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. – Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Spokesperson for Gun Owners of America, Antonia Okafor Cover, joins us to discuss the surge of women gun owners and why the Second Amendment is so important to women empowerment.
©Gun Owners of America. All rights reserved.
This is a conspicuous confiscation of power, and it’s precisely what America’s founding fathers strove to avoid through the establishment of checks and balances.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has published a notice outlining their plans to update regulations on stabilizing braces.
Originally developed to help those with disabilities shoot comfortably, stabilizing braces have become a popular firearm accessory used to legally adapt AR-style pistols into guns that can be shot from the shoulder, like the highly regulated short-barreled rifle.
According to the ATF, stabilizing braces will now have to conform to a set of stringent guidelines to be considered legal. If they don’t meet those standards, they—and the gun to which they’re attached—will automatically become regulated as a rifle under the National Firearms Act.
This isn’t the first time the ATF or the DOJ have attempted to regulate this popular accessory. A similar reclassification was proposed back in December, but it was shot down due to uproar from lawmakers and the firearm community. However, after pistol-braced firearms were used in two recent, high-profile mass shootings, the ATF has circled back to the issue and seems more motivated than ever.
After the ATF notice was published, more than 130 representatives penned a letter to the agency and called upon the bureau to withdraw the rule, stating that the “proposed guidance is alarming and jeopardizes the rights of law-abiding gun owners.”
Most importantly, the lawmakers reminded the ATF that for the last decade, it had asserted that there were legitimate uses for stabilizing braces, as the accessory was designed to aid disabled gun owners who enjoy recreational shooting.
“Should this guidance go into effect,” they wrote, “a disabled combat veteran who has chosen the best stabilizing brace for their disability is now a felon.”
In response, the ATF claimed that this new classification won’t impact braces designed to help those with disabilities. However, their proposed point-based worksheet of stabilizing brace criteria fails to make this clear for gun owners.
At 52 pages, the intricate proposal is so lengthy and establishes such specific requirements that law-abiding citizens will have no idea if their firearm is still legal.
“Certain prerequisites,” the proposal reads, such as weapon weight and the overall length, “will be applied to determine if the firearm will even be considered as a possible pistol or immediately determined to be a rifle.”
Furthermore, “design factors that are more likely to demonstrate a manufacturer’s … intent to produce a ‘short-barreled rifle’ and market it as a ‘braced pistol’ accrue more points than those that reveal less evidence.”
A stabilizing brace that has accumulated too many points based on these criteria will be deemed a rifle, and therefore unlawful. Not only is this formula complicated, but there seems to be another hitch.
“The new factoring system,” remarks the NRA-ILA, “seems designed to ensure that few, if any, firearms can meet the criteria.”
Therefore, by classifying these braced pistols as Short Barreled Rifles, one of the most highly regulated guns on the market, the federal government is forcing 10-40 million law-abiding gun owners to surrender, destroy, or register their legal firearms … or face felony charges.
Essentially, the ATF is able to add rules and reclassify weapons without holding a single vote in Congress. As a result, this significant assault on the Second Amendment will not receive its due process.
This is a conspicuous confiscation of power, and it’s precisely what America’s founding fathers strove to avoid through the establishment of checks and balances.
The Constitution’s authors designed the United States government as three separate branches: the legislative, judicial, and executive. The legislative creates laws, the judicial determines their constitutionality, and the executive implements them.
In certain scenarios, each branch has the power to override the others and ensure that no branch of government is able to hold too much centralized power.
Unfortunately, through its unilateral proposal that would impact tens of millions of US gun owners, the ATF is violating the Separation of Powers designed by the Constitution to limit government overreach and protect individual rights.
In Federalist No. 48, James Madison warned that “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
This is exactly what is happening today.
This stealth power grab should concern all Americans, even if they are outside the immediately-impacted gun community.
COLUMN BY
Brett Cooper is a professional actress and a Libertarian-Conservative writer. She’s an ambassador for PragerU and TurningPoint USA and content manager at Unwoke Narrative.
EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
I saw this news yesterday at The Blaze and was pretty impressed that a senior couple was ready and willing to blast a home invader as he attempted to break down their door while they ate breakfast.
And, I fully expected by today to have a name and photo of the invader who the homeowners shot dead especially because we are told he was on parole from a previous home invasion arrest.
I sure couldn’t find a name or a photo! The story is nevertheless worth posting as a cautionary tale. Many of us would be ready for an invasion after dark, but heck in the a.m. the doors are open, at least in my house, and weapons aren’t just laying around at the breakfast table.
Of course you could be one of those families I heard about recently who has a 9mm home defense handgun in most every room (presumably with no kiddos living there).
Check it out, really nice neighborhood ….
From The Blaze:
A California couple in their 60s were having breakfast Tuesday morning when they heard a knock at their door, followed by an attempt to kick down the door after they didn’t respond to the knock, Fairfield police said.
What happened next?
A Facebook post from Councilwoman Catherine Moy indicated the homeowner saw the suspect on his Ring surveillance camera.
The husband, fearing for his life and his wife’s safety, grabbed his legally owned gun to defend them, police said. Moy’s post said it was a .357 Magnum.
The intruder then broke down the door completely and entered the residence, police said.
With that, the husband fired at the intruder, who fled from the home, police said. Moy’s post said the homeowner shot twice at the intruder and hit him in the chest area.
[….]
Authorities said the intruder [who was found with a semi-automatic handgun.—ed] was a 27-year-old male from nearby Suisun City who was on parole for a violent crime in Alameda County. KTVU reported that the crime for which he was on parole was a home invasion.
Here is another story with a few extra nuggets of information.
Let me know if you find a name and a pic of the dead intruder.
And, would you be ready at breakfast?
EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
We have demanded that congress hold the president accountable for his usurpation of his office, and refusal to abide by our founding document, the US Constitution.
The president continues to act alone, and thumb his nose at congress when he is not given what he wants. He acts as if he is a child, throwing a fit because his mommy won’t buy him any candy in the checkout at Wal-Mart.
So, he takes what he wants, blames other people when he makes mistakes, and takes all the credit, in the rare instance, that something is done correctly. This out of control behavior is dangerous, and allowing this type of control, will have consequences beyond anything we can imagine.
I am going to reference “Hitler’s Enabling Act”, also known as, “Law for removing the distress of the people and the Reich”.
March 23, 1933, a newly elected German Parliament (Reichstag) gathered in Berlin, to pass the ,“Law for removing the distress of the people and the Reich”. With its passage, would come the end of German democracy, and create a legal dictator, in Adolf Hitler. The “distress” that Germany was experiencing at the time, was the result of a planned event, carried out on February 27th, 1933, by the Nazis themselves in order to create a crisis, to justify the willingness to concentrate all of the German government’s power in one man, Adolf Hitler.
The event amounted to the torching of the Reichstag building. This is similar to what some call a “false flag” operation, or event. As a result of the fire, the people were beyond upset, and the Nazis took advantage of the peoples’ outrage, pinned the act of arson, on the communists.
Chaos ensued.
On the day that the vote was set, Nazi storm troopers marched, as a show of force. They were chanting “Full powers- or else! We want the bill – or fire and murder!” These Nazi soldiers filled the hallways, staring down anyone that may want to vote against full power for Hitler.
