Category: Anti Civil Rights ideas & “Friends”
Even Big Tex, an icon of the Texas State Fair, is wondering what the heck is up with the fair’s new policy to exclude legally carried firearms. The move, quite simply, isn’t very Texan. Shutterstock PhotoFor most people considering what they will do if things in America truly go to hell in a handbasket, most figure, we’ll just go to Texas, one of the last bastions of seeming common sense and traditional American values such as toughness, self-reliance and common sense. That’s certainly what hundreds of thousands of Californians did during the Covid pandemic when it was clear their state was going to total, taxable crap. Well, now maybe we need to think about that. Seems, Texas may be going the way of the rest of softer America is going, which it feels like it’s going to hell in a handbasket.
Few things have highlighted this more than the recent decision by the State Fair of Texas to prohibit firearms on its fairgrounds, a move that has ignited a fierce backlash from Texas House Republicans and gun rights advocates, who argue that the new policy compromises public safety and infringes upon the rights of law-abiding citizens. The fair’s decision, which comes in the wake of a shooting incident at last year’s event, has been met with widespread criticism and threats of legislative action.
Last week, State Fair officials, in collaboration with law enforcement, announced the updated policy banning all firearms, including those carried by licensed holders, from the fairgrounds. This decision marks a significant shift from previous years when licensed concealed carry was permitted at Fair Park. The new policy, which also includes the installation of weapons detection technology at entrances, aims to enhance security following last year’s shooting, in which three people were injured at the fair’s food court. (Always somebody who has to ruin it for the rest of us.)
However, the ban has been met with swift opposition from 71 Texas House Republicans and Republican House nominees, according to The Texas Tribune. The Republicans signed a petition urging the State Fair to reverse its decision. The petition argues that “gun-free zones are magnets for crime because they present less of a threat to those who seek to do evil,” and criticizes the fair’s new policy as being unrepresentative of Texas values. As many as 98 percent of all mass shootings occur in gun-free zones. The lawmakers warned that if the ban goes into effect, they would consider pursuing legislative measures to protect firearm rights on publicly managed lands.
The National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) has also raised concerns about the legality of the firearm ban, given that the City of Dallas owns Fair Park, where the State Fair is held. According to Texas law, firearms prohibitions on government property are tightly regulated, and wrongful exclusions by state agencies or political subdivisions could result in fines. The NRA-ILA’s statement questioned the fair’s authority to enforce such a ban on government-owned property, despite the State Fair being operated by a private not-for-profit organization.
Texas Gun Rights, a prominent advocacy group, echoed these concerns, with President Chris McNutt stating that “Gun-Free Zones don’t work” and that the fair’s decision is a “feel-good attempt” that does nothing to improve safety. The group has called on the State Fair to reconsider its policy, emphasizing that it undermines the rights of law-abiding gun owners while failing to deter criminal activity.
As the State Fair of Texas prepares to open on September 27 in Dallas, the controversy surrounding its new weapons policy continues to escalate. With both sides entrenched in their positions, the issue is likely to remain a contentious topic leading into the next legislative session, where the potential for new laws addressing firearm rights on public lands could, and should, take center stage.
Attorney’s with the State of California are meeting with some pushback over their recent testimony before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on the state’s one-gun-a-month law.
On Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General Jerry T. Yen attempted to make his case in Nguyen v. Bonta, but some justices on the court seemed skeptical about his claims. In fact, in defending the law, Yen tried to make the case that it was intended to stop straw buyers, but at least one of the judges didn’t find that assertion credible.
“Do arms traffickers buy two at a time?,” asked U.S. Circuit Judge Danielle Forrest. “It seems like no.”
According to Yen, the law is a regulation on when you can own a gun, not if you can do so. But that argument didn’t sit well with Judge Forrest, either.
“It would be absurd to think that a government could say you can only buy one book a month because we want to make sure that you really understand the books you read, or you could only attend one protest a month because, you know, there’s some societal drawbacks from having protests so we want to kind of space those out. People would say that’s absurd,” Forrest said during the proceeding.
