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Federal Court Rules Against Right to Conceal Carry

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The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that people do not have a constitutional right to carry concealed weapons in public.

The 7-4 decision by an en banc panel of Ninth Circuit judges overruled a previous 2-1 decision by the court in 2014, finding the Second Amendment encompassed the right to conceal carry.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris appealed the 2014 ruling, which struck down a San Diego law requiring residents to show “good cause” in order to obtain a conceal carry permit.

“We hold that the Second Amendment does not preserve or protect a right of a member of the general public to carry concealed firearms in public,” wrote Judge William A. Fletcher, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, for the seven-judge majority.

Judge Consuelo M. Callahan, in a dissent wrote, “In the context of present-day California law, the Defendant counties’ limited licensing of the right to carry concealed firearms is tantamount to a total ban on the right of an ordinary citizen to carry a firearm in public for self-defense,” Callahan wrote.

“Because the majority eviscerates the Second Amendment right of individuals to keep and bear arms as defined by Heller and reaffirmed in McDonald, I respectfully dissent,” Callahan said.

The Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction includes Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

The Supreme Court has yet to take up the issue of whether the Constitution’s right to self-defense includes the right to conceal-carry in public.

The court, in the District of Columbia v. Heller case (2008) authored by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, affirmed the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms. (For more from the author of “Federal Court Rules Against Right to Conceal Carry” please click HERE)

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UCLA PROVES ONCE AGAIN: Gun-Free Zones Are Magnets for Murderers

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You say someone violated a newly defined “gun-free zone” to shoot innocents at UCLA?

Impossible! Preposterous! Outrageous!

Economist-slash-statisticians Tim Groseclose and John Lott, Jr. explain (more patiently than I could) for the mentally defective and the Left, but I repeat myself.

The fatal shooting at UCLA wasn’t supposed to happen. Late last year, California passed a ban on people being able to carry a permitted concealed handgun on college campuses. California instituted the ban despite the previous rule being in effect for over 100 years without a single example of any problem.

Both of the authors here have taught at UCLA, and we don’t take these arguments lightly… The shooting last week at the campus engineering building took place only about 400 yards from the UCLA police station. But despite police being so important in stopping crime, this case again illustrated a simple fact: Police virtually always arrive on a crime scene after the crime occurs.

…Since at least 1950, all but three public mass shootings in America have taken place where general citizens are [unconstitutionally] banned from carrying guns. In Europe, there have been no exceptions. Every mass public shooting has occurred in places where general citizens are not allowed to have guns. And Europe is no stranger to mass shootings, with a fatality rate virtually the same as that in the U.S…

…Those advocating gun-free zones argue that permit holders will accidentally shoot bystanders. Or that arriving police will shoot anyone with a gun, including the permit holders. At colleges, fears are raised that students will get drunk and misuse guns.

Out of the dozens of cases where concealed-carry holders have stopped shootings in malls, churches, schools, universities and busy downtowns, no permit holder has ever shot a bystander. Nor in these cases have the police ever accidentally shot a permit holder.

Gun-free zones are a magnet for murderers. Even the most ardent gun control advocate would never put “Gun-Free Zone” signs on their home. Let’s finally stop putting them elsewhere.

(For more from the author of “UCLA PROVES ONCE AGAIN: Gun-Free Zones Are Magnets for Murderers” please click HERE)

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Katie Couric Accused of Deceptive Editing in Second Documentary

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Katie Couric’s 2014 documentary Fed Up includes instances of deceptive editing similar to 2016’s Under the Gun, according to several people familiar with the making of the film.

Fed Up, which focuses on obesity and the food industry, was directed by Stephanie Soechtig and produced by Couric. The film includes two interviews with figures who hold viewpoints counter to the narrative of the film, and sources say both interviews include at least one misleading or deceptive edit intended to embarrass the interviewee.

Dr. David Allison, an interview subject in the film and the director of the Nutrition Obesity Research Center, says he was a victim of shoddy journalism. “What she did to me is antithetical to not only just human decency and civility but it is antithetical to the spirit of science and democratic dialogue,” he told the Washington Free Beacon.

After a brief exchange in the film between Allison and Couric over whether or not sugary beverages contribute more to obesity than other foods, Couric asks Allison about the science behind his objections. Allison then begins to explain before stumbling and asking Couric if he could pause to “get his thoughts together.”

Allison said Couric had told him it would be all right to pause and gather his thoughts at any point during the interview if he felt he needed to. (Read more from “Katie Couric Accused of Deceptive Editing in Second Documentary” HERE)

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Gun Shop Owner Confronts Obama: Why Take Guns From ‘Good Guys?’

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A gun shop owner confronted President Obama at a town hall event Wednesday evening in Indiana, asking why the president wants more gun-control laws that ultimately hurt “the good guys.”

