Not Just the Supreme Court at Stake

By Jeff Knox

(September 15, 2016) With less than 8 weeks left until the critical November elections, both sides are pulling out all the stops to try and get their supporters to the polls. One of the big topics has been potential Supreme Court appointments, but there is much more than just the Supreme Court at stake in November.

With the vacancy on the Court due to the death of Antonin Scalia, we know that the next President will, at a minimum, have that appointment to make, which will either maintain the Court at a slight lean to the “right,” or lean it far to the “left.” Since Scalia was a conservative leader on the Court, it will be close to impossible to find anyone who could effectively fill his shoes, or possibly take the Court any further to the right. That means that regardless of who wins the election, at best, the Court will probably be a bit to the left of where it was a year ago with Scalia on the bench. If Hillary Clinton wins though, Scalia’s replacement would be something between a “moderate liberal” like Obama’s pick, Merrick Garland, and a “radical liberal” like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Her pick will depend on the make-up of the Senate after the election. Whoever she appoints, when added to the current 4 liberal justices, would mean a solid liberal majority that would completely dominate the Court. There is also a likelihood of 83-year old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg retiring if Hillary wins the presidency, meaning the liberal wing of the Court would have only one member over 60-years of age, all but guaranteeing liberal dominance for at least the next 20 to 30 years.

But the Supreme Court is only the tip of the judicial iceberg, and the next President will have a significant impact on the rest of the judiciary as well. Over the past 8 years, Obama has shifted the balance of power in most of the circuits of the Federal Courts of Appeals, along with the Federal District Courts. In all he has appointed over 300 judges to lifetime seats on federal benches, resulting in Democrat majorities in 9 of the 13 Courts of Appeal, with at least 2 of the remaining 4 poised to topple with the next appointments. While most of those appointees have been considered “moderates” by the current yardstick of the pundit class, their decisions have been anything but moderate. Another 4 years of Democrat control will seal all of the circuits in “liberal activist” mode for decades. The Supreme Court is certainly important, but SCOTUS only hears about 80 cases each year, while Federal District Courts hear something in the neighborhood of 200,000 cases each year, and Federal Appeals Courts review approximately 40,000 of those.

Though Congress writes the laws, with the executive branch crafting regulations and enforcing the laws, it is the courts that decide what the laws mean and how they can or must be enforced. They can rule a law null and void by declaring it unconstitutional, or can, in effect, overrule the Constitution by ruling that a law or regulation either doesn’t violate it, or that it only violates it in a minor way which is acceptable as a “reasonable burden” on people’s rights.

For instance, the 9^th Circuit recently ruled that federal prosecutors could not prosecute people who violate federal laws against growing, using, or selling marijuana, as long as those people only did so in accordance with state laws regarding marijuana for medical purposes. But in a separate case, the same court ruled that a person who has a state-issued card authorizing them to use marijuana for medicinal purposes can have their right to purchase a firearm denied on the basis that if they have the card, it is a reasonable assumption that they are a user of illegal drugs. Even though the court acknowledged that this is a violation of Second Amendment rights, they concluded that the government’s interest in trying to keep guns away from illegal drug users outweighs individual rights to purchase firearms.

In that particular case, the plaintiff, who holds a medical marijuana card in Nevada, claimed that she did not actually use marijuana, but got the card as a way to show support for the concept. Under that circumstance, the court said, she is not prohibited from possessing firearms and ammunition, but can be prohibited from purchasing them, because it is reasonable for a gun seller who knows that a person has a medical marijuana card to assume that the person is a user of illegal drugs.

In this decision the court applied what is known as “intermediate scrutiny” to reach their conclusion that the infringement of the plaintiff’s Second Amendment rights was acceptable. This level of scrutiny is the middle-ground between “rational basis” and “strict scrutiny,” and is based on a determination that the government has a “compelling interest” for its infringing laws, and that the laws substantially relate to satisfying that interest. The use of “intermediate scrutiny” has become the standard method for courts to ignore the protections of the Second Amendment. Even though the Supreme Court, in their McDonald decision, declared that the right to arms is a fundamental right, and court procedures dictate that the higher standard of “strict scrutiny” should be applied to cases dealing with fundamental rights, liberal-dominated courts routinely ignore this standard and opt to go with “intermediate scrutiny” so they can justify ruling in favor of laws that restrict gun rights.