Judge John Owens further tore into Yen’s reasoning on one-gun-a-month law by using the scenario of a liquor store owner who might be threatened by a gang both at his business and his home. If the owner wanted two guns but didn’t have any, he would have to buy one, then wait 30 days to buy another. And Owens believes in that case the law would keep him from defending himself under the Second Amendment.
The appeal before the 9th Circuit comes after a U.S. District court ruled the law to be unconstitutional earlier this year. Of course, California is only too happy to spend taxpayer money to continue defending the law.
As the National Rifle Association argued in a brief filed in the case in June: “This Court has twice held that the Second Amendment protects the right to acquire arms. This Court’s prior holdings are supported by Supreme Court precedent. First, the Supreme Court has determined that ‘keep Arms’ in the Amendment’s text means to ‘have weapons,’ and the plain meaning of ‘have’ encompasses the act of acquisition.
Second, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that certain rights are implicit in enumerated guarantees. In the Second Amendment context, four Justices have recognized—and none have disagreed—that firearms training is ‘a necessary concomitant’ of the right to keep and bear arms. As this Court, the Third Circuit, and many district courts have recognized, acquiring a firearm must be a necessary concomitant as well.”
The state is also trying to meet the second Bruen standard by arguing that there is historic precedence for limiting gun purchases to one every 30 days. But it’s likely that assertion will fall on deaf ears, too.
As the NRA also pointed out in its brief: “The State argues that a more nuanced analogical approach is required because historically firearms were too laborious to manufacture and too expensive to purchase for firearms to be available for bulk purchase.
In fact, firearms were ubiquitous in early America, and affordable enough for every militiaman and many women to be required to purchase one or several firearms. Indeed, newspaper advertisements regularly offered large quantities of firearms for sale.”
Further bolstering that point, the brief continued: “In any event, California does not merely prohibit ‘bulk’ purchases; it prohibits the purchase of even two firearms in one month. Americans commonly purchased multiple firearms in a single transaction in the colonial and founding eras—and no law ever forbade it.”
Anti-gun groups should know better than to hop in bed with each other. They’re too fickle and their relationships almost always end in tears.
The Trace and the Gun Violence Archive may be the latest two anti-gun groups to part ways.
The Trace is the propaganda arm of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun empire. It masquerades as a newsroom solely to provide cover for members of the corporate media who republish their stories as if they’re actual news. Trace staffers call themselves journalists, some even have journalism backgrounds, but in reality, they’re nothing more than ardent anti-gun activists paid in Bloomberg bucks.
The Gun Violence Archive has been debunked dozens of times for its fake mass-shooting data. Anytime four or more people are killed or even slightly wounded with a firearm the GVA calls it a mass shooting – even if the incident is gang and/or drug related.
Last year, the GVA claims there were 656 mass shooting, which equates to 1.79 mass shootings per day. Initially, politicians, gun control activists and the mainstream media treated the GVA’s reports as if were gospel, but many now see the ridiculousness of the GVA’s claims.
The Trace and the GVA had a long history of collaboration, which produced dozens of biased stories. The two groups are even working together on the Gun Violence Data Hub, which they claim will go live sometime in the fall. Their two staffs will “collect, clean and publish datasets,” which they will then push out to the corporate media. The Hub has become a major fundraising hook for both organizations. Never mind that their work product will be created by paid anti-gun activists.
A story published Tuesday indicates that The Trace may have found a new data source – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC. Titled “Gun Deaths Fell in 2023 — Except Among Kids,” the story claims that “while overall gun deaths continued to decline from their post-pandemic peak, child gun deaths rose, and gun suicides hit a record high.”
The authors admit they used provisional data from the CDC. The actual numbers, they acknowledge, “are likely to change slightly before final figures are released in December. While the data is not yet final, it provides the most comprehensive and accurate accounting of gun deaths in America.”