Just before the vote, Adolf Hitler gave a speech and promised to only use this power, to carry out vitally necessary measures. His other promises highlighted in that speech, included an end to unemployment and to make peace with France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union.
Passage of the act, required 31 non Nazi votes, which came from the members of the center party. These votes were only made possible, by promises that Hitler made to these moderates, that were not followed through on after the fact.
One man Otto Wells, a social democrat, stood up and addressed Hitler directly. “We German Social Democrats pledge ourselves solemnly in this historic hour to the principles of humanity and justice, of freedom and socialism. No enabling act can give you power to destroy ideas which are eternal, and indestructible”.
With these words, Hitler became outraged. “You are no longer needed! The star of Germany will rise and yours will sink! Your death knell has sounded!”
The final vote was 441 in favor, and only 84, all social democrats, opposed. This was the beginning of the nightmare that was Nazi Germany. Note that it was voted on, and passed by elected officials.
The lesson to take away from this, is that our government is made up of imperfection, due to the fact that every elected official, is human.
Most importantly, giving one man dictatorial powers, will put us at the mercy of human nature, more specifically, sin. The Reichstag voted the power away, America is allowing the power to be taken through inactivity, or just looking the other way. History does repeat itself, but rather than learn from others’ mistakes, we as a people continue to travel down the same road, leading to the same mistakes.
The funny thing is, we always act like we are shocked or caught off guard, when in reality, we knew what was coming all along, we just chose to look the other way.
EDITORS NOTE: The above article was written by Jason Brown, a regular contributor and follower here. It is copied with his permission as always.
©Save America Foundation. All rights reserved.
Meanwhile immigration sanctuary policies are lauded and emulated.
On June 17, 2021 AOL published an Associated Press report under the title, Justice Dept.: Missouri governor can’t void federal gun laws. This report began with this excerpt:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is warning Missouri officials that the state can’t ignore federal law, after the governor signed a bill last week that bans police from enforcing federal gun rules.
In a letter sent Wednesday night and obtained by The Associated Press, Justice officials said the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause outweighs the measure that Gov. Mike Parson signed into law Saturday. The new rules penalize local police departments if their officers enforce federal gun laws.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton said the law threatens to disrupt the working relationship between federal and local authorities, they said in the letter, noting that Missouri receives federal grants and technical assistance.
“The public safety of the people of the United States and citizens of Missouri is paramount,” Boynton wrote in the letter.
The DOJ did not have to wait long for a response. Just hours later, as reported by ABC News, Missouri responds defiantly to Justice Dept. over gun law, which noted, in part:
Similar bills were introduced in more than a dozen other states this year, including Alabama, Arkansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Wyoming, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia and Iowa. In Texas, the governor has called for the state to become a so-called Second Amendment sanctuary.
Wow! A new form of “Sanctuary policies” enacted by state governments and the federal government under Mr. Biden’s “leadership” is upset!
Having uttered the magic word “Sanctuary”, we cannot ignore that over the past several decades a growing number of cities and states, almost invariably led by radical leftists, have implemented so-called “sanctuary policies” that, to varying degrees, hamper cooperation between local and state police and federal immigration law enforcement authorities.
Certainly, our nation’s immigration laws are serious laws that were enacted to protect national security, public safety, public health and the jobs and wages of Americans.
Frequently these sanctuary policies have increased to the point where detainees lodged by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) personnel have been blatantly ignored so that aliens who have serious criminal histories were released from custody rather than be turned over to ICE so that could be deported from the United States.
A few of these cases received attention from the media, but in reality a huge number of such criminal aliens who should have been removed (deported) from the United States were permitted to roam freely in towns and cities across the United States, all too frequently, with tragic results.
Consider the horrific case of 32 year old Kate Steinle who was shot to death by Jose Ines Garcia-Zarate, a citizen of Mexico who was illegally present in the United States and had and extensive criminal history in the United States. He had been previously deported from the United States five times, so that his mere presence in the United States constituted a felony under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA): 8 U.S. Code § 1326.
On December 1, 2017 Business Insider published a report about this case, Kate Steinle’s death at the hands of a Mexican national became a flashpoint in the immigration debate — here’s the story behind her killing. Here is an excerpt from this report:
At the time of Steinle’s death, Garcia Zarate had been convicted of nonviolent drug crimes and deported five times since the early 1990s.
He faced a sixth deportation in 2015, and was in Justice Department (DOJ) custody that March after serving 46 months in prison for a felony re-entry into the US, but instead of transferring him into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation, the department transferred him to the San Francisco County Jail for prosecution of a 1995 marijuana charge.
San Francisco prosecutors, who had long ago deprioritized marijuana charges, dismissed the decades-old charge and released Garcia Zarate on April 15, 2015. Due to San Francisco’s policy of limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities — which some refer to as a “sanctuary” policy — the city did not inform ICE when they released Garcia Zarate.
There is a huge number of similar cases around the United States, where “sanctuary policies” that contradict federal immigration law has resulted in the death and injury of thousands of victims at the hands of aliens who were illegal in the United States, subject to deportation but were shielded, aided and abetted by the jurisdictions who declared themselves to be “sanctuaries” for illegal aliens, in apparent violations of a number of laws, beginning with 8 U.S. Code § 1324 that begins with the following:
(a) Criminal penalties
(1)
(A) Any person who—
(i) knowing that a person is an alien, brings to or attempts to bring to the United States in any manner whatsoever such person at a place other than a designated port of entry or place other than as designated by the Commissioner, regardless of whether such alien has received prior official authorization to come to, enter, or reside in the United States and regardless of any future official action which may be taken with respect to such alien;
(ii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, transports, or moves or attempts to transport or move such alien within the United States by means of transportation or otherwise, in furtherance of such violation of law;
(iii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation;
(iv) encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law; or
(v)
(I) engages in any conspiracy to commit any of the preceding acts, or
(II) aids or abets the commission of any of the preceding acts,
When President Trump acted to end sanctuary policies that harbor and shield illegal aliens, out of his well-founded concerns about public safety and national security, he was rebuffed in the courts and by globalists who complained that his efforts were based on “xenophobia” and God knows what else!
Did the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission that we keep so much about by Nancy Pelosi suffer from racism and xenophobia? Pelosi has repeatedly called for a “9/11-style commission” to investigate the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Back on December 21, 2004, the Congressional Research Service issued a wide-ranging report that must be made mandatory reading for every political leader of the United States. The title of the report was: 9/11 Commission: Legislative Action Concerning U.S. Immigration Law and Policy in the 108th Congress Updated December 21, 2004.
Here is the summary of this report began:
Reforming the enforcement of immigration law is a core component of the recommendations made by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9/11 Commission). The 19 hijackers responsible for the 9/11 attacks were foreign nationals, many of whom were able to obtain visas to enter the United States through the use of forged documents. Incomplete intelligence and screening enabled many of the hijackers to enter the United States despite flaws in their entry documents or suspicions regarding their past associations. According to the Commission, up to 15 of the hijackers could have been intercepted or deported through more diligent enforcement of immigration laws.
The 9/11 Commission’s immigration-related recommendations focused primarily on targeting terrorist travel through an intelligence and security strategy based on reliable identification systems and effective, integrated information-sharing. As Congress has considered these recommendations, however, possible legislative responses have broadened to include significant and possibly far-reaching changes in the substantive law governing immigration and how that law is enforced, both at the border and in the interior of the United States.
