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The Alabama Legislatures 2022 regular session ended recently, marking the conclusion of a successful quadrennium that began in 2019. Throughout four regular sessions and numerous special sessions, I am proud to say that my colleagues defended Alabamas conservative values, fought for hardworking Alabamians in every corner of our great state, and took significant steps to strengthen Alabamas future and economy.

In this past session alone, lawmakers helped spearhead $160 million worth of annual tax cuts for Alabama families, small businesses, farmers, and retirees.

Thanks to conservative fiscal management by the legislature in recent years, we were able to deliver these much-needed tax cuts to ease the burden on Alabamians without negatively affecting vital government services, such as law enforcement, infrastructure, and education.

At the same time, weve made historic strides toward expanding affordable, high-speed internet access to all Alabamians, regardless of their zip code. Senate Majority Leader Clay Scofield, R-Guntersville, has been a stalwart leader in this critical effort, and the result has been not only unprecedented investments and public-private partnerships related to broadband expansion, but also innovative, comprehensive planning that will guarantee resources are allocated strategically, efficiently, and as expeditiously as possible.

On that note, innovation has been an overarching theme of this quadrennium for the legislature.

Along with Governor Kay Ivey, her administration, legislative colleagues, and private sector stakeholders, we concluded our work with the Alabama Innovation Commission and put legislation in motion that formed the Alabama Innovation Corporation. I am honored to serve as an ex-officio board member as well vice-chair of the Corporation, and Im thrilled at the progress we have made in a short time at cementing the Yellowhammer State as a burgeoning hub for 21stcentury entrepreneurship and technology.

From electric vehicles and modern automotive manufacturing to the aerospace and defense industry, biomedicine, cutting-edge scientific research, precision agriculture, and landmark developments at the Port of Mobile, the Alabama Legislature has proactively supported the growth of well-paying jobs and greater opportunity in all 67 of our counties.

My colleagues have also been laser-focused at guaranteeing our workforce is able to meet the demands of a 21st century economy. While we still have work to do, this quadrennium fashioned several pieces of legislation that compensate and treat our teachers like the professionals they are while striving to see all our students reach their full potential.

Its certainly notable that Alabama Republicans tackled all of this while not compromising on our values, core beliefs, or way of life.

We took steps to further secure our elections, including a ban on curbside voting and limiting the influence that private funds have on elections in Alabama, ultimately strengthening the integrity of our elections. Even though wed put our election system and processes up to anyone elses nationwide, we can never stop working to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.

Additionally, Alabama Senate Republicans know that the Second Amendment codifies inalienable rights that we will never allow to be infringed. After years of work, my colleagues and I were elated to pass constitutional carry and the Second Amendment Preservation Act, pushing back on President Joe Bidens radical gun control agenda.

Finally, and most importantly, the Alabama Legislature has been a champion for the most critical right of all the sacred, God-given right to life. With the Supreme Court of the United States potentially on the cusp of overturning the disastrous Roe v. Wade decision, Alabama Republicans this quadrennium have prepared the people of our state for this very moment.

By passing a constitutional amendment declaring Alabama a pro-life state and passing the most pro-life law in the country, we are ready and willing for the State of Alabama to again have the power to protect the unborn. Nothing is more important than being a voice for the voiceless and protecting the most vulnerable among us.

In Fiscal Year 2022, the legislature made a $772 million investment in communities across the state with will impact Alabamians for generations. Lawmakers appropriated the first round of federal dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in January to assist with challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is imminent that we will be tasked with allocating a second round of federal dollars, and I am confident that we will again make fiscally sound investments for the future of all Alabamians

I am proud of the work the Alabama Legislature has accomplished these past four years, but Im also filled with hope for the future of our state knowing that the best is yet to come.

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Opinion | The conservative foundation is laid and Alabama is ready to build back better - Alabama Political Reporter

U.S. Rep. Bob Good handily defeated a challenge by Charlottesville native Dan Moy for the 5th District Republican nomination Saturday.

The GOP used a convention at Hampden-Sydney University for its selection process to pick a candidate for Novembers election.