Despite the temporary nature of the CDC data, the story makes some bold claims: Murders involving firearms are down, gun-related suicides are at an all-time high, and the South had the highest gun-related death rates. But nowhere in the story does The Trace make its calculations available so their work can be reviewed. Every single hyperlink, and there are more than a few, takes readers to the CDC website and its raw numbers.
Suspicious Timing
“Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable,” Mark Twain said that.
Are crime rates going up? Is crime down? Nowadays, you can find statistics to support both theories, especially just 90 days before a major presidential election. However, the best tool to determine whether you’re safe or likely to become a crime victim is not a news story, a spreadsheet or a dataset, it’s an old-fashioned Mark I eyeball. Believe what you see, not what the government or its lapdogs in the corporate media tell you is true.
Quite frankly, many Americans don’t feel safe, and they pushed their lawmakers to act. As a result, a clear majority of states no longer requires law-abiding Americans to bend a knee and beg permission from the government to sell them back their constitutional rights in the form of a permit or license to carry a defensive firearm. Gun sales have skyrocketed. July was the 60th consecutive month that had more than one million NICS background checks, a major indicator of firearm sales, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
If crime rates are decreasing, these are the reasons why. It’s got nothing to do with more restrictive firearm laws, which are patently unconstitutional and raging in non-free states.
As to The Trace’s new reportage and its bold claims, consider who’s paying their bills. The Trace is funded by Michael Bloomberg, who actually believes you will be safer once you give up your guns.
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The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) has announced they will seek Supreme Court review in Bianchi v. Wilkinson, SAF’s challenge to Maryland’s assault weapons ban, after the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law.
“Today’s decision from the 4th Circuit is unsurprising given their prior decision in Kolbe,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “We believe, much like in Kolbe, the court’s analysis is flawed and that the challenged law is unconstitutional. We will be filing a petition for certiorari at the Supreme Court, as this case presents an excellent vehicle for the Court to settle this debate once and for all.”
In the 65-page opinion, judges for the majority wrote: “The assault weapons at issue fall outside the ambit of protection offered by the Second Amendment because, in essence, they are military-style weapons designed for sustained combat operations that are ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense.” Chief Judge Diaz drafted a concurring opinion, with five other judges joining.
Judge Richardson drafted a dissenting opinion, with four other judges joining stating: “The Second Amendment is not a second-class right subject to the whimsical discretion of federal judges. Its mandate is absolute and, applied here, unequivocal…In holding otherwise, the majority grants states historically unprecedented leeway to trammel the constitutional liberties of their citizens.”
Joining SAF in the case are the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Field Traders, LLC., the Firearms Policy Coalition, and three private citizens, David Snope, Micah Schaefer and Dominic Bianchi, for whom the case is named. “The court relied heavily on the distinction between ‘military style’ arms and those appropriate for self-defense use,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb.
“This distinction runs completely contrary to the mandates of Heller and Bruen, and now sets the stage for another petition for SCOTUS review of the case.”
Gov. Janet Mills’s office referred critical social media posts to the police. The FPC pushed back.
Talk about your thin-skinned politicians! Apparently, it doesn’t take much more than an insult from critics these days to get the governor of Maine to scream for the police.
Since When Is Criticism a Crime?
Back in December, during an interview with a local NBC affiliate about blunders by official in the lead-up to the Lewiston mass shooting, Maine Gov. Janet Mills left the door open to tighter gun restrictions, including a ban on so-called “assault weapons.”
That segment was picked up and publicized by The Maine Wire, a conservative-leaning news site. That outlet’s post, in turn, drew a pungent comment from the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), a pugnacious self-defense rights group that pulls no punches when it comes to defending individual liberty. So, of course the governor’s office went crying to the cops.
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“Documents obtained by the Maine Wire via a Freedom of Access Act show that Gov. Janet Mills’ personnel referred social media posts from the Firearms Policy Coalition and the Maine Wire to the State Police, flagging them for the governor’s Executive Protection Unit,” The Maine Wire‘s Steve Robinson reported last week.
