Category Archives: Second Amendment

As Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted in two killings that he said were self-defense, armed civilians patrolled the streets near the Wisconsin courthouse with guns in plain view.

In Georgia, testimony in the trial of Ahmaud Arberys killers showed that armed patrols were commonplace in the neighborhood where Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, was chased down by three white men and shot.

The two proceedings sent startling new signals about the boundaries of self-defense as more guns emerge from homes amid political and racial tensions and the advance of laws that ease permitting requirements and expand the allowable use of force.

Across much of the nation, it has become increasingly acceptable for Americans to walk the streets with firearms, either carried openly or legally concealed. In places that still forbid such behavior, prohibitions on possessing guns in public could soon change if the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a New York law.

The new status quo for firearms outside the home was on prominent display last week in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Local resident Erick Jordan carried a rifle and holstered handgun near the courthouse where Rittenhouse was tried for killing two men and wounding a third with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle during a protest last year.

I got a job to do protect these people. Thats it, said Jordan, referring to speakers at a news conference that was held in the hours after the verdict.

Speakers included an uncle of Jacob Blake, the Black man who was paralyzed in a shooting by a white police officer that touched off tumultuous protests across the city in the summer of 2020.

This is my town, my people, Jordan said. We dont agree on a lot of things, but we fight, we argue, we agree to disagree and go home safe, alive.

Thats real self-defense.

The comments were a counter punch to political figures on the right who welcomed the Rittenhouse verdict and condemned his prosecution.

Mark McCloskey, who pleaded guilty in June to misdemeanor charges stemming from when he and his wife waved a rifle and a handgun at Black Lives Matter protesters outside their St. Louis home in 2020, said the verdict shows that people have a right to defend themselves from a mob. He currently is a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri.

The verdict arrived as many states are expanding self-defense laws and loosening the rules for carrying guns in public. Both gun sales and gun violence have been on the rise.

At the same time, six more states this year removed requirements to get a permit to carry guns in public, the largest number in any single year, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. In all, 30 states have enacted stand your ground laws, which remove a requirement to retreat from confrontations before using deadly force.

Wisconsin has a tougher standard for claiming self-defense, and Rittenhouse was able to show the jury that he reasonably believed his life was in danger and that the amount of force he used was appropriate.

Ryan Busse, a former firearms-industry executive who now supports moderate gun control as an author and consultant, said the case reinforced the normalization of military-style weapons on city and suburban streets.

Reasonable gun owners are freaked out by this, he said. How is it that we see this and people are just like, Theres a guy with an AR-15. That happens in third-world countries.

He highlighted that a lesser charge against Rittenhouse as a minor in possession of a dangerous weapon was dropped before the verdict.

Theres a facet of Wisconsin law that allows kids to take their hunting rifle out with their dad or uncle, Busse said. Well hes not hunting. ... The old gun culture is being used to cover up for this new, dangerous firearms culture.

Gun-rights advocates seeking greater access to weapons and robust self-defense provisions argue that armed confrontations will remain rare.

Republicans including former President Donald Trump have been quick to applaud the verdict. They stand by Rittenhouse as a patriot who took a stand against lawlessness and exercised his Second Amendment rights.

Discord over the right to carry guns in public places spilled over into state legislatures in the aftermath of a 2020 plot to storm the Michigan Capitol, the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and other threats. States including Michigan and New Mexico this year banned guns at their capitols, while Montana and Utah shored up concealed-carry rights.

At the Supreme Court, justices are weighing the biggest guns case in more than a decade, a dispute over whether New Yorks gun permitting law violates the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

Defenders of the law say that striking it down would lead to more guns on the streets of cities, including New York and Los Angeles.

During oral arguments this month, justices also appeared to worry that a broad ruling might threaten gun restrictions on subways and at bars, stadiums and other gathering places.

New Yorks law has been in place since 1913. It says that to carry a concealed handgun in public for self-defense, an applicant has to demonstrate an actual need for the weapon.

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This story has been edited to correct that Jacob Blake was paralyzed, not killed, in a shooting by a police officer.

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Find APs full coverage on the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse at: https://apnews.com/hub/kyle-rittenhouse

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In Kenosha and beyond, guns become more common on US streets - Associated Press

In a real scene, you can look around for the truth. This is what we depend on journalists to do. Too often, however, todays reporters dont report; they frame fake narratives.

