Democratic elected officials in Northern Virginia
worked together to engineer a campaign against a Fairfax County
firearms store in a bid to politicize gun violence and drum up support
for a Democrat in an election Tuesday, an exchange of emails shows.
JB Gates, owner of Nova Firearms,
opened a shop in McLean after protesters thwarted his expansion efforts
in Arlington County by pressuring his landlord into breaking his lease.
Delegate Kathleen Murphy, McLean Democrat, wrote an email to state Sen.
Barbara Favola, Arlington Democrat, seeking help in shutting down the
gun store. Ms. Favola was instrumental in organizing opposition to Mr.
Gates’ shop in Arlington.
“Basically, we convinced the land owner that his business tenants
would lose business,” Ms. Favola told Ms. Murphy in a reply. “In other
words, moving a gun shop to a small cluster of shops in the middle of a
neighborhood was bad for business.
“The argument has to be about
supporting small businesses,” Ms. Favola wrote in her email. “The ‘we’
versus ‘they’ argument is winnable with the NRA.”
Ms. Murphy forwarded that email Sept. 25 to other Democrats in her district, including Fairfax County Supervisor John Foust, who is up for re-election Tuesday, saying, “Lets do it.”
Bearing Drift, a gun rights blog, obtained the officials’ emails via a
Freedom of Information Act request and made them available to The
Washington Times.
Ms. Murphy and Ms. Favola did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the emails. Mr. Foust declined to comment on the messages.
On Sept. 26, when Mr. Gates held the grand opening of his McLean gun shop, protesters picketed outside. That
same day, an online petition was created to thank the protesters and
demand a boycott of the McLean Service Center, Mr. Gates’ new landlord.
Online
forums on the Fairfax Underground public message board posted the
landlord’s personal cellphone and home address and encouraged protesters
to demand he break his lease with Mr. Gates.
“We’re not leaving,
and our new landlords are backing us 100 percent,” Mr. Gates told The
Times. “Our customers who live in the area have asked us not to back
down and stay, and a lot of our customers are from McLean.
“They
protested us the day we opened, had about 115 people there. But, to be
honest, that helped us more than it hurt us,” he said. “[The protesters]
put us on the map. I have people statewide, in Maryland, Pennsylvania,
D.C., all the way down to Florida, saying they saw us on the news and
want to support us. Business is good.”
Still, Mr. Gates is
perturbed by the politicizing of the issue. His shop is less than two
blocks from his previous location but is closer to a school, which
Democrats have cited in efforts to pique voter turnout Tuesday. Mr. Foust issued campaign handbills saying his Republican opponent, Jennifer Chronis, is “wrong on guns” and defends Mr. Gates’ shop.
“There
have been 47 school shootings this year alone,” the Foust handbill
reads. “Don’t let Jennifer Chronis become Supervisor. Because it’s not
right to sell guns next to a school.”
However, Virginia county
supervisors have no jurisdiction over gun stores that are established in
accordance with national and state laws. Mr. Foust
acknowledged as much to his Democratic comrades, noting in an email
that “State law pretty much prohibits the county from regulating guns.”
He attached a verbatim copy of the law.
“They’re turning my store,
my livelihood, into a political debate,” Mr. Gates said. “You have this
guy running for supervisor, saying without a doubt he’s going to shut
us down and equating our gun shop with the reason there’s gun violence.
For one thing, he can’t shut us down because we operate within Virginia
state and federal laws.
“It’s just insensitive and unwise. He is using it for political gain,” Mr. Gates said. Mr. Foust sees things differently.
“Chronis
remained silent while I and other McLean area elected officials were
publicly condemning the gun store owner’s decision to locate next to an
elementary school,” Mr. Foust said in an email to The Times. “It appears that the pro-gun shop people were and are supporting her.”
He
cited a Nova Firearms Facebook post Oct. 6 — long after the store’s
grand opening and subsequent protest — that displayed Ms. Chronis’
campaign banner and said, “Make the Second Amendment an Issue in the
Local Election. By now you’ve learned about the efforts of NOVA Firearms, and the threats they’ve received from their local county Supervisor.” Mr. Foust emailed The Times a screen shot of the post, which has since been taken down.
Mr. Gates blamed Mr. Foust
for publicly agitating the issue of his store’s closure and helping to
organize the protest, but he said Ms. Chronis has remained largely
silent on the issue.
Ms. Chronis did make a statement at the McLean Citizens Association debate in October
“I know John [Foust]
has already addressed that there are very few things really that can be
done at the county level, other than addressing potentially some zoning
changes,” she said at the forum, according to a transcript posted on
her campaign website. “So here’s where I disagree with the way that my
opponent has handled the situation. I believe it is the role of elected
officials to do something about solving the problem, to de-escalate the
situation and work with both parties to come to resolution.
“It is
not the role of our elected leaders to publicly insult law-abiding
business owners, and in my opinion, to fan the flames of an issue and
only make worse the fears of the parents for political gain,” Ms.
Chronis said.
Mr. Gates said Mr. Foust has yet to sit down with him to discuss the issue.
A watchdog group today asked the Internal Revenue Service to
investigate the National Rifle Association for failing to disclose $33.5
million in political expenditures on its tax returns over a six-year
period.
In a letter to the IRS and a separate one to the Federal Election
Commission, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
cited a recent story in Yahoo News as evidence of what it believes are
multiple violations of campaign finance and tax laws by the country’s
premier gun-rights group.
A spokeswoman for the NRA called the charges “baseless and nothing more
than a PR stunt” coming from an organization with its own political
agenda. The spokeswoman, Jennifer Baker, acknowledged that the NRA had
incorrectly filled out its tax forms in previous years when it wrongly
checked a box stating that it had not engaged in any “direct or indirect
political activities.”
But she said this was a “clerical error” made by the NRA’s accounting
firm, adding that the mistake had no practical consequence and had since
been corrected. She also noted that the NRA had separately reported to
the FEC that it spent millions of dollars in “independent expenditure”
political ads.
“No one can contend that the NRA was trying to hide that we are engaged
in political activity,” she said. “The assertion that this represents
fraud on the NRA’s part is absurd.”
But Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of CREW, said that the
NRA’s explanation for the mistakes on its tax forms “just does not ring
true.”
