U.S. top court rejects challenge to San Francisco gun regulation

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a challenge by gun rights activists to a San Francisco regulation that requires gun owners to keep their weapons locked up or disabled when stored at home.

By declining to hear an appeal filed by gun owners and the National Rifle Association, the court left intact a March 2014 ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld the measure.

The regulation, issued in 2007, states that anyone who keeps a handgun at home must either store it in a locked container or disable it with a trigger lock.

The challengers said the regulation violates the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to bear arms.
Two of the nine-justice court's conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, said they would have taken the case.
Thomas wrote that the Supreme Court has outlined to lower courts how to approach Second Amendment cases but the courts that oversaw the San Francisco case "have failed to protect it."
In 2012, the gun owners unsuccessfully sought an injunction that would have prevented the regulation from being enforced.

The appeals court also had upheld a regulation banning hollow-point ammunition that is designed to expand or fragment on impact, but that was not at issue in this appeal.

The Supreme Court has not taken up a major gun case since 2010. In the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case, the court held that the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual right to bear arms. Two years later in the case McDonald v. City of Chicago, the court held that the earlier ruling applied to the states.

As part of the 2008 ruling, the court struck down the District of Columbia’s trigger-lock requirement.

The case on which the court acted on Monday is Jackson v. San Francisco, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 14-704.

SHTF Home Defense

From Forward Observer Magazine...

SHTF Home Defense: Part 1 – Defending the Perimeter

https://readfomag.com/2015/02/shtf-home-defense-part-1-defending-the-perimeter/ 

SHTF Home Defense: Part 2 – Defending the Home

 

https://readfomag.com/2015/02/shtf-home-defense-part-2-defending-the-home/ 

Human silhouette target ban bill shows absurd dangers of anti-gun ‘solutions

 


A Pennsylvania “lawmaker” has once more demonstrated why mentally-challenged “progressives” (but I repeat myself) should never be trusted with power and responsibility. Representative Thaddeus Kirkland, a Democrat, naturally, plans on introducing a bill that “prohibits the use of human silhouette targets at shooting ranges across the Commonwealth...”
Naturally, he plans to include an exception for the “Only Ones.” Whether he intends to also mandate targets they use be accompanied with the words “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!” is left unstated.
“Rather than perpetuate violence by continuing to allow individuals to practice their target shooting by shooting at human silhouette targets at shooting ranges, my legislation will prohibit the use of targets that depict human silhouettes at shooting ranges across the Commonwealth,” Kirkland declares, as if using the word "shooting" four times in one sentence justifies subjecting everybody else to his heavy-handed foolishness. “Instead, silhouette targets could include, but are not limited to the following: white-tailed deer, black bear, wild turkey, and elk.”
We’ll just see what PETA has to say about that. Setting collectivist stooges on each other can be great fun to watch. And as an aside, Kirkland's presuming to "allow" implies there's an "obey me or be destroyed" mandate he's willing to have armed enforcers kill citizens over.
We'll have to see about that, too.
It’s probably lost on Kirkland that the people in the section of Delco he represents who are doing the lion’s share of the “gun crime,” including missing their targets and hitting someone else, are no doubt overwhelmingly “prohibited persons” and unlikely to be spending time at ranges. The bottom line is, this will hamper the effective self-defense training of good people, and interfering with that actually makes things more dangerous for everyone. Not that “progressives” blathering about “gun safety” and achieving Opposite Day results should surprise anyone who is, you know, rational...
Still, why stop at silhouettes? What about targets that actually show figures of people? What about popular “zombie” targets? They’re not human any more, are they? Fortunately, for Kirkland’s esteemed "peace officers," they’ll still be able to blow away “No More Hesitation” models of “white-privileged” pregnant women and kids, at least while their already-purchased supplies last. And I guess as long as we’re exploring the absurd, another ridiculous question or two is in order: Could I have a silhouette target of someone who looks human, but isn't? For some reason Star Trek’s android Data comes to mind...
Still, the stupidity isn't limited to Kirkland. Come on – it’s not like compulsive gun-grabbers are known for originality (just like the “Authorized Journalists” who make sure everyone has the latest talking points to parrot).
“Pennsylvania is not the first state to consider a ban on human-shaped targets,” Outdoor Hub reports. “Massachusetts has already banned the use of any shooting targets in licensed gun ranges “that depict human figures, human effigies, human silhouettes or any human images thereof, except by public safety personnel performing in line with their official duties.’”
Massachusetts. It’s OK for cops to train to shoot back at bad guys, but you, not so much. Well that just figures, doesn't it Gomer?
Trying to trace back legislative origins is a daunting task for anyone unfamiliar with the Acts and Resolves library system the state uses (guilty!), but the prohibiting language, applying to licensed “clubs,” appears in “An Act Relative to Gun Control in the Commonwealth” from 1998, back when “Republican” Paul Cellucci ruled the roost. Whether the language was a holdover from earlier legislation is unknown, but that it survived his and Mitt Romney’s tenures as governor without apparent objection shows it’s unfair blaming it all on Democrats.
Can you imagine being one of the privileged, exempted “law enforcers,” and being willing to escalate things through the entire continuum of force against someone who could appropriately argue (in spite of what totalitarians would claim) that his supposedly guaranteed freedom of expression was being violated?
It would be interesting to see this challenged, and see how a “compelling state interest,” generally required under strict scrutiny for First Amendment cases, would be backed up. Which qualified trainers and certified programs teach that everyone is safer when targets used in self-defense training are limited to concentric circles and to pictures of game animals under force of law? And just what qualifications do ignorant, anti-gun bigots have to impose their ignorance on others, including on people whose advanced classrooms they couldn't even safely participate in, let alone understand core concepts being taught, without first mastering prerequisite basic and intermediate skills?
It’s also interesting seeing how far some, living in places from which the demand for liberty arose, have repudiated freedom won for them by worthier men, and demanded shackles in its place. Sadly, it's just not surprising to those who have noted them ceding their -- and our -- birthright to turkeys. Literally and figuratively.