Good will now face off with Charlottesville native Josh Throneburg, a Democrat, in a battle for a seat in Congress. Throneburg secured his partys nomination in April after Andy Parker failed to get an appropriate number of signatures needed to appear on a primary ballot.

I want to thank the delegates from across the 5th District who came to Farmville and took on the responsibility of electing their Republican nominee for Congress, Good said in a statement Saturday. I am humbled and honored that they have once again placed their trust in me to fight for their values in Washington.

Good secured his bid for reelection with 84% 1,488 to 271 of Saturdays votes. Among Halifax delegates, the vote was a bit closer at 52 for Good and 23 for Moy, according to the weighed calculations.

I want to congratulate Congressman Bob Good on his victory, Moy, who made a South Boston appearance in March to seek delegates for his campaign, said in a Saturday statement.

Now it is time to unite and focus on keeping the 5th District red, Moy said. I fully endorse him for his reelection and look forward to continuing to build the Republican committee in Charlottesville and support our nominee.

Good is running for his second term in the United States House of Representatives after winning the seat in 2020. He ousted then-U.S. Rep. Denver Riggleman in an unconventional GOP convention held drive-thru style amid the coronavirus pandemic.

While a majority of the sprawling 5th District remains the same and includes all of Halifax County newly redrawn maps added Goods hometown of Lynchburg as well as new counties in the east near Richmond.

Throneburg, who recently appeared at the TJM Community Center in Cluster Springs, said fewer than 2,000 of party faithful turned out for Saturdays convention, representing only 0.02% of the population Virginias 5th-District.

This district has lacked real representation for far too long, Throneburg said in a statement. The reality is that Bob Good failed the people he serves.

Throneburg said the sitting congressman hasnt passed notable legislation and failed to bring federal money to the district he serves.

On the other hand, Good in his Saturday statement after the convention pointed to 31 pieces of legislation hes introduced on issues from lockdowns to the Second Amendment.

From day one, I made serving my constituents a priority Good said. We didnt just wait for people to call us.

Good and his office have also helped more than 2,000 Virginians cut through bureaucratic red tape, his news release stated.

So far, we have helped our constituents recover over $9.5 million that was owed to them from the IRS, VA, Small Business Administration, Social Security and many more federal agencies, Good said.

Throneburg also attacked Goods endless culture wars in his release.

Ive been meeting with voters in this district for more than a year, and what I have heard over and over is that people here arent invested in partisan politics: what they want is a representative in DC who is looking out for them, not a person who is there to serve his own agenda and his own ambition. Thronburg said. Bob Goods two-year record demonstrates that his priorities dont lie with the district.

On the point of politics, Good blames the Democrats control of Washington for skyrocketing prices of gas, groceries and rent.

I believe voters are going to give Republicans a chance to control Congress and stop the Biden agenda in its tracks, Good said. We must rise to that challenge, and do what we say we are going to do.

Read more:
Good wins nomination in battle for 5th District - YourGV.com

The Second Amendment reads: 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.

Most people think that this amendment was included in the Constitution to protect the right to bear arms (i.e., firearms). However, when I read Carol Andersons interesting, well-written, and very well documented book The Second, it became clear to me that this was not really the case at all.

The Second Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights to assure the Southern states that they would be able to continue to have militias in order to put down slave revolts and to hunt down runaway slaves.

James Madison needed to keep the Southern states in the Union and on board for ratification of the Constitution. That required acquiescence to safeguarding their ability to continue slavery. The amendments to the Constitution that make up the Bill of Rights are about individual rights; therefore, the right to have a militia could not be included there. However, a militia needed armed men, and thus, the individual right to bear arms was a means to put the right to a militia in the Constitution and keep the Southern states in the Union.

Another aspect of the Second Amendment speaks about the right of the people to bear arms. People when the Constitution was drafted meant white male citizens. Black people, enslaved or free, were not considered citizens. Immediately after the ratification of the Constitution, all states but one (Vermont) passed laws prohibiting Black people from owning and using guns, presumably to make absolutely sure that the right to bear arms was a white right, not a universal right.