The only way this trend of abuse will ever be corrected is for the Supreme Court to step in and reverse some of these bad decisions. But that will never happen if Hillary Clinton gets to name the next justice to the Supreme Court, and the abuse will continue to get worse as more liberal judges are added to District and Circuit Courts.

The November elections might not be our last chance to save the Constitution, but they are our best hope for doing so. If Donald Trump doesn’t win, Hillary Clinton does, and Hillary Clinton will unquestionably stack the courts against Second Amendment rights.

Time to Take Away the Guns & Badges

By Jeff Knox

(September 8, 2016) It is the nature of bureaucracies to grow – in size, scope, and power. Various agencies compete for authority, staff, and budgets. They schmooze politicians and try to grab headlines in efforts to achieve these goals, and they are never ever satisfied with what they have.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, or ATF as they like to be called, is an excellent example of this phenomenon. In the early 1900’s, a small research branch within the Department of Internal Revenue became known as the Bureau of Prohibition, and was tasked with chasing bootleggers. It grew, was moved from Treasury to the Justice Department, and was, for a time, a division of the FBI.

To get the funding they needed to grow, the Bureau of Prohibition got remarkably good at promoting itself in the media. It became common for agents to make pre-raid phone calls to friendly reporters so they could be on-scene as major busts occurred, and agents like Eliot Ness became national heroes, erroneously credited with taking down Al Capone.

With the end of Prohibition, the Bureau was transferred back to Treasury, where it became the Alcohol Tax Unit, but their gun-slinging, gangster fighting reputation earned them regulatory authority over production and sale of machine guns when Congress passed the National Firearms Act in 1934, and even more firearms oversight with passage of the Federal Firearms Act in 1938, regulating gun dealers and manufacturers. This gave the ATU a big boost in scope and budget, but in spite of the sexy-seeming idea of dealing with machine guns, enforcement of the NFA and FFA turned out to be primarily an accounting job. With little excitement on the gun front, the ATU turned their attention to mostly small, moonshine operations that continued to produce un-taxed liquor throughout the Appellation mountains. As “revenooers,” the agency maintained their image as intrepid crime fighters by using aggressive and brutal tactics against the hard-bitten mountain men, resulting in violent clashes and lots of publicity. This provided plenty of good press opportunities and led to exaggerations in popular books and movies – along with the creation of NASCAR.

In subsequent years, ATF’s responsibilities regarding guns increased. By the late ’70s ATF was again making headlines, but not good ones. Having discovered that catching real criminals engaged in serious gun crimes was difficult, the agency was focusing their attention on technical violations of the nation’s gun laws, but they were still using their trademark aggressive tactics, resulting in people being killed and lives being destroyed over minor paperwork errors. In 1978 and ’79, Congress investigated some of these activities, chastising ATF and pulling money from their budget. This also led to passage of the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act in 1986.

In frustration, ATF turned its attention to “right-wing hate groups” and “anti-government militias,” using possible weapons violations as an excuse to wade into what was normally FBI territory. In 1992 they tried to force a reclusive separatist into infiltrating the Aryan Nation organization by accusing him of selling a pair of shotguns which ATF said had barrels that were a quarter-inch too short. This led directly to the deaths of a 14-year old boy and his mother, along with a U.S. Marshal on Ruby Ridge in rural Idaho.

Failing to learn their lesson, less than a year later, the ATF launched a raid on the facilities of a small religious group outside of Waco, Texas. The group believed Armageddon was going to start with the federal government trying to murder them, so when the ATF launched their military-style assault, shooting chained dogs out front and storming the buildings, something like Armageddon did break out. Four ATF agents were killed along with six church members, leading to a 51-day standoff that ended with the church going up in flames and at least 76 men, women, and children dying.

