While many defenders of private gun ownership recognize that the Second Amendment was written to provide some sort of counterbalance against the coercive power of the state, this argument is often left far too vague to reflect an accurate view of this historical context surrounding the Amendment.

Looking at the debates surrounding the Second Amendment and military power at the end of the eighteenth century, however, we find that the authors of the Second Amendment had a more sophisticated vision of gun ownership than is often assumed.

Fearful that a large federal military could be used to destroy the freedoms of the states themselves, Anti-Federalists and other Americans fearful of centralized power in the US government designed the Second Amendment accordingly. It was designed to guarantee that the states would be free to raise and train their own militias as a defense against federal power, and as a means of keeping a defensive military force available to Americans while remaining outside the direct control of the federal government.

This grew out of what was a well-established opposition to standing armies among Americans in the late eighteenth century. In his book Eagle and Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America, 1783–1802, Richard Kohn writes:

No principle of government was more widely understood or more completely accepted by the generation of Americans that established the United States than the danger of a standing army in peacetime. Because a standing army represented the ultimate in uncontrolled and controllable power, any nation that maintained permanent forces surely risked the overthrow of legitimate government and the introduction of tyranny and despotism.

One of the greatest gimmick guns in recent memory is .410 pistols. Are they the manstopper that people insist they are?

Are we living in Venezuela now? //

Saint Louis University Lawyer John Amman succinctly sums up their position. The homeowners’ actions “could possibly be classified as assault by putting protesters in fear of their safety…People have a right to threaten force if they are threatened. However, if a group of protesters is walking by a home and not doing anything to the homeowners specifically, then they don’t have the right to threaten lethal force without an imminent threat.”

Let’s get this straight. Amman is concerned that the St. Louis couple who protected their home after a group of 300 BLM members had just entered their private community illegally, may have put members of the mob in fear for their safety. Is he kidding us? //

cogsys
39 minutes ago
The legal analysis is incorrect.

First, he deliberately confabulates the idea of assault as a tort, the civil action, and assault as a criminal action.

Second, the protesters broke into a Gated Community, therefore, TRESPASS has occurred. The presumption shifts, the protesters are no longer in the 'public square', they are in private space.

Further, while these protesters claim they were peaceful, there is plenty of evidence that suggests it doesn't take much to have these 'protests' convert into 'riots.' The Homeowners are permitted to make the assumption there property was dangerous.

If anybody can claim they suffered assault, it is the homeowners. The protesters had already committed a property crime and the homeowners had a reasonable fear they were in harm's way.

And it did not involve anyone connected to Donald Trump, the Trump Campaign, or Russia. //

On April 20, 2020, the Supreme Court — at the request of the United States — vacated cert in a case that had been fully briefed and ready for oral argument before the Court. It vacated the case after the Government notified the Court that it had filed a motion under Rule 48(a) to dismiss the indictment in the matter of United States v. Bronsozian.

The curious fact about the motion for dismissal is that it came long after the defendant was convicted at trial by a jury, his conviction was affirmed on appeal, and his case was pending in the Supreme Court awaiting oral argument. //

the Court vacated the granting of cert., and remanded the matter back to the Ninth Circuit for further proceedings in light of the Government’s motion. In turn, two days ago the Ninth Circuit remanded the matter to the district court. //

Defendant was indicted under a tax statute for failure to register and pay a tax on an automatic machine gun he bought from an undercover agent. The problem with the theory of prosecution is that many years ago Congress passed a law saying people could not longer pay, and the Department of Treasury could no longer collect the tax payments on automatic weapons called for in the tax law.

As a result, it has been DOJ policy to charge a different crime with regard to possession of an unregistered machine gun — not the “tax” based crime. It’s hard to put someone in jail for not paying a tax that the law says you cannot pay.

But someone in Los Angeles didn’t get the memo, and in 2016 a federal prosecutor there charged Bronsozian with a crime because he didn’t pay the tax on the machine gun it was illegal for him to pay. //

after consideration of a lot of potential “collateral impacts” of pushing forward defending a tax that is not being collected (ACA sound familiar to anyone?), the Solicitor General decided that the wiser course of action for policy reasons was to abandon the matter, and seek dismissal of the case back in the trial court where the indictment was brought to avoid having the Supreme Court weight in on the legality of enforcing a tax statute in light of a later act by Congress making it illegal to pay the tax (cough — Obamacare — cough). //

JerryS
6 hours ago
Here's from the CATO Institute blog on this case:
How often does DOJ dismiss an indictment while a cert petition is pending, without a confession of error? The solicitor general offered several examples, the most recent of which occurred in 1980. The SG could not find an example in the last 40 years.

Why did the SG take this strange course? Believe it or not, ongoing Obamacare litigation is the most likely explanation. In Texas v. United States, which the Supreme Court agreed to hear but which now likely won’t be argued till the fall, the federal government argues that the Affordable Care Act, which no longer raises revenue, cannot be construed as imposing a tax.

