By and large, members of my generation were raised in households with two parents, and we were taught how to deescalate and talk things out when problems arose. Today, that no longer seems to be the case.
We have a moral and social failing in our country that has caused an increase in mass shooters, predominantly young men. One has to pause to think about what’s different today from 30 or 40 years ago. It certainly isn’t guns, because it’s harder to get guns today than it was in the past, when you didn’t have to go through nationalized background checks. When I was growing up, you could purchase a firearm with no questions asked, yet we didn’t see so many mass shootings.
America’s young men are struggling with mental health issues or are broken and living in poverty with single mothers struggling to survive. Many of them are clearly crying out for help, and we owe it to them to listen. //
Another important facet of this dialogue is religion. I know we don’t often talk about religion these days, but it instills moral and ethical values that are key to a society’s success. It creates boundaries that inform us of what is good and what is bad.
Many of the greatest thinkers known to man have talked about the importance of morality and ethics for all civilized people, how they are key to a good life and setting boundaries against bad behavior. ///
God and the church are the answer that we are looking for to the ills of society
While leftists argue that banning camping in the city will just force homeless people to relocate to more rural areas, data suggests that lifting restrictions instead incentivizes homeless people to leave shelters that have strict regulations on drug and alcohol use and instead set up camp in public places.
“After the policy was instituted, the sheltered homeless count decreased 20 percent while the unsheltered count increased by 45 percent, according to the City of Austin’s latest data,” Save Austin Now reports. “In other words, 1/5 of Austin’s homeless left shelters for the streets while the overall number of homeless simultaneously shot up.”
After 58 years operating off the Hudson River in Buchanan, New York, the final nuclear unit at Indian Point closes on Friday at 11 p.m.
Some environmentalists celebrated the closure, arguing the plant’s proximity to New York City makes it unsafe and that climate change can be tackled without this atomic brand of carbon-free electricity source. But its closure has sinister immediate implications: climate change-causing fossil fuels will likely replace that nuclear energy in the near term.
Already, gas-fired generators powered 40% of the state’s power last year, up from 36% the year prior, as a result of Unit 2’s closure, the NY Times reported. That will continue until more renewable projects and energy efficiency measures can get up and running.
“I don’t see a near-future approach that doesn’t require burning fossil fuel,” said Alexander Couzis, the interim dean of the Grove School of Engineering at the City College of New York. “We can’t keep doing business as usual, and then having Indian Point shutting down and at the same time complaining that we’re burning too much hydrocarbon. I mean, something has to give.” //
Both units contributed about 13% of the state’s power in 2019, and about 29% of the state’s electricity is currently derived from nuclear energy. The state’s grid manager, New York Independent System Operator, determined in 2017 that three fossil fuel-reliant plants would be needed to meet energy demands once the nuclear plant shutters. Indian Point’s final reactor provided 1 gigawatt to the electricity grid, which Entergy says was enough to support 750,000 to 1 million homes in the New York City and Westchester area.
McDowell said he hoped China would have enhanced the core stage to perform a controlled deorbit after separating from Tianhe. “I think by current standards it’s unacceptable to let it reenter uncontrolled,” McDowell said.
“Since 1990 nothing over 10 tons has been deliberately left in orbit to reenter uncontrolled.” The Long March 5B core stage, without its four side boosters, is thought to have a “dry mass”, or when it is empty of propellent, of about 21 metric tons in mass.
Holger Krag, head of the Space Safety Programme Office for the European Space Agency, says from their experience, there is an average amount of mass of about 100 tons re-entering in an uncontrolled way per year. “This relates to about 50-60 individual events per year.”
“It is always difficult to assess the amount of surviving mass and number of fragments without knowing the design of the object, but a reasonable “rule-of-thumb” is about 20-40% of the original dry mass.”
Components made of heat resistant materials, such as tanks and thrusters made stainless steel or titanium, can reach the ground. Surviving objects will fall vertically after deceleration and travel at terminal velocity.
DeSantis’ over-arching point is that such claims of systemic racism are used as a political catch-all, whereby literally everything someone on the left doesn’t like is relegated to some form of systemic racism. That then gives them license to destroy the system instead of just dealing with whatever bad apples may emerge. Thus, the comparison to Marxism is profound and relevant, especially considering that many of those same people self-identify as Marxists.