Thus, the Second Amendment assured white supremacy. Anderson shows clearly in her book that, to the present day, Black individuals who legally carry a gun are treated differently from white gun carriers by law enforcement, and this not infrequently leads to the killing of African Americans who were legally carrying a gun.

The U.S. Supreme Court ignored the militia part of the one-sentence Second Amendment in the Heller vs. District of Columbia decision in 2008 when it ruled, 5 to 4, that The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. This was essentially reaffirmed in the McDonald vs. Chicago decision of the Supreme Court in 2010 (also 5 to 4). There have been no state militias in the U.S. since the National Guard was established as replacement by the Militia Act of 1903.

The consequences of the Heller and McDonald Supreme Court rulings have been devastating. Gun ownership has skyrocketed in the U.S., contributing to the significant recent rise in gun homicides and injuries, as well as to suicides by guns, gun accidents, and use of deadly force by law enforcement who are afraid of people they deal with having a gun, legally or not.

The wording of the Second Amendment does not support the notion that the intent of the original framers was to guarantee in the Constitution an individuals right to own and use guns for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Rather, as pointed out in Andersons book, the right to bear firearms was connected to the need of the Southern states to have armed militias, consisting of white men to keep Black slaves in their place.

More mass shootings have occurred while I was writing this: 10 dead and 3 wounded in Buffalo in what appears to have been a white supremacist, anti-Black act of gun violence. And in Milwaukee at least 17 people were injured in a shooting where police recovered no less than 10 guns at the scene (likely handguns).

Why are we waiting to ban all semiautomatic rifles and all handguns outside ones home for which there is no traditionally lawful purpose. Self-defense in the home, if one sees a need for that, can be accomplished with a handgun provided that it is safely stored and fitted with a trigger-lock and has a limited magazine capacity.

And there is no place in the U.S. for ghost guns that circumvent any sort of regulation, such as universal background checks, age limits, red flag laws, stolen-gun reporting requirements, and so on.

How many more people have to die in the U.S. because of the lack of common-sense gun regulation and our misinterpretation of the Second Amendment?

Maarten Bosland, a former Oak Park resident, is a member of Gun Responsibility Advocates.

Excerpt from:
The Second Amendment revisited - Wednesday Journal

(WHTM) With one day left to make their final pitch to voters ahead of the May 17 primary general election, candidates made their way out across the state, including United States Senate candidate Carla Sands who attended a gun-rights rally.

Every day is a day for the second amendment, Sands said. Including, Sands says, the Monday after a weekend of mass shootings, including one in Buffalo, New York.

None of these tragedies trump our Second Amendment rights. We hold this right dear, along with all of our constitutional freedom, our constitutional rights, Sands said. She says the gun wasnt the problem.

The family knew, the community knew. They should have stepped in and a mental health expert should have helped and intervened in this situation, Sands said.

Democratic State Senate Leader Jay Costa says he is astonished. And to think that a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate is going to talk about gun rights on Monday, today, after the weekend after is astonishing and just simply irresponsible.

Costa says that the conversation should be focused elsewhere.

We should be talking about gun reform measures. We should be talking about the hate crimes that have spewed some of this stuff thats taken place. Thats what we should be talking about and having rallies around those types of things, Costa said.

Costas district in Pittsburg includes the Tree of Life Synagogue, which was the scene of another hate-related mass murder. And every time it happens, they have to relive it, Costa said. And its just frustrating that were going to be out there today in Mechanicsburg talking about promoting more guns.

A supporter of gun rights, and of Sands,s says times like this are exactly when you need to know which politicians support gun rights. Anthony Terrace remembers his days in the United States Air Force.

You could have a gun strapped to you. So just like I do here, and I think its not necessary in a way. But I think everybody should still have that right to carry their arms, Terrace said.

Sands is one of even Republican candidates for U.S. Senate, all strong supporters of gun rights. All four Democratic Senate candidates support more gun control, to varying degrees.

The primary election is on Tuesday, May 17. To see who is running for Pennsylvanias open U.S. Senate seat, click here.

