This is a complicated read, and no mistake. It covers a lot of ground, including - tangentially - why college students are so easily indoctrinated.
One of the benefits of being a bad student is that, by the time I began to take the world of ideas seriously, I was already an adult, with a job, a wife, three kids and a mortgage. It was in the early 1990s, when I was on the staff of the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune, that I began haunting the local used book store, snapping up old volumes at 50 cents or a dollar each, pursuing an autodidactic course of remediation, to fill in the gaps in my knowledge that had by then become apparent to me.
The Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division has a long and storied history of standing up for, well, civil rights. They've taken on a ton of cases over the years, and they've got an impressive record in court cases. However, throughout all that storied history, there was always one civil right they ignored.
Before the Trump administration, they never took on a Second Amendment case.
You can imagine how that is being received.
Click thru for the wailing and gnashing of the teeth.
Writing for a three-judge panel, Circuit Judge Edith Hollan Jones said the ban actually reduced tax revenue by preventing distilling in the first place, unlike laws that regulated the manufacture and labeling of distilled spirits on which the government could collect taxes.
She also said that under the government’s logic, Congress could criminalize virtually any in-home activity that might escape notice from tax collectors, including remote work and home-based businesses.
If they could outlaw something, just because that means they can't tax it, they could outlaw your garden, you fruit trees, whatever. You're eating veggies you didn't pay taxes on.
To say nothing of home brewing or winemaking.
Not an issue I'm invested in, but I am in favor of liberty. (Hat tip to M D Campbell on X)
Magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition are ubiquitous in our country, numbering in the hundreds of millions, accounting forabout half of the magazines in the hands of our citizenry, and they come standard with the most popular firearms sold in America today. Because these magazines are arms in common and ubiquitous use by law-abiding citizens across this country, we agree with Benson and the United States that the District’s outright ban on them violates the Second Amendment.
Very interesting.
This decision is from the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, and NOT the US federal government Court of Appeals.
The case is Benson v. United States, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. I'm reasonable sure that Washington DC will appeal to wherever this is appealed next.
We don't lose our First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment, or any other enumerated rights when we visit another state, so why should our Second Amendment rights stop at the border of the state where we live?
A federal judge in New York has reached the obvious conclusion in a case dealing with the inability of non-residents to lawfully bear arms in the state: such a policy baldly violates the right to keep and bear arms.
The ruling doesn't make NY State recognize other states licenses, but they have to provide a way for out-of-state people to get a concealed carry license. If you travel to NY regularly, it might be worth it, though I'm sure it is expensive. Can't have the poor people with the right to bear arms. (Hat tip to MaddMedic)
The Nation is not a fan of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Not by a long shot.
The case is called US v. Wilson and it involves the stop-and-frisk of a Louisiana man named Damion Wilson. (Neither the judicial record, nor basic Google searches, reveal Wilson’s race. I’m going to assume he’s Black, but your mileage may vary.) Wilson was stopped by Deputy US Marshal Michael Atkins after Atkins observed “a bulge in [Wilson’s] waist.” Atkins believed it to be a “hard object”… like, perhaps, a gun.
Now Wilson was not a nice man. But the point is that the original stop, was just based on the suspicion that he had a gun in a state where it is perfectly legal to carry a gun.
So everything else that followed, such as more searches and more warrants, was tossed out.
Now The Nation does bring up some cases where people were stopped for "walking back and forth" and other nonsense.
For a more reasonable review of the situation, try the video below.
In a 2-1 vote, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, California, upheld a lower court judge's permanent injunction against enforcing the law.
Circuit Judge Sandra Ikuta said California failed to show that the law was consistent with the country's historical tradition of firearm regulation, as required under a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court precedent.
Why does anyone want to live in a state with the highest taxes, and the lowest liberty? It isn't that beautiful, and yes, I did live in California for about 5 years after college.
In many countries in Europe it can take up to two years to get a license to enjoy a shooting hobby. It is no wonder some Europeans opt for an increasingly popular ‘weird special hack’ which allows unlimited dirt cheap automatic carbines to materialize in one’s home without needing to ask anyone’s permission.
Click thru for a great photo that includes exampls of the FGC-9, Urutau, FGC-EVO, Rogue-9 and a Scorpion EVO variant, along with some pistols.
After reexamining its precedent, a federal appeals court has ruled that a federal ban on handgun sales to youths ages 18 to 20 violates the Second Amendment.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals New Orleans said it 2012 decision upholding the ban was incorrect based on subsequent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Some discussion of those decisions, in particular, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen. (Hat tip to Jews Can Shoot)
“Self-defense is a primary law of nature, which no subsequent law of society can abolish.”
