that would allow constitutional carry in South Carolina, the constitutional belief that any legal gun owner should be allowed to own a gun without regulations.

State lawmakers don’t expect the constitutional carry measure to reach the debate stage until April, possibly before the crossover deadline to send the legislation to the Senate, well after the House passes the state budget.

This is good, yes?  Constitutional carry.  Hold on.

But what the hearing over constitutional carry offered was a preview of how far some Republican House members will try to pull the debate Wednesday when a mostly Republican-led coalition attempts to pass a bill that would allow permitted gun owners to carry publicly where guns are allowed.

“It became clear there was a substantial amount of support for constitutional carry, not only from traditional Second Amendment right advocates, but supporters of (Democratic state Rep. Justin) Bamberg’s amendment to change it to a constitutional carry bill,” said state Rep. Micah Caskey, R-Lexington. “(It) made sense to offer you an opportunity to showcase your support.”

The dynamics of the debate break down like this:

House Republican leaders are ready to adopt an open carry bill while keeping permit laws in place, legislation that has the best opportunity for passage and falls more in line with public polling that shows South Carolinians are more comfortable with making sure gun owners have permits, not the alternative.

But a few Republican legislators are ready to tack on an amendment that would take the measure further, allowing any legal person to carry a gun without a permit.

They’re trying the “poison pill” approach.  Notice who offered the amendment up – Bamberg, a reprehensible controller.  He later admits it, saying, ““I don’t see how we can have a constitutional carry bill that lets people carry without a permit, without training and carry anywhere except at the places that our state takes money from their paycheck to fund,” said Bamberg, D-Bamberg. “I don’t see how we can do that.”

Normally I’d say to jump on this and make everyone take a stand in public.  But in this instance I’d say let’s be incrementalists.  After open carry is passed, then you can tackle constitutional carry.

The S.C. senate is already balking.

Another problem for constitutional carry backers is that Senate Republicans are unsure whether such an expansive proposal could pass their chamber, a body that has denied similar bills before.

State Sen. Larry Grooms, R-Berkeley, told The State while he supports constitutional carry — and has sponsored a bill in favor of it — he was not confident that it could pass the upper chamber.

But, he added, “there were not enough votes to expand gun rights. I believe that there now are enough votes in the Senate to expand gun rights. I just don’t know how far, and we’re going to find out.”

The left is always the best at strategy, displaying amazing patience concerning their goals.  It’s time we took a page from that book.

Start with open carry.  Leave constitutional carry for next year.  In the mean time, work your senators.  Work them hard, both on open carry (this year), and constitutional carry (next year).

You can watch the first 20 minutes and get the gist of just how dense, stolid, ridiculous and clownish the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is.  It sounds like a carnival full of carnival barkers, and quite obviously, they don’t care any more about what the constitution says.

I’ve been following this case since its inception and will try to keep you posted.  If the Fourth Circuit does what it appears they will do, we can all ridicule them for the tyrants they are.

News from South Carolina.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WPDE) — Six South Carolina senators want to make the state a Second Amendment Sanctuary, according to pre-filed legislation in Columbia.

Sens. Shane Massey, Rex Rice, Josh Kimbrell, Tom Corbin, Dwight Loftis and Tom Young filed the bill on Feb. 18.

In the bill, the senators write that they and the other members of the state general assemble find that the “Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects an individual’s right to ‘keep and bear arms'” and that the right may not be infringed upon.

In order to protect that right in South Carolina, the lawmakers want the state attorney general to review any federal law, treaty, executive order, rule, or regulation related to the Second Amendment that might come down. Then, they want the attorney general to “issue a written opinion of its constitutionality.”

If the attorney general finds that the federal law, treaty, executive order, rule, or regulation related to the Second Amendment is unconstitutional, the state senators have a plan to stop the enforcement of it in South Carolina.

Those plans include:

• not giving any public funds, personnel or property from the state to the implementation, regulation, or enforcement of that federal law, treaty, executive order, rule, or regulation;
• not letting any official, agent or employee of the state, or any political subdivision of it, enforce or attempt to enforce that federal law, treaty, executive order, rule, or regulation.

If anyone were to take legal action against South Carolina for not following the federal law, the lawmakers write in the bill that the attorney general shall will defend the case.

Many counties in South Carolina have become their own second amendment sanctuaries, including Horry County.

Kershaw County was the first county in South Carolina to become one.

This isn’t just weak tea, it’s pathetic.  Honestly, you’d think that a state like South Carolina, where they supposedly value liberty, could do better than this given what other states have done and are doing.

