Daily Digest: Mass Retaliation, Frisking Gun Owners, and Ballistic Coloring

1. That Fourth Circuit decision is seriously disturbing, on a number of levels.

   Re Weisser … remind me again why I should care what he thinks? Actually it’s all of a piece of the media painting literally anything Trump does in a bad light. (Example: “Mr Trump signed more executive orders in his first few days in office than Mr Obama did his first week!” in a breathless, quasi-horrified voice, heard on All Things Considered earlier today. That just suggests to me Trump thinks he has more to try to undo than Obama did … and based on Obama’s last few weeks in office, it’s an easy argument to make.)

   • There you have it. Three cheers to the 4th Circuit.

     Gun owners unite ! Keep watch that SWAT teams storming the neighborhood, rounding up the guns, are met with full force resistance !

     While people for sensible gun regulation will just smile and walk away with another victory for public safety.

     • Can’t wait til the powers you so enthusiastically cheer put you in their cross hairs for some thought crime or other made up offense. “But.. but…duh gun nuts wuz supposed ta get in trouble.. not MEEEE!”

       • Oh, but we’re on the side of the angles. We don’t have anyone who would use a gun to prosecute progress and a better society for justice. Tisn’t us who figure to banish all evil at muzzle-point.

         We still think Mr. Trump will do a deal in order to get his voter fraud program to turn up anything.

       • @2Asux

         Side of the angles huh? That makes you what, the hypotenuse?

         • OOOhhhhhh, you got me, boyo, Dyslexic keyboard. Sorry to have disturbed you.

       • Honestly, your original argument sounded like you were high and thats literally the only thing I could troll you on. Actually thats not true. Boyo? Really? I’m a young-ish Irish-American and I never hear that anymore.

         Also, I’m not worried about SWAT kicking in my door, cuz they’d find nothing but a lawsuit waiting for them. Doesn’t make it right that I’m out a front door cuz someone doesn’t like my political beliefs. Would you like it if someone kicked in your door because they were afraid of you?

         • Yes, well, old, old habits pop to the surface, now, don’t they?

           I happily agree that some kicking in the door without a likely cause would be at least an impolite introduction. It is not I who fear the SWAT raids for guns. It is not I rallying the fellows to prepare for a shoot-out over “gun rights”. I know that there are more clever ways to accomplish a goal. It is quite to our advantage that the “gun rights” club be looking for bugabears while we go about cleaning up in the courts, local committees, and what have you, making sense of restraints any reasonable person can see are needed. The ugly fact for the gun lobby is that all of Europe has fewer murders by gun than doe the US. That is all that really matters. There is no explaining away that one simple, immovable (stubborn) fact; more murder by gun in the US than in all of Europe. Indeed, to put quite a fine point on it, Chicago just about leads Europe, all alone. You’ll not easily dance away from that, now will you?

       • Nope. But it’s not about what you’re worried about. You dont matter. Not to me. Not to Vhyrus. Not to anybody here. People today are scared. And thats ok, the world is a scary place. Injustice, abuse, riots, police crackdowns. People want a piece of mind, and if that comes with carrying a gun, so be it. That doesn’t make them bad people, and it doesn’t justify your disdain towards them. It doesnt justify their house being raided because someone else was scared. We have guns because we want to feel empowered, and if thats ultimately not the case, so be that too. But you cant blame us for trying. And you certainly cant demonize us.

         But American gun owners are also confident. In our ability to shoot of course, but also in our ability to protect the things we love. What would you do for the people you cared about?

         Play your political chess game. Alone. It doesnt matter. Americans who are kind, and generous, and protective will always own guns. And they’ll use them for good. They should do so unafraid of how their government might punish them for it, its the least we can do for those willing to push the ultimate envelope. Those willing to be free.

         • Always a pleasure to learn how far off the mark gun people can be. Have I been talking about taking anything away from a scared public (pro-gun)? Have I recommended total registration? Confiscation, maybe? Not atall. But having you looking over your shoulder for the “jackboots” to storm the home doesn’t help you, and doesn’t influence people for common sense regarding rampant gun ownership by unskilled, untrained, irresponsible throwbacks to the breakaway. I’ll admit it has been a bit of fun jousting, but the game is not as you think. It surely is all about nibbling away at your cheese, making it unpalatable, unappetising, inconvenient to buy, nuisance to keep. Confiscation is the fear, but we will be just as happy you cannot use your gun without running afoul of one law, or another. Or finding that the five cent tax per bullet can always be raised. It will be interesting to learn if gun owners are as impervious to cost as smokers.

       • Ah yes the old “europe has fewer gun deaths” song and dance. Of course never a mention of any other way people are murdered. You know mexico has more “common sense” gun laws to. How is that working out? Then again you once praised China’s low firearm murder rates and wished we could be more like them, yup no downside to that. I guess that explains why you have no issue with people exercising their rights in full compliance with existing law are subject to having other civil rights curtailed.
         BTW how’s all your wonderful reform doing seeing how you lost the presidency, both houses of Congress, and a majority of state governors and state legislator majorities?

         • You posit that I disregard homicides from all sources in Europe. Let’s have a look at that. In stats from 2013 and 2014 (UN figures) we see that in the fourteen states generally considered “Europe” (by Americans), we have a combined total of 3650 intentional homicides (including gunshot deaths); U.S. posted 12,000+. Regards homicides, Europe is three times safer. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate).