http://www.examiner.com/article/human-silhouette-target-ban-bill-shows-absurd-dangers-of-anti-gun-solutions?CID=examiner_alerts_article

ATF position on equipment use threatens private gun-making

 Here's what I think about this horsepucky...


Since when can the BATFE just make up new laws? Only congress can make new laws,the jackbooted thugs at BATFE can not make up shit as they go to further Holder and Jones’s anti-gun agenda.
Horsepucky like this is yet another in a long list of reasons that people need to set up their own “maker spaces” or Patriot spaces,or whatever you want to call them. We need to set up small shops where we can manufacture stuff to bring in income,there’s all kinds of work that machine shops would rather subcontract out as job lots because some processes are very labor intensive and time consuming-which does not help them pay off the half-million or more dollar turning center they just bought on payments. Most of these jobs only require a lathe,milling machine,drill press,grinders,bandsaw,maybe cutting torches and a wire-feed welder.
Get a few guys-or ladies- together,put all the tools together,then either put all the tools in one garage or pole barn,or have each guy do his-or her-part of the machining process in their garage/pole barn/shop,and you end up with an income source with the added benefit of having the equipment to manufacture anything you want or need to manufacture.
The concept of maker spaces/patriot spaces was brought up on WRSA and by Fabbersmith-now would be a good time to get your maker space together-before Mr. Jones and the BATFE decide no one can purchase a lather or milling machine without approval from BATFE.
The BATFE leadership and their stormtroopers do not have you best interests in mind as they try to further their anti-gun,anti-freedom agenda.

Here's the story...

http://www.examiner.com/article/atf-position-on-equipment-use-threatens-private-gun-making?CID=examiner_alerts_article

Homeless woman’s stun gun a right-to-bear-arms case

BOSTON — Jaime Caetano was beaten so seriously by her former boyfriend that she ended up in the hospital. So when a friend offered her a stun gun to protect herself, she took it.
Caetano, who is homeless, never had to use it but she now finds herself at the center of a Second Amendment case headed to the highest court in Massachusetts.
The Supreme Judicial Court is being asked to decide whether a state law that prohibits private citizens from possessing stun guns infringes on their right to keep and bear arms. In an unusual twist, the court is also being asked to examine whether the Second Amendment right to defend yourself in your own home applies in the case of a homeless person.

