A high school senior in Indiana was shot during a law enforcement vocational training session when one of the deputies conducting the training session “accidentally” fired his service weapon, rather than a “dummy gun,” reports say.

On Thursday morning, Deputy Tim DisPennett, a 19-year veteran of the Vermillion County Sheriff’s Office, was conducting a vocational law enforcement class at South Vermillion County High School in Clinton, Indiana, about 15 miles north of Terre Haute. During a demonstration, DisPennett reportedly fired his service revolver, and the bullet from his gun grazed a male student.

A cop so ignorant that he didn’t know the difference between an inert blue plastic gun and his service weapon?

If it wasn’t a dummy weapon then it must have been some sort of training weapon. There are a few types out there. The main component of all of them is that they are easily identified as a training weapon.

The training weapons systems that allow you to use your own weapon replace the slide and barrel, again to make sure that you don’t have an Alec, like this deputy did.

H/T to Pistoleer Birdog357

In Bruen Justice Thomas stated that the plain text of the second amendment as understood at the time of its ratification along with the history and tradition shall guide our understanding of what is protected by the second amendment.

The operative clause of the second amendment is “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

This is a limitation on the federal government at the time of ratification. It meant that the federal government could not infringe on our right to keep and bear arms. It did not constrain state governments from infringing as they wished.

Because of this many state Constitutions have a right to keep and bear arms in them. For example:

The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence. And as, in time of peace, armies are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be maintained without the consent of the legislature; and the military power shall always be held in an exact subordination to the civil authority, and be governed by it.
— Massachusetts Declaration of Rights — Article 17

Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state. SEC. 16. The military shall, in all cases, and at all times, be in strict subordination to the civil power.
— Constitution of the State of Connecticut

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be infringed.
— N.Y. Civ. Rights Law § 4

Not all states have an explicit right to keep and bear arms. Part of the reason is that in 1868 the 14th amendment was ratified.

Under the 14th amendment the US constitution and the rights enshrined within it also restrict States and other political subdivisions of the States.

The 13th amendment said that the federal government could not enslave or force involuntary servitude on anybody except as a punishment for a crime for which the person has been duly convicted.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

The 13th amendment didn’t apply to the states, cities, towns, counties or villages. It only applied to the federal government. It was only with the ratification of the 14th that the 13th applied to lower political subdivisions.

As part of that the 1st through 12th amendments were also incorporated.

The Bill of Rights, comprising the first ten amendments to the Constitution, protects certain rights belonging to individuals and states against infringement by the federal government. While some provisions of the Constitution expressly prohibit the states from taking certain actions,1 the Bill of Rights does not explicitly bind the states,2 and the Supreme Court in early cases declined to apply the Bill of Rights to the states directly.3 However, following the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court has interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause to impose on the states many of the Bill of Rights’ limitations, a doctrine sometimes called “incorporation” against the states through the Due Process Clause.
— Amdt14.S1.4.1 Overview of Incorporation of the Bill of Rights

So we can see that the second amendment was ratified in 1791 and incorporated in 1868 and thus can be applied to any law or regulation within the US.

But Thomas said “the plain text” of the second amendment. The text isn’t plain at all. It talks about militias and free states, surely that means the right to bear arms is related to the state or militia in some way.

In interpreting this text, we are guided by the principle that “[t]he Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning.” United States v. Sprague, 282 U. S. 716, 731 (1931); see also Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 188 (1824). Normal meaning may of course include an idiomatic meaning, but it excludes secret or technical meanings that would not have been known to ordinary citizens in the founding generation.

The Supreme court has answered this question. They have stated what all of the words in the second amendment mean.

First, the second amendment has a prefatory clause “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” and an operative clause “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”

The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause.

The supreme court has stated exactly what the operative clause is and has also stated that the prefatory clause doesn’t limit the operative clause.

So the question then becomes what does “The right of the People to keep and bear Arms” mean? Again the court has answered us.

