Criminals use concealed handguns, they rarely use rifles or shotguns to commit a crime. Unfortunately, every time some loser or mentally ill person goes on a shooting spree with an AR-15 style rifle it leads the news day after day until it is “old news” and some other story takes its place.
22 of the 23 rifles the sniper in the Las Vegas shooting had in his room were AR-type rifles (AR-15 and AR-10).
President Obama, in a Presidential debate with Mitt Romney, said he would sign an “assault rifle” ban into law but it wouldn’t do any good because handguns are the real problem. This was in the context of mass shootings committed with semi-automatic civilian versions of fully automatic military rifles. Mitt Romney, as governor of Massachusetts, had signed an “assault rifle” ban into law at the request of the official NRA Massachusetts state organization.
One of the many times gun-owners have proven themselves to be the greatest threat to the Second Amendment.
If you take look at the list of “rampage killers” in the United States (excluding schools, workplaces, and churches) on Wikipedia going back to 1863, those 99 “rampage killings” resulted in 775 deaths, and that was from all types of weapons, not just “black rifles.”
According to Wikipedia, the most people killed in a workplace rampage shooting was 14, back in 1986. The most people killed in a school rampage shooting, in the United States, was the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 where 32 people were murdered and 17 wounded, with two handguns.
According to Wikipedia, there were no U.S. school massacres in 2019. There were two workplace rampage shootings with 17 dead and three rampage killings in which 18 people were killed for a total of 35 dead.
In 2019, according to the F.B.I, 13,927 people were murdered. 10,258 of those people were murdered with firearms. As bad as these senseless murders are, they detract from focusing one’s attention on the 99.99% of murders that were not murdered in a rampage killing.
Even if you could wave a magic wand that would eliminate all rampage killings, it would be but a drop in the bucket compared to the number of murders committed each year.
And at the risk of appearing to dodge the problem, in 2018, according to the CDC, 67,367 people died from drug overdoses. 47,000 of those deaths were from Opioid drugs, black market as well as prescription.
These preventable deaths are not unrelated. Earlier in this decade, the Los Angeles County Coroner published annual reports that included charts of homicide victims and whether or not they tested positive for drugs. Overwhelmingly, a homicide victim tested positive for one or more types of drugs, including Marijuana which is now a more or less legal drug in California.
The F.B.I. publishes a Uniform Crime Report that contains multiple tables of what firearms and other weapons are used to commit homicides. The number of rifles and shotguns used to commit homicides is dwarfed by the number of concealable weapons (handguns and knives) used to commit homicides.
The latest F.B.I. Uniform Crime Report is for 2019. The Murder Circumstances by type of weapons (Table 11) shows that of those homicides where the type of weapon is known, 364 homicides were committed with rifles nationwide, and 200 were committed with shotguns. Knives or other cutting instruments accounted for 1,476 murders. Blunt objects (hammers, clubs, etc.,) were used to commit 397 murders. Personal “weapons” (hands, fists, feet, etc) were used to commit 567 murders.
Handguns were used to commit 6,358 of the 13,927 murders. Handguns were used to commit 62% of murders committed with firearms where the type of firearm was known.
3,326 murders were committed by “Other guns or type not stated.”
It should be obvious to everyone why concealable weapons are overwhelming used to commit murders. Someone who walks down Main Street, USA with a rifle or shotgun on his shoulder or a handgun in a belt holster on his hip is going to be noticed. If people see that he is carrying a firearm then they have the opportunity to govern themselves accordingly and take steps for self-preservation.
There is no such opportunity given if someone carries a weapon concealed. That is why criminals and cowards carry weapons concealed. They carry concealed weapons because, in their own words, it gives them a secret/tactical advantage.
That, and cowardice, has always been why people carry concealed weapons. It is true today, and it was true in 1959 when sixty percent of the American people polled by Gallup in July of 1959 favored a ban on handguns except for police and (government) authorized persons.
In the history of Gallup polling since that 1959 poll, it was not until October of 2008 did the number of Americans who favor a handgun ban drop below 30% to 29%. The lowest support for the handgun ban was October 2016. The most recent poll in October of 2019 shows support for the handgun ban back up to 29%.
47% of Americans polled by Gallup want to ban so-called “assault rifles.”
It was revealed in one of the Nixon secret tape recordings that Richard Nixon had intended to ban handguns after he was reelected. If it had not been for the Watergate scandal and everything that entailed, he very well could have achieved a ban on handguns during his second term as President.
It is impossible to ban the legal sale of all knives. It is not impossible to ban the legal sale of most handguns and most knives. It is not impossible to confiscate most of the legally owned handguns (and firearms), and knives in the United States. Most people will simply turn them in.