Well, the National Firearms Act no longer raises revenue, because the government won’t collect the payment. Bronsozian argued that his provision cannot be sustained under NFIB v. Sebelius, the 2012 case that upheld the individual mandate after reconstruing it as a tax. As a result, DOJ would’ve had to argue that the National Firearms Act, which raises no revenue, must be construed as imposing a tax, while arguing that the no‐​longer‐​revenue‐​raising ACA cannot be construed that way.

Perhaps the easier path was to simply dismiss the indictment to sustain the Obamacare case. Our kudos to Mr. Bronsozian, and his counsel John Littrell, for securing an unusual win for constitutional governance by forcing the government into that pretzel. //

What else would you call mobs who show up with spray paint, tools and ropes to destroy a historical landmark? //

Dana Loesch
✔
@DLoesch
· 16h
I’m curious, have you ever objected as vociferously whenever I and other law-abiding gun owners were referred to as “terrorists” on your network? We never vandalized monuments or burned down buildings. https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1276282556946747392 …

Brian Stelter
✔
@brianstelter
There we go again with the president using the word "terrorists" https://twitter.com/GeoffRBennett/status/1276282321017151491 …

@DLoesch
I mean, there is a sitting congresswoman who called me and others “domestic security threats” but by all means, everyone clutch your pearls if the Antifa people burning down buildings, beating people in the streets, are referred to as “terrorists.”

These 11 examples of lawful defensive uses of guns last month represent a small part of published reports.

The Defensive Gun Use Database provides a much-needed counterbalance to the many false narratives about gun ownership.

The ballyhoo over the U.S. Supreme Court’s tiptoe around a Second Amendment decision this week might be a gun control celebration a little too soon.

The Supreme Court ruled this week in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York that changes made after the Court granted certiorari (agreed to hear the appeal) to the City of New York’s onerous ordinance and regulations rendered the case “moot.” That’s the ordinance that burdened the ability of the city’s gun owners to travel with lawfully owned, unloaded, and locked firearms to destinations outside the city.

While the result may be disappointing to Second Amendment advocates, the silver lining is that a Second Amendment day of reckoning may be dawning.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote a well-reasoned dissent, which Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas (mostly) joined, for why the case is not moot. He wrote, “By incorrectly dismissing this case as moot, the Court permits our docket to be manipulated in a way that should not be countenanced.”

Justice Alito observed that one would have expected the City of New York to continue to forcefully defend its law, as it had in lower courts. “But once we granted certiorari, both the City and the State of New York sprang into action to prevent us from deciding this case,” he continued. “Although the City had previously insisted that its ordinance served important public safety purposes, our grant of review apparently led to an epiphany of sorts, and the City quickly changed its ordinance. And for good measure the State enacted a law making the old New York City ordinance illegal.”

Justice Alito noted that the Court has “been particularly wary of attempts by parties to manufacture mootness in order to evade review.” Regrettably, that is exactly what the City of New York successfully did in this case.

Had the Court reached the merits of the plaintiffs’ Second Amendment claims, the dissenting justices, at least, would have held the City’s ordinance violated the Second Amendment, calling it “not a close question.”

The true importance of the case, however, is not the fact that the City of New York dodged a proverbial bullet, but rather what Justice Alito and Justice Kavanaugh had to say about how the lower courts have applied the Court’s holding in Heller and McDonald.

Gregg Bouslog runs On-Target Indoor Shooting Range in Laguna Niguel, CA. It’s where I taught my son to shoot and where I’ll teach my daughter once the chaos lifts. //

We tried to look at just who the new firearm purchasers were and we believe that more than 60% of these individuals were first time buyers. I can’t describe the amount of fear in my staff as we had the buyers show proof of safe handling as part of the purchase process as required by law. You have never seen so many barrels pointed at sales staff and other customers. It was truly frightening. We had to keep stopping the process to give quick safety lessons. We are adding many more basic classes in the coming weeks and encouraged these buyers to please attend. We hope they do.

More than a dozen of these buyers (men and women) actually thought that since they filled out and signed everything, they could just walk out and go home with the firearm. Several actually said they saw how easy it was to buy a gun on TV and why did they have to fill out all these forms.

The majority of these first timers lost their minds when we went through the Ammo Law requirements. Most used language not normally heard, even in a gun range. We pointed out that since no one working here voted for these laws, then maybe they might know someone who did. And, maybe they should go back and talk to those people and tell them to re-think their position on firearms – we were trying to be nice.

Most were VERY vocal about why it takes 10 days minimum (sometimes longer if the DOJ is backed up) to take their property home with them. They ask why do I need to wait 10 days if I need the protection today or tomorrow? We pointed out again that no one working here voted in support of that law.

They really went crazy when we told them that for each firearm they had to do the same amount of paperwork and they could only purchase ONE handgun every 30 days. Again, we didn’t [vote] for that law.

We had people cuss at us and stomp out when we explained that secondary identification had to be part of the paperwork, as they felt insulted that what they had wasn’t good enough. We have a number of Yelp reviews calling us names and other things about how bad we are because of this whole new buyer rush

As these revelations begin to spread among our liberal brethren in the state of California, will we see a shift in gun laws and support for anti-Second Amendment legislators? Only time will tell, but it will surely be an interesting question to ponder in the coming months and years.