The first salient feature of the operative clause is that it codifies a “right of the people.” The unamended Constitution and the Bill of Rights use the phrase “right of the people” two other times, in the First Amendment’s Assembly-and-Petition Clause and in the Fourth Amendment’s Search-and-Seizure Clause. The Ninth Amendment uses very similar terminology (“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”). All three of these instances unambiguously refer to individual rights, not “collective” rights, or rights that may be exercised only through participation in some corporate body.

The supreme court has stated clearly that the right belongs to the individual. “The right of the people” is not limited by the prefatory clause nor is it restricted to by any other qualification. It is every individual.

So what is it that the people have a right to? Something to do with arms.

The 18th-century meaning is no different from the meaning today. The 1773 edition of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary defined “arms” as “weapons of offence, or armour of defence.” 1 Dictionary of the English Language 107 (4th ed.) (hereinafter Johnson). Timothy Cunningham’s important 1771 legal dictionary defined “arms” as “any thing that a man wears for his defence, or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast at or strike another.” 1 A New and Complete Law Dictionary (1771); see also N. Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) (reprinted 1989) (hereinafter Webster) (similar).

Here the court again explicitly states that arms are weapons of any sort. Knives, swords, rocks, clubs and of course guns are all “Arms”. It also includes defensive equipment such as armour. So the second amendment not only guarantees the people the right to firearms, it also guarantees the people the right to body armor (and any other type of armor).

The only restriction in the Heller decision is that the people be able to “take into his hands” and that is not well defined.

The court also explicitly states that “Arms” are not limited to what was available in the 18th century.

Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 849 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 35–36 (2001), the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.

The court then addresses what it means to “keep arms”.

We turn to the phrases “keep arms” and “bear arms.” Johnson defined “keep” as, most relevantly, “[t]o retain; not to lose,” and “[t]o have in custody.” Johnson 1095. Webster defined it as “[t]o hold; to retain in one’s power or possession.” No party has apprised us of an idiomatic meaning of “keep Arms.” Thus, the most natural reading of “keep Arms” in the Second Amendment is to “have weapons.”

The court, in their opinion, explicitly states that requirements on how the people keep their arms is unconstitutional. The struck down D.C.’s restrictions requiring trigger locks and other such “safe storage” infringements.

So what about “to bear arms”? What does that mean, again the court has answered.

At the time of the founding, as now, to “bear” meant to “carry.” See Johnson 161; Webster; T. Sheridan, A Complete Dictionary of the English Language (1796); 2 Oxford English Dictionary 20 (2d ed. 1989) (hereinafter Oxford). When used with “arms,” however, the term has a meaning that refers to carrying for a particular purpose— confrontation. In Muscarello v. United States, 524 U. S. 125 (1998), in the course of analyzing the meaning of “carries a firearm” in a federal criminal statute, JUSTICE GINSBURG wrote that “[s]urely a most familiar meaning is, as the Constitution’s Second Amendment … indicate[s]: ‘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.’ ” Id., at 143 (dissenting opinion) (quoting Black’s Law Dictionary 214 (6th ed. 1998)). We think that JUSTICE GINSBURG accurately captured the natural meaning of “bear arms.” Although the phrase implies that the carrying of the weapon is for the purpose of “offensive or defensive action,” it in no way connotes participation in a structured military organization.

Further the court says that to bear arms does not mean “in the military/militia”

In any event, the meaning of “bear arms” that petition ers and JUSTICE STEVENS propose is not even the (sometimes) idiomatic meaning. Rather, they manufacture a hybrid definition, whereby “bear arms” connotes the actual carrying of arms (and therefore is not really an idiom) but only in the service of an organized militia. No dictionary has ever adopted that definition, and we have been apprised of no source that indicates that it carried that meaning at the time of the founding. But it is easy to see why petitioners and the dissent are driven to the hybrid definition. Giving “bear Arms” its idiomatic meaning would cause the protected right to consist of the right to be a soldier or to wage war—an absurdity that no commentator has ever endorsed. See L. Levy, Origins of the Bill of Rights 135 (1999). Worse still, the phrase “keep and bear Arms” would be incoherent. The word “Arms” would have two different meanings at once: “weapons” (as the object of “keep”) and (as the object of “bear”) one-half of an idiom. It would be rather like saying “He filled and kicked the bucket” to mean “He filled the bucket and died.” Grotesque.