The next time Nancy or her disciples invoke the 9/11 Commission, they need to be pointedly asked if they read the 9/11 Commission Report and how they and the Biden administration can blithely ignore the clear and present danger the Biden administration’s immigration policies (actions and lack of action) create for America and Americans.
Our nation’s Constitution and laws are not a menu from which picky eaters can decide what to order or not order. It is hypercritical and beyond outrageous that the DOJ would attack Sanctuary policies regarding the Second Amendment while not only sanctioning immigration sanctuary policies, but actually emulating those extremely dangerous policies in clear violation of standing federal law and in direct opposition to the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
©Michael Cutler. All rights reserved.
Data show that every year, at least 200,000 women employ a firearm to defend themselves against sexual abuse.
Gun control advocates often claim the moral high ground. They accuse opponents of selfishly clinging to their guns and having cold hearts toward the victims of gun violence. That is exactly what happened on May 20 at a Congressional hearing on the issue.
But Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) wasn’t having it.
“We care about victims,” he said in his testimony. “I care about the victims of gun control.”
Massie then related how gun control victimized Nikki Goeser, one of his former staffers, who “watched her husband killed in front of her, because she followed the gun control laws, and her assailant—her stalker—did not. She left her concealed carry weapon in her car, because it was a gun-free zone.”
More than a decade ago, she and her husband Benjamin Goeser were operating their karaoke business at a restaurant in Tennessee when her longtime stalker confronted them.
“…I would usually carry my permitted concealed handgun with me,” she told Fox News, “But, at the time, Tennessee did not allow carrying in restaurants that served alcohol. While I obeyed the law, Ben’s murderer did not. He had no permit to carry, and he brought a gun into a gun-free zone.”
“In April 2009, the murderer shot my husband seven times in front of 50 witnesses. The whole attack was recorded by the restaurant’s security cameras.”
Ben Goeser was a victim of gun violence. But, he was also a victim of gun control. A gun control law prevented his law-abiding wife from saving his life from a law-flouting criminal.
In a tragic irony, his death contributed to gun violence statistics that are regularly used to argue for more gun control laws like the very one that sealed his fate.
Women are particularly vulnerable to being victimized by gun control. An estimated 1.9 million women are targeted and physically assaulted in the United States every year: a number of them by stalkers like the one who menaced Nikki Goeser and slew her husband.
Data show that every year, at least 200,000 women employ a firearm to defend themselves against sexual abuse. And studies have shown that armed women are highly effective in preventing rape and sexual assault with guns
With generally smaller frames and thus less capacity to fend off large attackers with their bodies alone, firearms provide women essential protection. As comedian Chris Rock has pointed out, guns are the great equalizer. “You got pecs? l got Tecs,” he quipped, referring to the Tec-9 automatic pistol.
This reality is too often lost on many who otherwise voice support for female empowerment and equality. By depriving them of essential protection, gun control disempowers, oppresses, and victimizes women on a vast scale.
The specific gun control measures discussed in the May 20 hearing would only victimize women even more.
Gun control advocates want to eliminate a provision in the 1994 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act that allows gun dealers to proceed with a sale if the buyer’s mandated background check has not been completed within three business days. They blame it for enabling Dylann Roof to obtain the gun he used in the 2015 Charleston church shooting. Thus, they call it “the Charleston loophole.”
But in his testimony, Massie explained that Roof would have passed the background check anyway, so eliminating the provision wouldn’t have hindered him.
Who would it hinder? Women in desperate need of a gun to defend themselves and their loved ones from abusers or stalkers and whose safety can’t afford a lengthy waiting period. For potential victims in such situations, time is of the essence.
Also discussed at the hearing were “safe storage laws,” which advocates claim would prevent accidental gun deaths and suicides. But as Massie pointed out in his testimony, there is no evidence backing this assumption. Instead, safe storage laws only impair and inhibit people’s ability to use their guns defensively… as in the case of a home invader.
A survey conducted by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that on average, Americans use guns to frighten away home intruders about 498,000 times per year, and in general, felons have reported that they avoid entering houses when people are at home because they fear being shot. If criminals know that guns are safely out of reach in locked storage, they will have less of a deterrent.
“One of the great mistakes,” the economist Milton Friedman once said, “is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”
Another great mistake, explored by Henry Hazlitt in his classic book Economics in One Lesson, is to only consider a policy’s impacts on one group of people and ignore its impacts on other groups.
Gun control advocates are too often guilty of both errors. They dwell on their intentions and disregard the unintended consequences of gun control. And while accusing others of not caring about victims of guns, they themselves turn a blind eye to victims of gun control.
COLUMN BY
Brett Cooper is a professional actress and a Libertarian-Conservative writer. She’s an ambassador for PragerU and TurningPoint USA and content manager at Unwoke Narrative.
Dan Sanchez is the Director of Content at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and the editor-in chief of FEE.org.
EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
The Supreme Court rejected the notion that police could take someone’s guns without due process.
Bing. Bang, Boom.
By John Crumb, may 17, 2021;
WASHINGTON, D.C. –-(Ammoland.com)- In a case argued in front of the Supreme Court, that could affect Red Flag laws across the country, SCOTUS ruled unanimously that the “community caretaking” exception does not apply inside the home.
Caniglia v. Strom centers around the police seizing the firearms of a man that his wife reported as suicidal. The incident that led to the issue started when Edward and Kim Caniglia began to have marital problems in their 27-year long marriage. Mr. Caniglia grabbed his unloaded handgun and sat it on the table, and told his wife, “shoot me now and get it over with.”
Mr. Caniglia then left the house to go on a drive. While he was gone, Mrs. Caniglia hid the gun. When he returned, the couple started to fight again. This time, Mrs. Caniglia left the house and decided to stay at a motel to let things calm down and blow over.
Mrs. Caniglia tried to call her husband the following day, but he was not answering the phone. She then contacted two police officers to do a welfare check on her husband with her. She told the police about what her husband did the night before but stressed that her husband didn’t threaten her. He was just expressing how hurt he was because of the fighting. Mr. Caniglia has never been abusive and does not have a criminal record.
Police told Mrs. Caniglia to stay in the car. They found Mr. Caniglia sitting on the back porch. They talked to him, and he assured them that he wasn’t suicidal. One of the officers said Mr. Caniglia appeared completely normal but was upset because the police became involved in the dispute. The officers wanted him to go to the hospital for a mental evaluation.
Mr. Caniglia was hesitant because he believed the officers would seize his guns if he did, but the officers agreed not to take his firearms. The officers had him transported to the hospital via ambulance. Once gone, the police did what they promised Mr. Caniglia that they would not do. They entered his home and searched for guns. The officers seized two handguns, magazines, and ammunition without a warrant. They claimed to have used the “community caretaking” exception.
When Mr. Caniglia returned home, he found out police seized his guns without a warrant and did not leave him with any way to retrieve his firearms. When he tried to get the guns back, the police refused to turn over the man’s property. He would have to sue to get them back.
He claimed that police violated his Fourth Amendment rights and his right to due process. The case made its way through the courts. President Joe Biden strongly supported the actions of the police. President Biden has been pushing Congress to pass a national “red flag” law.
