#second amendment
Hypocritical Gun Control “logic”
It’s true: we can have the Second Amendment AND common sense gun laws that save lives. Everyone wins! (Unless you’re the gun lobby.)
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What exactly does Texas have going for it?
- You’re an energy production state that bankrupts your energy customers.
- Each passing year you’re climbing the charts for states hostile to women’s rights.
- Further regressing on environmental reforms (just basic maintenance like flood maps) to keep pitiful insurance rates - totally not going to backfire.
- Top tier obesity rates for adults and children.
- Football?
Yea, I’m deliberately ignoring guns because after hearing more interviews after Uvalde, listening to relatives say they need more guns to protect the children, you need cult intervention before we can actually talk about safety.
Another massacre of innocent young lives in the country that has a hard-on for guns. Yeah america cares more about guns than it does about the lives of children.
+ = 0️⃣
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This is how it looks from the outside. ijs
Sad shit.
1,200 Kids Have Been Killed by Guns Since Parkland
That is approximately how many people under age 18 have died as a result of gun violence in the United States exactly one year since the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, according to a new reporting initiative, “Since Parkland.” The shooting was the impetus for March for Our Lives, a nationwide movement that has included sit-ins, die-ins, and school walkouts, launching students to the forefront of the gun control conversation.
In a long-form report released just days before the one-year anniversary of the Parkland shooting, more than 200 teen journalists explained just how many gun-related deaths have struck young Americans. “Since Parkland,” a collaborative reporting project among The Trace, The Miami Herald, and the McClatchy newspaper group, showcases the lives of the more than 1,200 victims of gun violence — age zero to 18 — who have been killed in the 12 months since the Florida tragedy.
The goal of the project? To “create three-dimensional human begins that were more than just another statistic — more than just another kid dead,” The Trace senior project editor Katina Paron tells Teen Vogue.
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Scarborough on Gun Legislation: ‘A Lie’ to ‘Say Second Amendment Rights Are Being Trampled On’
MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough on Monday pushed back against the notion that gun legislation being proposed in the wake of recent mass shootings was “trampling” on Second Amendment rights.
According to Scarborough, universal background checks and adding regulations do not “infringe on Second Amendment rights.” He argued it was a “lie” to say that Second Amendment rights were “being trampled on.”
“I mean, if you look at a gun the wrong way, people go, ‘Oh, you’re trampling my Second Amendment rights,‘” Scarborough asserted. “There is nothing in any legislation that’s being proposed right now, whether you’re talking about universal background checks, that does anything to infringe on Second Amendment rights. Nothing at all. If you read the Constitution if you read the Second Amendment if you read Heller, the decision that said Second Amendment said what the Second Amendment said, there’s nothing in there.”
“We’re not even talking about military-style weapons, banning them,” he added. “But even if you were to regulate them more, other states are doing it. The court hasn’t overruled those; haven’t said that’s unconstitutional whether you agree or disagree, that’s one thing. But to say that Second Amendment rights are being trampled on, that’s what everybody says. It’s a lie. It’s just a lie.”
Scarborough on Gun Legislation: 'A Lie’ to 'Say Second Amendment Rights Are Being Trampled On’
Rep. Greg Steube Shows How Democrats Magazine Ban Would Also Outlaw Handguns
Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) showed the House Judiciary Committee Thursday how a ban on high-capacity gun magazine would lead to the outlawing of many popular handguns.
New York Gun Reform Laws Hurt The Law-Abiding
Democrats ADMIT They’ll Do ANYTHING To Take Your Guns
Glenn and Stu debunk the Left’s latest gun lies after two Democratic congressmen admitted that they don’t care what’s standing in their way, whether it’s the Constitution or the Supreme Court: They WILL take AR-15s away from Americans. And President Biden is right there with them, despite what he says about the “respect” he gives to “lawful gun owners.” But Glenn has a feeling they won’t stop at so-called “assault rifles”…
It’s Not MY Second Amendment Right — It’s OURS, and Yes, It’s Worth the Price
There, I said it. I’ll be the big, bad monster “gun nut” the left can hate. Lefties need conservative boogeymen to disdain. I volunteer for the role of “firearm hobgoblin.”
Now for some reality. Everyone believes that kids getting shot is abhorrent. Some of us also think it’s repulsive to dismember a kicking child four days before it’s born or support an attention-starved, 12-year-old boy’s decision to lop off his penis for Facebook “likes,” but that is another conversation.
Nevertheless, the left is willing happy eager to use a school shooting to ask us the following: “Are a bunch of dead kids worth your Second Amendment right???!?!?!”
