THE LANDMARK SECOND AMENDMENT CASE, ANTONYUK VERSUS JAMES, RESTS IN A STATE OF SUSPENDED ANIMATION. IT IS TIME TO WAKEN IT FROM AN INDUCED SLUMBER. WE EXPLAIN HOW.

We, at the Arbalest Quarrel have, since April 25, 2025, hammered the U.S. Supreme Court’s denial of Petitioners’ Petition for a Writ of Certiorari in Antonyuk vs. James, 120 F.4th 941 (2nd Cir. 2024) cert. denied, 2025 U.S. LEXIS, 1384, 145 S. Ct. 1900 (2025).

The legacy Press, including broadcast and cable TV and radio news outlets, and weblogs, podcasts, and social media sites (the few that followed the case and had provided commentary on it during the lengthy prosecution of Antonyuk), fail to assert (if they bother to consider at all) the importance of the case to the preservation of the Republic.

The Natural Law Right codified in the Second Amendment of the Nation’s Bill of Rights wasn’t an afterthought to the Constitution’s Framers who drafted it and who insisted on incorporating it into the Constitution, as a crucial component of the Bill of Rights. Nor did the States—that ratified the Bill of Rights in 1791—object to its insertion.

The States were certainly cognizant of the crucial need for a citizen army as necessary to the Security of a Free State. Freedom and liberty cannot exist in practice without an armed citizenry as Supreme and Sole Sovereign over the government and the Nation.

An elemental tension exists between the citizenry of a nation and a nation’s government. If the former (the citizenry) loses control over the latter (government), then tyranny results. Tyranny is inevitable.

Tyranny is the natural state of government—ALL GOVERNMENT. Most political entities—nations, tight or loose groupings or confederations of nations, and empires—start as despotic structures at inception.

This result is inevitable, absent a powerful, counterbalancing force, existent in the people.  

A “Tyranny” is a Despotic regime that unlawfully, wrests power that, in a political entity’s commencement, resides in the people, as supreme sovereign over both nation and government. The process, where, as here in our Nation, starts and proceeds through a lengthy, subtle, meticulously designed program, where nefarious elements both inside the nation and outside it, insidiously misuse a government’s levers of power against the nation’s true and sole sovereign: The nation’s citizenry.

The deliberate contortion of, misappropriation of, and misapplication of a nation’s constitution and laws to affect a reversal of ultimate authority and power, properly residing in the people, in the first instance, to a duplicitous, treacherous, government in the next instance, is the hallmark of Tyranny.

The framers of the United States Constitution were well aware of the danger posed by government due to its inherent nature to exert absolute control over the people if its power and authority were left unchecked.

The “Checks and Balances” set forth in the Constitution’s Articles, as ratified by the States, on June 21, 1788, may mitigate the devolution of a Nation, founded as a Republic, to a de facto State of Tyranny, but would not alone prevent that eventual occurrence. The Constitution, long ignored, would be eliminated, and a new one crafted, legitimizing the Autocratic State both as de jure law and in practice. No entity can be expected to properly police itself. The wielding of power creates a desire for the accumulation of more and more power, weakening, and ultimately overtaking one’s moral compass to resist negative, harmful impulses, destructive to one’s soul and to the soul of the Nation.

The Antifederalists among the Nation’s founders knew well that mitigating the natural tendency of a powerful government through the construction of words purporting to be adequate safeguards within the Constitution, however ingeniously conceived and adroitly crafted, is insufficient to effectively ward off tyranny.

At best, the “Checks and Balances’ of the Articles could slow the descent of Government into Tyranny, but would not prevent its eventual rise, cementing autocracy in the Nation, dooming the American people (the “Common Man”) to an existence of perpetual penury, enslavement and misery. The Antifederalists proposed—in fact, insisted upon—a written Bill of Rights, to be incorporated into the Articles.

The armed citizenry is necessary to constrain the tendency of government, as TYRANT, to exert control over the populace.

The Nation’s Bill of Rights was ratified by three-fourths of the States, on December 15, 1791, and thereby cemented into the Constitution.

Unlike such statements of rights and liberties crafted by the dubious United Nations and adopted in one form or another by various nations including those comprising the European Union, the Bill of Rights of the United States is no mere statement of lofty, but vapid, aims and sentiments. The Bill of Rights of the United States is both an assertion of PREEXISTING, ETERNAL, NATURAL LAW RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES, INTRINSIC IN MAN, EXISTENT IN MAN PRIOR TO GOVERNMENT, AS BESTOWED IN MAN BY THE DIVINE CREATOR (AND THEREFORE NOT AN IDEATION AND CREATION OF GOVERNMENT), but an ASSERTION OF POWERS THAT CANNOT LAWFULLY BE DIMINISHED, MODIFIED, OR ABROGATED, BY GOVERNMENT, OR REPEALED BY CONGRESS AND THE STATES. The WORDS MIGHT BE REPEALED, BUT THOSE WORDS ARE MERE CODIFICATION OF UNCONDITIONAL, ETERNAL RIGHTS. Of those NATURAL LAW RIGHTS delineated, “THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS” IS MORE THAN A RIGHT, IT IS A POWER, AN EFFECTIVE POWER AGAINST THE INSINUATION OF TYRANNY ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

The armed citizenry is necessary to constrain the tendency of government, to exert control over the populace. Unsurprisingly, the ostensible rights and liberties extolled by other nations—to the extent rights and liberties of the populations of those nations are asserted at all—do not include the right of the people to keep and bear arms, apart from two remaining countries, apart from the U.S. Those two countries are Mexico and Guatemala.

But the Constitutions of those two Countries severely constrain the acquisition, possession, types of weapons that can be borne and kept by the respective nation’s people, and the use of the weapons.

The applicable language, “shall not be infringed” is noticeably absent from the language purportedly recognizing a right to keep and bear arms. See the article in Business Insider.

Yet, even in our Country, destructive forces antithetical to the notion of an armed citizenry (as “necessary to the security of a Free State”) constantly, devise schemes to severely constrain the right/power of the American citizenry to keep and bear arms.

The reasons propagated by a sympathetic, seditious Press and Social Media mill, to woo the people away from their birthright, may sound plausible to some, but are, on reflection, unsound and fallacious. They are meant as a cover-story to hide a horrific aim—the destruction of a Free Constitutional Republic—replacing that Free Republic into an all-powerful, autocratic regime, a Tyranny, a government not answerable to the people.

Virulent Anti-Second Administrations, including the Biden-Harris and Obama Administrations, and Anti-Second Amendment members of Congress, and thirteen States (rated “A” or “A minus” by the “Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence,” in 2024), seek to constrain the exercise of the Right to Armed Self-Defense.

See chart in World Population Review——

These States include those in the Mid-Atlantic Region, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland; and those states in the New England Region (Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island); one Midwestern State, Illinois; the States on the West Coast (Washington State, Oregon, and California)'; and Hawaii, the lone State in the Polynesia subregion; and the District of Columbia.

In our tripartite system of Government, consisting of three co-equal Branches, the third Branch of the Federal Government, the U.S. Supreme Court, has traditionally received sporadic attention.

Some scholars maintain that the Founders did not intend for the Supreme Court to have a significant role in the functioning of the Federal Government. That is false. But it is a persistent belief among some.

Indeed, Democrats wish to pass a court packing plan resembling President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s original 1937 proposal, to ensure rulings favorable to their political agenda, thereby ensuring that the Supreme Court operates in a subordinate capacity.

If Democrats achieved their goal, the U.S. Supreme Court would become nothing more than an extension of Congress. The Court would exist simply as a puppet of Congress, existing merely to give its imprimatur—a rubber stamp—on Congressional policy objectives.

With the Democratic Party inexorably coalescing into the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and/or the Socialist Party USA (SPUSA), or taking its cue from those parties, the Country is rapidly dividing into two distinct, irreconcilable camps: Those of us wishing to keep the promise of the American Revolution alive, in strict accordance with the U.S. Constitution, the Blueprint of a Free Constitutional Republic, and those people who seek the Country’s total demise—extending to erasure of the Freedoms and Liberties codified in the Nation’s Bill of Rights. the bulwark of our Free Republic.

No clearer evidence of this GREAT DIVIDE in our Country is there than as seen in the kinds of cases before the Supreme Court in recent years.

The Court has come under substantial scrutiny as a result. But is it up to the task? We have our doubts.

Several cases before the High Court challenge State actions that infringe on Fundamental Rights, including Religious Freedom, Free Speech, and the Right to Armed Self-Defense.

All Fundamental Natural Law Rights are essential to preservation of a Free Constitutional Republic.

But the Federal Government and many of the States have, through time, whittled away at the citizenry’s cherished rights.

Americans have witnessed constant attacks on the First Amendment Freedom of Speech, and the near annihilation of the Right of the People to be Free from Unreasonable Searches and Seizures—as most information, today, is digital and digital information is difficult to keep confidential.

Where information is King, Government, Businesses, and Criminals (National and International) wish to gain access to all of it.

One’s identity is difficult to hold onto. A person’s hopes, dreams, and fears are easy to tap into, and one’s belief systems are malleable, subject to manipulation, shaped by propagandists and social media influencers.

Substantial numbers of Americans fall prey to widespread social and psychological programing, but most, fortunately, remain inured to this.

Those Americans who recognize the importance of the Nation’s fundamental, natural law rights tend to be able to resist social and psychological tactics aimed at breaking down the psyche.

Of all the Natural Law Rights, the most vital is the Right codified in the Second Amendment.

For close to a century, after the States ratified the Bill of Rights, there were no challenges to State or Federal action, as no need arose for that, as unconstitutional, unconscionable action was either rare or nonexistent.

But, in the late Nineteenth Century and throughout the Twentieth Century, cases began to materialize, concomitant with Government action beginning to intrude on the Americans’ basic Rights.

The recent Second Amendment case, Antonyuk vs. James, arose as a direct challenge to New York’s failure to adhere to the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Court’s third landmark case, NYSRPA vs. Bruen.

Well after two and a half years of litigation, the case came back to the U.S. Supreme Court on a second Petition for Writ of Certiorari.

Those Americans who cherish the Right to Armed Self-Defense were pleased to see the case set for a vote by the Justices at conference.

They had every reason to expect the Court to garner at least four votes necessary to grant review of the case. After all, the New York Government had blatantly and contemptuously rebuffed the Court and its rulings. Far from adhering to the Court’s rulings that were first and foremost directed at the State’s Handgun Law, the Government’s amendments demonstrated plain disregard for those rulings, inviting a challenge that came quickly.

One would have every reason to expect the Supreme Court to grant review of a case grounded on a government’s disregard of the Court’s rulings. Yet, that did not happen.

The Court perfunctorily denied review in its order of April 2025.

This was so unexpected as to invite incredulity. What happened next invited yet more incredulity.

Once the U.S. Supreme Court rejects a Petition for Writ of Certiorari, the Clerk remands the case back to the state or federal appellate court from which the appeal originated. The Clerk sends the case to the appellate court immediately. This occurred.

In the case at bar, the Clerk of the U.S. Supreme Court sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. That was the Court from which the Antonyuk Petitioners appealed the adverse decision of the Federal Appellate Court.

What happened next is perplexing, predicated on the basis of what we know at the time of posting of this article.

The Second Circuit seemingly continues to retain jurisdiction over the case; but no actions have been taken to advance its proceedings.

If the Appellate Court sent the case back down to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, as the Second Circuit had said it would do prior to staying that action when Antonyuk Plaintiff- Petitioners filed their Writ of Certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, one would presume that the Second Circuit would have remanded the case back to the District Court, to the lower Federal District Court, in accordance with the Appellate Court’s original order, and would have done so immediately, once the U.S. Supreme Court denied review of it. But there was no public pronouncement or other indication that this has occurred. 

If Petitioners had appealed from a final order of the Second Circuit, and assuming no new evidence arose in the case after the Supreme Court denied review of it, the case would now be at an end. But the Petition for a Writ of Certiorari was filed when the case was in a non-final condition. The Second Circuit had vacated most of the order of the lower District Court that had granted the Petitioners’ Motion for a Preliminary Injunction.

However, if new evidence did arise after denial of Petitioners Writ of Certiorari, notwithstanding that the particulars of the case being in a non-final condition, the Antonyuk Petitioners could still have filed a request for reconsideration of the denial of review based on such new evidence that came to its attention. The U.S. Supreme Court Rules allow for that. But we surmise no new evidence arose after the fact, and so, the Petitioners did not file a request for reconsideration. In any event there is a time constraint in the rules for a petitioner to file a request for reconsideration based on new evidence, if such comes to light after the fact.

A few commentators had surmised the U.S. Supreme Court denied Petitioners’ Petition simply because the case wasn’t ripe for appeal as the Second Circuit hadn’t rendered a final judgment on the case.

The case was still under a preliminary injunction, granted by the lower Court that the Second Circuit had subsequently vacated. But, if the U.S. Supreme Court was truly interested in this case, as the Court’s issuance of a “GVA” * indicated, then why didn’t the High Court issue a new GVA, pertaining to the Petitioners’ second Petition, making clear its desire to take up the case if the Appellate Court still denies the Petitioners the relief sought.

__________

*A GVA is a shorthand descriptor referring to an action of the High Court when it grants a Petition, vacates the decision of the lower Appellate Court from where the Petition was taken, and remands the case back to the Appellate Court to reconsider its prior decision, consistent with the U.S., Supreme Court’s order to it.

_________

But, after denial of Petitioners Writ of Certiorari, the Second Circuit may have resisted remanding the case and would do nothing more with the case. *

After all, the New York State Government had everything it wanted. It could continue to enforce most of the amendments to the Handgun Law, as the heart of those amendments were left untouched, by the Second Circuit that had vacated the lower (trial) Court’s granting of the Plaintiff-Petitioners’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction. Obviously, the Second Circuit was sympathetic to the Anti-Second Amendment predispositions of the New York Hochul Government.

So, then, what is the status of the Antonyuk case?

The Second Circuit has an obligation to pursue the case to final judgment, consistent with its own orders.

In the Second Circuit’s rulings, from which the Antonyuk Petitioners appealed, the Court said this:

For the reasons stated above, we MODIFY and AFFIRM the district court's injunction as to § 265.01-d to enjoin enforcement of that provision only with respect to private property open to the public; and REMAND the preliminary injunction as to § 265.01-d with respect to private property not open to the public for further merits analysis consistent with this opinion.

CONCLUSION

For the reasons stated above, we AFFIRM the injunction in part, VACATE in part, and REMAND for proceedings consistent with this opinion. In summary, we uphold the district court's injunctions with respect to N.Y. Penal L. § 400.00(1)(o)(iv) (social media disclosure) and N.Y. Penal L. § 265.01-d (restricted locations) as applied to private property held open to the general public. We vacate the injunction in all other respects, having concluded either that the district court lacked jurisdiction because no plaintiff had Article III standing to challenge the laws or that the challenged laws do not violate the Constitution on their face.

Did the Second Circuit deliberately keep the case in a non-final condition to forestall a Petition? If so, that didn’t stop the Petitioners from filing their Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Petitioners may have thought the Second Circuit was deliberately stalling for time on behalf of the State. Petitioners had no desire to play that game.

Moreover, Associate Justice Samuel Alito had previously warned the New York Government (and, by extension, the Second Circuit), not to dawdle on this case, which the Second Circuit decided to do anyway.

The Petitioners had every reason to believe that the Justices would see through the ruse played by the Second Circuit. And, even if some minor issues were left to be resolved (and what those are isn’t so clear from a perusal of the Order), the U.S. Supreme Court is not constrained from granting review on a case where, as here, justice demands review.

In accordance with the Rules of the Second Circuit, the Appellate Court is required to send the case to the lower court—in this instance, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York since it was the Federal District Court that had granted Petitioners’ Motion for a Preliminary Injunction, back in 2022. But the Second Circuit never did remand the case to the District Court after it received the case from the Clerk of the U.S. Supreme Court.

To the best of our knowledge and belief, the case IS STILL SITTING at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Why is that?

Of course, when the Antonyuk Petitioners appealed the case, the Second Circuit was required to stay any further action on it, pending the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the Petition. But, after the High Court acted, there is no reason for the Appellate Court to continue to hold onto the case. It must return the case to the District Court for action OR provide a reason for the delay in remanding the case to the District Court, if the Appellate Court chooses to hold onto it. Yet the Second Circuit has done neither one of those things.

If the Court refuses to remand the case and refuses, also, to provide a reason for why it has not remanded and will not remand the case to the District Court, then this must mean that the Second Circuit is deliberately stalling to prevent further prosecution of it. In that event, Counsel for the Petitioners would have reason enough to file a special Writ to the Supreme Court requesting the High Court to order the Second Circuit to remand the case immediately to the District Court so that the case can eventually come to a final resolution. And then, the Petitioners can file their “THIRD PETITION” to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court would then be hard-pressed to deny Petitioners’ Writ of Certiorari at that point.

Now, if attorneys for Petitioners have contacted the Second Circuit to ascertain why it is that the Appellate Court has not remanded the case to the District Court, we have not found any evidence of that. Such filings should be part of the public record.

We will pursue further analysis of this matter and also discuss what we see as a failing on the part of the Supreme Court, too, for having denied review of the case when, under the Court’s own rules, there was every good reason to grant review, and no rational reason to deny review.

Antonyuk vs. James is much too important to the preservation of the Republic, and to the sanctity of the Right codified in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to allow it to wither on the vine, indefinitely.

Our Country is slowly going to the dogs with the Radical Leftist subverting our core values and our most cherished Rights.

Four years of destructive policies instituted by the Biden-Harris Administration has devastated our Country on all indices.

President Trump has, through Herculean effort, done much to repair the massive harm wrought by the Marxists in Congress and by the Biden people.

Many of the lower Courts are working with the Marxists to create hurdles for Trump. And the U.S. Supreme Court for its part is doing precious little to combat harm engineered by the lower courts on behalf of seditious groups like the ACLU and a number of Leftist NGOs.

Our efforts go to protect and defend the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms. The linchpin to that effort rests with landmark Second Amendment cases.

Antonyuk was on track to become such fourth landmark case, and it can still become THAT FOURTH LANDMARK CASE. We are doing what we can to see that this comes to fruition.

__________________________________

ANTONYUK VERSUS JAMES: CRITICAL UNFINISHED BUSINESS—THE SUPREME COURT HAS FAILED TO DEFEND OUR MOST VITAL NATURAL LAW RIGHT

Trying to comprehend the nuances of Second Amendment litigation, let alone attempting to untangle the labyrinthine tortuous maze of Court filings, is all too often an exercise in futility.

Litigation descends into an abundance of Court filings—difficult to get a handle on—and often spawning a slew of companion cases, each with its own torrent of filings, further adding to the confusion.

This invariably results in lengthy (often years-long) delay in resolution and therein frustration for plaintiffs who wish only to exercise their Natural Law God-Given Right to Armed Self-Defense, without State resistance, but unable to do so, leading to visible anxiety, frustration, and understandable anger.

The monetary costs to and psychological costs for Americans take its toll.

This, unfortunately, is by design. Anti-Second Amendment States like New York, New Jersey, California, Illinois, Hawaii, and others, know this. They take advantage of this, trusting, expecting, that Americans will lose patience and/or money, and courts will delay review. Time and money are always on the side of the State.

Pro-Second Amendment groups that represent plaintiffs will acknowledge their frustration, but are ever hurrying onto the next case, for there will always be more cases to file.

BUT——as with many things in life, there is a pecking order.

No less is true of legal matters that go to State infringement of the Natural Law right to armed self-defense.

Some may argue that all court challenges to State or Federal Government action affecting the right codified in the Second Amendment have equal significance. They don’t. Yet, that false belief gives Pro Second Amendment organizations an excuse to drop every case that seems to be a losing proposition, and hurry onto the next one, hoping for, trusting for an optimum result.

Some cases, namely, and particularly, the three Twenty-First Century cases: District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 128 S. Ct. 2783 (2008), McDonald vs. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 130 S. Ct. 3020 (2010), and New York State Rifle and Pistol Association (NYSRPA) vs. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022) stand out as landmark Second Amendment cases and are rightly considered as  such.

Suppose counsel for those cases were quick to drop prosecution at the first obstacle they came across. Where would we Americans be then?

Heller arose as a challenge to the District of Columbia’s universal ban on handguns and to the requirement that all firearms that are kept in the home must be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device that renders them non-operational in an emergency, thereby defeating the purpose for which one keeps them in the home.

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down both the ban on handguns and the requirement that firearms kept in the home must be rendered inoperable.

Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, said, “In sum, we hold that the District's ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as  does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense.”

If the High Court had limited its review to those narrow issues, then those rulings alone would still be of paramount significance, and Heller would go down in Supreme Court jurisprudential history for those rulings alone.

But three of the Justices did not rest content with a ruling that handguns, as one broad category of firearms, falls within the core protection of the Second Amendment.

Associate Justices, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, saw, in the actions of the D.C. Government, an intentional, insidious, and dangerous attempt to gradually, inexorably erode the touchstone of Freedom and Liberty—the right of the people to keep and bear arms, without which a truly Free Constitutional Republic cannot logically exist.

Moreover, they must have realized, although Scalia never explicitly stated this in the Heller majority opinion he penned, that, holding handguns, or any other category of firearms, as falling within the core of the Natural Law Right, is meaningless if the Right does not reside in the Common Man, himself. Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito therefore realized the need to make clear and categorical what the Supreme Court had heretofore failed to do. These jurists stated as what the Framers of the Second Amendment intended by the plain words of it, which all too many States and the Federal Government blatantly denied—that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is an individual right, accruing to each American.

The prefatory clause serves as a rationale for the Right, to resist the onset of Tyranny in the Nation, and not—as Government has made a pretense of insisting upon, and which the U.S. Supreme Court has, heretofore, acceded to—a limitation on the individual’s exercise of it, which would weaken the peoples’ ability and resolve to prevent tyranny.

To deny the intrinsic quality of the Right—existent in Man, himself, preexistent and eternal, prior to any transient, conditional artifice of Man, such as “Government” and other institutions crafted by Man—would amount to qualifying and denigrating its essential nature, the vitalness of it, thereby trivializing it.

These jurists, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito knew that, if one jurisdiction can ban an entire category of firearms in common use, what then would prevent other jurisdictions as well as the Federal Government from following suit and eventually instituting a wholesale ban on all firearms. And what would prevent each jurisdiction going its own way, determining for itself the parameters and scope of the right, and the boundaries of it, and undermining the very notion of the Natural Law eternal, indivisible nature of it.

Was not the right, and its exercise by the Common Man, understood to constrain Government? How then can the Right to armed self-defense serve to constrain Government predisposed to Tyranny, if that Government should itself preordain the limits of that Right, or whether the people, the Common Man, should be allowed to exercise  at all?

When a crucial Second Amendment case comes before the Supreme Court on a writ of certiorari, the Court, if conscientious, should take the case up on review, and clamp down on those brazen Government actions that dare to infringe the core of it.

The U.S. Supreme Court had not taken up a Second Amendment challenge until the late 1800s.

And, when the Court did begin to review Federal Government and State actions, the Court’s rulings have reflected acquiescence to State and Federal Government actions that severely constrain unfettered exercise of the right to armed self-defense.

This disturbing trend, although gradual and inexorable throughout the Twentieth Century, was plainly noticeable to Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito. They would not allow this trend to continue into the Twenty-First Century. Heller became an appropriate vehicle upon which to bring to Government an understanding of the import and purport of the Right, consistent with the intent of the Framers.

To prevent inevitable de facto erasure of the Second Amendment, the three Associate Justices—joined, albeit reluctantly, by Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy—held clearly, concisely, and categorically that the Right of the people to keep and bear arms operates as an individual right, a right unconnected to a person’s association with a militia. In that respect, the Right to armed self-defense, is like any other Natural Law Right, such as the Right to Free Speech, the Right to Freedom of Religion, the Right to own Property, and the Right to be Free from Unreasonable Searches and Seizures.

The Heller rulings were met with opposition from states that abhor the Second Amendment. These states would not adhere to the Heller rulings. Instead, relying on earlier case law dicta, these jurisdictions asserted that Heller applied solely to the Federal Government, not to them.

Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito would not allow intractable States to defy Heller.

In McDonald vs. City of Chicago, these Associate Justices, with the backing, once again, of Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Kennedy, held the Right to Armed Self-defense applies to the states, no less so than to the Federal Government.

Two landmark cases, Heller and McDonald now place precise and stringent parameters on both the states and the Federal Government.

But stubborn states would, through time, continue to probe for weaknesses in Heller and McDonald—at times ignoring the rulings of the Court outright—emphatically and shamelessly pushing the boundaries of ostensible permissible state action, impinging upon the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms.

The THIRD potential major Second Amendment case to wend its way to the U.S. Supreme Court came five years after McDonald.

In 2015 the plaintiffs in Friedman vs. City of Highland Park, Illinois, 577 U.S. 1039, 136 S. Ct. 447 (2015), filed a lawsuit challenging the City Code that,

“gave anyone who legally possessed ‘an Assault Weapon or Large Capacity Magazine’ 60 days to move these items outside City limits, disable them, or surrender them for destruction. . . . Anyone who violates the ordinance can be imprisoned for up to six months, fined up to $1,000, or both.”