Two years later, a truck full of fertilizer and racing fuel was exploded in front of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Ruby Ridge and Waco were cited by the perpetrators as major motivation for their actions.

After that, the ATF laid low for a time. They attempted to restore their reputation in 2002 with a two-year, multi-million dollar, deep-cover investigation of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, but botched the operation so badly that no serious prosecutions resulted. This led to years of court battles between ATF and the undercover agent at the center of the operation, after his cover was blown, his house was burned down, and ATF tried to confiscate the royalties from a book he wrote about the investigation. It turned out to be an expensive mess that only resulted in another expensive mess – and additional embarrassment for the ATF.

In December 2010, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in a gun battle near Naco, Arizona. It was later discovered that the gun used to kill him had been purchased at a Phoenix gun shop and allowed to be smuggled across the border – along with nearly 2000 others – by the Phoenix ATF office. The gun-walking operation known as Operation Fast and Furious was uncovered by citizen-journalist Mike Vanderbough in collaboration with writer David Codrea. WND was among the first to report on the scandal with this column published in early February, 2011.

While the scandal resulted in some shake-ups at ATF – and the first-ever contempt of Congress citation for a U.S. Attorney General, many questions have still not been answered, and no one has been held to account for the operation that facilitated Agent Terry’s death and the deaths of possibly hundreds of Mexicans.

ATF followed this up with storefront sting operations in several cities where they set up fake stores that paid criminals for stolen goods in hopes of attracting illegal guns. The results tended to be lots of low-level thieves selling lots of stolen electronics and jewelry to U.S. taxpayers. Indications are that the sting operations caused increases in petty crime, and little in the way of useful intelligence or prosecutable serious offenses. Those operations have now been harshly criticized in an Inspector General’s report from the Department of Justice.

What all of this leads to is the inescapable conclusion that this is not a reliable law enforcement agency, and it’s agents should not be allowed guns and badges. The vast majority of ATF’s responsibilities lie in monitoring paperwork and collecting taxes. Their criminal investigation resources should be turned over to the FBI, and the ATF should be reorganized as an agency of bean-counters and pencil-pushers.

Lacking Initiatives

by Jeff Knox

(September 1, 2016) As the Presidential Election has captured the national spotlight, there are many other matters to be aware of prior to November 8. Congressional elections are particularly critical this year, as a shift in the Senate is a real possibility. That would mean that Chuck Schumer would become Majority Leader. Harry Reid was a moderate compared to Schumer. If the House changes hands, we would see Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House once more. Everyone should remember how well that worked. And then there are state elections, including 5 ballot measures dealing with firearm laws in Washington, Colorado, California, Nevada, and Maine.

Washington:

In Washington State, where Mike Bloomberg and a clutch of billionaires spent over 10 million dollars to pass an initiative criminalizing private firearm transfers, the anti-rights crowd is again proving that they are never satisfied. They have come back this year to demand that authorities be given the ability to restrict legal access to firearms by people who the police or household family members feel might be a threat to themselves or others.

This is one of those dangerous measures that seems very reasonable on its surface, but is wholly unnecessary and holds great potential for abuse. The only way to prevent a person intent on doing harm from accessing the tools with which to do harm, is to put that person in a place where those tools are not available and they can be watched. You cannot bubble-wrap the world, but you can pad a cell and remove shoelaces. If a person is violent, threatening, mentally unstable, or otherwise a serious danger to themselves or others, they can be arrested, taken into protective custody, held in a mental facility for observation, or committed against their will indefinitely. If the person is not demonstrating behavior to justify those actions, they are not demonstrating behavior to justify revoking their right to arms. A person who is too dangerous to have a gun is too dangerous to be free on the streets.

Colorado:

In Colorado the initiative is calling for the criminalization of otherwise lawfully carried, concealed firearms on college campuses. Colorado does not ban legal firearm carry on campuses, and has never had a problem with someone legally carrying suddenly going berserk. At a time when more and more states are recognizing that a sign on a door does not make a space “gun-free,” but does often make a space self-defense-free, it is foolish to bypass the legislature to try and enact laws to disarm those who wish to protect themselves and might prevent or mitigate a tragedy.