This question is obviously a vulgar attempt at a “gotcha” moment that liberals use to reinforce their hateful belief that conservatives are fearful, self-absorbed, soulless ghouls suffering from “crotch poverty” who grasp at guns to feel manly.
Also, it’s OUR Second Amendment right. It is a right for all Americans, and more Americans should take it seriously.
The response tweet is from a bot; I checked.
The Second Amendment isn’t about shooting deer; it’s about killing tyrants who have shredded our Constitution and taken control of our government.
The jackpuddings on the left either ignore this fact or are too stupid to think that we may need to stand up and fight for our nation someday, possibly soon.
Or they are in on it.
My favorite lefty lemmings are the bootlickers who say, “You only have a gun; you can’t fight nukes, you stupid Crucifix-clutcher!”
For starters, the U.S. military is highly unlikely to nuke 20,000,000 patriotic Americans who dare stand up for democracy. Nor do I foresee a gun battle in a peach orchard, cornfield, or a suburban neighborhood. I am not predicting Bull Run Part III outside of Washington, D.C. Then again, there was a time when I didn’t think the Democrats would steal a presidential election.
I do see a situation where the Democrats steal a move from Australia and use COVID-19 as an excuse to lock up people they deem “high risk.” Where would I get such a tinfoil hat idea? From the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). They call it “shielding:”
The shielding approach aims to reduce the number of severe COVID-19 cases by limiting contact between individuals at higher risk of developing severe disease (“high-risk”) and the general population (“low-risk”). High-risk individuals would be temporarily relocated to safe or “green zones” established at the household, neighborhood, camp/sector or community level depending on the context and setting.1,2 They would have minimal contact with family members and other low-risk residents.
Screenshot from: www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/global-covid-19/shielding-approach-humanitarian.html#r1
Keep in mind that this is all about “protecting” you from a scenario where 98.8% of KNOWN cases of the Bat Stew flu have survived in the U.S. I say “KNOWN” because tens of millions of Americans have tested positive with tests at home and self-medicated. Millions of kids have likely gotten the Hong Kong Fluey and shown no symptoms and hence weren’t even tested. Johns Hopkins University and the CDC will never know how many actual cases we’ve had.
More about the CDC’s “shielding” plan: “In theory, shielding may serve its objective to protect high-risk populations from disease and death. However, implementation of the approach necessitates strict adherenceto protocol.”
Strict adherence you say? COVID camps? To anyone paying attention, that dirty AR-15 and those demonic 30-round mags don’t seem so bad now, do they? I don’t know about you but I’m not going to one of Fauci’s “shielding camps.”
FACT-O-RAMA! The CDC will decide who is/is not “high risk.”
Here is one more from the CDC’s shielding nonsense:
Social/Cultural/ReligiousPractices
Consideration: Plan for potential disruption of social networks.
Explanation: Community celebrations (religious holidays), bereavement (funerals) and other rites of passage are cornerstones of many societies. Proactive planning ahead of time, including strong community engagement and risk communication is needed to better understand the issues and concerns of restricting individuals from participating in communal practices because they are being shielded. Failure to do so could lead to both interpersonal and communal violence.21,22
The CDC is already anticipating violence when they lock us up. Joe Biden wants your guns. Get it yet?
I STRONGLY recommend you read what the CDC/federal government has planned for “our protection.”
WATCH Video:
Republicans understand the importance of the Constitution, and we are willing to fight to keep it intact. Democrats see it as a roadblock to pinko paradise and have been trying to dismantle it for years.
Biden urged the CDC to enact an “eviction moratorium,” meaning that people didn’t have to pay rent. This was blatantly unconstitutional. He did it anyway. Biden also tried to have your employer fire you if you didn’t get an untested “vaccine.” That’s called authoritarianism, and the Constitution was written to keep it off of American soil.
The Democrats view the Constitution the way some people look at the rules of Monopoly; they go with the basics and try to change the ones they don’t like. You know, like ending the Electoral College and raising the number of Supreme Court judges.
Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) gave away the Democrats’ bolshie playbook at a House Judiciary Committee meeting last Thursday.
“You will not stop us from advancing the Protecting Our Kids Act today,”
he threatened.
“If the filibuster obstructs us, we will abolish it. If the Supreme Court objects, we will expand it.
And we will not rest until we have taken weapons of war out of circulation and our communities each and every day.”
Sure, the unknown congressman is screeching to the choir, but he said the secret part out loud. The enemy is at the gate front door.
