Category Archives: Second Amendment

As a Bowdoin student from central Maine, I have begun to realize that, in many ways, Maine is like two different states. To the Bowdoin students who are used to the liberal and welcoming politics of Brunswick and the greater Portland area, there is confusion as to how someone like Paul LePage was able to become the leader of such a seemingly open-minded state. Called Americas Trumpiest governor, LePage became infamous for his racist rants about drug traffickers and his obscene voicemail to a lawmaker who called attention to his racism. Just weeks into his tenure as governor, he shockingly told the NAACP to kiss his butt.

Understanding the popularity of LePage, who is now running for a third term as governor, is critical to understanding the totality of Maine, its people and its ongoing economic challenges.

As someone from the more rural and conservative part of the state, it is not surprising to me that LePage remained popular among so many of the white working-class Mainers who loathe the technological advancement and change associated with people from southern Maine, and especially with those from out of state. To these voters, LePage, being from the town of Lewistonwhich is known for its blue-collar rootsmeans more than just loyalty and understanding. His tenure as a manager of Mardens, a chain discount store popular in the state, gave him cache as a hardworking man of the people. His bluntness and willingness to offend the elites was also part of the appeal.

In addition, LePage plays into the us versus them mentality that has been exacerbated by the political and socioeconomic differences among Maines first and second congressional districts. To those from southern Maine, LePage and his supporters are often viewed as ignorant and bigoted people, stuck in the past and obstinately trusting the GOP to somehow save them from their economic failures. To many from the northern parts of the state, wealthy out-of-touch people and people from away are not seen as real Mainers and dont understand the struggle that comes from the loss of commerce and support that came with the shrinking of the mill industry in many communities. When people lament the popularity of figures like LePage and Donald Trump in Maine, blame is pushed onto the hicks for their closed-mindedness. This, in turn, causes conservative voters to feel distanced from the people and politics of the southern part of the state.

I recently heard that a student from out of state was told that everyone from north of Bangor is crazy. But this again speaks to the idea of the vastly different poles of the state of Maine. There is no line that divides the politics of Maine into normal and crazy or liberal and conservative. There is, however, the concept of a Volvo line that demarcates how the quality of life and values are believed to shift from yuppie millennials and crowded tourist towns to hunting and fishing enthusiasts who love the Second Amendment and use Facebook as their primary news source. But this line also speaks to issues of income inequality and wealth disparities in the state.

While these divisions are salient in situations like elections, they are not black and white. There are Bernie Bros in Presque Isle and Trump fans in Portland. Maines second congressional district (representing the northern four fifths of the state) has a Democrat for its representative. At its core, classism is a large component of the conversation, and disparities in education and income must be recognized. Generally, the further north you look in Maine, the lower the median household income becomes, the lower the level of education becomes and the more economic opportunity becomes scarce. While poverty is not the root of conservativeness, this gap in vitality is a source of contention.

Misplaced anger for Maines disparities elevates people like Paul LePage, who can make big promises to empower those who feel left behind and ignored, and who has a Trump-like persona of being tough on outsiders and having the best interests of the people of rural America at heart.

Not noticing and understanding the complexities of all of Maineincluding the parts of the state that are geographically far, and very different from, Brunswickcan lead to a simplistic understanding of Maines politics.

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A look outside the Bowdoin bubble - The Bowdoin Orient

A Shasta County Board of Supervisors meeting where residents argued for and against impeaching board members. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Throughout Northern California, a swath of conservative, sparsely populated counties have headed in a dramatically different direction politically in recent years to the rest of the state. Nowhere is this more clear than in Shasta County, home of the magnificent Shasta Mountain as well as 179,000 residents, and a mecca to mountaineers and hikers from around the world. In November 2020, while two-thirds of California voters chose Biden over Trump, in Shasta those numbers were reversed. Nearly 63 percent of local voters supported the coup-plotting MAGA man.