The U.S. Supreme Court should have taken this case up. It didn’t. The failure to do so has led to a myriad of problems for Americans who own or wish to own semiautomatic weapons.

Justice Thomas wrote a blistering dissent, joined by Justice Scalia. Justice Alito could have joined them and likely would have wished to do so but may have decided to bow out, letting the Chief Justice and the Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, save face.

The issue of semiautomatic weapons—all in common use—would come to haunt the Court for the next ten years as the issue would come to the Court’s attention once again, and most prominently, in Harrel vs. Raoul, 144 S. Ct. 2491, 219 L. Ed. 2d 1333 (2024), and yet a third time, eleven months after Harrel, in Snope vs. Brown, 145 S. Ct. 1534 (2025).

Justice Scalia would not take part in the voting on whether to review either one of those two cases, for he had died under mysterious circumstances, fourteen months after the Court denied certiorari in the Friedman case.

The Roberts Court would thereafter continue to deny review of any case involving the constitutionality of semiautomatic weapons in common use.

Justices Thomas and Alito did dissent from the failure of the Court to garner sufficient votes in Harrel or Snope to review State bans on semiautomatic guns in common use.

Harrel is particularly of interest and concern because the ban on AR-15 style weapons mirrors the issue in Friedman an earlier Illinois case.

And, whereas Friedman dealt with a Citywide ordinance, the Harrel case involved a ban on AR-15 weaponry embracing the entire State.

Perhaps the Highland Park ordinance in Friedman was testing the waters. When the Illinois Government saw the U.S. Supreme Court blink in Friedman, it likely decided to ban AR-15 style weapons throughout the State, figuring it could get away with a blatantly unconstitutional, unconscionable restriction. Apparently, it could. Without the clout of three senior originalists on the Bench, after the death of Scalia, Chief Justice Roberts likely felt he could quarantine Justices Thomas and Alito. Plainly, John Roberts has no intention of having the Court hold that semiautomatic weapons, as weapons that are in obviously in common use, fall within the core of the Second Amendment right. His antipathy toward the Second Amendment is abundantly clear.

That semiautomatic weapons are in common use, is not open to any credible debate. “The Gun Zone,” writes,

Estimating the precise number of semi-automatic firearms in the United States is notoriously challenging, but credible estimates place the figure above 100 million. This vast number underscores the widespread availability and popularity of these firearms, influencing debates on gun control, public safety, and the Second Amendment. . . .

The sheer number of semi-automatic firearms in the U.S. is a central point of contention in debates about gun violence and regulation. Proponents of stricter gun control argue that the widespread availability of these firearms contributes to mass shootings and other forms of gun violence. They advocate for measures such as bans on certain types of semi-automatic firearms, restrictions on magazine capacity, and universal background checks.

Opponents of stricter gun control argue that semi-automatic firearms are commonly used for self-defense, hunting, and sport shooting. They contend that restricting access to these firearms would infringe on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. They advocate for alternative approaches to reducing gun violence, such as improving mental health services and enforcing existing gun laws. The debate is complex and involves deeply held beliefs on both sides.

Roberts makes a point of asserting that the Supreme Court is not swayed by political concerns. The statement is not only false, but absurd. This is plain from his failure to take up Second Amendment cases that would tend to become landmark cases. As Chief Justice, he has considerable control over the Court docket, and sets the tone and themes, guiding which cases are to be reviewed. See the article in legalclarity.org, published on August 21, 2025.

The Chief Justice of the United States holds a unique and significant position within the American legal system, serving as the head of the judicial branch. This role is distinct from the other eight Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, encompassing both judicial leadership and extensive administrative duties. The Chief Justice’s responsibilities extend beyond simply hearing cases, establishing them as a central figure in the federal judiciary.

The Chief Justice presides over the Supreme Court’s public sessions, including oral arguments, guiding the questioning and ensuring orderly proceedings. This leadership extends to the private conferences where the Justices discuss cases and cast preliminary votes. The Chief Justice also influences the Court’s docket by creating a “discuss list” of cases that merit consideration for review.

A significant power of the Chief Justice is the authority to assign the writing of the majority opinion when they are part of the majority. This power allows the Chief Justice to influence the development of legal precedent by choosing which Justice will articulate the Court’s reasoning. While the Chief Justice leads these proceedings and discussions, their vote on a case carries the same weight as that of any other Associate Justice.

From the above brief discussion of Heller, McDonald, and cases that involve state bans on semiautomatic arms in common use, a person gains an inkling of those type of “gun” cases that the U.S. Supreme Court, under John Roberts, shies away from: cases that involve challenges directed to State bans on firearms in common use; challenges directed to the import and scope of historical tradition as the test that courts of review must utilize in lieu of interest balancing that the High Court in Heller struck down; challenges directed to the Federal Government’s use of the commerce clause to regulate an American’s right to armed self-defense; and, the parameters of State exercise of its police powers to constrain an American’s right to armed self-defense, codified in the Second Amendment.

The above issues beg for U.S. Supreme Court scrutiny, but the Court is hesitant to provide clarification apropos of State and Federal Government regulation.

NYSRPA vs. Bruen was the last Second Amendment case the High Court took up that can be properly inferred as a Landmark case.

John Roberts adamantly refuses to have the Court weigh in on the issue of weapons in common use, despite conflict in the circuits.

Roberts is evidently more concerned over incurring the wrath of a rabid Anti-Second Amendment mob, manipulated by and egged on by wealthy, powerful Anti-Second Amendment NGOs, and much less concerned over protecting and defending the Nation’s Bill of Rights—especially, the Nation’s most vital Right: The Natural Law Right to Armed Self-Defense.

This brings us to the most important Second Amendment case since Bruen, that fizzled out when the U.S. Supreme Court denied the Petition for Writ of Certiorari, without dissenting comment, wherefrom the Petitioners’ appeal of an adverse decision was taken.

The case is Antonyuk v. James, No. 24-795, 2025 U.S. LEXIS 1384, 145 S. Ct. 1900, 221 L. Ed. 2d 646, 2025 WL 1020368 (U.S. Apr. 7, 2025). The Court stated, “Petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied.”

The perfunctory denial belies the importance of the case. Why did not the High Court grant review, or, otherwise act as it did in respect to the Antonyuk Petitioners first Petition for a Writ of Certiorari. In that case, the Court issued a “GVR,” where the Court granted certiorari, vacated the Second Circuit Court's decision, and remanded the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit with specific instructions on how to proceed.

The authority for such GVR actions is derived from , 28 USCS § 2106. which grants appellate courts, including the Supreme Court, broad discretion to vacate judgments and remand cases for further proceedings as deemed just under the circumstances. That did not occur. The case that had such promise and that the Supreme Court, (namely Justices Thomas and Alito) had demonstrated acute interest in would end so abruptly.

Had the Supreme Court granted review, Antonyuk vs. James would have been THE FOURTH LANDMARK SECOND AMENDMENT CASE—NO QUESTION ABOUT IT.

The Court had addressed Antonyuk on two separate occasions, and each time the Court had indicated an interest in reviewing it once the Federal Appellate Court—the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit—had resolved the pressing issues.

Yet, despite Justices Alito’s and Thomas’s demonstration of profound interest in the case, the Court ultimately denied the Plaintiffs’ Petition for Writ of Certiorari—THE SECOND PETITION— the case went nowhere because the Chief Justice evidently considered this Second Amendment case a hot potato, and he wanted no part of it.

To get a handle on why the Chief Justice refused to vote to review Antonyuk (which served as notice to the three “moderate” Trump nominees to refrain from voting to grant review of the case) we must look at why the High Court bothered to grant review of Bruen—a case to which Antonyuk is intricately and inextricably tied.

Of course, the two senior Associate Justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito voted to review Bruen.

The question is why did Roberts defer to Thomas and Alito on this, thereby signaling to the three junior “moderate” justices (the Trump nominees), Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney-Barrett, that it is okay for them to vote to cast their votes, favoring review?

To answer that question we must look to an earlier New York case, New York State Rifle and Pistol Association vs. City of New York, NY, 590 U.S. 336, 140 S. Ct. 1525 (2020). 

In that case, petitioners challenged a New York City rule regarding the transport of firearms outside the City’s environs, claiming it violated the Second Amendment. They sought declaratory and injunctive relief to allow transport of firearms to a second home or shooting range outside the city but within the State.

The case commenced in 2013, taking seven years to finally make it up to the U.S. Supreme Court on a Petition for Writ of Certiorari.

The U.S. Supreme Court did grant review, on what at first glance did not appear to have the makings of a major Second Amendment case, but Justices Thomas and Alito did not see the case that way.

A hidden issue lay in the depths of the apparent narrow issue begging a major question, namely, under what legal theory can New York lawfully and constitutionally, and, no less rationally, deny the right of an American citizen (who is under no disability preventing him from keeping and bearing arms) from carrying a handgun for self-defense in the public domain?

Plainly, the Chief Justice did not want to deal with that broad-based issue that naturally springs from the visible issue concerning the transporting of a handgun by a licensee who bears a restricted license that does not permit him to gain access to his handgun if threatened while in the public sphere.

The Court first sought to buy time, avoiding a review of the case on the merits.

The Court vacated the Appellate Court’s judgment and remanded the case for further proceedings, allowing the petitioners to potentially amend their pleadings or develop the record under the new legal framework. The Court also permitted the Petitioners to seek damages even though they had not previously requested such relief.

The State and the City of New York took this maneuver by the Court as a tacit pronouncement to amend State Law and the New York City Codes to allow the Petitioners to transport their handguns to a gun range outside New York City.

The State and the City complied with the unwritten, tacit request of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Having done this, the Court ultimately dismissed the case.

Roberts needed an excuse to dismiss the case without dealing with the substantive merits of the case which, if reviewed, would have yielded the result rendered in Bruen—but two years earlier.

The State provided Roberts and the Liberal-wing of the Court with an escape valve, dubious though it be.

The U.S. Supreme Court having granted certiorari, the State of New York and the City amended their laws and code to give Petitioners the relief sought, henceforth allowing holders of a highly restricted handgun “premise” license to transport their handguns to a shooting range outside the environs of New York City YET, still under STRICT constraints, namely only so long as the licensees kept their handguns in a locked handgun case, and kept the ammunition for the weapon separate from the handguns, rendering the handguns impossible to use for self-defense while the licensees are enroute to the shooting range.

This slight change to the State’s Handgun Law and to the NYC Code ostensibly rendered the case moot, to the satisfaction of Roberts and the Liberal wing of the Court.

The New York City gun transport case is rarely mentioned today. But it deserves a close reading.

Had the Court’s majority not dismissed the case, it likely would have obviated the need for Bruen because the Court would have used the gun transport case as a springboard, ruling the right of the people to keep and bear arms applies outside the home, in the public domain, no less so than inside the home.

Justice Alito’s lengthy dissent (in which Justice Thomas and Justice Neil Gorsuch joined) is extraordinarily detailed. The Justices were denied the opportunity to strengthen the right codified in the Second Amendment to where it should be and should have been all along—exercise of a right to armed self-defense wherever a threat may arise.

Justice Alito explains in clear and precise terms why it is and how it is that the case WAS NOT MOOT. He plainly alludes to the idiocy of the City forbidding the carrying of a handgun for self-defense.

Justice Alito’s explication for reviewing the case on the merits is set forth in great part, below, where he alludes to a right to carry a handgun for self-defense in the public sphere. He points out that if a person has the right to transport a handgun when in public, then why can he not carry it for self-defense? Justice Alito shreds the rationale for the New York maintaining delineating several different kinds of license. Such practice of maintaining a plethora of license types still exist in the New York Handgun Law, even after the Bruen rulings.

In his dissent, Justice Alito also discusses the State’s “Proper Cause” standard which the Court struck down as unconstitutional, in the Bruen case.

Justice Alito opines:

In Heller, we held that a District of Columbia rule that effectively prevented a law-abiding citizen from keeping a handgun in the home for purposes of self-defense constituted a core violation of the Second Amendment. 554 U. S., at 635, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637. We based this decision on the scope of the right to keep and bear arms as it was understood at the time of the adoption of the Second Amendment. Id., at 577-605, 628-629, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637. We recognized that history supported the constitutionality of some laws limiting the right to possess a firearm, such as laws banning firearms from certain sensitive locations and prohibiting possession by felons and other dangerous individuals. See id., at 626-627, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637; see also McDonald, 561 U. S., at 787, 904, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894. But history provided no support for laws like the District’s. See 554 U. S., at 629-634, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637.

For a similar reason, 38 N. Y. C. R. R. §5-23 also violated the Second Amendment. We deal here with the same core Second Amendment right, the right to keep a handgun in the home for self-defense. As the Second Circuit “assume[d],” a necessary concomitant of this right is the right to take a gun outside the home for certain purposes. 883 F. 3d, at 58-59. One of these is to take a gun for maintenance or repair, which City law allows. See §5-22(a)(16). Another is to take a gun outside the home in order to transfer ownership lawfully, which the City also allows. §5-26(j). And still another is to take a gun to a range in order to gain and maintain the skill necessary to use it responsibly. As we said in Heller, “‘to bear arms implies something more than the mere keeping [of arms]; it implies the learning to handle and use them in a way that makes those who keep them ready for their efficient use.’” 554 U. S., at 617-618, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637 (quoting T. Cooley, Constitutional Law 271 (1880)); see also Luis v. UnitedStates, 578 U. S. ___, ___, 136 S. Ct. 1083, 194 L. Ed. 2d 256, 272 (2016) (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment) (“The right to keep and bear arms . . . ‘implies a corresponding right . . . to acquire and maintain proficiency in their use’”); Ezell v. Chicago, 651 F. 3d 684, 704 (CA7 2011) (“[T]he core right wouldn’t mean much without the training and practice that make it effective”).

It is true that a lawful gun owner can sometimes practice at a range using a gun that is owned by and rented at the range. But the same model gun that the person owns may not be available at a range, and in any event each individual gun may have its own characteristics. See Brief for Professors of Second Amendment Law et al. as Amici Curiae 10-12; see also App. 51, 56, 59 (referencing differences across ranges and shooting competitions). Once it is recognized that the right at issue is a concomitant of the same right recognized in Heller, it became incumbent on the City to justify the restrictions its rule imposes, but the City has not done so. It points to no evidence of laws in force around the time of the adoption of the Second Amendment that prevented gun owners from practicing outside city limits. The City argues that municipalities restricted the places within their jurisdiction where a gun could be fired, Brief for Respondents 18, and it observes that the Second Amendment surely does not mean that a New York City resident with a premises license can practice in Central Park or Times Square, id., at 21. That is certainly true, but that is not the question. Petitioners do not claim the right to fire weapons in public places within the City. Instead, they claim they have a right to practice at ranges and competitions  outside the City, and neither the City, the courts below, nor any of the many amici supporting the City have shown that municipalities during the founding era prevented gun owners from taking their guns outside city limits for practice.

If history is not sufficient to show that the New York City ordinance is unconstitutional, any doubt is dispelled by the weakness of the City’s showing that its travel restriction significantly promoted public safety. Although the courts below claimed to apply heightened scrutiny, there was nothing heightened about what they did.

As noted, the City relied entirely on the declaration of Inspector Lunetta, but this declaration provides little support. See supra, at 1531-1532. Some of what Inspector Lunetta asserted was simply not relevant to the justification for drawing a distinction between trips to a range in the City and trips to a range in a neighboring jurisdiction. For example, he stated that persons holding premises licenses “do not always transport their firearms in a locked box carrying ammunition separately, as required by NYPD rules,” but the issue in this case does not concern the storage of a gun on the way to a range. App. 77-78. Similarly, he declared that “[p]remises license holders have not demonstrated proper cause to carry a concealed firearm in public,” id., at 78, but the question before us is not whether petitioners have the right to do what they could if they had carry licenses.

Other statements actually undermine the City’s public safety rationale. Thus, the fact that prosecutors typically do not bring even misdemeanor charges against licensees who carry a weapon in violation of the limitations of their licenses, ibid., does not suggest that the City regards violations as presenting a particularly significant threat to public safety.

When all that is irrelevant is brushed aside, what remains are the three arguments noted earlier. First, Inspector Lunetta asserted that the travel restrictions discouraged licensees from taking their guns outside the home, but this is a strange argument for several reasons. It would make sense only if it is less convenient or more expensive to practice at a range in the City, but that contradicts the City’s argument that the seven ranges in the City provide ample opportunity for practice. And discouraging trips to a range contradicts the City’s own rule recommending that licensees practice. Once it is recognized that a reasonable opportunity to practice is part of the very right recognized in Heller, what this justification amounts to is a repudiation of part of what we held in that decision.

Second, Inspector Lunetta claimed that prohibiting trips to out-of-city ranges helps prevent a person who is taking a gun to a range from using it in a fit of rage after an auto accident or some other altercation that occurs along the way. And to bolster this argument, Inspector Lunetta asserted that persons who have met the City’s demanding requirements for obtaining a premises license are just as likely as anyone else to use their guns in a fit of rage. App. 77. If that is so, it does not reflect well on the City’s intensive vetting scheme, see supra, at 1528-1530, and in any event, the assertion is dubious on its face.

More to the point, this argument does not explain why a person headed for a range outside the City is any more likely to engage in such conduct than a person whose destination is a range in the City. There might be something to the argument if ranges in the City were closer than those just outside its borders but the City never attempted to show that. The courts below were incurious about the validity of Inspector Lunetta’s assertion, and given the location of the City’s seven ranges, the assertion is more than dubious. 

Inspector Lunetta’s final justification for the travel restrictions was only marginally stronger. It goes like this. Suppose that a patrol officer stops a premises licensee and finds that this individual is carrying a gun, and suppose that that the licensee says he is taking the gun to a range to practice or is returning from a range. If the range in question is one in the City, the officer will be better able to check the story than if the range is outside the officer’s jurisdiction. App. 79-80.

How strong is this argument? The City presumably has access to records of cases in which licensees were cited for unauthorized possession of guns outside the home, and it failed to provide any evidence that holders of target licenses had used their right to practice at out-of-city ranges as a pretext. And it is dubious that it would be much harder for an officer to check whether a licensee was really headed for an out-of-city range as opposed to one in the City. If a licensee claims to be headed for a range in the City, the officer can check whether the range is open and whether the individual appears to be on a route that plausibly leads to that range. But how much more difficult would it be to do the same thing if the range is in one of the counties that border New York City or across the Hudson River in New Jersey? A phone call would be enough to determine the range’s operating hours, and the route would still be easy to determine: There are only a few bridges and tunnels to New Jersey and just a few main thoroughfares to the neighboring New York counties. A court conducting any form of serious scrutiny would have demanded that the City provide some substantiation for this claim, but nothing like that was provided or demanded.

Would the situation be much different if the individual claimed to be headed home from a range? Once again, it would not be difficult for the officer to check whether the range was or recently had been open. And it is not at all apparent that determining whether a licensee was on a route to his or her residence would be any harder if the range at which the licensee claimed to have practiced was outside the City.

Inspector Lunetta’s declaration stated that ranges in the City are required to keep a record of everyone who practices there, and therefore if a person claims to be coming from a city range, the officer could easily check that story. But the declaration does not state that ranges in nearby jurisdictions do not keep similar records.  It should have been easy enough for the City to check, and a court engaged in any serious form of scrutiny would have questioned the absence of evidence, but no substantiation was provided or demanded below.

In sum, the City’s travel restriction burdened the very right recognized in Heller. History provides no support for a restriction of this type. The City’s public safety arguments were weak on their face, were not substantiated in  any way, and were accepted below with no serious probing. And once we granted review in this case, the City’s public safety concerns evaporated.

We are told that the mode of review in this case is representative of the way Heller has been treated in the lower courts. If that is true, there is cause for concern.

This case is not moot. The City violated petitioners’ Second Amendment right, and we should so hold.”

Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch had painted the Chief Justice in a corner. When another major New York case came up for review, he was compelled to vote to review it. That case is NYSRPA vs. Bruen.

He could not forbear to vote to review it. For, Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch voted to hear it, and, given Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion, in the Gun Transport case, Kavanaugh would be compelled to be the fourth vote. Roberts had to join the majority or come across as a hypocrite.

Hence, either the earlier New York case or the later Bruen case would result in a ruling that would go well beyond the narrow matter concerning the convoluted nature of the New York handgun law with its myriad types of handgun licenses.

The New York State Rifle and Pistol Association required a case that would finally disembowel the century old Handgun Licensing Law, and that case was Bruen.

Roberts could not prevent the four votes necessary to review the case and the New York Government could not so easily amend its Gun Law to deny the majority of New Yorkers who desired to exercise their Second Amendment right to armed self-defense, from doing so. The New York Government would have to begin issuing concealed handgun carry licenses to the majority of people who apply for a handgun carry license.

After Oral Argument in Bruen, which took place in November 2021, New York Governor Hochul and the Democrat-Party controlled Legislature in Albany went to work to devise a workaround that would salvage the draconian handgun licensing regime. They had seven months to craft a serviceable workaround which the Senate in Albany passed and Governor Hochul signed in Law, literally one week after publication of the Bruen decision on June 23, 2022.

New York would issue a multitude of concealed handgun carry licenses, but the Government would take its good time in processing an applicant’s application. The Government would also create a new law out of whole cloth limiting the areas in the public domain where an applicant can carry a firearm lawfully for self-defense.

This radical workaround of the Gun Law would transform what had once been an unrestricted concealed carry license that only few New Yorkers could obtain under the old “Proper Cause” standard, to a highly restricted concealed handgun carry licenses since the State, and especially the City of New York would convert into a patchwork quilt of lawful carry versus unlawful carry zones that would be very difficult to navigate through.

Within a couple of weeks of enactment of the amendments to the State’s Handgun Law (referred to as the “Concealed Improvement Carry Act), which took effect on September 1, 2022, the NYSRPA and one individual, Ivan Antonyuk would file suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York. That first case, referred to as Antonyuk I, for convenience, was dismissed without prejudice due to a standing issue.

The Court ruled that the NYSRPA did not have standing to challenge the “CCIA.” The Court intimated that the individual, Ivan Antonyuk, did have standing to challenge the State’s amendments to its Handgun Law, Antonyuk refiled the case, adding several other individuals as Party Plaintiffs, as well. That case is referred to colloquially by the Courts, as Antonyuk II.

The principal Defendant in the case is the Superintendent of the New York State Police.

Through time, new Superintendents were appointed by the Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul. And the caption of the Antonyuk case would change to recite the current Superintendent.

The case was pegged to be the next major Second Amendment case.

Yet, there would be no FOURTH landmark Second Amendment case. Chief Justice Roberts would see to that. There was no way he could weasel around it other than to deny review outright, with no reason given. And, surprisingly, Justices Thomas and Alito provided no dissenting opinion. We can only surmise that Roberts wanted no written remonstrations from those two Justices.

Roberts had effectively silenced them. And, if the two senior Justices could be effectively silenced, then the junior Justice Gorsuch was not going make waves.

Roberts had had enough. Notwithstanding that New York Governor Kathy Hochul had unconstitutionally contravened the Bruen rulings, effectively not only salvaging but strengthening an unconstitutional State handgun law, Justice Roberts would not allow review of a case, Antonyuk vs. James that plainly laid out not only the failure of the State to abide by the Court’s rulings but had done so in a blatantly defiant and transparently visible manner, therefore demonstrating her contempt for the Court’s Article III authority.

Evidently, Justice Roberts would rather stomach a State Government nakedly defy the Court than strengthen the Second Amendment, in the present political climate. That much is clear.

Curiously, very few news articles or commentary exist on the High Court’s denial of certiorari in Antonyuk and, of those few that point to the interlocutory (non-final) nature of the case, none bother to consider that the U.S. Supreme Court is not constrained from taking up a case that is in a non-final form first as a matter of right—the Court is not bound by any rule that it has itself created.

Thus, Supreme Court Rules are guidelines by which it decides to be bound or not. Concerning the present case, involving non-final orders, the U.S. Supreme Court has the authority to grant review of a writ of certiorari in cases where the judgment is not final, but this is subject to specific conditions. Under , 28 USCS § 1257 the Court may review the judgment of the highest court of a state even if the state-court proceedings are not yet complete, provided that the federal claim has been finally decided and further review of the federal issue cannot be had regardless of the ultimate outcome of the case. However, the Court will dismiss a writ of certiorari for lack of jurisdiction if the state court's decision is not final and does not fall within the limited set of situations where finality is found as to the federal issue, such as when the case is remanded for further proceedings .
Additionally, under  USCS Supreme Ct R 11 the Court may grant a writ of certiorari to review a case pending in a U.S. court of appeals before judgment is entered, but only if the case is of such imperative public importance as to justify deviation from normal appellate practice and to require immediate determination . USCS Supreme Ct R 11. This rule underscores the Court's discretion in granting certiorari for non-final cases, emphasizing the need for compelling reasons or significant public interest.

In conclusion, while the U.S. Supreme Court can grant review of a writ of certiorari in non-final cases, it does so under limited circumstances, such as when the federal issue is conclusively decided or when the case involves matters of imperative public importance.  