I recall the scene outside the U.S. Supreme Court building on the bright morning in 2008 when the Court was poised to hear D.C. v. Heller. This case resulted in a 5-4 decision in which the Court affirmed the Second Amendment does, indeed, protect an individual right.

I watched as a handful of anti-Second Amendment activists were herded by a few TV talking heads into a tight group for the cameras. Shown this way, this small group of anti-freedom activists could be made to look like they were a small part of a large demonstration of people there to demand the high court rule the Second Amendment into meaninglessness.

Even here, in front of the main entrance to the U.S. Supreme Court, and under the eyes of a pair of statues carved by James Earle FraserContemplation of Justice, a seated woman holding a figure of blindfolded justice, and Authority of Law, a statue of a seated man holding a tablet of laws and a sheathed swordthese media members were busy shaping a fake-news narrative against our Second Amendment rights.

This, of course, was just a small part of the overall scene. All around this obvious narrative shaping were hundreds of people peacefully lined up, all hoping for a spectators seat inside. Many had lined up before the sun rose.

Later, inside, I sat on a bench up above the main floor watching the hearing with other members of the media. Not far away was an AP reporter. I didnt think much about her until, mid-hearing, when former Justice Anthony Kennedy asked a question that hinted he was pro-freedom, she gasped, Oh no!

I looked at her and smiled. Oh no, indeed.

Such is our media. But such are also our social-media companies and the narrative-shaping control they have over many Americans. The American public now receives censored news in their social-media feeds with no gun advertisements allowed; if gun owners talk about the shooting sports or self-defense in these digital spaces, they might be canceled or shadow banned. The real picture is, thereby, being shaped and controlled, just as those reporters in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building had done.

When a news source does this, you can see their politics woven into stories and put down the publication and pick up another. But Big Tech isnt a publication or a cable news channel; it is an entire digital reality we are all feeding and being fed. It is family, friends, news, ads and a bombardment of everything else.

We dont yet know the impact these digital realities are having on us, our politics and our freedom. But we do know we are being manipulated.

This, of course, is a big, complicated First Amendment topic that affects the Second.

Well continue to look for answers to this modern and deep problem.

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Control of the Narrative - America's 1st Freedom

The year 2020 was historic in Milwaukee, and not just because of the pandemic. The year set a record high for both homicides and gun violence, with 190 people killedthe vast majority killed with guns.

This year, were on pace to beat those numbers. One local organization, Milwaukee Mothers Against Gun Violence, is among the many working to combat this issue, but also changing the way we view victims.

Milwaukee Mothers Against Gun Violence was founded by Debra Gillispie after her son, Kirk Bickham Jr., was shot and killed. Gillispie was one of the winners of this years Betty Awards from Milwaukee Magazine, and she shares why she made gun violence the focus of her lifes work.

"Because they [her son and his friend] were murdered and because they were African American, they [media] assumed it was under negative pretense, says Gillispie. It was victim blaming. And so that sparked my action. [Of] me going into action to clarify how my son was murdered."

Gillispies work has led her to meet many other survivors and other people like herself who were affected by gun violence. She says every person she's met has stuck with her.

"They all stick out to me because their stories are so unique. Not one is the same. But what I would say is that those who want to keep the voices going, those people actually stick out to me," says Gillispie.

With the Rittenhouse trial putting gun rights in the forefront, Gillispie says she's been lucky to be in contact with organizations like Wisconsin Anti Violence Effort. Now, she says she's able to stay abreast of the changes and what's going on in real time with gun legislation.

"Everyone seems to talk about the Second Amendment, as opposed to the First Amendment, which is our right to live and feel safe. I think that it should be at the top of the discussion," says Gillispie.

In the future, Gillispie says she would like to channel her activism into giving survivors a platform to tell their story.

"Giving survivors the opportunity when they're ready to share with us what it is that they would like to happen or to change, after they lose someone to gun violence. I pray someone gives me the opportunity to do that for our survivors or victims of gun violence," says Gillispie.