Shasta, along with roughly a dozen other northern and eastern counties in the state, has a dismal Covid-vaccination ratejust over 50 percent have received one dose of the vaccine, but significantly under half the population has received two or more dosesand a political environment increasingly fractured around the issue of mask mandates, public health restrictions, and vaccine requirements. The low vaccination rates have, especially during the Omicron surge, translated to high rates of infection, hospitalization, and death. At the same time, conservative residents have grown increasingly hostile to any and all public health measures intended to rein in the pandemic.

Last year, a recall effort was launched against three members of the countys board of supervisors, whom activists deemed werent conservative enough, especially when it came to pandemic policies. One of the three campaigns, against supervisor Leonard Moty, got enough signatures to qualify for the ballotMoty says that his well-financed opponents targeted him, in particular, on the assumption that once he fell, the county government would immediately tilt toward the alt-right. The recall election was set for this past Tuesday, February 1.

Moty is a Republican, and the former police chief in the town of Redding; but, despite these credentials, he and two of his colleagues, Joe Chimenti and Mary Rickert, were targeted for recall by conservatives after they voted to censure the other two county supervisors, Les Baugh and Patrick Jones, for letting the public into the boards chambers on January 5 of 2021 in the face of a countywide order banning in-person meetings. The three were also criticized by conservative opponents for not withdrawing the county from Governor Newsoms color-tiered system, in place for more than a year, that set different levels of restrictions on businesses and on public gatherings depending on what the infection levels and test-positivity rates were in each county.

While not all of the votes have been tallied yet, early returns from Tuesdays election strongly indicate that Moty will lose the recall. As of Wednesday evening, the no-on-recall side was trailing the yes-on-recallers by more than 5 percent, and the conservative activists were preparing to evict Moty, whom they deride as a RINO (Republican In Name Only), from his county office.

With many thousands of mail-in votes still to be counted, it is, of course, still mathematically possible for Moty to emerge triumphant, but local media and Moty himself expect the recall to prevail. If the supervisor loses, the front-runner to replace him is a conservative anti-crime activist named Dale Ball who, ironically, has a slew of problems with the law in his own past. At least one local media outlet reported that in the 1990s, Ball picked up several DUIs and a couple other criminal charges. The Record Searchlight, a newspaper with a circulation of 30,000 based in the regions largest town, Redding, also reports that he was arrested in 2006 on child endangerment charges after apparently beating his girlfriends 13-year-old son with a flashlight. Ball claimed that he hit the boy in self-defense, and he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge in the case. He also argues that his long track record of volunteerism, including organizing efforts to clean up homeless encampments, ought to carry far more weight than a sixteen-year-old misdemeanor charge. (Moty counters that, yes, Ball did clean up the encampments, but he says that Ball also ran with a vigilante group that called itself the Redding Area Transient Patrol, more colloquially known as the Rat Patrol, because, says Moty, They consider homeless people to be rats, and they were going to clean up the rats.)

Whether or not Balls volunteerism was colored by a vicious animus against the homeless, as homeless advocates allege, and whether or not Balls somewhat dubious past should count against him a generation later, there remains the broader question of political affiliations. Both The Sacramento Bee and KQED, the local public radio station, report that if the recall effort succeeds, a majority of the county board of supervisors will be aligned with militias and with the Proud Boys. If that is indeed the case, Shasta will be the first county in California to elect a far-right majority to its board of supervisors. Its members will include those who want to turn the county into a Second Amendment sanctuary county, and who want to bypass all public health mandates around Covid. Current Issue

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Inevitably, this will put the rural county on course for a head-on collision with the state government. It will also likely trigger similar political upheavals over the coming election cycle in a number of other counties, school board districts, and town governments in the rural far north of the state.

Theyre extremists, my way or the highway, and theyll stop at nothing to get there, Moty told me earlier this week. They think federal and state government is the enemy, that counties should not accept federal and state money. But 85 percent of our budget comes from state and federal money. If we dont accept that money, itll be very hard to operate. Youd have to cease HHS services, homeless services, assistance for the mentally ill.