           You can do your own deduction and inference, but Europe is safer, all way round.

           My claim that Europe suffers greatly fewer gun deaths stands, proven. Fact: Europe has fewer guns in the hands of the public. Fact: Europe has legions fewer deaths by gunshot than the U.S. Inescapable. Gun controls produce a safer environment for the greatest number of people. If the American population were to have been resident in Europe 2013-2014, 8300 people would still be alive. Do you seriously proclaim that those lives are insignificant, that they don’t count, that they are simply the sacrifice the nation pays for freedom?

       • cmac890,

         That certainly makes 2ASux obtuse!

       • 2ASux: Why are you against civil rights?

         • Why am I against civil rights? Fair question, asked politely. Granting that you are sincere, let me take a run at that.

           What civil right have you in mind? Best to know the celestial rankings before proceeding. At the top of the list of “natural, civil and human rights” is which one? The answer to that sorts it all out.

           The supreme, superior, premier, most important of what you call natural, civil and human rights is the right to life. So implicitly clear that your founders saw no reason to even list it in your constitution. Without the right to live, none of the other real or imagined “rights” matter a whit. My right to life is equal to yours, yours to mine, and neither outweigh the other. So what have we then? A Gordian knot over which of us has the greater moral right to preserve the premier “right”.

           I walk about carrying no weapon with which to intentionally or unintentionally take your life (let’s set aside motorcars, trams, buses and the like). Nothing I drop, or rearrange on my body can harm you in any way. I even go out of the way to avoid any contact with you atall, close or from a distance. I can visit a museum where you are also visiting, I can attend the theatre with you in the audience, I can sit on public transportation with you alongside, and in none of those settings is there anything I can do to kill you (unless I happen to simply be a crazed escapee from custody). On the other hand, you insist that your “right” to be armed with a pistol is superior to my right to be left alone, and to live. You declare that your “right” to self-defense with a firearm requires me to accept the risk that you may mishandle your gun, and injure or kill me “by accident”. You claim that it is just my misfortune that you or one of you mates shoots me without cause, while you are trying to deploy your firearm to defend yourself. You claim that your right to self-defense is superior to my right to innocent life. I say you have no moral authority to use a weapon capable of depriving me of life through accident, and even at a distance. Pick another defensive weapon, one that cannot assault me incidentally while you fumble with your own self-defense weapon.

           My right to life does not require me to kneel before you so that you can exercise your right to life by putting me in danger I do not know of, and cannot anticipate. At best we are at stalemate. The only solution to that is a system of controls on who, when, where may possess a firearm for purpose of self-defense.

           Against civil rights? Not atall. I am totally in favor of my right to life, and yours. Just not the idea that you exercising your right permits you to blithely carry a firearm anytime, anywhere, for just any reason.

       • So your desire to live unmolested means we all must surrender the right to defend ourselves from those who do not respect our rights. Interesting.

         As to your assertion that me bearing arms somehow is endangering to you, well, there is no salve I can offer for that. Your fear is unfounded, so must be any reassurance.

         • My right to life is equal to your right to self-defense (presuming, of course, that I do not become a deadly threat to you).

           I am taking no action that places you in danger from a negligent, irresponsible act with your gun. You, on the other hand, put me in danger by your aggressive act of walking about armed. Who has the moral responsibility to ensure the other is not harmed?

           I have said nothing to deny you the right to self-defense, only declared that self-defense by other means is still self-defense. The fact that you claim that a gun is the most effective “equalizer” in no way diminishes your moral responsibility for my safety (you are the one with the deadly weapon of long reach). I have no way to identify which among you is reasonable, trained, careful, responsible, else I would see to it to be wherever you are not.

           My statement merely said that you, the one with the deadly weapon of potential mass destruction, should be required to have formal training in gun safety and handling. I still would have no way to know whether you have, or not, the training. However, over time, with mandatory training required at the point of purchase, the number of qualified gunfighters should increase, lowering the overall threat to “law-abiding” citizens who present no danger to others through negligent use of some object. Indeed, when have you read a report that some dropped their penknife, and it ended up injuring a bystander? When have you read that someone dropped their truncheon, and injured a bystander? How many reports have you seen where a bystander was injured because someone was adjusting a screwdriver in their pants.

           You carry a weapon that has no intelligence, and I am the one who is to give up my right to life (which I live everyday), so that you can carry a gun that is unlikely to be used in self-defense at anytime in your life, but has devastating potential to be negligently discharge? My life is real, you supposed attacker is theoretical (based on your own statistics). You have the obligation to not harm me or other innocents, and to prove you have the temperament and judgement to be safe with you gun.

       • Once again, 2ASux, our realities are not meshing. I do indeed have the obligation not to infringe on your rights to life, but that’s about it. Heck, even our definitions of ‘mass destruction’ must be significantly different. A firearm (as you so correctly described as lacking intelligence) is utterly incapable of discharging on its own pending a MASSIVE engineering failure. The rarity of such circumstances similar to a car exploding in the middle of traffic due to an overich fuel mixture. Its presence is no different than any other tool. It can not cause harm without the negligence or ill intent on the part of the operator.