There should be no need to turn to a lawyer for an assessment.  That’s what weaklings and fearful men do.  If they want S.C. to be a 2A sanctuary state, then just declare it so.

Furthermore, it’s meaningless unless they not only prohibit agents of the state from participating in confiscatory laws or other infringements, but dispatch state agents to arrest FedGov agents who try to do the same thing.

On top of that, I won’t believe a word they have to say until they decriminalize open carry in South Carolina.

I was in contact with South Carolina Carry today asking if they had a comprehensive email contact list for South Carolina legislators.  They don’t.

As followup to this post I had intended to begin making contact and learned that they (SC legislators) have begun to use the absurd contact forms.  In other words, they have cloistered themselves off and insulated themselves from their constituency.

This makes it very hard, as intended.  If anyone knows how to make contact with South Carolina legislators, especially if you have a comprehensive distribution list, that would be great.  Or if not, if there is some retired gun rights advocate who just wants to help in this endeavor, please feel free to post here, or email me.  Perhaps there is someone who has contacts inside the SC government who could assist us with this?

South Carolina Carry is also interested in such a list.

David Codrea.

Gun owners can thank supposed “originalist” Justice Antonin Scalia for perpetuating and solidifying the “confusion,” although it’s fair to suspect his motives were more deliberate than speculative.

[ … ]

“Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited,” Scalia volunteered, seemingly desperate to apologize for the majority ruling and to make a concession the gun-grabbers could use to later advantage.

I think Scalia was appealing to the beltway elitists for forgiveness.  As we’ve observed elsewhere:

Heller offers a Second Amendment cleaned up so that it can safely be brought into the homes of affluent Washington suburbanites who would never dream of resistance-they have too much sunk into the system–but who might own a gun to protect themselves from the private dangers that, they believe, stalk around their doors at night. Scalia commonly touts his own judicial courage, his willingness to read the Constitution as it stands and let the chips fall where they may. But Heller is noteworthy for its cowardice.

Rather than being a great victory for the second amendment, I believe the Heller decision was one root of our interpretational problems with it.

Codrea does offer the remedy.

“For someone represented by the establishment as an “originalist,” Scalia’s views were anything but. In A View of the Constitution, which colleague Brian Puckett writes “was the standard constitutional law text at Harvard until 1845 and at Dartmouth until 1860,” William Rawle, “a contemporary of the Founders and the man to whom George Washington offered an appointment as the first U.S. Attorney General,” offered a vastly different opinion.

“No clause in the Constitution could by any rule of construction be conceived to give to congress a power to disarm the people,” Rawle declared. “Such a flagitious (think “shameful,” “wicked,” “criminal,” “villainous”) attempt could only be made under some general pretense by a state legislature. But if in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both.”

Speaking of shameful, wicked, and criminal villains, fast-forward to the present. There is a Democrat eye-rolling feeding frenzy to strip Americans of what Continental Congress Delegate Tench Coxe called “the birthright of an American,” which he specifically identified as “every other terrible implement of the soldier.”

“[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people,” Coxe continued.”

News from South Carolina.

A bill that would allow people to carry guns without concealing them in South Carolina is heading to the House floor.

The House Judiciary Committee approved so-called open carry of weapons for people who already have a concealed-weapons permit by a 16-8 vote Tuesday.

South Carolina is one of only five states without open carry, joining atypical partners such as California, Florida, Illinois and New York.

The committee ignored amendments by Democrats that would remove the ban on weapons at the Statehouse and would refine rules on weapons at public events like festivals.

The bill is enthusiastically backed by many Republicans and conservatives, who said it makes sense to let people carry the weapons they can already have in a visible holster. Laws against pointing a gun at someone or threating someone with a gun without a legal reason would remain on the books.

Of course laws against assault will remain on the books, just like laws against brandishing.  Why does that even need to be stated?

Now.  Since the committees have apparently taken their job seriously and refused to allow this bill to perish in committee like it always seems to do, the real struggle begins.

From here on we take names and make lists.  Every member of the House will have to cast a vote, since as I understand it, turning this bill over from committee constitutes a motion and second.  It’s a live bill.

Oh, there are still parliamentary tricks that could be played, like someone could make a substitute motion to do something like send it back to the committee to study this more, or some such nonsense.  But that also requires a vote by every member of the House.

So we take names, and no one gets to hide behind the fact that there is no live bill to vote on.  That horse has left the barn.

It’s time to ramp up the comms to House members, and after that, members of the senate.  They need to hear from people, especially if you live in South Carolina.  I frequently visit relatives in South Carolina and so I should have a say, but they won’t listen to me like they would from my readers in South Carolina.

Get busy.