“This is not a mom-and-pop shop,” Bookbinder said in an interview.
“This is a sophisticated, multimillion-dollar organization with many
layers of review. It’s hard to believe they simply missed this year
after year.”
The CREW complaint was prompted by an April 21, 2015, Yahoo News story
by independent journalist Alan Berlow disclosing that $1 contributions
he made to the NRA’s lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action,
through the organization’s website were misrouted to its political
action committee, known as the Political Victory Fund, or PVF.
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.
“Tommy Gnosis is someone named Jennifer Mascia,” Herschel Smith at The Captain’s Journal posted in March. He was describing someone who, under cover of anonymity, “visits web sites -- particularly gun rights web sites -- and spreads discontent and dejection.”
That’s consistent with the “elaborate subterfuge” technique for “infiltrating and disrupting alternative media online” used by those with an agenda. Per Canadian research, such “Internet trolls aren't just mean -- they’re sadists and psychopaths.”
That would also seem consistent with the control-all megalomaniac who
hired her, in a company-he-keeps kind of way. Mascia is one of two paid
flacks “attached prominently to the Everytown news project,” an experiment in virtual Astroturf that billionaire Michael Bloomberg will be rolling out this summer.
The guy wants to control everything else, so why not the narrative?
What drives Mascia is anybody’s guess, but chances are her father having been an underworld killer with multiple hits under his belt had an influence. That probably comes as a surprise to many gun rights advocates, unaware that Al Jazeera told its readers “America's best hope for tracking gun deaths is a mob enforcer's daughter,” and Bloomberg’s Moms Demand Action gushed on social media that her story was “Amazing.”
That Mascia’s primary female role model -- a moral weakling of a
mother who knew about, but nonetheless supported and covered up for the
monster she was married to and did nothing to stop him -- no doubt also
had an influence. It also may explain an affinity for foolish and
contemptible lackeys that provide cover for those who would take all
choices away.
At this point, though, good people would still feel a degree of
sympathy. After all, Mascia had no control over who her parents were or
what they did. Their defects and failings were not her fault.
The problem is, she’s chosen to become part of an effort to make the
rest of us defenseless against sociopath predators like her father, and
enablers who help them kill, like her mother. She knows full well no
“law” proposed by her billionaire patron would have any effect on
stopping diseased animals like John Mascia from working his sick will on
more victims.
The creepiest thing is the way Mascia rationalizes the homicidal punk using “shades of gray,”
allowing her to view him as two unrelated personalities, “my dad and
... this separate John,” and to write a book as “my way of honoring my
parents [and] still loving them.”
There is no gray in the premeditated taking of human life for gain,
nor any claim to honor. It is blackest evil. It must be stopped, and
anyone interfering with your ability to do that is an ally of that evil.
Grieving families of victims the Mascia thug murdered could have loved
their fathers, sons or brothers as well.
So while empathy for a daughter dealing with traumatic stress is
understandable, when coping defects are taken out on the rest of us,
we’re under no obligation to tolerate resulting toxic and irrational
damage. In the case of Meadow Soprano
here, her “work” for Bloomberg would best be met with an invitation to
take her damn Daddy Issues out on something else, and leave our rights
alone.
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — An Oregon bill expanding background checks to
encompass nearly all gun sales in the state made it through the
Legislature on Monday, overcoming obstacles that stymied two previous
attempts to pass similar laws.
The measure now heads to
Democratic Gov. Kate Brown, who has indicated support. Her signature
would make Oregon the eighth state to require screening before firearms
could be transferred between private, unrelated owners. No other states
have passed such legislation this year, advocates said.
Oregon’s effort is the latest
after the long-running debate over gun rights intensified following the
shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Last year, Washington
state passed a ballot initiative requiring background checks on all gun
sales and transfers, and Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to
Prevent Gun Violence, said the group has the signatures for a similar
ballot initiative in Nevada.
Supporters have tried twice
before to expand background checks in Oregon, saying it closes a
loophole that allows people to purchase firearms online without a
review. Neither attempt made it past a Senate vote, but Democrats
managed to increase their majorities in both chambers after last year’s
election, partially because key candidates in the Senate were backed by
billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s gun control group, Everytown for Gun
Safety.
The bill that passed the state
House on a 32-28 vote Monday requires background checks on most private
sales and transfers, except those between close family members such as
spouses or siblings. There are some exceptions, such as sharing a gun
while hunting or handing over a firearm for use at a shooting range.
Three Democrats joined all 25 Republicans in opposition.
Once the measure takes effect,
private sales would need to happen in front of a licensed gun dealer who
would run the check through Oregon State Police.
There is an exception for gun
sellers and buyers who live more than 40 miles from each other. In that
case, the seller could send the firearm to a dealer near the buyer, who
would then run the check and hand over the gun to the buyer if they’re
cleared.
The bill has borne intense
opposition from gun rights supporters, and every legislative Republican
has voted against it. Many cited law enforcement officials in their
districts who said they wouldn’t enforce the law or that it would be
difficult, if not impossible, to enforce.
Senate Bill 941, worse than
doing nothing, gives false hope, because it represents to people that
felons are not going to get guns. And colleagues, I think we all know
that’s not true. They are going to get them one way or another,” House
Republican Leader Mike McLane said.
Others argued the bill would
trample Second Amendment rights or would make criminals of gun owners
who choose not to get a background check every time they hand over a gun
to a friend or neighbor.
The seller of a gun would face a
misdemeanor for a first offense, punishable by up to a year in jail and
a $6,250 fine. A second offense would be a felony, with a potential
sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Under current law, anyone
purchasing a gun from a licensed dealer has to pass a background check
to ensure the buyer isn’t prohibited from owning a gun because of
convictions for felonies or violent behavior. Oregon goes further than
federal law by also requiring background checks at gun shows under an
initiative voters approved in 2000.
“This bill is not about stopping
all gun violence in Oregon, and it’s not about taking guns of the hands
of law-abiding citizens,” said Rep. Jennifer Williamson, a Portland
Democrat. “It’s about keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers,
those suffering from mental health crises, and convicted felons.”
