Daily Archives: May 30, 2023

Opinion | Beyond the Matrix Theory of the Human Mind – The New York Times

Posted: May 30, 2023 at 12:13 am

Imagine I told you in 1970 that I was going to invent a wondrous tool. This new tool would make it possible for anyone with access and most of humanity would have access to quickly communicate and collaborate with anyone else. It would store nearly the sum of human knowledge and thought up to that point, and all of it would be searchable, sortable and portable. Text could be instantly translated from one language to another, news would be immediately available from all over the world, and it would take no longer for a scientist to download a journal paper from 15 years ago than to flip to an entry in the latest issue.

What would you have predicted this leap in information and communication and collaboration would do for humanity? How much faster would our economies grow?

Now imagine I told you that I was going to invent a sinister tool. (Perhaps, while telling you this, I would cackle.) As people used it, their attention spans would degrade, as the tool would constantly shift their focus, weakening their powers of concentration and contemplation. This tool would show people whatever it is they found most difficult to look away from which would often be what was most threatening about the world, from the worst ideas of their political opponents to the deep injustices of their society. It would fit in their pockets and glow on their night stands and never truly be quiet; there would never be a moment when people could be free of the sense that the pile of messages and warnings and tasks needed to be checked.

What would you have thought this engine of distraction, division and cognitive fracture would do to humanity?

Thinking of the internet in these terms helps solve an economic mystery. The embarrassing truth is that productivity growth how much more we can make with the same number of people and factories and land was far faster for much of the 20th century than it is now. We average about half the productivity growth rate today that we saw in the 1950s and 60s. That means stagnating incomes, sluggish economies and a political culture thats more about fighting over what we have than distributing the riches and wonders weve gained. So what went wrong?

You can think of two ways the internet could have sped up productivity growth. The first way was obvious: by allowing us to do what we were already doing and do it more easily and quickly. And that happened. You can see a bump in productivity growth from roughly 1995 to 2005 as companies digitized their operations. But its the second way that was always more important: By connecting humanity to itself and to nearly its entire storehouse of information, the internet could have made us smarter and more capable as a collective.

I dont think that promise proved false, exactly. Even in working on this article, it was true for me: The speed with which I could find information, sort through research, contact experts its marvelous. Even so, I doubt I wrote this faster than I would have in 1970. Much of my mind was preoccupied by the constant effort needed just to hold a train of thought in a digital environment designed to distract, agitate and entertain me. And I am not alone.

Gloria Mark, a professor of information science at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of Attention Span, started researching the way people used computers in 2004. The average time people spent on a single screen was 2.5 minutes. I was astounded, she told me. That was so much worse than Id thought it would be. But that was just the beginning. By 2012, Mark and her colleagues found the average time on a single task was 75 seconds. Now its down to about 47.

This is an acid bath for human cognition. Multitasking is mostly a myth. We can focus on one thing at a time. Its like we have an internal whiteboard in our minds, Mark said. If Im working on one task, I have all the info I need on that mental whiteboard. Then I switch to email. I have to mentally erase that whiteboard and write all the information I need to do email. And just like on a real whiteboard, there can be a residue in our minds. We may still be thinking of something from three tasks ago.

The cost is in more than just performance. Mark and others in her field have hooked people to blood pressure machines and heart rate monitors and measured chemicals in the blood. The constant switching makes us stressed and irritable. I didnt exactly need experiments to prove that I live that, and you probably do, too but it was depressing to hear it confirmed.

Which brings me to artificial intelligence. Here Im talking about the systems we are seeing now: large language models like OpenAIs GPT-4 and Googles Bard. What these systems do, for the most part, is summarize information they have been shown and create content that resembles it. I recognize that sentence can sound a bit dismissive, but it shouldnt: Thats a huge amount of what human beings do, too.

Already, we are being told that A.I. is making coders and customer service representatives and writers more productive. At least one chief executive plans to add ChatGPT use in employee performance evaluations. But Im skeptical of this early hype. It is measuring A.I.s potential benefits without considering its likely costs the same mistake we made with the internet.

I worry were headed in the wrong direction in at least three ways.

One is that these systems will do more to distract and entertain than to focus. Right now, the large language models tend to hallucinate information: Ask them to answer a complex question, and you will receive a convincing, erudite response in which key facts and citations are often made up. I suspect this will slow their widespread use in important industries much more than is being admitted, akin to the way driverless cars have been tough to roll out because they need to be perfectly reliable rather than just pretty good.

A question to ask about large language models, then, is where does trustworthiness not matter? Those are the areas where adoption will be fastest. An example from media is telling, I think. CNET, the technology website, quietly started using these models to write articles, with humans editing the pieces. But the process failed. Forty-one of the 77 A.I.-generated articles proved to have errors the editors missed, and CNET, embarrassed, paused the program. BuzzFeed, which recently shuttered its news division, is racing ahead with using A.I. to generate quizzes and travel guides. Many of the results have been shoddy, but it doesnt really matter. A BuzzFeed quiz doesnt have to be reliable.

A.I. will be great for creating content where reliability isnt a concern. The personalized video games and childrens shows and music mash-ups and bespoke images will be dazzling. And new domains of delight and distraction are coming: I believe were much closer to A.I. friends, lovers and companions becoming a widespread part of our social lives than society is prepared for. But where reliability matters say, a large language model devoted to answering medical questions or summarizing doctor-patient interactions deployment will be more troubled, as oversight costs will be immense. The problem is that those are the areas that matter most for economic growth.

