Category Archives: Second Amendment

PHILADELPHIA Plaintiffs questioning a law that bans the mentally ill from possessing firearms have dropped Pennsylvania defendants from their case while remaining federal officials recently filed a motion to dismiss claims against them.

The motion was filed Feb. 28 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, days before plaintiffs Bradley Beers and Joseph Divita dropped the following Pennsylvania entities and individuals as plaintiffs: The Bucks County Sheriffs Department, Bucks County Sheriff Edward J. Donnelly, Bucks County District Attorney Matthew D. Weintraub, Attorney General Joshua Shapiro, Commissioner Tyree Blocker and the Pennsylvania State Police

According to federal law 18 U.S.C.922(g)(4), it is unlawful for individuals who have been committed to a mental institution to own guns. The plaintiffs, who are unable to own firearms, argued the law violates their Second and Fifth Amendment rights.

The plaintiffs filed a lawsuit that brought charges against a number of government officials and entities, including the U.S. attorney general, the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and FBI Director James Comey, among others.

The federal government says Second Amendment rights are unrelated to the plaintiffs situation and their histories, and their involuntarily commitment for severe mental disabilities supersedes their Second Amendment rights. It cited District of Columbia v. Heller, a case in which it was determined that the Second Amendment allowed for the denial of access to firearms for the mentally ill.

The motion also cited empirical evidence stating people who have been involuntarily committed are more prone to violence. According to a study cited from National Institute of Mental Health, patients with serious mental illnesses were two to three times as likely to be assaultive as people without an illness.

They also have an increased risk for suicide, with a 90 percent of people who commit suicide having a mental illness, the motion claims.

According to the feds, both plaintiffs were committed for suicidal tendencies and were considered dangers to themselves and others. Beers allegedly placed a gun in his mouth, threatening to kill himself in front of his mother, while Divita allegedly held a knife toward his father and confessed to his sister that he would kill himself if he ever obtained a gun.

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Feds seek to dismiss Second Amendment case involving mentally ill - The Pennsylvania Record

This event is 2A FlashMob Approved by AmmoLand News, anyone attending willautomaticallyqualify for their own FREE 2A Mob Patch.

Michigan -(Ammoland.com)-The Second Amendment March (SAM) is coordinating a pro-gun march and rally at the Michigan State Capitol on Wednesday, April 26th from 10:00 A.M.-2:00 P.M.

This event is open to the public.

The purpose of the event is to show support for the 2nd Amendment and allow citizens to meet with their legislators to discuss gun rights issues. Along with the SAM will be representatives for Michigan Gun Owners (MGO) and Michigan Open Carry, Inc. (MOC).

The event will start with speakers at 10:00 AM until noon. At noon a march will take place around the Capital Mall. Speakers will resume again at 1:00 PM. From 10:00 to 2:00 people are encouraged to meet with their local legislators and discuss their support of the 2nd Amendment. Throughout the event representatives from each gun groups as well as some State legislators will speak on the Capitol steps.

Tables for each gun group will be in the large tent on site with fundraising merchandise and literature available. Vendors can rent a table at this event. Lawful firearm carry is allowed on and in the Capitol building and we encourage all participants to exercise their 2nd Amendment right in a responsible manner.

Oh, and did I mention there will be a raffle?

Tom Lambert President Michigan Open Carry, Inc. [emailprotected]

Michigan Open Carry, Inc is a Not-For-Profit organization that depends on our dues paying members to continue our operation. We are an all-volunteer organization. As such, no one is paid a salary and very few of the personal expenses of our officers are reimbursed. Won't you consider joining us or renewing as a dues paying member today? please email [emailprotected]

About 2A Flashmob: In an effort to motivate gun owners and Second Amendment Supporters to show up in person at important events and rallies AmmoLand Shooting Sports News is giving away FREE 2A Flashmob Patches to anyone who attends a protest, rally, open carry event, committee hearing at your state capital or a Moveon.org counter protest. (You may already be eligible)

Spread the word, get out, get active!

