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Shots fired during Gunpowder Falls hike raise Second Amendment questions Maryland Daily Record (subscription) Hugh Pocock was hiking in Gunpowder Falls State Park on Memorial Day with his two sons when they heard gunshots. They were loud, but the trio assumed it was someone doing target practice and were not too concerned. But as Pocock and his sons began ...

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Shots fired during Gunpowder Falls hike raise Second Amendment questions - Maryland Daily Record (subscription)

We are over 100 days into the Trump administration, and there have been record numbers of gun sales as citizens are empowered by new leadership to embrace their Second Amendment rights. In April alone, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), the system gun retailers use to verify if a potential buyer can legally buy a gun, ran a whopping 2,045,564 background checks, showing there is renewed support for a strong Second Amendment after 8 years of anti-gun policies. And at the U.S. Concealed Carry Association (USCCA) our membership numbers continue to rise because the right to self-defense is one of our most fundamental beliefs as Americans.

In December 2015, a Gallup poll showed that 16% of Americans put terrorism as the number one issue facing our country. Sure enough, homeland security was also one of the biggest issues at the forefront of the 2016 election. Americans are worried about protecting themselves and their families, and have decided to take full advantage of their Second Amendment rights.

Under the past administration, President Obamas solution to violence and terrorism in this country was to legislate policies to keep people from legally obtaining guns. Now, under an administration thats pro-Second Amendment, gun owners can finally stop feeling criminalized for wanting to defend themselves.

An NBC/Washington Post poll also from December 2015 shows more people believe that the best way to stop terrorism is to allow citizens to arm themselves, instead of stricter gun control laws. A majority of people surveyed were also against an assault weapons ban, showing that the liberal claims of the majority of the country is against assault weapons, are false. In the same poll, only 22% of respondents were confident in the governments ability to prevent a terrorist attack an unsettlingly low number. All of these numbers from a year and a half ago, when our country was so close to an election, all explain the recent uptick in gun sales.

Americans watch the news, and are aware of what is going on around the world. We see it almost daily. Terrorist attacks in Europe, in places that seemed perfectly safe until recently, and even acts of domestic terrorism here in the United States have citizens concerned about their safety. Not to mention the instances of everyday crimes, which interestingly enough, is usually higher in places that have stricter gun laws. Legal access to firearms make citizens and their communities safer, and a country of armed, responsible citizens is a deterrent to criminals everywhere.

Lone-wolf terrorist attacks are on the rise, and the police cant always get there fast enough to stop the attacker before they hurt or kill people. Many attackers are known to the FBI and law enforcement, but there is little the government can do to intervene if the attacker keeps a low enough profile. It is up to responsibly armed citizens to be the first line of defense when these situations arise. Whether they are protecting just themselves, their family, or a classroom full of schoolchildren, people can see a clear need to arm themselves and know how to respond in a life threatening situation.

Back when the framers of the Constitution spelled out our freedoms in writing, the gun lobby did not exist. They were under no pressure from any interest groups regarding guns, and with pure intentions, wrote that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. With a leader in the White House that embraces and respects the Second Amendment, the tide is quickly turning toward a society that embraces responsible gun ownership, and does not condemn people for want to protect themselves.

Tim Schmidt is the president and founder of the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, and may be contacted at [emailprotected].

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More Americans Are Embracing Their Second Amendment Rights - The Daily Caller

One day in October 2010, a man by the name of Angel Mendez was at his home, asleep on a futon next to his pregnant girlfriend. Hed built the home himself, and it almost redefined the word modest. It was little more than a one-room shack in the back yard of another persons residence, with a blanket for a door. He awoke from his nap to see a person pulling back the blanket. He picked up his BB gun, and heard someone shout gun! before 15 rounds came flying at him. He was grievously injured, ultimately losing a leg. His unarmed girlfriend was also wounded.

It turns out the person who shot at Mendez was a police officer. Los Angeles County sheriffs deputies Christopher Conley and Jennifer Peterson were looking for a parolee who was believed to be armed and dangerous. They did not have a warrant to search Mendezs home, and they did not announce their presence or identity before accosting him. They entered, saw his BB gun, and started firing.