Again, the Supreme Court may grant a writ of certiorari to review a case pending in a U.S. court of appeals before judgment is entered, but only if the case is of "imperative public importance" and justifies deviation from normal appellate practice. This is outlined in Rule 11 of the Supreme Court Rules and . USCS Supreme Ct R 11, 28 USCS § 2101.
If the Second Circuit is refusing to issue a final order for improper purposes, such as delaying resolution to allow continued enforcement of an allegedly unconstitutional law, the plaintiff may argue that the case meets the criteria for immediate review under the collateral order doctrine or that it presents an issue of imperative public importance warranting Supreme Court intervention. However, the Supreme Court has emphasized that federal courts should generally avoid interfering with state court proceedings unless exceptional circumstances, such as bad faith or irreparable harm, are demonstrated.

First, the major issues have been fully briefed by both parties in Antonyuk, and several amici briefs have also weighed in.

Second, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has consistently sought, unconscionably, to delay final resolution of the case. Justice Alito has specifically warned the Government against delaying resolution of Antonyuk, and his warning was as much aimed at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals as it was at the Governor Hochul’s Office.

In the Harrel vs. Raoul case, referred to, supra, Alito says that he would have granted certiorari. And Thomas drafted a lengthy dissent referring to the Friedman case as a rationale for taking up Harrel. And he points out, at the end of his opinion that,

These petitions arise from a preliminary injunction, and the Seventh Circuit stressed that its merits analysis was merely “a preliminary look at the subject.” 85 F. 4th, at 1197. But, if the Seventh Circuit ultimately allows Illinois to ban America’s most common civilian rifle, we can—and should—review that decision once the cases reach a final judgment. The Court must not permit ‘the Seventh Circuit [to] relegat[e] the Second Amendment to a second-class right.’ Friedman, 577 U. S., at 1043, 136 S. Ct. 447, 193 L. Ed. 2d 483 (opinion of Thomas, J.).

Thomas made clear that if the Seventh Circuit ruled in favor of the State’s ban on semiautomatic rifles in common use, then the High Court would review the case and strike down the Illinois law.

Alito, for his part, would not delay review, but grant the petitions outright notwithstanding the interlocutory order.

When courts obviously intentionally delay final resolution of a case, then the Supreme Court must weigh in. To allow lower courts to use preliminary injunctions as a delaying tactic does a disservice to the administration of justice that Americans deserve.

If there should be any doubt as to the tactics of the Second Circuit in the Antonyuk case, one may simply look at the status of the case.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Plaintiffs writ of certiorari in late April 2025.

In accordance with High Court procedure, the Clerk of the Supreme Court sends the case down to the court from where the appeal was taken. In the Antonyuk case, Plaintiffs took their appeal from the Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

In accordance with the Court’s own rules of procedure, if the case is under a preliminary injunction issued by the lower U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, the Federal Appellate Court is dutybound to remand the case to the trial court for further action.

To our knowledge this has never happened. It appears the case still sits at the Appellate Court. If there is some reason for the delay, the Court has an obligation to make the reason known to the parties. That, too, has not happened.

But, after six months, why is the case still in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit? We would like to know.

We would also like to know why attorneys for the Plaintiffs have not contacted the Federal Appellate Court to ascertain why the District Court still has not received the case so that it can undertake a trial on the merits.

And, if counsel for Plaintiff Petitioners have contacted the Second Circuit to ascertain the reason for the delay in remanding the case to the District Court, and the Second Circuit has failed to provide a reason for the delay, then why haven’t Plaintiff Petitioners’ counsel not contacted the U.S. Supreme Court to spur the Second Circuit into action?

Plaintiffs did that once before and long ago, and Justice Alito, at the time, warned the Respondent Government (and by extension the Second Circuit), not to delay prosecution of the case. Yet, to date, nothing has happened to move the case along. And counsel for the Plaintiff Petitioners seems to have decided to allow Antonyuk to die. That is the only inference we can reasonably draw. But, what, then, explains counsel’s failure to act?

The most important case to come down the pike since Bruen—and which happens to be a case that stems directly from Bruen lies in stasis. There is fault aplenty to go around.

The Supreme Court should have granted certiorari but did not do so. And, having denied review, the Second Circuit ought to have sent the case back to the District Court for a trial on the merits. But that never happened. And counsel for the Plaintiff Petitioners (Gun Owners of America) have not troubled themselves to ascertain what the holdup is, at the Second Circuit. Why is that?

It is ridiculous to plow ahead with brand new cases, when Antonyuk, that should have been the Fourth Landmark case, lies dead in the water, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms lies severely weakened in the process as Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions continue to run roughshod over our Nation’s most vital right.

Lastly, and in the alternative to the claim that no final order has materialized, the Second Circuit’s lengthy opinion in Antonyuk vs. James, 120 F.4th 941 (2nd Cir. 2024), the issues have been resolved, and the Second Circuit decision is final.

The Second Circuit said this:

For the reasons stated above, we AFFIRM the injunction in part, VACATE in part, and REMAND for proceedings consistent with this opinion. In summary, we uphold the district court's injunctions with respect to N.Y. Penal L. § 400.00(1)(o)(iv) (social media disclosure) and N.Y. Penal L. § 265.01-d (restricted locations) as applied to private property held open to the general public. We vacate the injunction in all other respects, having concluded either that the district court lacked jurisdiction because no plaintiff had Article III standing to challenge the laws or that the challenged laws do not violate the Constitution on their face.

What remains of the case to be remanded? Nothing that we can see, and that would explain why, after six months, this Federal Court has not remanded the case to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York. The opinion of the Second Circuit is detailed but also convoluted. The U.S. Supreme Court, for its part, hasn’t sought to decipher the case.

There are only two issues, and as to those issues, the Second Circuit has rendered a final order or otherwise, an order that is conclusive as to the issues that Petitioners brought before the Supreme Court. One issue goes to the historical tradition tes, to ascertain the date a court is to utilize in determining whether a Government action is analogous to an earlier similar regulation. The other issue goes to the propriety of using “moral character” as the touchstone by which a handgun licensing authority ascertains appropriatness for issuance using the criterium of “dangerousness.”

In their Memorandum in support of Petitioners’ Petition for Writ of Certiorari, they assert, in the Section dealing with the Questions for review, the attorneys for the Antonyuk Petitioners say this,

Moments after this Court issued N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), striking down New York’s discretionary firearms licensing regime, state politicians decried the decision as “reprehensible,” vowing to resist the “insanity” of “gun culture” that “possessed . . . the Supreme Court.” Rather than following Bruen, New York enacted a “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” that makes it more difficult to bear arms than before Bruen was decided. A panel of the Second Circuit upheld much of this law in an opinion this Court vacated in light of United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024). But on remand, the panel doubled down, reissuing a nearly identical opinion and dismissing Rahimi as having “little direct bearing on our conclusions.” Relying almost entirely on a few late-19th-century outlier laws rather than Founding-era practice, the panel again affirmed New York’s requirement of “good moral character” as a precondition to public carry, along with most of its gun bans in all manner of nonsensitive public places. These holdings clearly contravene Bruen’s rejection of discretionary “suitability” assessments and warning not to declare all of Manhattan a “sensitive place.” The questions presented are: 1. Whether the proper historical time period for ascertaining the Second Amendment’s original meaning as applied to the states is 1791, rather than 1868; and 2. Whether “the people” must convince government officials of their “good moral character” before exercising their Second Amendment right to bear arms.

A salient issue goes to the historical date to be used in determining the constitutionality of the New York Government’s entire Licensing Regime.

The Petitioners argue that,

Although acknowledging “an ongoing scholarly debate on whether courts should primarily rely on the prevailing understanding” when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, or when the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, Bruen ultimately left the question unresolved “because . . . the public understanding . . . in both 1791 and 1868 was . . . the same. . . .” Bruen at 37-38. Yet Justice Barrett anticipated that this question “might make a difference in another case,” explaining that “1791 is the benchmark” and “Reconstruction-era history” alone is “simply too late” and “too little.” Id. at 82 (Barrett, J., concurring). Cautioning the lower courts, Justice Barrett rejected any “freewheeling reliance on historical practice from the mid-to-late 19th century. . . .” Id. at 83. But following Bruen, the lower courts have failed to coalesce on this temporal question and, like Bruen, Rahimi did not “resolv[e] the dispute.” Rahimi at 692 n.1. And like Justice Barrett in Bruen, Justice Jackson called the temporal question an “[e]xtremely pertinent inquir[y]” which “await[s] resolution. . . .” Id. at 746 n.4 (Jackson, J., concurring). Indeed, there is a multi-way circuit split on the question, and the district courts are in disarray, with divergent approaches continuing to multiply as to which historical sources to use. This case presents an excellent vehicle for this Court to resolve the debate between 1791 and 1868, which presents at all stages of litigation. Below, the panel relied – almost exclusively – on historical laws enacted well after the Second Amendment’s ratification, with the earliest being nearly half a century after the Founding. Strikingly, Bruen considered and rejected each of the three earlier purported analogues the panel did reference. Thus, the panel’s singular focus on mid-to-late 19th-century sources was outcome-determinative in this case because, “apart from a handful of late-19th-century jurisdictions” (Bruen at 38), no historical tradition exists to justify the CCIA. Resolution of the temporal question not only will correct the panel’s errors below, but also will provide critical guidance to innumerable lower courts analyzing similar challenges.

Although Bruen found it unnecessary to definitively resolve the temporal “scholarly debate,” that does not mean the lower courts lack guidance. Indeed, Heller, McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), Bruen, and Rahimi each demonstrate that the Second Amendment should be construed as originally understood in 1791. To the extent that earlier or later sources are utilized, it is only to confirm a tradition that existed at the Founding. As Bruen stated, this is the Court’s “general[] assum[ption].” Id. at 37. Heller explained that “[c]onstitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them....” Id. at 634-35; see also at 614 (post-Civil War “discussions took place 75 years after the ratification of the Second Amendment,” and thus “do not provide as much insight into its original meaning as earlier sources.”). Therefore, after primarily examining Founding-era sources (id. at 582-603), the Court considered sources “through the end of the 19th century” only to confirm what already had been established (id. at 605-19). Thus, in Heller, as in Bruen, the tradition of both time periods was “the same. . . .” Bruen at 38. McDonald provides further confirmation, rejecting “‘the notion that the Fourteenth Amendment applies to the States only a watered-down, subjective version of the individual guarantees of the Bill of Rights. . . . ’” Id. at 765. Like Heller, McDonald examined “[e]vidence from the period immediately following the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment,” but only because it “confirms that the right to keep and bear arms was considered fundamental.” Id. at 776; see also at 780.

Bruen further confirmed that 1791 is the focal point for Second Amendment interpretation. First, the Court described the Second Amendment as being “‘intended to endure for ages to come,’” noting that “its meaning is fixed according to the understandings of those who ratified it. . . .” Id. at 28. Second, the Court reaffirmed that constitutional rights have the same meaning “against the States . . . as against the Federal Government.” Id. at 37. Third, the Court noted that “we have generally assumed that the scope of the protection applicable to the . . . States is pegged to . . . 1791.” Id. Fourth, the Court again made clear that 19th-century history “‘do[es] not provide as much insight into [] original meaning as earlier sources.’” Id. at 36. And fifth, the Court explained that, to the extent 19th-century evidence is to be consulted at all, it only provides “‘mere confirmation of what the Court thought had already been established.’” Id. at 37. Rahimi, too, focused entirely on 1791, undermining the notion that Bruen was somehow “exceptional.” App.44; cf. Rahimi at 714 (Gorsuch, J., concurring) (“following exactly the path we described in Bruen”). As Rahimi explained, “[s]ince the founding, our Nation’s firearm laws have” supported temporary disarmament based on individualized dangerousness. Id. at 690 (emphasis added). Indeed, Rahimi’s Founding-era focus was pervasive, extending to both concurrences and dissent. See, e.g., id. at 710 (Gorsuch, J., concurring) (“‘admitting only those exceptions established at the time of the founding’”); id. at 705 (Sotomayor, J., concurring) (discussing issues “‘persist[ing] since the 18th century’”); id. at 737 (Barrett, J., concurring) (Second Amendment’s “meaning . . . is fixed at the time of its ratification”); id. at 750 (Thomas, J., dissenting) (noting “a general societal problem that has persisted since the 18th century”). This Court’s precedents thus provide unwavering confirmation that the Second Amendment is to be understood based on the original “public understanding of the right” when it was adopted in 1791. Yet despite seemingly widespread agreement among the Justices, the panel read Rahimi differently, claiming it had “little direct bearing on our conclusion[]” that 1868 is a focal point of Second Amendment analysis. App.7, 46-47 n.16.

If Bruen left any questions unanswered, Rahimi laid them to rest. Contrary to the panel’s insistence that Bruen was an “exceptional” case warranting uniquely heightened historical stringency, Rahimi confirmed that Bruen simply “explain[s]” the “appropriate analysis. . . .” Id. at 692; see also at 714 (Gorsuch, J., concurring) (“following exactly the path we described in Bruen”). Thus, Bruen and Rahimi establish the norm, and do not “permit a ‘more nuanced approach’” whenever a court declares a challenged regulation to be “less exceptional.” App.41.9 But the panel read Rahimi differently, casting it aside as having “little direct bearing” despite being the reason behind this Court’s remand. App.7. To reach this strange conclusion, the panel minimized (or ignored) much of this Court’s latest pronouncement. First, the panel limited Rahimi to its facts, claiming the regulation examined in Rahimi is “quite different” from the CCIA and never “addressed” the issues presented here. App.7. Second, conceding that Rahimi nevertheless might provide some guidance, the panel summarily concluded that “Rahimi is consonant with the [approach] applied” previously. App.8. How the panel’s focus on Reconstruction could be “consonant” with Rahimi’s focus on the founding, the panel never explained. And third, while Rahimi rejected the notion that only those deemed “responsible” have Second Amendment rights, the panel repeatedly discounted that statement as mere “dictum.” Rahimi at 701; App.68 n.26, 71 n.30.

Viewing Bruen’s methodology as applicable only to “exceptional” challenges, and Rahimi’s guidance as mere “dictum” with “little direct bearing,” the panel charted its own course, engaging in precisely the sort of “freewheeling reliance on historical practice from the mid-to-late 19th century” that this Court implicitly – and Justice Barrett explicitly – rejected. Bruen at 83 (Barrett, J., concurring); Rahimi at 738 (Barrett, J., concurring).

 The bottom line here is that the CCIA is a chimera with no rational or legal basis upon which to stand. But the import and implication of Petitioners’ argument goes beyond the State’s amendments to its Handgun Law. Since the date of ratification of the Bill of Rights (1791) is the predicate date upon which the State’s licensing regime is grounded, the entirety of the New York licensing “may issue” scheme must be cast aside. The Petitioners argue,

Finally, Rahimi helps to explain Bruen’s endorsement of the constitutionality of “shall-issue” licensing regimes. As noted above, see supra note 40, licensing schemes as such developed after the Civil War, and thus could be argued to lack precedent at the time of the adoption of the Second Amendment. However, as we have also explained above, we regard evidence of the tradition of firearms regulation from around the time that the Fourteenth Amendment made the protection of the right to bear arms binding on the States as likewise significant. But even if we do not, Rahimi strongly suggests that what matters in the search for historical antecedents of modern firearms regulations is the substance of the regulation, rather than the form.

There are no historical antecedents supporting New York’s CCIA. As with the use of “Proper Cause,” there is nothing in the language of the Second Amendment to support a broad “may issue” licensing scheme such as the one New York had cemented in the early 1900s, and which continues today under a moral character requirement that is inherently subjective and amounts to inherent and unacceptable subjective evaluation on the part of the licensing authority.

Chief Justice Roberts doesn’t want to touch any part of this, and, so, Petitioners’ Writ of Certiorari was denied out-of-hand.

The Court would argue as Court jurisprudence dictates that the denial of Certiorari does not connote a decision pro or con on the merits.

Still, the impact of failure to grant review means that the State is allowed to continue to enforce the CCIA and, in that, the State has won.

The Second Circuit won’t remand the case to the District Court even though it says it will, and attorneys for the Plaintiff Petitioners won’t hold the New York Hochul Government accountable. Failure of the Court to grant the Second Petition as it did the first and remand the case to the Second Circuit with instructions as to how to proceed is a dead letter.

The Roberts Court is done with Antonyuk. This has nothing to do with interlocutory matters. From a perusal of the Second Circuit decision, there is no tenable interlocutory matter. And even if there were a non-final issue to be resolved, it is difficult to decipher what that non-final issue is.

The Second Circuit has intentionally obfuscated any notion of an open issue.

This Second Circuit decision illustrates bad faith in the handling of the case and irreparable harm to the Petitioners, both of which meet the necessary condition of exceptional circumstances, established by the Court for reviewing Antonyuk vs. James, as well as presenting matters of imperative public importance warranting Supreme Court intervention. The irony here is that the issues are too imperative such that the Chief Justice seeks to avoid a strong public backlash among the Anti-Second Amendment crowd. Beyond that concern, Roberts is not ideologically motivated to defend the Second Amendment.

He will allow Second Amendment cases to be reviewed so long as the Court only need tinker around the edges of a challenge to state court action impinging upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms. But major cases, apropos of Heller, Bruen, and McDonald will be ignored. Antonyuk, unfortunately, is one of those cases. Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions have taken notice of the Court’s reticence and will continue to take advantage of that hesitation.

If Antonyuk is to be resurrected, then it must come from the the Plaintiff Petitioners themselves. But, there is a statute of limitations that must be met. And that time limitation has long since expired.

A party may request the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider its denial of a petition for certiorari under specific circumstances and through limited procedural mechanisms. According to Rule 44 of the Supreme Court Rules, a petition for rehearing of an order denying certiorari must be filed within 25 days of the denial and must be based on "intervening circumstances of a substantial or controlling effect" or other substantial grounds not previously presented.

And the petition must comply with strict procedural requirements, including certification of good faith and adherence to filing rules.

The Court will not grant such a petition without extraordinary circumstances and typically requires a response before granting rehearing . USCS Supreme Ct R 44.

The Court has also clarified that a motion for rehearing does not automatically suspend the denial order. A petitioner must apply to an individual Justice for suspension, and the likelihood of the Court reconsidering its position must be reasonable. Additionally, the Court does not allow extensions of time for filing a petition for rehearing of an order denying certiorari, as such orders are not considered judgments or decisions on the merits.

In rare cases, the Court may reconsider its denial of certiorari if subsequent developments cast doubt on the original decision.

Thus, while the U.S. Supreme Court provides a narrow avenue for reconsidering the denial of certiorari through a petition for rehearing, such petitions are subject to stringent procedural rules and are rarely granted unless extraordinary circumstances or significant new developments justify reconsideration.

Antonyuk vs. James is dead. So are the “assault weapons” cases.

A U.S. Supreme Court that lacks jurists with the fortitude and stature of Justices Thomas, Alito, and the late eminent Justice Scalia, will continue to deny review of challenges to state action that infringe the core of the Second Amendment Right. There are no other Justices on the Court like the senior Conservative-Wing Justices.

Of the three, only two remain, and the Trump nominees apparently do not have strength of will and who cherish the Nation’s Bill of Rights like the two true Conservative-wing Justices, Thomas and Alito, and they are getting up there in age.

This, unfortunately, is the disturbing reality of the situation, and the Right cemented in the Second Amendment and those who would exercise that Right can expect little support from the U.S. SUPREME COURT. The American people are on their own.

_____________________________

THREE MAJOR SECOND AMENDMENT CASES AND AS FOR A FOURTH AND FIFTH CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS CRIES, “HOLD, ENOUGH!” *

THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SHOUTS, “THE U.S. SUPREME COURT HAS NOT DONE NEARLY ENOUGH TO HONOR ITS OATH TO CONSTITUTION AND PEOPLE”—ENSURING THAT THE STATES AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DO NOT RIDE ROUGHSHOD OVER THE SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS.

It would seem to a rational mind that the U.S. Supreme Court would grant review of Petitioners’ Petition (their SECOND one) in Antonyuk vs. James. There was no reason not to grant review.

The Court had made plain its deep interest in Antonyuk for well over two years. And, well the Court should be interested in it.

For, the Antonyuk case arose from the abject failure of the New York Government to heed to the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court in a prior case that itself arose as a challenge to the New York Government’s brazen attack on the citizens’ Fundamental, Unalienable Right to armed self-defense, codified in the Second Amendment of the BILL OF RIGHTS (BOR) of the Constitution.

The New York Government has a longstanding, deep-seated abhorrence of the Fundamental Natural Law Right to Armed Self-defense, and that abhorrence goes back to its origins as a State.

That hatred manifests in a propensity to ignore U.S. Supreme Court strictures. The present Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, is prone to vocal outbursts of vituperative contempt toward the Court. In that respect her position on firearms, and civilian ownership and possession of them reflects the same smug contempt and false piety of her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo.

One would think the U.S. Supreme Court would slap down this insolent confrontational attitude toward the High Court quickly and decisively. But apparently, that hasn’t happened because the Chief Justice of the Court, John Roberts, has no interest in protecting the most vital Right in the American peoples’ arsenal of Rights—the unalienable Natural Law Right to Armed Self-Defense against both Predatory Man and the Predatory Man-Beast of Government.

But, regardless of the Chief Justice's ideological views on “the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms,” if those views are contrary to the views of the Framers who themselves held no reservations as to the necessity for it, for maintaining the “Security of a Free State,” one would think that Justice Roberts would cast aside his personal predilections pertaining to “the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms” in view of his Oath “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies foreign and domestic. And, in so doing, Chief Justice John Roberts would thereby be supporting and defending the credibility and integrity of the Court, as well.

Therefore, it is difficult to comprehend how and why the Chief Justice would allow a recalcitrant New York Government to openly defy the Court, but he has done so. And the junior members of the Court, which the legacy Press erroneously casts as members of the “Conservative-wing,”—those three members that President Trump nominated during his first term in Office—take their cue from Chief Justice Roberts.

They forbear from incurring his wrath by voting, as he wishes, to deny review of critical important Second Amendment cases—those cases having a significant impact on the tenability and viability of the three seminal Second Amendment cases, Heller, and McDonald, and Bruen, and therefore, on the continued viability of the Second Amendment Right to armed Self Defense.

The Antonyuk case arose as a challenge to the New York Hochul Government’s abject failure to adhere to the rulings of NYSRPA vs. Bruen. And, in having failed to adhere to the rulings of the decision, except on a purely superficial level—which only compounds its obstreperousness—the New York Hochul Government demonstrates an intention to remain a rogue actor, unaccountable to the United States Supreme Court, unaccountable to the U.S. Constitution, and unaccountable to the American people.  

While the Bruen case has nationwide effect, these facts should not be lost on any American.

The New York Government insists that THE SANCTITY OF ITS OWN ILLEGAL, UNCONSTITUTIONAL HANDGUN LAW SUPERSEDES THE SUPREMACY AND SANCTITY OF THE NATION’S BILL OF RIGHTS—INCLUDING, ESPECIALLY, THE NATURAL LAW RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS AS NECESSARY TO MAINTAIN THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

So, notwithstanding the universality of the holdings of that earlier case to all the states in the Union, this particular Case or

Bruen was published on June 23, 2022. The case arose as a challenge to the constitutionality of New York’s Handgun Law that denied individuals the right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense, absent a showing of extraordinary need to do so.

The Bruen case, as well as the two preceding cases, District of Columbia vs. Heller and McDonald vs. City of Chicago, require re-reading, reflection, and contemplation.

The PUBLIC, the LEGACY PRESS, and POLITICIANS tend to emphasize the major holdings and rulings of these three landmark cases.

The PROPONENTS of Heller, McDonald, and Bruen praise the holdings and rulings of these cases as well they should. And they consider these holdings and rulings long overdue, as well they are.

The OPPONENTS, meanwhile, unsurprisingly, protest the holdings and rulings of these THREE LANDMARK CASES, and would overturn them if they could.

But there is much more to uncover from these three cases than the holdings and rulings themselves.

The adage, “separating the wheat from the chaff,” suggesting the need to separate important information (the grain) from the trivial matter (the husk) comes to mind. But the holdings and rulings are not only crucial information, THE WHEAT, to be gleaned from Heller, McDonald, and Bruen.

As applied to review of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, zeroing in on the Court rulings alone, bypassing the reasoning and seemingly subordinate asides, is never a good idea.

For, sometimes THAT APPARENT CHAFF may hide something of importance that casts an important light on THE HIGH COURT’S holdings and rulings, “THE WHEAT” in a Supreme Court case.

Thus, the PURPORTED CHAFF ISN’T CHAFF, at all, but is itself “WHEAT”—CERTAINLY WHEAT to those Governments that look for a LOOPHOLE in a U.S. Supreme Court case that might provide them with A SEEMINGLY PLAUSIBLE REASON TO DISOBEY High Court holdings and rulings.

Rabid Anti-Second Amendment State Governments such as New York meticulously scrounge around a U.S. Supreme Court case, not unlike a squirrel searching intently for an acorn. And New York did just that when the Bruen decision came down. The State had long expected an adverse decision after Oral Argument in the case which took place almost eight months before the decision came down the pike. THE HOCHUL GOVERNMENT MADE SURE IT WAS READY FOR THAT ADVERSE DECISION AND WOULD BE IN A POSITION TO COUNTER ITS EFFECTS ON THE STATE’S HANDGUN LAW. THE STATE PULLED OUT ALL THE STOPS TO CREATE SUCH CHANGES TO THE GUN LAW THAT CAN DO MORE THAN SALVAGE IT, BUT WOULD PRESERVE IT. ALLOWING THE GOVERNMENT TO CONTINUE TO BUILD UPON IT AND EVENTUALLY, INEXORABLY, INEVITABLY WEAKEN THE EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE IN NEW YORK TO THE POINT OF EFFECTIVELY DE FACTO NULLIFYING IT.