Marcela Martin, BuzzFeeds president, encapsulated my next worry nicely when she told investors, Instead of generating 10 ideas in a minute, A.I. can generate hundreds of ideas in a second. She meant that as a good thing, but is it? Imagine that multiplied across the economy. Someone somewhere will have to process all that information. What will this do to productivity?

One lesson of the digital age is that more is not always better. More emails and more reports and more Slacks and more tweets and more videos and more news articles and more slide decks and more Zoom calls have not led, it seems, to more great ideas. We can produce more information, Mark said. But that means theres more information for us to process. Our processing capability is the bottleneck.

Email and chat systems like Slack offer useful analogies here. Both are widely used across the economy. Both were initially sold as productivity boosters, allowing more communication to take place faster. And as anyone who uses them knows, the productivity gains though real are more than matched by the cost of being buried under vastly more communication, much of it junk and nonsense.

The magic of a large language model is that it can produce a document of almost any length in almost any style, with a minimum of user effort. Few have thought through the costs that will impose on those who are supposed to respond to all this new text. One of my favorite examples of this comes from The Economist, which imagined NIMBYs but really, pick your interest group using GPT-4 to rapidly produce a 1,000-page complaint opposing a new development. Someone, of course, will then have to respond to that complaint. Will that really speed up our ability to build housing?

You might counter that A.I. will solve this problem by quickly summarizing complaints for overwhelmed policymakers, much as the increase in spam is (sometimes, somewhat) countered by more advanced spam filters. Jonathan Frankle, the chief scientist at MosaicML and a computer scientist at Harvard, described this to me as the boring apocalypse scenario for A.I., in which we use ChatGPT to generate long emails and documents, and then the person who received it uses ChatGPT to summarize it back down to a few bullet points, and there is tons of information changing hands, but all of it is just fluff. Were just inflating and compressing content generated by A.I.

When we spoke, Frankle noted the magic of feeding a 100-page Supreme Court document into a large language model and getting a summary of the key points. But was that, he worried, a good summary? Many of us have had the experience of asking ChatGPT to draft a piece of writing and seeing a fully formed composition appear, as if by magic, in seconds.

My third concern is related to that use of A.I.: Even if those summaries and drafts are pretty good, something is lost in the outsourcing. Part of my job is reading 100-page Supreme Court documents and composing crummy first drafts of columns. It would certainly be faster for me to have A.I. do that work. But the increased efficiency would come at the cost of new ideas and deeper insights.

Our societywide obsession with speed and efficiency has given us a flawed model of human cognition that Ive come to think of as the Matrix theory of knowledge. Many of us wish we could use the little jack from The Matrix to download the knowledge of a book (or, to use the movies example, a kung fu master) into our heads, and then wed have it, instantly. But that misses much of whats really happening when we spend nine hours reading a biography. Its the time inside that book spent drawing connections to what we know and having thoughts we would not otherwise have had that matters.

Nobody likes to write reports or do emails, but we want to stay in touch with information, Mark said. We learn when we deeply process information. If were removed from that and were delegating everything to GPT having it summarize and write reports for us were not connecting to that information.

We understand this intuitively when its applied to students. No one thinks that reading the SparkNotes summary of a great piece of literature is akin to actually reading the book. And no one thinks that if students have ChatGPT write their essays, they have cleverly boosted their productivity rather than lost the opportunity to learn. The analogy to office work is not perfect there are many dull tasks worth automating so people can spend their time on more creative pursuits but the dangers of overautomating cognitive and creative processes are real.

These are old concerns, of course. Socrates questioned the use of writing (recorded, ironically, by Plato), worrying that if men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves but by means of external marks. I think the trade-off here was worth it I am, after all, a writer but it was a trade-off. Human beings really did lose faculties of memory we once had.

To make good on its promise, artificial intelligence needs to deepen human intelligence. And that means human beings need to build A.I. and build the workflows and office environments around it, in ways that dont overwhelm and distract and diminish us. We failed that test with the internet. Lets not fail it with A.I.

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CyberArk Supercharges Identity Security Platform with Automation … – CXOToday.com

Posted: at 12:13 am

New Products, Features and Cross-Platform Integrations Accelerate Identity and Cloud Security

CyberArk (NASDAQ:CYBR), theIdentity Securitycompany, today announced new products and features across the CyberArk Identity Security Platform, making it the most powerful platform of its kind. Investments to enhance cloud security and deliver automation and artificial intelligence (AI) innovations across the platform make it easier than ever to apply intelligent privilege controls to all identities human and non-human from a single vendor.

The rapid acceleration of identities is part of what makes a unified approach to advancing Identity Security so important. Treating identities differently with stand-alone technologies misses the mark and exposes risk, said Peretz Regev, chief product officer, CyberArk. Our unified Identity Security platform breaks down those silos by contextually authenticating identities, then dynamically authorizing the least amount of privilege required. Additionally, we continue to strategically expand our use of machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve customers defensive capabilities to counter attacker innovation.