The alt-rights ascendancy in Shasta gives a window on what could be a fractious political future for Californias rural north. Collectively, the dozen or so rugged, mountainous counties of the north, all conservative, all with vaccination rates of under 50 percent, have a population of fewer than 2 million, or about 5 percent of the states population; but geographically they represent a large proportion of the states landmass. Over the past few years, these counties, so different from Californias urban south, have formed the heart of a growing movement to secede from California and to form a separate stateperhaps along with some of the more conservative rural counties in Oregonnamed Jefferson.

In 2014, voters in Tehama County voted, in a nonbinding election, to secede from California. Two other counties opted not to secede. That same year, however, several other county boards of supervisors also voted to explore the concept of secession, with three of them voting to secedefrom the state. More recently, pro-Jefferson secessionists have detailed ambitious maps showing that the new state would include 23 of Californias 58 counties, taking with it roughly 2.5 million of the states nearly 40 million residents. As with Shasta, these counties are overwhelmingly rural and conservative, and, in the Covid era, they tend to be under-vaccinated and hostile to statewide mandates, though not all of them to quite the same extent as is Shasta. In last years recall election against Governor Newsom, all but one of the counties east and north of Sacramento voted in favor of recalling the Democrat.

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Shastas recall vote this week doesnt bring the fever dream of Jefferson any closer to being implemented, but it does send a warning shot across Sacramentos bows. There are powerful conservative and radical-right currents swirling below the surface, even in deep-blue states like California, and the pandemic is continuing to provide combustible fuel for this political conflagration.

This is going to be the model they are going to use to try to take over a lot of other rural counties, says Moty, as he contemplates the new political realities of his county. If they can do this to me, with my history and reputation in the county, they can do it to anyone. And then it will be school boards and city councils next.

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Californias Red Counties - The Nation

Marshall County Sheriff Phil Sims is making it clear how he feels about the constitutional carry bills now before the legislature.

In a recent interview, Alabama Sheriffs Association Executive Director Bobby Timmons reportedly said Americans dont have the right to carry a handgun and that he would be in favor of changing the Constitution to limit the Second Amendment.

Bobby Timmons may be our Executive Director but he does not speak for us all, Sims said. I am a Republican conservative sheriff. I believe in the Second Amendment and I support the Second Amendment. He does not speak for me and what he said does not reflect my views as the sheriff of this county.

Sims said there are several bills being looked at in the session right now that involve the constitutional carry, also known as permit-less carry.

I have read several of the bills and am working with our local delegation and with our Lieutenant Governors office to help make the bills better, Sims continued.

In HB-66, or House Bill 66, there are some things I would like to see added to it.

Sims said many things are important to address.

In this bill, what I would like to see is a more definitive answer as to certain persons who are forbidden to carry guns, he continued. Examples are anyone convicted of a felony needs to be added to this bill. Right now, in Alabama, if you are convicted of a non-violent felony, you can posses a pistol. Its contrary to federal law. Alabama law conflicts with federal law, in that part of it. I want to see that if you are convicted of a felony, until you get it expunged, you cant have a pistol.

These will go to the repeat offenders who have low level felonies, like drugs offenses, burglaries, thefts, interference with custody, those type things. Another thing Id like to see addressed is people who are out on bond for felony arrests. No matter what the arrest is, if you are out on bond for a felony arrest, I dont believe those people have the right to carry a pistol until their case is disposed of. That needs to be addressed in this bill, Sims continued.

Another thing I would like to see more definitive is our mental health issues that we face. We are in a mental health crisis right now. Some of the most dangerous calls that we answer are mental health related. I would like to see that be addressed. For instance, if you have been involuntarily committed, those people should not have a weapon or firearm until they are cleared by a medical doctor.

Sims says taking away pistol permits actually hurts his officers.

If permits were gone, we couldnt track people who have come from out of state and have felony convictions. Right now, we can track it because we can check peoples permits, he said. We need to have those things addressed in the bill so when we do come across those people who get guns, we need to have a tool to be able to take that gun away from that person. Yes, they are going to get guns but if we dont have a tool to take it from them, we cant take the gun.