Looking simply at and relishing High Court rulings in those three Landmark Second Amendment cases as a “DONE DEAL” DOES NOT SERVE TO SECURE THE RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE. THOSE THREE CASES ARE A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTIO OF COURSE BUT WE WOULD BE LAX TO THINK THAT THOSE CASES ARE SUFFICIENT TO PRESERVE OUR UNALIENABLE RIGHT, AND THEREFORE SECURITY FROM TYRANNY.

The ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT COMMUNITY does not stop searching for an off-ramp, a loophole, some way around a Court’s holding, when it abhors a High Court decision.

The attempt to avoid or evade the Court’s strictures remains ever-present. Therefore, it behooves those of us who cherish “the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms” to consider and reflect on any possible weakness in the Landmark Second Amendment cases.

We can be sure the Anti-Second Amendment forces will do so, and we must stay ahead of the game.

A Free Constitutional Republic and Sovereign American Citizenry cannot long exist in a Nation that no longer exercises armed self-defense, that fails to embrace and cherish THE GOD-GIVEN RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, and that forgets THOSE PERTINENT LESSONS learned about THE HORRORS OF TYRANNY and DESPOTISM, THE IMPORT OF AND SUCCESS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION OF 1776, and the CUNNING AND TRICKERY OF OUR ADVERSARIES HERE AT HOME and ABROAD.

We must remain EVER VIGILANT AND AS ASTUTELY AWARE OF THE TANGENTIAL, NEBULOUS POINTS, FOOTNOTES, and REMARKS (the DICTA) EMBEDDED and BURIED in those case law holdings and rulings, and we must contemplate dissenting opinions as well, BECAUSE those DISSENTS can themselves one day assert themselves and become the LAW OF THE LAND.

So, we must be conversant in SUCH DISSENTING OPINIONS IN SUPREME COURT RULINGS—no less so than our adversaries. who seek our Nation’s demise. For those adversaries are numerous, powerful, well-funded, well-organized, and tenacious. And they are determined to take down OUR NATION’S ONE CERTAIN FAIL-SAFE AGAINST TYRANNY—THE ARMED CITIZEN—which is necessary if they are to succeed in their aim OF SUBVERTING OUR FREE REPUBLIC and SUBJUGATING A PEOPLE WHO ONCE EXISTED AS THE NATION’S SOLE AND SUPREME SOVEREIGN OVER GOVERNMENT AND NATION.

The New York Government, under its Governor Kathy Hochul had employed her attorneys and implored the State Democratic Party Majority in Albany to find some way TO AVOID the imprimatur imposed on the State by the Court’s Bruen decision while, at once, paying token service to it—to cloak their animus toward the Court and their intention to preserve the utility of the State’s Handgun Law.

This was no easy task for the New York Hochul Government, but it was determined to succeed. AND THEY HAD AMPLE TIME TO COMPLETE THIS TASK.

CONSIDER: ORAL ARGUMENT in the Bruen case took place on November 3, 2021.

From a perusal of the transcript of THE HEARING, the New York Hochul Government knew full well that the Court would render a MAJOR DECISION and THAT DECISION WOULD OVERTURN THE STATE’S IRON-CLAD GRIP OVER CIVILIAN CITIZEN POSSESSION OF AND USE OF HANDGUNS FOR SELF-DEFENSE IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN—THEREBY NEGATING THE TREMENDOUS POWER THE STATE EXERTED OVER THE CITIZENS WHO RESIDED OR WORKED IN NEW YORK, THROUGH OPERATION OF ITS HANDGUN LAW.

THAT LAW HAD EXISTED FOR WELL OVER A CENTURY IN THE STATE AND, THROUGH THE PASSING DECADES, THE GUN LAW BECAME ENTRENCHED, SOLIDIFIED IN THE LAW OF NEW YORK, GAINING ACCEPTANCE, AND AN AURA OF LEGAL AND ETHICAL RESPECTABILITY BY MANY AS A RESULT OF ITS LENGTHY DURATION. THIS INDOMITABILITY, IMPENETRABILITY, INSURMOUNTABILITY, THROUGH PASSAGE OF TIME AND NEW YORK COURT IMPRIMATUR, DOESN’T ALTER ONE IMPORTANT FACT: THE STATE LAW OFFENDS NATURAL LAW. IT MUST BE STRUCK DOWN.

AND THE U.S. SUPREME COURT WAS THE ONLY BRANCH OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT THAT CAN EFFECTIVELY DO SO, AND, THROUGH THE TENACITY, PERSISTENCE, PERSEVERENCE OF TWO ASSOCIATE JUSTICES, CLARENCE THOMAS AND SAMUEL ALITO—THE ONLY TWO WHO REMAIN AFTER THE UNTIMELY AND SUSPICIOUS DEATH OF ANTONIN SCALIA—THE STRIKING DOWN OF NEW YORK’S ILLEGAL AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL HANDGUN LAW, AFTER ONE HUNDRED AND TEN YEARS WAS TO BECOME A REALITY.

The Hochul Government certainly saw this and was noticeably alarmed at what such a High Court decision would mean to a State that had slowly, inexorably spread its tentacles around the Natural Law Right to Armed Self-Defense—at least in THAT jurisdiction. The prospects for a State having long preserved its unconstitutional Handgun Law was, in the space of less than one year would be undone.

The Hochul Government wasn’t incorrect in its inference. The Court came down with a blistering decision on June 23, 2022.

The State had almost EIGHT MONTHS to craft a mechanism to thwart the impact of Bruen, and salvage, if not secure, the CORE of its HANDGUN LAW that revolved around TWO DEVICES—— “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER,” AND “PROPER CAUSE.”

The New York Government had fabricated these two devices almost one hundred years before, in 1913. The intent was to tighten its grip over a citizen’s carrying of handguns in public, for self-defense.

GOOD MORAL CHARACTER and PROPER CAUSE served as an amendment to the State’s HANDGUN LAW enacted two years before, in 1911. The State’s HANDGUN LAW (commonly referred to as the SULLIVAN ACT) FORMALIZED the process for issuing a CONCEALED HANDGUN CARRY LICENSE in New York.

THE LEGALITY, CONSTITUTIONALITY, AND MORALITY OF STATE FIREARMS LICENSING GENERALLY AND STATE HANDGUN LICENSING PARTICULARLY IS PROBLEMATIC, DUBIOUS, AND MORE TO THE POINT, OUTRAGEOUS.

HANDGUN LICENSING INSERTS ITSELF BETWEEN THE AMERICAN CITIZEN AND THE RIGHT CODIFIED IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT. IN SO DOING, THE GOVERNMENT TRANSFORMS A GOD-GIVEN, UNCONDITIONAL, ETERNAL RIGHT INTO A MAN-MADE, CONTINGENT, CONDITIONAL, TRANSITORY PRIVILEGE. BUT THAT IS THE STATE’S INTENT.

New York State and Federal Courts had tried to skirt the problem by engaging in legal gymnastics and logical dilemmas to do so. These Courts tacitly accept that “the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms” IS A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT, A LIBERTY INTEREST TO BE PROTECTED, BUT CLAIM STATE HANDGUN LICENSING DOESN’T CONFLICT WITH THE RIGHT AS THE STATE IS SIMPLY EXERCISING ITS OWN RIGHT TO DO SO, UNDER THE CONCEPT OF A “STATE’S POLICE POWERS” WHICH IS THE BASIS OF THE COURT’S RULINGS IN FINDING THAT THE NEW YORK GOVERNMENT HAS LEGAL AUTHORITY TO DO THIS—BUT THAT POINT IS TACIT AS WELL.

A case often cited by the New York Courts (both State and Federal) in support of this, is Papaioannou v. Kelly, 14 A.D.3d 459  788 N.Y.S.2d 378  (N.Y. App. Div. 1st Dept. 2007). The Court opined, 

It is well settled that the possession of a handgun license is a privilege, not a right, which is subject to the broad discretion of the New York City Police Commissioner (Matter of Kaplan v Bratton, 249 A.D.2d 199, 201, 673 N.Y.S.2d 66 [1998]; Matter of Fondacaro v Kelly, 234 A.D.2d 173, 177, 652 N.Y.S.2d 604 [1996], lv denied 89 N.Y.2d 812, 679 N.E.2d 644, 657 N.Y.S.2d 405 [1997]), and respondent, by statute, has been delegated "extraordinary power" in these matters (Matter of O'Brien v Keegan, 87 N.Y.2d 436, 439, 663 N.E.2d 316, 639 N.Y.S.2d 1004 [1996]; Matter of Trimis v New York City Police Dept., 300 A.D.2d 162, 163, 752 N.Y.S.2d 47 [2002], lv denied 100 N.Y.2d 503, 791 N.E.2d 961, 761 N.Y.S.2d 595 [2003]). Indeed, the only issue to be reviewed by this Court herein is whether the administrative decision to revoke petitioner's pistol license was arbitrary and capricious or an abuse of discretion (Iacono v Police Dept. of the City of N.Y., 204 A.D.2d 225, 226, 612 N.Y.S.2d 140 [1994], lv dismissed in part and denied in part 85 N.Y.2d 848, 648 N.E.2d 786, 624 N.Y.S.2d 366 [1995]; Sewell v City of New York, 182 A.D.2d 469, 473, 583 N.Y.S.2d 255 [1992], lv denied 80 N.Y.2d 756, 602 N.E.2d 232, 588 N.Y.S.2d 824 [1992]), and whether a rational basis exists for the agency's determination. A rational basis exists when the evidence adduced is sufficient to support the Commissioner's action (see Matter of Bocchiano v New York City Police Dept., 213 A.D.2d 264, 624 N.Y.S.2d 21 [1995]; Sewell, 182 A.D.2d at 473).

New York police feel they are immune from the disastrous impact of this legal theory. They are wrong. The New York Government’s treating handgun licensing as a privilege that effectively overrides operation of the Fundamental Right to Armed Self-Defense when the two come into conflict, applies as much to them as it does to the civilian citizenry residing or working in New York.

See Boss vs. Kelly, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 62348 (S.D.N.Y 2007), affirmed,  Boss v. Kelly, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 520 (2d Cir. N.Y., Jan. 13, 2009). Note that the case commenced prior to Heller and a decision against the NYPD Police Officer was affirmed by a New York Federal District Court case one year after Heller. The case is instructive of the New York Government’s deep-seated suspicion of the armed citizenry. And that suspicion extends to the State’s own police officers. Consider, the Boss case. The Court spent considerable time discussing the operative facts of the case.

The facts alleged in the Complaint, which are accepted as true for the purposes of this motion, are as follows. Plaintiff Kenneth Boss is a police officer employed by the New York City Police Department ("NYPD").On February 4, 1999, Boss was one of four officers involved in the fatal shooting of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed twenty-two year old man of African descent. The incident received nationwide media attention and triggered protests related to the issue of police brutality.

Following the incident, plaintiff surrendered his weapon to the NYPD. Shortly thereafter, the four officers involved in the shooting of Diallo, including Boss, were indicted by a grand jury for murder, reckless endangerment, manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Upon his indictment, the NYPD suspended Boss for thirty days and then returned him to duty on "modified assignment," which is a duty status reserved for officers involved in disciplinary proceedings or criminal charges.

On February 25, 2000, after a trial, a jury found Boss not guilty of all charges. Subsequently, the NYPD Firearms Discharge Review Board concluded that Boss had not violated any NYPD firearms guideline, and recommended that plaintiff's duty status be reviewed in one year.

One year later - in April 2002 - Boss wrote to Commissioner Kelly  asking that he be returned to full duty, but that request was denied. Boss was then assigned to the Emergency Service Unit's training school and repair shop, where he remained on "modified assignment" with no gun.

In August 2002, Boss commenced a proceeding in New York Supreme Court, New York County, pursuant to Article 78 of the New York Civil Practice Law and Rules, seeking restoration to full duty with a gun. He alleged in that petition that maintaining him on "modified assignment" without a gun was arbitrary and capricious and in excess of Commissioner Kelly's legal authority. In his affidavit submitted in opposition to Boss's Article 78 petition, Commissioner Kelly explained the reasons  behind his decision to maintain Boss on "modified assignment" without a gun.

Specifically, according to the Complaint, Kelly wrote that in light of the controversy surrounding the Diallo shooting and subsequent criminal trial, if Boss were restored to full duty with a gun, and ever had to take any police action involving the use of force, "he and the Department would be inappropriately subjected to pre-judgment." This, according to Boss, "brands Plaintiff as incompetent and dangerous on the authority of sheer speculation."

On April 14, 2004, Justice Michael Stallman of the New York Supreme Court granted in part and denied in part Boss's Article 78 petition in a written opinion. Boss v. Kelly, 3 Misc. 3d 936, 776 N.Y.S.2d 772 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2004). Justice Stallman wrote that the police commissioner "exercises broad discretion to manage the Police Department, necessarily including deployment of personnel and their assignment to appropriate duties." Id. at 938. Nevertheless, Justice Stallman concluded that the Patrol Guide - which sets forth personnel rules governing the NYPD - permitted "modified assignment" status only when there is misconduct or disciplinary action anticipated. Id. at 941. Here, no disciplinary action was anticipated by the time the Article 78 was commenced, and the criminal charges had already been tried to verdict. Id. at 938, 942. Thus, the court concluded that Boss could not be kept on "modified assignment," although he could be assigned to a variety of other non-full duty assignments. Id. at 942. "It is clear," however, the court wrote, "that petitioner's demand for full duty status is a demand for restoration of his gun." Id. at 940. As to that, the court concluded that the Patrol Guide did not require that Boss's gun had to be restored, and that the decision not to restore the gun was within Commissioner Kelly's "broad discretion to manage the Police Department." Id. at 938, 940. Thus, the court granted the petition in part and remanded the matter to the Commissioner for further action consistent with the opinion. Id. at 943.

The Appellate Division, First Department, later affirmed that determination, writing that "[t]he Commissioner's determination not to return the petitioner to full duty status does not violate departmental rules, . . . and the decision not to restore his weapon was within the Commissioner's rationally exercised discretion. The Commissioner's stated reasons for denying restoration to full duty are neither irrational nor arbitrary and capricious." Boss v. Kelly, 17 A.D. 3d 269, 270, 793 N.Y.S.2d 423 (1st Dep't 2005) (internal citation omitted). Shortly thereafter, the NYPD changed Boss's duty status to "Full Duty No Gun."

In April 2006, Boss took military leave from the NYPD and deployed to Iraq as a marine, where he saw combat. Upon his later discharge from active military duty and return to the NYPD, Boss requested that he be restored to full duty with a gun he was, however, given the same assignment and duty status that he had prior to his military leave: "Full Duty No Gun." As a result, according to the Complaint, his status has earned him the "mocking moniker 'Kenny No-Gun' among his colleagues." (Id.)

On March 12, 2007, Boss initiated the present action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging in Count 1 that the City of New York, the NYPD, and Commissioner Kelly violated his property rights without due process by virtue of his duty assignment and in Count 2 that Commissioner Kelly violated his liberty rights without due process by filing an affidavit in the Article 78 proceeding that effectively "brands Plaintiff as incompetent and dangerous on the authority of sheer speculation." Boss seeks injunctive and declaratory relief and compensatory and punitive damages. Defendants now move to dismiss the Complaint pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim.

However, to establish a property interest, a plaintiff must have "more than an abstract need or desire for [the property], []he must, instead, have a legitimate claim of entitlement to it under state or federal law in order to state a § 1983 claim." Finley, 79 F.3d at 1296 (citing Roth, 408 U.S. at 577). Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly "recognize[d] that a benefit is not a protected entitlement if government officials may grant or deny it in their discretion." Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748, 756, 125 S. Ct. 2796, 162 L. Ed. 2d 658 (2005) (citing Kentucky Dep't of Corrections v. Thompson, 490 U.S. 454, 462-463, 109 S. Ct. 1904, 104 L. Ed. 2d 506 (1989)).

Although federal law controls what process is due, property interests themselves “‘are created and their dimensions are defined by existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law - rules or understandings that secure certain benefits and that support claims of entitlement to those benefits.”’ Velez v. Levy, 401 F.3d 75, 85 (2d Cir. 2005) (quoting Roth, 408 U.S. at 577); see also Martz v. Incorporated Vill. of Valley Stream, 22 F.3d 26, 29-30 (2d Cir. 1994).

Here, applying New York law, Boss cannot plausibly plead a "legitimate claim of entitlement," Finley, 79 F.3d at 1296, to possess a firearm while on duty because "[i]t is well settled that the possession of a handgun license is a privilege, not a right, which is subject to the broad discretion of the New York City Police Commissioner." Papaioannou v. Kelly, 14 A.D.3d 459, 460, 788 N.Y.S.2d 378 (1st Dep't 2005) (citing Matter of Kaplan v Bratton, 249 A.D.2d 199, 201, 673 N.Y.S.2d 66 (1st Dep't 1998) and Matter of Fondacaro v Kelly, 234 A.D.2d 173, 177, 652 N.Y.S.2d 604 (1st Dep't 1996)); accord Sewell v. New York, 182 A.D.2d 469, 472, 583 N.Y.S.2d 255 (1st Dep't 1992). Thus, because defendants may "grant or deny" Boss's access to a firearm "in their discretion," Town of Castle Rock, 545 U.S. at 756, he has failed to state a plausible claim that he has a property interest in possessing a gun while on duty.

In response, plaintiff points out that the New York state cases cited above arise from the Police Commissioner's decision to restrict a civilian's access to firearms, as opposed to his decision to restrict a police officer's access to firearms as part of his employment. However, plaintiff does not cite any legal authority suggesting that the Commissioner has less discretion in granting the right to carry firearms to police officers - employees over whom he may exercise considerable control within delimited discretion - than he does when granting that right to civilians.

To the contrary, both judicial decisions in Boss's own Article 78 proceeding explain that the Commissioner has considerable discretion in deciding whether an officer may carry a firearm. Justice Stallman noted that "[t]he Patrol Guide does not give an officer an absolute right to have a firearm under any and all circumstances," and therefore concluded that the decision "whether or not to restore an officer's firearm appears to be within the discretion of the officer's superiors, and ultimately, that of the Commissioner, rationally exercised." Boss, 3 Misc. 3d at 940. Similarly, the Appellate Division, First Department held that "the decision not to restore his weapon was within the Commissioner's rationally exercised discretion." Boss, 17 A.D.3d at 270.

Moreover, other courts have held that "[i]n determining the fitness of candidates, the Police Department, as the agency charged with the responsibility, is afforded 'wide discretion,' which is to be sustained unless clearly abused." City of New York v. N.Y. City Civ. Serv. Comm'n, 20 A.D.3d 347, 348, 800 N.Y.S.2d 1 (1st Dep't 2005); see   also Matter of Bruder v. Kelly, N.Y.L.J., Aug. 6, 2007, at 18 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Jul. 31, 2007) (deferring to the discretion of the NYPD Commissioner regarding the reinstatement of a police officer involved in another highly-publicized and racially-charged police brutality case "in view of the importance of the public trust in police officers"). Thus, because defendants had “wide discretion” in deciding to place Boss on “Full Duty No Gun” status, Boss has no constitutional property interest in possessing a gun while on duty, and Claim 1 is dismissed with prejudice.” [Citations to the Complaint omitted].

 Be all this as it may, since obtaining a HANDGUN LICENSE (A STATE PREROGATIVE, according to these Courts) operates as a CONDITION PRECEDENT to THE LAWFULLY CARRYING OF A HANDGUN IN PUBLIC and since the STATE can exercise its discretion in issuing or refraining from issuing a Handgun License, STATE INTERFERENCE IN A CITIZEN’S EXERCISE OF A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT IS THE ONLY INFERENCE THAT CAN BE LOGICALLY DRAWN.

Even if the State invariably were to issue a Handgun License to a citizen, still, issuance of a license as a CONDITION PRECEDENT to THE EXERCISE OF A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT IS PRESENT IN THE ACT, AND THEREFORE IT IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND ILLEGAL. STATE HANDGUN LICENSING (AND ANY STATE FIREARMS LICENSING) INTERFEREE WITH THE EXERCISE OF ONE’S FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE, NATURAL LAW RIGHT. YES, LICENSING IS A PRIVILEGE, AS NEW YORK COURTS AND OTHER COURTS MAINTAIN, BUT TO CLAIM THAT STATE APPLICATION OF PRIVILEGE, CONSISTENT WITH THE EXERCISE OF ITS POLICE POWER DOES NOT DAMAGE TO THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF THE RIGHT IS NONSENSICAL.

A STATE’S DELIBERATE, UNMITIGATED, UNCONDITIONAL CONVERSION of an UNALTERABLE and UNALIENABLE NATURAL LAW RIGHT into a Government PRIVILEGE is patently and facially illegal. Yet, this practice as indelible law in many of the Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions persists and in the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATIVE STATE, too, HAS UNCONSTITUTIONALLY involved itself in this as well.

Scarcely one full week after the New York Senate passed a set of comprehensive amendments to its Handgun Law, that included a NEW STATUTE in the NEW YORK PENAL CODE, pertaining to “SENSITIVE LOCATIONS”, Governor Kathy Hochul signed the amendments into Law. That occurred on July 1, 2022—the same day those amendments, referred to as the “CONCEALED CARRY IMPROVEMENT ACT” (CCIA), crossed her desk.

Less than two weeks later, on July 11, Ivan Antonyuk, and Gun Owners of America, Inc., (GOA) Gun Owners Foundation (GOF), and Gun Owners of America New York, Inc. (GOA-NY) filed its lawsuit, challenging the constitutionality of the State amendments to the Handgun Law.

On July 20 the Plaintiffs added a Motion for Preliminary Injunction.

In that first case the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York DISMISSED the CM [THE COMPLAINT] WITHOUT PREJUDICE on the Court’s OWN MOTION for “LACK OF SUBJECT MATTER JURISDICTION,” and thereupon DENIED the PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION as MOOT. [THIS CASE IS OFTEN REFERRED TO BY THE COURTS AS ANTONYUK I—A SHORTLIVED CASE, TO DISTINGUISH IT FROM THE SUBSEQUENT ONGOING CASE THAT THE COURTS REFER AS ANTONYUK II, FOR CONVENIENCE].

ANTONYUK II COMMENCED IN THE LATTER MONTHS OF 2022 AND CONTINUED THROUGH THE U.S. SUPREME COURT REJECTION OF ANTONYUK PLAINTIFFS’ SECOND PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI ON APRIL 7, 2025, [IN THE CASE LAST CAPTIONED ANTONYUK VS. JAMES [A.K.A. ANTONYUK II]]. THE PRESENT STATUS OF THE CASE IS UNKNOWN, BUT APPARENTLY, IT’S SITTING IDLE, IN A STATE OF ETERNAL LIMBO AT THE U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT, WHERE THE CLERK OF THE U.S. SUPREME COURT SENT IT, AFTER THE HIGH COURT REJECTED REVIEW OF IT. IS THE CASE ALIVE? IS IT DEAD? WHAT IS THE STATUS OF IT? IS IT IN A STATE OF “SUSPENDED ANIMATION.”

WHAT IS THE SECOND CIRCUIT DOING WITH IT?

ANTONYUK FOLLOWED A MEANDERING COURSE FOR NEARLY THREE YEARS, FROM THE DISMISSAL OF THE FIRST CASE ANTONYUK I IN JULY 2022, TO AN ODDLY TRUNCATED END/STATE IN APRIL 2025 AS IT APPARENTLY STILL SITS IN THE SECOND CIRCUIT.

Governor Hochul applauded the District Court’s DISMISSAL of ANTONYUK I, but that dismissal had nothing to do with the merits of the case, since the Plaintiff, Ivan Antonyuk, was not denied refiling the case.

Why did the District Court dismiss ANTONUK I. This is worth a careful look because the District Court was amenable to Plaintiffs’ allegations as presented in their Complaint.

The Court found the Plaintiff organizations didn’t have standing to bring action, but, in the Court’s lengthy opinion, it made plain that it found the ALLEGATIONS of the Complaint, challenging the constitutionality of the amendments to the Handgun Law, had merit. 

The Court made plain that Ivan Antonyuk, who was the sole INDIVIDUAL PLAINTIFF in the lawsuit, and who did have standing to sue, could refile, once the standing issue was cleared up.

While the Court could not lawfully suggest, or encourage Antonyuk to refile the case, as the Court must remain neutral, Antonyuk could rest assured the Court would be amenable to a refiling.

The Court opined,

“After carefully considering the matter, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have made a strong showing that they will experience irreparable harm if the preliminary injunction is not issued for the reasons stated in their memoranda of law. To those reasons the Court would add only that, even setting aside the unrebutted presumption of irreparable harm arising from the above-described constitutional violations, Plaintiffs have shown the adverse factual consequences that they—and especially Plaintiff Antonyuk—will suffer if an injunction is  not issued: his diminished safety in all the locations that he currently carries his concealed handgun that he will not be able to carry it. . . .[And],

After carefully considering the matter, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have made a strong showing that balance of equities tips in their favor and that the public interest would not be disserved by the Court's granting of their requested relief for the reasons stated in their memoranda of law.” [citations omitted].