Doug Rhude’s question came after the televised portion of the PBS town hall in Elkhart, Ind., had ended.

“Knowing that we apply common sense to other issues in our society, specifically like holding irresponsible people accountable for their actions when they drink and drive and kill somebody, and we do that without restricting control of cars and cells phones to the rest of us, the good guys,” said Rhude. “Why then do you and Hillary want to control and restrict and limit gun manufacturers, gun owners and responsible use of guns and ammunition to the rest of us, the good guys, instead of holding the bad guys accountable for their actions?”

In response to the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, Obama implemented 23 executive actions in an attempt to address gun access. He also supported gun control measures in Congress that would have reinstated the assault weapons ban passed in the 1990s, created universal background checks, and limited the ammunition clip sizes.

The legislation fell short in the Senate, with most Republicans opposing it and most Democrats supporting it.

Obama responded to Rhude’s question. “First of all, the notion that I or Hillary or Democrats or whoever you want to choose are hell-bent on taking away folks’ guns is just not true,” he said.

“And I don’t care how many times the NRA says it. I’m about to leave office. There have been more guns sold since I have been president than just about any time in U.S. history. There are enough guns for every man, woman and child in this country.

“What I have said is precisely what you suggested, which is, why don’t we treat this like every other thing that we use?” the president stated.

He went on to argue that those on the “no-fly list” should not be be allowed to purchase a gun.

Obama concluded, “So, sir, I just have to say, respectfully, that there is a way for us to have common-sense gun laws. There is a way for us to make sure that lawful, responsible gun owners like yourself are able to use them for sporting, hunting, protecting yourself, but the only way we’re going to do that is if we don’t have a situation in which anything that is proposed is viewed as some tyrannical destruction of the Second Amendment.”

Critics have pointed out that none of the changes the president seeks would have prevented any of the mass shootings in recent years, including Sandy Hook, Charleston, Chattanooga, Oregon or San Bernardino.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and others have contended that Obama’s call to empower the DOJ to yank individuals’ right to purchase guns if they have been placed on the no-fly list is unconstitutional. The Constitution’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments require that Americans’ right to “life, liberty, or property” cannot be denied without due process of law.

In a congressional hearing in December, Gowdy pressed a Department of Homeland Security official about the proposal. “My question is what process is afforded a United States citizen before that person’s constitutional right is infringed?”

The former federal prosecutor continued, “[President Obama] is fine with doing it with the Second Amendment. How about the First?”

Several have been mistakenly placed on the no-fly list, including Weekly Standard senior writer Stephen Hayes.

Fox News listed eight ways Americans can be placed on the no-fly list, which occurs without their knowledge. (For more from the author of “Gun Shop Owner Confronts Obama: Why Take Guns From ‘Good Guys?'” please click HERE)

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Pack It up, #WearOrange Gun Grabbers. You Can All Go Home After This EPIC Tweet

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Celebrities and politicians took to Twitter Thursday with hashtag activism and awkward #WearOrange selfies to ‘stop gun violence.’

One rape survivor and Second Amendment activist had the most EPIC response:

Don’t know Kimberly Corban’s story? Check it out here: Rape Survivor, 2nd Amendment Advocate Chronicles Assault Via Live-Tweet on 10-Year Anniversary

(For more from the author of “Pack It up, #WearOrange Gun Grabbers. You Can All Go Home After This EPIC Tweet” please click HERE)

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The New York Times Super Excited About Massive Gun Registration Schemes!

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Despite anti-gunnite talking points, most law abiding gun owners are not against background checks. We have no problem with making sure that the person attempting to purchase a firearm is not a bad person. But, do background checks actually stop Bad Guys from getting guns? For the most part, no. Hence, the NRA is not suggesting that we do away with the backgrounds check system, they just think it’s absurd to expand it, because it will almost never stop a bad character from getting a gun. And they are against the gun registration schemes of the anti-gunnites, because it is simply a big government control scheme. Furthermore, the government fails to enter those who are “adjudicated mentally incompetent into the National Instant Check System.” But, nothing will ever stop the gun haters from pushing their schemes

Gun Control That Actually Works

FOR more than 80 years, the United States has enforced a tough and effective gun control law that most Americans have never heard of. It’s a 1934 measure called the National Firearms Act, and it stands as a stark rebuke to the most sacred precepts of the gun lobby and provides a model we should build on.

Leaders of the National Rifle Association rarely talk about the firearms act, and that’s probably because it imposes precisely the kinds of practical — and constitutional — limits on gun ownership, such as registration and background checks, that the N.R.A. regularly insists will lead to the demise of the Second Amendment.