That’s how the great Mercy Otis Warren put it. But this wasn’t just a philosophical view for the Founders and Old Revolutionaries. They knew an armed society was essential to preserving liberty – because they lived it firsthand.
A lot was written about the Entire Populace being the militia at the time of the writing of the Constitution. Even people who were opposed to the federal system, wanted the people to be armed. But you can research those views yourself.
The Founders understood that a well-armed people would continue to serve as the first line of defense in a free society. General Henry Knox, the first Secretary of War, recommended to Pres. Washington:
An energetic national militia is to be regarded as the Capital security of a free republic; and not a standing army, forming a distinct class in the community.
Reason number 1371 that Homeowners Associations are evil.
This is a story of the time an HOA tried to tell a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, Retired Army Colonel Van T. Barfoot, that he could not fly the American flag in front of his home. It was a bad move.
This is it. This is a trifecta video where I finally get to talk about the military while simultaneously bashing on Karen's and HOAs all at the same time.
I particularly like the description of HOAs as "Diet Communism."
A homeowners association, which if you don't know is basically diet communism. It's where a bunch of people build some nice houses, then they get together and they're like...
Hey, we got all these nice houses, you know what we need. More government. We've got federal, state, county, Municipal. It's not enough. We need even more rules. We should come together, designate a tribunal of Elder Karens to make all the important decisions for us.
Until one day in December of 2009 when at 90 years old he would open a letter informing him he was not allowed to fly the American flag in his own front yard. Which, bear in mind, literal Nazis with machine guns couldn't stop him from flying the American flag in Germany in the 1940s, and now you're gonna try to tell him he can't do it in fucking Virginia, in his own front yard.
It's a bold strategy.
So the next day Colonel Barfoot's son-in-law calls up the local radio show. They run with the story. It gets picked up nationally almost immediately. Everybody from the White House Press Secretary, to Fox News, to the local VFW is absolutely Furious.
Okay stop. At this point in time it's 2009. Barack Obama's President. Do you understand what I've just told you? This HOA has fucked up so bad, that they've got the Obama Administration and Fox News to agree on something. Okay? Okay, this is a critical fucking error on their part. The HOA would end up backing down within a week, because apparently when the entire nation is looking at you like the eye of Sauron, it ends up being bad for the Aesthetics and curb appeal of your little neighborhood.
Click thru for a recap of Colonel Barfoot's military career, including the operation that lead to him receiving the CMH, and what his career was like after that.
That means that public housing authorities cannot ban tenants or their guests from being armed for self defense. This ruling is from U.S. District Judge Glenn T. Suddaby with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York
A federal judge in New York has issued a permanent injunction against the Cortland Housing Authority prohibiting any sort of firearms ban against CHA tenants, in a victory for the Second Amendment Foundation and its fellow plaintiffs.
SAF was joined in this action by three private citizens, Robert Hunter, Elmer Irwin and Doug Merrin. They are represented by attorneys Edward Andrew Paltzik, Serge Krimnus and Meredith Lloyd at Bochner PLLC in New York City.
If the Cortland Housing Authority doesn't appeal, and who can tell at this point if that will happen, then I expect a law suit in New York City, and they will fight tooth and nail to keep the population disarmed, because that is what tyrants do.
A small step? Perhaps.
The hat tip goes to the Armed Attorneys YouTube channel, and the video Breaking News: The Post Office Carry Ban Fight Begins! In which they note, that since public housing is often a dangerous place, you might want to be armed.
And they also note that U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York is generally considered to be hostile to gun owners and gun rights.
The 31st saw the release of what is probably the most refined and easily made 3D printed semi-automatic firearms offered for download so far. The Rogue-9 is a compact and improved ‘remake’ of the FGC-9 (currently arming thousands across the globe). Like the FGC-9, it requires no restricted firearms parts and can be made in any home, anywhere in the world using basic hardware store supplies.
I haven't had a chance to look at the design, beyond the image below, or search for videos of anyone firing it, but an improvement to the FGC-9 is a good thing. And the fact that the 3D models include jigs to make parts- that's known as tooling - is even better.
As the British and Australian governments clamber to ban toy guns for being easily ‘convertible’, developments like the Rogue-9 will show all efforts to slow down the incoming tidal wave of advanced DIY arms to be completely futile.