Lest you think this is a unique incident, in March I wrote about the terrible case of Andrew Scott. Like Mendez, Scott was an innocent man at home with his girlfriend when the police came. Like Mendez, he was mistaken by police for the armed and dangerous man they sought. They pounded on his door, but they didnt have a warrant, and they didnt announce themselves. Like any reasonable person, he was alarmed at the late-night disturbance and had no reason to expect the police were its source. So he grabbed his gun. When he opened his door, the police shot him dead in two seconds.

Neither Mendez nor Scott did anything wrong. They were both absolutely within their constitutional rights to pick up a weapon in response to the unidentified persons attempting to enter their homes. Yet Mendez, and Scotts heirs, have so far lost in court, unable to collect any meaningful compensation from the police officers who shot them precisely because they exercised those rights.

Scotts estate lost at the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that the doctrine of qualified immunity protected the officers from having to pay any compensation to the innocent victims of their mistaken and wrongful use of force. Mendez lost yesterday in the Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously against a quirky Ninth Circuit use-of-force rule that allowed excessive-force claims where an officer intentionally or recklessly provokes a violent confrontation, if the provocation is an independent Fourth Amendment violation. In other words, if the officers violated Mendezs Fourth Amendment rights by unlawfully entering his home, they could be held liable for shooting Mendez even if the shooting itself might otherwise have been justified under existing law.

The Supreme Court found that the Ninth Circuits rule violated court precedent requiring lower courts to instead apply a totality of the circumstances approach to such cases, under which the reasonableness of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight. The Supreme Court then remanded the case back to the lower courts, where the deck is already stacked against Mendez. The court of appeals, after all, already ruled that the officers had qualified immunity from Mendezs claim, and the trial court determined that Mendezs decision to pick up the BB gun was a superseding cause that limited the damages he could collect.

Its time for a different approach. Its time for Fourth Amendment jurisprudence to explicitly recognize and accommodate the Second Amendment. If the Second Amendment means anything at all, it means that I have a right to defend myself in my own home, where as Justice Scalia noted in District of Columbia v. Heller the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute. Moreover, the Second Amendment exists in large part to protect the private citizen from state tyranny. It is odd indeed, then, that current law largely grants officers of the state the right to kill me in my own home even if I do nothing wrong. Indeed, the very act of exercising my Second Amendment rights picking up a gun makes it less likely that I will prevail in court.

Theres an old saying that a person would rather be judged by twelve than carried by six. In times of peril, the thinking goes, its better to risk a jury than to risk your life. But under modern jurisprudence, when the police barge in youre likely to carried by six and then judged wanting by one: Youll die in the face of overwhelming firepower, and your estates case will be tossed right out of court by a judge.

This presents the homeowner especially if he lives in a high-crime area where the need for a gun is most dire with an impossible situation. In the event of a home intrusion, he has to identify the intruder before he picks up his gun or risk being shot dead instantaneously. If the cops make a good-faith mistake, the burden is on the homeowner. If the cops act improperly, as they did in both Scott and Mendez, the burden is still on the homeowner. Heads, they win; tails you lose.

What is to be done about this? Civil-rights jurisprudence must recognize the central legal truths of Heller and empower the original meaning of the Constitution. Police use of force against an armed homeowner should be evaluated on Second Amendment grounds, not merely as an unreasonable search or seizure. Agents of the state should be held liable for violations of Second Amendment rights when they kill or injure someone solely because he or she exercised those rights. Shooting an innocent man in his own home because he grabs a gun when an unidentified person pounds on his door or barges through it isnt just an unreasonable search or seizure. Its a direct violation of his clearly established right to keep and bear arms.

Its not too much to ask police officers to obtain warrants and to knock and announce their presence in all but the most exigent circumstances. In both Scott and Mendez, there was no good reason for police not to identify themselves. Yet in both cases, a residents reasonable response to police failures undermined his efforts to hold them accountable for those failures in court. That is unacceptable. When a person enters my house unannounced, I should have the right to hold a gun in my hand. To argue otherwise is to eviscerate the Second Amendment.

READ MORE: A Federal Appeals Court Goes to War against the Second Amendment What Justice Gorsuch Might Mean for the Second Amendment Why Would Anyone Want a Firearm?

David French is a senior writer for National Review, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, and an attorney.

