Category Archives: rights

Gun Control

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In the matter of Bianchi v Frosh, a Maryland gun control case in which the State has

designated specified firearms as assault weapons and prohibited them from being transported into the state or from being possessed, sold, transferred, or purchased in the state[]

Mountain States Legal Foundation has filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to take up the case. The article itself is worth the read, but what drew my eye is this position of the Fourth Circuit in its appellate ruling in Kolbe v Hogan, Jr. referenced in passing by JtN.

Are the banned assault weapons and large-capacity magazines “like” “M-16 rifles,” i.e., “weapons that are most useful in military service,” and thus outside the ambit of the Second Amendment?  The answer to that dispositive and relatively easy inquiry is plainly in the affirmative.

This test manufactured by the Fourth Circuit deliberately ignores our history and the actual text of our Second Amendment.

A significant fraction of the artillery—cannons—our Continental Army used in our Revolutionary War were privately owned, as were the powder and shot privately manufactured and provided. A significant fraction of our combat ships—privateering ships—in our nation’s Revolutionary War were privately owned, as were the powder and shot privately manufactured and provided.

The Fourth Circuit’s test also deliberately ignores another bit of our history: our Second Amendment was written as defense against an overreaching, abusive government like the one we fought that war to be free of. And our Declaration of Independence outlines the duty of all Americans: [W]hen a long train of abuses and usurpations…it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government…. which requires suitable weaponry.

The Fourth Circuit’s test also deliberately ignores the text of our Second Amendment: the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. There’s not a jot or a tittle in there of “except if a government official, including a judge, thinks otherwise.” Nor is there a single minim about government being authorized to specify the purpose for which an American citizen might choose to arm himself and to bear those arms.

The Fourth Circuit’s opinion can be read here.

Slander

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Former Alaska Governor and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin lost her slander suit against The New York Times (after the presiding judge telegraphed to the jury, while it was deliberating, that he’d set aside the jury verdict, but that’s for a story about judicial malfeasance). The Wall Street Journal‘s article centered its reporting on the premise that Palin had failed to pass the high bar reserved for celebrities and other public figures: she had to show actual malice in order to have a case, and she didn’t succeed in the judge’s opinion.

But case brings up a larger matter regarding the malice standard itself.

There’s no reason at all why some Americans should be prevented by that high bar from defending themselves against slander, while other Americans are not so prevented. The 14th Amendment to our Constitution is quite clear on this: No State shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The courts’ and the Court’s differential treatment of groups of Americans based solely on their social or political standing plainly violates that equal treatment clause.

Monarchism Returns to Canada

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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has invoked his nation’s Emergencies Act because Canada’s national security is at risk from the truckers’ peaceful protests against his government’s…over-exercise of Federal power.

The blockades are harming our economy and endangering public safety. We cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue.

As is typical of modern-day liberals, who resemble 18th century monarchists more than they do actual liberalism, Trudeau is shifting blame for the crisis in Canada, while also mischaracterizing the actual crisis.

What’s actually harming Canada’s economy are the vaccinate-or-be-fired mandates that prevent, for instance, Canada’s shipping industry from shipping.

The actual crisis is Trudeau’s monarchical invocation/misuse of the Emergencies Act to directly assault Canadians’ individual liberties, demanding, in the present instance, vaccinations in complete disregard of those personal liberties. Trudeau’s invocation is aimed at Canadians’ right to protest their government’s misbehaviors and is nothing more than a personal power grab in response to his ego being bruised by those peasants not listening to him.

Maybe the truckers need to go truly nationwide and without any sort of blockade, even by Trudeau’s fevered standard, simply refuse to ship anything at all, at least to Federal government facilities.

Bureaucrats Exercising Personal Power Because They Can

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The Biden-Harris administration is urging Americans in Ukraine to get out of that nation as fast as they can go. Biden-Harris even trotted out his National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, to issue a panicky plea for our citizens to get out—because Biden-Harris intends to strand those who don’t make it out just as thoroughly as he did in Afghanistan.

Enter Biden-Harris’ State Department bureaucrats.

The US State Department is requiring American citizens fleeing Ukraine into Poland to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination, according to a press release issued Saturday.
US citizens are allowed to enter Poland through its land border with Ukraine, but the State Department says those evacuating “must present a valid US passport and proof of COVID-19 vaccination.”

On top of this [aside: this seems a tacit Biden-Harris administration admission that vaccines against the Wuhan Virus don’t proof folks against subsequent infection as Biden-Harris had originally touted.]

Travelers are also encouraged to present a negative test result from a PCR or antigen COVID-19 test, which will facilitate entry into Poland[.]

This is just Biden-Harris’ bureaucrats exercising power for the sake of the exercise.

Even stipulating, arguendo, that the threat of the unvaccinated spreading the Wuhan Virus is real or has serious consequences, there are just too many ways for State to handle American “travelers'” who lack vaccination/negative test proof after their entry into Poland from Ukraine for this demand to be anything other than the ego trip of power.

State’s statement containing these barriers requirements can be read here.

Proving Their Point

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Freedom Convoy convoy/protests, in salute to and support of, the Canadian Freedom Convoy are planned for Brussels and France. The convoys have the same purpose, too: to protest the Wuhan Virus vaccine mandates and health papers “passports” required by the Belgian and French governments and to demand their end.

But.

A wide perimeter around the city of 1.1 million would be set up to keep an excess of trucks out of the center of Brussels.
Brussels Mayor Philippe Close said in a Twitter message that officials decided to ban the “Freedom Convoy” protest because organizers failed to seek permission to hold the event.

Imagine that. Needing Government permission to protest Government’s diktats.

And this:

Citing “risks of trouble to public order,” the Paris police department banned protests aimed at “blocking the capital” from Friday through Monday. Police will put measures in place to protect roads and detain violators.
Blocking traffic can lead to two years in prison, 4,500 euros (more than $5,000) in fines and a suspended driver’s license, the police department said in a statement.

Don’t you dare question your Government Betters.

Which proves the point of the truckers’ protests most admirably.

And, the proof has gone live.

Parts of the French “Freedom Convoy” made it to the Arc de Triomphe monument, where French police tear gassed them to drive them away and deny their protest.

The irony abounds.