Category Archives: rights

California Progressive-Democrats Strike Again

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This time, it’s the California’s Attorney General, the Progressive-Democrat Rob Bonta, who released the personally identifiable information of thousands of California’s firearm owners and concealed carry permit holders.

In the name of transparency, he claims. Oh, and that much transparency was an accident, he claims.

The information “accidentally” released includes

the person’s full name, race, home address, date of birth, and date their permit was issued. The data also shows the type of permit issued, indicating if the permit holder is a member of law enforcement or a judge.

This is what Bonta said in his Press Release, put out last Monday, regarding his “transparency” move:

The dashboard [Bonta’s 2022 Firearms Dashboard Portal] is accessible though DOJ’s OpenJustice Data Platform. The announcement will improve transparency and information sharing for firearms-related data and includes broad enhancements to the platform to help the public access data on firearms in California, including information about the issuance of Concealed Carry Weapons (CCW) permits….

You bet he broadly enhanced public access to data about firearm ownership and concealed carry permit holders.

This sort of thing doesn’t happen by accident. Bonta knows who is in the IT section of the California DoJ that he runs. He knows who did the software adjustment to release the data from the department’s concealed carry permit holder database. That those folks have not been fired for cause, much less arrested by his California Bureau of Investigation or Bureau of Firearms agents, speaks volumes about Bonta’s role in this attack on honest American citizens, who also are citizens of California.

That Bonta hasn’t resigned now that his release (yes, his release—he’s the one in charge; he’s the one who authorized the release) has been exposed says volumes about his continued approval of the release.

This is a continuation of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s attack on our 2nd Amendment rights, just a few days after the Supreme Court upheld them, explicitly, in striking down New York’s law requiring a citizen to get government permission to exercise his right by satisfying a government bureaucrat that he has a “need” and is a proper—in the bureaucrat’s eyes—citizen.

Update: Corrected the opening sentence, which had mistakenly omitted the first half due to a copy/paste fit of sloppiness.

Wuhan Virus Lethality in Children

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A thought on this. Using data from the CDC, Fox News points out that children

aged 0-17 make up about 22.3% of the US population but have accounted for about 0.1% of all Wuhan Virus [my term] deaths.

According to the CIA’s World Factbook, the US population is 337.3 million; those 22.3%, then, amount to 75.2 million children. According to worldometer, there have been (as of 25 Jun 22) a skosh over 1 million total deaths in the US from or related to the virus.

That works out to [0.001 x 1,000,000] 1,000 deaths among those children. Which works out to a mortality rate of a tiny skosh over 0.1% for children overall—not a likelihood given a case or a likelihood given an infection.

That puts the likelihood of a child dying from the Wuhan Virus down in the range of that child getting a serious side effect from one of the Virus’ vaccines.

That absolutely makes the decision to vaccinate a child a matter solely for the parent and doctor (and perhaps an older child) to decide and not for any government to require through CDC “guidelines.”

In fact, vaccinating a child really seems indicated only for those children with serious comorbidities which this virus might potentiate. That’s the only metric worth weighing against the (low) probability of one of those side effects.

“Rights” and Precedent

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There is considerable discussion concerning whether a constitutional right to an abortion existed and was taken away by the Supreme Court’s just released ruling on Dobbs or whether, as Justice Alito emphasized in his Dobbs opinion for the Court that such a right never existed, it was merely the creation of Roe and then claimed again in Casey.

And therein lies the point of this post.

There is no right to an abortion contained in our Constitution, whether couched in the 14th Amendment or in any other part of the document—not literally, not figuratively, not encompassed in any penumbra.

Nevertheless, the claimed right has been, and rightly so, the law of the land since the 1973 Roe ruling, as are all Supreme Court rulings the law of the land from the moment of publication of the ruling. But it’s not a very durable law.

That’s a problem with Court rulings, a problem closely analogous with Presidential executive actions: Executive Orders and the like. Any “right” created by a Court ruling can be withdrawn by a subsequent Court ruling, just as any Presidential executive action can be withdrawn by a subsequent President.

The rights acknowledged in our Constitution, in contrast, can only be undone by a supermajority of us American citizens, through a supermajority of our States.

A Supreme Court precedent should be deeply respected. However, as Justice Clarence noted in his Gamble v United States concurrence,

In my view, the Court’s typical formulation of the stare decisis standard does not comport with our judicial duty under Article III because it elevates demonstrably erroneous decisions [whosever view of erroneous, I add]…over the text of the Constitution and other duly enacted federal law.

And [emphasis added]

This view of stare decisis follows directly from the Constitution’s supremacy over other sources of law—including our own precedents.

By their nature, no precedent can be the final word, else we’d have neither Brown nor Citizens United nor Janus, and we’d have only war to which to resort regarding rulings like Dred Scott and the war organizations like Ruth Sent Us and Jane’s Revenge currently threaten over Dobbs, that politicians like Chuck Schumer threatened if Court rulings didn’t go his way, that Cori Bush and Maxine Waters currently threaten, and that Federal government officials like Merrick Garland and Joe Biden indirectly threaten with their refusal to enforce Court rulings of which they personally disapprove.

A Grievous Error

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board had one in its piece last Wednesday. In that opinion, the Editors touted the gun control “compromise” then-soon to be passed by the Senate (and actually passed the next evening). One of the things of which the Board is so enamored is this mandate:

The state laws must contain due-process protections—including the right to an in-person hearing, to know the evidence used to justify a red-flag order, and to have counsel present.

Noting Orwellian here.

It isn’t possible for red flag laws to have due-process protections. The accused’s weapons are confiscated solely on the accusation of another, and the accused must then prove his own fitness in order to get them back—a process that takes weeks, at best. On his success, it then takes additional weeks to months actually to get his weapons returned. So much for the government’s requirement to prove the charge.

That’s the destruction of the accused’s due-process, not the protection of them.

Red flag laws also are destructive of due-process protections for related persons. If another, unaccused, is in the same household and legally owns weapons, those are seized too, all in the name of denying the accused any access at all. That ancillary person then must then go into court and defend her possession, taking weeks to do so, and taking additional weeks to months actually to get them back. So much for the government’s requirement to prove the unrelated person’s unfitness to have her weapons.

That’s the destruction of the related person’s due-process.

A 2nd Amendment Ruling

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The Supreme Court, by a 6-3 ruling, has struck down a New York law that required citizens to show a proper cause and good moral character in order get a license to carry a firearm outside the home. That “proper cause” and the goodness of a citizen’s “moral character” were as defined by the State’s government personnel, and if they didn’t feel like it, or if the “need” didn’t suit them, or if these Moral Superiors didn’t like the man, they blithely could deny the applied-for license.

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the Court, said that was unconstitutional.

“The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees,'” Thomas wrote.
Thomas added that there is “no other constitutional right” that requires an individual to demonstrate some sort of special need to government officers in order to obtain a concealed carry permit.
“That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self-defense,” Thomas added.

And

New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment in that it prevents law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms.

Here’s New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s (D) preemptive reaction to the then-pending ruling:

Hochul vowed in May to call for an emergency legislative session this summer to craft new gun legislation as a means to work around the expected high court decision that curtailed the state’s concealed carry permit law.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) announced that his office is

analyzing this ruling and crafting gun safety legislation that will take the strongest steps possible to mitigate the damage done today.

These are canonical examples of why the 2nd Amendment is so necessary.

Notice, too, that this ruling looks like the beginning of the end for the concept of a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.

The Court’s ruling can be read here.