Category Archives: Second Amendment

Article 1, section 2 of the U.S. Constitution states in part, " The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of several states." So who are 'the people' who get to vote? The founding fathers use the term 'the people' to mean free white males such as themselves.

Article 2, section 8 talks of the importance "of the Militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions to provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the Militia." The dictionary term for Militia is "An army composed of ordinary citizens rather than professional soldiers, on call for service in an emergency."

The second amendment is all about the importance of maintaining a well regulated Militia.

"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." One sentence. We know in 1791 the term 'the people' does not mean everyone. It means free white males. One way the constitution provides for arming the Militia is to ensure that its citizens soldiers have the right to keep and bear arms.

The second amendment is about protecting the Militia and the citizen soldiers that are part of a Militia. If the founding fathers wanted to protect stand alone individual gun rights, they could have done so without tying gun rights to a well regulated Militia. Even then gun rights would have been for people like themselves.

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Letter to the Editor-Second Amendment | Opinion | swiowanewssource.com - The Audubon County Advocate Journal

The Advisory Committee on Civil Rules of Federal Judicial Conference recently approved several amendments to Fed. R. Evid. 702 intended to quash lackadaisical and flaccid Daubert gatekeeping.

Below is the amended text of the rule, with deletions in brackets and italics, and additions underlined and bolded:

Rule 702. Testimony by expert witnesses.

A witness who is qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education may testify in the form of an opinion or otherwise if [the court finds that] the proponent has demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that:

These amendments do not change the substance of Rule 702s standards for admission of expert testimony helpfulness, factual basis, reliability, and fit. Instead, the amendments are intended to emphasize judges role as gatekeeper and remind courts this is not a question for the jury to decide.

To that end, the first amendment provides that a judge should exclude expert testimony unless the substantive criteria of Rule 702 have been met by a preponderance of the evidence. The Draft Committee Notes accompanying the proposal explained, [M]any courts have held that the critical questions of the sufficiency of an experts basis, and the application of the experts methodology, are questions of weight and not admissibility. These rulings are an incorrect application of Rules 702 and 104. Too many courts have succumbed to this incorrect application, with far too many judges, instead, ruling that helpfulness to the jury, sufficient basis, reliability, and fit were matters of weight for the jury to decide. The Draft Committee Notes further clarified, [T]his does not mean, as certain courts have held, that arguments about the sufficiency of an experts basis always go to weight and not admissibility. Rather, it means that once the court has found the admissibility requirement to be met by a preponderance of the evidence, any attack by the opponent will go only to the weight of the evidence. The Committees intent is to reiterate the proper standard with explicit wording in the black letter of Rule 702.

The second amendment in subsection (d) requires an experts opinion to demonstrate that the experts reliable principles and methods were reliably applied to the facts of the case at hand. The Draft Committee Notes clarify that this amendment is intended to stop extravagant claims that are unsupported by the experts basis and methodology. This change is intended to stop courts from justifying admission of expert opinion by reasoning that the methodology matters, not the ultimate opinion. In other words, the amendments are intended to signal to judges that an expert should be excluded if the conclusion does not logically follow from a reliable application of the experts principles and methods, which will potentially lead to a higher rate of expert exclusions than were seen under Daubert.

Nothing in this amendment imposes any new procedures or standards. It is merely an effort to clarify the standard and to begin to rectify the ubiquitous errors made by courts when determining the admissibility of expert opinion. The approved amendment will be reviewed by the Judicial Conference in the fall, then the U.S. Supreme Court, and finally the U.S. Congress. If Congress approves the amendment, it will take effect on December 1, 2023

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Judges, Be the Gatekeepers 702 Needs you to Be | Husch Blackwell LLP - JDSupra - JD Supra

As Senate negotiators continue work on fine-tuning concepts for a gun control framework announced last week, one issue that has received surprisingly little attention is the potential inclusion of juvenile records in federal firearm background checks.

Who could argue with that? one might say. The more records available for review, the better.

The truth, as usual, is more complicated than most people realize.

Including juvenile records in firearms background checks presents a number of thorny issues, including those related to due process, developmental psychology, and logistics. Anyone who values the Second Amendment and fundamental fairness should approach the issue with caution and skepticism.

First, it is important to understand how the current federal background check process for firearm acquisition works.

In the case of a federally licensed dealer (FFL), the intended recipient visits the FFLs place of business and fills out a form answering under penalties of perjury yes or no to various questions about potentially disqualifying adjudications, commitments, convictions, or other circumstances.

The FFL then contacts the FBI or a state criminal records agency (depending on whether the state in question has opted in to administering its own system), which checks the individuals personal identifiers against the records available to the system.