Police found Caetano’s stun gun in her purse during a shoplifting investigation at a supermarket in 2011. She told police she needed it to defend herself against her ex-boyfriend, against whom she had obtained multiple restraining orders.
During her trial, Caetano, 32, testified that her ex-boyfriend repeatedly came to her workplace and threatened her. One night, she showed him the stun gun and he “got scared and left me alone,” she said.
She was found guilty of violating the state law that bans private possession of stun guns, devices that deliver an electric shock when pressed against an attacker.
In her appeal, her lawyer, Benjamin Keehn, argues that a stun gun falls within the meaning of “arms” under the Second Amendment. Keehn wrote in a legal brief that the state’s ban “cannot be squared with the fundamental right to keep and bear arms.” He also argues that self-defense outside the home is part of the core right provided by the Second Amendment.
Massachusetts is one of five states that ban stun guns and Tasers for private citizens, said Eugene Volokh, a constitutional-law professor at UCLA who has written extensively about Second Amendment issues. The devices are used by law-enforcement agencies around the country.

http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2025125177_stungunxml.html

Bloomberg Moms’ political spots relied on deceptive voter manipulation

Bellicose Demanding Moms have proven as easy to dupe and exploit -- by pushing emotional buttons and letting their ignorance do the rest -- as Obamacare supporters.

Photo by John Moore/Getty Images

Employing the same cynical political strategy and contemptuous duping of "stupid" voters as Obamacare promoters, Michael Bloomberg’s Moms Demand Action relied on deception to exploit ignorance, prejudices and fears in the midterm elections, a Gun Rights Examiner analysis of social media messages on TPM Livewire demonstrates. The professionally-produced “Explain Your A” campaign featured in the story targeted three Republican candidates who had received high marks from the National Rifle Association: Carl Domino of Florida, Paul Chabot of California, and Larry Kaifesh of Illinois.
“Does your A grade from the NRA mean you support gun rights for suspected terrorists?” the attack on Domino read. Along with his picture, the Moms included a photo of Al Qaeda’s American-born propaganda tool, Adam Gadahn, whose previous affiliations in the “gun control” debate were with anti-gunners shamelessly exploiting another lie, that full-auto weapons could be bought without background checks and IDs at U.S. gun shows.
“Does your A grade from the NRA mean you support the rights of felons to buy and own guns?” the hit piece on Chabot asked. His portrait was paired with a heavily tattooed prisoner behind bars.
“Does your A grade from the NRA mean you oppose taking guns from domestic abusers?” the smear against Kaifesh insinuated. Accompanying his picture was the image of a distraught, heavily-mascaraed woman with her fists clenched against her cheeks suggestive of both Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” and MacCaulay Culkin in “Home Alone.” For some unexplained reason, the model in the staged photo shoot has what appears to be masking tape across her mouth -- either that or she’s wearing a turtleneck like Mort from “Bazooka Joe” comics. With these crazy MILMs, who the hell knows?
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers,” novelist Thomas Pynchon noted in “Gravity’s Rainbow.” In this case, the minds behind the Moms ask those questions for us in order to manipulate emotions and suppress critical examination. After all, who wants terrorist, gangbangers and wife-beaters shooting victims?
The targets of the misleading Bloomberg hit pieces are enabling nothing of the sort, of course. And nothing being demanded would stop the bad guys anyway.
If a person is a known threat, public safety demands he be apprehended. If he’s only a suspected threat, there’s this little protection we’re supposed to have called due process, where people get a trial, are proven guilty and are sentenced. What they’re going for here is a “terror watch list” for guns, as if tipping off those who are under surveillance makes for smart intelligence work. What they’re also going for is people who are not in custody being stripped of fundamental rights and liberty, not that the Bill of Rights means anything when you‘re a “progressive” with an agenda to shove down throats. Besides, there’s another, bigger deception going on: These people are using fear of an Al Qaeda boogeyman to justify deprivation of liberties they really want extended to those they paint as domestic terrorists – that is, anyone who believes the right to keep and bear arms is a legitimate deterrent to tyranny, and in a last-resort right to rebellion.
OK, but what about felons, that is, people who have already received their due process? We’ll put aside my longstanding contention that anyone who can’t be trusted with a gun can’t be trusted without a custodian, and focus on the way things are. Such criminals are already prohibited by law from having a gun – for all the good that does at stopping them. What the Bloombergians want here is to end all lawful (!!!) private sales and transfers, done under another deception as we’re seeing unfold in Washington State, so-called “universal background checks.” And yes, of course they’re aware that the National Institute of Justice produced a “Firearm Violence Prevention Strategies” report in which it concluded “Effectiveness depends on the ability to reduce straw purchasing, requiring gun registration...”
So of course what they really want is gun registration (something the gun-grabbers know felons are exempted from, because requiring it of them would violate their right against self-incrimination). If all they really intended was to ensure recipients of firearms transfers were legally eligible, “common sense gun safety advocates” would be promoting a Blind Identification System, which could verify no legal impediment to a transfer exists but record no information identifying either gun buyers or what they purchased. And, again of course, the real reason they want registration is to facilitate confiscation.