It is a definite possibility that if President Trump loses his reelection then we will see firearms ownership, particularly ownership of handguns and rifles (not just assault rifles), and many shotguns, become extremely costly and entangled with paperwork, coupled with minor errors resulting in a lifetime ban on your right to possess firearms. There will be, of course, another “assault weapons” ban passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden. Only this time there will not be a ten-year sunset clause, and this time, the ban is going to include nearly all semi-automatic rifles and semi-automatic shotguns.
Who is going to stop it? Even if every Republican Senate seat is retained, Republican senators have a long history of bending over and grabbing their ankles for Democrat Presidents. The Democrat Party is a lost cause.
There are no lions in the Senate.
It is an almost certainty that we are going to lose two Republican Senate seats, Arizona and Colorado. Both states have long been drifting into the Democrat column.
The Republican senators from Iowa, North Carolina, and Maine, are all trailing in the polls. Even the Republican senator from Montana is barely leading in the polls. And by “leading” I mean by 1.6 points, well within the margin of error.
The reason why we are having four days of Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Barrett instead of a quick confirmation is because South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is tied in the polls with his Democrat opponent. Senator Graham needs video from the hearings to shore up his Republican base that has pretty much written him off as a Nancy Boy.
Texas Senator John Cornyn is doing better than Ted Cruz did two years ago but Texas is drifting into the Democrat column. Did you really think that all of those people from California who moved there weren’t going to bring their California politics with them? But Californians aren’t the worst of the problem causing the Democrat shift in Texas. Most of the immigrants to Texas are foreign immigrants. In nearly all foreign countries, only the government and criminals have guns, and as you might expect, it is nearly impossible to tell the government and criminals apart.
Only one Senate seat held by a Democrat is likely to be flipped into Republican hands, Alabama.
As incredible as it sounds, it looks like both Republican senate seats in Georgia are headed to runoff elections. The runoff elections won’t even take place until January 5, 2021. The runoff elections won’t be certified until well after the new Senate convenes on January 3, 2021. That will be two less Republican senators to oppose the Democrat majority, even if they wanted to.
Do not be surprised, once all the votes are counted and the elections final, to see Democrats not only gaining seats in the House of Representatives and winning the White House, they could topple eight Republican Senate seats and win control of the Senate as well.
Despite taking in several hundred millions of dollars a year, the NRA spends very little on political campaigns. The NRA’s greatest strength in elections past was communicating with what was once as many as six million members.
But the NRA is not what it once was. The leadership of the NRA wants to have doors opened for them in Congress and chairs pulled out for them to sit on. That means the NRA endorsed incumbents, including anti-gun incumbents. Let’s face it, NRA members aren’t the brightest folks you are going to meet but many of them caught on to the con game the NRA was playing with them and left.
In the California State Assembly District 66, the district that encompasses the South Bay of Los Angeles where my fight for the Second Amendment right to Open Carry began on May 8, 2010, the NRA has endorsed a vocal opponent of Open Carry, Arthur Schaper.
The NRA endorsing an opponent of the Second Amendment is not news. But Arthur Schaper is certifiably insane. Arthur Schaper is stark-raving, barking at the moon mad.
Arthur Schaper got the nomination because only two people entered the race. Schaper and anti-gun Democrat incumbent Al Muratsuchi. Under California’s election system, the two vote-getters in the primary move on to the general election, and since there were only two people on the ballot…
What kind of organization endorses a candidate for public office without doing so much as a web search on the candidate? And then ask yourself, “What if the NRA did know that it was endorsing a nutter?” What does the answer to either question say about the NRA?
Many other NRA members have died of old age. And just today, the news is reporting that the long time head of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, is under criminal investigation for tax evasion. Not forgetting that the New York Attorney General is suing the NRA in an attempt to shut it down.
Did you hear about the failed, internal attempt to oust La Pierre last year and the financial mismanagement that has imperiled the survival of the NRA, regardless of the problems with the New York Attorney General and I.R.S.?
For more than a few decades now, America’s youth has had better things to do with their time than go hunting. Also, as America became more urbanized, and suburbanized, the places to hunt, and shoot, have dwindled.
Most people, like my parents, who were born prior to World War II, were born on a farm. Hunting is what every boy and man did in those days. When my mother was in high school, her brothers and the other boys from the neighboring farms would carry their rifles to school because they engaged in shooting practice and competitions after school was over. And they did it on school grounds.
When the late Justice Scalia was a boy in New York City, he would carry his rifle to school on the subway. Nobody gave him a second look.
But then the 1960s came along, and the world changed.