Albert Einstein is reported to have written his son and said, “There’s something amazing about America’s democracy, it’s got a gyroscope and just when you think it’s going to go off the cliff, it rights itself.”
Einstein never factored in the possibility of stolen elections. Let’s face it: if the Democrats’ ideas are so good, “allegedly” stealing elections wouldn’t be necessary.
Communism, Nazism, authoritarianism — call it what you like. It’s time for conservatives to wake up and realize, “Yes, it CAN happen here.”
And liberals need to understand that the pesky Second Amendment is the last hope we have of stopping them. I really hope the Democrats don’t take it that far, but I don’t trust them. Neither should you.
It’s Not MY Second Amendment Right — It’s OURS, and Yes, It’s Worth the Price
They’re Coming for Our Guns…
In Joe Biden’s address to the nation on gun control on Thursday night, he made one thing abundantly clear to the American people: Democrats are coming for our guns.
Clearly, the president fails to understand the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution explicitly stating the right of the people to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed.” No God-given right is safe if our right to keep and bear arms and self-defense is gone.
We will continue reporting the truth about how guns save lives, the truth about the president’s and anti-gun mobs’ communist gun control proposals, and call out their outright lies… but we need your help.
Last night, Biden once again called for another “assault weapon” ban and falsely claimed the 1994 Assault Weapon ban reduced the number of mass shootings across the country. This is false, and Townhall’s Katie Pavlich has previously debunked one of Joe Biden’s favorite lies once and for all.
If the Democrats cannot ban AR-15s or magazines, at a minimum, they not only a national red flag law, the consequences of which would be devastating, but they also want to raise the age to purchase a gun to 21. For Democrats, you can go to war and die for your country at 18, but you cannot purchase a gun for self-defense.
Democrats who want to dictate gun policy are absolutely clueless about firearms. Just this week, President Biden referred to 9mm ammunition as “high caliber,” stating it is not necessary to own. In reality, a ban on 9mm ammunition would effectively ban a majority of handguns. Of course, the White House walked back the president’s statement, but the damage was already done. We know where they stand.
It is time for conservatives and law-abiding gun owners to stand up and fight back against this radical administration and the traitorous RINOs on Capitol Hill that want to disarm us.
A Tyrannical President Wants to End the Constitutional Amendment Written to Stop a Tyrannical President
I watched Biden’s 17-minute emotional threat to disassemble the 2nd Amendment, and a slew of headlines popped into my mind. I had to pick one for this article carefully because, frankly, I had a number from which to choose. I also liked:
“Nation’s Longest-Serving Political Leader Blames Politicians for Not Doing Something About ‘Gun Violence’ For Decades”
“Ignore the 100,000 People who Die Yearly From Drug Overdoses Due to Biden’s Open Border, Let’s Focus on a Rare School Shooting to Disarm Tens of Millions of Law-abiding Americans”
“Groggy Biden Stands on a Pile of Dead Kids and Says ‘Americans, I can See your Rights Disappearing From Here'”
Biden’s gun-grabbing speech did exactly what one would expect: it appealed to the emotions of the left while ignoring the logic of conservatives and the profound necessity of our Constitutional rights.
Yes, Joe, we get it. School shootings are horrific. P.S. Mad bomb shouts on the burning candles, nice touch. I’m just glad he didn’t mention “white supremacy” again, but he couldn’t, due to the fact that the Uvalde shooter was Hispanic and the Tulsa shooter was black. #Equity
No one hates to see children murdered more than the people who embrace the lives of children, whether or not they’ve been born yet, as well as family values and the idea of the nuclear family. That would be conservatives.
‘DO something. Just Do Something. For God’s Sake, Do Something’
Biden rattled off a handful of past mass shootings and mentioned that nothing has been done over the years. He neglects to mention these are the same years he has been in Washington, either as a senator, vice-president, or president.
Biden tooted his own horn about the mythical “assault weapon ban” from 1994 to 2004, and how mass shootings dropped in those 10 years but went up when “Republicans allowed it to expire.”
Assault Weapon Ban Fast-facts:
▪The ban didn’t keep even ONE semi-automatic rifle from being sold. It merely put restrictions on which/how many options could be put on the gun
▪ Despite what Biden said, Republicans didn’t “let” the “ban” expire, the bill was written to expire in ten years.