         Furthermore, its possession and bearing are rights. You can not impinge, limit, nor infringe on that as it would no longer be a right. And please, spare the sophistry about how rights are not unlimited or that one can not yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. One can indeed do as such, but they can held responsible for the damages that action causes. A similar set of ‘rules’ applies to every right, including the right to bear arms. Every bullet discharged has a lawyer attached.

         My firearms are indeed unlikely to ever be used against another person. GOOD. I never plan to hurt another. The same can be said of the overwhelming majority of the population, not just gun owners. I have personally had a DGU where no shots were fired, but have NEVER had a negligent discharge. Sure, this is anecdotal evidence, but just as valid as your supposition.

         You do not know the training of ANYONE else on the street in terms of driving, proficiency with any particular weapon, nor martial art. Each encounter every day could turn fatal. To fear a firearm being thrown into the mix is borderline irrational in my opinion. The amount of force we manipulate on a given day through flying, driving, or even flipping a light switch puts firearms possession, and the dangers thereof, into context.

         No one is asking you to give up any right. We’re just asking for you to not try to take ours. And yes, requiring training and licensing are infringements. In what manner are these restrictions placed on any other right? Is there a writ of permission and an ethics class so we might speak freely? I immensely encourage training, just as I would ask people to construct valid arguments in debate. Require it? No, as that would limit those rights. Nor do I have to prove anything to you or anyone else.

         Your well-meaning efforts to stop those who would do harm only criminalize the innocent. There is much truth to adage that “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”.

         • Nothing I wrote remotely indicates a desire to take your life. You pointed out that negligence is a danger, and we agree. Indeed, 500 people each year are killed by negligent gun handling. And you believe that is just the price innocent people pay to live in a free society.

           ALL your “rights” are infringed; none are absolute outside philosophy. If you can be punished for exercising any of your rights, that is an infringement. One you like, perhaps, but an infringement nonetheless. “Infringement” does not imply pre-punishment, it means that the use of whatever right you chose to exercise can be restricted in the sense that you will pay some sort of price if you violate those rules that constitute an infringement.

           So, let’s take firearm training for example. Let’s make it mandatory. What happens? Nothing. If you refuse to be trained, you may still walk about oblivious to others. You may still use your firearm for whatever purpose you chose. Your right could be considered to not be infringed because on one is stopping you from taking whatever action, prior to its happening. However, truth is that your right can be taken away if you use your gun, attempt to buy a new one, and have not the proper proof of training. Because you are convicted of a high crime, your “right” to own or possess a firearm is forever forfeit. Your “right” is now officially infringed. Same way with the worshiped first amendment. You can say whatever you wish, but the government has authority to punish you if your speech rises to a criminal act (“fire”, libel, slander, fraud, to name a few). So, if you know that certain speech can be sanctioned upon exercise, and you choose to avoid those sanctions, your right to “free speech” is duly “infringed”.

       • I *NEVER* implied that you wish to take my life. Not even sure where that came from.

         I’m not following your logic at all. You seem to be applying a preventative test to limiting rights, which is wrong. Blatantly so in legal, moral, and resultant terms. One can be punished for exercising a right if it results in damges to another party (i.e. inciting a riot, libel, and slander). You can not be stopped from speaking because of the fear that it *might* be construed as such. In fact, courts continuously strike down such laws and ordinances as “chilling” to those rights and their exercise.

         Someone carrying a tool affects you not a whit. Someone owning a tool affects you just as much. It is when they use it against you they cross a line. Until that time, your position is just one against civil rights. That’s all.

     • Yeah. This ruling flies in the face of SCotUS precedent and is going to get slapped down by Trump’s court.

       Oh and guns can most certainly make the world a better place. They let us deal with sub-human scum like you.

       • “Oh and guns can most certainly make the world a better place. They let us deal with sub-human scum like you”

         As you people are fond of saying, “If names are all you’ve got; you’ve got nothing”.

         Come along, old boy. At least try to look like pro-gun advocates are intelligent.

     • You are the battered wife of statists, 2ASux.

       Oh, and for all your friends whining about executive orders? Your boyo, Obama, used them with alarming regularity, as has been noted. Trump, being the opportunist sort, is exploiting the concept until someone tells him to stop. You guys allowed POTUS to rule by decree, without consideration that at some point, someone you don’t like would occupy the White House.

       • You’ve not read a word of me complaining about Trump using executive orders, have you? Spoils of war to the (for now) victor. It’s the way of it, man. Unless backed-up with irreversible legislation, the new orders will be overturned by the next real* president.

         * I just tossed that out because I know you lot gorge on raw meat.

   • He sure as hell isn’t blowing them out any faster than Obama did on his way out the door, though, and considering many of Trump’s EOs are to nullify these midnight orders, I’d say it’s a far more relevant observation. When Obama was drummed into office, he didn’t have to do anything but follow what Bush already had spooled up for him (in part because the two were coordinating the hand-off beforehand)

2. So, a court just allowed no-knock warrants on all concealed-weapons permit holders, and presumably by extension, anyone else the police have reason to believe carries (or possesses) firearms. And also, it appears, to allow restrictions on their first amendment rights if I read this correctly. So, the police now have permission to violently enter a home without first presenting a warrant or warning the owner simply because they believe they may be capable of effective resistance…like if suddenly surprised by a violent intruder. The civil liberties of the citizens fall to the convenience and whims of officers. Got it.