Bloomberg and his minions just keep checking off states on their list one by one-Nevada’s next. I’ve posted many times about this-as
have a lot of others,apparently no one’s listening,because every state
on Bloomberg’s list is going down one after the other-and he’s going to
keep checking off states on his list because no one’s paying attention. Maybe when he buys enough votes in Nevada-people will wake up.
Anti-gun Oregon Democrat State Senator Chuck Riley says the Supreme Court was “right for the time” for upholding the enslavement of blacks as Constitutional. His comments came after questioning by gun rights
advocates who were attempting to understand his rational for supporting
citizen disarmament edicts, and was recorded by videographer “LaughingAtLiberals.”
The Library of Congress
“But that wasn't the end of it,” blogger Gateway Pundit noted. He embedded a second video,
where Sen. Riley and his staffers were unable to explain how the
“universal background check” edict would work at stopping violent
criminals, or do anything besides provide a registration list of gun
owners.
As for Riley's slavery
concession, we've seen such precedent-driven disconnects with freedom
before, even with checks and balances in place. Without them, things get
even worse. An activist court empowered to make up law on its own has
the potential to impose enslavement via a complicit executive branch. A
tyranny-minded legislature can write edicts that do the same, providing
they can get them enforced without judicial restraint. An unchecked
executive can use all sorts of justifications to impose despotism. And
all three branches working in concert have pretty much brought us to the
point where “shall not be infringed” has been rendered meaningless
beyond what those in power will politically tolerate -- for now.
That’s why the growing new paradigm
represented by the “I will not comply” movement represents such a
threat to those who would rule. Because ultimately, when the system
results in tyranny, an armed people retain the power to nullify bad enforcement just as informed jurors have the power to nullify bad edicts.
Of course the outcome of that is not assured (what is?), but to those
who have made the choice between defiance and surrender, it beats the
alternative.
That leads to some fair questions for the individual leaders of
self-designated “gun rights groups” that call for enforcement of
existing Intolerable Acts (gun laws), and who actually have publicly
joined with anti-gunners in disparaging civil disobedience activists as “extremists”: If, years from now, with a shifted Supreme Court majority enabled by an unchallengeable electorate (something foreseen by another Oregon Democrat),
a new ruling reverses Heller and says it’s Constitutional for the
government to start rounding up registered guns and jailing anyone who
has not obeyed, will you urge defiance and resistance, or will you ask
your members to plead with their oppressors (and send a donation)? If
the former, why wait until things become so desperate? And if the
latter, why shouldn't we know now if you ever envision a line in the
sand?
During a Monday appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Sen.
Joe Manchin (D-WV) defended his post-Sandy Hook gun control push as
something that “made sense” in 2013 and something that “makes sense
now.”
Host Joe Scarborough approached the subject
by talking about how he and Manchin came from different backgrounds —
one a Republican and the other a Democrat — yet they found common ground
in “[talking] about the need for background checks” and about how they
“disagreed with the NRA” post-Sandy Hook.
Scarborough said to Manchin: “You caught a lot of flack in your
district and in your state for [pushing expanded background checks]. Are
you going to campaign supporting background checks in [the future]?”
Manchin replied:
It made sense. For me to dodge, it would have been easy
to just keep quiet on that coming from a gun cultural state and not
saying a word and getting the wrath of anybody. But the bottom line is,
it made sense. Treat me, as a gun person that I am, treat me as a
law-abiding citizen. Don’t look at me that I’ve committed a crime just
because I own a gun and like to go shooting and hunting. On the other
hand, I’m going to make good gun sense decisions. I’m not going to sell
to strangers. And if I go to a gun show or on the internet, I want to
know who that person is and vice versa. That still makes sense. It made
sense [in 2013], it makes sense now.
There’s only one problem: Manchin’s gun control push did not make sense in 2013 nor does not make sense now.
It did not make sense in 2013 because background checks weren’t even
part of the equation in Adam Lanza’s heinous attack on Sandy Hook
Elementary — Lanza stole his guns.
That’s why Manchin admitted
the very gun control legislation he was pushing in response to the
Sandy Hook attack would not have stopped Lanza from carrying out his
slaughter in the first place. Manchin made this admission a mere three
days before his bill was officially rejected by his Senate colleagues.
Admitting that legislation it passed Monday will not stop violent crime, Cleveland politicians instead came up with excuses for imposing it on citizens anyway, Northeast Ohio Media Group reported.
All but one Council member, Zack Reed, voted in favor of the new
edicts, which in many areas duplicate state law, but supposedly will
allow the city to keep resulting fines.
Whether any such coveted revenues will outweigh further legal costs
the city will face is a question taxpayers should be asking their
representatives who insisted on reopening an issue presumably already
settled in the courts. Ohio Revised Code
claims preemption by the state in the field of non-federal firearms
regulation, and the matter was supposedly already settled when the City
of Cleveland lost against the state in 2010, with the Supreme Court of Ohio “uphold[ing] as Constitutional state law displacing local gun-control ordinances.”
In addition to the duplicate laws and creation of a “gun offender
registry,” the Cleveland diktats create several new burdens on
law-abiding gun owners, including presuming to dictate reporting
requirements for private sales (creating a de facto registry) and to
impose storage mandates. Ohio Code declares “a person, without further
license, permission, restriction, delay, or process, may own, possess,
purchase, sell, transfer, transport, store, or keep any firearm, part of
a firearm, its components, and its ammunition,” meaning the city has
nothing lawful to say about imposing constraints. The new decree also
imposes a stolen gun reporting requirement that would appear to exempt
criminals, as requiring them to attest they were in violation of the law
prohibiting them from possessing a gun in the first place would also require self-incrimination in violation of the Fifth Amendment.
Rather than directly addressing Councilman Reed’s challenge to show
how the new edicts would have prevented any of the 25 homicides the city
has experienced so far this year, supporters of the legislation offered
unsubstantiated platitudes. Safety Director Michael McGrath fell back
on the “possibility of saving a life” talking point used to restrict the
rights of everyone else while saving nothing and no one. Councilman
Michael Polensek even admitted “the bad guys are not turning in their
guns. The bad guys are not registering. The kids who want to shoot
indiscriminately on the street won't stop," and Council President Kevin
Kelley “said that the legislation was not designed to stop gun violence”
and instead offered bromides about “council's values and ... good
public policy intended to encourage responsible gun ownership.”