The posts in question were entirely unthreatening, except perhaps to sensitive feelings. The Maine Wire added nothing to the video clip except for a short summary of the content: “Governor Mills is leaving the door open for a possible assault weapons ban following the Lewiston shooting.”
The FPC was, characteristically, a little sharper: “Hey @GovJanetMills, Three words: Fuck you. No.”
That’s short, to the point, and perhaps a bit sharp, but it implies no threats whatsoever.
Nevertheless, The Maine Wire found emails showing that Mills’ press secretary passed a link to the post around the office, and that “another staffer immediately forwarded the post to the Maine State Police employee responsible for protecting the governor.”
According to Robinson, this isn’t the first time officials in the Democrat-led state government have tried to get the outlet in legal hot water. Emails revealed the office of Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows questioning if an article illustration depicting a stylized presidential ballot featuring only the Joe Biden–Kamala Harris ticket qualified as a “fake ballot” since it showed the state seal. This happened after Bellows tried to boot Republican Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballot.
Part of a Pattern of Weaponized Law
The Maine spat is part of a flurry of cases across the country involving government officials attempting to misuse the legal system and regulatory power to punish political opponents. While not as high-profile or as high-stakes, it’s reminiscent of NRA v. Vullo, a case recently given new life by the U.S. Supreme Court, in which Maria Vullo, the former head of New York’s Department of Financial Services, very clearly used the power of her office over banks and insurance companies to twist their arms until they denied services to the National Rifle Association.
“Six decades ago, this Court held that a government entity’s ‘threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion’ against a third party ‘to achieve the suppression’ of disfavored speech violates the First Amendment,” Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote for the court in the unanimous opinion. “Today, the Court reaffirms what it said then: Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.”
Such coercion came in the form of the abuse of regulatory power over financial institutions in the Vullo case. But it can come as old-school referrals to the police of anybody who criticizes government officials and their policies. Anything like that violates free speech rights.
The Firearms Policy Coalition Fights Back
“The disdain for natural rights by government officials like Maine Governor Mills and Secretary of State Bellows bolsters our commitment to our mission to render them irrelevant,” the FPC responded to the dust-up over the X post referral.
In a July 18 letter to Mills and Bellows, FPC President Brandon Combs vowed, “we take First Amendment-protected rights just as seriously as we do others.”
“You must surely be aware that our X post responding to Governor Mills’s discussion of an immoral ban on protected arms is clearly protected speech as there is absolutely no uncertainty about the law regarding this form of speech. If not, some education is in order,” the letter continued. “Naked authoritarianism, such as efforts to chill free speech, is not acceptable to FPC and our members. We strongly encourage you to learn more about protected speech and arms.”
For what it’s worth, the first letter of each line of the letter, read vertically, spells: “Fuck You No.”
The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
The state police commissioner was copied on the letter. That seems a handy shortcut given the propensity of the governor’s office to share mean messages with the cops. It cuts out the middleman and ensures police get a timely heads-up about sharply worded criticism of government officials.
A Practice That Needs To Stop
The weaponization of law, the courts, regulatory agencies, and tax collectors is despicable, but nothing new. The IRS has been used by presidents at least as far back as Franklin Delano Roosevelt to torment political enemies. Operation Chokepoint put federal regulatory pressure on banks to cut off access to financial services for legal but politically disfavored industries. The practice is extralegal and destructive of whatever remains of respect for government. It’s also becoming increasingly common.
When abusing the power of the state to punish critics becomes the norm, it erases the line between people who have committed actual criminal acts, and those who have just pissed off the powerful. That’s what lands us at the point when the office of a state governor refers insulting social media posts for the state police to do something about.
We’ll discover the hard way what that something is, unless those on the receiving end push back the way the FPC did. That means mocking thin-skinned government officials, calling them out publicly, and taking them to court. Intolerant officials want to hurt their critics with powers that were never meant to be used that way. That can only be discouraged if such abuses come with high costs of their own.