   “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
   –Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

   The police, the captains who order these raids, the judges who sign their no-knock warrants, and the federal court justices who gave them that authority will also deserve everything that happens afterward if this is allowed to become standard procedure for law enforcement.

   • The quoted language comes from a nonbinding concurring opinion, not the majority opinion which says simply that if an officer has a reasonable suspicion that a vehicle occupant is armed, he is entitled to do a Terry pat down (i.e., a frisk) to determine if there are any weapons that might threaten the officer’s safety. Since Terry v. Ohio (1968) 392 U.S. 1, police have been authorized to disarm citizens during an investigatory stop. The court held that simply because West Virginia citizens can get concealed carry permits and that therefore carrying a firearm may be innocent does not require more from an officer that a reasonable suspicion that the person is armed. Obviously if Mr. Robinson had had such a permit, there wouldn’t be a case. In this regard, the opinion breaks no new legal ground, it merely declines to adopt a new defense to a Terry frisk.

     It is the concurrence of Judge Wynn that goes off the rails. Even though he recognizes that carrying firearms is presumptively lawful in West Virginia, he concludes that although the test ignored by the majority should be that the detainee is armed AND dangerous (in the conjunctive as two separate elements), he concludes that guns are inherently dangerous, and that therefore “individuals who carry firearms–lawfully or unlawfully–pose a risk of danger to themselves, law enforcement officers, and the public at large.” In other words, having a gun satisfies both elements of the Terry test, because “individuals who are armed with a firearm are categorically ‘dangerous.’ ” The rest of his remarks, quoted above, reflect his complete loss of logical sensibility due to his irrational fears of firearms and those who possess them, and are not a holding of the case. None of the other judges joined his concurrence.

     • I didn’t read the majority decision but thank you for the clarification. This was the first post I read this morning and it really set my day off on the wrong foot.

     • Good post.

       It’s useful to remember some legalities regarding Terry. In order to be frisked (and, presumably disarmed) you must be both detained and suspected of carrying a weapon. Since the court has decided that passengers in a traffic stop are effectively detained, it isn’t that big of a jump to disarm them if they are carrying a weapon in that limited instance.

       Not agreeing or disagreeing with it, but it’s not out of the blue.

     • Open carry then. No pat down required. Cop requests to disarm me, I’ll request the same of him.
       What percentage of rights remain?
       50%? More? Or less? It’s a serious question and not partisan.
       We’ll keep fighting until 100% are restored. That’s the essence of Conservatism.

       • I’m glad you’re so calm and understanding of the police and their plight. I bet you’re the same kind of person who refuses to sign tickets because they think it’s no longer valid if they don’t sign it.

         The officer doesn’t know you from Adam and if they’ve come into contact with you it’s for a reason, they don’t just run around willy nilly checking people for guns. They’re going to give it back to you in a few minutes, and it takes away tension on the officer’s end.

         • There are people out there shooting cops in the head and you think you can insult me with “you don’t sign tickets”. Oooooh. You got me. I refuse to sign a ticket. But what else I don’t do is shoot the cop in the face when he comes to the window.
           Disarming good people doesn’t make a cop any safer. Good thing I live in GA without a stupid DTI law. You carry on with 30% of your rights. I’ll keep my 55% and keep fighting for 100%. I don’t need crabs like you trying pull me down to your level of freedom.

     • “Since Terry v. Ohio (1968) 392 U.S. 1, police have been authorized to disarm citizens during an investigatory stop.”

       Can you cite a prior case where the “armed and dangerous” requirement from Terry has been redefined to be only “armed?”

       It seems that the point of THIS ruling is to establish the NEW precedent that “armed IS ALWAYS dangerous.” Where did that exist before this ruling?

   • Michael in GA- “Open carry then. No pat down required. Cop requests to disarm me, I’ll request the same of him.”

     Arizona style open carry for anyone over 21 who is a non-felon, without police background checks, prior approval and a licensing system is not financially rewarding for NRA, Inc., their lawyers can’t make any money “fixing” the the shit carry bills NRA promotes that way. That’s why NRA stepped in to the Texas open carry bill in 2016 and required that you have a concealed carry license also. NRA always sells out their own membership to the anti-gun police unions, and strives to the utmost to advance the legal infrastructure for the criminal police state as you see in this 4th Circuit opinion. Since you are not a traitor, this does not make sense to you.

     “Disarming good people doesn’t make a cop any safer.”

     Any cop who does not approach a vehicle stop or street contact without assuming that the person is armed is not fit to be a cop. Cops love to whine about how hard their jobs are, and by the way, can I get some free coffee at the 7-Eleven? If being a whiney mooch paid $1,000,000 per year, every cop I know would be a millionaire.

     “Good thing I live in GA without a stupid DTI law.”

     Yes, good thing you don’t have Duty to Inform with criminal penalties like NRA state lobbyist Todd Vandermyde “worked hard” to bring to us in Illinois. You have an option as to whether you feel like getting your brains blown out today like Philando Castile in Minnesota.

     Don’t expect the aging baby boomers you are interacting with to understand what freedom is. The perfect slave thinks he’s free. The good old boys don’t want to carry a gun legally, they want to have a piece of plastic in their wallets that proves they are “one of the good guys.” It makes them feel like junior policemen. These are the clowns who keep NRA, Inc. in business.