SCOTUS rejected the notion that police could take someone’s guns without due process.Anti-gun groups condemned the decision of the Court and claimed it makes people less safe. Gun rights groups hailed the decision as a victory for freedom. One gun group, Gun Owners of America, filed an amicus brief in the case on behalf of Mr. Caniglia. The organization celebrated the decision as a victory for inalienable rights.
Anti-gun groups condemned the decision of the Court and claimed it makes people less safe. Gun rights groups hailed the decision as a victory for freedom. One gun group, Gun Owners of America, filed an amicus brief in the case on behalf of Mr. Caniglia. The organization celebrated the decision as a victory for inalienable rights.
The case will have a rippling effect across the legal landscape. The courts will have to decide if this decision affects “red flag” laws.
RELATED ARTICLE: Israel Showed U.S. ‘Smoking Gun’ on Hamas in AP Office Terror Tower, Officials Say
EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
Quick note: Tech giants are snuffing us out. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense permenently banned us. Facebook, Twitter, Google search et al have shadowbanned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. Help us fight. Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW more than ever. Share our posts on social and with your email contacts.
The failure of Indiana’s gun law to prevent the FedEx shooting reveals the inherent problems with red flag laws.
Last week 19-year-old Brandon Hole did the unthinkable. He stormed into an Indianapolis FedEx facility with a Ruger AR-556 semi-automatic rifle and killed eight people.
He then took his own life.
CNN recently pointed out that Indiana is one of several US states that have so-called “red flag” laws—also known as Extreme Risk Protection Orders—that allow courts to seize firearms from individuals suspected of being a danger to themselves or others. Furthermore, it was revealed that Hole, who was interviewed by the FBI last year, was allowed to purchase a firearm months after being served with an Extreme Risk Protection Order.
“[Hole’s] mother told law enforcement in March 2020 that her son told her he would attempt ‘suicide by cop,’” CNN reported. “At the time, officials took a shotgun found at his home into custody, Marion County prosecutor Ryan Mears said Monday. And yet, later that year, Hole was able to legally purchase assault rifles.”
The revelation cast a shadow over Indiana’s red flag law, a policy that lawmakers have argued is essential to stopping mass shootings.
The failure of Indiana’s gun law to prevent the FedEx shooting “shows the limits” of the state’s red flag, Marion County prosecutor Ryan Mears told CNN.
In the Hoosier State, people who have their firearms seized are not automatically designated as violent or mentally unstable. Instead, the state has two weeks to file a petition requesting the court to designate the offender mentally unsound or violent. In Hole’s case, the firearm had been secured and the family made no effort to reclaim the weapon, so prosecutors determined they had “achieved” the law’s objective.
The seizure of the weapon did not stop the crime, however. And the failure highlights two reasons I’ve argued Americans should be wary of red flag laws. For starters, there is little evidence to support the claim that red flag laws reduce gun violence.
“The evidence,” The New York Times reported in 2019, “for whether extreme risk protection orders work to prevent gun violence is inconclusive, according to a study by the RAND Corporation on the effectiveness of gun safety measures.”
There’s a reason for this. As Indiana’s law shows, red flags are complicated. In many cases, the laws appear to be more about providing political window dressing than reducing gun crime.
For example, California’s red flag went effectively unused for years after its passage in 2016, The Washington Post reported. Washington, D.C.’s law went entirely unused, the Post said. Meanwhile, states such as Maryland and Florida have seized hundreds of firearms—yet it’s unclear if these confiscations actually stopped a shooting.
This leads to my second point. Red flag laws are essentially a form of “pre-crime,” a theme explored in Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi novella The Minority Report (which Steven Spielberg adapted into a pretty great movie in 2002).
In the book, police exploit precognitive powers to stop crimes before they happen. In the real world, of course, authorities do not have the power of precogs to help them fight crime, yet that has not stopped them from trying—even though Dick’s story explores the serious ethical problems of using the law against people who have not committed any crime (but might!).
Some argue that Indiana’s red flag failure isn’t evidence that red flag laws don’t work, it’s simply evidence that this particular law didn’t have enough teeth.
“In Indiana, they have the red flag law … but they don’t have the mechanism to make it difficult to get out and get more guns,” Michael Lawlor, a professor at the University of New Haven, told CNN.
Lawlor, who in 1999 helped write Connecticut’s red flag law—the first in the United States—as a member of the state legislature, said it should have been a “no-brainer” in Connecticut to prevent a person like Hole from purchasing a firearm.
In other words, we simply need a more effective bureaucracy. This is, of course, a perennial rejoinder from those who believe the state would run smoothly if only the proper managers were executing the plan. But as the economist Ludwig von Mises has observed, this is a fantasy.
“It is a widespread illusion that the efficiency of government bureaus could be improved by management engineers and their methods of scientific management,” Mises noted in Bureaucracy. “What they call deficiencies and faults of the management of administrative agencies are necessary properties.”
In other words, per Mises, these types of inefficiencies and dysfunction are inherent in bureaucracies, which lack the incentive structure that makes markets so efficient.
“A bureau is not a profit-seeking enterprise; it cannot make use of any economic calculation, Mises wrote. “It is out of the question to improve its management by reshaping it according to the pattern of private business.”
Mises’s point is actually driven home by CNN. The network points out there have been numerous instances of red flag laws failing in precisely the manner seen in Indiana, including in November 2018, when a gunman killed 12 people and injured more than a dozen more at a bar in California not long after he was visited by law enforcement authorities for erratic behavior. Authorities could have easily executed a red flag law, but they did not.
Still, for the sake of argument, let’s say the system does work and a would-be shooter is denied a firearm purchase. What is to prevent that person from simply obtaining a firearm on the black market?
The reality is that black markets do exist. And an abundance of research shows that the vast majority of the people committing gun crimes are not lawful gun owners. One University of Pittsburgh study, for example, found that lawful gun owners accounted for just 18 percent of gun violence.
“The top-line finding of the study — that the overwhelming majority of gun crimes aren’t committed by lawful gun owners — reinforces a common refrain among gun rights advocacy groups,” The Washington Post said of the study. “They argue that since criminals don’t follow laws, new regulations on gun ownership would only serve to burden lawful owners while doing little to combat crime.”
It’s difficult to fathom that a person determined enough to kill strangers in cold blood will be deterred after being denied a firearm purchase at the local gun store.
The bottom line is that Brandon Hole was a deeply disturbed person whose bizarre interests and behavior reportedly included an obsession with “Bronies,’ a subculture of the internet for male fans of My Little Pony.
His life ended tragically and claimed the lives of others in an even more tragic fashion. But to think that his crime could have been prevented if only the bureaucratic system had worked more efficiently defies reason and empirical evidence.
Moreover, if we convince ourselves that bureaucracy can truly prevent crimes before they happen if we only push a little harder against civil liberties, we don’t just delude ourselves.
We may end up creating a world that’s even more terrifying than Philip Dick’s dystopian vision.
COLUMN BY
Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.
EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
Whether you’re familiar with the administration’s plans or not, Joe Biden is one of the politicians pushing for smart guns. If you’re wondering what that means, why it rings a bell, or why we don’t have them already, you’ve come to the right place.
While they sound futuristic and the technology has made an appearance in many science-fiction films, the concept of smart guns is current and possible. Basically, smart guns have a safety on at all times that will only unlock with the palm of the owner. This is due to sensors in the grip that would change the firearms industry, literally making you the safety. Before you panic that your pistol would be taken away, hear the argument out.