Sims said he would even be willing to negotiate and give up the permits, as long as they can maintain a way for law enforcement to still take the guns off the streets from those who should not have them.

Pistol permits are $10 a year and the revenue greatly helps law enforcement, Sims said. If the permits were dropped, that revenue would then have to come from somewhere else.

The pistol permit fees go into a discretionary account that is audited by the the Public Examiners of the State, he said. Those funds go to things like training, guns, ammo, sending deputies to the academy, vehicles sometimes, new training facilities and even a new firing range weve never had.

My goal is to see that the permits remain, if nothing else, as voluntary. I think citizens would buy a permit and want to continue to support their local law enforcement, Sims said.

A pistol permit can also be used as an ID in the State of Alabama.

No doubt about it. I think if law abiding citizens want to carry guns, they have the right to. Theres no question about that, Sims said.

Timmons has come under fire from gun groups for his statements.

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Sheriff working with law makers on constitutional carry bills - Sand Mountain Reporter

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has announced a plan to end gun violence. The fatal shooting of a police officer has gripped not only his city's residents but people over the United States.

This shooting is the result of the most consequential misinterpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution by the U.S. Supreme Court in American history.

A well-regulated militia means just that. Its well organized and practices gun use that is consistent with armed forces training.

But in the most controversial misinterpretation of the Second Amendment, the late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the 2008 decision for the District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms.

Mayor Adams is fighting not only gun violence. Hes fighting this enormous misinterpretation of the Second Amendment.

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2nd Amendment has been misinterpreted -- Mike Bunch | Letters to the Editor | madison.com - Madison.com

During oral argument at the Supreme Court in December over Mississippis abortion ban, Justice Sonia Sotomayor laid bare a fundamental truth: Theres so much thats not in the Constitution.

Her point is a deep one, and salient to the abortion debate: The text of the Constitution does not explicitly affirm the right to abortion; no one disagrees with that. But the Constitution protects far more than what it literally describes. Unwritten ideas necessarily guide even the strictest readings of the text, despite what some originalist jurists like to believe.

Adrian Vermeule: Beyond originalism

This can be seen in just about every major constitutional debate, as I explore in my new book, The (Un)Written Constitution. Take, for example, the recent decision by the Courts six conservatives to strike down the Biden administrations COVID-vaccine mandate. The ruling was based on the idea that Congress cannot delegate major questions to administrative agencies, in this case the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The major-questions doctrine may be justified by a certain understanding of the separation of powers, as Justice Neil Gorsuch argued in his concurring opinion, but it is not found in constitutional text. Even the Courts power to strike down laws as unconstitutional is not specified by constitutional text. Indeed, the overhwelming majority of constitutional disputes that come before the Courtincluding abortion and free speech and the right to bear armsdepend on ideas and understandings that cant be found in the Constitution.

The arguments put forward in the Mississippi abortion case (Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization) are a perfect study in how unwritten ideas drive our readings of the text. The dispute over abortion revolves around the due-process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which stipulates that no state can deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. While Mississippi insists that a womans right to abortion has no basis in the Constitution, Elizabeth Prelogar, the solicitor general for the United States, maintains that the right is contained in the word liberty. How do we determine whether liberty includes the right of a woman to terminate her pregnancy?

It requires, in short, going beyond the text. This is inescapable because the text alone doesnt specify the meaning of enumerated rights such as the freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion, let alone the meaning of abstract rights such as liberty and the privileges or immunities of citizens. Whats more, going beyond the text is practically demanded by the Ninth Amendment, which explicitly acknowledges that there are specific, inviolable rights not named in the Constitution: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. But how do we determine the scope of abstract rights or which unenumerated rights, if any, should be constitutionally protected?

