Monthly Archives: July 2023

Around 100 people braved the relentless Michigan summer sun Wednesday for a rally in defense of gun rights in Michigan following months of new gun control bills being signed into law and ahead of a full ban on firearms at the state Capitol.

The event, held on a farm in Ionia, 40 minutes northwest from the state Capitol, took the place of the annual Second Amendment March thats been held on the Capitol lawn for the last decade, as the Advance previously reported.

So far this legislative session, in which Democrats have control of both the state House and Senate for the first time in almost 40 years, lawmakers have passed and gotten Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to sign laws instituting universal background checks for firearm sales in Michigan and require firearms and ammunition to be safely stored away from minors.

In May, alongside gun control advocates, including Michigan State University student Troy Forbush, who survived the Feb. 13 campus shooting, Whitmer signed red flag legislation into law that allows judges to order the removal of firearms from individuals that pose a threat to themselves or others.

Now, ahead of the Michigan State Capitol Commissions plans to implement a full firearms ban on Capitol grounds, there is no Second Amendment gathering scheduled to protest the measure.

The question is, OK, would anyone even show up if they had to go unarmed? Second Amendment March, the organization that plans the Capitol march, Founder Skip Coryell said on Wednesday.

Open carry is popular at The Second Amendment March at the Capitol with many attendees bringing long guns each year.

Coryell said its not out of the question that the group might try and have an event in September, when the rally typically takes place, but looking around at the turnout for Wednesdays event, he said hes not optimistic for the future of gun rights in Michigan.

When you talk to people, conservatives, theyre tired, and theyre worn out, Coryell said. Theyre sick of fighting. And its like, they just want to be left alone and relax. I dont know if theyre just recharging their batteries and theyre gonna pick up the fight later on or if theyve just surrendered? I dont know. I hope they havent just surrendered.

But turnout at the Capitol event has not been good in recent years, Coryell said, with attendance plummeting from up to 1,400 in years past to 100 or 200 in recent years.

Ken Hauser of Lapeer, Michigan stands by his signs at a Second Amendment rally in Ionia, Michigan July 19, 2023. (photo: Anna Liz Nichols)

Lucas Gerhard speaks to attendees at a Second Amendment rally in Ionia, Michigan July 19, 2023. (photo: Anna Liz Nichols)

American Revival Band at a Second Amendment rally in Ionia, Michigan July 19, 2023. (photo: Anna Liz Nichols)

The Trump Unity Bridge at a Second Amendment rally in Ionia, Michigan July 19, 2023. (photo: Anna Liz Nichols)

An Urn Ken Hauser of Lapeer, Michigan brought to a Second Amendment rally in Ionia, Michigan July 19, 2023. (photo: Anna Liz Nichols)

Attendee at a Second Amendment rally in Ionia, Michigan July 19, 2023. (photo: Anna Liz Nichols)

The Magnum Sports tent at a Second Amendment rally in Ionia, Michigan July 19, 2023. (photo: Anna Liz Nichols)

Attendee at a Second Amendment rally in Ionia, Michigan July 19, 2023. (photo: Anna Liz Nichols)

Attendees at a Second Amendment rally in Ionia, Michigan July 19, 2023. (photo: Anna Liz Nichols)

Jon Rocha of Sons of Liberty PAC speaks to attendees at a Second Amendment rally in Ionia, Michigan July 19, 2023. (photo: Anna Liz Nichols)

Signs Ken Hauser of Lapeer, Michigan brought to a Second Amendment rally in Ionia, Michigan July 19, 2023. (photo: Anna Liz Nichols)

Patricia and Mark McCloskey wave at attendees at a Second Amendment rally in Ionia, Michigan July 19, 2023. (photo: Anna Liz Nichols)

Second Amendment March Founder Skip Coryell sits at a Second Amendment rally in Ionia, Michigan July 19, 2023. (photo: Anna Liz Nichols)

Not even big-name speakers could draw a larger crowd Wednesday, including Kyle Rittenhouse, who at 17 years old in 2020 shot and killed two men, wounding a third during the civil unrest in summer 2020 in Kenosha, Wisc.. He asserted he acted in self-defense and was acquitted on homicide charges in 2021.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and her anti-freedom cohorts are hellbent on shredding Second Amendment rights for law-abiding Michiganders, Rittenhouse told attendees, advising them to work on a local level to change things in Michigan and work against any other gun reforms coming down the pipeline.