▪ Biden claims mass shootings dropped because of the ban. Not true. Check this out from fivethirtyeight.com:
During the ban, a semi-automatic rifle like the AR-15 could legally have any one of the following features, as long as it didn’t have two or more of them: a folding stock (making the gun slightly easier to conceal), a pistol grip (making the weapon easier to hold and use), a bayonet mount, a flash suppressor (making it harder to see where shots are coming from), or a grenade launcher.
A 2004 report commissioned by the Department of Justice on the effects of the assault weapons ban concluded that the law was largely ineffective at limiting access to weapons with the power of the AR-15. According to the report, the ban focused on “features that have little to do with the weapons’ operation, and removing those features is sufficient to make the weapons legal.” The report noted that several semi-automatic rifles were functionally equivalent to the AR-15 and untouched by the ban.
This means that Joe Biden stood on the bodies of recently murdered victims and lied to us about the “assault rifle ban” he boasted of helping to write.
FACT-O-RAMA! The number of mass shootings involving a grenade launcher has always been zero, and mass-bayonet attacks have been non-existent since the wrting of the Magna Carta.
Joe went on to bemoan gun locks and mental illness. The shooters in Tulsa, Uvalde, and Buffalo bought their guns just before committing their heinous crimes. Gun locks had nothing to do with anything.
Mental illness is a different animal and certainly worth a discussion, but there is NOTHING that could have stopped the Tulsa, Uvalde, and Buffalo shooters from buying guns. There are tests for mental illness, and laws to keep those who suffer from it from buying guns, but the last time I checked there is no test for evil.
Biden continued by saying that guns are the leading cause of death amongst children. This is not true. As per the New England Journal of Medicine, accidents and injuries are still the leading cause.
What Joe also slyly tried to do was equate gun deaths with “assault rifle” deaths.
The truth is this, more people are killed by knives and also by physical beatings than by ALL styles of rifles combined.
I wrote about that recently:
Here is an FBI chart showing the types of weapons used for murders between 2015-2019.
As you can see, over three times as many people were beaten to death as were killed by all rifle styles combined, and nearly five times as many were killed by knives. So unless your liberal sister-in-law is ready to turn in her cutlery and chop off her hands and those gnarly feet, she can kiss your ass.
What Joe failed to mention was how many kids are shot by stray bullets fired from gangbangers who the Democrats refuse to lock up. Or how many are young gangbangers themselves?
Biden then went on to say the age to purchase a semi-auto rifle should be changed from 18 to 21. This is hard to hear from a man who is down with transgender activism for kids.
Meet the Bolshie family!
14-year-old Britanny “Mom, I’m having an abortion.”
“OK.”
12-year-old Connor “Dad, I’m having my penis removed.”
“Ok”
18-year-old Mike “I"m buying an AR.”
“The FUCK YOU ARE!!!”
— The Kevin Downey, Jr. Show (@KDJRadioShow) June 3, 2022
It wouldn’t be a Biden speech with about a whisper or two. At one point he squeaked out the following: “Why in God’s name should an ordinary citizen be able to purchase an assault weapon that holds 30-round magazines?
The 2nd Amendment isn’t about shooting deer, Joe.
It’s about defending the Constitution against enemies foreign and DOMESTIC.
It’s for when our elected leaders go rogue. It’s for when an entire political party of the United States goes full commtard and won’t stop shredding the Constitution until it’s dead, floating facedown in the Potomac, enveloped in adipocere. Defending our Constitution is way easier to do with magazines that hold 30 rounds of commie-stoppers.
You can watch the whole hackneyed mouth-trash speech here.
WATCH Video:
House Democrat Wants to Tax Assault Weapons 1,000% and It Could Pass Without GOP Votes
In response to a recent string of mass shootings, one House Democrat is drafting a bill designed to severely restrict access to assault weapons.
Rep. Donald Beyer (D-Va.), who sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, is looking to put a 1,000% excise tax on AR-15-type rifles as a means of making them less affordable to the public.
“What it’s intended to do is provide another creative pathway to actually make some sensible gun control happen,” Beyer told Business Insider. “We think that a 1,000% fee on assault weapons is just the kind of restrictive measure that creates enough fiscal impact to qualify for reconciliation.”
With the affected guns ranging in price from $500 to $2000, the tax could add as much as $20,000 to the final sale price of the weapons. While bullets would not be taxed at the high rate, high-capacity magazines would be.
The details of the legislation are not yet final. Beyer insists that law enforcement agencies and the military would be exempt from the tax, as would existing owners. One can only imagine the surge in sales of the weapons should this legislation make it through. And while the proposal seems absurd on its face, that doesn’t mean it’s doomed to fail; Beyer is looking to use the reconciliation process to bypass a filibuster in the Senate.