In speeches, publications and a steady stream of fund-raising literature, the N.R.A. rails against gun registration and gun owner databases. In 2008, the organization’s chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, claimed that photographing and fingerprinting gun owners was “the key gun control scheme” of the candidate Barack Obama, who, Mr. LaPierre predicted, would confiscate every gun in America before the end of his first term as president. The N.R.A. now says that the “real goal” of “gun control supporters” like Hillary Clinton is “ gun confiscation.”

But the longstanding National Firearms Act not only already mandated the registration of all owners of machine guns, short-barreled rifles, silencers and other weapons deemed highly dangerous at the time, it created a national database of those gun owners with their mug shots and fingerprints, and a detailed description of each weapon purchased, including its serial number. Purchasers of “N.F.A. weapons,” as they are known, must pass an F.B.I. background check, be approved by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and pay a $200 tax. Stolen weapons must be reported to the A.T.F. immediately — the sort of requirement the N.R.A. opposes for other gun thefts.

In other words, the article is about requiring registration, mug shots, and fingerprints, among others, of all guns and their owners. A woman who wants a small .9mm for protection? Take her mugshot and fingerprints, just like she’s a criminal. Yet, these same people who push to treat law abiding gun owners like felons want to turn around and make things easier on actual felons.

Mr. Folloder, a manufacturer and collector of machine guns and silencers, is no fan of the firearms act. He’d like to make machine guns more readily available, and lobbied successfully to repeal a requirement that N.F.A. owners be preapproved by a local law enforcement officer. But Mr. Folloder and the A.T.F. agree that registrants are rarely implicated in crimes. People with registered weapons who can pay $40,000 for a machine gun “bend over backwards to obey the law,” he says. “If you’re going to spend that much money and put that much effort into obtaining one of these, you’re not going to be holding up the liquor store.”

N.F.A.-classified weapons do show up at crime scenes. But nearly all of them were unregistered, so the simple act of possession was a crime. According to A.T.F. analysis, among N.F.A. weapon owners there were only 12 felony convictions between 2006 and 2014, and those crimes did not involve an N.F.A. weapon. If that conviction rate were applied to the owners of the other privately owned firearms in the United States, gun crime would virtually disappear.

The idea here is to make it so damned expensive and burdensome to own a firearm that only those who can afford them will get them, and it won’t be people who will use them for crime. In essence, only people with money will be able to get them, people who tend to live in fancy pants neighborhoods, which rarely see crime, leaving the lower and middle classes un-armed, easy prey for criminals who do not get their guns legally.

Who will be most in danger? Women. Way to support women being able to defend themselves, Liberals.

The case for licensing and registration is stronger now than ever. Yet to today’s N.R.A. such measures are an existential threat to the Second Amendment. If that is true, why hasn’t the government used the N.F.A. database to confiscate weapons? Why has it failed to move against the holders of hunting licenses and concealed carry permits who readily submit to milder forms of gun licensing and registration?

Because they are a tiny number of weapons. But, let me turn the question around: why is it that anti-gunnites constantly push for schemes that make it harder for law abiding citizens to purchase and carry firearms? Why do they constantly push for more burdensome registration schemes for law abiding citizens? Why do them want things like registration, mug shots, and fingerprints for law abiding citizens? Why are they not pushing for measures against the criminals that use them and obtain them illegally? Why is it that the cities and states with the most burdensome gun schemes, areas run by the Democratic Party, tend to have the high amount of gun play?

I have a compromise: if law abiding gun owners agree to having their fingerprints and mugshots take for gun ownership, how about doing the same for an official voter ID card, which would be necessary to place a vote? Would that be acceptable to the anti-gunnites? (For more from the author of “The New York Times Super Excited About Massive Gun Registration Schemes!” please click HERE)

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When Will the Media Be Held Responsible for Lies About Guns?

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Conservatives have become used to the bias the mainstream media engages in on a daily basis. It has been going on for nearly a generation. The mainstream media, despite having the evidence shoved in its face, will deny it over and over again. Conservatives continue to make sure they point it out, but accept it is simply a reality that has to be dealt with.

There are times, however, when the media is not only biased but outright deceptive. That point was driven home earlier this week when Katie Couric and filmmakers of a documentary she executively produced fabricated a sequence in the film. From the Free Beacon:

The makers of a new Katie Couric documentary on gun violence deceptively edited an interview between Couric and a group of gun rights activists in an apparent attempt to embarrass the activists, an audio recording of the full interview shows.

At the 21:48 mark of Under the Gun a scene of Katie Couric interviewing members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun rights organization, is shown.

Couric can be heard in the interview asking activists from the Virginia Citizens Defense League, “If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorists from purchasing a gun?”

The documentary then shows the activists sitting silently for nine awkward seconds, unable to provide an answer. It then cuts to the next scene.

The reality, it appears, was far different.

However, raw audio of the interview between Katie Couric and the activists provided to the Washington Free Beacon shows the scene was deceptively edited. Instead of silence, Couric’s question is met immediately with answers from the activists. A back and forth between a number of the league’s members and Couric over the issue of background checks proceeds for more than four minutes after the original question is asked.