The idea of smart guns was introduced as early as 2000 under the Clinton administration. They were able to convince Smith & Wesson and Colt to work on manufacturing these firearms, but the response by the NRA and gun communities was overwhelmingly negative. After a boycott of the 2 companies, production ceased and no gun manufacturer has gone near the idea since. In 2002, New Jersey passed a law that would have made the sale of any non-smart gun illegal once they hit the market, but again smart guns didn’t come to fruition. One of the biggest arguments against smart guns is the preservation of the 2nd amendment, so let’s get into why we don’t have smart guns and will likely see the same reaction under this administration.
The leading argument against smart guns isn’t necessarily over the idea of safer guns, which is probably something a lot of people can agree on, but that the government would be in charge. That isn’t to say that the gun registry would be affected or firearms would lose their lethal capabilities, but the New Jersey law proved that the government would dictate gun sales. This was seen as a forerunner to gun control, if not an act of gun control in itself. To clarify, smart guns and the laws associated wouldn’t prevent anyone from stockpiling weapons and ammo. However, by making the sale of any other firearm illegal it was expected that only certain firearms would be made smart so that the guns that have been on the chopping block of legislation for years would no longer be legal. Obviously, the NRA led the charge against smart guns in 2000 and has continued to put up a fight for 2 decades.
The Biden administration is returning to the proposal of smart guns, so the answer is entirely possible that they’ll be on the market sooner than later. As society becomes more aware of statistics that could be lowered or prevented by guns that would only fire in the hands of the owner, it’s not exactly farfetched. Crime rates with stolen handguns would go down and the rate of accidental suicides and murders, especially by children, would significantly decrease. That last one is especially proving to be a good source of debates. Of course, the idea that smart guns will infringe on the 2nd amendment or set a precedent that the government could leverage into larger gun control is a great concern for gun activists and organizations. The NRA will push hard against any form of firearm that the government would be able to dictate, so there’s definitely room for argument on both sides. Finding a middle ground is going to be difficult and will be the reason we may or may not see smart guns for a long time.
It’s worth noting that the smart guns that were manufactured for testing only worked 90 percent of the time, but the implications are vast. A disarmed officer or invaded home-owner couldn’t be shot with their own weapon, but it also means that weapons couldn’t be shared in times of crisis. Basically, smart guns are a hot topic on the floor right now and the lava is only going to rise while political debates heat up.
This article by Richard Douglas originally appeared here.
©Richard Douglas. All rights reserved.
Maybe you own a few firearms or maybe you’re content with one, but no matter how good you are with that red dot sight on your 5.56 rifle you’re only human. There’s a reason Wyatt Earp wasn’t alone at the OK Corral, so why not consider arming your neighbors?
If you’ve seen the news in the last decade, you’re aware that crime rates and neighborhood violence have escalated. The more tensions rise, the more irrational people become and you’ll want someone to have your back when it hits the fan. Rather than sit around and wait to be victimized, though, why not create an environment that will deter criminals? It’s not hard to purchase a few cheap firearms to put in the hands of trusted neighbors, whether you’re in a bad situation or want to live in a safer area. The reason to buy some “throw-away” guns is because, no matter how much you like your neighbor, you wouldn’t want to give away a firearm you’ve trained with. Having a few extra weapons to arm your neighbors with will increase your numbers and give a better chance of survival.
The saying “It takes a village” doesn’t just apply to raising children, but protecting them. If your home gets broken into or comes under attack, you’ll want to know your neighbors will show up to help. People rely on police for protection but their job is to catch the criminal, not prevent the crime. That means it’s up to neighbors and friends to watch out for each other. By having several armed adults, you can know if something bad is coming your way. If the first home on your block is attacked, a gunshot from your neighbor will alert everyone and provide an early warning system that could save lives and prevent something terrible. Of course, it pays to be able to trust your neighbors’ abilities.
Would you rather have 10 guns with no skill or 5 guns in the hands of experienced shooters? If you have no other option, arming your neighbors in a time of crisis is important but it doesn’t mean you have to wait until then to build skill and familiarity. Taking your neighbors to the range or putting some time into teaching them on gun safety and basic shooting can mean the difference between help and friendly fire. Inexperienced hands can be just as dangerous when trying to protect you. A lot of crimes take place because criminals see a weak element among the flock of society, but safety is in numbers. Surrounding yourself with a few experienced neighbors that you trust behind you will prevent a lot of the potential crime that would come to your neighborhood.
The last reason to purchase additional firearms and arm your neighbors is patriotism. Not because having a gun is a nationalistic requirement, but because of the intent by a group of men in 1776. The revolution that was fought for your rights put the 2nd amendment there so that we could protect each other in the face of adversity and crime. While we do have first-responders to keep law and order, their numbers are limited and they can’t be everywhere. Arming your neighbors and yourself, even with something as simple as a revolver, can make for a safer environment. With widespread riots and crimes taking place, from kidnappings to assaults, it’s good to have the peace of mind that comes with a secure village.
This article by Richard Douglas originally appeared here.
©Richard Douglas. All rights reserved.
These 4 underlying sociological problems, not guns, are the key drivers of American violence.
The gun-control paradigm—the idea that the solution to American violence is more laws restricting guns—is unhelpful.
Gun control doesn’t work. Indeed, any statistical connection between gun policy and violence is tenuous. But even if gun control was effective, it would still be flawed.
Gun control burdens the free exercise of the constitutionally-protected Second Amendment right to bear arms, so it’s subject to compelling legal challenges and is flatly rejected by many Americans. In addition, the enforcement of stringent gun control invariably inflicts heavy burdens upon other civil liberties—especially in poorer communities and among marginalized populations.
Gun control’s coexistence with the values of a free society is, at best, an uneasy one. But it’s even less viable in the particular context of the United States. Consider the 400 million guns already in private circulation, plus the totally irreversible and ever-increasing ease of the self-manufacturing of firearms. No matter what laws are passed, widespread distribution and access to firearms are (and will remain) immutable facts of American life—especially for people who are willing to break laws.
In this context, it’s evident that gun control cannot solve the problem of violence in this country. The following four observations about American violence suggest some promising alternative paradigms.
If you visit the statistics page of the website for the anti-gun group Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, you’re immediately confronted with an enormous banner: “38,000 AMERICANS DIE FROM GUN VIOLENCE EVERY YEAR—AN AVERAGE OF 100 PER DAY.” However, that banner omits the fact that most of those deaths are suicides. A report in the Harvard Political Review noted that suicides accounted for nearly two-thirds of 2019’s gun deaths.
If we meet gun control groups like Giffords on their own terms and accept the inclusive statistic of “gun deaths” as our metric, it’s clear that gun violence ought to be addressed primarily through a mental health and suicide-prevention paradigm.
Can gun control be part of a suicide prevention strategy?
It’s hard to see how. Virtually any sort of firearm would suffice to take one’s own life, as well as other means. So, there’s no hypothetical in which popular gun control proposals like an “assault weapons ban” or magazine capacity restriction would make a difference concerning suicide.
Moreover, gun control measures such as red flag laws that seek to deprive people of their guns on an ostensible mental-health basis can actually deter struggling people from seeking the help they need. In this sense, a gun-control approach to suicide prevention is not merely useless—it’s actually counterproductive.