An exchange between Justice Clarence Thomas and Solicitor General Prelogar highlights this difficulty. Justice Thomas wanted to know just what right Prelogar was rooting abortion in. Was it liberty? Autonomy? Privacy? And just where did she find this right in the Constitution? The problem, Thomas asserted, was that the right she was defending was too abstract. When we talk about the Second Amendment or the Fourth Amendment, he said, we know what were talking about because its written. Its there.

But the liberty that Prelogar was referring to is written; it is there in the text. And the fact that liberty is more abstract than the rights found in the Second or Fourth Amendments doesnt obviate the Courts obligation to define its proper scope, just as the Court does with any other constitutional right.

Consider the First Amendments prohibition against abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. What does that freedom entail, exactly? Does it prohibit Congress from preemptively blocking speech that it deems unprotected? What about punishing such speech after the fact? Does it allow an opposition party or private citizen to criticize the sitting government? This last question was the subject of a heated debate in the 1790s, less than a decade after the First Amendment was ratified. While there was ready agreement that the text protected the freedom of speech and of the press, there was profound disagreement on the scope of these freedoms.

At the time, most sitting Supreme Court justices held that the First Amendment allowed the government to punish speech that brought public officials or the government into disrepute. Presiding over the trial of a critic of President John Adams, Justice Samuel Chase argued that any political minority must surrender up their judgment once a government was selected, and that private opinion must give way to public judgment, or there must be the end of government. In contrast, James Madison argued that interpretations like Chases prohibited the right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people which has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right. The disagreement between figures like Chase and Madison lay primarily in their disparate understanding of the logic of popular government, not in their literal reading of constitutional text. Their debate required using unwritten ideas to outline the substance and scope of the freedom of speech, or of the press, just as we have to outline the scope of liberty in the Fourteenth Amendment.

Originalists insist that we can accomplish this only by reading the text as it was understood by those who framed and ratified it. They turn to history and linguistic conventions from the period under investigation to retrieve the original public meaning of the Constitutions words. What would they have meant to an ordinary reader at the time of the texts ratification? As Justice Amy Coney Barrett has argued, the original public meaning of the Constitutions text, and it alone, is law. Yet this argument depends on unwritten ideas about the nature of the Constitutionon a disputed theory of what the Constitution isnot on the text.

Harry Litman: Originalism, divided

Even if we follow the original public meaning, how do we know whether we should be governed by the expectations of those who ratified the Fourteenth Amendment or by the general principles they brought into being? The text doesnt tell us. Does the Fourteenth Amendment apply only to rights that were clearly protected when the amendment was ratified, or does it apply more generally? Does it apply to marriage only as it was understood in 1868? What about interracial marriage? Same-sex marriage? A right to make decisions about procreation? A womans right to terminate her pregnancy? Even among originalists, debate persists on all of these issues.

Some originalists claim that we are bound by the concrete expectations of those who framed and ratified the Constitution. Justice Samuel Alito took something like this position during oral argument in Dobbs, when he asked whether abortion was a right, liberty, or immunity in 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. If the people who ratified the amendment in 1868 did not expect liberty to include a womans right to terminate her pregnancy, this logic goes, then that right is not protected.

If we follow the expected application of the amendment, it would almost certainly not protect interracial marriagewhich wasnt federally legalized until a century after the amendments ratificationlet alone same-sex marriage. Similar questions come up with regard to gender. Should women be entitled to the privileges or immunities of citizenship, including the right to make choices about their occupation, despite the fact that many of those who framed and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment did not necessarily expect it to apply to women in this way? (A few years after the amendment was ratified, the Supreme Court suggested that the answer was no. It upheld an Illinois law that denied the suffragist Myra Bradwell the right to practice law precisely because she was a woman: The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life.)

If we follow the general principles that the text brought into beingas opposed to their original applicationthey may entail obligations that those who framed and ratified the amendment did not understand or even consider. Steven Calabresi, a leading originalist and former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, argues that this isnt our problem. We should not be concerned, he says, with how those who ratified the Fourteenth Amendment applied it in particular cases; nor should we be concerned with how they expected it to apply. We should be concerned instead with the principle or concept that they brought into being.