Handguns had always been suspect but only a few states banned the carrying of handguns in public, openly or concealed. Oklahoma was one state that enacted a ban early in the 20th century. During the post Civil War Reconstruction period, South Carolina banned the carrying of handguns. Tennessee allowed only specific types of handguns to be carried and they could only be carried in one’s hand. It was illegal to carry a handgun in a holster in Tennessee. It still is unless you have a permit. Texas had convoluted laws that pretty much banned the carrying of handguns in public. Texas, like nearly every other state, did not ban the Open Carry of rifles or shotguns.
But these were handgun Open Carry bans were exceptions. Notwithstanding handguns, which a few states restricted or banned, it was legal to openly carry long guns in public in every state until the 20th-century. Florida had a 20th-century law prohibiting repeating rifles but that law seemed to be limited to Blacks. Anyhow, there are always exceptions. Likewise, with few exceptions, the concealed carry of firearms (e.g., handguns) was illegal in every state except Vermont, and only a handful of states even provided for the issuance of concealed carry permits.
Concealed carry is only legal in Vermont because of a Vermont Supreme Court decision in the early 20th-century that overturned an Open Carry ban in the town of Rutland. One could only carry concealed handguns in Rutland and only with a government-issued permission slip. That is exactly the type of law the NRA, and SAF, and all of the other so-called gun-rights groups have been pushing for – A ban on Open Carry coupled with it being illegal to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.
Don’ say but I heard so and so of my gun organization defend Open Carry. Ask yourself, where is your gun organization’s lawsuit to overturn Open Carry bans? They have certainly filed lawsuits in Federal courts arguing in favor of Open Carry bans and they have certainly filed Amicus briefs in opposition to Open Carry.
Not a single so-called gun-rights group has donated so much as one penny to my lawsuit to overturn California’s Open Carry bans since I first announced my lawsuit in May of 2011. Instead, they and their lawyers have attacked my lawsuit both in public and in court.
Please wakeup. The gun-rights groups are not your friend. They are the enemy. They exist only so long as you keep giving them money so please stop giving them money.
There were 19th-century convictions for concealed carry in the home that were upheld. A little know fact is that it is illegal to carry a handgun concealed in one’s home in California or on one’s property, loaded or unloaded, unless one’s home or property is located in a place where the 1967 ban on carrying loaded firearms does not apply.
New York required a permit to carry a handgun beginning in 1911. In the 1960s, New York banned the Open Carry of handguns except for antique handguns. Regardless, carrying a handgun required a carry permit. For that matter, you needed a permit to even keep a handgun in your home and often New York City would not even issue one of those permits. Even before the permit requirement to have a handgun in the home, it was a crime to carry a handgun concealed in one’s home in New York. One did not even have to carry the handgun concealed. If the handgun was placed in a drawer then it was concealed and that violated New York law. New Jersey did not require a permit to openly carry a handgun until the mid-1960s.
The US Supreme Court in the Heller decision said that the 19th-century prohibitions on concealed carry are constitutional. The 19th-century prohibitions on concealed carry were very broad.
California banned the Open Carry of loaded firearms in 1967. California became a state in 1850. It had never been legal to carry handguns concealed in the state. But up until 1863, when California banned concealed carry, California mostly left the fines and jail times to cities and counties.
There was an 1853 California Statewide law that divided the $20 fine for concealed carry into two parts and dictated how it was spent ($20 was a lot of money in those days). But from 1870 to 1917, concealed carry was either banned in cities and counties or required a locally issued permit that was valid only in that locality. The punishment could be quite severe for concealed carry without a license. California’s current concealed carry licensing laws stem from 1923. In 1924, the California Supreme Court upheld the law as well as upheld a five-year sentence and felony conviction for violating the law.
The NRA currently has its third California concealed carry lawsuit in ten years on appeal in California. That appeal is stayed pending a decision in Young v. Hawaii. Young v. Hawaii does not challenge the 2016 Peruta v. San Diego en banc decision that held concealed carry is not a 2A right.
The next appeal to be decided after Young v. Hawaii is my California Open Carry appeal. My appeal is not stayed. My appeal is fully briefed and argued before a three-judge panel. Once the Young v. Hawaii decision is final (the Mandate is issued) then my appeal is once again under submission for a decision. The NRA’s concealed carry lawsuit will have to wait for the decision in my California Open Carry lawsuit, Charles Nichols v. Gavin Newsom et al.
I do not challenge the 2006 Peruta v. San Diego en banc decision that held concealed carry is not a Second Amendment right.
That means there will not be an oral argument in the NRA’s third, failed concealed carry lawsuit. The three-judge panel eventually assigned to that appeal will remain bound by the Peruta v. San Diego en banc decision. The NRA will file another petition for rehearing en banc, most likely followed by a petition for a Full-Court rehearing, followed by a cert petition to SCOTUS. All will be denied, just as they were in the NRA’s failed concealed carry lawsuit, Peruta v. San Diego.
