Category Archives: Second Amendment

COLUMBIA AVirginia militiaman with a long gun. A 21st century white couple carrying assault weapons in a Starbucks. A black man opencarrying arifle in Dallas before being wrongly identified as the suspect whogunned down Dallas police officers last summer.

The images illustrate a topic Saul Cornell has dedicated his life to understanding: the legal carrying and display of guns in the U.S. under the Second Amendment.

He knows the topic is controversial.

"The interesting thing about the Second Amendment is everyones got an opinion on it," Cornell told a packed house of nearly 100 people in Mumford Hall on Wednesday. "I came to the subject of the Second Amendment not because of any great involvement with gun issues. I came to it out of my interest in the way history gets used by legal scholars and courts."

"Theres a complicated history and a very complicated contemporary reality between firearms and issues of race in America," Cornell said.

He explained how black Americans are disproportionately affected by gun violence, saying that African American men are less likely to be shot if they joined the military rather than remaining civilians.

Many of our gun laws, Cornell said, originated in the Antebellum South, which permitted open carrying of guns in public.

Cornell spoke at the last spring public lecture sponsored by the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, an academic center at MU that emphasizes U.S. Constitutional study, early American history and its relevance today.

He said guns have evolved since adopting the Second Amendment, which means Americans need evolved gun laws.

A Virginia militiaman carrying a long gun couldn't kill as many people as the white couple with assault weapons. Why, then, don't lawmakers enact more regulatory gun legislation parallel to new technology, Cornell asked.

He discussed the differences between the way Americans perceive a white couple and a black man open carrying: the couple celebrated exercising their rights, while police wrongly identified the black man in Dallas as a shooting suspect.

Cornell ended Wednesdays talk by comparing the number of gun-related deaths to car accident deaths in the U.S. He said gun deaths are rising, and the numbers are nearly equal.

"There are more gun stores out there than supermarkets," he said. "That's pretty ridiculous to me."

Traci Wilson-Kleekamp, the president of local activism group Race Matters, Friends, attended the lecture.

"It sounds like you're sort of tip-toeing around this thing on race," Wilson-Kleekamp said. "If you can, be explicit about this connection between slavery and today and our issues with guns."

Cornell said that the South is historically a more violent region, and expressly racial laws originated there.

"People are not aware of how these deep-seeded cultural forms influence their behavior," he said.

He cited a study in which white people often falsely identified guns in pictures with black faces, and simply saw other objects in pictures with white faces.

"It's a deeply, culturally-embedded kind of suspicion, and that makes it harder to extirpate," Cornell said. "Until we recognize it, we can't really move forward."

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Second Amendment historian connects race and gun rights - Columbia Missourian

National security and intelligence community journalist Michael Best reported on Thursday that he just got the documents from the Secret Service regarding threats against Hillary Clinton, and they indicate that the Secret Service did see threats against Clinton seemingly as a result of Trumps comment about second amendment people.

Secret Service documents indicate they did see threats against Hillary Clinton seemingly as a result of Trumps 2nd Amendment people comment, Best writes on Twitter, adding, DHS reaction to Trumps 2nd Amendment people comments: YIKES!'

On August 9th, 2016, Donald Trump suggested his supporters might shoot Clinton if she got to pick a Supreme Court judge, By the way, if she (Hillary Clinton) gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks. Although, the Second Amendment people maybe there is. I dont know.

On July 20th, CNN reported that the Secret Service was investigating a Trump adviser after he called for Clintons execution on the radio. Trump adviser Al Baldasaro told a radio host that Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason.

Donald Trump didnt distance himself from Baldarsaro.

Days later, Trump made his second amendment people comment about Clinton getting to fill the Supreme Court seat that Republicans stole from President Barack Obama. Trump supporters and Republicans have tried to pretend his comment wasnt an incitement to violence, but the Secret Service says they did see threats seemingly as a result of Trumps comment.

On the day when Senate Republicans are changing the filibuster rule so they can confirm an extremist to the Supreme Court who was nominated by a president who is under investigation for possible collusion with Russia, the Secret Service confirmed that Trumps call for second amendment people to shoot Clinton if she got to nominate a Supreme Court justice seemingly resulted in threats against her.

