When Obama was running for president in 2008, he promised to “fundamentally change America” – a phrase which lucid Americans took as meaning he was going to bring his leftist agenda to bear on us all. And if Obama has had any success as president, it’s certainly been his success in changing us fundamentally from a nation under law to a nation that often looks lawless. From a nation in which one feels secure into a nation in which more and more people are feeling that their security is in their own hands (literally). And this has led not only to record breaking gun sales since Obama’s election, but also to changes in state laws around the country to make it easier for law-abiding citizens to carry a handgun for their own protection.

As a result of this, Wisconsin, which was one of the few states to not have some form of concealed carry law within its borders, now has one thanks to their much maligned Republican legislature and Gov. Scott Walker. With the stroke of a pen in July of 2011, Walker made Wisconsin the 49th state in the union to allow the concealed carry of handguns. (Only Illinois, Obama’s old stomping ground, continues to deny its citizens this option right.)

And while I don’t want to take away from what Walker has accomplished in Wisconsin, during the last few years the momentum has shifted from seeking to allow licensed citizens to carry concealed handguns to allowing all citizens without a felony in their criminal record or mental health problems to carry concealed without a license or a permit. In other words, the growing push abroad is to recognize the 2nd Amendment as a sufficient permit for concealed carry and go from there.  After all, the 2nd Amendment does say we have the right not only to keep but also to bear arms.

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Making a Christmas list is always fun. And I remember as a kid listing things in order, putting the gift I would most like Santa to bring at the top of list. One year that was a bicycle, another year a certain type of BB gun, and another year a video game system. Throughout other years the number one gift request varied but was always the one thing on my list I went to bed dreaming about on Christmas Eve. And although such is to be expected of a child, it seems that a lot of adults now go to bed on Christmas Eve dreaming of what Santa might bring them as well: especially when the number one thing on their list is a Walther .380 or a Glock model 27 or a Springfield XD subcompact 9mm, all of which are splendid guns for concealed carry permit holders.

As a matter of fact, judging from sales receipts and FBI reports regarding sales for December 2011, it seems that Santa delivered at least 1.5 million firearms for Christmas.

Not only is this news in light of the fact that it required the FBI to do a record setting number of background checks in a month – 1.5 million in December alone – but also because it continues to highlight what has been a growing trend among people of all walks of life: namely, folks are less and less trustful of government’s ability to keep them safe.

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A politician is described as a “lame duck” once he or she has been defeated or announced their retirement, and is simply finishing out the remainder of their term in office. And even after Nov. elections are over and a large number of Senate and House members are voted out, the lame duck Senators and House members are usually just that – lame. But occasionally, they are fierce because the defeated office holder is bitter and has approximately two months to wreak havoc with his or her vote before leaving DC. When this happens, ideologues will use the time where they’re completely accountable to voters to score points for their side. We saw this after the Nov. 2010 elections when defeated Senators and House members banded together in late Dec. to repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” so homosexuals could serve openly in the military. Yet as bad as this is, the opportunities for a lame duck office holder to attack our freedom grows exponentially when said office holder is in the White House, and when he’s an ideologue who hates private gun ownership, the right to self defense, and the 2nd Amendment.

And this brings us to a crucial point. Namely, that if Obama wins re-election in 2012, he will be awarded four years of lame duck status in which to do anything and everything he wants to lessen our ability to own and use guns. He knows he won’t have to answer for it because he will not be running for re-election in 2016.

What would four years of a lame duck President Obama mean for gun owners? The only way to know is to gauge it by the things Obama has done already. In 1995, when pursuing a state level office in Illinois, Obama “endorsed a complete ban on all handguns.” At that time, he also expressed his support for waiting periods for handgun purchases. A “waiting period” is a set period of time, usually 5 to 10 days, which has to elapse between the time an individual buys a gun and is actually allowed to take it home. In other words, customer “X” would pay for a gun on Monday of this week, but would not be allowed to pick it up at the store until Monday of next week. (The foolishness of this scenario is evident when one considers what that waiting period might mean for a female who is being threatened by a violent criminal or sexual predator. She would have to buy her gun then spend the next week, the “waiting period,” hoping the criminal or predator would be willing to wait a week before attacking as well.)

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For the better part of a year, I have been saying that the end goal of Fast and Furious was more gun control. Rush Limbaugh has said this, Sean Hannity and other FOX NEWS personalities have said this, and the NRA and Gun Owners of America have said this, among others. (I had a post on Big Government on July 13th dedicated to making this very point.)