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A Sad Supreme Court Case Highlights the Need for Smarter Second Amendment Jurisprudence - National Review

"Shall Not Be Infringed"

Weapons change, but the man who uses them changes not at all.Gen. George S. Patton

It seems that a segment of the shooting population pines for the old times, and actually believes things were better way back when. Guns were in .30 cal and .45 ACP, the uniforms were pressed to a razors edge, and Mitsubishi was a thing only known for being shot out of the sky. Back when the ships were made of wood, and the men were made of iron. But the truth is, weapons evolve. And you either get with that evolution, or you go extinct. To borrow a quote from my favorite humor website Cracked.com, showing up to fight iron age enemies with bronze age weapons, you might as well have been carrying a breadstick. GUNS AMERICA

The prevailing thought on the gun control political left is that times have changed but technology has no reason to. That is, while a man had the right to defend himself using a single shot musket in 1791 against an attacker using a single shot musket, a man in 2017 using a five shot revolver has no right to defend himself against a perp with a 30 shot semiauto AR. Or a variant: the home owner with a 30-round AR has no right to use his repeating firearm against four attackers using a 10 shot semiauto pistol, a crowbar, a butcher knife, or a runaway truck. For the left, self-defense is unfair to begin with, and for all self-defense cases the left has a pat answer: The Founders Never Gave Americans the Right.

Justice Scalia did.

For the left. equality is everything. Self-defense by its nature discriminates against the attacker who may not be as well-armed. What they would prefer is for the perp to have the 30 shot AR, and for the home defender to have a replica single shot musket, or better yet, an Obamaphone with which they can call 911.

As you can see in the linked video, the victim has plenty of time to make the call. And wait for the police to show up. And too, that a single shot firearm would have sufficed.

As in all things, the left takes a logical point illogically to its logical conclusion: meaning that in the 18th century when the Bill of rights were composed, man used mostly muzzle-loading single shot muskets. When the founding Fathers wrote the constitution, the gun controller will posit, they never had in mind repeating firearms for use by civilians

David Deming - - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 Washington Times

For decades the federal judiciary has been trying to interpret the Second Amendment out of the Constitution. It is, as Sanford Levinson has termed it, an embarrassment to an elite class of legal scholars that finds firearms to be unusual and repulsive objects. Now the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has declared that the semi-automatic AR-15 rifle is not covered by the Second Amendment, despite that fact that is the most common rifle sold in the United States. This execrable decision is the latest outrage in a long series of disingenuous judicial contortions.

The courts have never come to terms with the fact that any intelligible reading of the Second Amendment requires an interpretation that acknowledges and reconciles its two clauses. The operative clause speaks of the right of the people, while the prefatory clause justifies the operative clause by professing that a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state.

Prior to the Heller decision by the Supreme Court (2008), for 60 years or more the federal judiciary almost unanimously ruled that the Second Amendment did not guarantee an individual right. The militia mentioned in the prefatory clause was taken to be the National Guard. Thus, the right described in the operative clause was interpreted to be the right of states to maintain militia. This interpretation was never credible because it excised the Second Amendment from its contextual and historical underpinnings.

The Obama-appointed left-liberal circuit courts, their predecessors and leftist media had the nation convinced that the 2nd Amendment ratified in 1791 actually meant the National Guard established in 1903. You see, not only are the political left Time Travelers, being delusional with uncontrollable tyrannical tendencies to rewrite law, they also live in the fourth dimension where $8000 deductibles actually mean AFFORDABLE Health Care.

The factual argument is that all firearms were designed for the military or police at first and came into general use later (and here I except fully-automatic small arms and artillery for what should be obvious reasons). Everyone belonged to the militia - as all able-bodied Americans legally do today unless they are prohibited from membership by law.

The militia is defined as all able-bodied non-trans-gendered Americans who used to be able to pick up a 12 lb. musket in 1791, but have trouble picking up a 6 lb. AR today that can fire 30 times as many rounds as the musket. Military and civilian small arms have operated in the same fashion (select auto fire is the exception, and have not been available to the general public since the 1930s.)

David Derning:

What weapons are excluded? Those not in the common use by an individual citizen, such as poison gas or large artillery pieces. The phrase used in Heller, dangerous and unusual, is properly understood to refer to weapons of mass destruction.