Republicans have become radical jihadists inciting violence to get their way, so after not even waiting the average period of time to get Gorusch confirmed, they flipped out and voted to change the Senate rules an act they admitted would ruin the senate. This is the modern day Republican Party. They have become the reactionary hot headed destroyers they chide the far left for being in the 60s.

Republicans arent here for the law and order theyre here to violate laws and norms until they get their way. If they dont get what they want, second amendment people might have to fix it for them.

And if that doesnt work, theyll just change the rules to fit their extremist pick for a seat they already violated precedent to steal from the Democratic president.

With the major victim/persecution complex that colors the Right these days, if the shoe had been on the other foot with these comments, we never would have heard the end of it. There would be investigations into investigations, and leaks and so many more leaks, and conservative journalists illegally recording people to prove how horrible Democrats were. And the press would breathlessly report on the drama, the victimization, the persecution.

If the shoe were on the other foot, elected Democrats would be saying Trump should be shot for treason for all of the Russian connections, since Republicans said that over Clintons hyped up email scandal when she wasnt even found guilty of anything. But Democrats dont roll that way. The Democratic President, Barack Obama, was careful and responsible with his rhetoric.

When it came down to actually inciting violence against his Democratic opponent, Trump supporters and the entire Republican Party enabled and supported Donald Trump. If they werent under a fast gathering cloud of sweeping Russian smoke, this would be a new low for the Republican Party.

As it is, facing possible treason and obstruction of justice accusations, inciting threats against a rival is to be expected. Its how dictators do things.

did Donald Trump incite violence, did donald trump threaten Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, second amendment people

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Secret Service Says Trump's Second Amendment People Comment Led to Threats Against Clinton - PoliticusUSA

Gun-control advocates often argue that gun-control laws must be more restrictive than the original meaning of the Second Amendment would allow, because modern firearms are so different from the firearms of the late 18th century. This argument is based on ignorance of the history of firearms. It is true that in 1791 the most common firearms were handguns or long guns that had to be reloaded after every shot. But it is not true that repeating arms, which can fire multiple times without reloading, were unimagined in 1791. To the contrary, repeating arms long predate the 1606 founding of the first English colony in America. As of 1791, repeating arms were available but expensive.

This article explains why the price of repeating arms declined so steeply. Then it describes some of the repeating arms that were already in use when the Second Amendment was ratified, including the 22-shot rifle that was later carried on the Lewis andClark expedition.

One of the men to credit for why repeating arms became much less expensive during the 19th century is James Madison, author of the Second Amendment. During Madisons presidency (1809-17), Secretary of War James Monroe (who would succeed Madison as president), successfully promoted legislation to foster the development of firearms technology. In particular, the federal armories at Springfield, Mass., and Harpers Ferry, Va., were ordered to invent the means of producing firearms with interchangeable parts.

To function reliably, repeating firearms must have internal components that fit together very precisely much more precisely than is necessary for single-shot firearms. Before President Madison and Secretary Monroe started the manufacturing revolution, firearms were built one at a time by craftsmen. Making a repeating arm required much more time and expertise than making a single-shot firearm.Howto make repeating arms was well-known, but making them at a labor cost the average person could afford was impossible.

Thanks to the technology innovation labs created at Springfield and Harpers Ferry, inventors found ways to manufacture firearms components at a higher rate, and with more consistency for each part. Instead of every part being made by hand, parts were manufactured with machine tools (tools that make other tools). For example, the wooden stocks for rifles could be repetitively manufactured with such precision that any stock from a factory would fit any rifle from the factory, with no need for craftsmen to shave or adjust the stock.

In New England, the Springfield Armory worked with emerging machinists for other consumer products; the exchange of information in this technology network led directly to the Connecticut River Valley becoming a center of American consumer firearms manufacture, and to rapid improvements in the manufacture of many other consumer durables. The story is told in: Ross Thomson, Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age: Technological Innovation in the United States 1790-1865 (2009);Alexander Rose, American Rifle: A Biography (2008); David R. Meyer, Networked Machinists: High-Technology Industries in Antebellum America (2006); David A. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932 (1985); Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change (1977);Felicia Johnson Deyrup, Arms Makers of the Connecticut Valley: A Regional Study of the Economic Development of the Small Arms Industry, 1798-1870 (1948). By the 1830s, manufacturing uniformity was sufficiently advanced that repeating arms were becoming widely affordable, and no longer just for the wealthy.