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Michigan 2017 Second Amendment March Is Less Than Two Weeks Away - AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

Latest State to Restore Gun Rights

Fairfax, Va. The National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) today applauded Gov.Terry Branstad for signingHouse File 517 (HF517) into law. The newly enacted law strengthensIowans fundamental right to self-defense and follows a national trend to expand Second Amendment rights.

It is a great day for freedom. Today, Iowa joined the nationwide movement to expand law-abiding citizens constitutional right to self-protection, said Chris W. Cox, executive director, NRA-ILA.The NRA and our five million members thank the IowaLegislature and Gov.Branstad for working to strengthen Iowans Second Amendment rights so they have the freedom to protect themselves and their families.

Included in HF 517:

Established in 1871, the National Rifle Association is America's oldest civil rights and sportsmen's group. More than five million members strong, NRA continues to uphold the Second Amendment and advocates enforcement of existing laws against violent offenders to reduce crime. The Association remains the nation's leader in firearm education and training for law-abiding gun owners, law enforcement and the armed services. Be sure to follow the NRA on Facebook at NRA on Facebook and Twitter @NRA.

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Iowa Governor Signs Monumental Pro-Second Amendment Legislation - NRA ILA

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

For decades the federal judiciary has been trying to interpret the Second Amendment out of the Constitution. It is, as Sanford Levinson has termed it, an embarrassment to an elite class of legal scholars that finds firearms to be unusual and repulsive objects. Now the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has declared that the semi-automatic AR-15 rifle is not covered by the Second Amendment, despite that fact that is the most common rifle sold in the United States. This execrable decision is the latest outrage in a long series of disingenuous judicial contortions.

The courts have never come to terms with the fact that any intelligible reading of the Second Amendment requires an interpretation that acknowledges and reconciles its two clauses. The operative clause speaks of the right of the people, while the prefatory clause justifies the operative clause by professing that a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state.

Prior to the Heller decision by the Supreme Court (2008), for 60 years or more the federal judiciary almost unanimously ruled that the Second Amendment did not guarantee an individual right. The militia mentioned in the prefatory clause was taken to be the National Guard. Thus, the right described in the operative clause was interpreted to be the right of states to maintain militia. This interpretation was never credible because it excised the Second Amendment from its contextual and historical underpinnings.

In the Heller decision, the Supreme Court stated unequivocally for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right. But Heller was badly flawed. Reversing decades of precedent by lower courts, the Supreme Court read the prefatory militia clause out of the Second Amendment and interpreted the operative clause to protect a personal right. While finding that people have a right to keep a handgun at home for the purpose of self-defense, the court noted in passing that dangerous and unusual weapons were not covered by the Second Amendment. But they failed to explain what these might be. The Heller court went so far as to suggest that weapons most useful in military service M-16 rifles and the like may be banned. Although the Heller decision established an individual right, it also opened the door for lower courts to uphold any statute that banned dangerous weapons or those that might be useful in military service. The flaw is obvious when one recognizes that virtually all weapons are potentially dangerous and useful in military applications.

Thus, we arrive at the 4th Circuit decision that even though AR-15 rifles are commonplace, they may be banned because they are like M-16s and useful in military service. As the dissenting judges noted, this curious logic would have made it possible to ban the muskets and rifles used by citizen militia during the Revolutionary War. But why stop there? Handguns are standard-issue military weapons. Shotguns and bolt-action rifles have been employed by the U.S. military. At one time or place, virtually every weapon has been used by the military, including knives and tomahawks. The irresistible conclusion is that the Second Amendment protects nothing.

The Second Amendment has never been recondite, it is only the judges who have been obtuse. An intelligible interpretation of the Second Amendment emerges the instant one reconciles the prefatory and operative clauses. In other words, the militia described in the prefatory clause is a militia composed of a people with a right to keep and bear arms. What type of arms? In 1939, the Supreme Court spoke explicitly to this. At the time the Second Amendment was adopted, men summoned to militia duty were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time. The Amendment not only protects weapons that might be useful in a military context, arguably it only protects those weapons useful in military service. Thus, the 4th Circuit Court was exactly and completely wrong.