Other speakers included Mark McCloskey, joined by his wife, Patricia, who as a couple yelled and pointed guns at protesters during the George Floyd protests in St. Louis, Mo. Mark McCloskey, who unsuccessfully ran in the GOP U.S. Senate primary in Missouri in 2022, told attendees about that day, saying he was defending his home and the whole experience has ruined he and his wifes lives.

Michigan GOP Co-Chair Malinda Pego was also in attendance, along with several gun rights activists and groups.

Things are looking bleak for movement in Michigan, according to Coryell.

Im not optimistic. What I see in the Legislature is they have the seat of power. Theres really nothing that can stop them right now. And theyre not willing to compromise, Coryell said. Longterm, 10 to 15 years down the road. Things are like a pendulum. They swing back and forth. Its all the way to the left right now. It will swing back. Maybe for my kids, but not necessarily for me.

Jon Rocha of Sons of Liberty PAC, which hosted and organized the event, told the crowd hes grateful for everyone who came, he saw a lot of familiar faces, notably in militia members who also showed up during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown protests at the Capitol. However, Rocha, a former GOP state House candidate, said the fight for Second Amendment rights needs new people.

Things have been happening so fast in Lansing and weve got to be on top of them, Rocha told the Advance. Things are what they are and Im hoping we get a new governor that will overturn a lot of this legislation and thats not going to come until 2026 so weve got a large fight and we got to keep letting people know about whats going on as more gun control laws get out there.

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Sparse turnout for gun rights rally with Kyle Rittenhouse after Michigan gun reform laws signed Michigan Advance - Michigan Advance

(National Archives | The Associated Press) This photo made available by the U.S. National Archives shows a portion of the first page of the United States Constitution.

By Tom Huckin | For The Salt Lake Tribune

| July 18, 2023, 12:00 p.m.

In the first half of this year, there were more than 330 mass shootings in the United States. (We Utahns are fortunate in that only one of them has occurred in our state.) Over the recent Fourth of July weekend, there were 22 mass shootings, resulting in 20 deaths and 126 wounded.

The U.S. has the highest number of civilian guns per capita in the world, and its not even close. As a consequence, we have more mass shootings, by far, than any other developed nation.

This is a trend that has been getting worse ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), that the Second Amendment right to bear arms extends to all citizens with few exceptions. That ruling was based on a dubious judicial theory known as originalism. The theory posits that modern-day judges should defer to the meaning of a statute as it was likely understood at the time of its enactment.

The Second Amendment reads as follows: 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.

But according to those five conservative justices, only the last nine words mattered. They chose to simply ignore the first thirteen words. According to them, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed meant that most every American citizen had the right to carry a gun wherever and whenever, with few exceptions. That ruling has become virtually sacrosanct, which is why we now lead the industrialized world in gun deaths.

In recent years, however, linguists have done massive historical research to determine exactly what the wording of the amendment likely did mean back in the day. Their main resource has been the 400-million-word Corpus of Historical American English created at Brigham Young University, where they have identified some 1,500 uses of the phrase bear arms as it was understood back when the amendment was written.

In virtually every case, bear arms was used not in a civilian context but in a military one. So the Second Amendment right to bear arms was accorded only to citizens performing some military role, and the Founders made that clear by including the first part of the amendment, A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State . . .

It was hardly irrelevant, as those five conservative justices claimed. The Second Amendment right to bear arms refers only to military uses, not to civilian ones.