What kind of repeating arms were available before1815, when the Madison-Monroe mass production innovation program began? The state of the art was theGirandoni air rifle, invented around 1779 for Austrian army sharpshooters. Lewis and Clark would carry a Girandoni on their famous expedition, during the Jefferson administration. The Girandoni could shoot 21 or 22 bullets in .46 or .49 caliber without reloading. Ballistically equal to a firearm, a single shot from the Girandoni could penetrate a one-inch wood plank, or take an elk. (For more on the Girandoni, see my article The History of Firearms Magazines and Magazine Prohibitions, 88 Albany L. Rev. 849, 852-53 (2015).)

The first repeaters had been invented about three centuries before. The earliest-known model is a German breech-loading matchlock arquebus from around 1490-1530 with a 10-shot revolving cylinder.M.L. Brown, Firearms in Colonial America: The Impact on History and Technology, 1492-1792, 50 (1980). Henry VIII had a long gun that used a revolving cylinder (a revolver) for multiple shots.W.W. Greener, The Gun and Its Development, 81-82 (9th ed. 1910). A 16-round wheel lock dates from about 1580.Kopel, at 852.

Production of repeaters continued in the seventeenth century. Brown, at 105-6 (four-barreled wheel-lock pistol could fire 15 shots in a few seconds); John Nigel George, English Guns and Rifles, 55-58 (1947) (English breech-loading lever-action repeater, and a revolver, made no later than the British Civil War, and perhaps earlier, by an English gun maker).

The first repeaters to be built in large quantities appear to be the 1646 Danish flintlocks that used a pair of tubular magazines, and could fire 30 shots without reloading. Like a modern lever-action rifle, the next shot was made ready by a simple two-step motion of the trigger guard. These guns were produced for the Danish and Dutch armies. Brown, at 106-7.

In Colonial America, repeating arms wereavailable for people who could afford them, or who were skilled enough to make their own. For example, in September 1722, John Pim of Boston entertained some Indians by demonstrating a firearm he had made. Although loaded but once, it was discharged eleven times following, with bullets in the space of two minutes each which went through a double door at fifty yards distance. Samuel Niles, A Summary Historical Narrative of the Wars in New England, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 4th ser., vol. 5, 347 (1837). Pims gun may have been a type of the repeating flintlock that became popular in England from the third quarter of the 17th century, and was manufactured in Massachusetts starting in the early eighteenth. Harold L. Peterson, Arms and Armor in Colonial America 1526-1783, 215-17(Dover reprint 2000) (Smithsonian Institution 1956). Another repeating flintlock, invented by Philadelphias Joseph Belton, could fire eight shots in three seconds. Idem,217. Pim also owned a .52 caliber six-shot flintlock revolver, similar to the revolvers that had been made in England since the turn of the century. Brown, 255.A variety of multi-shot pistols from the late eighteenth century have been preserved, holding two to four rounds. Charles Winthrop Sawyer, Firearms in American History: 1600 to 1800, 194-98, 215-16 (1910).

The repeaters described above werenotthe most common arms. It would take two decades for the program begun by President Madison to result in repeating arms beginning to become affordable to the middle class. So in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a person who could not afford an expensive repeater, but who wanted to be able to fire more than one bullet without reloading, would often buy ablunderbuss. The blunderbuss was the size of a very large handgun. Its muzzle flared outward slightly, like a bell. This made it easier to load while bouncing in a stagecoach, or on a swaying ship. The blunderbuss could fire either one large projectile, or several at once. Most often it was loaded with about 20 large pellets, and so it was devastating at short range. The name seems an adaptation of the Dutch donder-buse or thunder gun.

Excellent for self-defense at close quarters, the blunderbuss was of little use for anything else, having an effective range of about 20 yards. Militarily, it was used by sailors to repel boarders. Stagecoach guards and travelers carried blunderbusses, and it was also a common arm for home defense.For more on the blunderbuss, see Brown and George, above.