The real goal of Black Lives Matter and the myriad of other social justice activists out there is not to stop supposed examples of racism (note that even Derek Chauvin was never found to have had racist intentions). Rather, by their own admission, it’s to tear down the system as it exists and rebuild it in a more “equitable” fashion. But forcing equity via the heavy hand of government is, in and of itself, discrimination, because it throws out individual choices and performance in favor of defining people by their immutable characteristics. That’s racism. //
Arcturus77
17 hours ago edited
Bonchie,
I think a more succinct way of explaining the Marxist underpinnings of Critical Race Theory is to note that like "traditional" economic class-based Marxism, CRT posits a zero-sum struggle between groups of people, in its case, based upon racial or other biomarker identities (e.g., gender / sex). Individuals do not exist except insofar as they are members of a group -- and that group is either oppressed or oppressor. CRT is simply a Cultural Marxism.
Unlike other Marxism ideologies and movements that were economic power-based but included a cultural element -- most famously, the Maoist Cultural Revolution and, even more extreme, the Khmer Rouge -- CRT is a uniquely American Marxism. That's because it sidesteps the actual issue of excessive concentration of wealth and power by the overclass (except insofar as the overclass is white) and focuses on culture and racism -- via the "systemic racism" struggle between groups.
This is how multimillionaire Blacks such as the Obamas, LeBron James, and Oprah are, ipso facto, oppressed and a working class white living in a trailer park in Appalachia is the oppressor.
It is getting extra traction in America because corporate oligarchy has discovered the usefulness (at least short-to-medium term) of CRT because, as a Cultural Marxism, it really doesn't upset the highly imbalanced economic system but keeps it in place by keeping the population at war with itself.
It is a profoundly immoral and, operationally, a violent philosophy, but that's the inherent nature of Marxism in whatever form the "struggle" takes.
Facts, truth, reality itself are all subservient to the ideology and its zero-sum struggle. Needless to say, it is a profoundly illiberal philosophy. But young people with no real prospects in society and addicted to social media love it because of its all-embracing explanation of reality and good-versus-evil struggle it posits. Every Marxist movement has been like that.
The tragedy of the Obama presidency was rather than healing America's traditional racial divide, Obama made it acceptable for anyone who had one drop of "BIPOC" blood in them to claim the mantle of oppressed victimhood no matter their actual station or situation in life. //
skeptic62 Arcturus77
15 hours ago edited
Marxism is not about creating a more equitable system; far from it.
Each of us is bestowed with different skill sets. In Capitalism, the best in each field rise to the top, with the rest taking spots on the lower rungs.
For some though, their best if not only skill is the ability to take. Most are just common criminals, but under Marxism the “best” rise to the top by inflaming passions and pitting several groups against one. Until there is only one.
Marxists can’t compete in The Marketplace of Ideas, but they can surely surf the wave of revolution. THIS is why the Marxist Revolution never ends. //
timcooper62 Arcturus77
17 hours ago
I like what you wrote. They don't want to acknowledge the individual because then they may have to acknowledge individual rights. These schemes are the antithesis of individual rights. The individual has no rights under these schemes. Its totally un American and really as you say immoral. Its evil on its face. When people fail, instead of looking inward and making changes to improve, they can claim victim status and blame some oppressor. //
ConservatarianGirl
18 hours ago
For Republicans to be brave, they're going to have to care more about being right than about being liked. //
IrishMailey ConservatarianGirl
15 hours ago
And they need to say over and over: Rep. Lincoln freed the slaves and made them full citizens under the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, Rep. Eisenhower sent NG to desegregate Southern schools, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act comes from a 1957 Eisenhower bill that was defeated by sens. JFK, Johnson, and Al Gore's dad.
Of 943 viewers surveyed: 54% were Democrats, 25% were Independents, and only 18% were Republicans. They also seem to have had 3% go missing, without any explanation as to what those folks were, which makes me question all their other numbers.Many then extrapolated that out to “85% of Americans” approved of the speech, which is not the same thing as 85% of CBS viewers who responded to the survey, who are heavily weighted towards Democrats. It’s not even 85% of CBS viewers. //
Additionally what was funny was they initially reached out to 10,420 U.S. adults. Only 4,211 of that 10,420 planned on watching. But it ended up that only 943 watched and responded to the survey. So, it doesn’t sound like too many people of the folks they reached out to were even interested in watching and/or responding to the survey. People are not exactly enthralled with the idea of watching Joe Biden for any length of time and commenting. //
USMC69
4 hours ago
They reached out to over 10,000 and only 942 responded. Seems to me that means only about 8.5% of Americans approve. I think they got the decimal wrong, but that isn't surprising, they do like to use common core math.