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Milwaukee Mothers Against Gun Violence is working to change the way we view victims of gun violence - WUWM

Although I participated in the countercultural "revolutions," antiwar protestsand racial conflicts of the 1960s, it wasn't until August2016 that Ihad my first truly unnerving intimations of a full-blown American civil war: Then-presidential candidate Donald Trumptold a rallythat if Hillary Clinton "gets to pick her judges, judicial appointments, nothing you can do, folks. Although, the Second Amendment people maybe there is. I don't know."

By June 1, 2020, Trump's seeming afterthought about "Second Amendment people"hadmetastasizedinto something truly scary. He and combat-fatigues-clad Gen.Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,along with Attorney General William Barr, strode from the White House to Lafayette Park, where a peaceful demonstration had been dispersed brutally by National Guard troops.

Trump's insistenceonlydays earlier that the U.S. Army itselfshouldbe sent against the protesters a demandechoed by Arkansas Sen.Tom Cottonin a now-infamous New York Times op-ed reminded me of Julius Caesarleading Roman legions illegally across the river Rubicon from Gaul into Italy in 49 B.C. to subdue Rome's own citizens and, with them, their republic.

Kenosha, Wisconsin's closest approximation to the Rubicon is the tiny Pike River, which flows from Petrifying Springs into Lake Michigan. Its closest approximation to a military crackdown was the police mobilization againstviolent protests aftera police officer shotand paralyzedan unarmed young Black man in August of last year. Those police failed to challenge Kyle Rittenhouse, the illegally armed, 17-year-old "Second Amendmentperson" who shot three men, killing two of them.

And when a Kenosha County jury failed to convict Rittenhouse on even a misdemeanor, sendingwhat the parents of Anthony Huber one of the men Rittenhousekilled characterized as"the unacceptable messagethat armed civilians can show up in any town, incite violence, and then use the danger they have created to justify shooting people in the street," I couldn't help but wonder what, if anything, will stop armed "Second Amendment people" from showing up near polling places a year from now, as a Republican National Ballot Security Task Force" has done intermittently since 1981, although without brandishing guns.

More unnervingly and urgently, I wonder why a jury of ordinary citizens, along withthousands of others who approved and even celebrated the Rittenhouse verdict are walking themselves across a Rubicon to deliver the message I've just cited, even though they haven't been "demagogued" into doing it by a Caesar or driven to do it by a military force.

New York Times columnistCharles Blow has notedthat Rittenhousewas the same age asTrayvon Martin, the unarmed Black youth shot dead in Florida by George Zimmerman, who consideredhimself a "protector" of his neighborhood and who was acquitted of murder. Blow notes that although Trayvon Martin "was thugified" by Zimmerman and the judicial process, Rittenhouse was "infantilized" by the defenseargument that a 17-year-old may be excused for misjudging dangers that hehimselfhas provokedillegally. It's hard to imagine a similar jury acceptingsimilarexcuses for a young Blackman with an assault rifle,even if he never fired it.

I've contendedfor yearsthatswift, dark undercurrents are degrading and stupefying Americans in waysthatmost of us trynot to acknowledge. Moreof usthan ever before arenormalizing ouradaptations todailyvariants of force and fraud in the commercial groping and goosing of our private lives and public spaces; in nihilisticentertainment that fetishizes violence without context and sex without attachment; in the "gladiatorialization: and corruptionofsports; in home-security precautions against the prospect of armed invasion; in casino-like financing of unproductive economic activities, such as the predatory lending that tricksmillions out of their homes; and in a huge, ever-expanding prison industry created to deter or punish the broken, violent victims of all these come-ons, even as schools in the"nicest,""safest," neighborhoods operate in fear of gunmenwho, from Columbine to Sandy Hook and beyond, havebeen students orresidents there themselves.

Stressed by this republican derangement, millions are spending billions on palliatives, medications, addictions and even surveillance designed to protect them from themselves. All those vials, syringes,home-security systems and shootings reflect the insinuation of what Edward Gibbon, the historian of ancient Rome, called "a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire" until Roman citizens "no longer possessed that public courage which is nourished by the love of independence, the sense of national honour, the presence of danger, and the habit of command. They received laws and governors from the will of their sovereign, and trusted for their defence to a mercenary army."

Is it really so surprising that some of the stressed and dispossessed, too ill to bear their sicknesses or their cures, demand to be lied to instead, withsimple but compelling fantasies that direct them toward saviors and scapegoats into cries for strongmen to cross a Rubicon or two and for "Second Amendment people" to take our streets?