No one would dispute that modern arms are much improved from 1791 in terms of reliability, accuracy, range and affordability. But the gap from the 22-shot Girandoni (powerful enough to take an elk) to a modern firearm is pretty small compared withthe changes in technology of the press. Compared to the one-sheet-at-a-time printing presses of 1791, the steam and rotary presses invented in the 19th century made printing vastly faster a speed improvement that dwarfs the speed improvement in firearms in the last 500 years. When the First Amendment was written, a skilled printer could produce 250 sheets in two hours. Today, a modern newspaper printing press can produce 70,000 copies of a newspaper (consisting of dozens of sheets) in an hour. Now, with digital publishing, a newspaper article can be read globally within minutes after it is written.

This means that irresponsible media can cause far more harm today than they could in 1791. For example, in 2005, Newsweek magazine published a false story claiming that American personnel at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated Korans belonging to prisoners there. Eventually, Newsweek retracted the story. But the phony story had already spread worldwide, setting off riots in six countries, in which over 30 people were killed.Had Newsweek been using 18th-century printing presses, the false story would have mostly been read by several thousand people in the New York City area, where Newsweek is based. It would been months if ever before the Newsweek issue with the false story was read by anyone in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

We do not limit any constitutional right to the technology that existed in 1791. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the court observed:

Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 849 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 35-36 (2001), the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.

This is an accurate statement of constitutional law, but it understates how truly frivolous the argument against modern firearms is. The people who ratified the Bill of Rights certainly didnot anticipate the invention centuries later of the Internet or of thermal imaging sensors. The American people of 1791 did not have to anticipate the invention of repeating arms, because such arms had been in existence for centuries.

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Firearms technology and the original meaning of the Second Amendment - Washington Post

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He referenced the Second Amendment while talking about collegiate sports, contending that NCAA basketball players ought to be paid. In fact, Redick jumped from announcing the end of amateurism in collegiate sports to declaring the end of a Second Amendment that protects 21st century firearms.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Redick said:

The idea of amateurism, it doesnt exist anymore. And so if youre going to do what youre doing, then you just need that complete overhaul. Its got to be something radical. Its not just, Oh, lets just pay every player $5,000. It really requires something really radical. And maybe thats getting rid of college athletics as we know it.

He paraphrased a Thomas Jefferson quote to segue to guns, saying, I go back to the Thomas Jefferson quote Im going to butcher it, but its something weve all read. You wouldnt expect a little boy to wear the pea coat he wore as a boy as a grown man. You need to change with the times.

Redick then addressed gun control, saying laws should evolve in the same way he wants to see collegiate sports evolve. He said:

Laws should reflect that [change], rules, regulations, especially as we know more. Gun control. I dont want to get political, but gun control. Thats something that should evolve as technology evolves. When the 2nd Amendment was created, we had to worry about bears, people lived on the frontier and it took a minute to load a muzzle. I think laws should reflect where we are with guns.

Ironicallyjust one day before Redick made these commentsIndependent Institutes Dave Kopel wrote that gun control arguments framed around musket arguments show a lack of historical knowledge. Writing in The Washington Post, Kopel said:

Gun-control advocates often argue that gun-control laws must be more restrictive than the original meaning of the Second Amendment would allow, because modern firearms are so different from the firearms of the late 18th century. This argument is based on ignorance of the history of firearms. It is true that in 1791 the most common firearms were handguns or long guns that had to be reloaded after every shot. But it is not true that repeating arms, which can fire multiple times without reloading, were unimagined in 1791. To the contrary, repeating arms long predate the 1606 founding of the first English colony in America. As of 1791, repeating arms were available but expensive.

Kopels historical observation helps the reader better understand the Supreme Courts majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008). In that opinion, late Justice Antonin Scalia pointed to judicial precedent to show the Second Amendment protects guns in common use at any given time. In other words, at all times the Second Amendment protects the guns commonly owned and used by law-abiding citizens. This means protection for the very 21st century firearms J.J. Redick believes justify more gun control.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.