California:

The California initiative is being pushed hard by Leiutenant Governor and wann’a-be governor, Gavin Newsom. Most of the provisions of the initiative were passed by the legislature last session, so it is largely redundant, but Newsome is using it as a vehicle to promote his candidacy for governor. His initiative has some stronger, more harmful language, and it would be much more difficult for the legislature to amend.

So far proponents of the initiative – led by Newsom and several multi-millionaire friends – have outspent opponents at a rate of 9 to 1. Opponents have virtually every mainstream law enforcement organization in the state lined up in opposition to the initiative though, noting that it would make criminals out of people who pose no threat, would not stop real criminals and terrorists from acquiring guns and ammunition, and would waste tens of millions of dollars that could be much better spent on resources and programs that actually do reduce crime and save lives.

A coalition of rights groups is working hard to educate voters about the real dangers and flaws in this initiative, and to rally GunVoters to help defeat it. Whether their grass roots efforts will be enough to counter the money and media blitz of the initiative proponents will all depend on educated voters turning out in November.

Nevada and Maine:

Nevada and Maine have been targeted by Bloomberg groups with similar legislation to what was pushed through Washington a couple of years ago. They call it “Universal Background Checks,” but what it is in reality is criminalization of private firearm transfers, and the laying of groundwork for a universal firearm registration system.

The Bloombergers are painting these fights as being local “gun violence prevention” activists taking on the evil NRA, when in fact it is the Bloombergers who have come in with their massive out-of-state resources to overwhelm local, pro-rights, grass roots groups. Unfortunately the NRA is playing into the Bloomer’s script by putting themselves at the front of the public debate, rather than staying in the background and letting the locals be the face of the fight. In Washington State, NRA is the only opposition group listed on the ballot. In Nevada, rather than providing financial, strategic, and logistical support to the coalition of grass roots groups that had formed to fight the initiative, NRA came in and formed a whole new group – bypassing their own state affiliate – hired a PR firm, and is “leading the charge.”
My Dad used to say that it’s amazing how much can be accomplished if you’re not worried about who gets the credit. Too bad that wisdom didn’t stick at NRA, because they are all about getting all of the credit. We’re glad they’re there, we just wish they would be smarter about it.

The critical thing in all of these states is that GunVoters show up in droves on November 8 – dragging their families, friends, and neighbors along with them. Organize, rally, educate, and VOTE! Be sure that everyone you know understands that every vote matters and that these initiatives are dangerous and being promoted with lies financed by Bloomberg’s billions. We don’t have to convince people that background checks and magazine restrictions are a bad idea, just that these proposals are the wrong way to get there.

Stop Bloomberg. Stop Newsom. Stop low-information voters from selling your rights.

The President’s Leash

By Jeff Knox

(August 24, 2016) Republicans who say they “just can’t endorse Donald Trump for President” are being foolish. Certainly there are valid reasons to be concerned about Trump’s candidacy, but those concerns should pale against the thought of a Hillary Clinton presidency. While Trump is a bit of a wild card, his non-politician, straight talk has struck a chord with a broad segment of the American people who are fed up with political correctness and wheedling double-speak.

As President, Trump would face a strong system of checks and balances, just as the framers envisioned. Skeptical Republican politicians should express their faith in this constitutional system as a reason for voters to not only elect Trump, but as a reason to vote for skeptical Republicans. They should be positioning themselves as the “loyal opposition,” ready to work with Trump to accomplish the good of his agenda, while providing a thoughtful check against rogue actions. Skeptics can run as watchdogs, taking a position of strong support for Trump as someone they can work with to accomplish what Americans want and need, while not blindly taking orders, as some Republicans might, nor rejecting Trump’s proposals out of hand, as Democrats will do. Thoughtful Republicans must position themselves as the gatekeepers who will support the good, oppose the bad, and help Donald Trump make America great again.