Chiricahua Apache prisoners including Geronimo (front row, third from right). National Archives
In the wake of the 2022 NYSRPA v Bruen decision, gun control laws at all levels in the United States have been in danger. While the original case only applied to “may issue” concealed carry laws, the case opened the door to lawsuits of all kinds by changing the standard by which infringements are to be measured. Instead of being able to hand-wave our constitutionally-protected rights away with interest balancing (“We really, really, really need this law!”), states would instead have to show that an anti-gun law would have been tolerable at the time the Second Amendment was ratified.
The only way to prove this is to look at the history and find not only precedent, but also find that the precedent was overwhelmingly common. One state passing a law, or a few states having a law isn’t really enough. For an anti-gun law to stand, it would have needed to be common practice during the founding era.
Obviously, anti-gun forces aren’t going to give up. Instead of being like, “Damn. You got me. This law is unconstitutional,” we instead see them trying all kinds of crazy things to come up with historical precedent to justify today’s anti-gun laws. In a recent New Mexico case, a federal judge tried again to use laws against slaves owning firearms and laws against Native Americans owning guns to justify it.
In short, their argument is that these laws decided who could get a weapon. So, the thinking goes, a state can now decide who can own a weapon, even if very different criteria are used to make that choice.
Why This Argument Doesn’t Hold Water
One very important thing changed since the time of those bigoted and evil laws: the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.
While simply calling a law bigoted and even genocidal doesn’t automatically render it unconstitutional, it’s pretty clear that a law banning black people and Native Americans wouldn’t be constitutional today. Why? Because the Civil War marked the beginning of the end of that nonsense. Constitutional amendments ended slavery and ended treating anyone as a second-class citizen.
This didn’t become the reality on the ground overnight, though. Slavery ended, but a decades-long insurgency ultimately succeeded in ending Reconstruction. This enabled the South to bring milder forms of slavery back via Jim Crow. Native Americans were denied the rights of citizens both during and after the Indian Wars. But, during the 20th Century, governments and courts decided to start following the law and put an end to unconstitutional persecution of these classes of people. Now, things like Jim Crow and treating Native Americans as foreigners with no rights are in the garbage can of history where they belong.
Given that these laws banning these two classes of people from owning weapons wouldn’t be constitutional today, there’s really no sense in relying on them to support infringements on other people. To claim otherwise is to claim that black people and Native Americans could be rightly denied their rights today.
Really, though, the judge who wrote this decision and the other anti-gun lawyers who originally crafted this dumb argument aren’t bigots themselves. They know this is a nonsense argument that won’t prove durable in higher courts. All they’re trying to do is come up with something that looks semi-legitimate to slow the process down in hopes that Democrats can change the composition of the Supreme Court and undo NYSRPA v Bruen, as well as to make a mockery of the Bruen decision in the process.
We shouldn’t let them off the hook, though. Disingenuously using the bigoted past to support their agenda in the present doesn’t make them good guys. If anything, this should be seen as a spit in the face and a mockery of the people who fought so hard to end slavery and the abuse of Native Americans. For this, they should still be ashamed.
In with a rat-tat-tat, out with barely a whimper. That describes the great lawsuit filed by Chicago not even four months ago. The suit, originally filed in state court was transferred to federal court. And with a very short, two sentence filing, Chicago voluntarily withdrew the lawsuit from federal court.
CWB Chicago, as usual, reported on Chicago eating some humble pie.
CHICAGO — When Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced in March that his administration was filing a “first-of-its-kind lawsuit” against firearm manufacturer Glock, the city drummed up publicity with a press release and widespread media coverage.
There was no press release and no media coverage on Monday when the city’s attorneys unceremoniously dropped the case in a two-sentence federal court filing.
Chicago and its top-shelf lawyer buddies over at Everytown for Gun Control hailed it as a “first of a kind” lawsuit claiming that Glock pistols posed a public nuisance because criminals misuse them. The announcement back on March 19, 2024, attracted all sorts of national headlines happily parroting Chicago’s sensational claims.