In other words, knowing full well what they are imposing will
accomplish no reduction in violent crime, and in fact, violate Ohio law,
they are nonetheless using the coercive force of the city to mandate
citizen compliance -- or else. But the desperate to appear effective
politicians behind the scam will all get their names in the press and
claim bragging rights that they are both “doing something” and showing
leadership.
In any legitimate field of endeavor, that would be considered not just malpractice, but outright shameless fraud.
UPDATE: From an email alert received moments after publishing this article:
A video produced by States United Against Gun Violence purports to show a fake gun shop in New York City
appealing to first-time buyers, who are then recorded on a hidden
camera as a man behind the counter turns them against making a purchase
by telling them how the firearm he hands them was used to take human
life. As per standard practice, a well-financed Astroturf operation
relying on slick professional illusion-casters is counted on to make up
for lack of grassroots support.
States United to Prevent Gun Violence-You Tube video screen shot
States United/Ceasefire USA is one of the groups behind the recent #ImUnloadng campaign, in which prohibited person Snoop Dogg
tells all his fans that have 401Ks to not invest in gun companies
because of all his “friends, family members and associates” who
evidently make a regular practice out of shooting each other to death.
The first flag is raised when viewers are told the entire video setup
is a lie. That won’t surprise anyone familiar with “progressive”
anti-gunner practices, but the thing is, once someone admits they’re
lying, how are we to trust anything they say?
Is it reasonable to believe that not one person recorded challenged
the fraud behind the counter, told him off and walked out? Why is it the
“first time customers” were all so receptive to the technique of being
lied to that they swore off something they represented themselves as
wanting for reasons as valid as protection and belief in the Second
Amendment? If the monopoly of violence proponents are that persuasive,
if all they need do is tell someone the gun they’re buying was used in a
murder, why is it they’re not the ones with a five-million member
advocacy organization? And it’s hard enough to believe even one person
would be dumb enough to swallow the claim that a gun store carries and
sells real “crime guns,” let alone to accept that every single one of
the marks fell for it.
In the last few months, the
citizens of Washington State have come under fire from both state and
federal officials. They have been subject to everything from
surveillance to being viewed through the scope of a sniper’s
rifle—manned by a fellow citizen. The people have appealed to the
governor to no avail. According to Governor Inslee’s office, he has no
jurisdiction over the federal authorities who seek to subvert liberty
and control the populace. He is incorrect, but the People accept that
he is complicit in the criminal enslavement of the citizens.
The governor was served a list of grievances by We the People on 7
February 2015. Each of those grievances constitutes a crime against the
People, and against the founding documents of the state and our
nation. He ignored those grievances and did nothing. On 25 February
2015 a citizen of Washington State was illegally arrested, detained, and
interrogated as a domestic terrorist by federal officials who ignored
his rights secured by the rule of law. The governor refused to stand
and serve the citizens of his state as he swore to do, instead
submitting himself and the people of this state as subjects to an
overreaching federal government. On 9 March 2015, he was again called
to task and the People demanded that he uphold his oath to protect and
maintain the rights of the People as secured by the Constitution.
Again, the governor chose to ignore this letter and in doing so, ignored
the will of the People, and their unalienable rights.
It is for this reason that the people of Washington State now appeal
to the sheriffs, as the senior law enforcement official in each county.
When the system fails, it becomes their utmost duty to stand and uphold
the law. It is obvious that the system of Constitutional law has
failed; at every turn we see the blatant and gross violation of the most
basic of the People’s rights. The government is bound by the
Constitution to be accountable to the People; they derive their powers
from the consent of the governed. We, the people of Washington State,
reiterate our withdrawal of this consent in light of the government’s
refusal to honor the limits to their power and the unlimited rights of
the People.
Washington State law lays out the general duties of the county sheriff:
The sheriff is the chief executive officer and
conservator of the peace of the county. In the execution of his office,
he and his deputies:
(1) Shall arrest and commit to prison all
persons who break the peace, or attempt to break it, and all persons
guilty of public offenses;
Federal officials broke the peace by illegally and publicly arresting and detaining a citizen who had not committed a crime.
(2) Shall defend the county against those who, by riot or otherwise, endanger the public peace or safety;
Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson deprived the
citizens of their ability to defend themselves by imposing her personal
will through an illegal rule that violated their unalienable right. In
doing so, she endangered the public and safety of the people.
(3) Shall execute the process and orders of the
courts of justice or judicial officers, when delivered for that purpose,
according to law;
The sheriffs are duty-bound to stand and deliver
the judge, the Homeland Security agent, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation agent, and the United States Marshal involved in this
illegal arrest to justice.
(4) Shall execute all warrants delivered for
that purpose by other public officers, according to the provisions of
particular statutes;
Since the Judiciary of the State of Washington
is complicit in these crimes and refuses to prosecute or hold
accountable the persons responsible, We the People demand that the
sheriffs put forth warrants for their arrest.
(5) Shall attend the sessions of the courts of record held within the county, and obey their lawful orders or directions;
Because the orders and directions of the courts
are unlawful and criminal in nature, it is the duty of the sheriffs to
act on behalf of the Constitution and the citizens of Washington State.
(6) Shall keep and
preserve the peace in their respective counties, and quiet and suppress
all affrays, riots, unlawful assemblies and insurrections, for which
purpose, and for the service of process in civil or criminal cases, and
in apprehending or securing any person for felony or breach of the
peace, they may call to their aid such persons, or power of their county
as they may deem necessary.
United States Code 18 § 242 speaks very plainly
about the crime of depriving the people of their rights. The marshal,
agents, and the judge used the color of law to deprive the People; this
is punishable by a year in prison. They also, together with the snipers
on the rooftops in Spokane on 6 March, used deadly force to attempt to
impose their will on the People and deprive them of their rights; this
is punishable by ten years in prison. By illegally arresting and
detaining citizens they have engaged in kidnapping; this is a crime
punishable by life imprisonment or even the death penalty.
It is the duty of the sheriffs to apprehend and
secure these people for the felony crime of depriving the People of
their rights under the Constitution. As the state law makes clear, the
sheriff can call upon the people and the power of their respective
counties for assistance in performing their duties. If called upon, We
the People will support them…in any way necessary.