Ivan Antonyuk refiled his case on November 22, 2022. Five additional individuals were added as Party Plaintiffs. Governor Hochul appeared as the principal Party Defendant. Question arose as to the propriety of adding the Governor as a Defendant in the action.

In support of keeping Hochul in the Complaint, the Plaintiffs set forth,

[The] Governor (1) has openly criticized and expressed contempt for the Supreme Court's decision in Bruen, (2) took action to circumvent the Supreme Court's ruling by merely changing] the nature of the open-ended discretion" from proper cause to good moral character . . . , (3) pushed enactment of the CCIA through the legislature and (4) signed the bill into law, and (5) subsequently has acted as the interpreter-in-chief with respect to the CCIA's provisions. The Governor has opined on the statute's proper interpretation and provided guidance and instructions to officials throughout the state of New York as to its implementation according to her desires. For example, Governor Hochul (1) has instructed that the CCIA's new licensing process applies even to those whose carry license applications are already submitted and pending prior to September 1, 2022; (2) has claimed that the 'good moral character' activity will involve door-to-door interviews of a person's neighbors; (3) has claimed that the CCIA's plain text should not apply to certain parts of the Adirondack Park in contradiction to the wishes of the bill's sponsors; and (4) has opined that the CCIA's 'restricted locations' provision creates a 'presumption . . . that they don't want concealed carry unless they put out a sign saying Concealed Carry Weapons Welcome Here. . . . Moreover, and again, the Superintendent, who is tasked with implementing and enforcing various provisions of the CCIA, is the Governor's underling . . . .”

The Court curiously seemed to acknowledge some culpability on the part of Governor Hochul, but nothing that would render her legally responsible for the harm the CCIA might cause Plaintiffs.

The Court said,

True as all this [the allegations directed to Hochul] might be, it does not appear enough to render her a proper party to this action under the case law cited in Antonyuk I. Plaintiffs have not alleged or shown how Defendant Hochul could be properly found to have the specific legal duty to enforce the CCIA. [emphasis our own].

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

As a result, it is not clear to the Court how, to the extent that Plaintiffs were to ultimately prevail on their claims, Defendant Hochul would be the individual who may provide them the (legal) relief they seek. See Antonyuk I, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 157874, 2022 WL 3999791, at *11 (“[T]he question the Court must ask itself is whether (and, if so, the extent to which), if ordered to do so by the Court, [the relevant defendant] could provide Plaintiffs with the relief they seek.”). As Plaintiffs concede in their Complaint, “[t]o be sure, Governor Hochul is not the official to whom the Legislature delegated responsibility to implement the provisions of the challenged statutes.” (Dkt. No. 1, at ¶ 9 [Compl.] [internal quotation marks omitted].)

For all of these reasons, the Court dismisses Defendant Hochul as a party to this action.”

Subsequently, the U.S. District Court issued a TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER against the Government, followed by the granting of a Preliminary Injunction severely hampering the State’s enforcement of the Concealed Carry Improvement Act.

The Defendants thereupon filed a Request for Reconsideration of its granting Plaintiff’s Motion for Preliminary Injunction, and the District Court denied Defendants’ Request.

Defendants then appealed the District Court’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where they anticipated  finding a sympathetic ear. They weren’t wrong.

On December 6, 2022, in a short opinion, the Second Circuit, vacated the lower Court’s order granting Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction. In the case, still captioned Antonyuk vs. Hochul, the Court stated,

“Appellants request a stay pending appeal of the district court's order dated November 7, 2022 (N.D.N.Y. 22-cv-986, doc. 78), enjoining Appellants from enforcing certain aspects of New York's Concealed Carry Improvement Act ("CCIA"). Having weighed the applicable factors, see In re World Trade Ctr. Disaster Site Litig., 503 F.3d 167, 170 (2d Cir. 2007), we conclude that a stay pending appeal is warranted. Accordingly, upon due consideration, it is hereby ORDERED that the motion for a stay pending appeal is GRANTED and the district court's November 7 order is STAYED pending the resolution of this appeal. To the extent that the district court's order bars enforcement of the CCIA's provisions related to persons who have been tasked with the duty to keep the peace at places of worship, airports, and private buses, such categories are EXCEPTED from this order. Appellees' motion to expedite the resolution of the matter is GRANTED.

The Plaintiffs then appealed this INTERLOCUTORY ORDER to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Plaintiffs requested the Court to vacate the U.S. Circuit Court’s lifting of the U.S. District Court’s granting Plaintiff Petitioners’ MOTION FOR PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION. The U.S. Supreme Court refused the request, with this:

“Application to vacate stay presented to Justice Sotomayor and by her referred to the Court denied.”

[And] “Justice Alito, with whom Justice Thomas joins, respecting the denial of the application to vacate stay.”

But the two Justices added this statement:

The New York law at issue in this application presents novel and serious questions under both the First and the Second Amendments. The District Court found, in a thorough opinion, that the applicants were likely to succeed on a number of their claims, and it issued a preliminary injunction as to twelve provisions of the challenged law. With one exception, the Second Circuit issued a stay of the injunction in full, and in doing so did not provide any explanation for its ruling. App. to Emergency Application 2. In parallel cases presenting related issues, the Second Circuit has likewise issued unreasoned summary stay orders, but in those cases it has ordered expedited briefing. See, e.g., Order in Hardaway v. Nigrelli, No. 22-2933, 2022 U.S. App. LEXIS 36046 (CA2, Dec. 7, 2022), ECF Doc. 53; Order in Christian v. Nigrelli, No. 22-2987 (CA2, Dec. 12, 2022), ECF Doc. 40.

I understand the Court’s denial today to reflect respect for the Second Circuit’s procedures in managing its own docket, rather than expressing any view on the merits of the case. Applicants should not be deterred by today’s order from again seeking relief if the Second Circuit does not, within a reasonable time, provide an explanation for its stay order or expedite consideration of the appeal.

JUSTICES ALITO AND THOMAS HAVE MADE AS PLAIN AS THEY COULD THAT ANTONYUK WOULD BE TAKEN UP BY THE U.S. SUPREME COURT. THAT THIS DID NOT COME TO PASS STRONGLY SUGGESTS THAT THE CHIEF JUSTICE, JOHN ROBERTS, REBUFFED THESE JUSTICES. AND NONE OF TRUMP’S NOMINEES—NOT ONE OF THEM—CAME TO THE TWO SENIOR JUSTICES’ RESCUE, SUPPORTING THEM IN TAKING UP THE CASE, AND VINDICATING THE LEGACY OF THE EMINENT LATE JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA. THE COMBINED EFFORTS OF ALL THREE JUSTICES TO DEFEND AND TO SANCTIFY THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS FOR THE SAKE OF PRESERVATION OF A FREE REPUBLIC HAS COME TO NAUGHT.

THIS FAILURE OF THE COURT TO GARNER FOUR VOTES—LESS THAN A MAJORITY, TO GARNER REVIEW OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SECOND AMENDMENT CASE TO COME BEFORE THE COURT SINCE BRUEN, FOURTEEN MONTHS EARLIER, IS MIND-BOGGLING.

JOHN ROBERTS AND TWO OR ALL THREE OF TRUMP’S NOMINEES HAVE REFUSED TO HONOR THE COURT’S OWN PRIOR LANDMARK SECOND AMENDMENT CASE DECISIONS. IN FAILING THE CONSTITUTION, THE PEOPLE, AND THE COURT’S OWN ETHICAL OBLIGATIONS, JUSTICE ROBERTS AND THREE OSTENSIBLY, CONSERVATIVE-WING JUSTICES HAVE SEVERELY WEAKENED THE AUTHORITY OF THE COURT, ALONG WITH THE COURT’S CREDIBILITY ALL OF THAT HAS GONE OUT THE DOOR.

THE ANTONYUK CASE BRINGS UP ISSUES THAT MUST BE DEALT WITH LEST ALL LOWER COURTS, FEDERAL AND STATE, AND CONGRESS AND THE BUREAUCRACY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, AND THE MANY ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT STATE LEGISLATURES AND GOVERNORS,  CONTINUE, BRAZENLY, TO DEFY—EVEN MOCK—THE U.S. SUPREME COURT. DO JUSTICE ROBERTS AND THE TRUMP NOMINEES EVEN CARE?

When delving into Bruen, we take note of what the New York Hochul Government was looking for in the way of preserving its Handgun Law.

The Supreme Court made plain the State’s “PROPER CAUSE” STANDARD. Having struck down that standard as illegal and unconstitutional, the New York Hochul Government had no choice but to remove PROPER CAUSE from the HANDGUN LAW.

The State could not retain PROPER CAUSE as doing so would be too obvious an act of blatant defiance.

Even with the Socialist/Marxist Biden-Harris Administration in Office and a House under the control of the “Socialist” Democrat Party, those unelected people or groups operating as DECISION-MAKERS in the OFFICE OF THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF THE  U.S. GOVERNMENT DID NOT YET POWERFUL ENOUGH TO COME TO THE AID OF AN ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT STATE GOVERNMENT THAT WOULD TRANSPARENTLY DEFY THE U.S. SUPREME COURT, THIRD BRANCH OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. All this didn’t matter.

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT SABOTAGED ITSELF, HAVING REFUSED TO GRANT REVIEW OF ANTONYUK.

The Hochul Government brazenly transformed New York City into a “GUN FREE ZONE,” thereby effectively reducing the import of a citizen’s ability to defend himself with a handgun when facing a deadly threat when in public.

Notwithstanding Justice Thomas’ warning to the New York Hochul Government, the State severely hampered the efficacy of a valid New York Concealed Handgun Carry License.

Writing for the Majority, Justice Thomas said,

Although we have no occasion to comprehensively define “sensitive places” in this case, we do think respondents err in their attempt to characterize New York’s proper-cause requirement as a “sensitive-place” law. In their view, “sensitive places” where the government may lawfully disarm law-abiding citizens include all “places where people typically congregate and where law-enforcement and other public-safety professionals are presumptively available.” . . . It is true that people sometimes congregate in “sensitive places,” and it is likewise true  that law enforcement professionals are usually presumptively available in those locations. But expanding the category of “sensitive places” simply to all places of public congregation that are not isolated from law enforcement defines the category of “sensitive places” far too broadly. Respondents’ argument would in effect exempt cities from the Second Amendment and would eviscerate the general right to publicly carry arms for self-defense that we discuss in detail below. See Part III-B, infra. Put simply, there is no historical basis for New York to effectively declare the island of Manhattan a “sensitive place” simply because it is crowded and protected generally by the New York City Police Department.”

Can Governor Hochul honestly argue with a straight face that, since the State Government DIDN’T LITERALLY convert the entirety of Manhattan Island into a “SENSITIVE PLACE,”—only a GOODLY PORTION OF IT, WHICH THE STATE CAN ADD TO AT ANY TIME—the Government had nonetheless complied with “THE LETTER OF THE LAW?” The actions of Governor Hochul and her Government ARE QUESTIONABLE, actually, ACTIONABLE.

When the New York Government amended the Sullivan Act in 1913 to further constrain a civilian citizen’s exercise of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms by giving Government LICENSING OFFICERS more avenue to deny CONCEALED HANDGUN CARRY LICENSES by imposing THE REQUIREMENT OF “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” and “PROPER CAUSE,” the need for the former in view of operation of the latter, reduced the former, “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” (subjective as it is), essentially redundancy.

But, with the Supreme Court STRIKING DOWN “PROPER CAUSE” as UNCONSTITUTIONAL on its face, yet, having said nothing about STRIKING DOWN “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER,” the State transferred the import of PROPER CAUSE to the MORAL CHARACTER REQUIREMENT.

This wasn’t the best substitute, since the State would still be obligated to issue more CONCEALED HANDGUN CARRY LICENSES than it would have done under the PROPER CAUSE Standard. But, this manipulation could bolster GOOD MORAL CHARACTER, and, with the addition of a BRAND NEW “SENSITIVE LOCATION” RESTRICTION STATUTE, the New York Government could accomplish much the same thing. **

TRANSFORMING all UNRESTRICTED CONCEALED CARRY LICENSES into mere RESTRICTED CARRY LICENSES would accomplish much of the same thing.

Some New Yorkers, having secured a CONCEALED HANDGUN LICENSE FOR THE FIRS TIME, would think of it as a wonderful accomplishment since many thousands of New Yorkers could never hope to acquire a VALID NEW YORK CONCEALED HANDGUN CARRY LICENSE under the PROPER CAUSE Standard.

But, for those individuals who had acquired an UNRESTRICTED CONCEALED CARRY LICENCE, when the “PROPER CAUSE” Standard was still part of the HANDGUN LAW, none of them could be pleased at this development.

Moreover, New Yorkers often face long delays in the processing of applications. Nothing in that respect has changed.

Applicants are held to stringent time constraints in providing the handgun licensing officer with all the documents requested, and there is no reciprocal penalty for Government delays in processing applications. Bruen doesn’t respond to that.

GOOD MORAL CHARACTER remains A SALIENT ISSUE IN ANTONYUK as does the matter of clarifying the “HISTORICAL TRADITION” TEST that replaced “MEANS-END SCRUTINY in the HELLER case.

Bruen made substantial progress in outlining the meaning of the HISTORICAL TRADITION test that Courts must utilize when looking at STATE ACTIONS that impact the CORE of the Right but, even there, the question arises what State action is such that it impacts the CORE OF THE RIGHT?

Might not an Anti-Second Amendment Court such as the Second Circuit opine that a particular State action does not impact the CORE of the Right protected by the Second Amendment, and thereby revert back to use of MEANS-END SCRUTINY THAT INVARIABLY FAVORS THE STATE? And, wasn’t that the reason the Supreme Court in Heller revoked use of THAT TEST in the first place?

And what are we to make of HANDGUN LICENSING? Simply asserting that it has long been in use is not a sensible argument that it is legal and constitutional. That fact merely begs the question at issue: Whether STATE HANDGUN LICENSING IS LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL it ought to be retained, (OR CAN LEGALLY BE RETAINED) at all, especially since licensing of handguns (or of any firearm) entails Government involvement in the process. Once Government interposes itself between a citizen and a FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE NATURAL LAW RIGHT that the BILL OF RIGHTS makes plain no GOVERNMENT can LAWFULLY TRANSGRESS, and, as STATE RELIANCE ON HANDGUN/FIREARMS LICENSING ACCOUNTS FOR A MULTIPLICITY OF SINS, THE COURT SHOULD STRIKE IT DOWN AS FACIALLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND BE DONE WITH IT. MANY STATES HAVE EFFECTIVELY ABOLISHED HANDGUN LICENSING.

BUT, AMONG THOSE JURISDICTIONS THAT VIRULENTLY OPPOSE CIVILIAN CITIZEN OWNERSHIP AND POSSESSION OF HANDGUNS, THEY HAVE NOT BUDGED FROM THAT ATYPICAL STANCE AND THEY CONTINUE TO CRAFT EVER MORE DRACONIAN FIREARMS LAWS THAT SAVAGE THE IMPORT AND PURPORT OF THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS. THE STUBBORN RETENTION OF HANDGUN LICENSING REGIMES BY SUCH JURISDICTIONS ARE BOTH UNCONSCIONABLE AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND MUST BE STRUCK DOWN.

SUCH STATES CLAIM WRONLY THAT THE U.S. SUPREME HAS HELD AND CONTINUES TO HOLD STATE HANDGUN LICENSING CONSTITUTIONAL? Yet that isn’t true at all.

THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT HAS NEVER ISSUED A CATEGORICAL RULING OR STATEMENT DECLARING THAT THE INSTITUTION OF STATE HANDGUN LICENSING SCHEMES ARE CONSTITUTIONAL.

INSTEAD THE COURT HAS TO DATE EVALUATED SPECIFIC LICENSING REQUIREMENTS AND STRUCK DOWN THOSE THAT IT DEEMS IMPERMISSIBLY BURDEN THE SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHT, AS WAS THE CASE IN BRUEN. BUT, HAVING FAILED TO RULE HANDGUN LICENSING OR ANY FIREARMS LICENSING AS PATENTLY AND BLATANTLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL SIMPLY COMPELS STATES SUCH AS NEW YORK TO BE MORE CREATIVE IN CRAFTING WORK-AROUNDS.

THE COURT'S JURISPRUDENCE SUGGESTS THAT, WHILE SOME REGULATORY MEASURES MAY BE PERMISSIBLE, LICENSING SCHEMES THAT PREVENT LAW-ABIDING CIVILIAN CITIZENS FROM EXERCISING THEIR RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE WITHOUT JUSTIFICATION WILL NOT WITHSTAND CONSTITUTIONAL SCRUTINY. THE U.S. COURT MUST RULE HANDGUN LICENSING FACIALLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

BUT THERE IS A PRELIMINARY QUESTION. IS NOT THE ACT OF FEDERAL OR STATE GOVERNMENT LICENSING UNCONSTITUTIONAL AS A MATTER OF LOGIC AS WELL AS LAW SINCE THE ACT OF LICENSING OF HANDGUNS IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL/UNCONSCIONABLE BECAUSE GOVERNMENT INVOLVES ITSELF DIRECTLY IN A MATTER NATURAL LAW PROHIBITS AND WHICH, THREATENING THE VIABILITY OF A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, AND A FREE AND SOVEREIGN CITIZENRY.

MOREOVER, NO OTHER FUNDAMENTAL, NATURAL LAW RIGHT ALLOWS BLATANT GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE THROUGH LICENSING. WHY, THEN, ARE STATE HANDGUN LICENSING REGIMES SEEMINGLY TOLERATED BY THE U.S. SUPREME COURT. THIS MAKES NO SENSE, AS ROGUE ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT STATES AND A TYRANNICAL FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CAN EASILY ASSERT THAT SUCH HANDGUN/FIREARMS LICENSING SCHEMES ARE LAWFUL AND THEN FURTHER PROCLAIM THAT, AS PUBLIC POLICY AND A WELL-ORDERED SOCIETY, REQUIRE/DEMAND THE PUBLIC SURRENDER THEIR FIREARMS ON PAIN OF QUICK AND SEVERE GOVERNMENT PUNISHMENT FOR FAILURE TO DO SO, THOSE WHO MAY WISH TO DESIST/RESIST THE ORDER FOR GOVERNMENT COMPLIANCE, AS PER SE CRIMINALS.

To date, the U.S. Supreme Court appears to take a case-by-case approach, evaluating each licensing scheme based on its specific requirements and the burden it places on the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. But, this piecemeal approach only obfuscates the inherent illegality of the process and encourages States to easily find mechanisms to make continued enforcement of licensing of handguns, and of firearms generally, palatable to the High Court.

BUT ISN’T STATE HANDGUN LICENSING (with capital “L”), GOVERNMENT LICENSING OF FIREARMS, as opposed to specific CASE-BY-CASE licensing (with lower-case “l”), WHAT THE U.S. SUPREME COURT SHOULD REALLY BE LOOKING AT?

The failure of the U.S. Supreme Court to perfunctorily deny review of ANTONYUK bespeaks a serious deficiency in the operation of and jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court that has taken a MAJOR HIT, with the loss of Justice Scalia, and the sidelining of the two remaining TRUE CONSERVATIVES AND PATRIOTS, Justices Thomas and Alito.

It is said that the present Chief Justice, John Roberts’ reticence in handling major SECOND AMENDMENT CASES bespeaks the possibility that someone or something has compromised Roberts but, more likely, Roberts doesn’t want to take a stand on Second Amendment issues as he sees them as unimportant or politically problematic. His position on Heller, McDonald, and Bruen could have yielded even more profound decisional law, but the Justices who urged these cases were still constrained to weaken the rulings. And that has only delayed resolution and ALLOWED, EVEN INVITED ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT JURISDICTIONS TO CONTINUE TO EVADE THOSE RULINGS OF THE HIGH COURT THAT HAVE BEEN MADE.

And, Chief Justice Roberts doesn’t stand alone in now seeking to quarantine the THREE LANDMARK CASES and in backpedaling on PROTECTING THIS VITAL NATURAL LAW RIGHT, and in repulsing any further attempt to further clarify and strengthen THE RIGHT.

The Supreme Court has a long history, tracing back to the very ratification of the BILL OF RIGHTS in 1791, in refusing to take up SECOND AMENDMENT CASES on review.

And of the few cases the Supreme Court has taken up prior to the BIG THREE cases (RE: major, positive decisions that only came down in the 21st CENTURY, and, OF THOSE, OCCURRING within a confined TIME FRAME, 2008 through 2022), the Court has RULED AGAINST protection of our sacred Right, or has otherwise issued very narrow rulings, or has taken up Second Amendment cases that are relatively unimportant—not involving matters THAT SEVERELY CONSTRAIN BOTH THE STATES AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FROM CONTINUOUSLY IMPOSING themselves on Americans’ EXERCISE of their most VITALLY IMPORTANT RIGHT.

And, when one considers THE COSTS involved in attempting to secure a HANDGUN LICENSE and THEN KEEPING IT, and the time-consuming process of engaging in COURT BATTLES, and the exorbitant costs involved—running easily into thousands of dollars and even tens of thousands of dollars—and the psychological drain on one in fighting for validation and vindication of his NATURAL LAW, FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE, it is not surprising that many Americans, most Americans, just throw in the towel. Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions like New York know this.

They know that TIME AND MONEY (TAX-PAYER MONEY) are on their side. The New York Government has effectively won the war against tens of thousands of New Yorkers who wish merely to exercise their NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, especially in a CITY where the Government is both unable and unwilling to act to protect the residents of the CITY, but argue at once that individuals are not permitted to protect their own life with the most effective means available—a handgun.

OF WHAT PURPOSE ARE U.S. SUPREME COURT DECISIONS THAT HOLD A RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IS AN INDIVIDUAL RIGHT AND THAT THE RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE APPLIES BOTH AT HOME AND IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN AND THAT THE RIGHT CODIFIED IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT APPLIES TO THE STATES, NO LESS THAN TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, WHEN THE STATES AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ROUTINELY INFRINGE THE RIGHT, AND THE U.S. SUPREME COURT ISSUES EITHER LAME, NARROW DECISIONS DEVOID OF EFFICACY OR DENIES REVIEW OF CASES INVOLVING THE CORE OF THE RIGHT, AS IN ANTONYUK.

Organizations that defend this VITAL RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE themselves tend often to simply move to the next case when the most important cases ANTONYUK AND SNOPE end up DOA at the HIGH COURT. THERE ARE ACTIONS STILL TO BE TAKEN TO KEEP THESE CASES IN THE FOREGROUND OF THE PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS AND THAT OF THE LOWER COURTS AND THE HIGHEST COURT IN THE LAND.

Couldn’t these organizations that had prosecuted these cases acted, to try, at least, to keep these cases from falling down a hole. There is much to discuss?

WE INTEND TO DO OUR PART TO LAY BARE WHAT CAN AND MUST BE DONE. TOO MUCH IS AT STAKE. THE ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT PROPONENTS AND FANATICS ARE NOT GOING TO SLEEP ON THIS. THEY FULLY INTEND TO ABOLISH EXERCISE OF THIS VITAL RIGHT. FOR THEM, IT IS A MEANS TO AN END. A FREE REPUBLIC CANNOT BE DESTROYED AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION OF 1776 CANNOT BE UNDONE IF PATRIOTIC AMERICANS RESIST BY MAKING THEIR VOICES HEARD.

We will look at those MYRIAD SECOND AMENDMENT CASES in the next article to prove our point that the U.S. Supreme Court’s lackadaisical attitude toward the Right codified in the Second Amendment is not of present vintage. Justices Thomas and Alito, and the late eminent Justice Scalia finally took action to bring the importance of “the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms” in the forefront of the American Public’s psyche and to do so in earnest to protect the Right.

They know that, President Trump notwithstanding, this Country is at a dangerous precipice. And, this Nation could have fallen over if Hillary Clinton had defeated Trump in 2016 or if Kamala Harris had defeated Trump in 2024. The Electorate came to its senses both in 2016 and once again in 2024. But Americans have only bought some time. Democrats have made plain their intention to take the House, and possibly the U.S. Senate, in the 2026 Midterms, and the U.S. Presidency in 2028. But the Democrats today, are puppets of the Radical Left Marxist interests and powers. The Republic will be well lost if any of this should occur.

The U.S. Supreme Court has a role in preserving a Free Republic, and it can do that if it plays its part and takes up cases for review that involve clear infringement of our Bill of Rights. This piecemeal and half-hearted approach is insufficient.

We will not let this vitally important matter die.

We will follow-up by rebutting commentary—the few that exist—that suggest the Supreme Court could not have granted review of Antonyuk, that the case was not in condition for review. We will look at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit’s handling of the case and of the present tacit suspension of the case. We will also look at the Pro-Second Amendment organizations that have themselves dropped ball on Antonyuk and on Snope, the two most crucial Second Amendment cases to come before the High Court.