Moreover, the usual menagerie of gun control advocates cheered the fake news. “Good job, Mr. Mayor,” the ever-shrinking Chicago Tribune editorialized at the move.
Here it is, from Chicago Mayor Let’s Go Brandon’s mouth press room:
CHICAGO – Today, the City of Chicago announced a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against Glock, the manufacturer of the most popular handguns in the United States, alleging that Glock is facilitating the proliferation of illegal machine guns on the streets of Chicago. The lawsuit alleges that Glock unreasonably endangers Chicagoans by manufacturing and selling in the Chicago civilian market semiautomatic pistols that can easily be converted to illegal machine guns with an auto sear – a cheap, small device commonly known as a “Glock switch.” The suit is the first to use Illinois’s new Firearms Industry Responsibility Act, passed and signed into law in 2023 to hold gun companies accountable for conduct that endangers the public.
Filed earlier today in Cook County Circuit Court, the lawsuit reports that law enforcement personnel in Chicago have recovered over 1,100 Glocks that have been converted into illegal machine guns in the last two years alone in connection with a wide variety of crimes, including homicides, aggravated assaults, batteries, kidnappings, burglaries, home invasions, carjackings, and attempted robberies. The lawsuit alleges that Glock knows it could fix the problem but refuses to do so, and the City is seeking a court order requiring Glock to cease sales of its easily converted pistols to Chicago civilians. The City also seeks penalties against Glock and damages for the harm that Glock has caused to the City.
“The City of Chicago is encountering a deadly new frontier in the gun violence plaguing our communities because of the increase of fully automatic Glocks on our streets,” said Mayor Brandon Johnson, a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. “Selling firearms that can so easily be converted into automatic weapons makes heinous acts even more deadly, so we are doing everything we can in collaboration with others committed to ending gun violence to hold Glock accountable for putting profits over public safety.”
“Right now, anyone in the United States with $20 and a screwdriver can convert their Glock pistol into an illegal machine gun in just a few minutes,” said Eric Tirschwell, executive director of Everytown Law.“We intend to hold Glock accountable for the unconscionable decision to continue selling its easily modified pistols even though it could fix the problem, knowing that by refusing to do so it is exacerbating gun violence in Chicago.”
“We are proud to partner with the City of Chicago and Everytown Law in this vital effort to enhance public safety and create a safer Chicago for all its residents,” said H. Christopher Boehning, partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.
Yes, Everytown’s Law division website literally couldn’t contain their glee in the filing.
https://cdn0.thetruthaboutguns.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Everytown-Law-Headline.jpg
The page, still up as of July 24, 2024, shows a screaming headline that won’t even fit on at the top of their page.
In with a rat tat tat, out with barely a whimper
In recent days, in a move barely mentioned (if at all) in most of those same media outlets, Chicago dropped their lawsuit. In fact, the great ground-breaking lawsuit, filed with the help of the very best legal minds (cough) over at Everytown, was withdrawn in a two sentence filing.
In reality, the lawsuit filed in March of this year proved nothing new. It was just another poorly rehashed lawfare action against a respected firearm manufacturer that produces some of the most popular defensive handguns sold in America and elsewhere in the world.
Glock products have saved countless lives when used in self-defense and to put down violent criminals, terrorists and lunatics. They have also thwarted millions of criminal attacks.
But Chicago politicians needed to do something to distract from their feckless leadership and the failure of gun control schemes to stop criminals. After all, gun control disarms victims, not criminals. And when the victims are unarmed and defenseless, the criminals can ply their trade with impunity, particularly when prosecutors don’t prosecute and judges don’t incarcerate offenders.
Right along those lines, the same legal beagles re-filed the the withdrawn case once more in state court, only this time they’ve added a couple of Glock authorized gun shops as defendants. Yes, Eagle Sports and Midwest Sporting Goods now get to spend tens of thousands of dollars defending against a defective lawsuit. At least until Brandon’s legal team files another two sentence voluntary dismissal.
Does anyone want to take a bet that this latest filing will meet the same end, perhaps even sooner than the original filings?