We the People will no longer allow our
government to treat us as subjects. We are free men, we will act as
such, and we will be treated as such. We will hold accountable those
criminals and tyrants in our government who seek to subjugate and
control us. We demand that you, the sheriffs of Washington State, stand
and perform your duties in accordance with the state law, the state
constitution, and the Constitution of the United States of America. If
you do not, it will show that you, too, are complicit in the destruction
of liberty, and therefore are its enemy.
We remain non-violent, we remain principled and peaceful, but make no mistake:
These abuses of our liberties will end now.
We will not comply.
Signed,
Liberty for All:
Kit Lange
Anthony Bosworth
Maria Bosworth
and the Patriots of Washington
New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez is the subject of a Department of Justice investigation expected to result in criminal corruption charges, CNN reported Friday. Attorney General Eric Holder
has reportedly signed off on the prosecutor’s request to proceed with
the case against the career politician for allegations “he used his
Senate office to push the business interests of a Democratic donor and
friend in exchange for gifts.”
Menendez is the latest in a long line of Democrats pushing for more
edicts to disarm law-abiding Americans while appearing to be engaging in
criminal activities. Rated “F” by the National Rifle Association and
“F-“ by Gun Owners of America, a review of his “On the Issues” profile for “gun control” shows why:
Despite coming from one of the most heavily-controlled states in
terms of gun laws, Menendez supports even further restrictions, and on a
national level. As such, he supported a ban on magazines holding more
than 10 rounds, and sponsored a bill to ban so-called “large capacity feeding devices.”
A Fraternal Order of Police official said 5.56mm armor-piercing ammo is not typically used against officers
WASHINGTON, March 4 (UPI) -- The leader of
a national police organization this week said a proposal to ban
armor-piercing 5.56mm pistol rounds would be less effective than the
government thinks.
Last week, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
said it plans to outlaw steel-tipped 5.56mm ammunition because it now qualifies as an armor-piercing round.
Sale of the ammo has been legal since 1986 because it's a round that
could not, until recently, be fired from a handgun -- the stipulation
necessary for prohibition of any bullet. Traditionally, the 5.56mm
bullets have been fired only in AR-15 rifles.
In a 17-page report,
the bureau cited new handguns that are able to fire the round,
increasing the likelihood, the ATF believes, that the bullets will be
used against law enforcement officers.
However, James Pasco, executive director of the Washington office
of the Fraternal Order of Police, believes that banning the ammunition
wouldn't amount to much additional protection.
"This specific round has historically not posed a law enforcement problem," he said in a report by the Washington Examiner. "While this round will penetrate soft body armor, it has not historically posed a threat to law enforcement."
With around 325,000 members, the Fraternal Order of Police is the largest organization of sworn officers in the world.
Pasco's statements give fuel to critics who allege the bullet ban is merely a backdoor attempt by the Obama administration to render AR-15 assault rifles useless.
Supporters of the proposed ban, however, feel that newer handguns available to shoot 5.56mm ammo increase the threat to police.
"We are looking at additional ways to protect our brave men and
women in law enforcement and believe that this process is valuable for
that reason alone," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said. "If
there are armor-piercing bullets available that can fit into easily
concealed weapons, that it puts our law enforcement at considerably more
risk."
Still, opponents to the ban believe it's unlikely criminals will
purchase the expensive handguns -- and even if they did, the firearms
are much too large to be considered a concealed weapon.
The ATF is asking for public comment regarding the ban, to be
concluded March 16. But the proposal has already encountered stiff
resistance. In the House of Representatives, more than half of lawmakers
have signed a letter challenging the ban, and the National Rifle Association is urging the public to ask Congress to prevent it. A similar measure is moving through the Senate.
Since news of the proposed ban earlier this month, sporting goods
stores have been selling large quantities of the affected ammunition --
now at higher cost.
238 Members Sign Letter Opposing Proposed Ban on AR-15 Ammunition
Fairfax, Va. – In an overwhelming show of bipartisan
opposition, 238 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives have signed
a letter to the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives, opposing the Obama Administration’s attempt to ban
commonly used ammunition for the most popular rifle in America, the
AR-15. The National Rifle Association worked closely with House
Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) to gather signatures
on this critical effort.
“This letter sends a clear message to President Obama
that Congress opposes his attempt to use his pen and phone to thwart the
will of the American people,” said Chris W. Cox, executive director of
the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action. “Obama said he would enact
his gun control agenda ‘with or without Congress.’ He is now trying to
make good on that promise. The NRA would like to thank Chairman
Goodlatte and all who signed the letter for opposing this
unconstitutional attack on our Second Amendment freedom.”
The NRA is working with Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on a similar letter of opposition from the U.S. Senate.
New gun legislation would push back against a
controversial policy from the Obama administration effectively banning
armor-piercing ammunition.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) proposed
last week to prohibit gun companies from manufacturing and selling
5.56mm projectiles for M855 cartridges that provide ammunition for AR-15
rifles.
But the move is causing an uproar among Republicans, who suggest it would trample on hunters’ Second Amendment rights.
“The
Obama administration’s proposal would unilaterally strip law-abiding
hunters and sportsmen of their Second Amendment rights,” Rooney said in a
statement. “Congress has made its intentions clear that this ammunition
is for sporting purposes and should not be restricted. We cannot and we
will not stand by while the Obama administration tramples on the
Constitution, the rule of law, and the Second Amendment rights of
hunters.”
AR-15 rifles are popular with some hunters,
but they provide a big cause for concern for law enforcement officials
because they can fire bullets to penetrate bullet-proof vests.
To
date, the ammunition for AR-15s has been exempt from the Law
Enforcement Officers Act, but the ATF’s draft framework would change
that.
“No final determinations have been made and we
won’t make any determinations until we’ve reviewed the comments
submitted by industry, law enforcement and the public at large,” ATF
spokesman Corey Ray told The Hill last week.
But
Republicans are looking to pre-empt the ammunition restrictions. The
Protecting Second Amendment Rights Act would "would prohibit the ATF or
any other federal agency from issuing or enforcing any new restriction
or prohibition on the manufacture, importation or sale of ammunition in
the United States."