His active promotion of abortion means that he has excommunicated himself, the term is latae sententiae, from the Catholic Church according to Canon Law. The left likes to claim this is just Biden enforcing the “law of the land,” and as we have an alleged wall of separation between Church and state, Biden is just doing his job. This is just bullsh**. Since entering office, Biden has acted to expand abortion by his abandonment of the so-called Mexico City policy. This is a willing and affirmative act that knowingly increases the number of aborted babies.
Likewise, Biden’s minions have moved to attempt to overturn a court decision that held that doctors could not be forced to perform sex-change operations against their will. I don’t know why anyone would want to try to force a doctor to do such a thing…you might emerge from the process with excess parts stapled to your forehead…but you know how these people roll, right? Here is a thread with more detail.
Luke Goodrich
@LukeWGoodrich
#BREAKING: The Biden Admin just filed an appeal seeking to force religious doctors and hospitals to perform potentially harmful gender-transition procedures against their conscience and professional medical judgment. This is bad for patients, doctors, and religious liberty. 1/
3:54 PM · Apr 20, 2021
https://mobile.twitter.com/LukeWGoodrich/status/1384596304148398080
Like with abortion, this is not merely the enforcement of something that just happens to exist and which can’t be changed by a president that also violates the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Canon Law, this is Biden aggressively acting to impose policies that did not exist upon the nation of his own volition. //
Allowing Biden to continue to receive Communion while not merely supporting abortion and transgenderism, and homosexual marriage but actively promoting them and sending out his goons to proclaim him to be a devout Catholic is wrong. It is not wrong from a political stand point, it is wrong from a pastoral point of view. Every time Joe Biden steps up to receive the Eucharist he is showing the world that some Catholic bishops believe that there are one set of rules for the mopes in the pews who pay the bills and another set for the Very Important People who send billions of tax dollars to Church causes.
As we previously reported, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) was subjected to a barrage of racist abuse posted on Twitter from so-called “tolerant” leftists after he gave the Republican response to President Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday night.
Not only were vile comments like “token black Republican” spewed, but the offensive term “Uncle Tim” (crafted for Scott out of the racist slur “Uncle Tom”) trended for roughly 11 hours overnight before Twitter finally found the time to block it from the trending column.
But if you only read the Washington Post’s “report” on the left’s reactions to Scott’s speech, you would never know how despicable and ugly the reactions actually got. //
thidwick Yodas Dad
8 hours ago
“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
― Booker T. Washington
BTW when the NAACP was formed, CP was the respectful term - a pass on the organization's name is appropriate.
The researchers had gathered together to dig up part of an experiment: an unusual long-term experiment that started in 1879 on the campus of what is now Michigan State University.
A botanist named William Beal wondered how long seeds could remain viable underground. So he designed an audacious study to find out, knowing full well that the answer might not come in his lifetime.
Frank Telewski, a professor of plant biology at the university, explains that Beal got 20 glass bottles. "Those 20 bottles, he filled up with a sandy seed mixture," says Telewski. "And the sandy seed mixture contained 21 species of plants, with 50 seeds per plant."
The plants were just common weeds. The idea was to find out, if farmers faithfully weeded their plots, how long these annoying plants could keep coming up from seeds already in the dirt.
Beal buried the bottles in the ground, keeping the location private so it wouldn't get disturbed. Every five years, he dug up one bottle and checked to see if the seeds inside would germinate. In 1910, when Beal retired, he passed on the experiment to a colleague, who later passed it on to a colleague and so on.
The study has lasted far longer than Beal intended because its caretakers decided to stretch it out. Instead of every five years, they switched to digging up a bottle every 10 years. Then, every 20 years. Telewski helped unearth a bottle in 2000, when he took over the experiment from a colleague. That year, only a couple of different weeds were still able to sprout. //
The researchers waited and waited for about a week. Then, on the afternoon of Friday, April 23, Lowry checked the tray of seeds and saw one tiny green seedling. That means at least one old seed could still germinate, and more could sprout in the days to come.