     • Instead of whinging constantly like some ungrateful little shit, why don’t you rally others to build upon what the NRA set in motion for your state? You trolls never seem interested in that when complaining about how badly the NRA treated you. Sheesh, you’d think you lot were worse off after earning your damn concealed carry, spiteful wretches (by which I refer to the anti-NRA trolls who are tellingly far more concerned with badmouthing that organization than actually enjoying what they won in that fight waged on their behalf)

       • barn dweller- “rallying” NRA members in Illinois would require that they possess the I.Q. of at least a common house plant.

         I understand your feelings though. Duty to Inform in your state carry bill won’t affect you as long as you never leave the trailer park, except for your bus trip to Opryland. Besides, you’re a good old boy, plus you’re white.

         You’re right, NRA really cares about you as a person, and President Roosevelt had no idea that Pearl Harbor was going to be bombed by the Japs.
         You seem a little crabby today. Is it time for a nap at the nursing home? Go back to sleep and rest easy, the team at NRA HQ is looking out for you.

3. “Accordingly, the majority decision today necessarily leads to the conclusion that individuals who elect to carry firearms forego other constitutional rights, like the Fourth Amendment right to have law enforcement officers ‘knock-and-announce’ before forcibly entering homes. . . ”

   That just may motivate the ACLU to protect the 2A…

   • I’d love to know how exercising one right nullifies another. Any other. Take your pick.
     I’d be willing to put cash monies on this getting overturned the first time it gets challenged.

     The Fourth Circuit: Five Steps Ahead of the Ninth.

4. From the 4th Circuit ruling: “In sum, individuals who carry firearms — lawfully or unlawfully — pose a risk of danger to themselves, law enforcement officers, and the public at large. Accordingly, law enforcement officers may frisk lawfully stopped individuals whom the officers reasonably suspect are carrying a firearm because a detainee’s possession of a firearm poses a categorical “danger” to the officers.”

   That’s why Duty to Inform was placed in Illinois state Rep. Brandon Phelps “NRA backed” concealed carry bill in 2013 by NRA lobbyist Todd Vandermyde: so any cop from any jurisdiction, not in uniform and not on duty, can (legally) stop, frisk, disarm and execute any armed citizen they want, at any time, for any pretense.

   Since Illinois’ carry bill has criminal penalties for alleged violations of Duty to Inform (plus hundreds of gun-free zones) the police can arrest you, which means they can use force to make the arrest, which means that if you have a carry license they can instantly escalate to deadly force and blow your brains out. Thanks Todd!

   As we speak, the hired traitor of Chris Cox & Chuck Cunningham at NRA/ ILA is trying to legalize silencers in Illinois. Vandermyde tells his pack of retarded trailer dwellers that Duty to Inform “hasn’t been a problem” in Illinois. I guess Philando Castile in Minnesota didn’t “have a problem” when he was shot down by police.

   This is what happens when you let traitors and rats write gun bills with police unions. What’s next, duty to strip search? Go team NRA!

   • I’ve come to the conclusion your not even an actual bloomberg paid troll but just a web bot.

     • Nah, he’s just a pissed off Illinoisan, dealing with the horrible legislation that was allowed to pass, with the NRA’s blessing apparently. It’s how Illinois “works”…

       • Notice he never talks about doing anything to actually improve upon that legislation, it’s just “those guys betrayed us, they’ll betray you, too, so you should cancel your membership” concern trolling. Probably thinks they’re all about the gun sales like *some* people do as well. The org ain’t perfect, but if there’s an easy fight for gun rights, they are all over it to lend resources, and naturally take the credit. That’s useful enough by itself to be an asset.

   • Ad- don’t overrate yourself. I doubt you’re able to come to a “conclusion” about anything if you’re too stupid to figure out that Chris Cox & Chuck Cunningam at NRA/ILA employ lobbyists like Todd Vandermyde in Illinois who sold out Otis McDonald and their own members to be legally executed by police criminals and police impersonators.

     Send in your NRA life membership. It will cause a lessening of the pain between your ears and make you feel like you are conforming to a group. NRA, Inc. cares about you and is watching over you as you sleep like the Tooth Fairy. Sweet dreams young boy. May you continue to walk in between the raindrops, and remember that the police are your friends.

   • 16V- for the past couple of weeks, NRA state lobbyist for Illinois Todd Vandermyde has been trying to bring a suppressor legalization bill to committee vote. He just happens to have a side business which sells suppressors to law enforcement. The trailer dwellers are usually to dense to read the bills, but the “NRA backed” bill Vandermyde is pushing has a “terrorist watch list” provision to flag people with Illinois FOID cards and concealed carry licenses. Supplied by the Illinois State Police as usual.

     The same mob of retarded asswipes who cheered on Vandermyde when he sold them out to police unions with Duty to Inform in the 2013 carry bill can be found right now posting on Valinda Rowe’s Illinois Carry dot com forum, signing off with comments like, “we trust you Todd” and “in Todd we trust!” You cannot make this stuff up. If someone is so low that they look UP to a backstabbing rat like Vandermyde, they must be below gutter level living in a sewer. Or a southern IL trailer park in this case. These are the inbred hicks who sold out Otis McDonald. Yee-haw!

     • Wait, so now you badmouth someone’s effort on your behalf because they have a financial stake in your own freaking freedom? Thankless wretch.