Read the rest here:
The Rittenhouse syndrome: Has America crossed the Rubicon? - Salon

Tom Campbell| Tar Heel Voices

Maybe you remember the classic 1975 film, Network, where the anchor Howard Beale, throws open a window and shouts, Im mad as hell and Im not going to take it anymore.

Perhaps thats an explanation for the 2020 statistics on violent crime.

The good news-bad revelation is that the overall crime rate in our state declined again in 2020, however violent crime increased by 31 percent year over year. Philip Cook, a professor of public policy at Duke, said it was the largest increase since experts started keeping stats in the early '30s. 2020 became the most violent year of the 21st Century, Cook said. It looks like that is also true for North Carolina.

A crime is considered violent if it involves rape, robbery, aggravated assault or murder. Our state reported 44,452 violent crimes and 852 homicides, ranking us 21st in the nation ahead of New York, Georgia and most southeastern states, with the exception of South Carolina. We experienced 670 gun deaths, up from 2019s 511, and there were 20 mass shootings. Preliminary evidence indicates these numbers will increase again this year.

After years of decline in violent crimes how can we explain last years large increase, especially since most of us were cooped up in our homes for much of last year? Perhaps our pandemic frustrations morphed into anger. The hyper charged political climate could also have spawned violence and hatred. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that North Carolina has 29 active hate groups within our borders, groups that include white nationalists, neo-confederates, Ku Klux Klans, racist skinheads, Islamic, anti-immigration and Proud Boys.

Complete data from last year isnt yet available, but we know the majority of gun-related deaths involved suicide. In 2019 suicide deaths were 1,358 and since violent crime numbers rose last year it is reasonable to assume suicides did also. There are two responses to this data.

The first involves mental illness. Few can deny that our states mental health reforms, begun in 2003, are a disaster. Our state eliminated 854 psychiatric hospital beds from state facilities and re-directed funding to local communities. These local management entities were neither capable of dealing with the swell in patients nor able to provide adequate staffing and resources for them. Many with mental illness end up in emergency rooms, in county jails or committing suicide. Better options might have prevented some of these problems.

The second issue is gun control and I can already hear the gun lobby getting their dog-whistles ready to resist any restrictions to their second amendment rights. Take another look at what this article in the Bill of Rights says and doesnt say.

"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." In 1791, when the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution, there was no massive federal Army, no full-time or part-time state militias, police or sheriff departments like we have today. It was essential to have citizen militia groups, and they needed guns to defend themselves and their communities.

We support that right today, but it has been abused to mean anyone can own any weapon they want and carry it anywhere they go. Whenever even the hint of gun control is raised we hear threats that the boogey-man is trying to take all your guns. Not so. It is time for reasonable gun owners to show some backbone and admit there are too many guns too easy to buy and in the wrong hands. Daily we see headlines of drive-by and public shootings. Recently a North Carolina pastor call on his congregation from the pulpit to get gun training. Do we really want someone sitting in the pew next to us coming to church carrying?

Whats it going to take to move away from the anger and hatred evident today? We must lower the boiling point and find workable solutions for reducing both the anger and violent crime. For the time being, the best advice is the old time-honored axiom to count to ten before taking action.

Tom Campbell is a Hall of Fame North Carolina Broadcaster and columnist who has covered North Carolina public policy issues since 1965. He recently retired from writing, producing and moderating the statewide half-hour TV program NC SPIN that aired 22 years. Contact him at tomcamp@carolinabroadcasting.com.

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Tar Heel Voices: Mad as you-know-what and not going to take it - Kinston Free Press

The verdict in the highly politicized Kyle Rittenhouse trial erupted into a free-for-all as racial justice, gun control and gun rights advocates all tried to claim the jury's decision as a way to push their respective causes.

The events leading up to the shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 25, 2020when Rittenhouse fatally shot two men and injured a thirdwere heavily intertwined with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which swept the nation in the wake of George Floyd's death and regained momentum following the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

As racial justice protesters poured into Kenosha to call for police reform after Blake was shot seven times by a white officer, others traveled to the small Wisconsin city to protect local businesses that were set ablaze and looted amid the unrest. Among these so-called vigilantes was the then-17-year-old Rittenhouse.