Here is the video in question. Watch as the activists look almost embarrassed they don’t have an answer to her question.

There is a word to describe this kind of deception: Disgraceful.

The filmmakers’ lame excuse that they had no “intent” to deceive anybody has been met with the derision it deserves. There is no doubt they were attempting to make people who support the Second Amendment look completely idiotic, giving weight to the stereotype of gun owners as goofball hicks who just want to shoot their guns all day, every day.

Media deception is also evident in how interviewers will allow politicians to make some of the most outrageous claims without any pushback whatsoever. President Obama made two claims about guns that defy reality. First, he alleged that it’s easier to buy a gun than a vegetable. Then he said it was easier to purchase a gun than it was to buy a book.

Is there anybody in the media who truly believes it is more difficult to buy a tomato or a Harry Potter book than it is a Beretta?

Another lie the media happily parrots without consequence is that “40% of all guns are purchased without a background check.” This is an egregious lie that the mainstream media never bothers to fact check. The number is based on a self-reporting survey, not an investigation, most of which was conducted before the federal background-check system went into place.

Lately, one of the oft-repeated claims about firearms is the bogus accusation regarding the purchase of guns over the internet. President Obama routinely uses this line. In fact, it’s been tweeted by the White House account:

In reality, any purchase of a firearm made on the internet, in order for it to be legal, must be shipped to a federally licensed firearms’ dealer where the purchaser then has to undergo the necessary background check. If the individual is cleared, the transaction is complete.

The media is supposed to be the check against government officials who lie to the public — not an accomplice. When untruths about firearms are told and the media merely repeats them, the information is fed into the public and before too long the false statements are repeated until they become routine factoids.

Katie Couric and the others involved with this “documentary” really need to be held to account. The public statements they have issued thus far are not enough. There needs to be a correction made in the film, an apology issued and a complete mea culpa as to their intent. Until that happens, the backlash against them and the film should continue. (For more from the author of “When Will the Media Be Held Responsible for Lies About Guns?” please click HERE)

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Audio Shows Katie Couric Documentary Deceptively Edited Interview With Pro-Gun Activists

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The makers of a new Katie Couric documentary on gun violence deceptively edited an interview between Couric and a group of gun rights activists in an apparent attempt to embarrass the activists, an audio recording of the full interview shows.

At the 21:48 mark of Under the Gun a scene of Katie Couric interviewing members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun rights organization, is shown.

Couric can be heard in the interview asking activists from the group, “If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorists from purchasing a gun?”

The documentary then shows the activists sitting silently for nine awkward seconds, unable to provide an answer. It then cuts to the next scene. The moment can be watched here:

However, raw audio of the interview between Katie Couric and the activists provided to the Washington Free Beacon shows the scene was deceptively edited. Instead of silence, Couric’s question is met immediately with answers from the activists. A back and forth between a number of the league’s members and Couric over the issue of background checks proceeds for more than four minutes after the original question is asked.

(Read more from “Audio Shows Katie Couric Documentary Deceptively Edited Interview With Pro-Gun Activists” HERE)

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This Could Be the First State to Put Gun Owners in Federal Database

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Hawaii could become the first state in the United States to enter gun owners into an FBI database that will automatically notify police if an island resident is arrested anywhere else in the country.

Most people entered in the “Rap Back” database elsewhere in the U.S. are those in “positions of trust,” such as school teachers and bus drivers, said Stephen Fischer of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division. Hawaii could be the first state to add gun owners.

“I don’t like the idea of us being entered into a database. It basically tells us that they know where the guns are, they can go grab them” said Jerry Ilo, a firearm and hunting instructor for the state. “We get the feeling that Big Brother is watching us.” (Read more from “This Could Be the First State to Put Gun Owners in Federal Database” HERE)

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U.S. Judge Strikes Down D.C. Concealed-Carry Gun Law as Probably Unconstitutional

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A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a key provision of the District’s new gun law is probably unconstitutional, ordering D.C. police to stop requiring individuals to show “good reason” to obtain a permit to carry a firearm on the streets of the nation’s capital.

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon found that the law violates the “core right of self-defense” granted in the Second Amendment, setting aside arguments from District officials that the regulation is needed to prevent crime and protect the public.

“The enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table,” Leon wrote in a 46-page opinion, quoting a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision in 2008 in another District case that established a constitutional right to keep firearms inside one’s home . . .

Leon’s opinion reignited a running debate over the Second Amendment in the District and its courts; three different judges have come to different conclusions about the law, and gun rights advocates have made the city a main front in battles over gun-control measures. (Read more from “U.S. Judge Strikes Down D.C. Concealed-Carry Gun Law as Probably Unconstitutional” HERE)

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