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LA Clippers JJ Redick: Second Amendment Should 'Evolve' to Allow Gun Control - Breitbart News

AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

SCOTUS Warned Against Standard Review When it Comes to The Second Amendment AmmoLand Shooting Sports News Second, the self-defense interest in maintaining loaded handguns in the home to shoot intruders is not the primary interest, but at most a subsidiary interest, that the Second Amendment seeks to serve. The Second Amendment's language, while speaking ...

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SCOTUS Warned Against Standard Review When it Comes to The Second Amendment - AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

The restoration of Second Amendment-protected rights in the states is happening so quickly that its hard to keep up. On Friday, the Georgia legislature sent a bill to Governor Nathan Deal that would allow concealed handguns on public college campuses, with some exceptions built in to appease Deal, who vetoed a similar but stronger measure last year. Jerry Henry, executive director of GeorgiaCarry.org, a pro-gun rights group, was realistic: Its not the bill that we wanted but its the bill we got. It gives [us] a foot in the door. If Deal signs the bill, Georgia would become the 11th state with this kind of campus-carry law.

Georgia legislators also sent to Deals desk a bill that improved a number of the states existing gun laws, including giving individuals moving to the state from reciprocal carry agreement states a 90-day grace period to obtain a Georgia Weapons License (GWL) while continuing to carry legally using their previous states license. That bill also explicitly prohibits any probate judge from suspending, extending, delaying, or avoiding the process of approving a GWL application made by a citizen of the state.

In addition, it would protect firearms instructors from civil liability for any injuries caused by the failure of one of their students to use a firearm safely.

A third bill sent to Georgia Governor Beal would allow Virginia concealed handgun permit holders to enjoy permit reciprocity with Georgia.

The next day, multiple pro-gun and pro-hunting bills moved ahead in Virginia, including a measure that would allow any law-abiding person to carry a firearm in any state, county, or municipal park or other recreation area. Another bill would allow law-abiding Virginians to carry a firearm onto school property while dropping off or picking up students. Still another would protect shooting ranges from frivolous lawsuits and noise complaints as long as they are operating lawfully. This bill is a direct pushback against anti-gun groups that have filed such lawsuits and complaints in attempts to shut those ranges down.

Last week, North Dakota became the 14th state to allow constitutional carry, just weeks after New Hampshire passed similar legislation. Other constitutional-carry bills are pending in Alabama, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin.

A Michael Bloomberg-funded move in New Mexico to set up a gun registration system was rejected last week, following voter rejection of such a proposal in Maine last November.

On the national level, gun owners are celebrating House Speaker Paul Ryans withdrawal of his anti-gun ObamaCare Lite bill because of its hidden potential to invade Second Amendment-protected rights. Gun Owners of America (GOA) refused to back the bill unless it contained language that prohibited insurance companies from discriminating against gun owners, doctors from entering patients gun ownership information in any federal database, and federal agencies from trolling Medicaid and other federal health databases in order to add names to the NICS background-check database. GOAs demands were ignored, and so the group rallied its members against the passage of Ryans bill.

Also on the national level, Second Amendment supporters are still celebrating the move by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on his first day in office, which revoked a last-second move by former President Obama to phase out the use of lead ammunition for bird hunting on federal land. Under normal circumstances, such a directive wouldnt have rated a footnote, but in the present environment it showed that President Trump was not only determined to respect the Second Amendment but to put people in place in his cabinet with a similar determination.

And, just days later, President Trump himself repealed the so-called Social Security gun ban, under which certain Social Security beneficiaries would have had their Second Amendment-protected rights arbitrarily revoked without due process.

Another hopeful sign at the federal level is Trumps nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. After reviewing the available background of Gorsuch, 30-year defense attorney Andrew Branca, writing in National Review, stated:

As a strong Second Amendment advocate and someone who has concealed-carried a firearm for pretty much every day of my adult life I, for one, welcome Judge Gorsuchs nomination to the Supreme Court, with great optimism for the Courts future Second Amendment jurisprudence.