"We know that seeds can last a really long time in perfect conditions, like in seed storage vaults or the permafrost," says Weber, who notes that Beal's original question is still relevant. "We don't really know how long seeds can last in the soil. And that's where most of the seeds are." //
With four bottles left in the ground, the study should go on for another 80 years.
A 1966 study by the U.S. Navy noted that "The passage of large-amplitude internal waves could make submarine depth control difficult, particularly when the submarine is running quietly at low speed." The report, titled Internal Waves: Their Influence Upon Naval Operations, added that such waves "could initiate uncontrollable sinking of a submarine."
In World War II, submariners avoided the Strait of Gibraltar partly because they were aware of its reputation for propagating unusual undersea waves that were considered hazardous, David Farmer, a physical oceanographer at the University of Rhode Island, told USA Today in 2014.
At the height of the Cold War in 1984, a Soviet submarine that was apparently running beneath a tanker to mask its exit from the Strait suddenly smashed into the tanker's hull, causing damage to both vessels and forcing the submarine to surface. The collision is thought to have been caused by an internal wave that unexpectedly thrust the submarine toward the surface.
The waves "are generated over steep topography due to the surface tides," he tells NPR. "In the South China Sea, internal wave amplitudes can be about 100 meters (330 feet)."
A-CAES uses surplus electricity from the grid or renewable sources to run an air compressor. The compressed air is then stored in a big underground tank until energy is needed, at which point it’s released through a turbine to generate electricity that’s fed back into the grid.
Rather than vent the heat generated as the air is compressed, Hydrostor’s system captures that heat and stores it in a separate thermal storage tank, then uses it to reheat the air as it's fed in to the turbine stage, which increases the efficiency of the system. This could prove to be key; compressed air storage systems have typically offered round-trip efficiencies between 40-52 percent, and Quartz is reporting more like 60 percent for this system. //
Hydrostor’s A-CAES also makes use of a closed-loop reservoir to maintain the system at a constant pressure during operation. The storage cavern is partially filled with water and as the compressed air is piped in, the water is forced into a separate compensation reservoir. Later, when the air is needed, the water is pumped back into the air storage cavern, pushing the air out towards the turbine.
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) is hosting dinners to express appreciation for the brave men and women in law enforcement. Yet after the BGEA’s president, Franklin Graham, invited police in Seattle, Wash., to attend one of the free dinners at a four-star hotel, the Seattle Police Department (SPD) issued a condemnation of Graham and his organization due to their support for biblical Christianity. Leftists and antifa in Seattle have demonized police, but it seems evangelical Christians are the lowest of the low — even the police want nothing to do with them.
Earlier this month, SPD Chief Adrian Diaz revoked a department-wide email invitation to the BGEA’s Seattle-area law enforcement appreciation dinner on May 11, citing concerns about alienating “our community’s LGBTQ members.”
“An internal email was shared this week informing SPD employees of a free appreciation dinner hosted by the Rev. Franklin Graham. Based on Graham’s history and affiliations, the email has raised concerns that the SPD may not be committed to the equity of our community’s LGBTQ members,” Diaz shared in a message on the police blotter. //
As Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, put it, “You cancel a dinner by one of the most famous Christian organizations in all of American history in the name of diversity and inclusivity. That only works by the way if you take the definition of those words and turn those definitions on their head.”
People in left-leaning cities like Seattle may regard police as the dregs of society, a systemically racist institution. Yet even the police are too good for those horrific evangelical Christians.
It is the intent of the legislature that administrators, faculty members, other employees, and students at public schools, including public charter schools and institutions of higher education, respect the dignity of others, acknowledge the right of others to express differing opinions, and foster and defend intellectual honesty, freedom of inquiry and instruction, and freedom of speech and association.
The Idaho legislature finds that tenets outlined in subsection (3)(a) of this section, often found in “critical race theory,” undermine the objectives outlined in subsection (1) of this section and exacerbate and inflame divisions on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or other criteria in ways contrary to the unity of the nation and the well-being of the state of Idaho and its citizens.