With CyberArks single, unified Identity Security platform organizations can achieve Zero Trust and least privilege with complete visibility and enable secure access for any identity from anywhere and to the widest range of resources or environments. TheCyberArk Identity Security Platformhelps customers apply intelligent privilege controls to reduce risk for all identities and consolidate vendors while delivering operational efficiencies and achieving a faster ROI.

CyberArk leads the market with innovative new features and investments in automation and artificial intelligence to improve Identity Security and enable organizations to implement proactive controls and defensive strategies. Key innovations in these areas include:

Enhancements across the CyberArk Identity Security Platform focus on further improving security, adoption and user experience. Additional new capabilities driving value across the platform will include:

In addition, at IMPACT 23 CyberArk also announcedCyberArk Secure Browser, a first-of-its-kind Identity Security-based browser.

About CyberArk CyberArk(NASDAQ:CYBR) is the global leader in Identity Security. Centered onintelligent privilege controls, CyberArk provides the most comprehensive security offering for any identity human or machine across business applications, distributed workforces, hybrid cloud environments and throughout the DevOps lifecycle. The worlds leading organizations trust CyberArk to help secure their most critical assets. To learn more about CyberArk, visithttps://www.cyberark.com, read theCyberArk blogsor follow onLinkedIn,Twitter,FacebookorYouTube.

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Photoshop Is Getting Artificial Intelligence — Why That’s a Big Deal … – The Motley Fool

Posted: at 12:13 am

Adobe (ADBE 5.95%) is bringing artificial intelligence to Photoshop, and it makes all the sense in the world. As Travis Hoium covers in this video, if AI ends up being an incremental technology improvement it will make Adobe's business stronger.

*Stock prices used were end-of-day prices of May 24, 2023. The video was published on May 24, 2023.

Travis Hoium has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Adobe. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2024 $420 calls on Adobe and short January 2024 $430 calls on Adobe. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.Travis Hoium is an affiliate of The Motley Fool and may be compensated for promoting its services. If you choose to subscribe throughtheir link they will earn some extra money that supports their channel. Their opinions remain their own and are unaffected by The Motley Fool.

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Slack CEO looks to artificial intelligence for help in rolling out new … – The Boston Globe

Posted: at 12:13 am

One way to break the cycle of drudgery, at least from her point of view, is by effective use of messaging software, particularly when enhanced by artificial intelligence.

As the newly christened chief executive of Slack, the messaging app, you would expect Jones to say that. She is all-in on making office workers days more productive. Toward that end, on May 4, Jones announced a suite of Slack programs that use artificial intelligence under the brand name Slack GPT. These are designed to make colleagues communications more efficient, including by providing conversation summaries and writing assistance, and to make it easier for salespeople to respond to clients and prospects, by providing alerts of sales leads and instant research. These AI programs will also help Jones and her colleagues integrate the consumer-facing Slack app with the business-focused tools offered by Slacks parent company, Salesforce.

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Jones was already one of the most prominent Latinas in the high-tech sector when she became CEO about four months ago, taking over for Slack cofounder Stewart Butterfield. Now, as the head of one of the best-known software programs used in modern office life, shes also one of the most prominent tech executives in Greater Boston.

Although Salesforce is based in San Francisco, Jones lives in Cambridge. She moved to Greater Boston more than 15 years ago from the Seattle area as a Microsoft executive, in large part because her husband wanted to return to his home state. She continued to rise up the ranks at Microsoft, before leaving in 2015 to be VP of software product management for speaker maker Sonos in Boston. Salesforce called four years later; she liked how its e-commerce options allow companies like Sonos to stay independent, and took a job helping oversee that part of Salesforces business.

Jones said she was surprised when Butterfield reached out about taking over Slack. But she calls the past four months the best, you know, four months Ive had in my career even though it involves plenty of travel. She has bounced around from Australia to London to Toronto, with plenty of visits to San Francisco.

Chamber chief executive Jim Rooney thought Jones would be a perfect keynote speaker for this years annual meeting and invited her through chamber members Thea James and Betty Francisco, who volunteer alongside Jones at Boston nonprofit Compass Working Capital.

About that AI that Jones talked about at the chamber: She has been impressed by how quickly big companies are adopting Slack GPT. Every customer is knocking on my door, Jones said. Theyre like, Hey, just protect my data, but I need this.

As the states economic development secretary, Yvonne Hao is leading the charge to update the official economic development plan for Massachusetts something required by state law to happen every four years. She certainly wont be at a loss for feedback.

Last week, Hao told members of real estate trade group NAIOP Massachusetts that more than 200 people attended the first two regional listening sessions, in Springfield and Worcester from big companies and small businesses, nonprofits and city councils. She plans to finish the report by the end of the year and is relying in part on an advisory council, which includes NAIOP chief executive Tamara Small as a member.

One possible reason Hao is getting so much feedback: rising concerns about the states economic competitiveness.

At the NAIOP event, Jake Grossman of the Grossman Companies said he worries about taxes and housing affordability. Can you give me a little therapy session? Grossman asked Hao. Whats the good stuff thats happening?

Hao said shes hustling to make the case at every turn for why companies should stay and grow here, arguments that tend to focus on our well-educated talent pool. She said she heard that a chief executive was being recruited to relocate to North Carolina, so she hopped on the phone with him to explain why he should stay. And she noted that Governor Maura Healey has hired Quentin Palfrey and Will Rasky to go after all the federal funds they can find for Massachusetts. Other states have this muscle developed [but] we havent, she said of lobbying Washington.