House Dem Wants to Tax Assault Weapons 1,000% and It Could Pass Without GOP Votes
Oregan Man Destroys Guns, Claims it’s to Reduce Violence
Like many of you, I have a number of guns sitting in my gun safe. To my knowledge, only one has been used to take human life, and it’s an SKS my father brought back from Vietnam. I have another that might have–a Yugo SKS with a Serbian crest carved into the stock.
None, however, have been fired at an individual since I obtained them. Absolutely none.
The same can be true of most people’s guns.
However, an Oregon man went on TikTok to destroy his own weapons, he says to combat violence.
WATCH Video:
A Hillsboro man is getting national attention on social media after turning his two firearms over to police to be destroyed following the mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas.
“Today I’m turning in my weapons to the Hillsboro Police Department in Oregon, both my AR-15 and my nine millimeter handgun. I no longer want them,” said Ben Beers in his now viral TikTok post.
Next, Beers will cut off his junk in order to combat sexual assault.
After all, that makes just as much sense as getting rid of your guns because of someone else’s actions.
If you’re going to destroy your guns because of what a third party did with a completely different weapon, then clearly your sexual organs are just as responsible for rape as the rapist’s organs are.
Then again, Beers has his perspective a little skewed.
“Which is a good thing,” said Beers. “Hopefully, soon we can all wake up and realize this needs to be done… this is an idea. Guns are not as precious to us and nor are my Second Amendment rights as the lives of my children in school.”
Beers and his wife have two daughters. By the time they’re grown, he said he hopes access to guns in America will look different.
“I can’t even find a PlayStation 5, but I can go get a Glock, you know?” said Beers.
Understand, my daughter is the same age as those killed in Uvalde. I hold her as one of the most important things in my life along with my son and my wife.
But where Beers screws up is in thinking this is a binary thing, that you can’t hold your children precious and support gun rights. Your Second Amendment rights preserve your ability to protect those things you hold dear.
Then again, I don’t think any of that is what matters to Beers.
No, what mattered to him was having the opportunity to virtue signal.
He wanted to get followers and likes on TikTok and used the tragedy and his supposed response to it in order to get them.
He hasn’t made anyone safer.
Hell, following Parkland, a number of people pulled the exact same thing, making a big show of destroying their firearms. Since then, violent crime has skyrocketed.
Now, I’m not saying them destroying their guns caused the spike by any means. However, destroying their guns damn sure didn’t do anything to help, either.
On the same token, Beers hasn’t actually done anything of value, either.
But hey, now he can say he’s big on TikTok. 14-year-old girls everywhere will be totally jealous.
The Morning Briefing: Will Squish Republicans Cave to Democrats on Guns?
Thanks to Oval Office Occupier Joe Biden’s speech last Thursday, America’s argument raged on all through the weekend. Let us be clear about one thing: there is no gun “debate” in this country, it’s a knock-down, drag-out fight.
We’ve had a lot of content written these past few days covering the issue. I wrote a column on Friday that included something that comes up in conversations a lot lately:
As I often tell people, in over half a century of shooting, my guns have never shot anybody.
Why should my Second Amendment rights be run roughshod over?
No one has ever been able to make that case to me.
That may seem a little simplistic but I would like someone to take a crack at answering it.
The coastal Democrats are trying to move quickly on new gun legislation, coming up with outlandish ideas like the one Matt wrote about over the weekend:
In response to a recent string of mass shootings, one House Democrat is drafting a bill designed to severely restrict access to assault weapons.
Rep. Donald Beyer (D-Va.), who sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, is looking to put a 1,000% excise tax on AR-15-type rifles as a means of making them less affordable to the public.
“What it’s intended to do is provide another creative pathway to actually make some sensible gun control happen,” Beyer told Business Insider. “We think that a 1,000% fee on assault weapons is just the kind of restrictive measure that creates enough fiscal impact to qualify for reconciliation.”
Democrats have never encountered a situation that they couldn’t tax to death.
The big worry for pro-Second Amendment types is whether any Republicans might be moved by media pressure to “compromise” on what the Democrats like to laughingly call “common sense” legislation. There were rumors floating around last week that some Republicans were ready to yield on “red flag laws,” which Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) railed against, calling them “unconstitutional.
In his latest column over at Townhall, Schlichter offers up a variety of reasons that the GOP shouldn’t compromise on guns. My big reason has always been this:
the Democrats are never satisfied once Republicans yield to them.