5. Was it here that I read that the Mass. Attorney General has informed manufacturers that NO evil black rifles may be sold in Ma. as they are all illegal under the state’s statute? I wonder how the Supremes will feel about the first state-wide ban on semiautomatic centerfire rifles?

   • The ban requires a rifle to have at least two restricted features to be banned (pistol grip + whatever). Thats basically all evil black rifles. Semi-automatic centerfire rifles are still legal (Beretta Storm, M1’s, Mini-14, etc), just not the scary-looking ones. So every appeals court around here will uphold it, because Big Brother knows best, it’ll never get to SCOTUS

     • Those guns are still “substantially similar” to select fire or assault weapon variants, and can accept high cap mags as-is even if the mags are illegal; no dice.

   • SCOTUS denied cert in Friedman v. Highland Park in 2015 which was just about evil “assault rifles”. Still, it’ll take some time for this new case to crawl through the courts. With a good chunk of luck (read: two or three Trump-appointed justices down the road, Kennedy out of the picture), it might eventually lead to the intended outcome in D.C.

     • Julius- what happened in Illinois with the Friedman case is that ISRA (IL state rifle association, the state tumor of NRA) were feeling their oats after getting state Rep. Brandon Phelps concealed carry bill passed in July 2013, so they decided step into the ring with the big boys in D.C., which is like watching a pack of retarded pygmies attempting to play football with the Bears at Soldier Field.

       ISRA as corporate entity dates back to about 1903 or so, and so do most of their membership. Attending one of their yearly conventions looks like an outing from the old folks home. Flannel shirts and double barrel shotguns. “Executive director” (they love those self-important Freemasonic titles) Richard Pearson is usually seen at any GRPC with a drink in his hand holding forth about how “we had to have Duty to Inform” in “our” (NRA backed) carry bill, because “our bill has preemption.”

       Pearson fancies himself The Great Helmsman of Illinois gun rights, but the fact is that he & the rest of the old farts at ISRA sabotaged the grassroots fighting for concealed carry for the past twenty years. They took local dentist Friedman to SCOTUS and lost, thereby screwing up legal precedent for you and everyone else in America for the next fifty years. They are losers, and that’s all they know how to do, lose.

       In real life, Pearson is an insurance salesman in the dried up burg of Chatsworth, IL, population 500 souls, plus a grain bin. His insurance office is ISRA World Headquarters. He could not punch his way out of a paper bag, much less take on the Supreme Court of the United States. You really cannot understand how unimpressive these turds are until you see them in person.

       • So, the NRA is wrong to take what they can get (your concealed carry), and wrong to push their luck (some of their court cases), and too cowardly to fight difficult fights, and take credit for everyone else’s hard work, yet deserve the blame when their tactics don’t succeed.

         You gonna wear out that axe grinding on it, boy.

       • barn dweller- “You gonna wear out that axe grinding on it, boy.”

         Hey, is that like folksy wisdom from southern Illinois? My grandpa passed away a while back, and I’ve sort of had a void in my life ever since then. Could you fill that role in my life and help me to understand how state Rep. Brandon Phelps is really looking out for me by placing Duty to Inform in his “NRA backed” carry bill? With your guidance I see now that it was for my own good.

         Can I refer to you as “Gramps” from now on? When I go to sleep at night, it would be comforting to hear your voice calling out, “goodnight, John boy” just like in the Waltons. That TV show was the real America, when you just trusted bloated bureaucracies like NRA to take care of us. Ah, for the Good Old Days when men were Good Old Boys, and the policeman was our best friend.

         Are you growing out your beard for IGOLD 2017? From the pics I have seen, the Duck Dynasty look is all the rage, so you better get started.

6. I’m glad I don’t live in the 4th Circuit, but I expect that to be heard by the Supreme’s when a more conservative circuit rules it the opposite way, the right way.

   I hope Justice Kennedy will leave the bench soon.

   • The only way any Dem can leave the bench in the next 8 years is involuntarily.

7. By the extension of the logic provided in the opinion, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals just declared that EVERY POLICE OFFICER in the United States of America should now be considered a DANGEROUS person. Wait until the BLM movement figures that out.

   • not really. As pointed out above, the most extensive opinion was a concurrent one that does not hold force of precedence.

     • Do you think the gun-hating LEOs will understand that? Or will they act on the headlines, and then enjoy immunity because they “honestly misunderstood” the opinion? Do you think that is an “accident?”

     • You may think that. And I may think that.
       That does not mean that any prosecutor or judge will think that.
       Just because we think that something is right, or wrong, doesn’t protect us from others in power who think the opposite way.

       • And all across this great land, hundred or even thousands of the lesser side of LEO-dom will be laughing at the age-old mantra, “You might beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride.”

8. For being so full of shit themselves Huffpo seems to think gun owners are honest to a fault.

   As unwise as it may be, and as obvious as it often is, people lie to doctors all the time. They lie about drug use, cheating on their partner, exercising, diet, alcohol consumption, taking their meds and, well basically everything. This is why your average Urgent Care physician is kind of a dick.

   For the most part what yarn you spin doesn’t matter. That nasty, oozing rash on your cock, your A1C, your weight, blood pressure, heart rate or other tests they might subject you to will tell the truth. Such is not the case with firearms ownership.

   On this topic you can safely lie with impunity unless you constantly show up with gun related injuries like GSW’s or the tell tale signs of being pistol whipped on the regular or have a complete inability to shut your cum dumpster about how many toys you own.