We will also point out the major Second Amendment cases that have come before the Court since the early 1800s. There aren’t a lot of them, and those the Court has reviewed have mostly favored the States or the Federal Government. It is only in the first few decades of the 21st Century that Americans have seen a concerted effort by the U.S. Supreme Court—at least through the actions of some of the Justices—to take an active, avid, interest in protecting the Second Amendment “Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms,” and have made the first tentative steps to return the Country back to the true sovereign of the Nation and Government—the American people. The Court has done this by pointing to the RIGHT (and POWER) through which the PEOPLE EXERT THEIR SOVEREIGNTY and PROTECT THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE—THROUGH NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS.

This is no small matter. The fate of our Republic depends on securing THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS.

___________________________________

*From Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth

Act 5, Scene 8,

Macbeth to MacDuff during their Swordfight:

“I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet,
And to be baited with the rabble’s curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’” [Emphasis our own]

_____________________________

**Other virulent Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions have taken their cue from New York. Illinois is one such jurisdiction.

See the article, “Seventh Circuit Upholds Illinois’s Carry Ban on Public Transportation,” by John Crump, posted on September 3, 2025, in Ammoland Shooting Sports News. https://www.ammoland.com/2025/09/seventh-circuit-upholds-illinoiss-carry-ban-on-public-transportation/

____________________________________

THE SUPREME COURT’S VITAL FUNCTION: ENSURE THE SECOND AMENDMENT, THE ULTIMATE SAFEGUARD AGAINST TYRANNY OF GOVERNMENT, ENDURES STURDY AND ROBUST

IF THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS FALLS BY THE WAYSIDE A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC FALLS WITH IT

The Constitution of the United States TOOK EFFECT on June 21, 1788, when New Hampshire became the ninth State to ratify it. At that time, Constitution consisted of the ARTICLES only. Yet, some of the Framers expressed acute dissatisfaction with it in one respect. The Constitution lacked A BILL OF RIGHTS (BOR).

They would not abide by this. They were adamant.

They found an express statement of Americans’ Fundamental, Unalienable, Eternal Natural Law Rights, especially the need for an explicit assertion of the elemental Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms as obligatory. That Right and other Natural Law Rights must be cemented in the Nation’s Constitution.

IF FREEDOM AND LIBERTY ENDURE AND THAT THE SUPREME SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE OVER THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BE PRESERVED, THEY DEEMED AN ASSERTION OF THIS RIGHT—THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS—AS ESSENTIAL, LEST TYRANNY ENSUE AND THEREBY ANNIHILATE BOTH A FREE REPUBLIC AND THE ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY OF THE CITIZENRY OVER GOVERNMENT.

Thus, THIS FACTION OF THE FRAMERS OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION, THE ANTIFEDDERALISTS, MADE THEIR CASE. THEY INSISTED ON INCORPORATING, THE BOR, AS A FORMAL DOCUMENT IN THE NATION’S CONSTITUTION.

The ANTIFEDERALISTS CORRECTLY DEDUCED WHAT THE OTHER FACTION AMONG THE FRAMERS, THE FEDERALISTS, DID NOT: THAT THE NASCENT FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC MIGHT EXIST for a short period of time without a formal BOR, but IT WOULD NOT PERSIST through time.

Like a newborn child, THIS NATIONAL, CENTRALIZED, FEDERAL GOVERNMENT would be born delicate, weak, completely helpless, posing little threat to the states and to the people. But, give it time to grow and, with the powers it wields (demarcated AND limited though they be), this U.S. Government would be poised to become, eventually, a gargantuan headache and extraordinary danger to the continued safety, security, and well-being of a Free State and to the well-being and sovereignty of the American people.

In a short time, the Federal Government would prove to be a mischievous imp and hellion—hardly a well-behaved child, knowing its place.

The Government would be UNRULY, DIFFICULT TO CONTROL SURELY, YET STILL MANAGEABLE, ALBEIT BARELY, since the GOVERNMENT, a few decades out, would still be in its formative stage of growth.

BUT—GOVERNMENT would, in time, reach its full potential, EVENTUALLY, INEXORABLY, INEVITABLY, growing into a fierce, uncontrollable, and raging Monster, CHALLENGING THE AUTHORITY AND POWERS OF THE STATES, AND AT THE SAME TIME, DENYING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THEIR RIGHTS AND POWERS AND MERCILESSLY TUGGING AWAY AT AND WRENCHING FROM THE PEOPLE THEIR SOVEREIGNTY OVER GOVERNMENT—becoming a thing justifiably FEARED AND LOATHED—a TYRANNY.

IN SO DOING THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WOULD TRY TO REVERSE ITS DEFINED ROLE AS SERVANT OF THE SOVEREIGN, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. WITH THE POWERS IT WIELDS AND USURPS FROM THE PEOPLE, THE GOVERNMENT WOULD DEMAND OF THE PEOPLE, THEIR OBEISANCE TO IT, AS THE NEW AND UNLAWFUL MASTER OVER THE PEOPLE.

THIS MALFEASANCE OF GOVERNMENT CANNOT BE AND MUST NOT BE BORNE.

Consider: Were it not for the American people, who, before the creation of both GOVERNMENT and the STATES, fought and won a TRULY EPIC, HISTORIC WAR for INDEPENDENCE from TYRANNY of GOVERNMENT, A GOVERNMENT AN OCEAN AWAY, THE BRITISH EMPIRE.

If so, is it not THEY, the AMERICAN PEOPLE, who, AS PROGENITOR of BOTH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND THE STATES, remain the SOLE and SUPREME SOVEREIGN over both? And, if so, Are not the AMERICAN PEOPLE the SUPREME RULER OVER GOVERNMENT, THE STATES, AND THE NATION?

After all THE PEOPLE (WHO WOULD BECOME THE FIRST AMERICANS AND ITS FIRST CITIZENS) COMPRISED THE COLONIES. AND THE COLONIES DID NOT BECOME STATES, AND THE STATES, IN TURN, DID NOT BECOME A NATION UNTIL THE PEOPLE, THE FIRST AMERICANS AND AMERICA’S FIRST PATRIOTS, AND ITS FIRST CITIZENS, FOUGHT AND WON THEIR WAR FROM INDEPENDENCE FROM TYRANNY. See PDF in congress.gov.

THE PEOPLE ACCEPTED THE FORMATION OF STATES FROM THE COLONIES AND THE PEOPLE, THROUGH THE STATES, RATIFIED THE CONSTITUTION THAT BECAME THE BLUEPRINT FOR A FREE REPUBLIC AND NATION, AND THE FORMAL DOCUMENT FOR THE CREATION OF A FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, THAT EXISTS ONLY BY THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. ALL THIS AROSE AFTER  THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THREW OFF THE YOKE OF TYRANNY—WON THEIR WAR OF INDEPENDENCE FROM THE TYRANNY IMPOSED ON THEM BY THE BRITISH EMPIRE UNDER THE MONARCH, GEORGE III.

So, then, as all this came to be, are not the American People, those who, before both States and the Federal Government, have a vested interest in and the most senior interest in SECURIING for themselves, for their families, for their offspring, and for those generations of Americans, yet unborn, the greatest stake in securing for posterity, a FREE STATE (AN INDEPENDENT AND SOVEREIGN NATION, AND FREE REPUBLIC) AGAINST TYRANNY, whether THAT THREAT OF TYRANNY emanates INSIDE OR OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES?

If that is so, would not these FIRST PATRIOTS, these FIRST AMERICANS, these FIRST CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES, not be dismayed, then, to see THEIR FREE STATE metamorphosing into a thing despised—a thing they had given their blood and coin to defeat—A TYRANNY?

AMONG THOSE FRAMERS, surely neither of one the two factions, FEDERALISTS OR ANTIFEDERALISTS would dare to risk LOSS OF THEIR FREE REPUBLIC they had struggled mightily to craft after extensive  capital, in blood and money was spent to achieve victory over such a mighty, formidable foe, the British Empire, and its Monarch, George III.

But, there was dissension among the two factions on one point.

The FEDERALISTS, among the Framers, hoped and trusted that the NATIONAL GOVERNMENT conceived and assiduously crafted and ratified by the States, would effectively avoid the dangers it might pose, to the People, through the formidable powers that Government wields, since a number of “checks and balances” among the THREE BRANCHES would prevent any one BRANCH gaining control over the others, and, thus, prevent endangering the SECURITY OF A FREE STATE.

Would such assiduously crafted “CHECKS and BALANCES” truly prevent the new-formed FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DEVOLVING into TYRANNY?

Would not the “CHECKS and BALANCES” prevent this U.S. Government from destroying, irreparably, a Free Constitutional Republic?

Both FACTIONS felt that this SEPARATION OF POWERS AMONG THE THREE BRANCHES WOULD HELP THWART THE ONSET OF TYRANNY. BUT WOULD THAT BE ENOUGH?

There did exist a “FAIL-SAFE” unconnected to GOVERNMENT, OVER WHICH GOVERNMENT would have no lawful authority to regulate and therefore constrain.

Both factions felt that, in a worst-case scenario, the Nation’s WELL ARMED CITIZENRY—ALWAYS ARMED—would serve as the BEST CHECK against and the ultimate effective impediment to encroaching TYRANNY of GOVERNMENT, in the event the mechanism of “SEPARATION OF POWERS” through a system of “CHECKS and BALANCES,” failed to forestall if not prevent GOVERNMENT TYRANNY from arising.

These FIRST PATRIOTS were therefore confident that, if THE TYRANNY OF GOVERNMENT did arise, in some future time, those future generations of Americans would be able to resist and successfully defeat THAT TYRANNY, just as they, the progenitors of what would become the greatest Nation on Earth, had effectively resisted and successfully defeated the powerful British Empire—the most impressive and powerful Empire that existed in the Eighteenth Century.

BUT RISK OF TYRANNY IS ALWAYS A CONSTANT, AS IT TYRANNY IS INHERENT IN ALL GOVERNMENT. Best then to avoid having to rely on the ARMED CITIZENRY to thwart TYRANNY in the first place—since substantial, horrific bloodshed would result. For, a Tyrant Government would not be so easy to displace, nor willing to acquiesce to the armed citizenry.

Yes, the armed citizenry may help prevent a TYRANNY from becoming an insurmountable threat, which is possible once a TYRANT consolidates all the powerful mechanisms of Government. And those mechanisms are certainly expansive and extraordinarily powerful—beyond anything the Framers could have conceived of at that time, even as they had no doubt a Centralized Government, wielding extensive powers even at that time, in late Eighteenth Century America, would accrue more power in the passing years and decades.

So, then, why take a chance? Why would the Framers wish to craft a CENTRALIZED, NATIONAL GOVERNMENT at all? Many of the States balked at the prospect of relinquishing any power and authority to one Government.

But FEDERALISTS among the Framers were proponents of a strong, central Government, as they saw a need to guard against such future threats coming from abroad, i.e., such THREATS posed by foreign adversaries as the British had once posed to them, before they had even come to form a Nation.

And the Federalists won the day on that point.

To that end, the Federalists felt a “STANDING ARMY,” ready to meet an invasion at once, and head-on, would serve as the best deterrent to such a threat posed by a foreign invader. THAT IS THE UPSIDE, AS THE FEDERALIST FACTION SAW TO FORMING A STRONG CENTRALIZED GOVERNMENT.

But where there is an UPSIDE, there is a DOWNSIDE.

And the DOWNSIDE to having a centralized Government is the inherent threat it poses to the American people and to the States. itself.

Neither FEDERALISTS nor ANTIFEDERALISTS maintained any illusion about THE THREAT a FEDERAL GOVERNMENT poses to the STATES and to the PEOPLE.

The Framers knew that, even with their best efforts to keep Tyranny at bay, their well-crafted Federal Government cannot police itself. Within it the seeds of TYRANNY reside, always waiting, patiently, eternally, for an opportunity to pounce.

Since NO Government that man ever devised can ever prevent Tyranny from emerging at some point since the desire of all GOVERNMENT is control, those nations that perceive themselves as either DEMOCRACIES or REPUBLICS, and not outright DICTATORSHIPS, (at the inception), find themselves in a quandary.

Government will invariably default to a DESPOTIC STATE as that is its NATURAL STATE OF BEING—ITS NATURAL CONDITION—IF IT DIDN’T ALREADY commence as a DESPOTIC STATE.

It is axiomatic, self-evident true, that GOVERNMENT cannot be trusted to truly and effectively “POLICE” itself.

A system of CHECKS AND BALANCES, to complement the REPUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT the Framers devised and implemented can, at best, FORESTALL TYRANNY, for a time, but cannot PREVENT it.

GOVERNMENT will eventually subjugate its populace. For control and subjugation of a population is its aim, even if Government fails to consciously see that aim, for Government comprises men, and even the most ethical among them, will, likely, eventually, take advantage of opportunities for self-advancement, at the expense of the American people, and many will fall victim to outright corruption.

Thus, if those in the Government convince themselves that they truly operate to serve their constituents, that they only have the best interests of the people at heart and are motivated only to act to serve those interests, they will ultimately falter.

Tyranny is therefore inevitable, and, so, unavoidable, in the absence of an equally powerful countervailing force, to prevent tyranny of government, and that countervailing force must come from the outside.

The Framers of THIS FEDERAL GOVERNMENT fashioned THE GOVERNMENT AS A REPUBLIC, RULED BY LAW,  AND SAFEGUARDED BY A CONSTITUTION, OVER WHICH INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS REIGN SUPREME.

A POINT OF CLARIFICATION IS NECESSARY. THAT POINT OF CLARIFICATION PERTAINS TO THE NATURE OF OUR NATION AND THE FORM AND STRUCTURE OF TH FEDERAL GOVERNMENT COINCIDENT WITH THE NATION——

Contrary to the incessant, tiresome pontification of many politicians, echoed by a smug, self-righteous, seditious Press, that the public witnesses today, the United States IS NOT A DEMOCRACY.

The Framers, to their credit, never crafted the Federal Government to be a “DEMOCRACY.”

Those politicians, and members of the Press, and those in the academic community that constantly, nauseatingly, refer to our Nation and THE Government as a Democracy are simply wrong or, otherwise, they deliberately seek to confuse the public. For what they mean by the term is “DEMOCRACY in its “PURE” form: A “DIRECT” DEMOCRACY. See the article in consoc.org.

Likely, this is constant reference to the Federal Government (and, by extension, the Nation) as a “DEMOCRACY” is a misnomer, and this is by design, and the aim is insidious.

APPLICATION OF A PURE (DIRECT) DEMOCRACY in a LARGE BODY OF PEOPLE—A NATION—is never a good thing.

In structure, this form of Government is inherently unstable: A MOBOCRACY, leading to outright ANARCHY, and dissolution of society—and, so, in practice, completely inoperable, unless devious individuals or groups, seek to utilize a mob to foment constant riots, to destabilize society with the aim of instituting DESPOTIC REGIME from the ruin of society.  

Otherwise, what is purposed as a “DIRECT (PURE) DEMOCRACY” isn’t really a DEMOCRACY at all.

Those that employ the term do so to confuse the public. The term ‘Democracy’ sounds pleasant. That is why they use it. But, on analysis, nothing good comes from application of a “DIRECT (PURE) DEMOCRACY, ON A NATIONAL STAGE, INVOLVING MILLIONS, OR TENS OF MILLIONS OR HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS, OR BILLIONS OF PEOPLE.

The main reason a “DIRECT (PURE) DEMOCRACY” falls short especially in the context of present-day politics is that those who propound it find it useful as a propaganda tool devised for the purpose of manipulating public thought so that the majority of the Electorate would vote into office those people who dictate policy that benefits dangerous, unelected  forces, working in the shadows. Their aims and agenda are wholly contrary to the interests of the American people and inconsistent with the precepts, principles, and tenets of INDIVIDUALISM upon which our Constitution, reflecting the core values of the FRAMERS of the U.S. CONSTITUTION, and FOUNDERS OF OUR FREE REPUBLIC are grounded.

The FRAMERS of our Nation (and Government) crafted it as a REPRESENTATIVE (NON-DIRECT) DEMOCRACY, more familiarly, and more accurately, “A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC.”

Those Destroyers of our Nation, talk incessantly, glowingly, and imperiously of “DIRECT (PURE) DEMOCRACY,” which they seek to utilize to institute a MARXIST DICTATORSHIP. The aim is to control the thought processes of tens of millions of people who tend to vote.

These DESTROYERS OF OUR NATION, realize they are most successful in influencing those Americans who live in the major urban areas that contain high concentrations of people, and, especially concentrations of people who are amenable to their messaging.

These DESTROYERS would like very much to dismantle our ELECTORAL SYSTEM which would, if successful, give them an extraordinary edge in winning elections grounded on POPULAR VOTE,” (even though Trump did win the POPULAR VOTE as well as the ELECTORAL COLLEGE in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election).  

Once these DESTROYERS succeed in placing a majority of PROGRESSIVE and “DEMOCRAT SOCIALIST” (a.k.a. COMMUNIST or MARXIST) LEGISLATORS IN CONGRESS and succeed in winning the “WHITE HOUSE,” the Government would fall prey to control by unelected forces operating in the shadows, using the elected officials as their puppets.

The horrific impact of such manipulation is manifest in the actions of the BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION.

Extraordinary damage was done to our Country: economically, geopolitically, socially, culturally, and jurisprudentially.

If the majority of the Electorate had voted Kamala Harris into Office, and if the Democrat Party controlled both Houses of Congress, the end of the Republic would have been in sight well before the end of Harris’ first term in Office.

President Trump has cast a bright light on the extent of damage this BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION had wrought on our Nation.

The aim is to destroy our Republic. What these people have in mind is the creation of a DESPOTIC REGIME THAT IS CLOAKED IN THE GUISE OF DEMOCRACY, ruled by a chosen few: AN OLIGARCHY.  

Their objective is to exercise firm control over, and subjugation of, the masses.

They seek the DESTRUCTION of the Rule of Law, even as they claim to extol it. They seek the DISSOLUTION OF A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC even as they claim, arrogantly and disingenuously to preserve it.

They intend, unabashedly, to DISASSEMBLE our Nation’s HISTORY AND HERITAGE, OUR NATIONAL IDENTITY AND ETHOS, OUR CULTURE AND OUR JUDEO-CHRISTIAN ETHICS, GROUNDED ON THE PRECEPTS, TENETS, AND PRINCIPLES OF THE SOCIO-POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM—all in the pursuit of something better, which they have considerable problem in articulating since it is noxious, and internally incoherent.

And they yearn to ERADICATE NATURAL LAW RIGHTS on which our BILL OF RIGHTS exists.

But then they do not acknowledge or recognize the existence of NATURAL LAW RIGHTS.

All LAWS AND RIGHTS AND POWERS they presume are man-made constructs, nothing more nor less than that.

And they intend to ERASE ALL EXERCISE OF RIGHTS that appear in the BILL OF RIGHTS—A DOCUMENT THESE DESTRUCTORS OF OUR REPUBLIC FEEL IN DRASTIC NEED OF AN OVERHAUL.

Such Rights listed either must be strenuously modified or, as they insist, or, as regards the “ARMED SELF-DEFENSE,”—which they abhor—abrogated.

This raises the question——

WAS THE INCLUSION OF THE NATURAL LAW RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS A SOURCE OF CONTENTION AMONG ANY OF THE FRAMERS?

NO, OF COURSE NOT.

BOTH THE FEDERALISTS and ANTIFEDERALISTS alike, presumed that FUTURE AMERICANS would internalize basic defining traits that the Framers themselves inculcated—

ONE, TO TAKE as axiomatic, THE EXISTENCE of SUCH THINGS AS NATURAL LAW RIGHTS, INTRINSIC TO MAN, ENDOWED IN MAN BY THE DIVINE CREATOR.

TWO, TO TAKE AS A GIVEN THAT THE EXERCISE of AMERICANS’ Natural Law Rights is sacrosanct and inviolate, ordained by the Divine Creator.

This means that NATURAL LAW RIGHTS ARE UNDERSTOOD AS THE LAW OF THE LAND—SUPREME LAW—beyond the lawful power of Government to regulate, modify, abrogate by edict, repeal, ignore, or transgress in any manner.  

These ELEMENTAL RIGHTS include, most crucially, THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS FOR SELF-DEFENSE AGAINST THE TYRANNY OF GOVERNMENT), AND THE RIGHT TO EXPRESS THEIR WILL (THE RIGHT OF FREE SPEECH and THOUGHT and ACTION).

Thus, both FEDERALISTS and ANTIFEDERALISTS, felt that, IF OR WHEN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DEVOLVED TOWARD A CONDITION OF TYRANNY, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WOULD BE ABLE TO AVAIL THEMSELVES OF THE MOST EFFECTIVE AND THE MOST EFFICIENT WEAPONS AVAILABLE TO RESIST AND TO DEFEAT TYRANNY.

This means AMERICANS MUST OWN, POSSESS, AND HAVE IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE (AT THE READY) MILITARY PERSONNEL WEAPONRY TO BRING TO BEAR AGAINST A TREACHEROUS TREAONOUS GOVERNMENT, ITS LEADERS AND SUCH MILITARY THAT WOULD TAKE UP ARMS AGAINST THE CITIZENRY IN DEFERENCE TO A DESPOTIC REGIME.

Understand, these Federalists—no less than the Antifederalists—accepted as self-evident, THE EXISTENCE/PERSISTENCE of ETERNAL (SUPERNAL) LAW, FUNDAMENTAL, NATURAL LAW bequeathed by the DIVINE CREATOR to MAN and existent on and in MAN.

They saw NATURAL LAW RIGHTS as ABSOLUTES, and TRULY THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND as did the ANTIFEDERALISTS.

The two factions differed on whether a body of Rights had to be expressly set down in writing.

The FEDERALISTS thought an explicit written BOR inserted into the Constitution, unnecessary. They believed that future generations of Americans no less than they, as the FIRST generation, would never doubt the existence of, importance of, and the supremacy of a BODY of FUNDAMENTAL, ETERNAL, UNALIENABLE NATURAL LAW RIGHTS, without which a FREE REPUBLIC, EXISTENT now, would not continue to exist (PERSIST) through time.

WHO, among those FUTURE AMERICANS would disagree with this? To do so would be to welcome TYRANNY. That would be an apostasy, pathological, and idiotic in the contemplation of it.

The Federalists, and likely the Antifederalists too, would find it difficult to fathom that future generations of Americans would acquiesce to Tyranny, let alone welcome it.

The Framers would find bewildering and disturbing that some Americans, albeit a tiny number, would welcome the dissolution of the Republic, while a substantial number would bow to the wishes of those who would destroy the Republic. They would do so because they have lost faith in the Republic and felt that they have no voice in the future well-being of it. Such Americans have capitulated, believing ruination of the Republic is inevitable, seeing the Republic collapsing around them and feeling powerless to effectuate change for the better. Many other Americans refuse to believe that those politicians who remonstrate against the Nation truly mean what they say.

And when such Americans come across evidence of the dangers posed by such people that cannot be dismissed out-of-hand, they fall victim to bouts of cognitive dissonance, refusing to accept what their senses tell them. They simply block from their minds blatant evidence of destructive tendencies of politicians whom they intend to vote into office anyway. And that accounts for a third of the Electorate. They will support politicians who do not have the interests of Americans at heart.

The FEDERALISTS, lacking foresight, would find impossible to grasp how the sensibilities of Americans could become so fractured.

And, being unable to accept the perversity of some Americans, and presuming, wrongly, that all Americans, will accept in the future, just as they do, that Natural Law Rights of Man are not a matter of fashion, but are containers of absolute truths—timeless, not contingent or transient, but eternal. Hence, the FEDERALISTS FELT NO NEED IN CRAFTING AN EXPRESS  BOR. NATURAL LAW WOULD BE BEST SIMPLY LEFT, IMPLIED.

The ANTIFEDERALISTS—as a group more skeptical and cynical but prescient, demurred.

They insisted on an EXPRESS BOR, and their insistence and persistence ultimately won the day.

Given the persistent, vehement concerns and arguments raised by the ANTIFEDERALISTS, the FEDERALISTS acceded to the inclusion of an EXPLICIT BILL OF RIGHTS.

Once the Framers agreed to set down a formal written BILL OF RIGHTS, the question arose as to which of the natural law rights are most important to the existence and persistence of the Nation as a FREE REPUBLIC. These Rights would be “ENUMERATED,” and such UNENUMERATED rights as exist but not considered at the time would also be referenced and were included in the catch-all NINTH AMENDMENT (as recognition that NATURAL LAW RIGHTS not expressed do not automatically exclude others.

This was one of the sticky points among the Federalists who raised concern that in a future time the Government might not recognize and acknowledge other important Natural Law Rights, and therefore argue that the only Rights to be acceded to would be those ratified to by the States in a formal BOR, if in fact the BOR were explicit, expressly stated in a document, incorporated in the Constitution.

The point made had merit. And, The Ninth Amendment rectified the issue the Federalists raised, without jeopardizing the crafting of a FORMAL BOR, set down in writing.

Thus, the ANTIFEDERALISTS could delineate, “ENUMERATE” the most important NATURAL LAW RIGHTS—those most clearly impacting THE NATION. Thus, a renegade Government  would be unable to plausibly, convincingly claim and proclaim to the polity that such NATURAL LAW RIGHTS, not explicitly mentioned either don’t exist or that, if they do exist, the failure to be explicitly mentioned in the BOR means the Framers didn’t feel necessary to mention them and so, the Government can therefore ignore them. And, so the Country would descend head over heels into tyranny due to the mere failure of NATURAL LAW not being set down in writing.