Scalia himself was skeptical of this approach. He contended that the word liberty in the Fourteenth Amendment protects only what is enumerated in the Bill of Rights, as well as rights that have historically been protected by American law. In Dobbs, the Mississippi solicitor general followed Scalias reasoning, arguing that because the right to abortion is not specified in constitutional text, nor supported by history, it is not constitutionally protected. In doing so, he drew on Scalias dissenting opinion in the 1992 case that reaffirmed the central logic of Roe v. Wade, where the justice asserted that abortion was not protected by the Constitution because of two simple facts: (1) the Constitution says absolutely nothing about it, and (2) the longstanding traditions of American society have permitted it to be legally proscribed.

What looks like an indisputable claim firmly grounded in constitutional text is, in fact, a particular reading of the text driven by Scalias desire to confine its more open-ended termssuch as liberty in the Fourteenth Amendmentto specifically enumerated rights. Otherwise, Scalia feared, such terms would become a boundless source of additional, unnamed, unhinted-at rights, definable and enforceable by us, through reasoned judgment.

In his attempt to limit the Constitutions more abstract clauses, Scalia was following the New Deal jurist Hugo Black, who referred to himself as a constitutional literalist. Black famously argued that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights, applying themand no othersto the states. Accordingly, the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment refers to rights articulated in the first eight amendments. Black pointed to his historical research to justify this argument, but even more important to his thinking was the belief that reading the text in this manner provided a salutary limit on judicial discretion. Like Scalia, Black worried that open-ended and abstract constitutional clauses invited judges to read their political preferences into the Constitution.

Yet the Fourteenth Amendment does not say that the liberty protected by due process refers only to what is articulated in the Bill of Rights. Those who framed the Fourteenth Amendment could have easily said as much, but they didnt. Some scholars have reasonably argued that this is the best reading of the amendment, but those arguments inescapably depend on unwritten ideas about how to interpret liberty in the Fourteenth Amendment.

How we determine the scope of libertywhether we root it in particular historical understandings, limit it to rights enumerated elsewhere, or take it as a more general principleis not dictated by constitutional text. This is just as true when we turn to supposedly concrete rights such as freedom of speech. It is true of numerous cases currently before the Court: Does religious liberty require states that fund nonsectarian private education to also fund religious education? Does the right to bear arms include a right to concealed carry? These cases all turn on the justices unwritten ideas.

My point is not to argue for or against any particular method of constitutional interpretation; it is, rather, to insist that a large majority of the issues faced by the Court cannot be resolved simply by appealing to constitutional text. There is no avoiding this. All approaches to constitutional interpretation rely on unwritten understandings. Going outside of the text is essential to reading the Constitution. This does not mean that anything goes; it means that we have the burden of giving our reasons for the constitutional judgments we must make.

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What the Constitution Doesn't Say - The Atlantic

President Joe Biden said Thursday that his gun violence prevention strategy is necessary to combat rising violent crime in cities across the country and that preventing the sale of certain firearms "doesn't violate anybody's Second Amendment rights."

"Making sure that people who are not allowed to have a gun, don't get the gun in the first place," the president said of his push to institute stricter background checks for firearm sales. "This doesn't violate anybody's Second Amendment right. There's no violation of the Second Amendment right to talk like there's no amendment that's absolute."

"Remember, when the amendment was passed, they didn't say anybody can own a gun, any kind of gun, or any kind of weapon," he said. "You couldn't buy a cannon when this amendment was passed, and so nobody with the money should be able to buy certain assault weapons, but that's another issue."

Biden, speaking alongside Attorney General Merrick Garland, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, additionally outlined new measures the Justice Department was taking on Thursday to clamp down on the illegal sale of "ghost guns" and other "assault" weapons. Those actions include:

The president also called on Congress to approve $500 million in new funding "for proven strategies we know will reduce gun crime," including $300 million to expand the COPS Hiring Program and $200 million for evidence-based community violence interventions.