After the night turned deadly, many activists contrasted the treatment of Rittenhouseboth that evening and in the year-and-a-half that followedto Black Americans, like Blake, and BLM protesters, who were being shot and tear gassed by police officers that same summer.

In the months after the Kenosha shootings, Rittenhouse's delayed arrest and pictures of the teen flashing white power signs while on bail became subject to backlash from critics who argued none of these incidents would be permitted if it was a Black teen who traveled across state lines with an AR-15 and shot people dead.

"Kyle Rittenhouse's trial served as a prime example of the tragically disparate treatment between Black and white Americans," NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson told Newsweek. "Rittenhouse's decision to go to Kenosha and provoke protestors was unwarranted, dangerous, and some have said rises to domestic terrorism."

When the jury in Rittenhouse's case acquitted him on all charges, racial justice activists saw it as a confirmation that there are "two justice systems at work in America."

"From the outset, this case has pulled back the curtain on the profound cracks in our justice systemfrom the deep bias routinely and unabashedly displayed by the judge, to the apathy of officers who witnessed Rittenhouse's crimes and did nothing," civil rights attorney Ben Crump said in a Friday statement. "If we were talking about a Black man, the conversation and outcome would be starkly different."

Over the course of three-and-a-half-days, as the jury deliberated, BLM protesters and supporters of Rittenhouse returned day after day in anticipation of a verdict that would deliver each group what they believed to be justice.

While some members of opposing sides were seen sharing pizza and remaining peaceful, others were seen clashing loudly outside the courthouse.

Those who attended in support of the defendant were not there to argue against the BLM activists' calls for racial equality, but to defend their constitutional right to bear arms.

And so the not guilty verdict also became a rallying call for both aisles of the gun debate.

Gun rights groups saw it as proof that the nation believes the Second Amendment should prevail, while gun control advocates proclaimed that it sent a "troubling message" to the nation.

Because Rittenhouse contended that he acted in self-defense that night, the right to bear arms emerged as a central talking point in the case.

Friday's verdict implied that the jury unanimously agreed that Rittenhouse had the right to fire his rifle out of fear of death or great bodily harma decision gun rights groups saw as a win to their cause.

"Today, the American justice system worked as designed, and a young man who has been lambasted, defamed, and threatened by the media and anti-gun Left was declared innocent of all the charges against him," the executive director of the National Foundation of Gun Rights (NFGR), Dudley Brown, said in a statement following the verdict.

The NFGR was one of the first organizations to back Rittenhouse, raising over $50,000 last year to help pay for the teen's legal fees.

"Self-defense is a God-given right, and Kyle defended himself in the face of grave danger and bodily harm," Dudley said. "We hope that Kyle will now be allowed to live a free and prosperous life, and that all Americans will understand that the Second Amendment isn't about hunting it's about the right to defend oneself from tyranny and lawless criminal actors."

On the other side, gun control advocates called the verdict "a perversion of justice," "a horrifying reminder" and "a gross miscarriage of justice." They cautioned that allowing Rittenhouse to walk free would permit gun violence across the country to persist.

"There is no right to carry a firearmmuch less an illegally bought assault rifleacross state lines to terrorize and play 'police officer,'" the Brady Campaign's chief counsel, Jonathan Lowy, said in a statement. "And this tragedy shows what happens when civilians feel entitled to bring guns anywhere."

"If the Kenosha Killer had not brought an assault rifle to that protest, no one would have died. Because he did, two people were killed," Lowy continued.

However, racial justice activists argued against the debate entirely, describing it as a distraction from the real issue at hand.

"This was never a case on the right to bear arms, or the right to defend yourself, this was a case on white supremacy," Johnson said. "The fact that Rittenhouse was able to be apprehended safely, made out to be a victim in the media, and ultimately walk away a free man at the decision of a nearly all-white jury paints a grim picture of the state of race relations in this country."

As various groups continue to use the verdict to make political statements about the social climate of America, legal experts have maintained that the jury's decision is one pertaining to a specific criminal case and not a wider generalization on where the nation stands on racism or guns.