The alternative is a Hillary Clinton presidency with Republicans serving as little more than speed bumps in the way of her agenda. Republicans divided and in disarray would have little hope against a strong and united Democrat Party and Congress. Hillary Clinton in the White House, Congress dominated by Democrats and RINO’s, and a “liberal” majority in the Supreme Court, along with a fawning liberal media would be a freight train of ever-expanding government and centralized control, with little in the way of obstacles to check their “progress.”

Most Americans are familiar with the famous quote form Lord Acton; “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It is an accepted truism, and it was recognized as such long before Acton penned his famous quote. The founders of the United States understood this truth, and designed the new American government to be based on individual liberties, protected by laws and limits on government power, and guarded by thee separate and co-equal branches. At every level there are checks and balances designed to prevent any one person or group from wielding so much power that they can commit crimes without being held accountable for their actions. This begins with the establishment of clear limits to government power in the Constitution, and ends with guarantees of a free press, the rights to petition and assembly, and for the gravest extreme, the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

Even though the Democrat Party offended some of its most “progressive” members with their manipulation of the primary election, the party itself has united strongly behind Hillary Clinton. Every Democrat in Congress will follow the marching orders that Clinton issues, and unless Republicans stop their infighting and undermining of the Trump campaign, those Clinton Democrats are likely to be in the majority in at least one, if not both houses of Congress.

Can you imagine Hillary Clinton as President, with Chuck Schumer as the Senate Majority Leader, and Nancy Pelosi as the Speaker of the House? The media has demonstrated its unwavering support for Clinton, and her appointment to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court will remove the last vestige of checks and balances that might obstruct her agenda.

Our system is supposed to be designed so that the courts check Congress and the President, Congress checks the courts and the President, the President checks Congress and the courts, and the free press acts as a check on all of them. And this all happens within the constructs and protections of the Constitution and the laws of the land – ideally with the best interest of the nation and the people at heart.

The problem is that in spite of all of the protestations to the contrary, many people in “public service” are much more concerned with their own fortunes, personal power, and ideologies than they are with protecting individual liberty and our nations founding principles.

Much has been said about Donald Trump dividing the Republican Party, but little has been said about what effect that division would have on a Trump presidency. In reality Trump’s nomination was a result of existing divisions within the Republican Party, not a cause of them. More importantly though, as President, Trump would not only have to overcome or override objections from Democrats in Congress, he would have to overcome resistance and objections from members of his own party – not to mention challenges in the courts, where even naming a replacement for Scalia would only keep the Court relatively “moderate” at best.

Hillary Clinton on the other hand, enjoys united support among party leaders and members of Congress. She and her husband have proven themselves to be self-serving masters of political manipulation, willing to blatantly lie to promote themselves and avoid consequences for their actions. If she wins the presidency, it is also quite likely that Democrats will also win a majority in the Senate, and possibly the House. Her pick to fill the current opening on the Supreme Court would mean a solid 5-vote, “liberal” majority on the Court along with domination in Congress.

In other words, if Donald Trump is elected President, he will be on a short leash and have to fight for his agenda, while Hillary Clinton would be unfettered, with very little in the way of checks and balances. A Trump presidency would be a four-year long battle with occasional, carefully worked out victories. A Hillary presidency would be an unrestricted dictatorship, which would unquestionably be absolutely corrupt.

Hillary Will Abolish the Second Amendment

By Jeff Knox

(August 17, 2016) Donald Trump was widely criticized by media, Democrats, and even some Republicans after he made a joke regarding Second Amendment remedies to Hillary Clinton’s plan to “essentially abolish” the Second Amendment. As if “reporters,” commentators, and politicians were all reading from the same script, they consistently pointed out that Clinton had no such intentions – in spite of the fact that this is exactly what she intends to do.