News that can help shape the political landscape of the gun rights advocacy community was broken last night on the nationally-syndicated Armed American Radio program, when Larry Pratt, Executive Director of Gun Owners of America, announced GOA will begin scoring politicians on their support or opposition to amnesty for illegal aliens. GOA has been alone
among national gun rights groups warning that a “pathway to
citizenship” will provide for millions of new anti-gun voters with the
electoral clout to undo all hard-won legislative and judicial gains gun
owners have enjoyed in recent years. That the administration is working
toward that and other agenda goals is corroborated by what Homeland
Security Jeh Johnson told the United Conference of Mayors, when he
maintained that “the approximately 11 million people who are in the
country illegally have ‘earned the right to be citizens.’”
The danger of allowing that to happen was emphasized recently by
Oregon’s Rep. Kurt Schrader, who declared immigration “will decide who is in charge of this country for the next 20 or 30 years.” Plus, Obama's counting on that.
The discussion took place in the third hour of the program,
beginning at the 45-minute mark. I was one of the panelists, along with
Pratt, host Mark Walters, Neil W, McCabe of Human Events, and blogger,
trainer and gun authority George “Mad Ogre” Hill. Referencing back to a
guest from the second hour, Georgia Congressman Doug Collins, I
regretted not being able to establish his position on joining with so-called “Republican rebels” and separating Barack Obama’s amnesty from Department of Homeland Security funding.
“I know that there are pro-gun politicians that get A-ratings and
things like that, but should not amnesty also be a part of the way that
these people are scored?” I asked Pratt.
“Well the answer you’re going to get from us at GOA is absolutely, it
should be a part of scoring, and it’s something that we plan on
including in our rating of Congress this next year, because as we've
already discussed, if we don’t block this amnesty move now, before we
get five, eight-million previously illegal aliens now voting 85 percent
anti-gun Democrats, that’s the ballgame,” Pratt replied. “That’s it.
“We lose our Second Amendment, it doesn't matter whether it’s still
in the Constitution in writing or not,” he continued. “The National
Archives can’t protect it from this kind of assault.”
At that point, legislative and judicial avenues will be closed, and
all gun owners will need to make a decision that carries terrible
personal consequences.
GOA’s decision will offer further contrast with the way political
grades are assigned by the larger National Rifle Association. With NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre telling the Conservative Political Action Conference
that “[T]o defend firearm freedom, we need more than just firearm
freedom ... One right depends on another,” with a recent NRA advertising
campaign promoting the message that all rights are connected,
and with NRA’s bylaws mandating the organization to “protect and defend
the Constitution of the United States [and] promote public safety, law
and order, and the national defense,” the continued “single issue”
excuse for avoiding amnesty is neither consistent nor credible.
(Bloomberg) — California’s ban on new semiautomatic handguns that
don’t stamp identifying information on the cartridge was upheld by a
U.S. judge in a major loss for gun-rights groups.
The law barring sales of handguns without the microstamping
technology doesn’t violate the Constitution’s Second Amendment because
gun owners don’t have a right to buy specific types of firearms, U.S.
District Judge Kimberly Mueller in Sacramento said in her ruling.
“Plaintiffs insist they have the right to determine the precise way
in which they would exercise their Second Amendment rights,” Mueller
said. The insistence upon particular handguns falls “outside the scope
of the right to bear arms,” she said.
California in 2013 became the first state to bar retailers from
selling new models of semiautomatic handguns not equipped to imprint the
weapon’s make, model and serial number on the cartridge when a bullet
is fired. The statute was supported by law enforcement because it can
help deter or solve crime.
Thursday’s ruling that the requirement doesn’t violate the Second
Amendment will prompt other states to impose similar requirements, in
particular because there’s wide popular support for ballistic
fingerprinting, said Allison Anderman, an attorney with the Law Center
to Prevent Gun Violence in San Francisco.
“Microstamping is a really important tool for law enforcement,” Anderman said in a phone interview.
De Facto Ban
Calguns Foundation Inc. and the Second Amendment Foundation argued
that the requirement amounts to a de facto ban on sales of new
semiautomatics because several manufacturers said they wouldn’t produce
guns that included microstamp technology even if it meant their firearms
couldn’t be sold in California, the most populous U.S. state.
About 1.5 million handguns were legally sold in California since
opponents sued in 2009 to block the microstamping requirement, which
according to Mueller’s ruling shows that the law doesn’t effectively ban
the sale of firearms in the state.
The District of Columbia, the only other place in the U.S. to mandate
microstamping, is set to begin enforcing that requirement next year,
Anderman said.
The two gun rights groups said in a court filing Thursday that they
will appeal the ruling by Mueller, who was nominated by Democratic
President Barack Obama.
‘Strong Case’
“The court’s reasoning, that California’s prohibition of most
handguns doesn’t even implicate the Second Amendment, is interesting,”
Alan Gura, a lawyer for the groups, said Friday in an e-mail. “But we’re
confident that we have a strong case on appeal.”
The case may go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 2008
upheld individuals’ right to own handguns, calling them the
“quintessential self-defense weapon.”
The 2008 high court ruling left room for gun-control backers to
impose new rules to promote safety. California, New York and Maryland,
among other states, enacted restrictions that U.S. gun manufacturers and
retailers contend are intended to regulate their $14 billion industry
out of business.
The California law was signed in 2007 by then-Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger, a Republican, and was put on hold until 2013 when state
Attorney General Kamala Harris, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate
next year, determined the technology was available to all gun makers and
wasn’t encumbered by patent claims.
“The court’s ruling means that more gun crimes will be solved, more
lives will be saved, and California communities will be safer,” Mike
Feuer, the Los Angeles city attorney and the author of the microstamping
bill, said in a statement.
The case is Pena v. Cid, 09-cv-01185, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California (Sacramento)
BRIDGETON
A felony gun charge against a Port Elizabeth resident arrested by
police last year for possessing an unloaded antique weapon has been
dismissed by the Cumberland County Prosecutor's Office, according to a
news release issued Wednesday.
Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae announced in the release that the state will exercise "prosecutorial discretion to dismiss" the second-degree unlawful possession of a weapon charge against Gordon N. Van Gilder.