There is an enormous literature on suicide prevention and the best ways to help people who are struggling with mental health issues. Discussions of different medications, cognitive therapies, wellness practices, and other measures are far beyond the scope of this article. But this is where our resources and efforts should be focused.
Attempting to stop suicide by imposing gun control is like trying to stop drunk driving by banning cars: it’s a completely implausible “solution” that elides the actual problem at hand.
The boogeyman of the gun control lobby is the proverbial “mass shooter,” some deranged, antisocial individual who carries a “military-style” rifle into an ostensibly safe place, like a school or grocery store, and indiscriminately slaughters innocent people. He often has hateful or bigoted motivations for this act.
While such shootings do happen, they are incredibly rare and account for a vanishingly small proportion of the homicides that the U.S. experiences in a given year. Per 2019 FBI data, just 2.6% of homicides are carried out using a rifle. In fact, clubs and bare fists are used to kill more people annually than rifles. And of the mass shootings that we do see, many are gang-related; concerning, but not wholly aligned with the gun control narrative.
Now, consider these facts: almost two-thirds of child murder victims are killed by their own parents. Nearly half of all female murder victims are killed by their partners or ex-partners.
And while it’s common knowledge that most victims of homicide are killed by someone they know, a surprisingly large proportion—perhaps as low as 1 in 8, but possibly as high as 1 in 5—are killed by an actual family member. Conservatively, a given homicide victim is about five times more likely to have been killed by a family member than killed with any sort of rifle.
The gun-control movement’s resources and efforts are overwhelmingly guided and driven by the “mass shooter” scenario, hence their fixation on policies like assault weapons bans and magazine capacity restrictions. But, even if such policies could be meaningfully enforced and implemented (they can’t), it’s hard to imagine those sorts of policies having much bearing on partner and familial violence.
The mass shooter fixation, and the gun fixation more broadly, is utterly unable to curb violence of this kind. Instead, resources and efforts would be much better spent addressing partner and familial violence. Organizations that help women to escape dangerous relationships or address other aspects of domestic violence are poised to do much more good than organizations with broad and quixotic disarmament missions.
The failure of the United States’ 20th century experiment with alcohol prohibition has been well-documented. But one unintended consequence of Prohibition was a dramatic increase in violence. Without access to legal means of resolving conflicts, people involved in the illicit alcohol business—for which there was a massive consumer demand—handled their disputes and protected their interests with gunfire.
While romanticized depictions of bootleggers and mobsters have made for entertaining fictional fare, the true story hardly evokes nostalgia. The nation’s homicide rate increased over 40% during Prohibition. The violence was especially pronounced in large cities, which experienced a homicide rate increase of nearly 80%. Even as more resources were directed to law enforcement, the rate of serious crimes soared and prisons overflowed. Had Prohibition been allowed to continue, the already-disastrous situation would likely have deteriorated even further.
Fortunately, Americans realized that the costs of Prohibition were too high. Repealing Prohibition was the clear solution. With the ratification of the 21st Amendment, the nation’s homicide rate dropped precipitously, falling to well below pre-Prohibition levels within just a few years.
Unfortunately, we seem to have forgotten the lessons of Prohibition. The War on Drugs, ostensibly fought to make our communities safer, has in fact made them more violent.
Noah Smith (who’s certainly no champion of gun rights), writing for The Atlantic, observed:
Legal bans on drug sales lead to a vacuum in legal regulation; instead of going to court, drug suppliers settle their disputes by shooting each other. Meanwhile, interdiction efforts raise the price of drugs by curbing supply, making local drug supply monopolies (i.e., gang turf) a rich prize to be fought over. And stuffing our overcrowded prisons full of harmless, hapless drug addicts forces us to give accelerated parole to hardened killers.
In short: it’s Prohibition all over again. But the effects of Prohibition’s modern-day incarnation are even more insidious. After waging the Drug War for decades, we must also consider its secondary and tertiary consequences. As Thomas Eckert points out, the Drug War contributes to family disintegration, poverty, and gang recruitment.
These underlying sociological problems, not guns, are the key drivers of American violence.
Poverty and lack of opportunity are strongly associated with violence.
That’s fairly obvious if you simply look at the geographic and demographic distributions of violence in America, which I have previously explained. Academic research on the subject has come to the same conclusion. (See here and here). Despite being gun control advocates, these researchers understand that there are underlying sociological drivers of violence that transcend “guns” and warrant our attention.
To be sure, most people will readily accept that poverty and despair are associated with violence—that’s unsurprising. However, they may see the problem of poverty as impossibly vexing and intractable. Implementing stricter gun laws might seem more feasible by comparison, even if it doesn’t get to the root of the problem. Part of the appeal of gun control is the simplicity of its narrative.
But that’s a mistake. You may refer back to this breakdown to see why the “get rid of the guns, get rid of the gun violence” narrative is simplistic, not simple.
Moreover, there’s actually a lot that we can do to reduce poverty and create greater opportunity, and many of these measures have—or could plausibly attain—broad-based, bipartisan support. There are sound steps to be taken that are both feasible and meaningful. Michael Tanner of the libertarian Cato Institute presents a compelling array of such policy reforms in his book, The Inclusive Economy: How to Bring Wealth to America’s Poor.
But regardless of whether you favor Tanner’s approach or some other, the essential point to recognize is that violence is largely a symptom of underlying social conditions. Gun control not only fails to fix but actually aggravates those conditions. Any critic of the “War on Drugs” should be able to see how a “War on Guns” has similar effects on individuals, families, and communities.
When speaking of reducing violence by building prosperity, it’s encouraging to know that we’ve already done it, to a very large degree. That’s an inescapable conclusion of Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of our Nature. Now it’s up to us to make sure that that progress continues, especially on the margins of society where it’s most needed.
Gun control can’t solve our problems. Especially with the widespread adoption of 3D printing and other means of self-manufacture, gun control will increasingly be relegated to irrelevance. Gun control policies will burden only the upstanding citizens who, in good faith, try to abide by them, and are nonetheless ensnared. If we want to get serious about addressing violence in America, there are many more promising areas to focus on.
COLUMN BY
Mark Houser is an independent researcher who writes about the right to bear arms and firearm policy.
RELATED ARTICLE: Facebook Bans Your Gun Ads But Spends Millions On Zuckerberg Security
EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
In the wake of two mass shootings within a week, leftist nonprofit Everytown For Gun Safety aims to spend at least $1 million in ads to “[pressure] Republican senators to support measures that would strengthen and expand background checks for gun buyers”. Their funds come mainly from Mike Bloomberg, longtime proponent of gun control and one of Everytown’s founders.
Everytown For Gun Control claims to be concerned with defeating gun violence, yet they consistently ignore evidence that shows when more citizens are armed, it’s less likely for gun violence to occur. Instead of recognizing that America needs to be informed, armed citizens who can protect themselves and their communities from mass shootings, Everytown chooses the leftist narrative: that restricting gun ownership and increasing gun-free zones is the way to remain safe. But a whopping 98% of mass shootings take place in gun-free zones like schools, where perpetrators know no one can shoot back.
Everytown isn’t the only company jumping on the gun control bandwagon. Major players such as Airbnb (1.33), Dick’s Sporting Goods (2.67), and Levi Strauss and Co. (1.00) have all signed a letter entitled “CEOs For Gun Safety” to pressure the Senate into action. The letter claims that these companies “stand with the American public on gun safety” — except that aside from leftist radicals, common-sense Americans are fighting for their 2nd Amendment rights.