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You can watch Biden's remarks in full below.

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Biden on gun control plan: 'There's no amendment that's absolute' - Washington Examiner

Theres a big push to fight gun violence. But if the idea is to stop the violence by going after guns, I think the fight is already lost.

Extraordinary rise in gun violence in King County in 2021

CBS News correspondent Jeff Pegues reported this week that anybody with a 3D printer and easily-available software can make their own gun in as little as 45 minutes.

You can also print a gun part called a receiver, and use it to assemble a gun with no serial number. That makes it untraceable, and therefore very popular with bad guys. Its whats called a ghost gun.

FiveThirtyEight reported that, in 2019, police in Philadelphia recovered 95 ghost guns. By 2020, it was 250. Last year, the numbers were on track to double again, and thats just one city.

It is legal to make your own guns the good guys do it all the time. Some of them are highly-skilled gunsmiths. But pretty soon, you wont have to be highly-skilled.

The ATF is clearly worried, and theyre looking for ways to regulate ghost guns. But how?

Once everybody can make their own weapons and that day is coming even if the government did want to grab your guns, it would be physically impossible. And in a world where anybody can make a new one in under an hour, it wouldnt be worth the trouble anyway.

The whole Second Amendment debate is over. The Second Amendment won!

But Dave, you might say, we could regulate gunpowder! Yeah, good luck with that.

Bad guys will always get loaded weapons. Which means all thats left is universal anger management training.

And we thought getting everybody vaccinated was tough.

Listen to Seattles Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen OBrien weekday mornings from 5 9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to thepodcast here.

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Ross: Have we already lost the fight against gun violence? - MyNorthwest.com

Today, February 1st, theOregon Legislature begins the 2022legislative session.With the start of session, anti-gun legislators have again begun pushing policies that do nothing to prevent crime and only target law-abiding gun owners. NRA Members and Second Amendment supporters are encouraged to stay alert and contact their legislators in opposition to Senate Bill 1577.

Senate Bill 1577 would ban 3-D printed guns, however the billis so poorly written that it confuses undetectable firearms with 3D printed guns. This bill is the ultimate solution in search of a problem. Undetectable firearms have been banned under federal law for 30 years.This is nothing more than political theater. However, because of poor bill drafting, this bill could have serious unintended consequences for hobbyists who engage in the lawful home manufacture of firearms.

As in 2021, thelegislaturecan expect to see both pro and anti-gun agendas this year.Gun owners and sportsmen throughout the state must stay actively involved to defend freedom.

Your NRA will continue to fight to promote and protect your right to keep and bear arms and hunting heritage.Our members remain the most powerful political force in American history, and together, we will secure the Second Amendment for present and future generations.

Please continue to checkwww.NRAILA.organd your email inbox for NRA-ILA alerts on the latest action items. NRA-ILA will keep you updated on Second Amendment and hunting-related legislation.

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Oregon: Anti-Gun Legislation Introduced as the 2022 Legislative Session Convenes - NRA ILA

Vicki VanAmeyden views her role as an artist as a responsibility to express her view of what is right and good in our world. Art is also, she says, a sanity keeper for her. Often incorporating text in her art, VanAmeyden uses non-traditional materials to make strong statements and shake the viewer to attention. With a masters in fine arts from Western Michigan University, VanAmeyden, now retired, has taught art at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts and Kellogg Community College.

This is the second time Ive felt compelled [in a way] that is maybe a little more political, VanAmeyden says. I did it after 9/11, too, created a body of work. Just around everything that was happening then. And then around 2015, I felt compelled to do it again with the rise of Trump I felt like I had a platform and, for whatever reason, that I have a responsibility as an artist with that platform.

A conversation with Vicki VanAmeyden

VanAmeyden often incorporates text along with nontraditional materials in her artwork to make her statement. One powerful work, called American Hero, makes a statement about the misuse of the Second Amendment by using nails, resting books, including the Bible and two volumes about the Second Amendment atop the nails, then topped with bullets from an assault weaponas if a hero sandwich to illustrate the American diet.