What weapons are excluded? Those not in the common usage by an individual citizen, such as poison gas or large artillery pieces. The phrase used in Heller, dangerous and unusual, is properly understood to refer to weapons of mass destruction. For those who worry that this interpretation would allow the sale and possession of machine guns, take note: There are currently about a half-million registered and transferable fully automatic weapons owned by individuals in the United States. Yet these are virtually never misused.

Judge Neil Gorsuch has recently reminded us that good judges often reach decisions they dont like. Federal judges have found in our Constitution rights to both abortion and gay marriage, subjects that never appear. Perhaps they should consider extending the same latitude to an ancient right that is explicitly provided for.

David Deming is professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma, and is the author of Science and Technology in World History (McFarland, 2016).

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Second Amendment protects the assault rifles - Washington Times

Neil Gorsuch, newly sworn in as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, is taking his seat at a busy time for the court. Beginning this week, the Court will meet in conference to decide what cases it will hear in the near future, and the future of the right to keep and bear arms could depend on the outcome.

In the Peruta case, which is one of the cases up for consideration this week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals originally concluded in a 2-1 decision that San Diego County is violating the constitutional rights of residents by not recognizing self-defense as a valid reason to acquire a concealed-carry license. The judges found that the denial of a concealed-carry license, coupled with Californias ban on the open carrying of firearms, amounts to an infringement on the right to keep and bear arms. However, that decision was overturned by a broader panel of judges on the 9th Circuit. In the en banc decision, the 9th Circuit held that there is no Second Amendment right to carry a concealed firearm in public. What about the open carry ban? The en banc review claimed that the question was beyond the scope of the lawsuit and would require additional litigation before the constitutionality of an open carry ban could be addressed.To confine the right to be armed to the home is to divorce the Second Amendment from the right of self-defense described in Heller and McDonald.

If the Supreme Court doesnt agree to hear Peruta, then the en banc decision will remain in force throughout the western states that comprise the 9th Circuit. A new challenge to the states open carry ban has been filed, but it will be years before it gets to the Supreme Court for an appeal. In the meantime, millions of Americans will have their Second Amendment rights curtailed by a court that refuses to examine the real question: Do we have a right to bear arms for self-defense outside of the home?

Increasing the chances that the Supreme Court might hear Peruta is the fact that there is a significant split among the courts of appeals on the issue of bearing arms for self-defense outside of the home. In Moore v. Madigan, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded: A Chicagoan is a good deal more likely to be attacked on a sidewalk in a rough neighborhood than in his apartment on the 35th floor of the Park Tower. A woman who is being stalked or has obtained a protective order against a violent ex-husband is more vulnerable to being attacked while walking to or from her home than when inside. She has a stronger self-defense claim to be allowed to carry a gun in public than the resident of a fancy apartment building (complete with doorman) has a claim to sleep with a loaded gun under her mattress. But Illinois wants to deny the former claim, while compelled by McDonald to honor the latter. That creates an arbitrary difference. To confine the right to be armed to the home is to divorce the Second Amendment from the right of self-defense described in Heller and McDonald.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan decided not to appeal the 7th Circuits decision to the Supreme Court, and instead the state moved to adopt a shall-issue concealed-carry law (Its interesting to note that Illinois didnt adopt a law similar to Californias, even though anti-gun sentiment runs strong in the state legislature). If the Supreme Court had the chance to consider this case back in 2013, perhaps the Peruta case would be superfluous. Its not. Its the best chance the Supreme Court will have in years to put to rest the idea that the right to keep and bear arms exists only inside the home. Lets hope with the addition of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court that there are four justices ready to vote to hear the case.

Cam Edwards is the host of Cam & Co., which airs live 2-5 p.m. EST on NRATV and midnight EST on SiriusXM Patriot 125.He lives with his family on a small farm near Farmville, Va. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @camedwards.

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Will The Supreme Court Hear A Second Amendment Case This Year? - America's 1st Freedom (press release) (blog)

The City by the Bayon behalf of Californiasues mom and pop firearms accessories companies across the country.Dylan Saunders, owner of one such shop,7.62 Precision, is fighting back.