Throughout this time, I have had a copy of an email that was sent to me back in March of 2011. It’s an July 2010 email from ATF Special Agent in Charge Mark R. Chait to ATF Supervisor William Newell. It is copied to a third ATF Supervisor, William McMahon. Newell and McMahon were assigned to the Phoenix area at the time (and Phoenix just so happened to be ground zero for Fast and Furious.) In it, Chait asks Newell if he can find enough “anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales.” In other words, Chait was asking whether, in the midst of the flood of new weapons hitting the streets via Fast and Furious, a means could be found to justify more gun control.

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On December 8th, the very day Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the House Oversight Committee to answer questions about Fast and Furious, I had a post on Big Government which highlighted Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner’s (R-WI) mention of impeachment. You’ll recall Sensenbrenner essentially told Holder he was sick and tired of the way the DOJ was dragging its feet in answering questions, and he was particularly weary of Holder’s habit of answering inquires with, “gees, somebody else did it.” And even if you haven’t followed Fast and Furious closely up till now, if you read the exchanges that took place between Sensenbrenner and Holder on Dec. 8th, it’s easy to see why the Congressman was pushed to his wits end.

But just in case you need a primer, as you read the transcript below, please keep two things in mind. First, on May 3rd, Holder gave testimony to Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) in which he claimed he had only learned of Fast and Furious in the past “few weeks.” This claim by Holder is demonstrably false—has been proven false—and Holder has since changed his answer. And secondly, on Feb. 4th, the DOJ submitted a letter to Congress in which they claimed no gun-walking had taken place in relation to Fast and Furious (in other words, they claimed that none of the 2,500 weapons sold to straw purchasers had been smuggled, or been allowed to “walk,” into Mexico). That letter, like Holder’s prior testimony, was recanted.

That’s the backdrop for the following exchange on December 8:

Sensenbrenner: There have been inconsistent submissions to Congress. You yourself testified that you’d only heard about [Fast and Furious] a few weeks earlier, and then in November you said it probably was a few months. [And] as late as October 7th, in response to allegations that you lied on May 3rd, you wrote to Congress that your statements on Fast and Furious have been “truthful and consistent.” [Yet] one of your underlings, on Feb. 4th, Assistant A.G. Ronald Weich, responded to Senator Grassley denying that the ATF had walked guns and that letter ended up being withdrawn.

Clearly, Sensenbrenner was incensed as he thought of the lies surrounding Fast and Furious. So much so, in fact, that as he spoke he took pains to try to be measured in his speech:

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Unsafe streets are unsafer almost entirely due to restrictions on the freedoms of the citizen to act in an emergency involving violence. Though states affirm the armed citizen, major cities refuse. All gun control interferes with the average reasonable person and it escalates crisis to the gain of the State. But some states do not want to preside over crises when they can preside over prosperity, “prosperity” meaning some of the greatest wealth: freedom. Everyone prospers under freedom better than under any other system. The word takes on new meaning under freedom.

I often receive letters for my position — the repeal of all gun laws. I answer every one of these. The idea is not to do without laws, but to erase all of the adversity gun control has caused and to start over. I am reasonably certain that America would write a few gun laws, but only a handful, having now lived with the disaster that is the political punishment of freedom. And punishing freedom is what gun control is about. Limiting one’s latitude to act in time of emergency aggravates adverse social conditions. This then cultivates an attitude of need or political remedy. The safeguard of freedom is undermined in mandates, such as gun control, and the crisis grows.

But not all public servants agree with this sort of governance. When it comes to the armed citizen, forty-eight states affirm their constituents’ right to carry a loaded sidearm, they don’t fight it or feel any mandate against it. Do these people like guns? No, not likely. What these people do like is propriety and integrity. In affirming the concept of the armed citizen throughout their state, these legislators do not believe in the gun, they believe in the citizen.

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My brand is Safer Streets 2012 because of one essence: safer streets as we all want them are an indicator of a healthier self-rule.

You will not get to safer streets nor a self-rule without smaller government first, and that will not come as long as there is gun control. Everything else, every delay, every complication, is lip service, designed to waylay our time, energy and spirit away from anything productive, giving us the feeling that we are directing things, but actually wasting our time.