What is the government enjoined from doing:

We look to this because it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed.”

From this it is clear that every part of the second amendment has been analyzed and defined by the Supreme Court. The inferior courts of the United States don’t get to reinterpret what the words mean, they have been told what the words mean.

The above quotes are from the Heller opinion: DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA ET AL. v. HELLER

This opinion was followed by the McDonald opinion. The problem was that immediately after Heller the people tried to exercise their rights and were thwarted by the States refusing to issue permission slips.

The States argued that Heller “…that Heller had explicitly refrained from opining on whether the Second Amendment applied to the States…”

This is where the Fourteenth Amendment comes into play for the first time. In McDonald the court said: Yes! The second amendment applies to the states as well as all other political subdivisions!

Two years ago, in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. ___, this Court held that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense and struck down a District of Columbia law that banned the possession of handguns in the home. Chicago (hereinafter City) and the village of Oak Park, a Chicago suburb, have laws effectively banning handgun possession by almost all private citizens. After Heller, petitioners filed this federal suit against the City, which was consolidated with two related actions, alleging that the City’s handgun ban has left them vulnerable to criminals. They sought a declaration that the ban and several related City ordinances violate the Second and Fourteenth Amendments. Rejecting petitioners’ argument that the ordinances are unconstitutional, the court noted that the Seventh Circuit previously had upheld the constitutionality of a handgun ban, that Heller had explicitly refrained from opining on whether the Second Amendment applied to the States, and that the court had a duty to follow established Circuit precedent. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, relying on three 19th-century cases—United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, Presser v. Illinois, 116 U. S. 252, and Miller v. Texas, 153 U. S. 535— which were decided in the wake of this Court’s interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause in the Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36.
— CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT

The court has defined what the words mean, has said that it applies to the Federal, State and Local governments. Because of this the infringers moved to a different tactic. They finally acknowledged that the second amendment was an individual right and that their gun control laws were infringements but they claimed that because Heller allowed for some restrictions on the right, that the courts needed to find a balance between the right of the people and the needs of the governementgovernment.

This was often labeled “means-end”. The idea being that the larger the infringement the more tightly tailored the law had to be to the asserted government need. If it was a “small infringement”, say limiting the number of firearms a person could buy in a given period of time, the solution the government asserted could be broad. On the other hand if the infringement was greater, say limiting your right to have a gun within your home, then the solution the government asserted needed to be tightly tailored.

The problem with this was that any court that wanted a law to pass muster need only pick the right place on that scale to get the result the government wanted. They would define stringent laws such as a magazine ban or an assault weapon ban as being a small infringement so the government’s broad brush was allowed. If on the other hand the infringement encroached on the “core second amendment right” the courts would agree with the government’s assertion that the law was tightly tailored.

The actual argument in NYSR&PA v. Bruen isn’t really all that important. What was important was the court’s opinion.

Since Heller and McDonald, the Courts of Appeals have developed a “two-step” framework for analyzing Second Amendment challenges that combines history with means-end scrutiny. The Court rejects that two-part approach as having one step too many. Step one is broadly consistent with Heller, which demands a test rooted in the Second Amendment’s text, as informed by history. But Heller and McDonald do not support a second step that applies means-end scrutiny in the Second Amendment context. Heller’s methodology centered on constitutional text and history. It did not invoke any means-end test such as strict or intermediate scrutiny, and it expressly rejected any interest-balancing inquiry akin to intermediate scrutiny. Pp. 9–15.
— NEW YORK STATE RIFLE & PISTOL ASSN., INC. v. BRUEN

Here the court states clearly that means-end is not acceptable. Only “…which demands a test rooted in the Second Amendment’s text as informed by history.”