They’ll just want more. Just look at what they’ve done with abortion.
They reject any limitations whatsoever.
Republicans who want to buddy up to the Dems on guns in order to get a pat on the head from The New York Times do so at their own peril, which New York’s Chris Jacobs found out the hard way.
There are no simple paths to an agreement between the left and the right on this issue and Republicans should be wary of any that seem to be.
The Democrats’ end game is to take all of our guns away.
They’ll do it in baby steps and Republicans who are afflicted by Swamp disease will fall for them.
And then one day it will be too late.
The Morning Briefing: Will Squish Republicans Cave to Democrats on Guns?
California: No. 1 in Gun Control, No. 1 in ‘Active Shooter Incidents’
An FBI report on ‘Active Shooter Incidents’ in 2021 shows that California was the number one state for such incidents, with six incidents total.
California is also number one for gun law strength, the Mike Bloomberg-affiliated Everytown for Gun Safety noted.
According to the FBI, there were 61 “active shooter incidents” across the country in 2021 and 12 of the incidents met the definition of a “mass killing.”
California led the nation with six “active shooter incidents.”
California has…
▪ Universal background checks,
▪ An “assault weapons” ban,
▪ A “high capacity” magazine ban, a 10-day waiting period on gun purchases,
A a red flag law, gun registration requirements,
▪ A “good cause” requirement for concealed carry permit issuance,
▪ A a ban on carrying a gun on a college campus for self-defense, ▪ A ban on K-12 teachers being armed on campus for classroom defense,
▪ A background check requirement for ammunition purchases,
▪ And a limit on the number of guns a law-abiding citizen can purchase in a given month, among other controls.
Additionally, ammunition purchases are only allowed if made through a state-approved vendor.
California: No. 1 in Gun Control, No. 1 in ‘Active Shooter Incidents’
Something to Consider:
San Antonio Spurs Head Coach Gregg Popovich Gregg Popovich: I Shouldn’t Be Able to Buy an AR-15, Neither Should You
San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich spoke at a ‘Stand with Uvalde’ rally Saturday, referenced AR-15s, and said, “I shouldn’t be able to buy one, you shouldn’t be able to buy one.”
Outkick.com reported Popovich’s participation in the rally.
Popovich’s statements on AR-15s came after he held up Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) as an example of a politician who is supporting gun control in the wake of the Uvalde attack. On May 27, 2022, Breitbart News noted that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tapped Cornyn to work with Democrats in pursuit of “bipartisan” gun control.”
After mentioning Cornyn, Popovich turned to the topic of the Uvalde attacker and criticized his ability to get a gun.
He said:
“Nobody’s trying to take away anybody’s guns, nobody. But they said that this 18-year-old, he probably had mental challenges, but they gave him a gun.
They gave him an AR-15.
They didn’t give him a hunting rifle, they didn’t give him a handgun, and the things that’s amazing to me about that.”
Popovich then started to ask why an 18-year-old can buy an AR-15 but redirected his point to say,
“Wait a minute, why can anybody buy an AR-15?
I shouldn’t be able to buy one, you shouldn’t be able to buy one.
What the hell do you need an AR-15 for?”
San Antonio Spurs’ Gregg Popovich: We Shouldn’t be Able to Buy AR-15s
“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.”
- Constitution of United States of America 1789
Bill Maher: School Attacker’s Advantage Is Not Gun Type But Time
On Friday, HBO’s Bill Maher made clear the Uvalde school attacker’s advantage was not the type of gun he used but the amount of time he had to use it.
Maher said,
“I mean, this kid was in the room for 40 minutes before anybody came in. It wouldn’t have mattered what kind of gun he had. Any kind of gun could do any amount of damage in that time.”
On May 27, 2022, a Breitbart News op-ed noted, “We must understand that the attacker’s advantage in a school shooting is not so much the type of firearm he uses but the time he has without armed resistance and the degree of surprise that results from the launch of his attack.”
When there is no armed guard present to stop the attacker and no perimeter fencing, or there is weak perimeter fencing, and there are no armed teachers, the attacker has time on his side when he gets inside the school.
Consider Maher’s words again: “I mean, this kid was in the room for 40 minutes before anybody came in.”
Breitbart News noted that the February 14, 2018, Parkland attacker had time to pause and reload five times during his rampage. The Sandy Hook Elementary School attacker had more than nine minutes without armed resistance.
