The topic of guns came up a few times during the debate tonight, usually because Trump rightly claimed that Kamala Harris would go after people’s guns.
At one point, Harris tried to shut down the topic by claiming she wouldn’t come after people’s guns because she’s a gun owner.
This has never come up before. She owns a gun? Really?
Harris has made her position on guns quite clear over the years.
Millions of illegal military-grade firearms are circulating in Ukraine and Kiev is now trying to get the situation under control, Interior Minister Bogdan Drapaty has said.
The senior official made the remarks on Ukrainian TV on Friday, promoting a plan to address the problem of mass illegal-weaponry in teh country, which was approved by the country’s parliament earlier this year.
While an exact number of illegal weapons held by Ukrainians is unknown, it is likely between two and five million pieces of military-grade firearms, the minister said, citing estimates by Kiev’s “European partners.”
The weaponry being held unlawfully includes “trophy” pieces found by civilians in combat zones, as well as firearms handed out in an uncontrolled fashion by the Ukrainian authorities themselves in the early days of the conflict with Russia, Drapaty explained. To avoid legal trouble, citizens must register their arsenals by December 25, he said.
“After declaring [firearms], a person will have the right to keep it as long as the martial law remains enacted, and to use it to resist armed aggression,” Drapaty stated, while urging civilians to use their firearms against the Russian military.
A federal appeals court panel on Wednesday ruled in favor of a Texas woman whom judges described as a “non-violent, marijuana smoking gunowner,” affirming a lower court’s ruling that federal charges filed against the woman for owning a firearm as a cannabis user are unconstitutional.
“The short of it is that our history and tradition may support some limits on a presently intoxicated person’s right to carry a weapon,” the court wrote in the new opinion, “but they do not support disarming a sober person based solely on past substance usage.”
Judges also pushed back against claims by Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys that cannabis users are inherently more dangerous than other Americans.
“Nor, contrary to what the government contends, do restrictions on the mentally ill or more generalized traditions of disarming ‘dangerous’ persons apply to nonviolent, occasional drug users when of sound mind,” the decision says.
DOJ has argued in this and other recent court cases that the federal law against gun and ammunition possession by someone who uses marijuana is consistent with other historical restrictions on gun ownership, such as by “mental defectives…and others whose possession of firearms is contrary to the public interests.”
But the Fifth Circuit panel disagreed.
“We must ask: why was severe mental illness a reason the Founders disarmed people, and is that ‘why’ ‘relevantly similar’ to § 922(g)(3)?” says the opinion, referring to the statute against gun ownership by people who consume illegal drugs.
Wrote the court: “It is not.”
“The government highlights nothing demonstrating that laws designed to confine (and consequently, disarm) those so severely mentally ill that they presented a danger to themselves and others map onto § 922(g)(3)’s rationale,” the panel said. “Repeat marijuana users, like repeat alcohol users, are of sound mind upon regaining sobriety, whereas those adjudged severely mentally ill often require extensive treatment and follow-up examination before they can be said to be of sound mind again.”
While this year’s Republican Party platform makes only a passing reference to Second Amendment rights, the platform approved at the Democratic National Convention this week does not mention them at all. But it does include eight references to “gun safety” and a section that brags about the Biden administration’s accomplishments in this area while laying out an agenda of additional firearm restrictions.
That treatment of this subject is similar to the approach that Democrats took in 2016, when their platform mentioned “the rights of responsible gun owners” but did not elucidate the basis of those rights, and in 2020, when the platform did not go even that far. The 2016 platform devoted a paragraph to gun control, which became two paragraphs in 2020 and has now expanded to five. Neither of the two most recent platforms so much as alludes to respect for gun rights.
By contrast, Democrats in 2000 promised to “respect the rights of hunters, sportsmen, and legitimate gun owners.” Four years later, after the gun issue, including Al Gore’s support for banning “assault weapons,” was widely blamed for contributing to George W. Bush’s election, Democrats promised to “protect Americans’ Second Amendment right to own firearms.” The 2008 and 2012 platforms included similar language, in both cases explicitly invoking the Second Amendment, which disappeared in the 2016 platform and now does not even seem like a dim memory for Democrats.