"Accordingly,
the public should be forewarned about the prescriptions against
possessing a firearm — even an antique — in a vehicle," she continued. Webb-McRae declined to comment further on the dismissal.
Van Gilder's Eatontown attorney Evan Nappen said he was delighted to hear charges were dropped.
The attorney learned of the dismissal while in an interview with The Daily Journal.
"That is very good," he said while reading the news release over the phone. "I commend the prosecutor for exercising her dis
cretion accordingly."
If convicted of the second-degree charge, Van Gilder could have faced a maximum of 10 years behind bars
The
charge also carried a minimum 3.5-year sentence that could have
seriously jeopardized Van Gilder's public school pension, his right to
vote and his reputation in the community, Nappen said.
"I'm very appreciative that they exercised their discretion here and did the right thing," Nappen said. Nappen
said his client will follow up on trying to retrieve the centuries-old
"Queen Anne" flintlock antique pistol now in custody of the county.
"It's a valuable collector's item," he said.
The
dismissal comes after a two-week long public outcry against state and
law enforcement officials, with many charging that officials overstepped
in their pursuit of charges against the elderly man over an unloaded
antique weapon.
Van Gilder, a 72-year-old former educator at Millville
Senior High School, was arrested at his Port Elizabeth home by members
of the Cumberland County Sheriff's Department on Nov. 21, 2014.
The arrest came a day after he and 22-year-old Adam Puttergill were stopped in their Toyota Tacoma by Sheriff's Department officers in a Millville neighborhood.
The two said they were in the process of returning to their Port Elizabeth home after visiting a Vineland pawn shop, at which Van Gilder purchased the 300-year-old flintlock pistol. Puttergill was acting as the driver for Van Gilder, who suffers severe arthritis, he said.
He also lives with Van Gilder, who informally adopted him about a decade ago.
Cumberland County Sheriff Robert Austino later said his officers pulled the two over because they were in a suspicious neighborhood known for illegal drug activity.
While talking to the two, officers at the scene discovered empty heroin bags and a broken scale used for measuring drugs, Austino said.
The
discovery prompted a full search of the vehicle and officers also found
Van Gilder's 300-year-old flintlock pistol wrapped in cloth inside the
glove compartment. Puttergill was taken into custody on an outstanding Vineland Municipal Court contempt warrant, he told The Daily Journal last week.
He
also was charged with possessing two prescription pills that were not
in their pharmacy container. The drug charge has since been handled by Puttergill's attorney in Millville Municipal Court, resulting in a conditional discharge of the charge.
While
Van Gilder was let go at the scene, Sheriff's Officers returned to his
home the next day and arrested and booked the 72-year-old on the
unlawful weapons charge for his unregistered gun.
The incident
quickly went on to attract state and national attention following
revelation of the arrest by The Daily Journal last week. Nappen
and other public supporters of Van Gilder accused the Sheriff's
Department of a "smear campaign" for charging the elderly man with what
they view as an egregious and overstepping charge.
The incident
even spurred at least two New Jersey lawmakers to introduce bills that
would provide state judges with sentencing discretion in such future
cases involving those charged with unlawful weapons possession.
A bill sponsored by state Sen. Jeff Van Drew and Assemblyman Bob Andrzejczak, whose district includes Millville,
would further revise the Graves Act, allowing courts to permit a person
convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm admittance to pretrial
intervention or supervisory treatment if they had no known association
with a criminal street gang and no criminal convictions.
Setting
the state up for massive gun owner civil disobedience along the lines
of what has occurred in California and is currently happening in New
York and Connecticut, Democrat State Senator Jacqueline Y. Collins filed
the Firearms Registration Act
with the Secretary of State on Friday. The act was then presented for
first reading and referred to the Democrat-dominated Assignments
Committee.
Collins’ measure “[p]rovides that every person in the State must
register each firearm he or she owns or possesses in accordance with the
Act,” the official synopsis declares. It also “[p]rovides that a
person shall not purchase or possess ammunition within this State
without having first obtained a registration certificate identifying a
firearm that is suitable for use with that ammunition, or a receipt
demonstrating that the person has applied to register a suitable firearm
under the Act and that the application is pending.”
In addition, it requires “the Department of State Police must
complete a background check of any person who applies for: (1) a
registration certificate for a firearm that was lawfully owned or
possessed on the effective date of the Act, was brought into the State
by a new resident, or was acquired by operation of law upon the death of
the former owner; or (2) a renewal of a registration certificate
unless, within 12 months of the date the renewal application is
submitted, the applicant passed a background check conducted by the
Department in connection with the applicant's acquisition of another
firearm.”
Ominously, it also “Provides that it is a Class 2 felony to sell or
transfer ownership of a firearm to another person without complying with
the registration requirement of the Firearms Registration Act.” That
can get someone three to seven years, a punishment equivalent to that
people who intentionally transmit HIV are sentenced to.
This new batch of proposed infringements is in addition to requirements already imposed by Illinois State Law requiring gun owners to have a Firearms Owner Identification Card to purchase firearms and ammunition. In fact, it’s an in-your-face to gun owners from an avowed gun hater. Collins
is a former CBS-TV in Chicago “news” editor with credentials from
Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and Harvard
University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, among other
credentials from “progressive” academia. Fittingly, she was a “2001
Legislative Fellow for U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.” She was also endorsed by the Brady campaign
at the same time it threw its weight behind (former?) “gun communist”
Bobby Rush and future felons (and prohibited persons) Jesse Jackson, Jr.
and Rod Blagojevich.
When she joined rabidly anti-gun “priest” Mike “Snuffy” Pfleger for a media blood dance,
they were strangely silent on the fact that the ones doing the killings
in Chicago are exempt from gun registration schemes they would impose
on the law-abiding. That’s because in Haynes v. U.S.,
the Supreme Court ruled that requiring felons to register guns violated
Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination.
Collins knows this, of course, as do all gun-grabbers who would
require registration, which is a prerequisite for confiscation. That
increasing numbers of gun owners know that and have defiantly told those
enacting such Intolerable Acts to get bent is not lost on impotent and
enraged state monopoly of violence cultists, who vent their fury by demanding others employ that violence to bend the “scofflaws” to their will.