Bill Maher: School Attacker’s Advantage Is Not Gun Type But Time
Joe Biden’s Call to Restrict Young Adults’ Second Amendment Rights Previously Defeated in Federal Court
WASHINGTON, DC – President Joe Biden called for American adults ages 18–20 to be barred from buying modern sporting rifles, but a federal appeals court has ruled that the Second Amendment fully applies at age 18, making it likely that such a restriction would be struck down as unconstitutional.
Biden specifically said he would raise the age on “assault weapons,” but there is no such thing as an “assault weapon.” Biden’s nominee for ATF director couldn’t even define the term when Sen. Tom Cotton challenged him to do so.
So assuming Biden meant assault rifles – more correctly called modern sporting rifles – the key to this constitutional question is found in 18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(1) and ©(1). Those provisions of a federal law say that, although an 18-year-old can buy a long gun (rifle or shotgun) from anyone, an adult must be at least 21 to buy a handgun (pistol or revolver) from a FFL (a federal firearm license holder) – in other words, a gun store. A citizen can buy a handgun from another source starting at age 18, but an American must be 21 to buy a handgun from a federally regulated retail outlet.
That makes no sense to many people. At age 18 you can buy a handgun from a friend, a sister, or even that creepy neighbor down the street but not from a regulated, monitored, professional store that will first conduct a proper background check. But that is the law.
Biden seemed oblivious to all this when he said – falsely – in his divisive primetime speech that an 18-year-old cannot buy a handgun from any source in Texas. Not surprisingly, various lawsuits have been filed in recent years challenging that restriction.
In 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that the restriction violates the Constitution’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, setting the stage to strike it down in the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and South Carolina as this case continues. After many pages of analysis, the court concluded:
A review of the Constitution’s text, structure, and history reveals that 18-year-olds are covered by the Second Amendment. Like most other constitutional rights, the Second Amendment has no explicit age limit, and the most analogous constitutional rights apply equally to everyone. And when a constitutional right applies differently to minors, the age cutoff has consistently been set at 18, not 21.
Founding-era history confirms that the public understood the Second Amendment to cover 18-year-olds. At the time of ratification, every state and the federal government required 18-year-old men to enroll in the militia. Those in the militia, as Heller reminds us, were a subset of the political community known as “the people” that enjoyed Second Amendment rights. While most of the militia laws the government identifies still allowed 18-year-olds to join the militia, those that required enlistees to be 21 are few in number and distant in time from ratification. So the historical basis for those 18 and older having Second Amendment rights rests on firm ground.
Nor is the Fourth Circuit alone. Seven judges in the Fifth Circuit took the same position, as written by one of the most respected federal appeals judges in the nation, Judge Edith Jones. In 2013, Jones explained to seven dissenting judges why the Second Amendment allows law-abiding adults ages 18–20 to buy handguns:
Congress has seriously interfered with this group’s constitutional rights because of a class-based determination that applies to, at best, a tiny percentage of the lawbreakers among the class. Of course, the lawbreakers obtain handguns, but the law-abiding young adults are prevented from doing so, which adds an unusual and perverse twist to the constitutional analysis. I stress again [the judges’ ruling on the other side, saying that younger adults as a group are] “irresponsible”; the Second Amendment protects “law-abiding responsible adults”; the Second Amendment permits “categorical regulation of gun possession by classes of persons” irrespective of their being within the core zone of rights-holders; and finally, “Congress could have sought to prohibit all persons under 21 from possessing handguns—or all guns, for that matter.”
If any of these phrases were used in connection with a First Amendment free speech claim, they would be odious. Free speech rights are not subject to tests of “responsible adults,” speakers are not age-restricted, and class-based abridgement of speech is unthinkable today. Even if it is granted that safety concerns exist along with the ownership of firearms, they exist also with regards to incendiary speech. Some reasonable regulations are surely permissible, but the panel’s approval of banning young adults from the commercial and federally regulated market for the quintessential self-defense weapon is class-based invidious discrimination against a group of largely law-abiding citizens.
It would be interesting to see if the Biden administration attempts to argue that modern sporting rifles should be treated differently than handguns, given that Biden himself suggested in the past few days that he could ban 9mm handguns – which is a common barrel size for a standard handgun and smaller than many other common sizes like .40-caliber – and that modern sporting rifles have a similar profile in the marketplace. It would seem that age-based restrictions on one would stand or fall with the other in a constitutional challenge.
This does not mean that Biden cannot seek to make the purchase age 21. All it means is that because the Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms at age 18, any change Biden and his Democrat Party would like to enact regarding the purchase age would likely need to be done through a constitutional amendment. The White House has said nothing to suggest Biden is willing to take on that challenge.