For the record, there are over a half million fully automatic firearms in the hands of specially-licensed American citizens and collectors and they are never used in the commission of crimes.

THE REPEATING FIREARM EXISTED IN PRE-REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA

David Koppel of the Volokh Conspiracy, Washington TImes:

The first repeaters to be built in large quantities appear to be the 1646 Danish flintlocks that used a pair of tubular magazines, and could fire 30 shots without reloading. Like a modern lever-action rifle, the next shot was made ready by a simple two-step motion of the trigger guard. These guns were produced for the Danish and Dutch armies. Brown, at 106-7.

30 rounds, just like the modern AR-15 - exactly the kind of firearm the Founders had on mind when they referred to Shall Not Be Infringed.

David Kopell continues:

Gun-control advocates often argue that gun-control laws must be more restrictive than the original meaning of the Second Amendment would allow, because modern firearms are so different from the firearms of the late 18th century. This argument is based on ignorance of the history of firearms. It is true that in 1791 the most common firearms were handguns or long guns that had to be reloaded after every shot. But it is not true that repeating arms, which can fire multiple times without reloading, were unimagined in 1791. To the contrary, repeating arms long predate the 1606 founding of the first English colony in America.

Firearms technology and the original meaning of the Second Amendment

One of the men to credit for why repeating arms became much less expensive during the 19th century is James Madison, author of the Second Amendment

To function reliably, repeating firearms must have internal components that fit together very preciselymuch more precisely than is necessary for single-shot firearms. Before President Madison and Secretary Monroe started the manufacturing revolution, firearms were built one at a time by craftsmen.

THE REPEATING FIREARM IS EXACTLY WHAT THE FOUNDING FATHER HAD IN MIND

Koppel: What kind of repeating arms were available before 1815, when the Madison-Monroe mass production innovation program began? The state of the art was the Girandoni air rifle, invented around 1779 for Austrian army sharpshooters. Lewis and Clark would carry a Girandoni on their famous expedition, during the Jefferson administration. The Girandoni could shoot 21 or 22 bullets in .46 or .49 caliber without reloading. Ballistically equal to a firearm, a single shot from the Girandoni could penetrate a one-inch wood plank, or take an elk. (For more on the Girandoni, see my article The History of Firearms Magazines and Magazine Prohibitions, 88 Albany L. Rev. 849, 852-53 (2015).)

Liberals who neither know history, civics, understand law, or how to count, may be surprised to find that 1779, just like the existence of repeating firearms, came before 1791 when the Second Amendment was ratified. Conservatives dont find any of it surprising.

The first repeaters had been invented about three centuries before. The earliest-known model is a German breech-loading matchlock arquebus from around 1490-1530 with a 10-shot revolving cylinder. M.L. Brown, Firearms in Colonial America: The Impact on History and Technology, 1492-1792, 50 (1980). Henry VIII had a long gun that used a revolving cylinder (a revolver) for multiple shots. W.W. Greener, The Gun and Its Development, 81-82 (9th ed. 1910). A 16-round wheel lock dates from about 1580. Kopel, at 852.

Production of repeaters continued in the seventeenth century.

The only factor for repeating firearms not being common in the Revolutionary War was cost. They were prohibitively expensive to manufacture with any precision - and it was specifically precision that was required to manufacture firearms capable of self-reloading.

THE AR-15 - THE BARBIE DOLL FOR GUYS

Designed a half-century ago, the AR-15 was the later of many self-loading repeating firearms that came before and now are in common use for over a century. It is common and for that reason is validated by the Heller decision to be legal for all. It is popular because it is a universal, it is light and maneuverable, it is user friendly and fast, and it is a capable firearm free people demand for its varied purposes.

Andrew G, BenjaminAll Rights Reserved

David Kopel is Research Director, Independence Institute, Denver; Associate Policy Analyst, Cato Institute, D.C; and Adjunct professor, Denver University, Sturm College of Law. He is author of 17 books and 100 scholarly journal articles

Andrew G. Benjamin is a real estate and tax specialist, equities trader, a former economic advisor to New York city mayor Rudy Giuliani; serving on the transition teams Subcommittee on Taxation, Finance and the Budget. Benjamin also wrote extensively about intelligence, economic issues, the Mideast, terrorism, technology, high end audio and transnational politics.