It is important to understand that under current law, disqualifying circumstances are meant to be categorical and objective. That is, the only question for the background check system is whether any records indicate a person falls into a statutorily defined class of prohibited persons.

If not, the transfer is approved.

If so, the transfer is denied.

If the matter is unclear, the transfer is delayed, and the underlying circumstances are subject to further review.

In order to ensure such delays dont lead to de facto prohibitions without actual proof of ineligibility, however, FFLs have the option (but not the requirement) to transfer the firearm after three business days elapse from when the background check was initiated. The FFL, of course, must not have any reason to believe the person is actually prohibited before making the transfer.

In the case of a delay-transfer, background check analysts continue trying to resolve the question of the persons eligibility for several more weeks (up to about 90 days). If a disability is eventually established, the case will be referred to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives for possible retrieval of the firearm and, where appropriate, prosecution of the individual for lying on the background check form.

The records that populate the background check system are overwhelmingly provided by the states, and include records of arrest, conviction, and the outcome of other judicial proceedings.

The statutorily defined categories of prohibited persons most likely to implicate juvenile records include any person who:

This is where things get complicated.

Thats because there is a separate justice system pertaining to juveniles in the states.

As explained on a government website that describes the features of the juvenile justice system, the process operates according to the premise that youth are fundamentally different from adults, both in terms of level of responsibility and potential for rehabilitation.

In line with these goals, the system typically takes a more paternalistic and less punitive view of justice than the adult criminal justice system. The website continues:

The juvenile justice system takes a significantly more restorative approach than the adult criminal justice system. A truly successful case for youth would result in the adolescent learning from the experience without exposure to the severity of an adult prison, altering their decisions and life course moving forward, and having no future contact with the juvenile or criminal justice systems. ***

There exists a firm belief that youth can and will lead healthy and constructive lives if given the opportunity to grow instead of being presumed irredeemable and segregated from their communities.

The flipside of this restorative approach, however, is that the juvenile system is typically more informal and less focused on procedural due process than the adult criminal justice system. Most states do not consider adjudications of delinquency in the same category as criminal convictions.

This promotes the goal of giving the system more options to provide services and rehabilitative opportunities to the accused juvenile.

From the juveniles perspective, however, there are not all the same procedural protections from state action as in the adult system.

This restorative emphasis and lower threshold of judicial process also means records of juvenile adjudications are treated differently than criminal convictions. Most are not considered public records, for example. And often they are purged when the juvenile reaches the age of majority. In general, juvenile records are less likely to be held against the individual than records of criminal convictions.

Of course, juvenile misbehavior varies in degrees. And in most states, very serious behavior homicides or assaults resulting in serious physical injury, for example can lead to a juvenile being prosecuted in the adult criminal justice system, with all the usual consequences that implies.

Given all this, including records of juvenile adjudications in firearm-related background check systems can introduce serious legal, philosophical, and practical problems.

Developmentally, juveniles as compared to adults are likely to be relatively ignorant, impulsive, overconfident, and shortsighted to lack perspective and mature judgement. All this, of course, predictably leads to more disruptive tendencies. But sometimes acting out on these tendencies says less about the character of the juvenile than the persons age, development, and circumstances.

The very existence of juvenile justice systems throughout the states demonstrates a consensus that it is cruel to allow bad decision-making in youth to hold back someone in adulthood who has gotten his or her act together.

Moreover, when it comes to due process and the ability of juveniles to assert their rights against unjustified or erroneous state action, they do not have the resources, sophistication, or procedural benefits available to defendants in the adult criminal justice system. In other words, even innocent juveniles may have to take the rap, rather than beat the rap, simply because they do not have the means, knowledge, or wherewithal to assert their rights.

Practically speaking, the considerable problems that have plagued background check systems even with criminal records are likely to be even more pronounced with juvenile records. The quality, availability, reliability, consistency, accuracy, and thoroughness of juvenile records will almost certainly be less across the board than criminal records, because the very point of having a separate system is so these records DO NOT follow juveniles throughout their lives.

Finally, using juvenile records against individuals ONLY in the Second Amendment context disparages this fundamental liberty and treats it as a second-class right.

This should chill the heart of any pro-gun advocate who understands the essential difference between a right the government cannot abrogate without compelling and well-established justification versus a privilege it can administer, bestow, and deny at its own pleasure.

Given these issues, NRA-ILA recommends limiting records about juveniles in firearm-related background check systems to those pertaining to criminal convictions in the adult system.

Rest assured, the NRA will be closely scrutinizing the outcome of the Senate negotiations to ensure issues pertaining to juvenile records are not used as an end run to prevent law-abiding, responsible adults from benefitting from the right to keep and bear arms.