   • Smart take, Mr. strych9. I had to come clean with Dr. Ubennett about that nasty, oozing rash.

9. Looks like a lot of hot air over the 4th Circuit ruling. It does not allow police to lawfully stop anybody carrying a gun. It simply allows them to frisk anybody who they suspect of being armed after they have already been lawfully stopped for other reasons. That’s not really materially different from the original Terry v. Ohio ruling.

   • I agree with you. I’ve been pulled over and I always hand the cop my conceal license and tell him I’m armed. I’ve never had a cop ask to confiscate my gun until the process of running my information and possibly issuing me a ticket is over. But I would comply if they did. Cops have a difficult job and I understand if they’re weary of issuing a citation to an armed citizen who’s just broken the law in some fashion. Even if he just pulled you over for a moving violation, he won’t know until he runs plates whether the vehicle is stolen and he won’t know until he runs your information if there’s a warrant out for you.

     Now, if he tries to keep my weapon beyond the encounter, or if there’s a shooting and I get hit while I’m not able to protect myself, I’ll sue the pants off the city. That old phrase “I carry a gun because the cop I used to carry hurt my back” totally applies here.

     • “Cops have a difficult job and I understand if they’re weary of issuing a citation to an armed citizen who’s just broken the law in some fashion. Even if he just pulled you over for a moving violation, he won’t know until he runs plates whether the vehicle is stolen and he won’t know until he runs your information if there’s a warrant out for you.”

       They usually run the plates before approaching your vehicle so that is not germane to your point.
       And if it is so dangerous to disarm and arrest someone who has an outstanding warrant, what makes it any safer with this law? You are disarming good people who won’t shoot a cop in order to protect from bad people that would.
       Logic failure.

       • Alright, you got me on the plates. The license bit is still valid though. You can be derogatory of me until the cows come home. But we had a cop here just last month who was shot while pulling someone over.

         I get that you troll this website everyday looking for every comment that doesn’t conform to your line of thinking.
         You’ve said absolutely nothing that would make me change my mind about cops being weary of pulling over and issuing citations or worse to armed citizens who’ve just committed a crime.
         Argument failure

         • “You’ve said absolutely nothing that would make me change my mind about cops being weary of armed citizens who’ve just committed a crime.”

           Of course not. That because you have a twisted perspective on real world interactions between human beings. And I said absolutely no thing about cops not needing to be “weary”. Maybe they should stop moonlighting and they wouldn’t be so weary during their regular shift. If you meant to say “leary”, in no way did I suggest that cops shouldn’t be alert and cautious.

           I don’t troll this website looking for idiotic statements. They sort of jump off the page on their own. I just look at things logically without political or personal slant. Things either make sense or they don’t.
           It doesn’t make sense to have everyone involved in a traffic stop voluntarily disarm to prevent someone who would murder a police officer from doing so.

       • Timothy;
         “But we had a cop here just last month who was shot while pulling someone over.”
         Was that because he was legally unable to frisk the person for a weapon, or because he was ambushed after they failed to disclose their armament? Or was he gunned down the instant he came up to the car, before any of this prior-restraint and legal risk on the citizen nonsense could possibly come into play?

   • Timothy- “Now, if he tries to keep my weapon beyond the encounter, or if there’s a shooting and I get hit while I’m not able to protect myself, I’ll sue the pants off the city.”

     From what I know of 1983 federal civil rights law, you will not be able to sue a cop or the city that employs him for violating your civil rights if he disarms you and something bad happens, like you get shot “accidentally” when he grabs your piece. It will probably be considered within the scope of his duties, and the police unions have elevated “officer safety” to the status of the Holy Virgin Mary, their innocence and sanctity cannot be questioned.

     That’s why Illinois’ shit carry bill from 2013 has Duty to Inform and gun seizure written into the act, so you specifically cannot sue for civil rights violations when you are set up and hurt by cops.

     Illegal search and seizure now becomes part of the licensing procedure, whereby you give up your constitutional rights to remain silent, be searched and disarmed without cause, and generally go about your business peaceably without bothering anyone else when you obtain the license. NRA is “working” for you night and day. That’s why Chris Cox & Chuck Cunningham pay money to lobbyists like Todd Vandermyde, he keeps the police unions in business.

     Sort of the way a truck driver with a CDL license in Illinois is considered DUI under the law if he registers ANY alcohol level in a breathalyzer test, but as Joe Citizen my presumed level of intoxication is .08. If you apply for a carry license, you are now under “administrative law.”

     • Sounds like the real issue is your corrupt police unions, and not the NRA or Todd Vandermyde…You sound like anti-gunners blaming gang violence on access to firearms (in addition to your vehement NRA hatred)

     • barndweller- thanks for your keen insight, as you rail about giving up one right to exercise another. Do you have mold in your trailer? Lack of fresh air can cause foggy thinking. Have them look into your diet at the nursing home.

       NRA is there to protect you and make decisions for your best interest, sort of like FDR during the Great Depression. I’m sure they mean well, and are doing the best they can with your membership money.

10. Good luck, GOAL & everyone. You’ll need it, as the SJC seems to view Heller & McDonald as “guidelines” not legal precedent. So the Supremes could show up in court with slung rifles and the SJC would just say, “Meh”.