We’ve made some friends and allies in Congress and we have unseated some foes of liberty, but some of us still have the impression that we’re not getting the cooperation we need. Somewhere in there, the new freshmen believe, there is such a thing as sensible gun regulation.

There isn’t. Gun laws are incompatible with liberty. All gun laws.

In Part I, I said that in time of violence, when the target of crime is armed, there is more law present, more public policy present, and more public interest served than by all 20,000 gun laws in force. With a majority of states affirming second amendment latitude, it is clear what their public consensus is. The major cities are out of step.

In Part I, I said that we are the Sovereign, and that our 2012 candidates must acknowledge this on the stump. They should be asked outright and they must affirm this by the repeal of all gun laws, please.

The repeal of all gun laws will unveil one powerful societal dynamic, and that is the personal independence of the individual. When crime is fought best at the scene of the crime and not exclusively after the fact, say, for instance, detection, interdiction, apprehension and the administration of justice, it is because independence has been brought to bear on the problem when it can do the most good. Our greater independence from our own public servants is critical to everything from personal safety to prosperity. Our independence from our servants is critical to self-rule and safer streets.

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Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his little outfit “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” are at it again. Hoping to gain traction for what has heretofore been an absolutely pathetic gun control campaign, Bloomberg is rolling out all the stops by trying to scare us into thinking Al Qaeda agents are buying their guns at U.S. gun shows.

I’m not kidding: Bloomberg’s latest television ad contains clips of an American-turned-Islamist advising his comrades to buy their weapons at U.S. gun shows.

The ad is very, very sloppy, and full of factual errors. Like when the Islamist says, “You can go down to a gun show and come away with a fully-automatic assault rifle.” I’m sorry, but that’s just not true. Fully automatic weapons are subject to strict federal regulations above and beyond the normal, all too stringent, regulations on semi-automatic firearms in this country. To purchase a fully automatic weapon you have to live in a state that allows them, go through a 3 to 6 month process of federal background checks, pay a significant federal firearms tax, and receive approval by local law enforcement authorities, among other things.

To be honest, it’s sick that Bloomberg is so desperate to take away our guns that he’d actually present such an out-and-out lie by an Islamist as justification for limiting our access to firearms.

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How was I to know [he] was with the Russians, too?

Justice Stevens’ opinion leaves him on the wrong side of history regarding the importance of the 2nd Amendment.

Part III deals with Justice Stevens’ dissenting opinion in McDonald v. Chicago, Justice Scalia’s responsive concurrence, and a general summary of the issues.  Part I dealt with the plurality decision written by Justice Alito, the dissenting opinion of Justice Breyer, and is relevant to a discussion on the doctrine of incorporation.  Part II dealt with Justice Thomas’ brilliant concurrence, rejecting the doctrine of incorporation for the “privileges and immunities” clause of the 14th Amendment.

You may recall that we addressed the legacy of Justice Stevens’ in a previous article:

Justice Stevens, a member of the Court since 1975, displayed distrust for freedom and voted on the wrong side of many significant constitutional issues.  He willingly eroded individual rights in favor of intrusive government policy.  Stevens’ uneasiness with freedom and individual rights led him to substitute textually sound, constitutional arguments with “intangibles” and fearful hypotheticals involving individuals abusing their rights at the expense of others.

Sure enough, he is up to the same shenanigans in what will be one of his last opinions.  To our benefit, Justice Scalia makes sure that Stevens leaves SCOTUS with a swift kick in the pants. (more…)

Send lawyers, guns and money…the sh%$ has hit the fan!

Seriously!  Justice Thomas opened a whole new chapter in constitutional jurisprudence with his concurring opinion regarding the 14th Amendment’s “privileges and immunities” clause.

Part II deals with Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion in McDonald v. Chicago. Part I dealt with the plurality decision written by Justice Alito, and the dissenting opinion of Justice Breyer, and is relevant to a discussion on the doctrine of incorporation.  Part III will address Justice Scalia’s concurrence directed at Justice Stevens’ dissent.

Let me preface this article by saying Justice Thomas is my favorite Supreme Court Justice.  Progressives often ridicule him for being “silent,” but why should he bother asking attorneys questions when their arguments focus on SCOTUS swing-vote, Justice Kennedy.  His textual approach to interpreting the Constitution makes the most sense.  While originalism and textualism both seek the original meaning of a statute or provision of the Constitution, originalism seeks the intent of the authors, where textualism focuses on the contemporary meaning of the text.  Primary sources on the intent of authors leads to a cogent argument, but primary sources on the meanings of words promotes a sound argument (and if you never learned logic then you have some studying to do; progressive arguments are rife with fallacies). (more…)

I’m the innocent bystander…not anymore!