Its tragic how a misinterpretation of the Constitution by five powerful men in robes including three (Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, John Roberts) still on the court can have such disastrous consequences. And with a partisan court and a polarized Congress, theres virtually no practical way to change it for a long time to come.

Tom Huckin, professor emeritus at the University of Utah and longtime resident of Salt Lake City, likes to challenge conventional wisdom.

See the article here:
Tom Huckin: A misinterpretation of the Constitution leads to disastrous consequences - Salt Lake Tribune

I was delighted to see at least two thoughtful responses to my op-ed on the Second Amendment.

Opponents to altering the Second Amendment frequently point to the Heller case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. I cited it as well. I agree that the Heller case is essential reading because both sides of the gun debate rely upon the writings of the Founders of this country. At the time the Second Amendment was adopted, there was much discussion and debate over what it was about and what it meant. Was the purpose of the Second Amendment to assure a government organized militia or to permit future citizens to own and utilize assault weapons not known at the time of the adoption of the Second Amendment?

The other letter brought up the frequent refrain of the European Holocaust which murdered 6 million Jews. It is true that the Jews of Europe were denied weapons when they most needed them, whether it was the Warsaw ghetto uprising or other attempts by Jews to escape the German-led extermination of European Jews. There may be few who know that Harry Truman imposed an arms embargo against the Jews fighting in Palestine to save other Jews from Europe and to protect themselves against Nazi-inspired Arabs in the Middle East.

However, it would be a terrible error to believe that the lack of guns alone killed Jews. It was plain and simply milennia of inbred anti-Semitism. The best proof of the fact that guns were not the only thing necessary to save Jews were the heroic actions of church leaders in Bulgaria, Italy, a small island off Greece and Denmark. In any country that resisted the Germans during World War II, Jews were saved. It was moral conscience that saved Jewish lives.

The allies refused to bomb the rail links leading to Auschwitz and other death camps. Clearly, lack of weapons and military support helped the Germans, Polish and Arabs murder Jews. However, an emphasis on guns and weapons alone would be a terrible distortion of history.

I am a proponent of the view that Jews should all learn self-defense, Krav Maga, and legally carry weapons after proper training and compliance with legal limitations, However, the salvation of the Jewish people today will be neither personal training nor guns, but rather a robust response to anti-Semitism, ancient and modern.

Respectful Second Amendment debate is a good thing and clearly, much more ink will be spilled before we get a handle on the carnage being caused by improper and illegal use of guns.

CLIFFORD A. RIEDERS

Williamsport

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Debate on Second Amendment | News, Sports, Jobs - Williamsport Sun-Gazette

Last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled hisproposal for a 28th Amendmentto the U.S. Constitution, which the Democrat says would enshrine fundamental, broadly supported gun safety measures into law while leaving the Second Amendment unchanged.

Although the Second Amendment protects individual liberty by telling the government what it cant do with respect to gun control regulations, Newsoms proposed constitutional amendment would tell the government what it must do to restrict individual liberty through gun control.

The California governors proposal would ban civilian sales for semiautomatic firearmscommonly owned by millions of Americans, strip law-abiding young adults of their right to keep and bear arms, and (in the form of waiting periods and universal background checks) impose many layers of bureaucratic red tape between peaceable citizens and the exercise of their natural right to self-defense.

The notion that this idea would do anything other than gut the Second Amendment is, of course, laughable. And despite Newsoms insistence that these measures are popular, theyve been passed only by a small minority of states. His amendment has no chance whatsoever of being passed by a two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress, much less of being ratified by the requisite number of state legislatures.

The reality is that more than 230 years after Congress ratified it, the Second Amendment continues toplay an integral rolein preserving Americans natural rights, particularly from criminals who would harm them.

Almost every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between500,000 and 3 milliontimesannually, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has acknowledged. In 2021, the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the issue concluded thatroughly 1.6 million defensive gun usesoccur in the United States every year.

