Category Archives: Second Amendment

LOS ANGELES Two years ago Chris Cheng came out of nowhere to beat seasoned marksmen, police officers and veterans to win History Channels reality shooting competition show Top Shot.

When I auditioned, I was openly gay. But I was surprised as nobody cared. They only cared how well I could shoot and represent our season, said Cheng, who quit his job at Google after the show and is now an NRA news commentator and is releasing his first book Shoot to Win. There is this stereotypical view of the gun community as anti-gay rednecks, but nothing could be further from the truth. It was interesting as the History Channel never outed me on the show even though they had hours of footage. I asked why and they said simply that it just wasnt relevant.

Indeed gay rights and gun rights often go hand in hand says Gwen Patton, the rep for gay gun rights organizationPink Pistols National.

We dont want people to hurt us, we want people to run away from us, and the best way we have found to do that is to be armed, Patton said. Now if someone tries to attack us, we can defend ourselves. Ideally we dont want any altercation at all, but if there is a perception that the gay person on the street could have a concealed gun, it might make the perpetrator think twice.

According to FBI Hate Crime Statistics, sexual orientation is the second largest motivator for bias crimes in the United States, second to racial bias, and far exceeding the number of religious or ethnically-spurred hate crimes.

Patton said while she has never had to use her firearm in defense, another gay member of a local Philadelphia chapter recently did.

All he had to do was display it, no bullets were fired, she said. Guns can be a very useful tool, but society has turned them into something they are not. They arent the boogeyman.

There are now more than 45 Pink Pistols chapters nationwide. With its slogan pick on someone your own caliber, members get together at least once a month at local ranges to practice their shooting skills, share self-defense tips and talk about gun safety. According to Cheng, bringing gays and guns together serves as an important conversation starter.

Many in the LGBT community simply have never seriously entertained the notion of owning a firearm, or thought whether they want to be a victim or if they want to survive an attack, he said, while Patton says it's false that the right is all about keeping firearms, while the left pushes gay rights.

So some think of us as traitors, she explained. But at the end of the day, its about recognizing that the government shouldnt be taking our rights away our rights to be armed, and our rights to be happy and with the person we love.

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Gay gun activists: Growing LGBT push to support the Second Amendment

Pro Second Amendment Committee Candidate Forum--Sheriff
Pro Second Amendment Committee of Grand Junction, Colorado holds its 2014 Candidate Forum. Mesa County Sheriff portion. Recorded by http://www.facebook.com/RightTreeBarking.

By: Bradley Barker

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Pro Second Amendment Committee Candidate Forum--Sheriff - Video

Vikram Khanna: Public health industry using records for gun control
VIKRAM KHANNA talks to Guns.com about digitizing health records and what it could mean for you during the Second Amendment Foundation #39;s gun rights policy conference in Chicago, Illinois, on...

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Vikram Khanna: Science Vs Fiction in Public Health Policy
VIKRAM KHANNA speaks at the Second Amendment Foundation #39;s gun rights policy conference in Chicago, Illinois, on Sept. 28, 2014.

By: Gunscom

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Vikram Khanna: Science Vs Fiction in Public Health Policy - Video

All About - Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
What is Second Amendment to the United States Constitution? A report all about Second Amendment to the United States Constitution for homework/assignment The...

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Second Amendment Meant Musket Rifle--That was "The Right To Bear Arms"
I #39;ve never heard over all the years Of NRA BULLSHIT, that the second amendment of the constitution is referring to A MUSKET RIFLE. If the Founding Fathers kn...

By: Sean McCoy

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Second Amendment Meant Musket Rifle--That was "The Right To Bear Arms" - Video

State Representative Bruce Williamson, R-Monroe, recently received an A rating from the National Rifle Association of America. This grade serves as an evaluation of Williamsons support of Second Amendment issues during his time in office.

As a lawmaker, I believe it is my duty to protect and preserve the Second Amendment, just as our founding fathers intended, Williamson said. I am proud that the NRA recognized my continued efforts to preserve our citizens most basic, constitutional rights.

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Williamson receives A rating from gun group

In D.C. v. Heller, the Supreme Court stated that (emphasis added, citations omitted, as usual),

Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

[Footnote: We identify these presumptively lawful regulatory measures only as examples; our list does not purport to be exhaustive.]

The question, then, is whether this presumpti[on] of validity can ever be rebutted for instance, if a persons felony conviction is many decades in the past, is for a not very serious felony, or both. Some federal courts have stated that the answer would be yes under the right circumstances. United States v. Moore, 666 F.3d 313, 320 (4th Cir. 2012); United States v. Barton, 633 F.3d 168, 174 (3d Cir. 2011); United States v. Williams, 616 F.3d 685, 693 (7th Cir. 2010); United States v. Duckett, 406 Fed. Appx. 185, 187 (9th Cir. 2010) (Ikuta, J., concurring); United States v. McCane, 573 F.3d 1037, 1049-50 (10th Cir. 2009) (Tymkovich, J., concurring). Some North Carolina state court decisions have actually set aside particular claimants state-law gun disabilities, under the North Carolina Constitutions right to bear arms provision. Britt v. State, 681 S.E.2d 320 (N.C. 2009) (holding that a nonviolent felon whose crime was long in the past regained his state constitutional right to keep and bear arms); Baysden v. State, 718 S.E.2d 699 (N.C. Ct. App. 2011) (same). But Thursdays Binderup v. Holder (E.D. Pa. Sept. 25, 2014) is, to my knowledge, the first federal court decision to actually set aside such a gun disability on Second Amendment grounds.