The two predominant factions of the NRA were hunters and target shooters. Now its predominant factions are old hunters, aging target shooters, and concealed carriers. Especially those concealed carriers who offer the often mandated training to obtain a concealed carry permit. Being a concealed carry instructor pays a lot more than they would be earning at their old minimum wage jobs.
The NRA is largely impotent today. It is doubtful its leader Wayne LaPierre will survive, and there is nobody to take his place. Although my money is on Ted Nugent. His replacing Wayne LaPierre as captain of the sinking ship has a certain poetry to it. That assumes that there is a place left to take. The NRA could very well be dissolved by the State of New York, where it is incorporated before LaPierre is gone.
There are a few pipsqueaks in the game who have deluded many gullible people into believing that when they walk the halls of Congress, the ground shakes beneath their feet. All of them fantasize about taking LaPierre’s place. Some even feign, like Augustus Caesar did, that they are unworthy to lead.
The reality you should prepare for is this:
Beginning on January 3, 2021, Joseph Biden will be President, both houses of Congress will be controlled by Democrats, if the Senate Republicans manage to squeak by with a majority of votes, there are enough RINOs in the Senate who will cross over and vote with the Democrats on anti-gun bills, Republican control will be meaningless. Any future vacancies on the Supreme Court will be filled by anti-gun justices. Justices Alito, Thomas and Breyer are all over 70 years of age. Assuming that Judge Barrett is confirmed and assuming she is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, if we lose either Justice Alito or Justice Thomas then we will be right back where we were before the confirmation of Judge Barrett- We won’t have five votes on the Supreme Court to win a Second Amendment case.
If Judge Barrett is not confirmed then sooner than later, there will only be two or three justices on the Supreme Court who support the Second Amendment. The Democrats won’t have to pack the court. They just have to wait for nature to take its toll.
Half of the American people favor a ban on “assault weapons.” They don’t know what an assault weapon is, they just know that they don’t like them. That gives the Democrats the opportunity to ban nearly everything and label the ban as an “assault weapons ban.” Half the country will support its passage, for the children.
Meanwhile, gun owners will continue to chant their mantra that Open Carry can, should, and must be banned, as the NRA and Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) did in their concealed carry lawsuits. Those gun-owners include many, many “Black rifle” owners. The NRA, if it is still around, will continue to claim that a ban on Open Carry coupled with “shall-issue” concealed carry is “Constitutional Carry.”
There won’t be any more Open Carry lawsuits filed. My California Open Carry lawsuit was filed on November 30, 2011. The California Loaded Open Carry ban became law in July of 1967. I was the first person to challenge that ban. I remain the only person to challenge the ban as it applies to the Open Carry of handguns, rifles, and shotguns. I am the only person who also challenges California’s bans on the Open Carry of unloaded long guns as violating the Second Amendment.
The State of California told an eleven judge panel of the 9th circuit court of appeals that the Open Carry right extends beyond the curtilage of our homes but it still remains a crime for me to step even one inch outside the door of my home into the curtilage of my home without violating California’s bans on Loaded and Unloaded Open Carry. The State of California made that concession over five years ago. The State of California conceded that its Open Carry bans violate the Second Amendment. As the prevailing party in that lawsuit, the State of California is prohibited from arguing that the Second Amendment does not protect a right to openly carry a firearm in public.
And so what did the State of California argue in my appeal? The State argued that the Supreme Court is wrong and my three-judge panel must overrule the US Supreme Court decisions in Heller and McDonald.
That argument should have been laughed out of court. Inferior courts do not have the authority to overrule a decision of the Supreme Court.
And yet here we are, more than two and a half years after the State of California stood before my three-judge panel of judges and told them to do just that and I am still waiting for a decision on whether or not the Second Amendment extends even one inch outside the doors to my home, and we are still waiting even though the State of California already conceded that it does, and made that concession over five years ago!
We have the elected officials we have because they were voted into office. We have the appointed officials we have, such as judges, because of the elected officials who were voted into office picked them. The appointed officials remain in office because the elected officials won’t remove them from office and the voters won’t replace the elected officials with new people who will remove the appointed officials from office.
There is an old saying, “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” If gun-owners keep electing garbage then garbage laws and garbage appointments made by garbage politicians is what we will continue to get.
The number of gun-owners in this country is more than the number of people who vote. In places like anti-gun California, gun-owners overwhelmingly outnumber the people who vote.
Unfortunately, gun-owners either don’t vote or if they do vote then they vote for politicians hostile to the Second Amendment.
Gun-Owners are the Greatest Threat to the Second Amendment.
Gun-Owners are the Greatest Threat to the Second Amendment – Part 2
Gun-Owners are the Greatest Threat to the Second Amendment – Part 1