She knows Massachusetts has been one of the few states to lose people during the pandemic but is determined to reverse that trend.

This is not the time to hang out and rest, Hao said. We have real issues we have to fix. If you wait too long ... by the time you realize youve lost, its too late.

As the founder of Resilient Coders training program for people of color, David Delmar Sentes has helped a generation of Black and Latino tech workers enter the workforce.

Now that the tech sector is experiencing a downturn, Delmar Sentes worries many of those alums are being left behind, and that the corporate diversity commitments made in recent years are slipping away. (Delmar Sentes left Resilient Coders last year to finish his book on this topic, What We Build with Power.) Black workers, he said, have been disproportionately affected by all the tech layoffs, and diversity and equity budgets have been slashed.

Thats why he and Pariss Chandler, founder of the Black Tech Pipeline, among others, are launching a campaign for worker-led equity in the field. Theyll hold their first organizing meeting on June 12. Among the reforms Delmar Sentes wants: companies getting serious about dropping bachelors degrees from the list of job requirements. He also hopes for the creation of some sort of organization think of it as a Better Business Bureau, but for DEI that can track companies that are doing well, and the ones that are performing poorly.

Resilient Coders and other organizations like it are functionally marching into the wind, he said. If you do that long enough, you wonder what it would be like to change the direction of the wind.

Terry Richardson has led major sales efforts for two giant tech companies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and AMD the kind of jobs that can put you on the road more often than youre home.

While at AMD, Richardson was deciding whether to finally retire, or to find a job a little closer to home. He ended up picking the latter option, when Josh Dinneen rang him up. Dinneen was moving up to president at Portsmouth, N.H-based IT services and cybersecurity provider GreenPages, which also has an office in Charlestown. And Dinneen wanted someone he could trust to take over his previous role there as chief revenue officer. Thus, the invite was extended to Richardson. He joined GreenPages, which is owned by Boston private equity firm Abry Partners, on May 1.

Richardson said he liked the technology expertise and the people at the 310-person firm. Plus, its hard to argue with the lifestyle improvements, because most clients are in and around New England as opposed to the marathon trips Richardson took on almost a weekly basis. While the GreenPages headquarters in Portsmouth isnt exactly a short drive away from his home in Hopkinton, at least he knows he can finish the day in his own bed. Its time, finally, to stop the running.

Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jonchesto.

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Second Amendment Roundup: U.S. Seeking Cert on Prohibited Persons % – Reason

Posted: at 12:11 am

Federal law prohibits nine categories of persons from receipt and possession of a firearm. As the Supreme Court continues to develop its Second Amendment jurisprudence, which ones of those types are most significant in regard to representativeness and numerosity?

Felons in possession of firearms have been the leading type of prosecution under the federal Gun Control Act since its enactment in 1968. There were 7,454 such convictions in 2021.

The ban on felon possession is found in 18 U.S.C. 922(g), which also includes eight other categories of prohibited persons all of which pale into insignificance compared to the felon ban. One of the more minor categories is a person subject to a domestic restraining order. While the feds aren't too good at posting current data, in the years 2013 to 2017, there were 26,717 such convictions based on felon status, and only 121 for restraining order status. The proportions can't be much different today.

Given that disparity, why is Attorney General Merrick Garland so keen in having the Supreme Court decide whether the restraining order folks, instead of the felons, are protected by the Second Amendment? The felon issue is ubiquitous, and not just because of the sheer numbers. It involves not only the violent felony vs. non-violent felony issue, but also whether any limits exist in this day-and-age in which almost anything can be a felony. Why has Martha Stewart forfeited her right to have a gun for self-defense?

So why would the government try to convince the Supreme Court to take up the atypical issue regarding persons with a restraining order? Here's my take.

The Biden Administration is salivating at the prospect of United States v. Rahimi, about which I've written previously, being the next Second Amendment case to be decided by the Supreme Court. That's because the defendant in the case appears to be such an odious character. Arrested by police following multiple shooting sprees, Rahimi was prohibited from gun possession because he was subject to a prior agreed-upon civil protective order. The Fifth Circuit found the ban to be facially unconstitutional because no historical analogue allowed disarming a person based on a civil protective order rather than a criminal proceeding.

The government didn't bother to file a petition for rehearing en banc, and rushed straight to the Supreme Court with a cert petition. There is a reason for the adage that bad facts make bad law, and the Administration is angling to take full advantage of that.

So do the amici that have filed briefs urging the Court to grant cert. One of them is California Governor Gavin Newsom, who argues that the Court's "intervention is needed immediately," given that the Fifth's Circuit's decision "is just one example of lower courts misreading Bruen."

It then lists some of the other decisions that take the Second Amendment seriously, an obviously unacceptable outcome to those who wish to re-designate the right to bear arms to a second-class status.

As the cert petition states, "the government is filing this petition for a writ of certiorari on a highly expedited schedule . . . in order to allow the Court to consider the petition before it recesses for the summer." Nothing like rushing to the front of the line and insisting to the Court, "Pick me!"

And the government recently opposed the full length of an extension requested by Rahimi's counsel to respond to the petition. In its response the government indicated that it would only agree to cutting in half counsel's normal reply time "given the substantial disruption caused by the court of appeals' decision," in order "to allow the petition to be distributed on June 6 for consideration at the June 22 conference." The extension was granted only in part, to May 30.