Corporations that support causes like Everytown For Gun Safety and other gun control groups need to be reminded where the American public actually stands. Read the full list of signatories for “CEOs For Gun Safety” and let them know you won’t support them until they stop pandering to the leftist agenda. Then, withdraw your 2ndVote dollars from these companies and spend with their competitors. Stand up for what America’s founders envisioned and against those who would restrict our 2nd Amendment rights.
EDITORS NOTE: This 2ndVote column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
A cursory overlook of the justice system’s operations reveals that the expansion of police powers almost always impacts marginalized communities more harshly – communities the Democrats claim to stand for.
In a case argued before the US Supreme Court on Wednesday, the Biden Administration, along with attorneys general from nine states, submitted arguments asking the justices to uphold warrantless home entry and gun confiscation by police.
The case stems from a domestic dispute between an elderly married couple, Edward and Kim Caniglia. After an intense argument between the two that led to Edward dramatically telling his wife to shoot him with one of his handguns, Kim left the home to spend the night in a hotel. The next day she was unable to reach her husband and became concerned.
She reached out to police for a wellness check and an escort back to the home. But upon their arrival, police manipulated Edward into a psychiatric evaluation even though officers admitted in their incident report that he “seemed normal” and “was calm for the most part.” The police officers then lied to Mrs. Caniglia and told her Mr. Caniglia agreed to confiscation of his weapons. Even though Edwards was promptly released from the hospital, he was only able to regain his property after filing a civil rights lawsuit.
Police in the case relied upon a narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment called “community caretaking.” This exception is a half-century old Supreme Court-created doctrine designed for cases involving impounded cars and highway safety. Essentially it was meant to give law enforcement a legal way to remove cars from the side of the interstate or clear wrecks.
While the First Circuit US Court of Appeals acknowledged the doctrine’s reach outside the context of motor vehicles is “ill-defined,” it upheld the arguments in this case and allowed the exception to extend to private homes. In its finding the Court states that this exception is “designed to give police elbow room to take appropriate action.”
But attorneys for Caniglia argue that extending the community caretaking exception to private homes would be an assault on the Fourth Amendment and would grant police a blank check to intrude upon the home.
An amicus brief filed by the ACLU, the Cato Institute, and the American Conservative Union agreed with the attorneys and pointed to jurisdictions that have extended such provisions leading to warrantless invasions of homes for things like loud music or leaky pipes.
One does not need to have a long memory to understand exactly how such permissions could go awry. For anyone who has paid attention to the news cycle over the past year, it is jarring to see a Democratic administration argue for warrantless home entry and gun seizures merely one year after Breonna Taylor’s death.
Taylor was killed in her home by police after a no-knock entry (tied to a falsified warrant) led to cops spraying her apartment (and surrounding ones) with bullets. Taylor’s boyfriend, believing the home was being broken into by criminals during the middle of the night, fired in defense and was originally charged in the case (all charges were later dropped and he is suing the department).
The case created a national firestorm that elevated conversations around Second Amendment rights and self-defense, no-knock warrants, Fourth Amendment protections, and the need for policing reform and accountability. If such atrocities occurred under our current laws, it is pretty scary to imagine what law enforcement might get away with should the Biden administration get its way in this case.
Such arguments before the Supreme Court show that for many progressives their admirable instinct to restrict police power quickly goes out the window when they see an opportunity to chip away at gun rights.
This is severely misguided. A cursory overlook of the justice system’s operations reveals that the expansion of police powers almost always impacts marginalized communities more harshly— communities the Democrats claim to stand for.
In a 2016 speech on the senate floor, Senator Tim Scott (R, SC) spoke about his own experience with racial bias in policing as a black man in this country. “In the course of one year, I’ve been stopped seven times by law enforcement,” Scott said. “Not four, not five, not six, but seven times in one year as an elected official.”
There is no reason to think that an extension of the community care exception would not have the same effect on communities of color.
To cite just one study out of hundreds, the US Sentencing Commission found that when it comes to federal gun crimes, black people are more likely to be arrested, more likely to get longer sentences for similar crimes, and more likely to get sentencing enhancements. If the Supreme Court upholds the administration’s argument, it is not difficult to predict which communities will be impacted the most by this new expansion.
Progressives are not the only ones experiencing a disconnect in principles at the moment either. Many Republicans were surprised in recent months to see police departments readily enforce unconstitutional lockdowns—carting business owners off to jail and fining law-abiding people who simply wanted to go to work. Likely, the majority on the right will be aghast at the arguments presented in this case and their clear violation of both our Second and Fourth Amendment rights. But it should not escape them who is arguing for these violations, nor who would ultimately enforce them.
In another amicus brief filed by the public interest litigation giant, the Institute for Justice, attorneys argued “The Fourth Amendment protects our right to be secure in our property, which means the right to be free from fear that the police will enter your house without warning or authorization. A rule that allows police to burst into your home without a warrant whenever they feel they are acting as ‘community caretakers’ is a threat to everyone’s security.”
The Breonna Taylor case should have been a turning point in our nation’s history and spurred legislation that would strengthen and uphold our essential individual rights and restrict police power. Many hoped it would be the final straw that brought an end to egregious practices like no-knock warrants. Instead, despite much public outcry and demand, we continue to see politicians on both sides of the aisle push for increased police power and an erosion of our right to be secure in our homes and our property.
Former Congressman Justin Amash (L-MI) said protection from warrantless searches is central to the Bill of Rights.
“The warrant requirement isn’t optional; it’s at the heart of the Fourth Amendment,” Amash told FEE. “Treating the Fourth Amendment as though it flatly permits searches and seizures that seem ‘reasonable’ in the eyes of government officials, regardless of whether a warrant has been obtained, drains it of its purpose: protecting the right of the people to be secure in their persons and property.”
Make no mistake, this is among the most appalling attacks on our fundamental rights and way of life currently occurring. It is an attack on property rights, on our right to self-defense, and on our right to privacy, and if it is allowed there will be gross violations of individuals as a repercussion.
It is vitally important to remember that police brutality is a direct consequence of a government that has grown too big and powerful. The more power we give to the government and its agents, the more prone it is to abuse. It’s time we address the root cause of the problem and put the government back in its place.
COLUMN BY
Hannah Cox is a libertarian-conservative writer, commentator, and activist. She’s a Newsmax Insider and a Contributor to The Washington Examiner.
EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
Not content with glorifying pedophilia in Cuties, Netflix in season three of the animated Paradise P.D. features an episode that, according to NewsBusters, is not only devoted to “attacking gun rights,” but was also “blasphemous against Christianity, featuring a video of a gun-wielding Jesus that turns into a porno.” Great, Netflix! Edgy! Courageous! Cutting edge! Stunning and brave! Now, when is your cartoon show featuring, say, a machete-wielding Muhammad who takes up with a nine-year-old Aisha? If we had any actual journalists, they would be asking Netflix officials that question, and there is no doubt about what the answer would be: Netflix has far too much respect for Muslims and Islam to produce a show like that.