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SECOND AMENDMENT PRIMER Part II - Canada Free Press

Gun rights can be a touchy topic, especially considering Virginia Techs past. I would like to start off by saying that when I advocate for gun rights and against gun-free zones, I do not seek to neglect the horrific mass shootings that have taken place on college campuses and around the United States.

The people of the United States have the right to own a firearm under the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which states: A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. Many politicians, specifically politicians on the left, seem to believe that this amendment needs to be updated or interpreted differently. As former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once said, The Constitution is not a living organism, it's a legal document, and it says what it says and doesn't say what it doesn't say."

As citizens, we know how inefficient and unorganized our government can be, so why should we trust our politicians when they say that we will be safe, if not safer, without our own personal protection? Personally, I would rather be in control of my safety, especially if it comes down to a life or death situation.

One of the ways the left is trying to take away gun rights is by passing an assault rifle ban. Not too long ago, I did not see a problem with banning assault rifles, as I assumed it meant militaristic rifles that the everyday American has no logical use for. However, I later found out the term assault rifle can mean whatever a politician wants it to mean. Politicians, primarily on the left, are misleading the American people by using terms that have no concrete meaning.

Another way the left has tried to take away gun rights is by implementing gun-free zones. A gun-free zone is exactly what is sounds like; its a place where citizens are not legally allowed to carry guns. In a fairytale, perhaps this would be a great idea. No one carries a gun, no shootings and no robberies, right? Wrong. The people who commit gun violence are not law-abiding citizens. If you havent noticed, murder and assault are already illegal. The law does not act as a deterrent for any of the people who have committed or wish to commit such acts.

The only people who truly abide by gun-free zones are the people who respect the law and have no intent of using their gun to harm an innocent person. These zones unarm the good guys and have no impact on the bad guys, essentially making citizens in a gun-free zone sitting ducks. Many gun-free zones are advertised as such. By advertising that a place is a gun-free zone, one is in turn announcing that those inside are defenseless, and therefore an easy target. Edmund Burke once said, The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. Politicians on the left are making it so that good men have no option but to do nothing.

The gun does not pull the trigger, just like a spoon doesnt make someone overweight. People make themselves overweight and people choose to pull the trigger.

Now that I have established that theres little logic behind creating extremely rigid gun laws, lets look at the lefts record of accomplishment, or in this case, the lack of such. Illinois is one of the top ten states with the strictest gun laws. Chicago, one of Illinois major cities, had 762 gun-related deaths in 2016 alone. This is the highest number of gun-related deaths the city has seen in 19 years. Detroit, the city with the second highest murder rate in the country, also has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country. In 2016, Detroit had 302 homicides.

These two cities not only have some of the harshest gun laws in the nation, but they also have some of the highest murder rates in the United States. A list of a few countries and regimes that were or still are gun-free zones include Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and now the struggling socialist country of Venezuela. These draconian gun laws are ineffective and illogical as shown by their inability to keep those residing inside safe and secure.

Our government should be promoting gun ownership rather than placing powerless laws on them. A great example of more armed citizens decreasing crime is Switzerland. In Switzerland, every man who is a citizen serves in the Swiss national military and is obligated to keep their rifle and ammunition in his home. As of 2010, Switzerland only had 0.5 gun-related deaths for every 100,000 citizens. As a conservative, I am not supportive of the government mandating that every U.S. male in the military own a personal gun, however, I do think politicians and citizens on the left need to realize that by un-arming themselves and other citizens, they are in fact creating more victims to gun-related deaths.

Another flaw in the gun control debate is that leftists fail to recognize the personal responsibility of the shooter. The gun does not pull the trigger, just like a spoon doesnt make someone overweight. People make themselves overweight and people choose to pull the trigger. The shooter makes a cognitive decision to pull the trigger and harm another person. If a student misspells a word on a spelling test should the teacher ban pencils? Of course not, so why should our government ban guns when someone misuses one? They shouldnt; a gun, like a pencil, is a tool. Theres no logic nor facts supporting that banning guns will work or has worked. As Ronald Reagan once said, We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker.

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Gun regulation: A shotty violation of Second Amendment rights - Virginia Tech Collegiate Times