Speaking with reporters outside the courthouse, Rittenhouse's defense attorney, Mark Richards, said that unlike Rittenhouse's prior attorneys, he did not take on the defendant's case to argue a cause.

"I don't represent causes, I represent clients," Richards said.

"If [Rittenhouse] was looking for someone to go off on a crusade, I wasn't his lawyer," he added.

Michael McAuliffe, a former federal prosecutor and former elected state attorney, also emphasized to Newsweek that neither political issue was being presented to the jury.

"The caselegallyis about the shooting deaths of two individuals, the wounding of a third person with a weapon and the reckless endangerment of others. Self-defense is the legal justification for those actions," he said. "The evidence and the jury instructions don't address or refer to race or the Second Amendment. And, as you know, the gun charge was dismissed."

Rittenhouse had also been charged of unlawful possession of a firearm by a minor, but the defense team successfully argued that the charge should be dismissed based on the size of the rifle's barrel.

"The underlying tension in the case may well be about guns and one's use of weapons in a situation that has the backdrop of confusion and chaos," McAuliffe said.

"However, the jury's job is to ignore the larger issues and focus on whether the defendant committed a crime or crimes through his actions that evening," he added. "Criminal juries shouldn't be making larger policy statements when determining the potential criminal culpability of a defendant."

Even the prosecution and President Joe Biden have urged the nation to respect the jury's verdict and trust the system, despite earlier remarks expressing hope there might be some type of guilty verdict.

"While we are disappointed with the verdict, it must be respected," lead prosecutor Thomas Binger said in a Friday statement. "We are grateful to the members of the jury for their diligent and thoughtful deliberations."

Biden echoed those sentiments, saying: "While the verdict in Kenosha will leave many Americans feeling angry and concerned, myself included, we must acknowledge that the jury has spoken."

Read this article:
Was the Kyle Rittenhouse Trial About Race, the Second Amendment or Neither? - Newsweek

In gratitude

During this season of gratitude, theres a few things I am really grateful for in our community.

To the crews who worked so hard on the Foys Lake interchange, thank you! I travel that road multiple times a day, and over the past several months I was excited and surprised daily at how much work was being done and the fact that it was completed! You deserve a holiday bonus!

To our schools youre doing it! You have risen above the vitriol in our community and are continually providing an excellent education and above and beyond opportunities for our kids to thrive. I see you Kalispell Education Foundation and the creative teachers and administrators who just received over $26,000 in community grants to do more great things. Thank you!

And to our beloved ImagineIF library Ive been watching from the front row how you are graciously navigating every block that is being set in front of you, from the county commissioners to your own board of trustees. You just keep showing up, ensuring free and untethered access to all information, and incredible programs for all. You are wonderful.

Sara Busse, Kalispell

With the U.S. Supreme Court about to render what could be a landmark Second Amendment ruling in the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Assoc. v. Bruen, the Daily Inter Lake on Nov. 15 published an editorial from the Los Angeles Times in its As Others See It feature on the opinion page. With the potentially profound and far-reaching consequences of the courts decision in this case on state and local laws across the country, it is altogether fitting and proper for the Inter Lake to share views on the subject from other publications around the nation. I only wish they had chosen a different source.

The once great L.A. newspapers summary of the issues at stake and the history of the high courts stance vis--vis Artice II of the Bill of Rights suffers from sloppy scholarship. Journalists are not, of course, legal scholars, nor are they supposed to be. Nor are their readers. But with little effort the arguments of the legal scholars on whom Justice Anton Scalia and the court majority based their decision in District of Columbia at al. v. Heller, particularly those of David E. Young, can be easily grasped by those who write for and read newspapers.

The failure to fully explore and explain these arguments instead implying that Scalia and his colleagues pulled their ruling out of a hat in much the same way that Justices Blackmun, Burger, Douglas, Brennan, Stewart, Marshall and Powell in Roe v. Wade discovered a constitutional right to abortion in the penumbras and emanations of the document smacks of either bias or laziness or both.

The SCOTUS may well dodge the foundational issues in their ruling on New York State Rifle & Pistol Assoc. v. Bruen, but if their ruling, to use the L.A. Times editors term, upends long-prevailing presumptions regarding the right to keep and bear arms, it would be pleasant to discover that at least some mainstream journalists had made more than a cursory effort to familiarize themselves with Second Amendment scholarship instead of excusing themselves by employing the (fundamentally false) bromide that the amendments wording is ambiguous because it is NOT ambiguous when viewed in the proper historical and linguistic context.