Ah yes, respect. As Bob Dylan’s character Jack Fate puts it in Dylan’s underappreciated movie Masked and Anonymous, “I got a lot of respect for a gun.” As everyone knows, the real reason why Netflix doesn’t hesitate to make fun of Jesus and Christians but wouldn’t dream of subjecting Muhammad and Muslims to the same treatment is because they know that Christians won’t kill them for doing so, not even those crazed “right-wing extremists” that we keep hearing about who are supposedly the greatest terror threat we face today. But with Muslims, it’s a different story: Netflix, if it ever dared to produce an animated show about Muhammad, knows that it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that a jihadi could emerge who would be intent upon separating the heads of Netflix executives from their bodies. That’s how “respect” is born these days.
But Netflix didn’t care to demonstrate any respect for Christians the fiendishly obscene episode of Paradise P.D. entitled “Trigger Warning.” In it, according to NewsBusters, a foe of disarming the populace offers to take proponents of that disarming on a tour of the National Rifle Association. “The tour includes a gun pit with a dead kid buried in it and the corpse of Charlton Heston used as a statue, complete with a quote – ‘Pry this gun from my cold, dead hands and win a Republican Senate seat.’ The head of the NRA, Mr. Chip F**k-Yeah, shows them a video using Jesus as a prop to show how “guns make a better world.” The video is horrifically offensive, with Jesus coming down from the Cross to kill his persecutors with machine guns then have sex with two women.”
Believe it or not, it just gets worse from there. But aside from this article and a few others, no one will take any particular note. The establishment media certainly won’t: today’s “journalists” generally hate Christianity as much as Netflix does. But a particularly piquant comparison comes from France. Shortly after a Muslim beheaded schoolteacher Samuel Paty on October 16, 2020 for showing a cartoon of Muhammad in his class, it came to light that French police called in Paty and interrogated him over allegations of “Islamophobia.” Paty told them, and he was right, that “I did not commit any offense.”
In today’s world, however, he did. It is a massive de facto offense against contemporary woke sensibilities to offend Islam and violate Sharia blasphemy laws. That is true in the United States no less than it is in France. When Pamela Geller and I held our Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest in 2015 in defense of the freedom of speech, and Islamic State jihadis attempted to kill us all, Geller was roundly condemned not just by leftists by even by prominent people who are often considered conservatives (including Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham and Greta van Susteren) for daring to commit what they considered to be a gratuitous offense to Muslims. The idea that it is important to defend the freedom of speech against violent intimidation, and not validate that intimidation by giving in to it, did not impress them at all.
The freedom of speech is the foundation of any free society, and so Netflix is entirely free to depict Jesus in a lewd and ridiculous manner, and to mock gun owners as paranoid lunatics. The double standard, however, grows ever more glaring. If Netflix had been operating in France and made fun of Muhammad, police would have called in its executives for questioning. In the United States, if it had made fun of Muhammad, they might not have had to talk to the cops, but they would have been inundated with charges of “racism” and “Islamophobia.”
What is all this going to look like five or ten or twenty years down the road, as Americans, and Westerners in general, grow ever more accustomed to the idea that one must adhere to Sharia blasphemy restrictions on mockery, or even criticism, of Islam, but the West’s own culture and traditions, rife as they are with “white supremacism” and “hate,” are fair game. It seems to be a recipe for cultural and societal surrender.
RELATED ARTICLES:
Why Erdogan pulled Turkey out of European treaty aimed at protecting women from violence
Kenya: Muslims murder five people, injure dozens as bus drives over roadside IED
EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
It looks like in less than his first one hundred days, Biden has an Islamic terrorist attack on his hands, but you will likely never hear those words uttered.
Just a nut with a gun, move along, nothing to see.
Of course, a week ago the nut with a gun was a white guy perpetrating a hate crime against Asians.
This week it’s a ‘new American,’ a Syrian Muslim, whose innocent victims are all white and you likely won’t see the phrase “hate crime” anywhere outside of conservative media.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, the Left will rage, but their fury will be directed at the weapon and not the man. (Biden will have his excuse.)
The Syrian immigrant is just a nut who had gone over the edge, driven there by Islamophobic America. And, they may go one step further and blame it on (understandable to them) pent-up Trump hatred.
Here is just one of many stories you will see today (this one at CBS) about the slaughter quoting Biden’s reaction:
At the White House, President Biden said another city has been “scarred by gun violence” and called on Congress to pass gun control measures. “I just can’t imagine what the families are feeling, the victims whose futures were stolen from them, from their families, their loved ones, who know have to struggle to go on and try to make sense of what’s happened.”
There was a delay by authorities in announcing the name of the suspect, so a bunch of Lefties went crazy on social media blaming whitey for the shooting.
See the Washington Examiner op-ed:
We know now that the man who shot up a grocery store Monday in Boulder, Colorado, is an immigrant from Syria named Ahmad al Aliwi Alissa. In the context of recent history, this means there’s reason to think he might be a Muslim terrorist. But saying that aloud will get you called a racist by the media.
For now, we’ll just have to pretend that this is another “lone wolf” who in no way fits into the totally not-real pattern (according to the media) of mass violence perpetrated by Muslim extremists in places as far-flung as Mumbai, Rouen, and Chattanooga and as close as Miami, San Bernardino and New York.
If Aliwi Alissa were white, we could at least assume, without any evidence, like the media are doing with the recent killing spree in Atlanta, that this was an act of white supremacism. Instead, it looks like we’re back to square one.
Gasp! Maybe he was a pro-Trump anti-masker! Opinion writer Eddie Scarry continues….
Of course, before the shooter was identified by police, liberals had been very eager to draw early conclusions about him. They were 100% certain he was white and perhaps even an anti-masker — i.e., a Trump supporter.
I’m serious. Liberal journalist Kurt Eichenwald *** mused on Twitter that the details might reveal that the shooting, which left 10 people dead, was an episode of “anti-masker violence.”
Meena Harris, the niece of Vice President Kamala Harris, tweeted immediately after the shooting that “violent white men are the greatest terrorist threat to our country.” She anticipated that Aliwi Alissa might be a real terrorist, but not the kind that Democrats would rather not acknowledge.
But, speaking of nut jobs….
***Get a load of where this Leftie “journalist’s” head is!
At Breitbart:
(Islamic terrorists, not so much…..)
Eichenwald thinks the country is insane!
King Soopers in Boulder requires customers to wear a mask. Was a shooting there today. A man was arrested, maybe shooter, wasn't wearing a mask. I seriously hope this doesnt end up being anti-masker violence. This country is so insane that this possibility has to be considered.
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) March 22, 2021
Is there a chance in hell that we will hear the truth if this later tweet speculation, that Biden provoked an Islamic terror attack, turns out to be on the mark?
There is so much news and commentary about this horrible event and I have a doctor appointment today with little time to look further. So please send some links with updates via the comment section here at ‘Frauds and Crooks.’
I would love to know if anyone sees anything about how his Syrian family came to be living here.
And, of course, pray for the innocent victims’ families.
Endnote: Do you think libertarian Alex Nowrasteh is still pimping for more Syrian refugees? See my post yesterday.
Trump was Right! Jihadists Attempting to Get Across our Southern Border
RELATED TWEET:
Photographs of the 10 people killed by suspect Ahmad al-Issa in #Boulder, Colo. I was told a few days ago that the race of victims in shootings matter even if there is no evidence of race playing a role in the attack. pic.twitter.com/fxiG4jGbdM
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) March 24, 2021
RELATED ARTICLE: Brother of Boulder jihad mass murderer detained, along with other family members
EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.