Restoring Second Amendment-protected rights after decades of efforts to abrogate them is an inch-by-inch process, and that process is being helped along greatly by a president who is determined to keep his promises in this area. On the importance of the Second Amendment, Trump wrote:

The Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental right that belongs to all law-abiding Americans. The Constitution doesnt create that right it ensures that the government cant take it away. Our Founding Fathers knew, and our Supreme Court has upheld, that the Second Amendments purpose is to guarantee our right to defend ourselves and our families. Law-abiding people should be allowed to own the firearm of their choice. The government has no business dictating what types of firearms good, honest people are allowed to own.

These victories, taken one at a time, dont appear to amount to much. Taken together, however, they indicate not only the momentum shift in favor of the Second Amendment, but a better understanding of it. The language does confuse some: 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.

The following statement concerning the importance of books in a well-educated culture, offered by Stephen Halbrook, a senior fellow at The Independent Institute, is instructive in clarifying the Founders meaning: A well-educated citizenry, being necessary to the culture of a free state, the right of the people to keep and read books shall not be infringed.

An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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Second Amendment Victories Continue to Pile Up - The New American

AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

Civil Rights Groups Threaten Philadelphia & Others With Litigation Over Taser Bans AmmoLand Shooting Sports News We hope that these cities will simply choose to comply with the Second Amendment and respect the people's fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms, said Brandon Combs, president of the Coalition and chairman of the Foundation, but if they ...

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Civil Rights Groups Threaten Philadelphia & Others With Litigation Over Taser Bans - AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

As Ed Gardner rides in his car on the way to the shooting range, the local NPR station blares over the radio. Gardner says he's "in the closet" at the range, having to hide from his gun-owning peers one of the most guarded secrets of his identity: He's a liberal.

"We try to avoid emotional topics when people are armed," he said.

Gardner is the executive director of the Liberal Gun Club, which was founded in 2008. Since Donald Trump's election, membership has been booming. Most new members come by way of simply searching for an alternative to the monolithically conservative gun enthusiast forums across the internet.

New members have been coming in droves: Enrollments are up over 10%, and across social media, blog posts about the potential need for a "gun culture on the left" are shared by thousands of people.

The "snowflakes" are grabbing their guns. Those who see the Trump agenda as an existential threat to safety are starting to rethink their position on gun ownership, taking self-defense classes and joining groups like Liberal Gun Club or Pink Pistols, an LGBTQgun club. Waiting to receive these new gun owners are the Second Amendment leftists who have been advocating for a liberal gun culture for years, trying to convince fellow liberals that not only are many gun control measures a lost cause, but a divisive political tool that ignores the underlying causes of violence.

"Tyranny isn't the United States Army, necessarily," Gardner said in the car on the way to the range, having flipped off NPR to discuss the Liberal Gun Club with me. "Tyranny can be when a transgenderkid or adult in Compton is actually afraid for her life because some people don't like queer people."

For some, it wasn't Trump. Piper Smith got to work building a San Diego chapter of the Pink Pistols after the Pulse nightclub shootingin Orlando, Florida. Smith said they've brought over 360 active local members into the chapter, and held self-defense trainings for dozens of paying participants. The group is planning to be present at San Diego's upcoming pride festivities. For Smith, it's a nonpartisan issue it's about protecting LGBTQlives.

"There are plenty of places in California where LGBT people don't feel safe, and with good reason," Smith said. "The police will come and take a report, or they'll come and pick up your body. But I'd much rather have LGBT individuals standing up for themselves, not living in fear and not staying home because it's dark and they're scared."

"Tyranny can be when atransgenderkid or adult in Compton is actually afraid for her life because some people don't like queer people."

Liberal gun owners have been pleading with their lefty brethren for years. In op-eds, magazine stories,Facebookposts and closed-door conversations, they've begged their fellow liberals to understand that gun ownership is intertwined with their heritage, their families, their communities and their personal independence, that restricting access is more about scoring points in partisan politics than about solving the underlying causes of violence. Now, more people are starting to see logic in those arguments.

In Gardner's words: "You've got the chuckleheads like us on the sidelines saying, 'We told you so. Let us show you the way. Let me sing you the song of my people.'"

The Robinsons are typical liberal gun owners in that they belong to one particularly special slice of American Democrats: They grew up rural. Sara Robinson was raised in California on the Eastern Sierra, tumbleweed and cowboy country where you might find gun racks mounted on pickup trucks in the high school parking lot. Her husband, Evan, is from Eugene, Oregon, from a family of gun owners and hunters.