Clinton has said; “The Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment, and I am going to make that case every chance I get.” Combine that statement with the 5-4 decision in Heller, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s declaration that the Court’s ruling in Heller was a “bad decision,” and her suggestion that the Court should revisit that ruling if they could get a fifth like-minded justice on the bench, and you have a formula for “essentially abolishing the Second Amendment.” But reversing Heller is not necessary to accomplish that. Heller was actually a very narrow and limited decision. While it did resolve the question of the right to arms being an individual right, rather than some sort of “collective right,” the case only dealt with the question of an individual’s right to possess a functional handgun in their home for self-defense. While the decision suggested broader application, it did not rule beyond that narrow issue. Their followup decision in McDonald was also a 5-4 decision, with Ginsburg and her three compatriots dissenting. It recognized the Second Amendment as dealing with a “fundamental right” which could not be ignored by the states.

Since those decisions, a number of cases testing the broader implications of Heller have made their way to the Court, but they have refused to hear any of them. These cases have dealt with questions of how far the right to arms extends and what sorts of restrictions are permissible. In each case, a Federal Court of Appeals had ruled in support of government limits and against individual rights – in clear conflict with the language of Heller and the Second Amendment itself.

All that is necessary for the Second Amendment to be “essentially abolished,” is for the Supreme Court to rule on one or two of these types of cases and deliver decisions that support those very bad lower court decisions. By ruling that things like “assault weapon” bans, bans on carry, and registration schemes are constitutional, and setting the level of “scrutiny” at the lowest threshold, the Supreme Court could thoroughly neuter the Second Amendment without reversing Heller, and without having to amend the Constitution – essentially abolishing the meaning, intent, and application of the Second Amendment for all practical purposes. This would take litigation off the table and put the fight back into Congress and state legislatures.

There is no doubt that this is exactly what the Court would do if Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Breyer had one more vote on their side. That’s why Donald Trump was absolutely correct in his assertion that Hillary Clinton would “essentially abolish the Second Amendment,” and that’s why it is so critical that she not be given the opportunity to accomplish that goal.

Barack Obama has nominated Judge Merick Garland to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia last February, but Republicans in the Senate say the new president should be the one to appoint Scalia’s replacement, and have refused to consider Obama’s pick. If Clinton is elected, Republicans will probably also lose seats in the Senate, and her pick is likely to be much more radical than Garland.

Meanwhile in California, a very significant Second Amendment lawsuit recently suffered a crushing reversal and is ripe for being petitioned to the Supreme Court. The Peruta case has been bouncing around the courts since 2009. It challenged San Diego County’s policy of only issuing concealed carry licenses to individuals who could prove a particular need to carry a concealed firearm. A three-judge panel of the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a strong ruling that the “needs requirement” was a violation of the Second Amendment, but the court then called for an en banc hearing of the case and reversed that ruling. Their justification was that while the Second Amendment might guarantee a right to carry a firearm for self-defense, it does not guarantee a right to carry a gun concealed, therefore the San Diego county policy is not a violation. What is so egregious about this decision is that California completely forbids the open carry of firearms, leaving licensed concealed carry as the only legal alternative, leaving defensive carry as a privilege, not a right. A suit has now been filed challenging the ban on open carry, but at best we are looking at years more litigation, and it will all be for naught if Clinton names Scalia’s replacement.

The attorneys in the Peruta case are now in a difficult position. They have only a limited window in which to petition the Supreme Court for a hearing, but an appeal now could open the door for a “liberal” dominated Court to eviscerate the Second Amendment. Only a Trump win can prevent that.

And of course, in the midst of these legal wranglings, California has adopted a half-dozen new, harsh gun control laws and has an even harsher initiative on the ballot for November. A group of activists have started a petition to force removal of the offending new laws, but it is a “Hail Marry” effort, and will be meaningless if the anti-rights initiative passes. California voters must stop the anti-rights initiative, and the rest of us must stop Hillary Clinton. Anything less will most assuredly be disastrous for gun rights and much more.

The Second Amendment Threat

By Jeff Knox

(August 10, 2016) It was interesting watching the media going nuts over Donald Trump’s recent comment about the Second Amendment. During an August 9 rally, Trump said:

“Hillary wants to abolish – essentially abolish the Second Amendment. And by the way, if she gets to pick her judges…(shrugs shoulders, shakes head) Nothing you can do folks… (then as an aside,) Although, the Second Amendment people, maybe there is… I don’t know. But I tell you what, that will be a horrible day.”