This is the where the weasels start weaseling over words. What history? If you want history how about the century from 1911 when New York passed the Sullivan Act? That’s history. How about all of the gun control laws passed post 1865? That’s over 150 years of history.

Thomas addressed that.

…To do so, respondents appeal to a variety of historical sources from the late 1200s to the early 1900s. But when it comes to interpreting the Constitution, not all history is created equal. “Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them.” Heller, 554 U. S., at 634–635. The Second Amendment was adopted in 1791; the Fourteenth in 1868. Historical evidence that long predates or post-dates either time may not illuminate the scope of the right. With these principles in mind, the Court concludes that respondents have failed to meet their burden to identify an American tradition justifying New York’s proper-cause requirement. Pp. 24–62.
— Bruen

Here is where we run into the problem. The court’s opinion says “The Second Amendment was adopted in 1791; the Fourteenth in 1868.” This puts both dates at the same level. Thomas then says that historical evidence that long predates or post-dates either time are not useful in finding analogise gun control laws.

We want the date of importance to be 1791 when the people voted and decided on ratifying the second amendment. They knew what it meant at that moment in time. We know have a damn good idea what it meant. We also know what gun control laws existed at that time. Almost none.

But in 19681868, just past the end of the Civil War, there were a lot of gun control laws being passed. These laws were almost always designed to be either a part of the “Black Code”, “Jim Crow”, or retaliation on the men that fought with the Confederacy.

There is clear indications that the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment was not about reinterpreting the bill of rights but instead on imposing the limits on the States.

Gun grabbers are desperate to get the courts to pull in laws from the late 1800s and early 1900s to allow them to infringe on the 2nd.

Finally, the court has stated that the second amendment does not grant the people any rights.

As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553 (1876), “[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed ….”
— D.C. v Heller

UPDATE: Corrected 1968 to 1868, removed space from block quote, removed word.

SCOTUSBlog is a good resource for people following supreme court cases. Even before cert. is granted.

Unfortunately that doesn’t mean that they always present good articles.

After researching and writing my previous article I found a link to this article:
Cherry-picked history and ideology-driven outcomes: Bruen’s originalist distortions

The author argues from a position of authority. His article is full of statements given as fact that are just opinion.

The majority opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen invokes the authority of history but presents a version of the past that is little more than an ideological fantasy, much of it invented by gun-rights advocates and their libertarian allies in the legal academy with the express purpose of bolstering litigation such as Bruen. Rather than applying a history, text, and tradition approach, it would be more accurate to characterize Justice Clarence Thomas’ decision as an illustration of the current Supreme Court’s new interpretive model: “Fiction, Fantasy, and Mythology.” Indeed, the distortion of the historical record, misreading of evidence, and dismissal of facts that don’t fit the gun-rights narrative favored by Thomas are genuinely breathtaking in scope. Thomas has taken law-office history to a new low, even for the Supreme Court, a body whose special brand of “law chambers history” has prompted multiple critiques and been a source of amusement for generations of scholars and court watchers.

Then we get to his supporting arguments.

There were a lot of gun control infringements passed after the civil war and Thomas just ignored those. They were at the time of the passing of the 14th amendment and should count just as much as when the second was adopted in 1791.

It never ceases to amaze me that so many of these infringers go to laws that were part of the racist Jim Crow laws to prove that their current infringements should be allowed to stand.

The six conservative justice on the U.S. Supreme Court have seemingly come to think of themselves as historians, able to excavate the original meaning of the Constitution from archival sources revealed to them in the briefs of petitioners and respondents. The result has been bad history and worse law, culminating in last term’s New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, where the majority invalidated New York’s restrictions on carrying concealed handguns because it was deemed inconsistent with “this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

So we see it once again, the court’s decision being questioned because they aren’t experts in history. Same bit of noise we got out of an Mississippi District Judge a month ago.

The argument goes that the Supreme court isn’t qualified to do historical research. Even though the entire American Legal system is built on the concept of “Common Law”. Common law is laws that are applied the same (in common) across all courts. I.e. how a law is interpreted in the past is how it is going to be interpreted in the future.