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Juvenile Records for Background Checks: An Issue That Should Provoke Caution, Skepticism - NRA ILA

AUBURN, Ala. Im a left-leaning Democrat, but on May 24, I voted on the Republican ballot in Alabamas primary election. The states primaries are open, which means Democrats can request a Republican ballot, and vice versa. Alabama is a deep red state, and I wanted some say in electing the officials who will represent me, because they will almost all certainly be Republican.

And have a say I did: Tom Whatley, the state senator for my district, finished behind Jay Hovey by a single vote. (A hearing on Saturday will determine whether Mr. Hovey will be declared the winner.) I voted for Mr. Hovey because I find Mr. Whatleys policies and legacy so abhorrent. If I hadnt cast my vote on a Republican ballot, the two men would be tied.

The walk from my car to the polling station seemed long because I was 38 weeks pregnant, and the heat of our Southern summer was already in full force.

Mr. Hoveys campaign literature describes him as a conservative, Christian Republican whos going to fight for our children, born and unborn, and protect our Second Amendment rights. And the rest of us meaning the nonconservative, non-Christian citizens of our district can go eat glass, as a friend of mine put it.

In 2019, Alabama enacted a near-total ban on abortion. I drove three friends to the Capitol in Montgomery, an hour away from Auburn, where we protested; the ban was blocked because abortion rights are protected federally. Its likely they wont be for long, that soon Ill live in a state where abortion is largely, if not completely, restricted; a state that will also allow, come January, individuals to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.

Thats a bill Mr. Whatley supported, though our county sheriff came out against it. Id like to think Mr. Hovey would not support such dangerous idiocy, but I might be kidding myself.

Mr. Whatley seemed to forget, as a lot of the politicians here do, that he represents me and my family, along with my conservative Christian neighbors. But I think Democrats in Washington have forgotten they represent Alabamians, too.

My thinking on why were in the situation were in where 61 percent of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, yet that access may soon to be taken away has changed greatly since I moved to the Deep South from Missouri, nearly seven years ago. Democrats have ignored this state, and its neighbors, for decades. I have heard some of them describe people here as ignorant, backward and deplorable. I cant tell you how many times people who live in big, blue cities have blinked in amazement when I tell them I live in Alabama, or that I like it. That surprise is its own kind of ignorance.

And I do like it. I think its valuable to live in a place where everyone doesnt think exactly the same as I do, but beyond that, I love the natural beauty of the South, the friendliness, the food. The stories. The South has flaws, but so does every place. Every time I write an essay about my home I get hate mail. Its less directed at me and more directed at the South a place that I am sometimes told should no longer exist. Its easy to write off an entire region from afar; less easy when you live here.

Theres so much beauty in rural Alabama, and it often abuts terrible poverty. A brilliantly hued hydrangea next to a trailer with blacked-out windows. A row of abandoned old houses next to a field of unmown wildflowers. I do believe that Democratic policies are friendlier to the poor, but how would you know that if you live in a trailer without running water or internet in the middle of a state that has long been out of play for Democratic candidates in national elections? (The victory by a Democrat, Doug Jones, in the U.S. Senate special election in 2017 was anomalous; three years later he was beaten by a Republican former college football coach with no political experience.)

I understand why Democratic presidential candidates wouldnt want to waste time and money campaigning here Alabama feels as if it belongs to Republicans. This is a state with three abortion clinics; as of 2017, there were 113 of them in New York.

The afternoon of the primary in May, my parents came over to watch my children so my husband and I could go to my final ultrasound. I am considered high risk because Im 40 and so during the last weeks of my pregnancy I was closely monitored. There is no doubt in my mind I received excellent care. There is also no doubt in my mind that care for me and other women will be compromised if abortion rights are dismantled. Women would seek out unsafe abortions. Certain forms of birth control might be made illegal, a miscarriage might be dangerously drawn out really, the possibilities are endless.

Your body does not feel like your own at the end of a pregnancy. My stomach was so large it looked otherworldly, especially when the baby inside moved. I was exhausted and swollen. My mind didnt feel particularly like my own, either. My thinking was scattered, my attention span short. This will be my last pregnancy. I feel lucky to experience it.

But that feeling luck, as if Im the witness to some kind of magic, the magic that produces a human from a womb can exist, and does, alongside my belief that its barbaric to deny women the choice of whether they want to carry a child in the first place.

I can believe in the ideals of the Democratic Party while believing that the party has, in certain respects, lost its way; I can become enraged at its recent, hollow attempt to codify abortion rights into federal law. The partys leadership seems to be looking at this moment as a way to improve its chances in the midterms.