Whatever you make of former President Donald Trump’s evolution on gun rights, which seems to reflect political expendience rather than true conviction, he at least understands the importance of paying lip service to the Second Amendment. The current Democratic Party, by contrast, is intent on pushing gun control without acknowledging any constitutional limits on it.
“When I’m back in the Oval Office, no one will lay a finger on your firearms,” Trump promised at the National Rifle Association’s Great American Outdoor Show Presidential Forum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on February 9. “It’s not going to happen….Even as they turn America into a crime-ridden, gang-infested, terror-filled dumping ground, Joe Biden and his thugs will do everything in their power to confiscate your guns and annihilate your God-given right to self-defense. During my four years, nothing happened. And there was great pressure on me having to do with guns. We did nothing. We didn’t yield.”
In their platform, the Democrats quote those last four sentences, which they consider damning: “While he ‘did nothing,’ gun violence spiked: Trump oversaw the largest single-year increase in murders in history, including a 35 percent increase in gun murders. He refused to limit the use of high-capacity magazines after a Las Vegas shooter used a dozen 100-round magazines to kill 58 people. And, when confronted with horrific gun violence, he told families to ‘get over it.'”
A U.S. judge has dismissed charges against a woman who possessed a machine gun, citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision that shifted the framework for how courts analyze cases dealing with constitutional rights.
Machine guns fall under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, U.S. District Judge John Broomes found.
That means prosecutors must show that the law barring possession of machine guns is rooted in historical firearm restrictions, under the 2022 Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, he added.
“In this case, the government has not met its burden under Bruen and Rahimi to demonstrate through historical analogs that regulation of the weapons at issue in this case are consistent with the nation’s history of firearms regulation,” Broomes wrote in his 10-page ruling on Aug. 21. “Indeed, the government has barely tried to meet that burden. And the Supreme Court has indicated that the Bruen analysis is not merely a suggestion.”
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority in Bruen, said that when the Second Amendment is found to apply, government officials must show that the regulation in question “is consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
In the recent ruling in United States v. Rahimi, the justices found that a law prohibiting people under domestic violence-related restraining orders from possessing guns does not violate the Second Amendment, and they clarified how courts should analyze such regulations.
“A court must ascertain whether the new law is ’relevantly similar‘ to laws that our tradition is understood to permit, ’apply[ing] faithfully the balance struck by the founding generation to modern circumstances,’” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. He said that some courts had misunderstood Bruen.
Broomes’s decision came after prosecutors charged Tamori Morgan, a Kansas resident, with illegally possessing an Anderson Manufacturing AM-15 .300 caliber machine gun and a machine gun conversation device.
When will Meta pull the plug on someone representing the United States at the Paralympic Games in Paris, which start later this month?
When their sport uses a gun, of course.
According to a Wall Street Journal report late last month, McKenna Geer, a member of the U.S. team, will be competing in the air rifle event. However, last month, she said she was censored for posting about shooting-related things. Which, as you know, people who shoot for sport are known to do.
Geer, 28, has a condition known as amyoplasia arthrogryposis, which affects the muscles. You’d think that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta — which runs Facebook and Instagram among its social media holdings — would read the room in terms of shadow-banning her. You’d be wrong.
“Earlier this month, Ms. Geer shared a photo on Instagram of the air rifle she used to qualify for the Paralympic Games,” the Journal reported on July 24.
“The company flagged the photo as out of line with its guidelines and informed her that nonfollowers wouldn’t be able to view her account or content in Instagram’s search, explore suggested users or similar features.”
The company’s explanation?
“Our Recommendations Guidelines help to promote content that fosters a safe community on Instagram,” it said.
Geer, who apparently knew this was a possibility, took to Instagram on July 17 to write about Meta’s decision.
“I have always feared the day the media would censor my sport and speech just because I use firearms,” she wrote. “That day has finally come.”
The White House X account posted, “It’s time,” on Wednesday alongside an image reading, “Ban Assault Weapons.”