The court began by deciding whether Daniel Binderups conviction counts as a felony for federal felon-in-possession law, and concludes that it does. Federal felon-in-possession law actually bars gun possession by people who have state or federal convictions for any crime punishable by a year or more in prison or, if its labeled a misdemeanor by state law, by two years or more in prison. The focus isnt (solely) on the formal felony-vs.-misdemeanor label attached to a crime by state or federal law, nor on the actual sentence for the crime, but on the maximum sentence authorized for the crime (or so the Binderup court held, consistently with other cases). The crime in this case corruption of minors is labeled by Pennsylvania as a first-degree misdemeanor, which means it carries a maximum sentence of five years. It must therefore be treated, the court held, as a felony for purposes of the federal felon-in-possession statute.

But then, the court asked whether the Second Amendment nonetheless preempts federal felon-in-possession law in this particular case. In Barton, one of the cases cited above, the Third Circuit the federal appellate court that sets binding federal precedent for Pennsylvania and some other jurisdictions wrote:

To raise a successful as-applied challenge, [a defendant] must present facts about himself and his background that distinguish his circumstances from those of persons historically barred from Second Amendment protections. For instance, a felon convicted of a minor, non-violent crime might show that he is no more dangerous than a typical law-abiding citizen. Similarly, a court might find that a felon whose crime of conviction is decades-old poses no continuing threat to society. The North Carolina Supreme Court did just that in Britt v. State, 363 N.C. 546 (2009), finding that a felon convicted in 1979 of one count of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute had a constitutional right to keep and bear arms, at least as that right is understood under the North Carolina Constitution.

And Binderup, the court held, did present such facts about himself and his background. His only conviction was nearly 17 years before. It stemmed from a nonviolent incident a consensual sexual relationship Binderup had with a 17-year-old employee. Pennsylvania law does not even treat the offense as a statutory rape; the formal age of consent in Pennsylvania (as in most other states) is 16, and sexual conduct by an adult with a 16- or 17-year-old is treated as consensual, though bad for a the minor and therefore the crime of corruption of minors. The statistics presented by the government, showing that people with criminal convictions even nonviolent ones are likely to commit other crimes arent probative given the nature of the crime, how long ago the crime was, and Binderups current age (59). For these reasons, the court held,

[P]laintiff has demonstrated that, if allowed to keep and bear arms in his home for purposes of self-defense, he would present no more threat to the community that the average law-abiding citizen.

And because of this, the presumption that theres no Second Amendment problem with barring felons from possessing guns, the court held, has been rebutted.

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Volokh Conspiracy: A rare Second Amendment exemption from federal ban on felons possessing guns

Fear of the federal governments interference with Second Amendment rights and suspicion that elected officials are ignoring the will of the people have provoked a resurgence of self-described patriots across the country who say they are preparing to defend themselves and their rights.

Organizations tracking the movement say the number of groups has risen dramatically in the past six years.

Theres a very unreasonable, ridiculously crazy attack on the Second Amendment and people that own guns, said Cope Reynolds, a member of the White Mountain Militia in Show Low, Ariz. If everything were not protected by the Second Amendment, the government would have the opportunity, if they so desired, to go unchecked with impunity and do whatever they want to do.

Americans who have a tradition with guns, such as those who hunt for sport or game, believe the same. They might not belong to a militia or survival outfit, but they are just as concerned about gun rights. They dont wear the tradition on their sleeve, but they keep it alive by practicing their hobby and by handing down the love of guns and sport to their children.

Then there are the real activists.

Reynolds is the operations manager of Shots Ranch, a tactical shooting range and survival training facility in Kingman, Ariz. He considers this type of training to be necessary preparation for a time in America he sees as inevitable.

We want people to be able to provide for themselves in a world where we might not be able to just run down to Wal-Mart at any time, Reynolds said. We think that at some point in America were probably going to experience those times and a lot of us think its not going to be far away.

For individuals like Reynolds, the Second Amendment is an important check on the government and is needed to protect the Constitution.

Its the beauty and the danger of Americas Constitution, said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Second Amendment expert. Its great generalities are so vague that anyone can interpret them in light of their own experience and their own interests. And indeed, the Second Amendment is one of the most confusing textual provisions of the Constitution.

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a firearm for traditionally lawful purposes like self-defense.

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'Patriots' are ready to defend their right to keep guns

Second Amendment Press Conf.
This video is about Second Amendment Press Conf.

By: freedomspeak1

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Second Amendment Press Conf. - Video