Taking their cue from Clinton staffers and radical anti-rights extremist groups like Bloomberg’s Demanding Moms, the media painted Trump’s comment as a suggestion that gun rights supporters should take up arms against the government if Hillary is elected. Shannon Watts, the PR flak who heads up Mom’s Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, sent out an outrageous email fundraiser claiming that Trump’s comment was a call to assassinate Hillary Clinton. In the email, titled “Ballots vs. Bullets,” Watts echoed the Clinton camp, declaring; “This is dangerous,” and claimed that, “the media quickly reported Americans’ widespread shock at the idea that Trump was encouraging the assassination of a U.S. president.” She even included footnotes to support this asinine assertion. The three articles in the footnote were:

1. An editorial from rabid Trump-basher, Philip Bump at the Washington Post, who parsed the statement down to suggest that it was a threat against Clinton, but said nothing about “widespread shock,”

2. An editorial report by Trump-basher Andrew Prokop at Vox, a “progressive” news service aimed at millennials, which mainly consisted of some speculation about what Trump might have meant and reprints of some comments made by other “progressive” pundits on Twitter.

3. An article by Louis Nelson at Politico suggesting that Trump was in trouble for making the remarks, and supporting that contention by quoting a variety of Clinton and Democrat functionaries who were hyperventilating about it.

None of these suggested anything resembling “widespread shock” among Americans, just typical attempts to exploit an opening from an opponent. The suggestion that Trump was actually encouraging revolt or suggesting assassination is silly. He was talking about the damage Hillary Clinton could do to the country and the Constitution if she is elected, and one of the points was that if she were to make appointments to the Supreme Court, the Second Amendment would be virtually abolished – which is absolutely true.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently stated that she, like Hillary Clinton, believes the Court’s decision in DC v. Heller was “bad” and that a future Court would have the opportunity to revisit the issue when a case challenging a gun control law comes up. Since Heller was decided 5-4 with the now deceased Antonin Scalia leading the 5, it is no stretch to assume that a “progressive” replacement to fill Scalia’s empty seat at the bench would mean that the next case to arrive in the Court concerning gun laws would be decided 5-4 in the opposite direction. By ruling that only “intermediate scrutiny” or “rational basis” need be applied to such questions, the Court could effectively nullify Heller, and thus make the Second Amendment hollow.

Trump was offering a dire warning in an effort to rally GunVoters to his cause and against Clinton – in the upcoming election. His follow-up comment that perhaps “Second Amendment people” might not be helpless, was obviously a joke, but it was a joke with historical teeth.

The Second Amendment itself is a warning against overreaching government. Those who suggest that pointing out this fact is a threat and insurrection, are ignoring the other side of that coin. The threat of the Second Amendment is not that gun owners will resort to armed violence to get our way. Rather it is that the people can and should resist unjust force with force of our own.

This is right and just, and is in full harmony with the writings and beliefs of the founders and the legal scholars who followed them. Famed Supreme Court Justice and constitutional historian, Joseph Story, in his highly respected tome Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States phrased it like this:

“The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.” (emphasis added)

That “strong moral check” is in fact a warning. The idea is that as long as the American people are armed, and thus have the ability to physically resist overreaching government, they will never have a need to physically resist the government, because the government would be foolish to try and oppress a citizenry that is well-armed.

If I take a new shooter to the range and caution them not to let the gun point at any part of their own body, and to keep their finger away from the trigger, would anyone suggest that I was threatening them?

Reminding those in power that We the People are potentially dangerous and should be handled with respect, is not a threat, it’s a courtesy.

Don’t tread on me.

Obama Going After Gunsmiths

By Jeff Knox 

(August 4, 2016) The Obama administration has announced new regulatory guidelines that will drive thousands of small gunsmiths out of business.  This reinterpretation of existing regulations lowers the bar for what constitutes “manufacturing” of firearms, and will require that any gunsmith who performs any service more involved than simply cleaning or replacing old parts with functionally identical new parts register as a firearm manufacturer and pay a $2250 annual registration fee.

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