BUT, THE MOST IMPORTANT NATURAL LAW RIGHTS ARE ARTICULATED IN WRITING. AND THE MOST IMPORTANT, BY FAR, IS THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS. THIS NATURAL LAW OPERATES AS BOTH AN EMPHATIC RIGHT, MANIFEST IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS AND, SO, IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO IGNORE, AND ALSO AS A “POWER” that A TYRANT MUST CONTEND WITH.  

It was with this deep concern in mind the Framers realized a need for the ARMED CITIZENRY to be set down meticulously in writing, and to be set down back-to-back with the right of FREE SPEECH. SINCE BOTH FEDERALISTS AND ANTIFEDERALISTS AGREED THAT THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS WAS ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL TO THE WELL-BEING OF THE REPUBLIC BOTH AT THE TIME OF RATIFICATION OF THE CONSTITUTION AND THE BILL OF RIGHTS, AND WOULD REMAIN THE MOST IMPORTANT RIGHT AND POWER THE PEOPLE COULD EVER EXERCISE, THE FEDERALISTS AND ANTIFEDERALISTS PLACED THIS RIGHT AND POWER, FRONT AND CENTER IN THE BOR.

THE RIGHT CODIFIED IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION WOULD BE THE FRAMERS’ ANSWER TO THE EXISTENTIAL THREAT POSED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WITH ITS IMPOSING “STANDING ARMY” IN THE EVENT THE GOVERNMENT TURNED TOWARD DESPOTISM.

AS THE POWER OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS INFINITELY MORE POWERFUL TODAY THAN IN THE PAST, THE IMPORT OF THE ARMED CITIZENRY IS NO LESS VITAL TODAY IN SECURING A FREE REPUBLIC. AND THAT CITIZENRY—COMPRISING TENS OF MILLIONS OF WELL-ARMED PATRIOTS IS NOT A FORCE A TYRANT CAN TRIFLE WITH. AND IT DOESN’T. PROOF OF AN INTENTION OF RUTHLESS FORCES TO CONTROL THE CITIZENRY INVARIABLY ZEROES IN ON THE “ARMED” CITIZENRY. THE DESIRE OF THOSE FORCES THAT SEEK OUR NATION’S DEMISE EXPENDING SUBSTANTIAL EFFORT TO CONSTRAIN THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SERVES AS PROOF OF THE SIGNIFICANT POWER EXISTENT IN THAT ARMED CITIZENRY TO KEEP A GOVERNMENT, TEDNDING TOWARD DICTATORIAL RULE, EXTREMELY CONCERNED AT THE FORMIDABLE POWER EXERTED BY THIS ARMED CITIZENRY THAT CAN COME TO BEAR WITH SUBSTANTIAL FORCE AGAINST A TYRANT.

A STANDING ARMY of the U.S. (FEDERAL) Government would be pose an existential threat both to the States and to the people, just as the ARMED CITIZENRY would pose an existential threat to a TYRANT GOVERNMENT.

Thus,

The Framers of the Constitution — the ANTIFEDERALISTS and FEDERALISTS, alike — agreed on that. There was no debate on THAT threat. There was only a debate on how to best suppress that threat.

The Framers all agreed on the need for THE ARMED CITIZENRY. And, once the Antifederalists convinced the Federalists that “the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms” needed to be set down in writing because a renegade government would deny that such a Natural Law Right exists unless it were made explicit, no further argument needed to be made.

The FRAMERS SET THAT FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS—A RIGHT THAT SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED—IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS, CEMENTED IT IN PLACE, NEVER TO BE REMOVED.

Once expressed in writing, the Tyrant Government could not thereafter claim, even if implausibly, that THE CITIZENRY has no such right. For THERE IT IS—right in the Constitution—AND THERE IT SITS AS a CONSTANT REMINDER AND WARNING TO ANY WOULD-BE TYRANT THAT THE TRUE AND SOLE AND SUPREME SOVEREIGN OF THE NATION IS THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

GOVERNMENT WOULD DO WELL TO HEED THIS.

This express notation, THE A RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS in the Constitution would serve to remind a Tyrant Government that, even if Government did not recognize the existence of Natural Law Rights, it is enough THIS RIGHT, FOR ONE, IS SET DOWN EXPLICITLY IN A WRITTEN BOR.

So, the Tyrant Government has to acknowledge its treachery to Constitution and People, were it to strike the Second Amendment down, banning exercise of the Right.

STRIKING DOWN THE RIGHT, DOESN’T DESTROY THE RIGHT. FOR THE RIGHT IS ETERNAL, EXISTENT IN THE MIND OF GOD, AND EXISTENT IN THE MIND AND HEART OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

THE RATIFICATION OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS COMES TO FRUITION IN 1791.

On December 15, 1791, THREE-FOURTHS of the original 13 States comprising THE UNION RATIFIED THE Nation’s BILL OF RIGHTS, INCORPORATING IT into THE CONSTITUTION. But three of the original thirteen states, curiously, Georgia, Connecticut, and Massachusetts held out their vote, until 1939. NO MATTER. A SUFFICIENT NUMBER OF STATES RATIFIED IT BACK IN 1791, THAT IT BECAME EFFECTUATED IN THE CONSTITUTION, FOR ALL TO SEE. See the article in prologue.blogs.archives.

A SLOW, INEXORABLE ATTEMPT TO UNWIND EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS

THE DISTURBING TRENDING OF OUR FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC TOWARD A STATE OF TYRANNY HASN’T COME OF A SUDDEN, BUT QUIETLY, INSIDIOUSLY, DECADES IN THE MAKING—OVER A CENTURY—AND, LIKE THE PROVERBIAL FROG IN A POT OF WATER BEING SLOWLY HEATED TO BOILING, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, LIKE THE FROG, IS SLOWLY BEING COOKED, NOT REALIZING THAT OUR MOST IMPORTANT RIGHT IS BEING CHIPPED AWAY AT THROUGH ENACTMENTS OF A ROGUE CONGRESS AND A ROGUE U.S. SUPREME COURT. THIS STARTED IN THE LATE 1800S RACHETING UP IN EARNEST IN THE 1930S, COMMENCING WITH CONGRESSIONAL ENACTMENT OF WHAT CONSTITUTED ITS FIRST MAJOR, ATTACK ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

CONGRESS PASSED THE “NATIONAL FIREARMS ACT” (NFA) IN 1934, A BRAZEN INFRINGEMENT OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT.  THIA ACTION OF CONGRESS WAS IN CLEAR DEFIANCE OF THE NATURAL LAW RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, THAT, THAT PLAINLY PROHIBITS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FROM INTERFERRING WITH THE EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT.

The law imposed a tax on the transfer of machine guns and short-barrel firearms Many Americans and Pro-Second Amendment organizations were justifiably outraged. The Federal Government is prohibited from enacting laws infringing NATURAL LAW RIGHTS. The codification of the Natural Law makes the prohibition plain. The independent clause in the Second Amendment says——

CLEARLY, CONCISELY, AND CATEGORICALLY,

“THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.”

Congress drafted a statute that infringes a Natural Law Right, codified in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution, blatantly and unapologetically. The NRA and other Pro-Second Amendment organizations brought suit against it. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Law, ruling it Constitutional, notwithstanding the plain language of the Right codified in the Second Amendment prohibiting Federal action against exercise of a Constitutional, Fundamental Right. The transfer tax, expensive for the time, operated effectively as a ban on ownership and possession of firearms since few Americans could afford payment of the tax.

From that point on, the Supreme Court would continue to hold such acts by Congress that are clearly unconstitutional and are deemed constitutional anyway, infringing the natural law right to armed self-defense. Several Anti-Second Amendment States, such as New York, that had long taken a dim view of civilian citizen possession of firearms had presumptively attacked the Second Amendment over twenty years before the NFA was enacted, with enactment of the Sullivan Act of 1911 that formalized licensing of handguns in New York. The State required anyone desiring to carry a handgun in New York to first obtain a valid handgun license from an authorized New York State official.

The State interposed itself between the American citizen who wishes to exercise his fundamental right to keep and bear arms and a fundamental, unalienable, Natural Law Right.

At the time, New York Courts upheld the law on the grounds that the Second Amendment prohibition on Government infringement of the Fundamental right only applies to the Federal Government, not to the States. A hundred years later, in the case McDonald vs. City of Chicago, the U.S. Supreme Court would hold that the Second Amendment Right operates as a constraint on the States no less than on the Federal Government.

The point is that no Government, Federal or State can impose laws that infringe the core of the Right. New York remains  defiant of U.S. Supreme Court Second Amendment rulings, and routinely infringes the plain import of the Second Amendment to the present day. When NYSRPA vs. Bruen came out in June 2022, the New York Government, under Governor Kathy Hochul, paid only lip-service to the rulings. The State’s blatant effrontery toward both the High Court and Americans’ most sacred right, codified in the Second Amendment, continues to the present day. A challenge to the constitutionality of the State’s amendments to its Handgun Law came immediately—within two weeks of the Governor’s signing of the amendments into Law. When the case wended its way to the U.S. Supreme Court on a Second Petition for Writ of Certiorari, in February 2025, the Court perfunctorily denied it, weakening the Second Amendment and undermining the Court’s own credibility. The refusal of the Court to hear Antonyuk is no small matter, for this case directly impacts the soundness of the Court’s rulings in Bruen. Thus, the failure to review this case is of another order of magnitude.

Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions having continuously given little regard to the Second Amendment since publication of the first Landmark Second Amendment case—the 2008 case, District of Columbia vs. Heller—will only be further emboldened to defy the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court.  

Many States erroneously assumed that the Second Amendment only applies to the Federal Government, the Framers of the Bill of Rights, never stated or intimated that the BILL OF RIGHTS only operates as a limitation on the Federal Government and not the States, this is presumptive, not definitive. Sure, the Bill of Rights directly impacted the Federal Government, but as a Government entity itself, the States were wrong and have been wrong for over a Century in taking as axiomatic that the States were free to regulate with abandon, the Fundamental Rights of the American people.

The 2010 McDonald case made plain the BOR applies to the States no less than it does to the Federal Government.

Although the High Court utilized the Fourteenth Amendment to piggyback off of the use of a Civil Rights Amendment upon which to find application of the Second Amendment to the States strikes us as more a makeweight—namely a Court crafted rule upon which to compel State compliance with a FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT. Is such really necessary?

To assume so logically implies that States do not have to accede to the supremacy of Natural Law Rights by virtue of the inherent power baked into those Rights as preexistent God-Given Law, but only by virtue of what Supreme Court rulings say about the efficacy of them and by what Congress does.

And Congress, as it turns out, transgresses the import of Natural Law Rights whenever it wishes, as it has done with enactment of the NFA in 1934, and has since done. See discussion infra.

Although concerned about a rogue, tyrannical Federal Government trampling basic rights, the Framers of the U.S. Constitution did not suggest that Fundamental, Natural Law Rights don’t affect the States.

UNDER THE DOCTRINE OF FEDERALISM, THE STATES AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AS SOVEREIGN POWERS IN THEIR OWN RIGHT EXERCISE POWERS RESERVED TO THEM ALTHOUGH ARTICLE IV, SECTION 4, APPEARS TO BE AN AREA OF CONTENTION. TO THE STATES HAVE A RIGHT AND POWER TO ENFORCE THEIR OWN BORDERS AGAINST ILLEGAL ALIEN INVASION, WHEN THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS REMISS IN PROTECTING THE GEOGRAPHICAL INTEGRITY OF THE NATION’S BORDERS OR, IN FACT, DELIBERATELY, UNCONSTITUTIONALLY AND UNCONSCIONABLY FAILS TO FAITHFULLY EXECUTE THE LAWS OF CONGRESS AND THE CONSTITUTION?

This matter is not academic. It arises from the Biden Administration’s (namely the President’s) unlawful failure to protect the Borders of the United States, placing policy aims and agenda, unconstitutional on their face, over the Laws of the Land, thereby failing to protect the HEALTH, WELFARE, AND SAFETY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, IN PURSUIT OF AN AGENDA THAT COMPORTS WITH INTERNATIONAL AIMS THAT CONFLICT WITH THE CONSTITUTION AND THE LAWS ENACTED BY CONGRESS.

Anything that the Articles don’t delineate as powers exercised by the Federal Government alone, are either exercised by the State or the people, as the TENTH AMENDMENT sets forth, or fall within the purview of the Federal Government. But, once again, where the Federal Government fails to act, be it through sheer ineptitude or through reckless indifference to the SECURITY OF A FREE STATE, then that bespeaks TREACHERY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, and the STATES AND THE PEOPLE MUST ACT TO PROTECT THEIR INTERESTS, AND THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE NEXT U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION TO DO SO.

The U.S. SUPREME COURT, UNDER CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS HAS ITS WORK CUT OUT FOR IT, BUT IS NOT UP TO THE TASK.

Through time, both the Federal Government and the States have chipped away at the Fundamental Rights of the people. As between the “Police Powers” directed to the right and duty of the states to provide for “PUBLIC SAFETY” and the Right and corresponding duty of the People to provide for their “PERSONAL SAFETY” there is now a clash of signature powers and rights of the Federal Government, the States, and the People.  

The U.S. SUPREME COURT is remiss on delineating the SCOPE OF AND BOUNDARIES OF POWERS, RIGHTS, AND OBLIGATIONS AND OF THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, THE STATES, AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

THE SIGNATURE RIGHT AND POWER OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE RESIDES IN ITS EXERCISE OF THE SACRED AND VITAL FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT (AND POWER) AS CODIFIED IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS. THE MOST FLAGRANT VIOLATION OF THE CITIZENRY’S RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS PLACES THE ELECTORATE IN A PRECARIOUS POSITION OF DEPENDENCY ON STATE OR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FOR ITS HEALTH, WELFARE, AND PERSONAL SAFETY. THIS IS RIDICULOUS AND PROFOUNDLY DANGEROUS. IF THE PEOPLE ARE DENIED THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, AND IF THEIR OTHER BASIC RIGHTS FALL PREY TO GOVERNMENT OR STATE USURPATION AND DE FACTO REPEAL, THEN THE AMERICAN PEOPLE NO LONGER ARE CONTROL OVER THEIR OWN DESTINY. THEY NO LONGER THE SOVEREIGN OVER THE NATION’S ARTIFICIAL CONSTRUCTS—STATE AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. THIS CANNOT BE BORNE INDEFINITELY. THE PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT AND THE DUTY TO COERCE THESE GOVERNMENTAL BODIES TO REFRAIN FROM EXERTING UNLAWFUL CONTROL OVER THEM, ESPECIALLY WHERE THESE GOVERNMENTAL BODIES FAIL TO COMPLY WITH THEIR OWN DUTIES AND OBLIGATIONS UNDER LAW AND CONSTITUTION.

CONSIDER THE FAILINGS OF THE FIRST TWO BRANCHES, CONGRESS AND THE OFFICE OF THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE, COMPRISING THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, AND THE FAILINGS OF MANY STATES (those controlled by Progressives and “Democrat Socialists,” i.e., Marxists and Communists).

To whom do the PEOPLE look to obtain clarification of their duties and the relationship of the Federal Government and the States to toward the People, apropos of the Peoples’ exercise of their Natural Law Rights?

WHEREOF DOES ONE FIND THE THIRD BRANCH OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO SECURE AND CLARIFY THE RIGHTS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AGAINST STATE and FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OVERREACH?  

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT is nowhere to be found. The Court should have taken up the slack by defining, clarifying the import of the Right codified in the Second Amendment, the PEOPLE’S MOST CHERISHED RIGHT AND POWER.

The U.S. Supreme Court should compel both States and Federal Government to adhere to the strictures of the Right as codified. For without constraints on State and Federal Government, a Free Republic cannot continue to exist—and the people lose their Sovereign Authority over the States and Federal Government. And that opens them up to dependency, subjugation, and control. And that signifies the onset of DESPOTISM AND TYRANNY.

The U.S. Supreme Court has continuously failed to act conscientiously and with alacrity in defense of the rights of the PEOPLE—THE SUPREME AND SOLE SOVEREIGN OF OVER THE NATION AND OVER THE GOVERNMENT—STATE AND FEDERAL.

Finally, at long last, the UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT—DID TAKE ACTION TO CARVE OUT THE SINGULAR POWER OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ON THE RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE in THREE LANDMARK CASES, HELLER, MCDONALD, AND BRUEN. And the High Court began to make tentative steps in the matter of protecting and clarifying the RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS AS AGAINST PREDATORY MAN AND THE PREDATORY MAN-BEAST OF GOVERNMENT (Both State and Federal).

Yet Predatory Man continues to prey with abandon on innocent Americans, residing and working in many jurisdictions across the Country). And the High Court has made little headway in dealing with recalcitrant, renegade States and in dealing effectively with UNCONSTITUTIONAL ACTS OF CONGRESS AND ILLEGAL RULES PROPOUNDED BY an over-zealous ADMINISTRATIVE FEDERAL BUREACRACY that CONTINUES, RELENTLESSLY TO TRAMPLE on and to SHRED AMERICANS’ SACRED RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE.

On June 26, 2008, roughly 217 years after ratification of the BOR the U.S. Supreme Court published its landmark Second Amendment decision in District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 128 S. Ct. 2783.

Until publication of Heller, the Court consciously, conspicuously, and consistently avoided setting its imprimatur ON THE PLAIN MEANING OF THE NATURAL LAW “RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS.”

Yet, notwithstanding the clear and categorical IMPERATIVES OF HELLER and, notwithstanding the clear IMPERATIVES OF MCDONALD THAT CAME TWO YEARS LATER, AND notwithstanding the clear and categorical IMPERATIVES OF BRUEN THAT FOLLOWED TWELVE YEARS AFTER MCDONALD, ROGUE ACTORS, AND ROGUE STATE AND FEDERAL COURTS WITHIN THE JURISDICTION OF THOSE STATES, have deliberately circumvented those SUPREME COURT RULINGS, and have dismissed the clarifying LEGAL AND LOGICAL REASONING of the HIGH COURT. These entities continue to act against the Court’s rulings, with impunity. And, Americans continue to challenge these unconstitutional State actions and indefensible lower court rulings. A flurry of new cases challenging those unconstitutional state actions and indefensible lower court rulings have come to rest before the U.S. Supreme Court. Yet, what does the High Court do in response? Little to nothing. And so many other misdeeds against the Second Amendment Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms and against the High Court’s rulings respective of that Right.

Granted, the U.S. Supreme Court CANNOT INVOKE its appellate jurisdiction absent A CASE OR CONTROVERSY that comes before it.

And many major challenges to unconstitutional state actions have come before the Court, at no small expense in time and money and effort as Americans challenge unconscionable State actions that plainly infringe the core of the Second Amendment Right and that blatantly defy the rulings of the Supreme Court.

One would think the U.S. Supreme Court, that stood as the only Branch of Government that would in the first few decades of the Twenty-First Century had FINALLY “taken the bull by the horns,” had come to the assistance of the American people and started to staunchly defend Americans’ sacred right.

Yet, since Bruen, the High Court has failed to follow through on its achievements in CLARIFYING and STRENGTHENING the SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE.

This does not bode well for Americans, NOR for preservation of the Second Amendment Right.

Congress and a RENEGADE Administrative State Bureaucracy and ROGUE State governments haven’t thrown in the towel.

Searching for loopholes around Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, or simply ignoring the Supreme Court’s rulings, the forces that seek the demise of the right of the people to keep and bear arms are moving ahead steadily.

The American people for their part, have not thrown in the towel. But, apparently, the U.S. Supreme Court has. Why?

This apparent acquiescence by the U.S. SUPREME COURT to State and FEDERAL GOVERNMENT contempt and defiance toward the U.S. Supreme Court is puzzling.

THE HIGH COURT MUST ACT AGGRESSIVELY AGAINST THIS ATTACK ON BOTH A VITAL NATURAL LAW RIGHT AND ON THE COURT’S ARTICLE III AUTHORITY.

The U.S. SUPREME COURT MUST CONFRONT THESE RENEGADE GOVERNMENT ENTITIES AND ACTORS HEAD-ON.

Doing so, would also serve to reinvigorate the U.S. Supreme Court as still a viable THIRD BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT, staking out its rightful authority as established in Article III of the Constitution.

That the Supreme Court would, all too often, become a willing or unwilling, but weak tool of one or the other Branch of Government, instead of protecting the interests of the American People—the true sovereign authority in the United States—should give one pause. One is compelled to reflect on what the role of the U.S. Supreme Court is, after all.

Through the passing decades, the High Court seems to have forgotten Marbury vs. Madison that had staked out a clear defining role for itself, DEFINING AND CLARIFYING WHAT THAT ARTICLE III POWER TRULY MEANS.

The U.S. SUPREME COURT SEEMS TO ACT IN fits and starts. And, in matters of the sanctity of the Second Amendment, what had commenced with vigor and resolve has fallen flat.

Failing to follow through with what the Court has started with FORTITUDE AND PURPOSE, places the Second Amendment and the credibility of the Court in a doubtful place. The purport of Heller and McDonald and Bruen will fizzle out, leaving the Second Amendment Right in a worse position than had the Court not taken up these cases at all. Anti-Second Amendment States, and Anti-Second Amendment members of Congress, and the Anti-Second Amendment Administrative State will certainly take notice. Lower Court opinions will perceive these THREE LANDMARK SECOND AMENDMENT CASES AS BUT ANOMALIES AND OUTLIERS, ABERRATIONS, AND ONE-OFFS, and, in time, these cases will cease to have precedential value.

Pro-Second Amendment organizations will go their merry way, taking on new cases without recognizing that, a foundation has been laid FOR ALL THAT FOLLOWS on the Second Amendment right. Each one of those cases proceeds from the one before. Can Antonyuk vs. James be salvaged. We think it can. As it follows directly from Bruen, this case must not be swept under the rug. And the same goes for the Snope case. What is to be gained dealing with new cases, when the salient matters of Heller and Bruen remain attenuated, incomplete, unresolved—simply hanging in Antonyuk and Snope?

THE FOUNDERS OF OUR REPUBLIC WOULD FIND THIS SEEMINGLY CASUAL, LACKADAISICAL ATTITUDE OF THE U.S. SUPREME COURT TOWARD THE SANCTITY OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHT INEXPLICABLE, POSSIBLY INCOMPREHENSIBLE, AND CERTAINLY MYSTIFYING, DISHEARTENING AND ALSO DISMAYING. IN TERMS OF THE CONSEQUENCES TO THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE, WHICH DEPENDS UPON A WELL-ARMED CITIZENRY, THIS ATTITUDE OF THE COURT IS TRULY HORRIFYING. BUT THERE IT IS.

THE Declaration of Independence WAS THE First Document through which America’s First Patriots, proclaimed their refusal to submit to Tyranny. The Document was taken as a Challenge by the British Empire, and one that the Tyrant, George III would meet with force, as America’s First Patriots had expected and they knew their lives were on the line. They met the challenge, and, surprising to the British and to other European nations, and, perhaps, to America’s Patriots as well, they defeated Tyrant. Their victory was resounding, complete.

America’s Patriots then had to grapple with their next major challenge—crafting a Constitution establishing the Nation as a FREE REPUBLIC—a FREE STATE.

IN THAT CONSTITUTION, THE FRAMERS CLARIFIED THAT THE PREEMINENT AND FINAL ARBITER OF THE LIFE OR DEATH OF A “FREE STATE” RESIDES ALONE IN THE AMERICAN PEOPLE  THEMSELVES.

And it may come to pass that, as the sole and supreme sovereign of their Country and Government, Americans may have to assert their sovereignty over rogue governments—a rogue Federal Government and rogue States—when those governments fail the People, devolving into Tyranny. The American People have the means to secure their Country against the Tyranny of Government, whenever and wherever that Tyranny, in their Country, arises.

But, when does Tyranny arise and become intolerable, obligating the people TO RESIST IT—knowing that failure to do so will lead to IRREMEDIABLE OPPRESSION and SUBJUGATION.

And if THAT should happen, then their fate is sealed. FREEDOM AND LIBERTY DISSOLVE AWAY. SERVITUDE, PENURY, AND MISERY BECOME THEIR LOT IN LIFE, NOT ONLY FOR THEMSELVES BUT ALSO FOR THEIR OFFSPRING AND FOR THOSE GENERATIONS OF AMERICANS TO COME.

IT IS TO PREVENT SUCH A DIRE OUTCOME THAT THE SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS EXISTS.

IF THE PEOPLE HAVE THE CONCOMITANT WILL TO DEFEAT TYRANNY, THEY CAN PREVAIL AGAINST ANY DESPOT, AS THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, CODIFIED IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS GIVES THE PEOPLE THE MEANS TO CARRY OUT THEIR WILL EFFECTIVELY, VANQUISHING TYRANNY.

AMERICAN PATRIOTS HAVE DONE SO BEFORE, AND AMERICA’S PRESENT PATRIOTS CAN DO SO HENCE, IF SUCH BECOMES NECESSARY.

The Founders of our Republic knew that Government—all Government—tends toward Despotism.

Some Governments commence as Despotic regimes.

Others, such as our own, and particularly our own commence as a True and Free Republic that, in time, inexorably, inevitably falls to Despotism, i.e., Tyranny, unless the people prevent Tyranny from growing to the point that it becomes insurmountable.