To be clear, whether the Court considers the petition now or in the fall, it will not hear the case until next term. An apparent aim of the Administration is to ensure that Rahimi is the next Second Amendment case the Court hears. If there are other meritorious prohibited-person petitions that are filed after cert is granted in Rahimi, under typical Court practice those petitions likely would be held pending resolution of Rahimi. After that, the Court would grant cert, vacate, and remand (GVR) the pending cases for reconsideration in light of whatever it would decide in Rahimi.

A better approach would be for the Court not to act too quickly and to wait until it returns from its summer recess to decide whether to take Rahimi or another case for plenary review. The Court likely will at that time have a fuller menu of options from which to choose. For example, the Third Circuit is poised to decide the Range v. Garland case en banc. Range presents an as-applied civil challenge to the federal felon prohibition on behalf of an individual who was convicted for excluding lawn-mowing income from his food stamp application nearly thirty years ago. The three-judge panel upheld his conviction based on improper historical analogues such as the disarming of slaves.

In addition, the Second Circuit recently held argument in Zherka v. Garland, a challenge similar to Range's on behalf of an individual convicted of conspiring to commit bank and tax fraud. The district court upheld his legal disability under the "two-step" framework that Justice Thomas characterized in Bruen as "one step too many." These cases present more typical challengers than the one in Rahimi, and the facts of the cases are less likely to have a skewing effect on the law.

Rather than precipitously granting the Rahimi petition and then holding cases like Range and Zherka if they come before the Court, the Court should consider the full array of petitions that are filed when it comes back from recess and grant the one, or ones, most representative of the challenges that typically are brought in this area. The Court could then hold Rahimi pending the outcome of that case or at a minimum grant another petition alongside Rahimi.

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2nd Amendment Quotes for Hot Topics – Everyday Power

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However you feel about guns, take a moment to check out our 2nd Amendment quotes to learn more.

We have some of the most insightful and historically relevant Second Amendment quotes to help you better understand both sides of the debate.

You may also enjoy reading these related articles:

The Second Amendment is a provision that protects an individual to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

Many people have interpreted this provision differently, so the Second Amendment has varying meanings depending on who you ask.

Check out these Second Amendment facts below:

The Second Amendment prevents the need for the United States to have a professional standing army.

When the Second Amendment passed, the country was in different conditions than today.

The Second Amendment wasnt intended to grant a right for private individuals to keep weapons for self-defense.

However, the right to bear arms generally refers to a persons right to possess weapons.

As a result, the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitutional right to bear arms as an individual self-defense right over the years.

Some people believe the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to carry arms.

Other people believe the Second Amendment preserves the right to bear arms within the context of a well-regulated militia.

The interpretation of the Amendment has spawned national debate for centuries.

People in favor of gun rights suggest that the Second Amendment is a necessary safeguard against government tyranny.

Gun control activists disagree.

They suggest the Second Amendment is outdated.

They dont believe it accounts for modern violence concerns.

To learn more, check out our Second Amendment quotes below.

These quotes remind us why some people are so passionate about maintaining the integrity of the Second Amendment.

1. There is more hooey spread about the Second Amendment. Molly Ivins

2. The Second Amendment is an integral part of the Bill of Rights. Ted Cruz

3. The Second Amendment is, of course, very much part of the American fabric. Peter Bergen

4. The Second Amendment says we have the right to bear arms, not to bear artillery. Robin Williams

5. The Second Amendment is just as important as all the other Amendments. John Kennedy

6. A gun saved my life. Thats why I wont let my Second Amendment right be taken away from me. Stacey Dash

7. You know why theres a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one. Rush Limbaugh

8. We also cannot allow Wall Street banks to rewrite the Second Amendment just because theyre too big to fail. John Kennedy

9. The Second Amendment does protect the right to people to possess weapons for self-defense in the home. Laurence Tribe

10. The Second Amendment, like the First Amendment, was never written to apply to the states themselves but to Congress. Ryan McMaken

Below are some Second Amendment quotes from some well-known individuals.

11. I dont hate the government. I dont think the Second Amendment is being infringed upon. Henry Rollins

12. But the guns are there, the Second Amendment is there, to make sure all of the rest of the amendments are followed. Louie Gohmert

13. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed. Justice Alex Kozinski, US 9th Circuit Court

14. The final line in the Second Amendment says, The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. That means not by the president, not by Congress. Chuck Norris

15. As an ardent defender of the Second Amendment, I will work aggressively with my House and Senate colleagues to make sure no attack on gun rights becomes law. Ronny Jackson

These pro-Second Amendment quotes are all about freedom and the law of the land.