Paragraph A
No public institution of higher education, school district, or public school, including a public charter school, shall direct or otherwise compel students to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to any of the following tenets:
- That any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior
- That individuals should be adversely treated on the basis of their sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin
- That individuals, by virtue of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin, are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by other members of the same sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin
No distinction or classification of students shall be made on account of race or color.
No course of instruction or unit of study directing or otherwise compelling students to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to any of the tenets identified in paragraph (a) of this subsection shall be used or introduced in any institution of higher education, any school district, or any public school, including a public charter school.
*Nothing in this section should be construed to prohibit the required collection or reporting of demographic data by public schools public institutions of higher education.
Open your profile folder and see if you have a file named abook.mab.bak and another named history.mab.bak. Those are backups of your Personal and Collected addressbooks in the old .mab addressbook format (v78 does not use the mab format, but v68 does. This is one of the major changes introduced in v78). To restore those backups, simply rename them to their original name, e.g abook.mab and history.mab and restart Thunderbird.
You can run Thunderbird v68 with the --allow-downgrade commandline switch to downgrade your v78 profile for use with v68.
Beginning in July 2018, the Intelligence Community will begin its release of declassified documents related to the Tet offensive. These documents will be released in three installments over a period of 15 months. Below is a list of each document added. As documents are released we will include additional features and information to improve functionality and discovery. Please check back regularly for ongoing updates.
In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Tet Offensive—which took place on January 30, 1968—Director of National Intelligence Daniel R. Coats directed intelligence agencies to review their holdings to reveal previously classified details to the public.
This page displays selected documents from the declassified volume as well as other contextual images, videos, and quotes which will be updated on a periodic basis. To view all declassified documents that have been released to date please click on the 'view documents' link. Additional items of interest can be found in the menu to provide greater context and insight into the Tet Offensive declassification effort.
Intel.gov will serve as the hub for the release of Tet offensive declassified documents. However, some agencies have dedicated locations for their corresponding documents:
Before the likes of the cancel culture rewrite the history of the Vietnam War, it is important to remember that US and South Vietnamese forces won virtually every major battle during the war, including the 1968 Tet Offensive, which wiped out the Viet Cong as an effective fighting force, but which the pro-Communist Walter Cronkite (and others) spun as a “strategic American defeat” to American television audiences. An excellent discussion of how Tet was falsely spun by the North Vietnamese Communists and their sycophants in the American media and anti-war movement (which was possibly the most successful information operation in history) can be found here entitled “Tet Declassified.” That Communist info op convinced Americans that the war was lost, which led to the “Vietnamization” of the war effort, to the Paris Peace Accords, to the American withdrawal from Vietnam, and ultimately to Operation Frequent Wind.
Why was the war lost? A tragedy of bad decisions and strategic errors. That the US evolved ridiculous Rules of Engagement but no mission success criteria doomed the American effort to failure. Body counts, aircraft sorties and bombs dropped, artillery rounds fired, etc. The US “counterinsurgency strategy” was completely wrong, given the overwhelming military superiority of the US versus the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. And LBJ’s management of the war effort from the Oval Office severely constrained commanders in the field. Allowing unfettered access by the American news media to unit-level operations was a strategic mistake, which led to the likes of Cronkite falsely spinning the reality on the ground to Americans watching the “television war.”
By 1971 or 1972, the war was essentially won in South Vietnam, and after the Christmas bombing of Hanoi in December of 1972, North Vietnam’s will to continue had been broken. However, it was the Democrat majority in the US Congress who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, and who deliberately forfeited the war after all US forces were withdrawn for US political reasons, as well as suspended military aid to the South Vietnamese. That latter perfidious act was the coup de grâce. Funny how nobody mentions that these days as the DC Democrats push their Communist agenda down our throats. Some things never change. //
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/tet-offensive-halted
https://www.aim.org/aim-column/the-terrible-truth-about-walter-cronkite/
Med Hypotheses. 2021 Jan; 146: 110411.
Published online 2020 Nov 22. doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2020.110411
PMCID: PMC7680614
PMID: 33303303
Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis
Baruch Vainshelboim⁎
Abstract
Many countries across the globe utilized medical and non-medical facemasks as non-pharmaceutical intervention for reducing the transmission and infectivity of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). Although, scientific evidence supporting facemasks’ efficacy is lacking, adverse physiological, psychological and health effects are established. Is has been hypothesized that facemasks have compromised safety and efficacy profile and should be avoided from use. The current article comprehensively summarizes scientific evidences with respect to wearing facemasks in the COVID-19 era, providing prosper information for public health and decisions making.
