Tag Archives: freedom

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.

“Negotiate”

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French President Emmanuel Macron is at it again vis-à-vis Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Ukraine would eventually have to hold peace talks with Russia, while Ukrainian troops fought hard to hold back the Russian invasion force in the country’s east.
“At some point, when we will have helped Ukraine as much as possible to resist, when I hope Ukraine will have won and fighting will have stopped, we will have to negotiate,” Mr Macron told reporters while visiting French troops in Romania.

Whose definition of victory, though? Whose definition of what’s possible? Whose definition of fighting will have stopped?

Will the fighting have stopped because the Ukrainians have run out of weapons and ammunition because wobbly (to use a Margaret Thatcher term) nations like France have decided for Ukraine that it’s enough and stopped supporting Ukraine materially and materiel-ly?

Will Macron decide for Ukraine that fighting—or supplying Ukraine—is no longer possible? Will Macron decide for Ukraine when “victory” had been achieved?

Ukraine is in a war for its very existence as a polity and as a society, and it’s fighting a barbarian bent on destroying that polity and society. Macron apparently has forgotten his own nation’s struggles for existence in two wars in the last century, the first of which threatened its existence but for the unalloyed aid of other nations, and the second of which did erase France from the map except for one part that was a satrap of another nation and the other part that was a rump country wholly subsidiary to that other nation, an erasure undone only by the unalloyed aid of other nations.

The only victory possible for Ukraine has already been articulated by Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That victory consists of the Russian barbarian (my term) gone entirely from Ukrainian territory.

I suggest that the only negotiation with the barbarian that is possible once he’s driven from Ukrainian territory is how far back into Russia from the Ukrainian border all roads and railroads must be torn up and plowed over.

“We, Europeans, we share a continent, and geography is stubborn: it turns out that at the end of it, Russia is still there,” [Macron] said.

Macron’s cheap snark, despite itself, puts a premium on victory on Ukrainian terms and on subsequent negotiation on my term. We do, indeed share a continent under stubborn geography. However, France is still there, as I noted above, only because other nations came, without hesitation or reservation, to its aid.

So it must be for Ukraine. France above all owes this debt to Ukraine, owes this debt to Europe.

Lost Hope

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That’s the position of the Iranian people regarding President Joe Biden (D). Khosrow (security-protected identity):

The Iranian resistance have lost all hope in the Biden administration. The price of President Biden’s policy on the people of Iran and the region is one being paid with our blood and the destruction of our lives.

They won’t be alone in not too long. Israeli blood and destruction—Israel’s existence—will be in the wind when Biden gets his way on his Iranian nuclear weapons deal, and Iran gets its nuclear weapons along with billions of dollars in cash payments and billions more in lifted economic sanctions.

I Disagree

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(Surprise.)

Oklahoma’s Attorney General John O’Connor (R) thinks banning “assault weapons” (whatever those are in the real world) looks like a big action, but it really isn’t.

Banning assault weapons looks like it’s a big action, but it really isn’t a big impact. We’re going to dance around all this, Neil, for a long time, but the fact is it’s criminals and people with some type of either long-term or temporary mental illness or depression. That’s the culprit. Only those people shoot people outside of our military.

He’s wrong. While such a ban would have little impact on availability to criminals and the insane, it would have a very large impact on us average Americans‘ ability to see to our own needs and purposes.

But the truly large impact would be on our Constitution and so on our individual rights (and duties). If allowed to stand, such a ban would degrade our 2nd Amendment, weakening it against additional and steadily broadening bans until our 2nd Amendment no longer exists in any material form.

He Could Have Said This…

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President Joe Biden (D) says he’ll send four—count ’em—four High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems equipped with medium range rockets to Ukraine. It’ll take about three weeks to get into Ukrainian hands for operational use. There’s no word on how many actual rockets will be shipped along with the systems, not even a rough ballpark estimate. Only this:

The Pentagon would not say how many rockets it will provide to Ukraine, only that it is sending four of the truck-mounted HIMARS systems. The trucks each carry a container with six precision-guided rockets, which can travel about 45 miles[.]

Such largesse by the Progressive-Democrat President. Russia’s Smerch system, their own multiple launch rocket system, carries a dozen rockets per load and ranges 56 miles.

Even so, Biden could have said from the start that he was sending this token to Ukraine and without all the prattle about what he was not going to send.

The question remains, too: how many more Ukrainians must die, how many more Ukrainian women raped and children butchered by the barbarian while Biden dithers before any more arms shipments?

And why the concern about Ukraine striking into Russia to hit supply depots, troop gatherings, transportation routes from those into Ukraine, or any other targets the Ukraine government deems useful to its fight for national survival? Why should Russia be a sanctuary, protected against counterattack in this war that Russia started and still is prosecuting?