16. The Second Amendment is not just words on parchment. Wayne LaPierre

17. Theres another group that just hates the Second Amendment. John Kennedy

18. Thankfully, the Second Amendment and the American people will not stand for it. Katie Pavlich

19. We need to get some rationality on the Second Amendment. This is crazy what we allow ourselves. George Takei

20. I will not sign a piece of legislation that has anything to do with imposing limitations on our Second Amendment. Glenn Youngkin

21. If the U.N. gun-ban treaty is ever signed and ratified into law, we may never get a second chance to save the Second Amendment. Wayne LaPierre

22. If youre too dangerous to buy an airplane ticket, youre too dangerous to buy an assault weapon. And when we talk about the Second Amendment. Jim Gray

23. There is a group of people that I think in good faith honestly believe that further curtailing our Second Amendment rights will enhance public safety. John Kennedy

24. Im not representing any organization. I represent the people of Ohio, and a lot of people in Ohio feel very strongly about their Second Amendment rights. Rob Portman

25. What a lot the media, and especially Fox News, has messed up with me is theyve made it seem like Im trying to take away peoples guns that Im against the Second Amendment. David Hogg

Here are a few additional gun control quotes and perspectives.

26. I dont think you should infringe on the type of weapon somebody should buy or the number of rounds in a high-capacity magazine. Gabriel E. Gomez

27. For me personally, Im anti-gun and always have been and always will be. But Im definitely not someone who is looking to abolish the Second Amendment. Justin Tranter Stevens

28. For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation. John Paul

29. What I dont want to do is restrict law-abiding citizens from their Second Amendment rights, which are focused on freedom. I point out all the time. Remember, bad guys arent stupid; theyre just bad. Jim Jordan

30. How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of. Dr. Suzanna Gratia Hupp

The founding fathers wrote the Second Amendment into law to protect gun rights.

Here are some of their most memorable quotes.

31. I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery. Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787

32. No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776

33. A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined. George Washington, First Annual Address to Congress, January 8, 1790

34. I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers. George Mason, Address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 4, 1788

35. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote! Benjamin Franklin

36. That no man should scruple, or hesitate a moment, to use arms in defense of so valuable a blessing, on which all the good and evil of life depends, is clearly my opinion. George Washington, letter to George Mason April 5, 1769

Here are some additional quotes to hear what the founding fathers thought.

37. The Constitution of most of our states assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed. Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Cartwright, June 5, 1824

38. The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country. James Madison, Annals of Congress 434, June 8, 1789

39. A free people ought not only to be armed but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent on others for essential, particularly for military, supplies. John Adams, speech to US Congress January 8, 1790

40. On every occasion, let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, [instead let us] conform to the probable one in which it was passed. Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823

Supporters of the Second Amendment often cite a desire to preserve their freedom as the basis of their passion; these quotes remind us why.

41. I am a strong supporter and proponent of the Second Amendment. Always have been. Lucy McBath

42. The authors of the Second Amendment had a more sophisticated vision of gun ownership than is often assumed. Ryan McMaken

43. I support the Second Amendment but the Second Amendment was created and designed to prevent tyranny and not to encourage terror. Jim Gray

44. I strongly believe that the Second Amendment creates an individual right to possess and use guns for purposes of both hunting and self-defense. Cass Sunstein

45. The enemies of freedom are waging an all-out assault on the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which we have sworn to protect and defend. Jeff Duncan

Here are a few additional quotes about liberty and the importance of protecting it.

46. Our fight isnt just about the Second Amendment, its about preserving all our liberties saving our constitutional heritage and protections for the future. Wayne LaPierre

47. The Second Amendment is a constitutional right. I didnt make it up; the Republican Party didnt make it up. Its in the Constitution. I think its just as important as any of the other rights in our constitution. Marco Rubio

48. We are a country that believes in free speech and the open debate of ideas. Were a country that also believes in the Second Amendment and our ability to have guns. But weve got to figure out a way to keep America safe. Valerie Jarrett

49. I support gun safety measures, and Ill tell you, I grew up in a family of gun owners and hunters, and I went hunting with my dad as a kid, and you know, I have deep respect for the Second Amendment and the culture of our country. Eric Swalwell

50. It is often, therefore, just assumed that the writers of the Second Amendment were nave and incapable of seeing the vast asymmetries that would develop between military weaponry and the sort of weaponry the average person was likely to use. Ryan McMaken

Debates regarding the Second Amendment continue to rage.

Therefore, you have people on both sides who do not seem to be able to agree with an interpretation of the provision in a way that makes sense for each side.

There is an adage that says there is nothing new under the sun.

Whether private citizens should bear arms or if this right belongs to militias or the military was not raised until long after the Bill of Rights was adopted.

The United States was founded by those who feared what would occur if governments used soldiers to oppress people.

They were fresh from under the thumb of the British Royal Crown and wanted to protect themselves from tyranny.

It is understandable why they would enact measures to protect themselves from repeating the hardships from their previous conditions.

So today, people argue that since the United States has a strong, professional standing army, there is no need for an armed public.

However, gun rights advocate point to crime, violence, and a need to protect their families as reasons to keep their guns.

Where do you stand on the 2nd Amendment conversation?

Be sure to let us know in the comments below.

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2nd Amendment Quotes for Hot Topics - Everyday Power

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ICYMI: Buffalo News Editorial: Gun Laws and a More Sensible … – ny.gov

Posted: at 12:11 am

Today, the Buffalo News published an editorial on gun violence and how Governor Hochul has strengthened New York's gun laws. Text of the editorial is available below and can be viewed online here.

If it's true that our choices define us - and also understand that doing nothing is a choice - a recent News story shows that residents of this state have cause to be thankful they live here and not in the armed camp called Texas.

Both states suffered terrible tragedies last year. In Buffalo, 10 Black residents were murdered by a racist teenager while, only days later in Uvalde, Texas, another teenager massacred 19 elementary students and two teachers. Both killers used AR-15-style rifles, the preferred weapon of American mass murderers.