We have only one court which is not bound by precedent, the Supreme Court. They are allowed to say “We got it wrong in the past.” We saw this with Dobbs case where they overturned Roe.

They looked at the Constitution, they looked at the understanding of abortion law at the time. They looked at all the amendments to the Constitution (which are included in the Constitution) and said “We can’t find anything in the Constitution that gives the federal government the power to regulate abortion. Thus it is a states issue.”

Justice Thomas made it clear that laws that infringe on the right to keep an bear arms must fit within the text, history and tradition of the second amendment at the time of its adoption, 1791.

He also mentioned in 1868 as well because this is when the 14th amendment was adopted which said that the federal Constitution extended into the states. It was there so that the former confederate states couldn’t pass slavery laws that re-enslaved blacks in violation of the 13th amendment.

It turns out, however, that historical similarity is in the eye of the beholder. Thomas thus dismissed the many 19th century gun control laws as non-analogous “outliers,”…

That’s right, notice that 19th Century means the 1800’s. Steven Lubet wants you to conflate the time at the beginning of the 19th century with the time at the end. In the early 1800’s there were no gun control laws to speak of. But in the 1870s, after the civil war there were a number of Jim Crow laws passed that infringed on the rights of blacks. Many of those laws disarming blacks.

Since the New York law was passed in 1911 was in keeping with the racist laws of the deep south they should be allowed to stand.

This is the problem with allowing the courts to downplay their own ability to do historical research and to actually bother to read our own laws. The words of the second amendment are very clear. They are easy to understand. It takes work to twist them into different meanings. The number of times people have misquoted the 2nd in order to prove it was a collective right is mind boggling.

In addition, there is a great deal of legal history where the supreme court has said explicitly what the words of the second mean.

The biggest clue to this is that everyone of these people that pass these infringements do so while saying it doesn’t infringe because.

It isn’t an infringement because this gun is to deadly “Is it an arm? Yes. Does this restriction infringe on my right to keep or bear it? Yes.” Then the law is unconstitutional.

Well there needs to be an exception because no right is unconditional!

The law says I can’t carry in Times Square. Is it keeping me from arming my self with an arm? Yes. Is it infringing on my right to bear that arm where I want to carry it? Yes. Then it is unconstitutional.

As Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern put it, “modern technology has made guns vastly more powerful and deadly, and the exponential growth in population creates new challenges that were not present hundreds of years ago.”

Which is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter how much the population has change or how the technology has changed. Shall not be infringed.

Judge Joseph Goodwin read Bruen correctly when he said “there are no laws in 1791 requiring serial numbers and the governments assertion that serial numbers help solve or stop crimes can’t be considered.”

Of course, there were no such laws. Serial numbers were unknown in 1791; they came into wide use only with the advent of mass production of firearms. “The first legal requirement for serial numbers did not appear until 1934,” and then only for machine guns; their removal was not criminalized until 1938. “Serial numbers were not broadly required for all firearms . . . until the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968,” 100 years after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Which is exactly the point. There were no laws at that time. The constitution says “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” If that text doesn’t cover forcing serial numbers on all firearms then you can’t make a law punishing a person for having a firearm with no serial numbers.

That Mississippi Judge said “[no judges are] experts in what white, wealthy, and male property owners thought about firearms regulation in 1791. Yet we are now expected to play historian in the name of constitutional adjudication”. Do you racist much Judge?

The entire opinion piece is full of “But this law is good!” statements. Totally ignoring why that law is unconstitutional or just plain bad.

It might be a “good” thing to remove the right to posses firearms from convicted violent felons. It is “bad” to remove the right to possess firearms from people that have not been convicted, even if they have court orders or restraining orders issued against them. The people of this country are innocent until proven guilty. You don’t get to punish them for something they haven’t been convicted of doing. Would you take away a person’s right to vote just because a spiteful ex- got a restraining order against them?