By Dave Gahary

San Francisco officials recently made news for vowing to protect undocumented (read: illegal) immigrants by refusing to order local law enforcement to assist in enforcing federal immigration law and sued the Trump administration over its order to cut off federal funds to sanctuary cities. Now they have a new target in theirsights: the Second Amendment.

Dennis J. Herrera, first elected city attorney of San Francisco in 2001, is the most well-known champion of same-sex marriage in the Golden State. Today, he wants to make a name for himself by capitalizing onthe many alleged massacres that have been frothily reported by the fake news media.

A week after his attack on the presidents plan to rein in the rampant illegal immigration, Herrera filed suit on Feb. 9 against five named and 50 unnamed companies selling magazine repair kits to California residents, who have had their Second Amendment rights severely limited by gun control-crazy politicians.

Magazine repair or rebuild kits are new magazines that have been opened, disassembled, and packaged for shipping and are used to repair existing magazines, create limited-capacity magazines, or otherwiseassembled and used in accordance with local laws and restrictions.

On the first page of the 34-page complaint, the lawsuit evokes several so-called massacres that have ostensibly occurred in this country over the past decade.

American Free Press sat down with the owner of one of the five named companies, Alaska-based 7.62 Precision, to discuss the lawsuit.

Dylan Saunders, who grew up in Alaska mostly in bush villages without electricity or running water and spent some time in the U.S. Army as a cavalry scout and later as a sniper in an infantry unit, livesin Wasilla, Alaska, where former Gov. Sarah Palin was mayor for six years.

I was injured in Iraq and came back trying to figure out how to support my family, Dylan told AFP. So I started doing what I knew, and that was working with firearms as a way to try to pay the bills.

Listen to AFPs interview with Dylan Saunders by clicking the image below:

He added, Several weeks ago I was very surprised to get a knock at my door at about 10:30 in the evening and receive a summons stating that I was being sued.

Saundersexplained how he got tangled up in this lawsuit.

California some years ago passed a law that prohibited most people in California from purchasing what they call a large capacity magazine, which would be anything larger than 10 rounds, Saunders explained. In the language of that law, they clearly allowed for magazine repair kits to be sold to residents of California, in order to keep grandfathered magazines working. Magazines are consumable items in firearms. They wear out, and theyre usually one of the first components to wear out. So, in order to keep a firearm running you need to be able to repair your magazines since they couldnt replace them.

When California banned magazine repair kits a few years ago, Saunders stopped selling them.

However, Herreras legal staff had simply accessed an old web page from Saunderss website, where ordering the kits is impossible. Once publishedon the World Wide Web,all pages remain accessible, even pages and websites that no longer exist.

Had they simply called me and asked if they could order one from me or even called me and told me that it was the attorney for the city of San Francisco, Saunders said, I wouldve been willing to prove to him that I was not selling these kits and had not intended for that page to be visible. But instead of getting that, they simply sued.

Saunders suspects there is another agenda at play here.

Its pretty obvious that their intent is not to keep people from selling magazine kits in the state of California. Their intention is to attack firearms companies and try to put them out of business, Saunders said. Thats why theyre using lawsuits rather than criminal charges. In the case of criminal charges, they would have to prove that a crime had been committed, while they can bring a lawsuit and hope to bankrupt a company without actually having to win the lawsuit, without having to provide proof. A lot of companies would just fold as a result.

Instead of folding, Saunders fought back, by tapping into what is called crowdfunding, by which a project (in this case, legal fees) is funded by raising money collectively from a large number of people across the world.

These guys were going to get a default judgment if I couldnt retain a law firm, so what I did was I established a GoFundMe campaign, Saunders explained. I was blown away that people from all over the United States jumped in. I think it was less than a week wed raised $10,000, which was our goal.

Saunders has retained a top-notch law firm thanks to the donations, and is still overwhelmed by the support.

We had people donating hundreds of dollars, he said. I was expecting that people would donate $15, $20, $25, and maybe some people would go big and donate $50, but I was just blown away by the support, both monetary and by people sending messages and saying, Were pulling for you in this. It really says something about our country and about shooters across the country.