In New York the response was prompt. Gov. Kathy Hochul and state legislators saw the weaknesses in the state's gun laws and moved to tighten them. Among them was New York's red flag law which, had it been implemented against the shooter, might have avoided a terrible tragedy.

But in Texas, the bloodshed and the grieving of an entire community seems to matter not a bit - not officially, anyway. Not only has the state government there chosen to do nothing in response to that human tragedy, its governor has gone of his way to celebrate not just guns, but a murderer from another part of the state.

This is not about the Second Amendment, the Founding Fathers' murky protection of firearms. It's no more absolute than the First Amendment is. Rights have limits; they may be indistinct and subject to interpretation, but they exist, regardless of the braying of absolutists.

What this is about is priorities: public safety vs. the right to own any kind of weapon; children's lives vs. the right to carry firearms designed for mass murder. In New York, there is a willingness to take facts into account, while in Texas, the compulsion, apparently irresistible, is to ignore such facts no matter how much blood is spilled or how young the victims.

Gun laws make a difference. Along with a more even-keeled culture, New York's laws help this a much safer state than Texas is, as stark statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention document. For 2021, the most recent year available, New York's firearm injury death rate was 5.4 per 100,000. The rate in Texas was nearly triple New York's, at 15.6 per 100,000. Similarly, while New York's homicide rate was 4.8 per 100,000, the Texas rate was almost double, at 8.2 per 100,000. Those number tell a tale. The adoration of guns is a predictor of death.

And it is a cultural problem in Texas, as its reckless governor makes abundantly clear. A jury in Austin convicted an individual of murder of murdering an armed man - yes, it's Texas - who was protesting police brutality. But such is that state's commitment to gun culture - and its hostility to protest - that Gov. Greg Abbott wants to pardon him. Call it further evidence of the nation's rising problem with mental health.

Support for rational gun laws crosses political lines. Even many gun owners understand the need for legitimate controls. The flat rejection of them is mainly the province of the far right, often under the romantic guise of protecting the country from the imaginary risk of attack by their own government.

It didn't work that way on Jan. 6, 2021. Then, it was members of the far right, some of them armed, who sought by means of violence to overturn a fair election in service of a defeated president who had shown his disdain for the Constitution. So part of the value of gun laws is to protect decent Americans from extremists with too easy access to such weapons.

No state's gun control laws are perfect, as the May 14 murders at the Jefferson Avenue Tops supermarket showed. But neither is any state's laws against murder. You do what you can.

It would be much more effective for Washington to act, of course. Even with effective state laws, it's too easy to bring in weapons from states that benefit from the gun culture. Again, the numbers document the need. As healthdata.org shows, the United States is an outlier on gun violence, leading all high-income countries and territories with populations of at least 10 million. And leading by far: The country's rate of 4.12 firearm homicides per 100,000 people is more than double the rate of Chile, in the No. 2 spot at 1.82 per 100,000. Canada's rate is 0.5 per 100,000; the United Kingdom's, 0.04.

That's worse than an embarrassment. It's malfeasance - a failure to act in the face of facts that are killing Americans. Already this year, the Gun Violence Archive reports 243 mass shootings - that's about 1.7 per day - and 23 mass murders, or a little more than one per week.

It's a terrible record of violence and federal indifference. But it makes it good to live in New York.

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Opinion | Prince William needs gun-free zones – The Washington Post

Posted: at 12:11 am

As it stands in Prince William County, unloaded firearms are allowed in parks and public places where families and children gather. The Board of County Supervisors has the power to change this and improve residents safety.

Banning firearms from park property, apart from those carried by law enforcement, is essential to protecting the people who use county parks, is constitutionally sound and needs the support of the community.

Without an ordinance, unloaded guns are allowed on baseball and softball fields. These fields are used by children, teenagers and their families to play and watch youth sports. No one should have to worry about a concealed firearm while watching their child play softball. Allowing firearms, even unloaded, in any park is reckless and asking for tragedy.

Prohibiting firearms in sensitive areas is constitutional and does not threaten Second Amendment rights. The constitutionality of firearm bans in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings has been upheld by the Supreme Court repeatedly.

The time to enact change is now. Lets keep our kids safe at public parks.

The writer is a volunteer with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

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Opinion | Prince William needs gun-free zones - The Washington Post

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Second Federal Judge Expands Block on Biden Pistol-Brace Ban as … – The Reload

Posted: at 12:11 am

Another federal court has cast doubt on the legality of one of President Bidens unilateral attempts at implementing new gun restrictions.

United States District Judge Jane L. Boyle of the Northern District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction against the ATFs ban on pistols equipped with stabilizing braces on Thursday in the case Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) v. ATF. Drawing on the injunction issued against the ban on Tuesday by a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Boyle said similar concerns over administrative procedure and Second Amendment rights were at issue in the case before her court. She limited her injunction to just the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Although the Fifth Circuits order limited relief to the plaintiffs in that case, the Court finds the same relief is appropriate here, Boyle wrote in her order. And while Plaintiffs raise some arguments that were not raised in Mock, the resolution of that appeal will almost certainly affect, if not control, the Courts decision on Plaintiffs Motion. For these reasons, the Court GRANTS IN PART the Motion and issues a preliminary injunction as to Plaintiffs in this case only, pending resolution of the expedited appeal in Mock v. Garland.