In Heller, we held that the Second Amendment protects the right to possess a handgun in the home for the purpose of self-defense. Unless considerations of stare decisis counsel otherwise, a provision of the Bill of Rights that protects a right that is fundamental from an American perspective applies equally to the Federal Government and the States. See Duncan, 391 U. S., at 149, and n. 14. We therefore hold that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment right recognized in Heller. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings.

It is so ordered.

And so, our 2nd Amendment right to firearms settles into its proper place among our pantheon of fundamental rights.  The truth of the matter is that we always retained that right, but the law had been interpreted contrary to the Constitution.

Two arguments were the focus of McDonald v. Chicago: (1) the narrow interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s “privileges and immunities” clause adopted in the Slaughter-House Cases should be rejected; and (2) the 14th Amendment’s “due process” clause incorporates the 2nd Amendment right.  Justice Thomas addressed the first argument in a concurring opinion (arguably the bigger precedent), but we will turn to that topic in Part II.  Justice Scalia skewered Justice Stevens’ dissenting opinion in another concurring opinion, but that will be the topic of Part III.  First let us examine Justice Alito’s plurality opinion concerning the second argument, and the dissent of Justice Breyer. (more…)

A third instance of Elena Kagan opposing Americans’ Second Amendment right to own a gun became public Thursday, ensuring gun rights will be a major issue in her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. It also confirms that President Obama’s gun-control agenda is to create a Supreme Court that will “reinterpret” the Second Amendment until that amendment means nothing at all.

This year, no case on the Supreme Court docket is more important than McDonald v. Chicago, where the Court is deciding whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is only a right you have against the federal government, or instead if the Second Amendment (like most of the Bill of Rights) also secures a right you can assert against state and local governments. At issue is whether Chicago’s law banning guns—even in your own home—is constitutional.

When the Supreme Court considered its last Second Amendment case in 2008, District of Columbia v. Heller, then-Solicitor General Paul Clement filed a brief in the case, and then requested and received time to argue the federal government’s position on the meaning of the Second Amendment.

When the McDonald case was argued before the Court on March 2, current Solicitor General Kagan argued… Nothing. Not only did she not ask for time during oral argument, she didn’t even file a brief (which the solicitor general routinely does in important constitutional cases—and the McDonald case is tremendously important).

If someone asserts that the solicitor general shouldn’t file a brief because it’s a state issue as to whether the Second Amendment is “incorporated” to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment (which is the issue in McDonald) the record speaks to the contrary. The last time the Supreme Court “incorporated” a right from the Bill of Rights to the states, in the 1969 case Benton v. Maryland, the solicitor general filed a brief, and then (just like Heller in 2008) was given time in oral argument time to express the government’s views in front of the Court.

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Elena Kagan may be hostile to the view that the 2^ndAmendment to the Constitution protects American’s individual right to keep and bear arms.  Bloomberg reports today, “Kagan Was ‘Not Sympathetic’ as Law Clerk to Gun-Rights Argument.”  With the evidence presented by the Los Angeles Times that Kagan was very active in the gun control agenda during her time as counsel for the President Bill Clinton Administration, a thorough examination of Kagan’s views on the 2^nd Amendment is merited.

Bloomberg Reports that “Elena Kagan said as a U.S. Supreme Court law clerk in 1987 that she was ‘not sympathetic’ toward a man who contended that his constitutional rights were violated when he was convicted for carrying an unlicensed pistol.”  In the wake of the District of Columbia v. Heller decision holding that the 2^nd Amendment is an individual right, it is incumbent upon Senators to explore the views of Solicitor General Elena Kagan on American’s civil right to own a firearm. More from Bloomberg:

Kagan, whom President Barack Obama nominated to the high court this week, made the comment to Justice Thurgood Marshall, urging him in a one-paragraph memo to vote against hearing the District of Columbia man’s appeal. The man’s “sole contention is that the District of Columbia’s firearms statutes violate his constitutional right to ‘keep and bear arms,’” Kagan wrote. “I’m not sympathetic.”

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