"Everyone had them, and it wasn't the big tribal totem it's become," Sara told me.

The Robinsons, like many gun owners, refer to guns as "tools" devicesyou'd use to deal with rattlesnakes, coyotes, varmints and feral animals that wander over from a neighbor's land to terrorize livestock. The two have spent months out on the road, camping in remote areas surrounded by Trump voters.

And coming out as a gun enthusiast early in a conversation with a right-winger is, well, disarming.

"The first thing conservatives try to do is put you in a liberal box of an educated white lady from the city," Sara said. "The first thing I have to do is pull that rug out from under them. So I drop that code, and that throws them. They don't know what to do with me after that. The gun is really a useful way to put them on notice that I'm not the liberal they think I am."

In 1977, the National Rifle Associationunderwent a radical transformationwhen hardline conservatives seized power in the group nearly overnight, clearing out moderates from leadership positions. Since then, guns have been used by both parties to win easy points with their bases, while creating a sharp political divide based less on core values and more on the stereotype of gun-clinging hillbillies, in the case of liberals, and conservatives' paranoia about liberal elites coming to take the guns.

The split in attitudesin attitudes of urban and rural gun owners mirrors an important theme of the 2016 election:the presumption that coastal elites know what policies best suit rural people's needs.

The rural conservatives the Robinsons meet on their travels see the world as a more dangerous place than their liberal counterparts. When Evan's local gun instructor teaches classes, he invokes the horror of a lurking crack addict, and the racially tinged rhetoric is lost on no one. Sara often hears stories about bar fights, robberies and confrontations that take place an hour's drive away from the closest sheriff's deputy. She once chalked up a lot of that talk up to paranoia. Now, she tends to believe them.

"Trump-land tends to be a rougher place than most liberals live in," Sara said. "Most of us are urban and fairly well educated, we live in denser areas, we're more open and less fearful, so the way we think about strangers is very different."

"The gun is really a useful way to put them on notice that I'm not the liberal they think I am."

The Robinsons said they can't deny there's plenty of rhetoric to fuel the myth that leftists want to come and take all of the guns away, and that the party line evokes a world without guns. Evan recalled Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) saying in 1995, "Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in."

"It's an unthoughtful response that, at best, is designed to work on the base with no regard to the relative stupidity of it," Evan said. "The idea that [there could be] no guns in America is magical thinking. They're just not going to disappear, no matter what we do."

Being a liberal gun owner can often mean being a pariah in both worlds. Evan's been blacklisted from several online liberal groups for his position on gun ownership, and gun owners who vote blue can be seen as traitors to the cause of gun ownership in the enthusiast community.

Sara said, "You just learn to keep it quiet."

When I called Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor and author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, to ask him whether gun rights have been a losing political issue for Democrats, he responded, "You needed a Second Amendment leftist to tell you that?"

President Bill Clinton fought so hard for his 1994 ban on assault weapons that he is credited with helpingRepublicans take back Congress in the midterm elections that year. In 2004, the ban expired, having had no conclusive effect on gun violence.

"Many Democrats who have lost elections have cited gun control as an issue," Winkler said. "On the other hand, there's [the] core base that wants it. It's hard for the party to ignore important members of its base and coalition."

Many left-leaning gun owners support existing regulations, as well as accurate reporting for states for the sake of background checks and minimum safety standards for concealed carry permits.

"The idea that if we had no guns in America is magical thinking. They're just not going to disappear, no matter what we do."

But they have a deeper vision for addressing gun violence than reducing access: a hard look at its root causes. Abouttwo-thirds of gun deaths in the United States are suicides.An analysis from Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, a pro-gun-reform advocacy group, found that "more thanhalf of all women killed by intimate partners in the U.S. are killed with guns."The analysis also found that over half of all victims of gun homicides are black Americans.

Nearly every damning statistic that indicts guns also indicates a deeper cause.

"We should be looking at suicide prevention, health care, systemic poverty and racism, the war on drugs," Lara Smith, the president of the California chapter of the Liberal Gun Club, said in a phone interview. "These are the real problems, and when you focus on the guns you don't focus on the underlying issues."