The Supreme Court’s bad history

On Nov 7th, 2022 Judge Suddaby issued his preliminary injunction enjoying parts of the NY State CCIA.

Most of the “good moral character” requirements were enjoined as well as the intrusive requirements the state was using to make that determination. Along with the good moral character being enjoined, Suddaby also said that many of the locations cited as “sensitive places” were not. He also enjoined enforcing the “opt into the 2nd” law where there had to be affirmative signage on a location to allow CCWs to carry.

Today the Second Circuit court granted an emergency stay of Suddaby’s order. We’ll update this article once we have the text of that stay.

This was just a three judge panel that issued the stay.

Interestingly the injunction issued against restricting the right to carry in a place of worship is still in place.

Motion For Emergency interim stay of temporary restraining order, and stay of order pending appeal

A few years ago there was a Photoshop’ed image making the rounds in the gun rights community. It showed a bunch of brits marching against “knife violence”. It was obviously a fake image because for years we had been saying “What’s next? If you take our guns you’ll be back to take our knives and then our axes until there is nothing left.”

We were told “It will never happen.”

The image wasn’t faked. It was real.

Lots of videos and news articles flow across my feeds and one was interesting given the current pushes of gun infringers, the police showing up at a man’s door to confiscate his firearms. The video thumbnail didn’t give enough context so I clicked through to watch. What I observed was eye opening.

First, this is taking place in Great Britain, where they are subjects, not citizens. There is no “right” to keep and bear arms. Instead you have a privilege granted to you by the government to own a limited selection of firearms.

The modern history of gun control in England starts in 1903 with the “Pistols Act”. This was one of those “it isn’t a big deal so why fight it” sort of laws.

It said that before you could purchase a pistol you had to either had to have a gun license or game/hunting license or be able to prove it was only going to be used on your own property. There was another clause that allowed you to purchase a pistol if you had a signed statement from the police saying you were going to be out of country for at least six months.

In other words, this was a step in getting firearm owners registered.

There was no real control because you could get a gun license by going to the post office and purchasing one, on demand.

If there were calls of “Slippery Slope!” nobody cared enough and nobody believed it.

After WWI the communists were pushing everywhere. There was a huge influx of firearms into the country and the government was afraid of civil unrest. This lead to the Firearms Act of 1920.

This changed the requirements for owning a firearm from just buying a “gun license” to getting a “firearm certificate”. A firearm certificate was good for three years and specified the firearm and amount of ammunition that the holder could possess. It didn’t require serial numbers but just a list of firearms.

The issuing of certificates was via the local chief of constables and was a “may issue”. The applicant had to have good moral character and good reason for needing a certificate. Good moral character is my turn of phrase and may or may not be in the actual law.

The slippery slope was in action but again, without a culture of firearms, the people that were most affected lived in places where the local chief constable granted certificates. Those that lived in cities didn’t grant as many but there were not as many applicants.

You ended up with the sort of mish-mash that you see in New York or California where depending on where you live the ability to get a CCW was either nearly impossible or as easy as asking and paying your fees. This was so well known that the State of New York actually made an exception for New York City which said that CCWs from the rest of New York State were not valid in New York City.

In 1937 they passed another Firearms Act to tighten up the requirements. It raised minimum age to purchase from 14 to 17. It extended the act to cover shotguns and smooth-bore weapons. It required the military to issue Firearm Certificates for machine guns, allowed the Chief Constable to add conditions on firearm certificates.

Finally it removed self-defense as a good reason for wanting a firearm certificate. “firearms cannot be regarded as a suitable means of protection and may be a source of danger.”

The slippery slope shows itself yet again. This is just another small step.

In 1968 they passed another “Firearms Act”. This included bans on certain weapons. Extended shotgun requirements from just SBS to all shotguns. It also introduced a more complete version of “prohibited person”.

It is unclear from my source (lazy, single sourcing it today, and not root sources) doesn’t make it clear which of the firearms act required every firearm to be registered with serial numbers.

By 1988 they needed still another firearms act. Still more restrictions and the gun owners barely whimpered.