For this reason,The Daily Signalpublishes a monthly article highlighting some of the previous months many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missedor that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read other accountsherefrom past months and years. You also may follow@DailyDGUon Twitter for daily highlights of recent defensive gun uses.)

The examples below represent only a small portion of the news stories on defensive gun use that we found in June. You may explore more using The Heritage Foundations interactiveDefensive Gun Use Database.(The Daily Signal is Heritages multimedia news organization.)

As these examples help demonstrate, the Second Amendment doesnt need amending, and peaceable citizens dont need more barriers to the exercise of their natural right of self-defense.

They need a government that doesnt resort to Orwellian doublespeak about its goals, pretending to enshrine freedom by restricting those rights that already are enumerated in our Constitution.

This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal

See more here:
Sorry, Gov. Newsom, but Citizens Want to Use Guns to Defend ... - Heritage.org

D-Wave Quantum Inc. Enter into the Limited Waiver and Second Amendment to Loan and Security Agreement with PSPIB Unitas Investments II Inc  Marketscreener.com

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D-Wave Quantum Inc. Enter into the Limited Waiver and Second Amendment to Loan and Security Agreement with PSPIB Unitas Investments II Inc -...

The legality of a Texas law exempting firearm suppressors made and kept in the state from federal regulations will not be determined by the federal judiciary after a challenge defending the law by the Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) on behalf of several Texas residents was dismissed.

The Texas Legislature passed House Bill (HB) 957 by Rep. Tom Oliverson (R-Cypress), known as the Texas Suppressor Freedom Act, into law in 2021. It allows Texans to ask the OAG to obtain a federal court order on their behalf granting them permission to manufacture and keep homemade suppressors without having to register them with the federal government.

The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has warned Texans that all federal laws requiring an application for a tax stamp, as well as the registration tax, still apply. Violations of the law can result in hefty fines and imprisonment.

Several residents asked the OAG to seek a court order on their behalf. Now impeached and suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit, prevailing against the Department of Justice (DOJ) in the first motion to dismiss brought in October of last year. The DOJ had argued the Second Amendment does not apply to suppressors, but Judge Mark Pittmann disagreed.

However, this week Pittman ruled against the state, dismissing the lawsuit for lack of standing.

In his ruling, Pittman took issue with both the situation in which the individual residents who wanted to make suppressors sought relief, and the ability of the state to intervene on their behalf.

Pittman explained that the plaintiffs neither attempted to make a suppressor and demonstrate a legitimate fear of being prosecuted by the federal government by doing so, nor did they fill out an application for a suppressor and demonstrate a burden on their constitutional right by being made to pay a tax.

While he acknowledged that the federal government has a history of prosecuting people for possessing unregistered suppressors, because the plaintiffs didnt claim to have an unregistered suppressor, there was no fear of being prosecuted for having one.

Individual Plaintiffs are correct that the government has a history of prosecuting the illegal possession of unregistered silencers. But these Plaintiffs have adduced no evidence that they, in fact, possess any illegal silencers or otherwise attempted any prohibited conduct. Nor have they shown that they have been threatened with prosecution or that it is likely. And our doctrines of criminal law forbid convicting persons for mere thoughts, desires, or motives, Pittman wrote.

The ruling does leave the door open for a challenge if a plaintiff shows standing, Pittman explained.

However, any future challenge will not be brought by the state on behalf of its citizens under Pittmans ruling, which determined the state doesnt have standing under the Constitution to intervene.

By its own words, Texas seeks to protect the ability of its individual residents to make firearm silencers at home, he wrote, adding, The only purported link between the State of Texas and the (Gun Control Act) regime is Texass state statute exempting silencers from the operation of federal law. And the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution determines the winner of that duel.

While Pittmans ruling has no bearing on whether the Second Amendment protects the right of Texans to make and keep a firearm suppressor in the state outside of federal regulations, any future court challenge will need to be brought by the citizens themselves, who have sufficient standing.