Lee W. Smith, Somers

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Letters to the editor Nov. 21 | Daily Inter Lake - Daily Inter Lake

The Student Government Association (SGA) is proposing two amendments to their Constitution, requiring 1/3 of the student body to vote on them in order to pass.

The first amendment aims to allow members of the Cabinet to hold or retain officer positions in any other formally constituted campus organization, meaning that students would be able to simultaneously hold an e-board position in a student organization while also serving as an SGA Cabinet member.

Reasons for this change include a lot of the best candidates for the SGA Cabinet are students who are very involved on campus and know a lot about how Stevens student organizations run and since our terms align with the calendar year and most other organizations align with the academic year, this often creates an issue that there are students who would like to join the SGA Cabinet, but in order to do that would need to resign from their e-boards in the middle of their term.

The second amendment aims to change the quorum requirement for referendums of proposed amendments to the SGA Constitution from one-third of the Student Body to five percent of the Student Body. Currently, 1/3 of the student body at a population of 3,791 is 1,263 students. At 5%, only 190 students would be needed to pass amendments.

In an email to undergraduate students, the SGA stated that with the current quorum, it is nearly impossible to make any changes. By decreasing the quorum we are hoping to allow future SGA officers to be able to make necessary and appropriate changes. Five percent of the undergraduate student body is the current number of nominations a presidential ticket needs to receive in order to move to the voting stage of elections. We feel as though it is an appropriate number of votes for constitutional changes as well.

In January 2021, the SGA went through a similar process of seeking 1/3 of the student body to vote on a completely new Constitution, which failed to pass after lack of student participation in the voting process. With the current voting portal only being open until November 22, it is unclear if the amendments will be passed.

Students can vote for the constitutional amendments at this link.

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Student government seeking 1/3 student body vote for Constitution amendments The Stute - The Stute

GOP elected officials like Rep. Matt Gaetz (L) and Madison Cawthorn (R) celebrated the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse (C) of all charges. (Photos:Paul Hennessy,Sean Krajacic-Pool/Getty Images, Republican National Committee)

Within minutes of the news breaking that Kyle Rittenhouse, a teenager who shot and killed two people last summer in Wisconsin, had been found not guilty, Republicans were flocking to the internet to celebrate.

Kyle Rittenhouse is not guilty, my friends! You have a right to defend yourself, a grinning Rep. Madison Cawthorn, a North Carolina Republican, cheered on an Instagram Story. Be armed, be dangerous, and be moral.

Kyle, if you want an internship, reach out to me, Cawthorn added in a caption at the bottom.

A Rittenhouse internship might turn out to be a hot commodity among the Capitol Hill GOP. Before the verdict was reached, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz suggested that Rittenhouse could become his intern. On Friday, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosarthe guy whose staff made an anime that depicted him killing New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Corteztweeted, I will arm wrestle @mattgaetz to get dibs for Kyle as an intern.

Justice was served for #KyleRittenhouse and he is fully exonerated, Gosar added. As I said last year, obviously self-defense.

Gaetz also reaffirmed his support for Rittenhouse on Friday, in a tweet from his official Twitter account. Kyle Rittenhouse committed no crimes, he wrote, before adding the nonsensical suggestion, Now do BLM

Rittenhouse had faced charges of first-degree reckless homicide, two counts of first-degree intentional homicide, and two counts of reckless endangerment of safety. In August 2020, he killed two men and maimed another during protests against police brutality in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

In the months since, Rittenhouse has become a cause clbre among conservatives, who have portrayed him as a hero, who did what was necessary to protect himself, and as a potential martyr for gun rights. During the protests, Rittenhouse was trying to protect a car dealership.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, meanwhile, saluted Rittenhouse as one of the good guys.

Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, who loves to show off her own gun collection, called Friday a great day for the Second Amendment and the right to self-defense, adding, Glory to God!

The Twitter account for Republicans on the House Committee on the Judiciary took a simpler tack. After the verdict, it tweeted, Justice.

But Florida state Rep. Anthony Sabatini, whos running for Congress, might have done the most: He proposed turning Nov. 19 into the federal holiday Kyle Rittenhouse Day.