Remember when Dr. Fauci emphatically told Americans not to wear facemasks when the coronavirus pandemic hit our shores more than one year ago?
If you don’t recall, allow me to jog your memory. During a “60 Minutes” interview on March 8, 2020, Dr. Fauci said, “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.”
In the same interview, Fauci also said:
“While masks may block some droplets, they do not provide the level of protection people think they do. Wearing a mask may also have unintended consequences: People who wear masks tend to touch their face more often to adjust them, which can spread germs from their hands.”
Fauci was far from the only government official downplaying masks once upon a time.
On February 27, during a congressional hearing, Dr. Robert Redfield, then-director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention responded, “No,” when asked if Americans should wear facemasks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Two days later, then-U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams tweeted, “They [facemasks] are NOT effective in preventing [the] general public from catching coronavirus.”
That was then. This is now.
So, what happened? Somehow, almost every infectious disease expert did an abrupt 180 and got fully on board the facemask bandwagon. By late spring 2020, in the blink of an eye, wearing a facemask became a requirement to participate in society.
However, the question remains: Do facemasks actually prevent the spread of COVID-19?
According to a recent study by Stanford University, “Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis,” the answer remains, “No.” //
“Clinical scientific evidence challenges further the efficacy of facemasks to block human-to-human transmission or infectivity. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) of 246 participants [123 (50%) symptomatic)] who were allocated to either wearing or not wearing surgical facemask, assessing viruses transmission including coronavirus. The results of this study showed that among symptomatic individuals (those with fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose etc…) there was no difference between wearing and not wearing facemask for coronavirus droplets transmission of particles of >5 µm. Among asymptomatic individuals, there was no droplets or aerosols coronavirus detected from any participant with or without the mask, suggesting that asymptomatic individuals do not transmit or infect other people.”
In granting certiorari earlier this week, the Supreme Court will finally address the constitutionality of New York’s law. However, in granting review of the case, the Supreme Court narrowed the issue for review to “whether the State’s denial of petitioners’ applications for concealed-carry licenses for self-defense violated the Second Amendment.” This question differed from that which the petitioners had sought review, namely “whether the Second Amendment allows the government to prohibit ordinary law-abiding citizens from carrying handguns outside the home for self-defense.”
Both framings of the issue, however, squarely present the Supreme Court with the question of whether Heller and McDonald’s guarantee of an individual right to keep and bear arms is limited to the home. While several circuit courts have read Heller and McDonald as limited to the possession of guns within a home, Justice Thomas’ recent dissent (joined by Justice Kavanaugh) from the denial of certiorari in a gun case exposed the folly of such a view:
As this Court explained in Heller, at the time of the founding, as now, to bear meant to carry. When used with arms, . . . the term has a meaning that refers to carrying for a particular purpose—confrontation. Thus, the right to bear arms refers to the right to wear, bear, or carry upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person. The most natural reading of this definition encompasses public carry. Confrontations, of course, often occur outside the home. See, e.g., Moore, supra, at 937 (noting that ‘most murders occur outside the home’ in Chicago). Thus, the right to carry arms for self-defense inherently includes the right to carry in public.
This conclusion not only flows from the definition of bear Arms but also from the natural use of the language in the text. As I have stated before, it is extremely improbable that the Framers understood the Second Amendment to protect little more than carrying a gun from the bedroom to the kitchen. The meaning of the term bear Arms is even more evident when read in the context of the phrase “right . . . to keep and bear Arms. To speak of bearing arms solely within one’s home . . . would conflate bearing with keeping, in derogation of [Heller’s] holding that the verbs codified distinct rights. In short, it would take serious linguistic gymnastics—and a repudiation of this Court’s decision in Heller—to claim bear Arms does not extend the Second Amendment beyond the home.
Justice Thomas added to the above reasoning an analysis of “cases and treatises from England, the founding era, and the antebellum period,” all of which “confirm that the right to bear arms includes the right to carry in public.”
Of course, several justices are nonetheless likely to resort to linguistic gymnastics to avoid what they perceive as bad (or unpopular) policy. But will five justices stand firm? We will know next year.