I look at this moment quite differently. I think of all the poor women who live in this state, the women who will disproportionately be forced to carry pregnancies they do not want, who cannot afford to travel to the nearest clinic that legally provides abortion. Is it nave to wonder why Democrats at the national level didnt try harder to provide easier access to abortion in red states when they could have? Why dont elected officials truly serve both the people who vote for them and the people who dont? That these questions seem nave, that I already know the answers, doesnt make them any less pressing.

I read the earliest news of the school shooting in Texas while scrolling through my phone in the ultrasound clinics waiting room, where my husband and I saw the first images of our childs face, rendered in 4-D. By the time I gave birth, a week later, the same arguments that always play out between right and left after mass shootings were playing out again. Nothing had changed. Usually I ignore mass shootings, because they seem like the price of living in this country. Its harder to do when the victims are children.

Impossible, one might say.

Anton DiSclafani is the author of the novels The After Party and The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, and an associate professor of creative writing at Auburn University.

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Opinion | How the Abortion and Gun Debates Look From Alabama - The New York Times

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected within days to rule on the validity of a New York state law that places strict limits on carrying handguns, New York State Rifle & Pistol Inc. v. Bruen and the decision could rewrite the heated American debate over gun control.

Opponents of the law, which requires those seeking a concealed-carry license to prove that they need it for self-protection,argue that the statute is barred by the Second Amendment to the Constitution. But the fact that the Justices are now considering overturning the New York law which has been in effect for more than a century is a vivid indicator of how the justices view of the Second Amendment has taken a dramatic turn in the 21st century, and how what were once unanimous decisions that the amendments reach is limited have turned into rancorous debates at a sharply divided court.

The Second Amendment was added to the Constitution as part of the Bill of Rights in December 1791. It reads: 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.

That was not a controversial provision, merely codifying a widely held view on the legitimacy of a citizen militia and repeating a guarantee included in the British Bill of Rights of 1689 and the earlier U.S. Articles of Confederation.

What gun controls were and were not allowed was so uncontroversial that it was 1939 before the first case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on whether the Second Amendment applied to a specific law curbing gun ownership. In fact, the Supreme Court had been in business for 85 years before it got its first case involving the Second Amendment at all. And then it was only a peripheral issue.

1875s United States v. Cruikshank had its origins in disputes over the outcome of the 1872 gubernatorial election in Louisiana disputes that led to such violence that more than 100 Blacks were killed. The federal government charged some of the white vigilantes with violating an 1870 statute making it unlawful to conspire to deprive anyone of their constitutional rights. Part of the charges were that the defendants had taken away the arms with which the Blacks were defending themselves.

The justices unanimously freed the vigilantes, saying that the constitutional curbs on seizing guns do not apply to actions of individuals. The Second Amendment, they said, doesnt give anyone the right to own firearms, it merely prohibits governmental action to take away their guns.

But the opinion by Chief Justice Morrison Waite went much further. The Second Amendment, he wrote means no more than it shall not be infringed by Congress. This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government.

In other words, he said, the Bill of Rights creates no barriers to firearms regulation by state or local government.

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The Supreme Court again unanimously reaffirmed that position 11 years later. The case had to do with the validity of a $10 fine.

It was imposed on Herman Presser, a member of a group of Chicago workers of German background organized to counter the armed private guard squads formed by local employers. He headed some 400 of the members as they marched through Chicago streets carrying rifles.

That violated a state statute against any private militia not licensed by the governor. Presser insisted that prosecuting him infringed on his Second Amendments right to bear arms, but the justices were having none of it. Reiterating the Cruikshankstance, in Presser v. Illinois Justice William B. Woods wrote unequivocally: [T]he amendment is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the national government, and not upon that of the state.

From the beginning of the republic, states had placed some limits on gun owners, such as forbidding carrying them in crowded places. But with the Supreme Court assurance that such statutes were valid, in the last decades of the 19th century, the popularity of such laws in state legislatures really took off.

Twenty-eight states had some curbs on where guns could be carried, and 15 barred minors from owning guns. In 1875, Wyoming actually banned all personally owned firearms from any city, town or village.

None of these state statutes were challenged at the Supreme Court.

It was 53 years before the Supreme Court again ruled on a Second Amendment case. United States v. Millerwas the first time the Justices looked directly at a Second Amendment challenge to a gun control law; without dissent they continued to emphasize that the amendment leaves lots of leeway for government regulation.

Under scrutiny was the very first significant federal curb on gun ownership. The 1934 National Firearms Act, passed in reaction to bloody criminal gang shootouts, imposed no bans; it did demand that various guns (those mostly used by criminals) be registered for a $200 fee. Two men arrested for bringing an unregistered sawed-off shotgun from Oklahoma into Arkansas argued that the law was an invalid incursion on their right to bear arms.