Joe Biden’s Call to Restrict 2nd Amendment for Young Adults Previously Defeated in Federal Court
Gun Control Activist Says it “Makes Sense” to Avoid Talk of Gun Ban… “ For Now.”
If you want a depressing look at how politics is trumping policy in the congressional response to the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, look no further than this report from The Hill on the current state of the gun control debate in Washington, D.C.
While the headline rightly notes that Joe Biden and congressional Democrats are not on the same page in their anti-gun talking points, with Biden pushing for a ban on so-called assault weapons (and maybe even 9mm handguns) and Senate Democrats focused on expanding background checks and giving grants to states to implement “red flag” gun seizure laws (House Democrats have their own legislative package that they’re teeing up, which includes a ban on “large capacity” magazines but no ban on modern sporting rifles), my big takeaway is that even the anti-gun senators hoping to use the horrific events in Uvalde to impose new restrictions on gun owners aren’t pretending that what they’re working on would have prevented that atrocity from taking place.
“It’s really a study of incrementalism, I think that’s what [Sen.] Chris Murphy is doing,” said Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, referring to the lead Democratic negotiator on gun control.
“He’s come to the realization that if he leads with an assault weapons ban, it’s not going to go anywhere. To get the 10 Republicans you need to break the filibuster, you can’t lead with a strong right hand. You’ve got to spar a little bit,” he said.
Murphy (D-Conn.) says he wants to get something done that saves lives, even if it doesn’t directly respond to the recent mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, where in each incident 18-year-old shooters deployed AR-15–style rifles.
“Republicans are not willing to support everything that I support, like banning assault weapons. But I really think that we could pass something that saves lives and breaks this logjam that we’ve had for 30 years,” Murphy said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
Even some gun control activists are willing to hush up about their desire for a gun ban for fear of scuttling the current talks that are underway.
Alex Barrio, the director of advocacy for gun violence prevention policy at the Center for American Progress, pointed out that keeping a proposed assault weapons ban on the back burner keeps Democratic divisions out of the spotlight.
“There are also Democrats that do not support an assault weapons ban. We know that [Sen.] Joe Manchin is one of them. That being said, keeping off the table for now makes sense,” he said.
Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Angus King (I-Maine), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) voted with Manchin (D-W.Va.) and every Senate Republican against Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) proposal to ban assault weapons during the Senate’s last extended gun control debate, in 2013.
You know who else hasn’t signed on to the current “assault weapons” ban bill gathering dust in the Senate? Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, the husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the co-founder of the gun control group that bears her name. There’s no doubt that Kelly and Giffords back a ban, but Kelly is also running for re-election to a full six-year term this fall and has been very quiet about pushing for more gun control legislation since he won a special election to fill the remaining term of the late John McCain in 2020.
Kelly might not be able to keep his anti-gun opinions to himself for long, however. Anti-gun activists, including Barrio, say they’ll push for a performative vote on banning modern sporting rifles if the Senate doesn’t pass something that the gun control lobby can call a win.
“If Republicans pull back from these negotiations … if the Republicans refuse to do anything and they decide at the end that they’re going to be 50 votes ‘no’ on everything,” even proposals to encourage red flag laws, “then I do think the assault weapons [ban] does need to go on the floor, there does need to be a vote,” Barrio said.
Christian Heyne, vice president of policy at Brady, a group that advocates for gun control, said, “I certainly think the responsible call to action right now is to call for an assault weapons ban vote.”
“These are weapons with tactical features designed for the battlefield to make these weapons more lethal, which is why they are the connective tissue between so many of these mass-casualty shootings,” he said.
Yeah, about that. According to the FBI’s recent report on 61 active shooter incidents in 2021, 48 of them involved the use of a handgun, while just 10 involved the use of a rifle (several incidents involved suspects with both rifles and handguns, and there were a few instances of a shotgun being used by the attacker as well).
Rifles just aren’t used in a lot of crimes, period. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report for 2019 documented 364 homicides in which a rifle of any kind was used as a murder weapon. That’s less than the 1,476 homicides in which knives or cutting weapons were used, the 397 homicides committed with the use of blunt objects like hammers, and the 600 homicides committed by individuals using hands, fists, and feet.
Not that any of that matters to anti-gun politicians hoping to use the tragedy in Uvalde to chalk up a win of some sort. What we’re watching play out in Washington, D.C. is a strategy based on the politics of the moment, with public safety a secondary concern at best.
Gun control activist says it “makes sense” to avoid talk of gun ban… “for now.”