For now, those wanting a suppressor must pay the $200 tax, fill out an application, undergo a background check, and wait roughly 10 months for the tax stamp to be approved by the ATF.

The rest is here:
Federal Judge Rejects Lawsuit to Uphold Texas Suppressor Law for ... - The Texan

All seven pardons Gov. Maura Healey recommended won approval from the Governor's Council on Wednesday, cementing the first pardons awarded by a Massachusetts governor during their first elected year in office in three decades.

Healey in Juneproposed the pardons, which had earned the support of the Parole Board before Gov. Charlie Baker left office in January, when she also announced that she is planning to reform the clemency process to make it fairer, more timely and minimize racial disparities.

The Governor's Council, which reviews and approves the governor's clemency recommendations and judicial nominations, voted unanimously in favor of all seven pardons.

"I think our next seven items are pretty exciting for all of us," Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, who chairs the Governor's Council, said to councilors ahead of the pardon votes on Wednesday. "The opportunity to move forward with affirming pardons proposed by the administration an administration that in its first year of office, this is the first time in any recent memory that an administration has moved forward with pardons."

The pardons are aimed at people convicted on a variety of charges, one dating back more than half a century: Edem Amet, who was convicted in 1995 on drug charges; Xavier Delvalle, who was convicted in 2006 on breaking and entering and larceny charges; Glendon King, who was convicted in 1992 on drug charges; John Latter, who was convicted of arson in 1966; Deborah Pickard, who was convicted on several charges between 1982 and 1987; Gerald Waloewandja, who was convicted of drug charges in 2003; and Terrance Williams, who was convicted of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon in 1984.

All seven pardons were recommended by the Parole Board during Baker's tenure, but Baker did not act on them before he left office in January, according to a Healey administration official.

"I just want to thank you and the governor," Councilor Marilyn Petitto Devaney told Driscoll during Wednesday's meeting. "I tried to hard to get the former governor to bring these forward, and you've started off so early with this, that we're going to have a wonderful administration and I look forward to more pardons."

Other councilors echoed Devaney's statements, saying they looked forward to approving more pardons, which forgive offenses, and commutations, which reduce sentences.

When Healey recommended the pardons in June, she said some of the individuals on the list face "barriers and uncertainties" in their lives today as a result of their criminal records.

Latter, who was convicted about 57 years ago, is unable to obtain a nursing license in Florida because of his record, while Williams has been denied a position at a private security company six times due to his conviction, according to Healey's office.

Williams who had long wanted to become a police officer joked in June that he is "too old for the academy" but said he's "not too old to help our community out." He called the process of securing a pardon recommendation a "long journey."

"We really need to look at people who are out there just like me, who just made a mistake years ago who just want that opportunity to come back to society," Williams said. "I never gave up."

King is a U.S. Army veteran who has worked for the Boston Fire Department for more than two decades. He told reporters that the pardon would lift a weight from his shoulders and also allow him to exercise his Second Amendment firearms rights.

"For a gentleman that's got a good head on his shoulders to be labeled a convicted felon for years is not a good thing," King said. "I've done everything by the book, everything right. I just want to get rid of that label."

Healey's office has said she is the first governor to issue pardons during her first year in office since former Gov. Bill Weld did so in 1991.

Despite the initial flurry, the Parole Boardannounced Mondaythat it will not continue advancing any pardon requests to Healey's desk until the governor finishes a promised review of the clemency process.

"In the Governor's first announcement of executive clemency, she indicated that the Administration is currently working to modernize the state's clemency guidelines to center fairness and racial and gender equity," Timothy McGuirk of the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security told the News Service. "That process requires meaningful engagement with a broad range of stakeholders before issuing new guidelines later this year. To ensure current and future petitioners participate in a clemency process guided by the new framework, the Parole Board, functioning as Advisory Board of Pardons, will not schedule new clemency hearings until the update is complete."

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Governor's Council approves all 7 of Healey's pardon ... - WBUR News