The ruling represents a bittersweet victory for gun-rights advocates who have fought to have the pistol brace ban tossed since the ATF finalized it earlier this year. While the injunction will provide a slight reprieve for the pistol brace-owning plaintiffs in the case ahead of the end of the bans amnesty period this month, its limited nature may leave millions of brace owners at risk of federal prosecution unless they register their braced firearms with the government beginning in June.

The lawsuits stem from President Joe Bidens decision to try and reclassify guns equipped with pistol braces, which are designed to strap to a shooters forearm rather than be pressed against their shoulder, as short-barrel rifles or shotguns. The reclassification would put them under the jurisdiction of the National Firearms Act, which requires the guns to be taxed and registered with the ATF. The agency set June 1st as the deadline to submit tax-free registration. Anyone who owns a pistol-brace-equipped gun that falls under the rule and doesnt register it could be charged with a federal felony.

President Biden used a similar rulemaking procedure to reclassify unfinished gun parts as firearms in another executive action that has since run into legal trouble. His ghost gun ban has also been enjoined by federal courts since it went into effect, though those injunctions have been limited in the same way the pistol brace blocks are.

Confusion over how far the new injunctions stretch prompted the Firearms Policy Coalition, the plaintiffs in the Fifth Circuit case, to request clarification from the court as to how many people are covered by the injunction it issued.

Absent such clarification before the time when the Final Rule goes into effect, many persons interacting or residing with Appellants, as well as members and customers of the organizational Appellants, risk inadvertent violation of the Final Rule and potential prosecution, and Appellants themselves will be unsure of the scope of the relief provided and how they can act to mitigate their otherwise irreparable injuries, FPC said in its motion for clarification.

As with the FPC case, the SAF case includes a gun-rights group and a gun company alongside several individual plaintiffs. Whether the injunctions extend to all the members of FPC and SAF as well as the customers of Maxim Defense and Rainier Arms will have a major impact on how many people are protected from prosecution as the cases move forward.

The courts interpretation of the plaintiffs covered by the injunction could have ramifications for the injunction issued in the Northern Texas case. Judge Boyle said she would not consider ruling on any additional claims against the ban until the Fifth Circuit panel concluded its expedited proceedings on the matter. Oral arguments in that case are not scheduled to take place until June 29, nearly a month after the amnesty period for brace owners will have ended.

Despite the rulings limited scope, gun-rights advocates still called Thursdays order a significant win.

We are pleased that the Court has preliminarily enjoined ATFs brace ban before the effective date, Adam Kraut, Executive Director of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), said in a press release. SAF will continue to aggressively litigate this issue to prevent the erosion of constitutional rights and prevent administrative agencies from overstepping their authority.

The ATF did not respond to a request for comment.

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Editorial: Mayor’s order of support for trans citizens contrasts with the … – St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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By the Editorial Board

This newspaper has consistently criticized Missouris Republican political leaders for a blatantly unconstitutional state law declaring certain federal gun restrictions unenforceable in the state. Thats simply not how it works; federal law supersedes. It would be inconsistent, then, to suggest that St. Louis could simply declare Missouri legislation against transgender citizens unenforceable in the city which is why Mayor Tishaura Jones approach is a better one.

The executive order Jones signed last week doesnt take the legally doomed approach of presuming to invalidate state legislation that harasses transgender people regarding medical care and sports participation. Instead, it counterbalances the effects of that legislation by providing support services for trans citizens.

Missouris 2021 Second Amendment Preservation Act is mainly designed to let the Legislatures Republican majority play to its gun-culture base. It threatens to fine any police agency in Missouri that enforces any federal gun laws that dont have an equivalent in state law. This has made Missouri-based law enforcement hesitant to work with their federal counterparts for fear of running afoul of the statute, thus endangering public safety. Luckily, the law is headed for probable overturn in the courts under the core constitutional principle of federal supremacy.

There is a parallel relationship between state and local policies: When they are in conflict, state law supersedes. That would include two cynical bills awaiting Gov. Mike Parsons signature that would restrict transgender minors from receiving gender-affirming medical care or participating on school sports teams that dont align with the gender on their birth certificates. The gender-sports issue is such a rarity in the real world as to render the legislative focus on it ridiculous, while gender-affirming health care involves complex medical and family issues that politicians have no business interfering with. These are mean-spirited attacks on a tiny minority in order to stoke the political right.

Jones order could provide real protection for trans kids without a counterproductive direct challenge to state statutes. It orders the city health department to organize a summit for providers to discuss best practices under the expected new law and disseminate information on access to gender-affirming care. It orders the designation of at least one bathroom in every city administration building as all-gender and calls for city employee training on gender identity inclusivity. It directs city economic development experts to recommend ways to incentivize businesses to support gender inclusivity. Regarding the sports issue, it simply declares that city-run sports programs wont ask participants their gender identity.

Whats notable about Jones order in addition to not giving state lawmakers much if anything to hang a legal challenge on is that it takes a supportive approach to the issue. A fair-minded public, both in and out of the city, should note the contrast with the outright malice of the state legislation.

Views from the editorial board, opinions from guest and national columnists plus the latest letters from our readers.

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