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The GOP Is Just Loving the Kyle Rittenhouse Verdict - VICE

The right to keep and bear arms is a lot like the right to freedom of speech. In each case, the Constitution expressly protects a liberty that needs to be insulated from the ordinary political process. Neither right, however, is absolute. The First Amendment, for example, has never protected perjury, fraud, or countless other crimes that are committed through the use of speech. Similarly, no reasonable person could believe that violent criminals should have unrestricted access to guns, or that any individual should possess a nuclear weapon.

Inevitably, courts must draw lines, allowing government to carry out its duty to preserve an orderly society, without unduly infringing the legitimate interests of individuals in expressing their thoughts and protecting themselves from criminal violence. This is not a precise science or one that will ever be free from controversy.

One judicial approach, however, should be unequivocally rejected. During the nineteenth century, courts routinely refused to invalidate restrictions on free speech that struck the judges as reasonable. This meant that speech got virtually no judicial protection. Government suppression of speech can usually be thought to serve some reasonable purpose, such as reducing social discord or promoting healthy morals. Similarly, most gun control laws can be viewed as efforts to save lives and prevent crime, which are perfectly reasonable goals. If thats enough to justify infringements on individual liberty, neither constitutional guarantee means much of anything.

During the twentieth century, the Supreme Court finally started taking the First Amendment seriously. Today, individual freedom is generally protected unless the government can make a strong case that it has a real need to suppress speech or expressive conduct, and that its regulations are tailored to that need. The legal doctrines have become quite complex, and there is room for disagreement about many of the Courts specific decisions. Taken as a whole, however, this body of case law shows what the Court can do when it appreciates the value of an individual right enshrined in the Constitution.

The Second Amendment also raises issues about which reasonable people can disagree. But if the Supreme Court takes this provision of the Constitution as seriously as it now takes the First Amendment, which it should do, there will be some easy issues as well.

District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) is one example. The right of the people protected by the Second Amendment is an individual right, just like the right[s] of the people protected by the First and Fourth Amendments. The Constitution does not say that the Second Amendment protects a right of the states or a right of the militia, and nobody offered such an interpretation during the Founding era. Abundant historical evidence indicates that the Second Amendment was meant to leave citizens with the ability to defend themselves against unlawful violence. Such threats might come from usurpers of governmental power, but they might also come from criminals whom the government is unwilling or unable to control.

McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) was also an easy case under the Courts precedents. Most other provisions of the Bill of Rights had already been applied to the states because they are deeply rooted in this Nations history and tradition. The right to keep and bear arms clearly meets this test.

The text of the Constitution expressly guarantees the right to bear arms, not just the right to keep them. The courts should invalidate regulations that prevent law-abiding citizens from carrying weapons in public, where the vast majority of violent crimes occur. First Amendment rights are not confined to the home, and neither are those protected by the Second Amendment.

Nor should the government be allowed to create burdensome bureaucratic obstacles designed to frustrate the exercise of Second Amendment rights. The courts are vigilant in preventing government from evading the First Amendment through regulations that indirectly abridge free speech rights by making them difficult to exercise. Courts should exercise the same vigilance in protecting Second Amendment rights.

Some other regulations that may appear innocuous should be struck down because they are little more than political stunts. Popular bans on so-called assault rifles, for example, define this class of guns in terms of cosmetic features, leaving functionally identical semi-automatic rifles to circulate freely. This is unconstitutional for the same reason that it would violate the First Amendment to ban words that have a French etymology, or to require that French fries be called freedom fries.

In most American states, including many with large urban population centers, responsible adults have easy access to ordinary firearms, and they are permitted to carry them in public. Experience has shown that these policies do not lead to increased levels of violence. Criminals pay no more attention to gun control regulations than they do to laws against murder, rape, and robbery. Armed citizens, however, prevent countless crimes and have saved many lives. Whats more, the most vulnerable peopleincluding women, the elderly, and those who live in high crime neighborhoodsare among the greatest beneficiaries of the Second Amendment. If the courts require the remaining jurisdictions to stop infringing on the constitutional right to keep and bear arms, their citizens will be more free and probably safer as well.

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Interpretation: The Second Amendment | The National ...