Dave Gahary, a former submariner in the U.S. Navy, prevailed in a suit broughtby the New York Stock Exchange in an attempt to silence him.

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San Francisco Tries End-Run Around Second Amendment ... - American Free Press

Fairfax, Va. Iowa is the latest state to pass significant legislation in recent months restoring Second Amendment freedoms. This week Iowa lawmakers sent House File 517, an omnibus bill containing many pro-gun reforms, to Governor Terry Branstad. HF 517 would restore the right of law-abiding gun owners to carry in the capitol and would restore the rights of parents to make decisions about their youth and handguns. The bill also strengthens self-defense rights for law-abiding Iowans.

In state legislatures across America, lawmakers are expanding law-abiding citizens constitutional right to self-protection, said Chris W. Cox, executive director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action. The NRA and our five million members thank the Iowa legislature and Governor Branstad for working to strengthen Iowans Second Amendment rights so they have the freedom to protect themselves and their families.

Included in HF 517:

Second Amendment rights bills in the states this year:

Gun Control bills in the states this year:

State laws restoring/protecting Second Amendment rights in recent months:

Twelve states now have Constitutional Carry Laws: Vermont, Alaska, Arizona, Wyoming, Kansas, Maine, Idaho, West Virginia, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota

States rejecting gun control schemes in recent months:

Federal legislation protecting Second Amendment rights in recent months:

Established in 1871, the National Rifle Association is America's oldest civil rights and sportsmen's group. More than five million members strong, NRA continues to uphold the Second Amendment and advocates enforcement of existing laws against violent offenders to reduce crime. The Association remains the nation's leader in firearm education and training for law-abiding gun owners, law enforcement and the armed services. Be sure to follow the NRA on Facebook at NRA on Facebook and Twitter @NRA.

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Iowa Poised to Restore Second Amendment Freedoms - NRA ILA

Chicago police officers in March. A recent Illinois court ruling has implications for the Second and Fourth amendments.

Joshua Lott/Getty Images

The American judiciary is currently engaged in a vigorous debate that can be summed up in one question: Can you diminish your Fourth Amendment rights by exercising your Second Amendment rights? The Fourth Amendment protects individuals against unreasonable searches and seizures; the Second Amendment safeguards the right to keep and bear arms. What happens, then, if police officers search or seize a person solely because he is carrying a firearm? Is that unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment and therefore illegal?

Mark Joseph Stern is a writer for Slate. He covers the law and LGBTQ issues.

Last week, an Illinois appeals court answered that question in the affirmative, ruling that mere possession of a handgun does not justify a search or seizure. Liberals and conservatives alike should cheer the courts decision. Empowering law enforcement to curtail the Fourth Amendment makes no one safer, even when its done in the name of controlling gun violence. And allowing officers to target gun owners without suspicion of wrongdoing puts us all at greater risk of harassment, discrimination, and brutality.

Unfortunately, not every court sees the issue that way. In January, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that when officers conduct a lawful traffic stop, they may frisk the driver if they reasonably believe him to be armedregardless of whether the person may legally be entitled to carry the firearm. Even if the individual holds a concealed-carry permit, the court clarified, an officer may still search him without having any suspicion that he committed a crime. In a trenchant critique of the ruling, National Reviews David French wrote that the majority was relegating lawful gun owners to second-class-citizen status. While that might sound dramatic, Judge James Wynn admitted as much in a concurrence, declaring that gun owners forego other constitutional rights, including freedom from unannounced police intrusion and freedom of speech.

We didnt have to wait long to see what Wynns theory looks like in practice. In March, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, refused to reconsider a decision previously issued by a panel of 11th Circuit judges. The panel had thrown out a lawsuit against a police officer who suspected, without any good reason, that a criminal might be lurking inside a particular apartment. In the dead of night, the officer banged on the apartment door. (He did identify himself as law enforcement.) The startled resident retrieved the firearm that he lawfully owned and slowly opened the front door. When he saw a shadowy figure holding a gun, he retreated inside. The officer shot him dead as he was attempting to close the door.