The alarming post was thrashed online, with commenters roasting the Biden-Harris White House for hoping to destroy the Second Amendment.
One X user pointed out the irony that Harris’ running mate Tim Walz drove tens of thousands of his constituents to buy “assault rifles” in response to the deadly BLM riots of 2020 that destroyed major Minnesota cities under his watch.
New Jersey’s ban on the AR-15 rifle is unconstitutional, but the state’s cap on magazines over 10 rounds passes constitutional muster, a federal judge said Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Peter Sheridan’s 69-page opinion says he was compelled to rule as he did because of the Supreme Court’s rulings in firearms cases, particularly the 2022 Bruen decision that expanded gun rights.
Sheridan’s ruling left both 2nd Amendment advocates and the state attorney general planning appeals. The judge temporarily delayed the order for 30 days.
Pointing to the high court’s precedents, Sheridan suggested Congress and the president could do more to curb gun-related violence nationwide.
“It is hard to accept the Supreme Court’s pronouncements that certain firearms policy choices are ‘off the table’ when frequently, radical individuals possess and use these same firearms for evil purposes,” he wrote.
Sheridan added: “Where the Supreme Court has set for the law of our Nation, as a lower court, I am bound to follow it. … This principle — combined with the reckless inaction of our governmental leaders to address the mass shooting tragedy afflicting our Nation — necessitates the Court’s decision.”
On July 23, 2024, The National Association for Gun Rights was victorious in a summary judgment from the Federal District Court, Northern District of Texas, which overturned the ATF’s prohibition on forced reset triggers.
The ruling was issued by Judge Reed O’Connor, which vacated the ATF’s prohibition on forced reset triggers, declaring resoundingly that the ATF went beyond the scope of its statutory powers by redefining forced reset triggers as machine guns. The ruling was partly based on the Supreme Court’s recent Cargill decision overturning the ATF’s bump stock prohibition regulation.
Hannah Hill, Executive Director of the National Foundation for Gun Rights (the legal arm of NARG) declared, “We are absolutely thrilled that the court has dealt such a decisive blow to the ATF’s unconstitutional agency overreach. The ATF under the Biden/Harris regime has utterly trampled the Constitution and the rule of law in their eagerness to destroy the Second Amendment. The ATF may appeal this ruling, but precedent and momentum are both on our side, and we fully anticipate the absolute end of the ATF’s unlawful, unconstitutional ban on forced reset triggers.”
Joe Biden lied about guns, Second Amendment rights and nearly everything else so often that even his staunchest supporters stopped taking him seriously. The country’s 46th President beclowned himself with his own falsehoods.
Biden was a classic fabulist. He invented stories and assigned himself the starring role. Whether he was singlehandedly confronting hunters armed with standard-capacity mags in a Delaware swamp, exaggerating the efficacy of the 1994 federal Assault Weapon Ban or making up colonial cannon prohibitions, Biden received more Pinocchios than Disney, which is one of the reasons why he’ll be sitting in a beach chair rather than behind the Resolute Desk for the next four years.
By comparison, Kamala Harris has been much more circumspect about her anti-gun plans, and despite her maniacal cackle, could prove a more serious opponent to our Second Amendment rights than her former boss ever imagined possible.
Last year, most likely at the insistence of Barack Obama, Biden put Harris in charge of the new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which Biden said would “centralize, accelerate, and intensify our work to save more lives more quickly.”
The Office has no website. Its budget has never been made public. Its staffing levels are not known. It operates in secret, without oversight and wields tremendous power. Only three staffers were identified. One has a long association with Obama.
Almost immediately, it became clear that the Office was an incubator and a clearinghouse for anti-gun policy that it pushed out to blue states.
In December 2023, Harris hosted a gaggle of state lawmakers at the White House to showcase the Office’s new gun-control policies. The names of the attendees were not released, nor were the details of the meetings. None of the meetings were recorded or transcribed.
After overseeing the Office, Harris’ anti-gun rhetoric has sharpened, and it is clear what she has in store for law-abiding gun owners if she replaces Biden on a permanent basis.
Hellbound and Down 
You must be logged in to post a comment.