In 1997, knowing who owned firearms, what makes models and serial numbers they had, and how much ammunition, the government banned most guns and went collecting.

Still more gun control showed up in 2006.

In 2022 a person in Great Britain still needs government permission to own a firearm. What firearms are allowed is strictly limited. The firearm and shotgun certificates have to be renewed every 3 years. Many Brits store their firearms at an RFD (think FFL with storage facilities) because of “safe storage” laws.

Being a government this means that things don’t work right nor do the work rapidly. The following video talks about the police going around to take weapons from “shooters”. A shooter in Britain is somebody that shoots firearms.

The police managed to mess up people firearm certificates, leaving firearms off or leaving the list of firearms blank. As far as I can tell this means tat the shooter could be in violation of British law because they have a gun that is not listed on their permission slip.

These shooters contacted the right authorities to get things correct.

In one case the police showed up to take the firearms while “things were being figured out.” Of course afterwards it proved difficult for the person to get their firearms back.

In another case the police removed a shooter’s firearms because he “had a new medical diagnosis” He had been diagnosed with a learning disability but the police took his firearms and required him to get a psychiatrists statement that he wasn’t a threat to himself or others. Even after that he had difficulties in getting his firearms back.

Later they came back again because of their mistake on his firearm certificate. This time he stood his ground and refused.

In order to protect is firearms from confiscation, he now stores them with his local RFD.

All of this sounds so much like the infringements that are being pushed here in the states.

This is why we never stop fighting for our rights. We don’t compromise. “Will Not Be Infringed!”

So go watch the video. It is worthwhile to see where gun control can lead. And remember, London is suffering from huge amounts of violent “knife crime”.

When you get done watching, there is the final point.

Did you notice that the arguments are the same “shooters are the most law abiding” was the one that got me.

But the one that was sickening to me, was how gently the fought back. They aren’t fighting for the right to keep and bear arms. To be free Citizens, they are fighting for the government to give them their permission slips back. They can’t even conceive of freedom from the government control.

May you continue to chase your dreams.

This is the alleged quote President Andrew Jackson (D) when the Supreme Court decided Worcester v. Georgia

Worcester v. Georgia was about a law in Georgia which required state permission for a non native (Indian) to be on native lands. Worcester was a minister that lived with the Indians, was translating the bible into Cherokee, and in general trying to do good things. This was prior to the Trail of Tears.

The court found that it was unconstitutional and ordered Worcester freed. The state of Georgia refused. The federal government did nothing and the Supreme Court did not request federal law enforcement to do anything.

Due to a multitude of changes this was never pushed to an extreme and in 1832 Jackson said that the Supreme Court was the final say in what is Constitutional. Prior to that declaration, Jackson believed that the President and the Supreme Court were equal in that judgement.

So the question comes up, over and over again, what if the Supreme court decides that some part of gun control is unconstitutional and the states continue to enforce those laws?

Consider the following, somebody decides to make a select fire AR-15. I.e. they drill the fourth hole and put in all the right parts. They never take the gun out of state, they never cross state lines, they don’t do anything criminal with that firearm other than possessing it.

A state, like Connecticut, New Jersey, New York or California, arrests and charges this person under their assault weapons ban.

Instead of attacking just the assault weapons ban our defendant decides to attack the NFA and the AWB at the same time. Because the feds are lined up to prosecute him for the machine gun if the state doesn’t put him away. There is precedent for people being heard in court over the possibility of being charged. In first amendment cases this is called “a chilling effect”.

If you don’t know if a particular statement is protected speech you are unlikely to speak in fear of being prosecuted. So even if the law doesn’t explicitly deam your speech “illegal” the fact that it could be stretched to do so is enough for it to be considered an infringement of your rights.

This is the issue with “hate speech” regulations. Hate speech is always in the eyes of the victim. As such there is no way to know prior to making the statement how that person will interpret that word.