Read more:
Astonishing or every day is a day for the second amendment? Sides spar over gun-rights rally - ABC27

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Another Supreme Court decision may soon send shock waves. Its the first time the justices will rule on what the Second Amendment means since 2010.

For centuries, the Second Amendment was construed as referring to service in the militia. It wasnt until 2008in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Court established an individual right to gun ownership. The decision was the culmination of a decades-long campaign by the National Rifle Association and other gun rights allies, as I wrote in my book The Second Amendment: A Biography. (Two years after Heller, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the Court forbade states, not just the federal governments, from infringing on the gun ownership rights recognized in Heller.)

The Supreme Court has not made a major Second Amendment ruling since 2010. Meanwhile, hundreds of judges around the country developed a robust approach to the Second Amendment, as my Brennan Center colleague Eric Ruben has documented. Yes, they have ruled, it is an individual right, but like other individual rights, there can be restrictions based on societys needs, such as public safety. The judges borrowed an approach from the First Amendment known as tiered scrutiny. The vast majority of gun laws were upheld.

Now theres a new Supreme Court supermajority of six justices. The NRA is bankrupt and discredited, but its political power lives on in the lifetime-tenured justices, many of whom the organization pushed into power. This case is the result.

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen challenges a 1913New York law limiting who can carry a concealed weapon in public places. In order to get a concealed carry license, New Yorkers must show that they have proper cause basically a greater need for self-protection than others in the community. The laws challengers contend that the Second Amendment guarantees them the right to carry a concealed weapon without the permission of a licensor.

At the oral argument, Justice Samuel Alito asked New York States lawyer a startling question: There are a lot of armed people on the streets of New York and in the subways late at night right now, arent there? Alito added, All these people with illegal guns: theyre on the subway, walking around the streets, but ordinary, hardworking, law-abiding people, no. They cant be armed.

The suggestion that anyone would want subway riders to be carrying guns is absurd. Perhaps the justice is spending too much time in his basement watching 1970s Betamax tapes of The Warriors or Death Wish. That dystopian depiction of the transit system hasnt been the reality in decades, if ever. Indeed, in Essex County, New Jersey where Alito grew up, population approximately 800,000 there were more than 150shootings last year. Comparatively, the subway system recorded just three in the same time frame, while moving hundreds of millions of passengers.

The idea that ordinary, hardworking, law-abiding people should show up armed on a subway, or a college campus, or for that matter a city street, is utterly at odds with the real world and real life as real people actually live it. But this Court, drenched in dogma and originalist faux-history, may force that on cities all across the country.

Perhaps they will rule that cities can bar guns from unusually dangerous places. (The argument spent a surprising amount of time on the question of whether the campus of the NYU School of Law was, in fact, a campus, or was too groovily urban to be seen that way.)

Some observers expect Justice Clarence Thomas to write this opinion. He has repeatedly decried the Courts unwillingness to blow up gun laws. He thinks that there should not be First Amendment-style scrutiny but rather a sole focus on text, history, and tradition.

Fortunately, there is much history and tradition that supports restrictions on carrying weapons. We may hear Hollywood-infused ideas of law-abiding people packing heat. In fact theres a striking photo from Dodge City, the legendary frontier town. It shows a sign plantedin the middle of its main street: The Carrying of Fire Arms Strictly Prohibited.

Bruen may be a bigger case than Heller. Only a handful of American cities had DC-style bans on handguns inside the owners home, so the Heller decision didnt touch most of the country. In contrast, eight heavily populated states have concealed carry laws similar to the one at issue in Bruen. If the Court strikes down New Yorks law, roughly one-quarter of Americans can expect to interact with people carrying deadly weapons.

The Supreme Court could issue a more limited ruling in Bruen, for example rescinding the proper cause requirement of the New York law without declaring an absolute constitutional right to concealed carry. But recent history suggests these justices arent interested in limited rulings. Watch out for falling precedents.

Remember what Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote Heller, said of his colleague Clarence Thomas. When asked about the difference between their jurisprudence, Scalia replied, I am a textualist. I am an originalist. I am not a nut.

Read more:
After Abortion, Will the Justices Turn to Concealed Carry Laws? - brennancenter.org