Whether or not Collins’ latest deliberate act of spitting on freedom
stands a chance of being enacted remains to be seen. Regardless, a
critical mass of gun owners will not let that alter their resolve to
hold fast to their rights and to not back up another inch. There’s a new paradigm, with a growing number of determined citizens recognizing what colleague Mike Vanderboegh has identified as two countries sharing the same territory, and where his fundamental question “Do the people serve the government or does the government serve the people?” has yet to be ultimately tested in our time.
Whether or not it is tested depends on how far domestic enemies with
"appetites for the liberty and property" of others are willing to press
those they would compel obedience from. If they're not willing to
enforce against all, it will show a self-defeating weakness in the
Chicago machine, and encourage other gun owners to join in and spread
mass defiance even further. And if they are, we'll all get an
unequivocal answer to that question.
The coalition that sponsored last fall’s successful gun-purchase
background-check initiative wants to intervene in a lawsuit trying to
overturn the state law.
Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Monday
applauded an attempt by a coalition of gun-regulation groups to
intervene against a lawsuit seeking to roll back the new law expanding
background checks on gun buyers.
A lawsuit filed in December by gun-rights supporters alleges Initiative 594 violates the Second Amendment and can inadvertently criminalize people because its language is too vague.
Ferguson, along with the state Attorney General’s Office and Washington
State Patrol Chief John Batiste, are currently named as defendants.
On
Monday, the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility, I-594 citizen
sponsor Cheryl Stumbo and the local arm of former New York City Mayor
Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety filed to join the
defendants in the lawsuit.
“It’s my role to defend initiatives lawfully passed by the people of
Washington state, and my office will do so vigorously,” Ferguson wrote
in an email. “We welcome the participation of the backers of the
initiative in the process.”
The move, which a judge must first approve, would allow the groups to
file motions and offer a full defense of a law they campaigned hard to
enact.
Approved by 59 percent of voters last November,
Initiative 594 expanded background checks on gun buyers beyond the
federal standard to private sales like some found online or at gun
shows.
But the lawsuit lays out concerns by firearms-training groups,
private security guards and inspectors, and others. Among the plaintiffs
are the Northwest School of Safety; Puget Sound Security Inc.; Firearms
Academy of Seattle; the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation; and
Alan Gottlieb, the foundation’s executive vice president.
In quick succession Monday morning, Gottlieb ticked off two reasons
for gun-rights supporters to take heart with the new developments.
“I think the other side has now realized that our challenge has some
very good merit to it,” he said. “The second thing is I think it shows a
vote of ‘no confidence’ in the Attorney General’s Office in being able
to defend.”
It is common for groups that have pushed initiatives to later become
involved in the related lawsuits, according to Hugh Spitzer, acting
professor of law at the University of Washington’s School of Law.
In this case, “it enables the proponents to supplement the arguments that the attorney general makes,” said Spitzer.
The
development comes as gun-rights supporters have ricocheted between
rallies and hearings at the Legislature, trying to find support to
change or repeal I-594, or send it back to voters in a referendum.
But those bills appear to have died in the Democrat-controlled House.
And a January rally at the Capitol against I-594 succeeded only in the banning of guns in the Legislature’s viewing galleries after armed demonstrators entered those areas.
Stumbo, I-594’s citizen sponsor and a survivor of the 2006 Jewish
Federation shootings in Seattle, described the lawsuit as a frivolous
action brought by the gun lobby.
“The
same individuals who failed to weaken our state’s gun laws in last
year’s election are now using the court system to do exactly that,”
Stumbo said in prepared remarks.
TALLAHASSEE — In what judges described as a first-of-its-kind case, an
appeals court Wednesday upheld a Florida law that prevents people from
openly carrying firearms, finding that the restriction does not violate
the constitutional rights to bear arms.
The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal
stemmed from the 2012 arrest in Fort Pierce of Dale Norman, who was
carrying a gun in a holster. A jury found Norman guilty of a
second-degree misdemeanor charge, leading to the appeal on
constitutional grounds.
The
appeals court said the state law does not "destroy the core right of
self-defense enshrined in the Second Amendment" and in part of the
Florida Constitution that guarantees the right to keep and bear arms.
Also it pointed to the ability of people to get concealed-weapons
permits.
The
ruling described the case as presenting a question of "first
impression" about whether the Second Amendment forbids the state from
banning the open carrying of firearms while allowing people to carry
concealed weapons under a permitting system. In legal terms, a question
of "first impression" indicates a first-of-its-kind decision.
Norman's attorneys last year filed a lengthy brief arguing that the
ban on openly carrying weapons violated the federal and state
constitutions and was overly broad.
"The state cannot ban open
carry,'' said the brief, which also traced the history of gun laws in
Florida. "It is the core of the right to bear arms. When every court to
consider the issue has ruled that concealed carry is a privilege, and if
you accept that there is a right to bear arms as the plain language
states, there is only one manner in which firearms can be borne in the
exercise of the right — openly."
The brief said Norman, then 24,
was arrested Feb. 19, 2012, after someone spotted him with a gun on his
hip and called police. Norman had been issued a concealed-weapons permit
days before.
In its ruling, the appeals court emphasized the role
of the Florida Constitution, which it said, "unlike the U.S.
Constitution, explicitly states that the manner in which guns are borne
can be regulated."
"In fact, no controlling authority has been presented to this court
for the proposition that the Legislature may not impose some
restrictions and conditions on either the method or manner that lawful
arms may be carried outside the home,'' the ruling said. "In fact, the
plain wording of the Florida Constitution provides explicit support for
the state's position that it may regulate the open carry of firearms."
The court also noted that Norman could legally carry the gun in a concealed fashion.
"(The)
defendant was not prohibited from obtaining a concealed weapons permit
--- indeed, he possessed one at the time of his arrest,'' the ruling
said. "Likewise, (the) defendant did not argue that he was somehow
precluded from the ability to lawfully carry his weapon in a concealed
fashion. He was able to lawfully possess his firearm, albeit while
concealed, for self-defense purposes as recognized by the Second
Amendment, the Florida Constitution and Florida statutes. The course of
conduct he chose, that of openly carrying his firearm for protection,
was not the only option available to him to exercise his rights."
