ACLU Sticks Up for the NRA?!
First the California bill and now this. There are apparently a few vestiges of intellectual honesty left within the ACLU . . .
The official view of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) remains that the Second Amendment protects a “collective right rather than an individual right.” But the organization nevertheless is helping the National Rifle Association (NRA) fend off extralegal attempts by New York state officials to put it out of business.
In a brief filed in federal court today, the ACLU argues that New York’s strong-arm efforts to compel banks and insurance companies to ditch the NRA as a customer represent a glaring violation of the First Amendment.
“Although public officials are free to express their opinions and may condemn viewpoints or groups they view as inimical to public welfare, they cannot abuse their regulatory authority to retaliate against disfavored advocacy organizations and to impose burdens on those organizations’ ability to conduct lawful business,” the ACLU says.
The ACLU’s amicus brief never says the group agrees with the NRA’s positions on firearms. Instead, the group invokes a long series of First Amendment cases to argue that the regulators should not use their power in office to punish political enemies.
We’ll take what we can get.
State Supreme Court orders gun control initiative back on Washington’s November ballot
Keep trying until you get the result you want . . .
Washington voters will get to vote on a gun control initiative this November after all.
The Washington Supreme Court today reversed a lower court’s decision blocking Initiative 1639 from the November ballot, ruling that Secretary of State Kim Wyman does not have the legal authority to reject it.
Gun rights advocates, including Robin Ball of Spokane’s Sharp Shooting Indoor Range and Gun Shop, challenged the validity of the petitions, contending the type on the back that spells out the entire initiative was too small to read and the changes to state law were not clearly marked with the standard process of striking out words that would be removed and underlining words that would be added.
Wyman acknowledged those problems after I-1639 supporters submitted some 378,000 signatures, but said she had no legal authority to reject them. A check of signatures later revealed the petitions had more than enough to qualify for the November ballot.
Family of Oregon Teen Denied Gun by Walmart Wants Same Fine That Was Handed Down to Anti-Gay Wedding Cake Bakers
Walmart has reportedly offered her $150 . . .
An Oregon teenager who filed a discrimination complaint with the Bureau of Labor and Industries after Walmart refused to sell her a rifle asked for $135,000 in a settlement—the same amount an Oregon baker was fined after refusing to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple.
Hannah Brumbles, an 18-year-old Deer Island woman, filed a civil rights complaint with BOLI in April. BOLI investigators found that Walmart had violated state nondiscrimination laws and filed formal charges against the company on Aug. 21.
Her father says he wanted the same fine that was levied against a Gresham bakery that refused to sell a wedding cake to a lesbian couple.
“Discrimination is discrimination,” says Chris Brumbles, Hannah’s father.
A black woman shot and killed her abusive husband in a “stand your ground” state. Now she faces murder charges.
Lots of questions here. Jacqueline Dixon had an order of protection against her husband which she reportedly enforced sporadically . . .
A black woman in Selma, Alabama, says she shot and killed her abusive husband because he charged at her and she feared for her life.
Now she’s facing a murder charge — despite living in a state with a “stand your ground” law in place, and despite a history of domestic violence, including a 2016 order of protection filed against her husband because he punched her in the face repeatedly.
The case raises questions about Second Amendment rights, particularly when it’s women — specifically women of color — who are exercising them. Just a few months ago, another case drew national attention when a black woman defended herself with a registered (and unloaded) gun but ended up in jail for it anyway.
Why We Can’t Ignore the “Militia” Clause of the Second Amendment
Gun-rights advocates often fixate on the second half of the amendment, claiming that the phrase about a militia is just something that provides a reasoning for the second phrase. Many opponents of gun control even suggest that the only phrase here of key importance is “shall not be infringed.”
Looking at the debates surrounding the Second Amendment and military power at the end of the eighteenth century, however, we find that the authors of the Second Amendment had a more sophisticated vision of gun ownership than is often assumed.
Fearful that a large federal military could be used to destroy the freedoms of the states themselves, Anti-Federalists and other Americans fearful of centralized power in the US government designed the Second Amendment accordingly. It was designed to guarantee that the states would be free to raise and train their own militias as a defense against federal power, and as a means of keeping a defensive military force available to Americans while remaining outside the direct control of the federal government.
This grew out of what was a well-established opposition to standing armies among Americans in the late eighteenth century.
Man Arrested For Threatening To ‘Shoot’ and ‘Blow Up’ TPUSA High School Leadership Summit
The forces of tolerance continue to show us exactly who and what they really are . . .
An Illinois man was arrested last month for threatening to “shoot” and “blow up” Turning Point USA’s High School Leadership Summit at George Washington University, ABC7 reports.
28-year-old Alexander Micah Cohen tweeted a photo of a man with a baseball bat wrapped in what appears to be barbed wire, writing, “On my way to #HSLS2018 to greet the nice conservative teenagers.” Another tweet reportedly said: “I’m riding through D.C. [to] go and shoot GWU up … We gon’ come and blow GWU up.”
A parent of an attendee reportedly saw the tweet and notified the FBI, launching an investigation by the Metropolitan Police Department. The police reportedly also worked with Twitter to identify Cohen due to the threatening language of the tweet.