That exists right here, right now. If I put that word “here” to say that this word is currently considered hate speech, that one word could be used to label this entire site as “full of hate speech.” There was a professor that was on a overnight class trip. His students asked him a question and he responded using that word to say “don’t use ‘word’” Him saying don’t use it got him fired and canceled.

Regardless, in our example if it happens in California then the 9th circus hears the case and immediately decides that all is constitutional. The cases on the east coast go to different circuit courts which have already shown a tendency to believe that the state is right in balancing needs.

So it ends up in the Supreme Court where Justice Thomas gets to write another slapdown of the gun controllers.

The regent for Joe Biden, President for life, makes the statement “Hell Yes, we are taking those guns!” The gun infringing states then refuse to acknowledge the Supreme Court opinion.

Thus the court can not get the federal government to intervene nor is the federal government going to send in the troops to enforce anything.

And here is where it gets dicey. We the People of these United States have given the government temporary power in limited form. We are not subjects. We are citizens.

First I expect there to be a huge amount of civil disobedience. Currently Connecticut is experiencing the larges act of civil disobedience known in the US. The number of “assault weapons” that were registered under the requirements of their AWB.

So there will be civil disobedience. Second, there are still a large number of Law Enforcement Officers that do believe in the constitution. They will refuse to enforce.

Finally, there will be deaths.

In the novel Friday by Robert A. Heinlein the constable got an “illegal” order and decided it was the right thing to do to go investigate and arrest. He “rushed” Friday and ended up dead.

There are going to be “go getter” types that want to do the gun grab. For some of them there will be death instead. For some gun owners there will be death. And it will get bloody.

We’ve been covering how some judges are adhering to the Bruen decision and others are not.  The ones that are not are distinct in that they all seem to be stretching to find something that isn’t there or to find a way to invert the rules.

Before Bruen, the Second Amendment looked like an abandoned cabin in the woods. A knot of vines, weeds, and roots, left unkempt for decades, crawling up the cabin’s sides as if pulling it under the earth. Firearm regulations are that overgrowth. Starting with the Federal Firearms Act in 1938, laws were passed with little—if any—consideration given to their constitutionality. That is, until the Supreme Court intervened in Bruen.

What a wonderful turn of phrase.

He is right. For the longest time the second was treated as the red haired stepchild. There is no other right that has had so many restrictions put on it. There is no other right which has been so “balanced” by government wants. The second was treated as a might have run.

As people that are not involved in the criminal court system we look to avoid being embroiled in the law. I.e. we want to be law abiding people. We also want to be able to defend ourselves and our family. That means we want laws that allow us to keep and bear arms freely.

Laws that create a legal minefield of where we can carry and where we can not are designed to make it so hard to carry legally that we just don’t. You are going to stop at the Post Office after work? Is it worth it to carry today then?

I’ve had a courthouse guard hassle me because I had a holster on my hip. No gun. Just the holster.

I want this to stop. I think that you want it to stop as well.

But the Bruen opinion bites much deeper than “just leave us alone.” It is going to roll back many of the gun control laws.

In United States of America v. Litsson Antonio Perez-Gallan another part of the Gun control laws took a hit. And this one will start the fall of red flag laws. U.S. District Judge David Counts ordered that Perez-Gallan’s petition to dismiss be granted.

Perez-Gallan was being charged with being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm. He was called “prohibited” because there was a restraining order against him.

That’s it. Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8) it is a crime to possess a firearm while subject to a court order.

The gist of Judge Count’s order is that 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8) is unconstitutional.

This would mean that all Red Flag laws are also unconstitutional.

As the judge stated, until 1994 there was no law prohibiting a person under court order from possessing a firearm. This is not within the history or tradition of the second amendment in 1791.

All cases attacking 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8) have been denied because of standing. They happened prior to the Heller opinion in 2008. Thus the courts ruled that the “right to bear arms” was a collective right.

It is likely that over the next dozen years or so we are going to see the gutting of the GCA and the NFA. Regardless of the games that the gun rights infringers continue to play.
United State of America v. Litsson Antonio Perez-Gallan – Memorandum Opinion