The Guardianrecently mapped gun homicides down to the census tract level, reportedly for the first time in U.S. history. The analysis found that, regardless of the hype around isolated mass shooting incidents and famously dangerous inner cities, gun violence often correlates with pockets of extreme destitution. The authors described the violence as a "regressive tax that falls heaviest on neighborhoods already struggling with poverty, unemploymentand failing schools."

The Liberal Gun Club felt vindicated. Because of a ban on funding for research that could advance the cause of gun control at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention thanks to NRA lobbying very little data that can speak to the root causes of gun violence actually exist. Progressives of all stripes have been fighting to liftthat amendment for years:anti-gun liberals because they think the research will prove the need to remove guns from public life, and pro-gun liberals because they think the research will light the path for more sophisticated, effective solutions.

"For me, this underscores the need for deeper research," one person posted to the Liberal Gun Club'sFacebook page in the wake of the Guardian's story. "Fund the CDC to do it. Don't be afraid of it. Follow the data where it takes us."

One of the first things that comes up when talking to a gun owner is whether or not you've actually fired a gun a necessary litmus test for whether or not you get it. So when Liberal Gun Club honcho Ed Gardner and I arrived at the range, he put a whole series of weapons in my hands and walked me through how to fire each one.

"We should be looking at suicide prevention, health care, systemic poverty and racism, the war ondrugs. These are the real problems."

The one I was drawn to most was aSmith & Wesson M&P, loaded with powerful bullets called by their caliber: .40s. The M&P is compact and light. It sent empty shells ricocheting across the range, often smacking me sharply across the head. My nerves never died down: A .40-caliber handgun kicks hard and blows much larger holes than a more manageable rifle loaded with thinner .22s. It's blunt and concussive. Gardner later informed me it's one of the weapons of choicefor many American police officers.

Gardner, too, harped on the root causes of violence. He spoke eloquently about the overall project of Second Amendment leftists: to address violence at its root by drawing attention away from guns and toward mental health, poverty and inequality.

"Yes, guns are deadly," Gardner said when we sat down at an Irish pub after leaving the range, the smell of gun smoke and lead still in my nose. "Yes, guns are weapons. Should everyone have them? Probably not. But maybe instead of worrying about what people are using to kill each other, we ask why people are killing each other."

Excerpt from:
2nd Amendment snowflakes: In Trump's America, liberals are finally reaching for their guns - Mic

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GOA suggests the choice of confirming or not confirming is so clear cut that it boils down to one thing: Do you support the Second Amendment?

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Gorsuch is President Trumps nominee to fill the vacancy left behind by Second Amendment bulwark Antonin Scalia. And Gorsuchs nomination proves Trump true to his promise to put forward a justice very much in the mold of Justice Scalia.

GOA executive director Erich Pratt said, Gun Owners of America is urging people to contact their Senators and ask for an aye vote for the Senate.

GOA executive director emeritus Larry Pratt said, [Gorsuch] supports the Second Amendment as it was written [and] as it was understood at the time. So were pretty comfortable getting Mr. Gorsuch on the court, that he is going to be pretty much in line of Antonin Scalia.

Larry also said, This is going to be a whole lot better an appointment that if Hillary Clinton had been making it, that is for sure.

Breitbart News reported that Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) questioned Gorsuch during the confirmation hearings and used that opportunity to try to discover even a chance that he would be open to more gun control. What she found was Gorsuch standing on the law and the precedent of District of Columbia v. Heller (2008). Gorsuch said, Whatever is in Heller is the law and I follow the law.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.

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Gun Owners of America-Vote on Gorsuch Comes Down to ... - Breitbart - Breitbart News

NewsBlaze (registration) (blog)

The Next Second Amendment Handgun Carry Case to Go Down in Flames NewsBlaze (registration) (blog) This is a sad second amendment handgun carry case, Young v. Hawaii. The saddest fact is nothing can be done at this late stage to salvage it, thanks to the lawyer who represented Mr. Young on appeal. Mr. Young represented himself in the district court.

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The Next Second Amendment Handgun Carry Case to Go Down in Flames - NewsBlaze (registration) (blog)