11. Oy! I can’t believe that I actually read the Weisser column. It’s like listening to my cat. I am now stupider. Thanks, Mike.

12. Well, I think the odds of getting one or more relatively strict origionalists added to The Supremes just went up.

13. From Huffin puff…”Even the NRA can’t seem to produce more than eight or nine instances each month in which an armed citizen made the difference protecting anyone from crime.”

    So to stop the hundreds of murders & thousands of shootings in Chicago alone, the nation should sacrifice 108 defensive gun uses per year.

    Anti gunners herd mentality, why save a few when making a law gets more killed.

14. Unfortunately the NRA filing a lawsuit in Massachusetts is just spinning its wheels. The State will simply pass a new legal law banning them all as California recently did.

    • cisco- “…the NRA filing a lawsuit in Massachusetts is just spinning its wheels.” From the point of view of an honest and ethical person with morals, you are totally right, NRA is wasting it’s time. But that’s the point, NRA has now learned that they can make big time money from lawsuits.

      Alan Gura toiled away for years in obscurity on 2nd Amendment law. When he filed to take Otis McDonald to court against the city of Chicago, NRA wanted nothing to do with it. When he finally got a hearing, NRA hired insider former Solicitor General Paul Clement to barge into the McDonald case just months before Gura got in front of the Supremes. Clement stole ten minutes from Gura’s thirty minute oral argument time. Later NRA got $1.3 MILLION in legal fees from Chicago for the McDonald case.

      NRA, Inc. has a new race hustle: use blacks as face men for their lawsuits, then sell them out to police unions and set them up to be killed by placing Duty to Inform in their carry bills like NRA lobbyist Todd Vandermyde did in Illinois. They don’t want to win, they want to pass the worst bills possible so their lawyers can bill hours fighting it out later with your membership fees.

15. “… individuals who elect to carry firearms forego other constitutional rights, like the Fourth Amendment right to have law enforcement officers ‘knock-and-announce’ before forcibly entering homes. … Likewise, … individuals who choose to carry firearms necessarily face greater restriction on their concurrent exercise of other constitutional rights, like those protected by the First Amendment.”

    Wow. Just, wow. As another poster stated, how does exercise of one right take other rights off the table?

    • “…how does exercise of one right take other rights off the table?”

      What a keen legal mind you suddenly have. You’re an Illinois resident, right? Why don’t you explain to the people here from other states why Illinois concealed carry bill has Duty to Inform, which means if you apply for Illinois’ carry license you must give up your right to remain silent, and your right to be treated as innocent until proven guilty?

      A convicted felon who just got out of prison walking down the street in Chicago can remain silent if stopped by a cop and asked whether he is armed. If the cop performs a search against his consent and comes up with a gun, the felon has a chance to get the case thrown out if he gets a decent lawyer.

      Every one of you inbred white trash flag waving clowns from the trailer parks south of Joliet let NRA lobbyist Todd Vandermyde put Duty to Inform in Illinois’ 2013 concealed carry bill and cheered him on while he did it. So now you think maybe police searches are a problem? Here’s a clue for you and the rest of the losers at ISRA & NRA: the police are not your friends.

16. cisco- “…the NRA filing a lawsuit in Massachusetts is just spinning its wheels.” From the point of view of an honest and ethical person with morals, you are totally right, NRA is wasting it’s time. But that’s the point, NRA has now learned that they can make big time money from lawsuits.

    Alan Gura toiled away in obscurity for years on 2nd Amendment law. When he filed to take Otis McDonald to court against the city of Chicago, NRA wanted nothing to do with it, but when he finally got a hearing, they hired insider former Solicitor General Paul Clement to barge into the McDonald case just months before Gura got in front of the Supremes. Clement stole ten minutes from Gura’s thirty minute oral argument time. Later NRA got $1.3 MILLION in legal fees from Chicago for the McDonald case.

    NRA, Inc. has a new scam: use blacks as face men for their lawsuits, then sell them out to police unions and set them up to be killed by placing Duty to Inform in their carry bills like Todd Vandermyde did in Illinois. They don’t want to win, they want to pass the worst bills possible so their lawyers can bill hours fighting it out with your membership fees.

17. Huffpoo links should be avoided not (only) as “fake news” but the funding of the enemy. Click that POS at your own risk.

    The 4th can gavel fu<k themselves. Their actions summon the repeal of their mandate as "guards" of their Nation and its Liberties, and demand a 'throwing of'' and replacement of that Circuit, and those who appointed and support them, with a "new guard" [per the Declaration of Independence, paragraph 2] and it will require "arms", and a hunting of these people and destruction of everything that has ever been important to them.

    • Double-edged sword on that site. Hate to give ’em clicks, but it also falls under “know your enemy” territory. The hysteria, intolerance, stereotyping and hate in their comment section is more than illuminating.

18. Break, break.
    If you haven’t read it, the linked article on the Arizona Good Samaritan is worth your click. It’s well written and balanced, with any opinion that creeps in tending to lean right. It’s sad that seeing an article like that is sufficiently rare that I feel compelled to give it special mention.

19. The Fourth Circuit has basically said that if you exercise some given right, the government can limit your exercise of others.

    How long until they decide on that basis that it’s okay to reduce the free speech rights of people exercising their freedom of religion? or their freedom of the press? or their right to a speedy trial?

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