But the decision found that right was a very narrow one. The opinion by Justice James C. McReynolds interpreted the amendment as applying only to a defensive militia, and found that a sawed-off shotgun does not have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.

It was not until 1995 that there was a hint that new personnel on the court might be bringing with them a different reading of the Second Amendment. It came in United States v. Lopez, a challenge to the conviction of Alfonso Lopez Jr. for bringing a concealed handgun and bullets to his high school in San Antonio, Texas a violation of a 1990 federal law banning possession of any firearm at a place that the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, is a school zone.

The high court threw out the conviction and held the law invalid as reaching beyond the powers the powers Congress claimed it had to regulate commerce. The Second Amendment was not at issue at all.

But Lopezis a significant part of gun rights history because it was the very first time the Supreme Court struck down a firearms control law. And the justices 5-4 vote showed that the unanimity that had characterized the previous gun control decisions had been shattered.

In 2008, those hints that the Supreme Court was moving away from its narrow reading of the constitutional limits on gun control became unequivocal reality. With another 5-4 decision, the justices tremendously broadened the Second Amendment prohibitions and threw into doubt more than a century of precedents.

That case, Washington, D.C. v. Heller, invalidated a broad gun control law in the District of Columbia that barred possession of handguns and required that other firearms be registered and kept unassembled, even in the owners home. Robert A. Levy, a lawyer who sensed that the Supreme Court was ready to changes its views of gun control laws, had rounded up a diverse group of six local residents to challenge the law.

At the high court, a five-justice majority agreed with Levys clients. The opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia specifically rejected the interpretation that the Second Amendment was exclusively about owning firearms that could be used by a militia, calling that language only a prefatory clause. In fact, he wrote, the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans whether or not they have an intention of participating in a militia.

In other words, as a general rule, neither the federal nor state or local government can put curbs on individual gun ownership.

The court in Heller almost hits the reset button on the Second Amendment, Duke University law professor Joseph Blocher, co-director of the universitys Center for Firearms Law, said.

Scalia did go to pains to make clear that that rule was not absolute that some gun controls were valid, albeit only narrow ones.

Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on the 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, he wrote.

Heller is the standard by which all gun control measures are now judged. In two cases that it took up before the current one assessing the New York gun carry law, the Supreme Court made that clear. Because the District of Columbia is a federal enclave, some argued that Heller did not apply to the state and local laws. But in 2010, again in a 5-4 decision, the court held that the same standard applies to all jurisdictions, thereby invalidating a Chicago policy that for 50 years had effectively banned the acquisition of handguns. And in 2016, in a case the justices thought was so clear-cut that they didnt need to hear oral arguments, the high court invalidated a Massachusetts ban on stun guns, even thought it had been upheld by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, that states highest court.

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The History of Gun Control and the Second Amendment - HistoryNet

Letter to Editor,

I have one simple question to ask the anti-gun folks protesting in Culver City. How would you defend yourself if an armed criminal broke into your house and threatened your life?

I have posed that question to our local Culver City social network groups, and I never got a coherent answer. Infact, one person whined to me and asked me what I would do. I simply answered that I would shoot the intruder and the person who was anti-gun would be dead.

As a consequence, to my answer, the whining anti-gun person complained to Facebook that I was violating community standards and that I should be suspended from Facebook.

Since fascist book, I mean Facebook, is biased against guns and the 2nd amendment, my Facebook account has been suspended for 30 days for supposedly violating the community standards of a whiner.

Not only are our 2nd amendment rights being attacked but our first amendment rights are being suppressed by big tech companies.

This all happened because I asked a simple question that has not been satisfactorily been answered by the anti-gun fanatics.

Robert Zirgulis

Culver City

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Defends Second Amendment Gun Rights - Culver City Observer

Regarding Militias were the intent (Letters to the Editor, June 16): As a historian of the Second Amendment, I agree with historian Joe La Salas letter about its intent and the fallacy of originalism, but not that its misinterpretation today is the fault of identity politics.

Identity politics were embedded in the Constitution, written by white men, excluding Indian, Black people and women, plus Mexicans once the U.S. had forcibly annexed half of Mexico. Each group would experience oppression and struggle for citizenship and formal equality.

La Sala also fails to mention research about what the white militias codified in the Second Amendment were for: killing Indians to occupy their land and to guard against slave revolts.

The Second Amendment needs to be abolished for the white supremacist entity that it is.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, San Francisco

Regarding Alameda County should end mask mandate (Insight, June 12): A quick look at virus numbers across the area, state and country shows yet another large spike. Why? Because careless individuals like the authors of Sundays opinion piece think their personal freedoms trump everyone elses right to be safe.