 http://www.examiner.com/article/bloomberg-moms-political-spots-relied-on-deceptive-voter-manipulation?CID=examiner_alerts_article

Mosby-Building Tribe: Kith, Kin, and Sacrifice

"Tribes, and the bands that make up those tribes are—historically and prehistorically—composed of a physical and spiritual extension of the family. In European cultures this is referred to with some derivation of the Germanic term “folk.” To use another traditional European term (I am after all, of very European descent), your folk are your “kith and kin.” While it will undoubtedly incite the angst of the white power organizations, despite my use of Euro-centric terminology, this is not about race, contrary to their blatherings otherwise.
“Kin,” as anyone raised in the Southern Highlands as I was, can tell you, means “family.” These are—obviously—those people related to you by blood. “Kith” on the other hand, is somewhat more complicated, because it is so often misused by those with a political agenda. According to the Merrian-Webster dictionary, kith refers to “familiar friends and neighbors.” It is Middle English, cognate of the Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, word cythth, meaning “known.”
Thus, your tribe composed of your “kith and kin,” has nothing to do with everyone who shares your national heritage, or even your race. It is your known friends, neighbors, and family. This is critically important, as we discuss neo-tribalism, in the sense of building and forging self-reliant communities. Most native English speakers will be familiar with the proverb, “blood is thicker than water.” The problem is, the common, contemporary understanding of that term is completely inverted. The original verbiage of the proverb was “the blood of the oath is thicker than the water of the womb.” It actually meant the EXACT OPPOSITE of what we commonly use it to reference."

Read the rest@

https://readfomag.com/2014/11/building-tribe-kith-kin-and-sacrifice/#comment-1383

‘Exigent circumstances,’ warrantless searches and lethal force

"If a police officer is illegally attempting to enter your home, should you be legally permitted to use force to prevent him from doing so? It’s a difficult question. You don’t want to make people think they have license to decide at the scene that a search is illegal, use force against cops and then end up with casualties. Even if it were unquestionably legal, it certainly wouldn’t be advised. But the alternative is to say that citizens should be legally required to submit to illegal searches and hope that the courts will rule in their favor later. Even if the subject of the illegal search were to later win in court, which is hardly a given, an illegal search can have immediate and irreversible consequences."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/11/07/exigent-circumstances-warrantless-searches-and-lethal-force/

Reading for the Holiday Weekend

http://starvinlarry.com/2014/07/12/weekend-reading/


http://starvinlarry.com/2014/07/12/some-more-weekend-reading/