Endorsing the 11th Circuits decision not to re-evaluate the case, Judge Frank M. Hull likened the officers behavior to the knock and talk rule. This rule permits officers to knock on an individuals door for legitimate police purposes. Hull explained that here, the officer had simply engaged in a variation on a knock and talk. When he saw a firearm, he perceived a threat and opened fire. This shooting of an armed individual in his own home, Hull insisted, did not violate any clearly established constitutional rights.

But as Judge Beverly Martin pointed out in dissent, the officer violated at least two constitutional rights. First, he used objectively unreasonable excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Second, this force plainly infringes on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms as established by the Supreme Court in 2008s District of Columbia v. Heller. Martin wrote:

The Second and Fourth Amendments, Martin concluded, are having a very bad day in this Circuit.

Martin should be pleased to learn that both amendments are faring much better in the Illinois First District Appellate Court. A panel of judges for the First District was confronted with what is, by now, a familiar fact pattern. Markell Horton, a black man, was standing on a porch when two police officers drove by. The officers saw a metallic object in his waistband that they believed to be a weapon. They stopped the car and got out, at which point Horton went inside the house. The officers walked up to the porch and, they claim, found a set of keys on the ground. They unlocked the front door and entered the house, finding Horton in a bedroom, crouching next to a bed. One officer, Roderick Hummons, detained Horton and searched the room, discovering a gun underneath the mattress. The state charged and convicted Horton, who had a criminal record, of knowingly possessing a firearm after being convicted of two qualifying felonies.

It might be tempting for liberals to view these cases through the lens of gun control. They should resist the temptation.

To summarize: Two officers stopped in front of a house, at which point its apparent residents went inside. Because one resident might have been armed, the officers barged into the house and detained its occupant while searching for the weapon. Yes, it turned out to be possessed unlawfully. But what if Horton had a concealed-carry permit? At the time of the search, the officers only knew that a man with a gun was inside of a house. Did that give them reasonable suspicion to enter the house and search it?

By a 21 vote, the court said no. Possession of a gun, the majority wrote, does not, on its own, give officers reasonable suspicion or probable cause to conduct a search or seizure. The dissent argued otherwise, noting that although a gun owner could have a permitcalled a Firearm Owners Identification, or FOID, card in Illinoishe might also possess his firearm illegally. This rationale, the majority responded, leads down a dangerous path:

The majority also noted that, given Chicagos ongoing history of police misconduct, Horton did not create reasonable suspicion by quickly entering the house upon sight of the police. In an environment where minorities have legitimate suspicion of how they might be treated by police, the court explained, they will be more likely to try to avoid police contacteven though doing so makes them appear culpable of something. Without reasonable suspicion, Hummons search and seizure was unlawful. Under the exclusionary rule, illegally obtained evidence cannot be used at trial. Thus, the court ordered the evidence against Horton should be suppressed.

It might be tempting for liberals to view these cases through the lens of gun control and favor the state or for conservatives to see them as a question of law and order and support the officers. Both sides should resist the temptation. A rule that allows cops to search or seize individuals for carrying a gun can only lead to more brutality against young black men like Philando Castile. It also permits officers to trample upon our rights to property and self-defense. These are constitutional values, not partisan ones. And advocates across the ideological spectrum should urge the courts to follow the First Districts lead and reject the disastrous illogic now developing in the federal circuits.

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Why Liberals Should Be Alarmed That Courts Are Eroding the Second Amendment - Slate Magazine

Put simply, writes Judge Robert King of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, we have no power to extend Second Amendment protections to weapons of war.

In Kolbe v. Hogan, the court upheld Marylands ban on assault weapons, also known as rifles that look scary to people who know nothing about guns.

As talk radio host Darryl W. Perry of Free Talk Live notes, Kings perversely broad statement would cover a ban on the possession of rocks:

And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth. So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and smote the Philistine, and slew him 1st Samuel, Chapter 17

King also displays a poor grasp of history. No judicial power is required to extend the Second Amendment to cover weapons of war, because theyre precisely what it was intended to cover in the first place.