As long as an attitude that somehow having to wear a mask in public is so horrific that you need to risk the health of others continues, this virus will continue to spike over and over.

Lets get real, so-called personal freedom is an illusion. You pay taxes, obey traffic laws, wear clothing, use a helmet on a bike or motorcycle, use a seat belt; these are just a few examples of curbs on your freedoms. Why are you not screaming about these attacks? Irony much?

Im really tired of all this whining of personal freedoms. We need to put this virus to sleep, and if that means a bit of inconvenience for all of us to get healthy, suck it up. Its really sad how self-centered so many have become. Its not all about you.

Time to stop being so selfish and consider a greater good.

Owen Rubin, San Leandro

Regarding Muni bond narrowly rejected voters (Bay Area & Business, June 15): Is the Chesa Boudin recall to blame? Connecting Measure A to the Boudin recall does little to address the root cause of the bonds failure: Proposition 13.

In 1978, California voters passed Proposition 13, which placed limits on property tax increases but also stipulated that any tax increase or bond measure, local or statewide, could only pass with a two-thirds super-majority vote. Over the past four decades, raising needed funds for critical public services has become increasingly difficult.

Measure A didnt fail because of pro-recall voters, we simply cant expect to pass $400 million for Muni when 66% of San Franciscans are required to vote yes. If our state representatives in Sacramento truly care about lifting our city out of this pandemic, then the answer is simple: Lower the super-majority threshold. Theyve already done this with school construction bonds, now its time to attend to our crippling infrastructure.

Madeline Cook, Oakland

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Letters: What the real intent of the Second Amendment's militias was - San Francisco Chronicle

The corporate media is abuzz with news that senators have reached a bipartisan gun deal that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell endorsed on Tuesday but sacrificing Americans constitutional rights to hoaxing Democrats who have and will use their power to target their political enemies is nothing for Republicans to be proud of. Its the type of ideological surrender that they should lose their jobs and leadership positions over.

The bill text is still not available but from what Democrat Sen. Chris Murphys Twitter feed and the official framework indicate, the legislation could include sweeping measures such as problematic red flag laws that overstep too many constitutional bounds for Republicans to comfortably sacrifice.

Despite concerns that the legislation could compromise Americans Second, Fifth, and FourteenthAmendment rights, McConnell and 10 of his squishiest GOP colleagues including Sens. John Cornyn of Texas, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Rob Portman of Ohio, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Mitt Romney of Utah, Bill Cassidy of Lousiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania plan to join the Democrats anti-gun escapades. Together, they caved to the emotional blackmail wielded by Murphy and amplified by the corporate media.

Republicans have no good reason to trust Democrats to skilfully create legislation that is mindful of Americans rights. Nor do GOPers have reasons to support legislation that yields little evidence of actually deterring criminals from committing crimes that are already illegal.

After all, the leftist legislators supporting the gun deal are the same politicians whosupported spying on a president, falsely accused a Supreme Court nominee-turned-justice of rape, defended the Biden administration when it sicced the feds on parents who wanted a say in what happens in their childs classrooms, and so much more.

In the past, when Democrats have been given inch-sized opportunities to restrict gun rights, theyve sought to take miles and ban certain guns and gun parts altogether.

As my colleague Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi recently noted, historically, Democrats have not only tried to expand the definition of partner in domestic violence-motivated gun grabs but have also tried to broaden the reasons for losing your gun rights toincludemany types of non-violent misdemeanors.

Yet, some of the most powerful GOPers in Congress, even those who have sworn to protect the Second Amendment, are salivating to sign dangerously broad and likely deliberately unspecific legislation crafted by these same Democrats.

Congressional Democrats like Murphy and their allies in corporate media have already admitted that the gun deal includes considerably more than [Democrats] hoped for initially.

Thats because the Republicans involved in negotiations pressured for nothing, so they got nothing.

McConnells gun restriction lead negotiator Cornyn likes to brag about his A+ rating from the National Rifle Association but the Republicans former promises not to restrict Americans rights to guns have been repeatedly broken and will be violated if this new bill passes. Even Cornyns meaningless boasting about everything excluded from the Democrats bill signals theres nothing that was included that he found worthy of praising.

So not only have Republicans signed onto more gun restrictions but theyve also ceded constitutional ground to Democrats who have a history of abusing their self-assigned power to gatekeep who can access a firearm.

Yielding power to Democrats like Murphy who exploited the Texas tragedy to orchestrate a gun grab is nothing for McConnell or any Republicans to be proud of. As a matter of fact, thats something worth forcing them out of office over.