That piece was kicking around in my head for quite a while, VanAmeyden says. The books connected for me with the American system and beliefs surrounding guns. Its almost an inalienable right in this country to own a gun. I think its gotten out of balance. Those nails, theyre old nails, and they reminded me of coffin nails. The bullets on top are for an AR-15 it was quite a process, learning about guns and bullets and knowing the AR-15 is the most popular gun in the United States, which I dont think people use for hunting.

VanAmeydens work often stops viewers in their tracks, forcing sometimes uncomfortable contemplation, provoking emotion and thought. She has been acknowledged with awards at both the regional and national levels and includes a Lila Acheson Wallace Award for Illustration. Additional grants and awards include the KCC Outstanding Adjunct Award for Excellence in Teaching; WMU Teaching Effectiveness Award; Teacher Ambassador Appointment to Takasaki, Japan; West Michigan Merit Scholarship; WMU Faculty Development Grant; and Creative Industries Development Grant. VanAmeydens work can currently be viewed at the Ninth Wave Studio in Kalamazoo.

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Art Beat: Art that resists - WMUK

Efforts to pass so-called second amendment sanctuary laws in Iowa distract from the real issues.

Recent efforts by the Iowa Legislature demonstrate how engrossed some legislators are in gun rights.

A bill following the national trend of second amendment sanctuaries aims to prohibit federal gun control in Iowa. But all this measure will do is distract Iowans from real issues related to gun violence.

Senate File 2002, introduced by Sen. Zac Nunn, R-Bondurant, would prohibit state and local law enforcement from enforcing federal laws, regulations, and executive orders that infringe on the right to keep and bear arms.

Nunn told the Des Moines Register: Were concerned that there could be a move at the federal level, through a department or agency, that could really place some restrictions on a gun owners rights and have no one in the legislative body either the federal level or the state level making their voice heard.

The movement for second amendment sanctuaries spread in 2018 following multiple high profile mass shootings, which advocates then called for more rigorous gun control laws. Across the country, more than a thousand local governments have declared themselves second amendment sanctuaries, meaning they have no intent of following federal gun control measures. However, many critics agree second amendment sanctuaries will not hold up in court.

Last July, Jasper Country became the first in Iowa to become a second amendment sanctuary, soon followed by Hardin County. Since the summer, 33 counties across Iowa have adopted such measures.

Bill Richards, a lobbyist for the Iowan Firearms Coalition, told the Des Moines Register: We do think its a very important issue that the state make these statements somewhat symbolic but also something to fall back on if theyre pressed.

However, the movement for second amendment sanctuaries fails to meet the moment because gun rights are not under fire in the U.S.

President Joe Bidens campaign included a widely praised gun control agenda, with programming measures such as banning assault weapons. However, little has been done to regulate access to firearms. Unless Democrats sweep the Senate and the House in 2022, there is little hope that Biden can pass gun-control legislation through Congress.

Americans have more guns than any other country, and in Iowa 43.6 percent of adults have guns in their home. With the prevalence of gun culture in America, it is unlikely any significant gun-control legislation will be passed in the near future.

Whether or not this bill is passed in Iowa, nothing will change. This symbolic bill is just a distraction from real issues.

Second amendment sanctuaries are merely a statement to show support for gun ownership. We do not need to concern ourselves with unnecessary measures.

Iowa legislators like Nunn should be concerned with legislation that can better protect Iowans, like gun-safety education, recognizing gun violence as a preventable public health problem, negotiating sensible gun laws, and promoting a culture of gun safety.

As the 2022 midterm election approaches, we must consider what our legislators have done for us. Iowans deserve lawmakers that are committed to progress, not meaningless publicity stunts.

Columns reflect the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Editorial Board, The Daily Iowan, or other organizations in which the author may be involved.

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Opinion | Iowa does not need to be a second amendment sanctuary - UI The Daily Iowan