The Second Amendment was ratified only a few years after a citizen army many of its soldiers armed, at least at first, with weapons brought from home defeated the most fearsome professional military machine in the history of the world, the army of a global empire.

The express purpose of the Second Amendment was to guarantee the continued maintenance of an armed populace. In fact, the Second Militia Act of 1792 legally required every adult able-bodied white American male to own and maintain weapons of war (a musket or rifle, bayonet, powder and bullets) just in case the militia had to be called out.

Even in the 1939 case usually cited to justify victim disarmament (gun control) laws, U.S. v. Miller, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the reason Jack Miller/s short-barreled shotgun could be banned was that it WASNT a weapon of war: [I]t is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.

Yes, you read that right: The Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment applies ONLY to weapons of war. I think thats too narrow myself, but at least it comes at the matter from the correct historical perspective.

The purpose of the Second Amendment is best understood in terms of a quote falsely attributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto of the Japanese navy at the beginning of World War II: You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.

Shame on King and the 4th Circuit for failing to uphold the plain meaning of shall not be infringed.

(Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism, thegarrisoncenter.org. He lives and works in north central Florida. Follow him on Twitter @thomaslknapp.)

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The Second Amendment and 'weapons of war' - The Montgomery Herald

On Friday, the U.S. Senate voted to confirm Neil M. Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Gorsuchs nomination was heavily backed by the NRA, both because of the pro-Second Amendment views expressed in his judicial writings and his originalist approach to jurisprudence. Justice Antonin Scalia exemplified originalism in his landmark Heller opinion in 2008 that recognized the Second Amendment protects an individual right grounded in the principle of self-defense.

Judge Gorsuchs confirmation capped a dramatic series of events that began with Scalias sudden, unexpected death on Feb. 13, 2016. Not only was Scalia the Supreme Courts leading Second Amendment champion, his was one of only five votes cast in the five- to-four Heller decision, and its five-to-four follow-up, McDonald v. Chicago. Although two justices voting against the Second Amendment in Heller had since left the court, they were replaced in the interim by two equally anti-gun Obama picks, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Thus, with Scalias untimely passing, the court was at best split four to four on its continued support for the Second Amendments individual right.

History will record that the balance of power on the Supreme Court was in fact a key issue in the 2016 presidential election and that Obamas hand-picked successor, Hillary Clinton, suffered a crushing defeat after emphasizing her own view that the Heller Court had been wrong on the Second Amendment.

Candidate Donald Trump, meanwhile, made no secret of his determination to nominate a pro-Second Amendment judge to the fill Scalias vacant seat. After his victory in November, President Trump kept his promise by nominating Judge Gorsuch.

In the intense media and political scrutiny that followed Trumps selection, there was never any serious argument against Judge Gorsuchs credentials, integrity, impartiality, and ability. He has been praised by legal professionals across the political spectrum.

Yet anti-gun loyalists in the Democratic Party, blinded by ideology and unable to recover from their stinging rebuke in the election, launched the first partisan filibuster in U.S. history to block Neil Gorsuchs nomination.

In practical terms, their strategy gained them nothing.

Senate Republicans on Thursday responded by applying the Senate rules instituted by Harry Reid (NV-D) in 2013. At that time, Reid pushed through the elimination of the Senate filibuster on executive appointments and lower-court nominees. The Reid Rule now applies to Supreme Court nominations as well.

Judge Gorsuch was then confirmed on Friday by a bipartisan 54-45 vote.

While there may be no end to the hypocrisy, rancor, and obstruction that liberal loyalists are willing to inflict on the American political process, all citizens of goodwill can rest assured that in Judge Gorsuch, they have a decent, unbiased, and highly-qualified Supreme Court justice who will uphold the law.

And Second Amendment advocates in particular should sleep more soundly knowing that when the Supreme Court again hears a case on the right to keep and bear arms, Justice Scalias seat will be occupied by a man dedicated to ensuring that the Framers vision of constitutional freedom is upheld.

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Freedom Wins! Pro-Second Amendment Judge Will Join U.S. Supreme Court - NRA ILA