The people most at risk of losing in this bipartisan deal are Republicans who will never get the benefit of a winning compromise with Democrats and law-abiding citizens who under the Consitution have every right to own and use guns. Most congressional Republicans have sworn to protect these rights but right now, 10 of the ones closest to McConnell are not.

These Republicans were chosen carefully because most of them are not at risk of getting voted out of office soon, but the dozens of other Senate GOPers who see the problems with handing over control of Americans rights should do everything they can to bar them from leadership. If Republicans were willing to cave on the Second Amendment, how much emotional manipulation will it take for them to surrender on other key conservative issues?

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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McConnell, GOPers Attacking The 2nd Amendment Can't Be In Leadership - The Federalist

Mississippi leaders of the New Black Panther Party spoke out against black-on-black violence and the crime crisis gripping their community Tuesday.

"Black people shouldn't be killing black people, under no circumstances," member Steven Harris said during a press conference in Jackson, Mississippi. "You have to love your people."

Crime and death in the community have reached a crisis point, according to Sherrell Potts, a commander in the New Black Panther Party.

CALIFORNIA ANIMAL SHELTER BANS PET ADOPTIONS FOR GUN RIGHTS SUPPORTERS

"We just had a 5-year-old baby get killed at a convenience store," Potts said.

Leaders of the group also used Tuesday's press conference to announce a slew of events, including a National Black Unity Convention, according to a report.

Events will include a national self-defense training and a national self-defense Second Amendment assembly, the report noted.

Tuesday's remarks come less than a month after the New Black Panther Party called for an end to gang violence in minority communities.

Lets not be our own worst enemy. Lets be creative. Lets build," New Black Panther Party's General Taylormade said, according to a report.

"Let's provide a better future for the youth. Instead of allowing them to deteriorate, we have to set the tone. We cant sit back and say, 'Its not our problem.' It can become your problem. It can come sit at your doorstep."

Gangs need to put down their guns and community members need to combat the hardships faced in underrepresented areas, the group said.

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"Put the guns down. Stop killing your people. Learn how to unite in your community," Harris said.

More:
Pro-Second Amendment New Black Panther Party speaks out against rising crime - Washington Examiner

Submitted by Aaron Arkin.

In the 1963 movie of the same name, Billy Liar (played by Tom Courtenay) is an aggrieved young man, described as ambitious but lazy, living at home in a middle-class English family. Unable to free himself from his dependency and lacking the strength of character to move himself into the world of adult choices, he resorts to constant lying (thus the name) and frequent fantasizing. Of the latter, the most striking is when in response to a harangue from his parents, we see him armed with a machine gun angrily mowing down his entire family. For the movie audience, the contrast between Billys fantasy and what is actually and mundanely taking place at the family dinner table is shocking, and maybe for some, even vindicatory.

Of course, Billy wouldnt really murder his family, and in England he wouldnt have ready access to a machine gun. But experiencing grievance is not rare, and in our country awash in assault weaponry, the aggrieved dont always settle for just fantasy.

When establishing responsibility for a criminal act, three elements are sought: means, motive, and opportunity. In the case of mass murder, means is easy access to guns. Here in the US, their ubiquity was turbocharged by the Supreme Courts most recent interpretation of the Second Amendment which reads: 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.

Historian consensus for most of American history however, was that the Second Amendment limited the un-infringed possession of Arms to a citizen militia. They concluded the Founding Fathers were focused on keeping state militias from being disarmed in the absence of a national armed service. The revised interpretation of the Amendment, giving individuals that constitutional right, was provided by the opinion of Justice Antonin Scalia. Writing for the 5 to 4 majority in District of Columbia v. Heller (June 20, 2008), he ignored both the Amendments historical context, and its grammatical construction.

The Second Amendments grammatical construction, it is built on two clauses, the building blocks of sentences. Clauses are groups of related words (phrases) that contain both a subject and a verb. When a clause can stand alone as a complete sentence with a clear meaning, its considered independent. If it only makes sense when you join it with another clause, its dependent (or subordinate). A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State is a dependent clause because it makes sense, that is, it is only a complete thought when combined with its following clause the right to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

Another way we know that the Second Amendments grammatical construction is a complete and logical thought only when the two clauses are combined is because, according to the grammar text, Writing and Thinking, Foerster and Steadman, revised by McMillan, the meaning of the independent and dependent clauses holds if the full statement can be preceded by the terms if, in case that, provided that, unless, since, as, because, inasmuch as, in that, or and now that, without changing the thought of the sentence. For example: Inasmuch as 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 has the same meaning as the Second Amendment.

Summing up, the complete thought and logic of the two Second Amendment clauses is that, if militias are necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms wont be infringed. The converse of that statement is that, if militias are not necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms does not automatically follow. Since we no longer have or utilize self-armed citizen militias to secure the State, the Second Amendments rationale became irrelevant or inapplicable when the United States created its own armed services. One could reasonably argue that, in effect, the Second Amendment repealed itself.

As an avowed constitutional textualist (by the way, a questionable and controversial mode of legal interpretation of historic documents), who supposedly focused on the plain meaning of the text of legal documents to understand and emphasize how the terms in the Constitution would be understood by people at the time they were ratified, as well as the context in which those terms appeared, it is striking and ironic that Judge Scalia chose to ignore both the grammatical construction of the Amendment, and its historical context. In his dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens (joined by Ruth Bader Ginsberg, David Souter, and Steven Breyer) argued that the courts judgment was a strained and unpersuasive reading which overturned longstanding precedent, and that the court had bestowed a dramatic upheaval in the law. One may fairly conclude that in his desire to provide individual citizens the right to have Arms for self-protection, Judge Scalias commitment as a constitutional textualist was conditional.

Many supporters of Scalias interpretation do seem to sense that his reading of the Second Amendments intent rests on shaky legal ground; seeing any restriction on gun rights as a hole in the dike or a slippery slope, if you will, that could cause Scalias legal edifice to fail. Pointedly, we dont see similarly strenuous advocacy in service to the other nine Bill of Rights Amendments which, presumably, sit on firmer legal grounds. Shaky grounds or not, with the Courts ruling, we are now left to deal with its unintended consequences.

When it comes to grievance as a common human experience for motive (the second element of a criminal act) at the heart of mass shootings, I am brought in mind of an ironic saying, Lucky the man who knows who his enemy is. I take this to mean that if ones focus is on an enemy for ones difficulties or failures, it is not necessary to look within. And unfortunately as it turns out for us, for many people with that need there is no lack of enemies: different races, religions, political views, sexual identity and preferences, immigrants, economic classes, event attendees, people in power, people without power, high achievers, old people, young people, people who criticized, bullied, bested, insulted, or made fun of you; who cut you off on the highway, drove too slowly, wore the wrong color clothing, said something you didnt like, looked at you funnily, had something you were lacking. In other words, the other.

Opportunity (the third element of a criminal act) for mass murder is provided by so-called soft targets: night clubs, houses of worship, places of employment, grocery stores, schools, restaurants, malls, public gatherings, festivals, highways, homes, neighborhood streets. There is really no limit. Considering all of the above, we have a perfect storm for increasing the number of mass killings using semi-automatic and what are effectively automatic weapons.

Even in the face of this horrific violence however, there has been little appetite for meaningful political solutions. There is even refusal by many politicians to accept that the proliferation of lethal weaponry contributes to the slaughter. Instead we get the mantra: Guns dont kill people; people kill people, followed by arguments for increasing funding for mental health care (which ironically many politicians on the right have voted to defund in the past), hardening all soft targets (as if that were really possible), and getting tougher on criminals (although we incarcerate more people than any other nation on earth): anything but meaningful restrictions on access to guns and banning the most dangerous weapons.

Supporters of least restrictive gun laws also make the argument that we would be safer with more arming of the citizenry, including teachers, more open carry laws, and fewer restrictions on concealed weapons. As it is estimated there are already more guns in private hands in America then there are people, by that measure we should already be the safest country in the world. In fact, we have the second highest number of gun deaths in the world.

A more rational approach would be the one that has been adopted by other advanced democracies. They ignore any right to bear Arms type of construct, and balancing the interest in of public safety against providing self-protection for responsible citizens, just regulate the sale of weapons and the kinds of weapons permitted.

But back to Billy Liar: at the end of the movie, he finds himself in a position to make an actual grownup choice. Hes met a free-spirited young woman (Julie Christie, in her break-out role) who is ready to meet the challenges of the adult world and who offers him the opportunity to join her and start life on their own. And part of him wants this: to overcome his need for dependency; to have an adult relationship, and to make his own way. Sitting on a train about to leave the station, poised for an entry into an adult future, Billy chooses to leave the train to get some milk to drink (what could be more emblematic of dependency and lack of real agency?), promising Julie there is plenty of time for him to get back before the train leaves.

The audience instantly realizes Billy will not be coming back. True to form, he delays his return, described by one critic as the train leaves the station without him as, . . . shrugging on the platform and settling for the mediocrity he despises and probably deserves. Turns out Billy reserved the worst lies for himself. Seems he is not alone.

Go here to read the rest:
Letter: Billy Liar: Coming Soon To a Theater Near You The Suburban Times - The Suburban Times