For Tyranny becomes progressively more difficult to defeat, once it consolidates its authority over the military and police, intelligence apparatuses, and communication networks, and when the engines of commerce and finance work out secret agreements, compacts, and alliances with Government to thwart the WILL of the People and conspire to break their WILL AND CONFISCATE THEIR WEAPONRY.

Power brokers wish to amass more power. And Government is the most powerful of all power brokers.

In our Country, this consolidation of power bespeaks the end of the American people's sovereignty over the Federal Government and rogue State Governments and the Governments’ supremacy over its populace. There are no mechanisms of control baked into government, no checks and balances capable of keeping government from accruing more power and usurping the sovereignty of the American people—taking that sovereignty from the people—and assuming it, unlawfully, and unconstitutionally for itself.

This is axiomatic. And we are seeing it happen here.

If the United States as a FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC  is to remain truly FREE, it can only do so if the people have the will and EFFECTIVE means to prevent that FREE REPUBLIC from becoming DESPOTIC—from becoming a TYRANNY.

One thing and one thing alone has to date prevented a calamity from occurring: the prominence and sanctity and inviolability of our NATURAL LAW “RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS.”

NO OTHER NATION ON THE EARTH HAS ANYTHING AT ALL REMOTELY LIKE THIS. NO OTHER GOVERNMENT ON EARTH WOULD DARE ALLOW OR COUNTENANCE THIS. And this point is true of both DESPOTIC REGIMES and REPUBLICS.

Only our COUNTRY is a FREE REPUBLIC in the TRUEST SENSE of the word ‘REPUBLIC,’ for only our Country COMMENCED AS A TRULY FREE REPUBLIC and remains so ALBEIT not easily today. Our Country would have long ago have fallen to tyranny but for our Bill of Rights and especially but for the RIGHT CODIFIED IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

The Founders of our NATION conceived and crafted it as a Constitutional Republic, NOT a Democracy (contrary to what many commentators and politicians say) and that is a good thing. There is a distinction in that—a major distinction—between the two. See, e.g., the articles in legaldictionary.net and usconstitution.net.

Unfortunately, Republics AND Democracies all trend toward dictatorship over time, for, as mentioned, supra, dictatorship is the natural state of and condition of government.

Republics and Democracies ALL collapse into one or another form of DICTATORSHIP. See the article in enorcerna.com.

The Founders of our Republic, the Framers of our Constitution, sought to prevent the onset of dictatorship by establishing THREE CO-EQUAL BRANCHES with delineated, limited, demarcated powers and authority to handle THE PRIMARY governmental functions: LEGISLATIVE, EXECUTIVE, AND JUDICIAL.

This set of checks and balances among the THREE BRANCHES could DELAY the onset of a Dictatorship, but cannot PREVENT IT, ONCE IT HAS TAKEN ROOT.

The basic functions of the Federal  Government within its framework, as stated in the CONSTITUTION, IS TO PROVIDE FOR THE COMMON DEFENSE OF THE NATION AGAINST FOREIGN  ADVERSARIES AND ALSO TO PROTECT THE INTEGRITY OF THE NATION’S BORDERS.

The basic function of the States is to PROVIDE FOR THE SAFETY OF THE COMMUNITY AND TO PROTECT THE INTEGRITY OF ITS OWN BORDERS.

Beyond these salient powers and concomitant responsibilities of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT and THE STATES, they have one more DIRECTIVE, REFERRING NOT TO POWERS EXERCISED BUT, RATHER, TO A MAJOR, CRITICAL CONSTITUTIONAL RESTRAINT ON STATE AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENT EXERCISE OF POWER.

Both are Constitutionally prohibited from taking action to constrain the NATURAL LAW RIGHTS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

And, thanks to the prescient action of the ANTIFEDERALISTS, we have a FORMAL “BILL OF RIGHTS.” That BILL OF RIGHTS lays out specific parameters beyond which the Federal Government and the States must not transgress. The Supreme Court, among the Three Branches of the Government, can and must positively point out the unlawful encroachment of State and Federal Government when they exceed their authority by inhibiting the exercise of Natural Law Rights that belong solely to the American People.

THE FAILURE of the U.S. Supreme Court to take action whenever a case or controversy comes before it, alleging unlawful encroachment by the STATES or the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT on the core of the BILL OF RIGHTS, has led to these entities taking too many liberties with it.

At least a few Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have taken actions to mitigate the damage the States and the Federal Government have done to the BOR.

But for the decisive actions of three ASTUTE, CONCERNED members of the Court, the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms would be in even worse disarray today than it already is.

Three Senior Associate Justices, the late eminent Antonin Scalia, and the two remaining senior Justices on the Court, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito applied the brakes on this runaway train.

THE ROBERTS’ COURT IS SHIRKING ITS OBLIGATION TO PROTECT AND DEFEND AMERICANS’ MOST SACRED AND VITAL RIGHT: THE RIGHT TO ARMED DEFENSE AGAINST TYRANNY

Since June 2022, when the third and last landmark Second Amendment case decision came down, the Court, under Chief Justice John Roberts, started to backslide. And this became painfully apparent because it is the Chief Justice who sets the tone and theme of the Court. And Roberts is not up to the task.

Therefore, the Associate Justices must cajole the Chief Justice to act as a few stalwart Justices have done so in the past and as two, only remain today of the original three.

Those original three Associate Justices who stand out as true Patriots include the late eminent Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, and two Senior Associate Justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

They have taken swift and concerted action to defend the citizenry’s most sacred and vital Right—the Right of the people to keep and bear arms. They took the lead. They forced Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy to exercise the Court’s Article III powers.

The result was three Landmark cases—all decided in the space of twelve years, and the first such cases to come down the pike since ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791.

Those three Landmark Second Amendment cases make plain what many scholars and Federal and State Governments fail to perceive to be true due to personal predilections that have overtaken their senses and their intellectual acuity. This is most apparent and egregious when the lower State and Federal Courts set their imprimatur down, supporting unconstitutional State and Federal Government actions.

This failure of the lower courts to take action to prohibit illegal and unconstitutional State and Federal action is morally reprehensible and legally indefensible, and, in matters involving the Second Amendment, this jeopardizes the “SECURITY OF A FREE STATE.”

The security of that Free State is jeopardized when the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to step in to protect it. This occurs when the High Court fails to act and refuses to exercise control over the lesser Federal and State Courts, all of which fall under its purview.

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT MUST CLARIFY, IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS, THE MEANING OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT FOR THOSE RECALCITRANT COURTS THAT DELIBERATELY OBFUSCATE THE PLAIN LANGUAGE OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT, DOING SO TO DENY THE AMERICAN PEOPLES’ EXERCISE OF THEIR NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE.

Let’s take a close look at the constituent parts of this Natural Law Right to armed self-defense, as codified in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

There are FOUR in the independent clause.

FIRST, WHAT DOES THE PHRASE “THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE REFER TO? WHO ARE THE “PEOPLE” THAT THE RIGHT MENTIONS?

The right of the people to keep and bear arms refers specifically to the AMERICAN PEOPLE, as INDIVIDUALS (sentient, self-aware, of independent mind and will, with knowledge of good and evil, and capable of action (agency)).

This means that the right to keep and bear arms exists in the individual, inherently. It is not a thing that manifests until or unless an individual serves in a COLLECTIVE, i.e., in a Militia, as THE Collective. The idea of a limitation on the right of the American citizen, in his individual capacity to keep and bear arms, is false. For to suggest otherwise, is to set a limitation on the exercise of the right where none exists. Such suggested limitation contradicts the exclusive right to keep and bear arms, free from constraint. No legal constraint exists in the language of the Second Amendment which, coheres with the concept of a God-Given right that is without constraint or prohibition.

The Dependent clause operates as a qualifier—a reason for the keeping and bearing arms. It serves as both a reminder and warning to the Government and the States to refrain from enacting laws, rules, codes, regulations, edicts or any other Governmental command that denigrates exercise of the right.

SECOND, WHAT DOES THE PHRASE “KEEPING AND BEARING ARMS” MEAN?

The right to keep and bear arms refers to weapons that one can avail himself of immediately and can bear without assistance from other people or conveyance.

[The concept of weapons here therefore refers broadly to personnel weapons (i.e., the weapons each armed citizen easily and capably can bear by himself for himself].

THIRD, WHAT DOES THE WORD, ‘ARMS’ refer to in the phrase, “TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS”?

The weapons here mean MILITARY WEAPONS because such weapons best enable “THE COMMON MAN” to provide for the security of a free state (as these weapons give the citizen soldier the most effective means for confronting and engaging a Tyrant’s forces and toppling an unlawful, treacherous, treasonous regime.

This point contradicts that of the Anti-Second Amendment zealots who proclaim that, “no one (namely, a civilian citizen) needs or should have a ‘weapon of war’ or any ‘military style weapon.’”

These Anti-Second Amendment proponents state and incessantly reiterate this declaration to shut down discussion and argument before it starts.

They don’t perceive or offer this declaration as a proposition to be proved and rebutted, but as an assumption to be accepted and acclaimed as sensible and self-evidently true, though it is not.

The mere existence of an armed citizenry, armed and trained in using military weaponry and able and willing to use it if such becomes  necessary, would give any Government tending toward tyranny, pause, unless the citizenry welcomed Tyranny or had willingly acquiesced to it because they were duped through a massive campaign of deception to ignore the clear signs of true despotism.

FOURTH, “WHAT DOES THE PHRASE, “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED” MEAN? This phrase plainly means no one and no entity, especially Government (as the most serious threat) can constrain, impede, deny, or interfere with the citizen’s exercise of this Natural Law Right.

Who, among us, would rationally defend, least of all welcome, government exerting control over his freedom and liberty? Unfortunately, quite a few:

Those elements both inside and outside our Country who not only invite and endorse this but also actively, avidly advance the aim of REPRESSIVE, OPPRESSIVE Government constraint on the individual freedom to defend himself against any predatory threat, including, and particularly, the threat posed by Government.

Most of Americans would not countenance constraint on one’s defense of self against  government domination over one’s life.

The well-armed citizenry, tens of millions of us, equipped with military weapons serves as a formidable force to be reckoned with for any would-be TYRANT.

This explains the Antifederalists insistence on explicit mention of the Natural Law “right of the people to keep and bear arms” in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution. The recitation of the right to keep and bear arms serves as a constant reminder to those in Government that the American People are the master over Government and can dissolve it when it no longer serves the interests of the people, and resorts to illegal usurpation of the Citizenry’s Sovereignty over Government.

But for this reminder to government and but for the capability of an exceptionally well-armed citizenry—tens of millions of American Patriots—to overthrow tyranny, recitation of the fundamental, unalienable natural law right to armed self-defense would be unnecessary, because it is otherwise redundant.

For, THE RIGHT to SELF-DEFENSE the Right of one to secure his personal survival against every manner of PREDATOR implies an absolute right to access the most effective means available to ensure one’s survival against a visible threat, by employing a firearm against that threat—say a threat from a beast of prey or predatory man-beast. In these two instances, no explicit recitation of the right of the people to keep and bear arms is needed. For, such Natural Law Right would be implied under the NINTH Amendment AS ONE OF MANY UNENUMERATED NATURAL LAW RIGHTS.

The RIGHT SPECIFIED in the Second Amendment, as an ENUMERATED RIGHT, is required for an especial matter affecting all American Patriots.

The Second Amendment refers specifically to ARMED SELF-DEFENSE NECESSARY TO PROTECT THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE.”

The dependent clause in the language of the Second Amendment operates as a qualifier, providing an explanation for inclusion of the Natural Law Right, as an ENUMERATED RIGHT, instead of as an UNEUMERATED RIGHT. 

That Right is directed toward thwart a threat beyond what one confronts typically in nature or in civilization.

But, the threat posed by THE MAN-BEAST OF GOVERNMENT is more nuanced, and more expansive in the damage it inflicts—for the entire body politic is threatened by a Government that devolves into Tyranny.

Why would it take the Supreme Court 217 years to explain the SECOND AMENDMENT comprehensively, meticulously? Is not the language of the Second Amendment plain enough? Surely it is. But naysayers are legion and they deliberately obfuscate the plain meaning to confound the public, to dull its meaning, thereby inviting GOVERNMENT to make inroads on it, to constrain the PEOPLES’ EXERCISE OF IT.  

The Supreme Court is a MAJOR BRANCH of THE GOVERNMENT, BUT, unlike the other BRANCHES, it seems to lack the desire to exercise its unique, AND CRITICALLY IMPORTANT Article III powers, even as the other TWO BRANCHES ARE EAGER to accrue ever more power for themselves AND TO USURP THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

Why IS THE THIRD BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT DENIGRATED WITH REGULARITY BY THE PRESS AND BY CONGRESS AND BY MANY OF THE STATES?

Sure, the Supreme Court doesn’t control the “PURSE STRINGS” of Congress and it doesn’t control the powerful MILITARY, FEDERAL POLICE, and INTELLIGENCE APPARATUSES of the Chief Executive.

BUT THE THIRD BRANCH HAS ONE UNIQUE POWER, AS LAID OUT IN ARTICLE III, EVEN IF THAT POWER IS  TACIT.

FOR THAT POWER IS THE SINGULAR SOURCE OF THE COURT’S STRENGTH.

THE JUDICIARY CLARIFIES THE LAW AND CONSTITUTION, SO THE OTHER TWO BRANCHES DON’T GO ASTRAY. IN THE EXERCISE OF ITS AUTHORITY, THE SUPREME COURT ENSURES THE SEPARATION OF POWERS OF ALL THE BRANCHES AND CONSTRAINS THE MISUSE OF AUTHORITY OF THE STATES.

IT CONTROLS THE THOUSANDS OF LOWER FEDERAL AND STATE COURTS. AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY, IT HAS THE AUTHORITY TO ENSURE THE SANCTITY OF THE CITIZNERY’S NATURAL LAW RIGHTS.

REGARDING THIS LAST POINT, THE U.S. SUPREME COURT HAS CONTINUITY OF IN ITS COMPLEMENT OF NINE MEMBERS. UNLIKE THE OTHER TWO BRANCHES THE SUPREME COURT IS INSULATED FROM CORRUPTING INFLUENCES. IT IS NOT BEHOLDING TO ANY OTHER PERSON OR ENTITY AND IS THEREFORE BEST SHIELDED FROM BRIBES AND OTHER CORRUPTING INFLUENCES.

THIS ALONE INSULATES IT FROM ANYONE OR ANYTHING THAT MIGHT PREVENT IT FROM EXERCISING ITS SINGULAR POWER OF MAKING CLEAR TO THE OTHER TWO BRANCHES, AND TO THE STATES, WHAT THE LAW IS. THAT IS AN AWESOME POWER.

AND THIS IS AS THE FOUNDERS OF OUR FREE REPUBLIC, THE FRAMERS OF THE CONSTITUTION, INTENDED.

THUS, CONTRARY TO THE CLAIMS OF SOME COMMENTATORS AND SCHOLARS, THE FRAMERS OF THE CONSTITUTION NEVER INTENDED THE U.S. SUPREME COURT TO BE A SUBORDINATE BRANCH, MUCH LESS AN UNNECESSARY, REDUNDANT APPENDAGE.

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT ALONE HAS SIGNIFICANT AUTHORITY TO PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF THE CITIZENRY BY TELLING THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND THE STATES TO FORBEAR ACTING TO FRUSTRATE AMERICANS’ EXERCISE OF THEIR FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE NATURAL LAW RIGHTS.

IN EXERCISING ITS AUTHORITY, THE U.S. SUPREME COURT, MORE SO THAN ANY OTHER FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ENTITY, IS CAPABLE OF ENSURING THE SANCTITY OF OUR ELECTORAL SYSTEM.

IT IS BEST SUITED TO SECURING OUR NATION’S LAWS FROM MISUSE AND MISAPPLICATION. AND IT IS BEST EQUIPPED, OF ALL THE BRANCHES, TO PROTECT THE COUNTRY FROM SLIDING INTO TYRANNY.

FAILURE TO EXERCISE ITS POWERS, INVITES TYRANNY.

IF THE SUPREME COURT SHIRKS ITS OBLIGATION TO CONSTITUTION AND PEOPLE, IT FALLS TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THEMSELVES, AS LAST RESORT, TO PROTECT THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE.

BUT IF THE PEOPLE MUST RESORT TO REBELLION TO RESIST AND TOPPLE TYRANNY, THAT WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE BLOODSHED. BUT SUCH MAY BE NECESSARY TO SECURE THE PROMISE OF AMERICA’S WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE IN 1776, IF THE SUPREME COURT FAILS US.  

When the U.S. Supreme Court fails to review cases, that it ought to review, and the High Court defers to lower State and Federal Courts, when doing so undermines its authority and credibility, and brings concomitant loss of respect to the entire judiciary, it is, then, not surprising that Congress, and the States, and other entities, treat it as weak, and undeserving  of exercising its Article III.

Obsequious behavior only leads to further defiance by the other two Branches and by the States, and by the lower State and Federal Courts too, which all fall under its purview. And that compounds the problems for the Supreme Court.

And, as the Court’s credibility becomes ever more tenuous, its rulings will be visited with contempt, routinely ignored or given mere lip-service.

A few U.S. Supreme Court Justices are well aware the present Chief Justice, John Roberts, is being unnecessarily accommodating to the States, to the lower courts, and to the other two Branches.

This does nothing to maintain the sanctity of the Constitution, or the Country, or our Citizenry, or the stability of a Free Republic.

Our Republic would have slid dangerously into a state of Tyranny a few decades ago but for the actions of a few stalwart Justices.

The late Justice Antonin Scalia, and the TWO present SENIOR Justices, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, were three Men—American Patriots—who saw our Nation’s concrete foundation against Tyranny beginning to crumble.

They undertook a substantial restoration process to strengthen the bulwark against TYRANNY, by strengthening our Fundamental Natural Law Right, codified in the Second Amendment.

Who in this Country would defend Tyranny? Unfortunately, quite a few: Those elements both inside and outside our Country who not only invite and endorse this Tyranny but actively, avidly advance that objective, to  fruition.

Tens of millions of Americans, ably equipped with military weapons, are in the last analysis the only force capable of preserving a Free Republic.

Two Branches of the Federal Government along with Rogue States know this. That explains why so much time, effort, and money (taxpayer money) has gone into the de facto repeal of and eventual de jure eradication of the Natural Law Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms. There is even serious discussion about doing away with the Constitution altogether or by revising it drastically.

Seeing this occurring in the last ten years demonstrates the importance of the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

The Three Justices, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito saw this. And recognized that, with the Republic rapidly ceding power to foreign influences, and to shady opportunists in our Country, they realized the importance of bolstering the Second Amendment posthaste.

The FIRST Landmark Second Amendment case, District of Columbia vs. Heller, arose, not because most of the Court wanted to grant review of it, for most of the Court did not.

Only three Justices insisted on taking it up: Scalia, Thomas, and Alito. Not so, any others on the Court.

Chief Justice John Roberts, and Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy would have wished to deny review of it. And the erstwhile Conservative-wing Justice, David Souter, and the liberal-wing Justices, Stephen Breyer, John Paul Stevens, and the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, would wish to avoid reviewing it, as is plain from their vigorous dissents or when they joined in those dissents, as the case shows.  

Three dominant voices on the Court told the “moderate,” pseudo-Conservative-wing Justices, that they would not abide the inexorable and insufferable weakening of the Natural Law Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms.

That’s what they saw occurring and that is what they sought to prevent in a bold decision, proclaiming the sanctity of the Right of the People to Armed Self-Defense.

After decades of Supreme Court complaisance, even docility toward Congress, which had enacted unconstitutional laws—the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA), the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA), and the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, in 1993—the U.S. Supreme Court, through the efforts of three Justices would not abide the death of a Free Republic by slow strangulation of the Natural Law Right to Armed Self-Defense. Heller paved the way. McDonald and Bruen would follow.

And, thereafter Antonyuk and Snope came to the attention of the Supreme Court. BUT NOTHING HAPPENED! THE COURT GREW AMAZINGLY SILENT ON THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT CASES to come up on appeal after Bruen.

Antonyuk follows directly from Bruen. YET—the Court denied review. The making of THE SUPREME COURT’S FOURTH LANDMARK SECOND AMENDMENT CASE came to naught.

Snope follows directly from Friedman. Yet, the Court ultimately denied review of that one as well. Snope had the making of THE SUPREME COURT’S FIFTH LANDMARK SECOND AMENDMENT CASE. The Court delayed review of it when it came up in conference several times. But, in the end, that case also came to naught.

Protection of the Second Amendment has come to a screeching halt!

That means PROTECTION IS BACKSLIDING! WHY? Americans are faced with a sad inference that needs to be drawn, however reluctantly: the capitulation of John Roberts and at least  two of the three Trump Nominees—Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

The Electorate successfully voted Donald Trump to serve his second term, much to the chagrin of legions of powerful forces that seek to destroy our Republic. And they are biding their time until Trump’s second term ends in January 2028, a matter of seconds from the standpoint of political history.

No one has the intellectual capacity together with the incredible fortitude of President Trump who is doing everything in his power in the short time available to get our Country back on track and back to its roots.

In the end, it will be up to the American people to secure a Free Constitutional Republic.

After 250 years of our Nation’s incredible success, will it come to pass that a decisive, final stand of America’s Patriots takes place, commencing July 4, 2029, as those Patriots proceed to do what they can to DEFEND THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE from those FORCES THAT DARE TO CRUSH US, were they to succeed in ensconcing yet another DISGUSTING “BIDEN-HARRIS ABSURDITY” in the Office of the Chief Executive, once again bringing ignominy and humiliation to our Nation and to our People?

Did not the Antifederalists, with preternatural clarity, perceive the RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS as the only tenable option remaining to us Americans—OUR “FAILSAFE”—a drastic step BUT ONE necessary to protect a FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC from rupturing once the Nation’s institutions crumble, when the well-oiled engine of society falls into abject Anarchy and ruin, and after a failed Government COLLAPSES of its own ponderous weight, into Tyranny?

In our next article, we will present a list of all the major U.S. Supreme Court cases that came before the Court subsequent to ratification of the Bill of Rights, in 1791. This list of cases will show THAT THE SUPREME COURT HAS BEEN uniformly REMISS IN PROTECTING THE SECOND AMENDMENT, until the Court took up Heller in 2028.  

The failure of the Court to review Second Amendment cases that involve an attack on the core of the Right, or, otherwise, deciding the cases wrongly, by finding constitutional government action that deliberately infringes the CORE OF THE RIGHT, does nothing positive to secure the Right, as these cases decisions allow government to infringe that which “shall not be infringed,” in defiance to the clear meaning of the Right. UNCONSTITUTIONAL ACTIONS OF CONGRESS, AND OF SOME CHIEF EXECUTIVES (OBAMA AND BIDEN), AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL ACTIONS OFTHE STATES ALL CHIP AWAY AT THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

The bottom line here is that Justice Roberts isn’t the only Chief Justice that has been remiss in promoting the sanctity of the Second Amendment.

The Court has a long history of SHIRKING ITS DUTY TO PROTECT AND DEFEND THE SECOND AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. ROBERTS IS JUST THE LATEST EXAMPLE OF A COURT DEMONSTRATING LITTLE REGARD FOR THE SECOND AMENDMENT, WITHOUT WHICH TYRANNY IS UNAVOIDABLE, AND THE REPUBLIC DIES.

THE FAILURE OF THE U.S. SUPREME COURT TO ENSURE THE SANCTITY OF THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS INVITES TYRANNY AND TYRANNY COMPELS REBELLION

When the carefully demarcated authority among the three Branches of our Federal Government begins to fracture and when unelected forces operating in the shadows exert illegal control over the Government, the singular importance of and sanctity of the Bill of Rights (BOR) comes into stark relief. *

The BOR reflects preexisting, ETERNAL TIMELESS, NATURAL LAW instilled in Man by the Divine Creator.

Because the BOR expresses God’s Will, it embodies a MORAL STRICTURE that prohibits Government from treading upon MAN’s AGENCY (INTENTIONALITY).

The Framers of the Constitution’s Articles and BOR accepted as presumptively true the SANCTITY and INVIOLABILITY of each American. This is FOUNDATIONAL to THE CREATION OF AND THE PRESERVATION OF A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC AND TO THE CITIZENRY’S PERPETUAL AND ABSOLUTE DOMINANCE FOR THE CITIZENS,  ALONE, ARE, AND REMAIN SOLE, AND SUPREME AND PREEMINENT SOVEREIGN OVER GOVERNMENT.

The ARTICLES of the U.S. CONSTITUTION set forth THE POWERS of each BRANCH of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT—LEGISLATIVE, EXECUTIVE, AND JUDICIAL—WHICH FUNCTIONS ARE MIRRORED IN STATE GOVERNMENTS.

Such POWERS WIELDED BY THESE GOVERNMENTS—THOUGH FORMIDABLE THEY BE—ARE LIMITED POWERS, WIELDED ONLY BY THE CONSENT AND GRACE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

The People, then, who created their governments— THEY ALONE RETAIN BOTH THE MORAL AND LEGAL RIGHT TO DISPENSE WITH THOSE GOVERNMENTS, TO DISMANTLE AND DISSOLVE THEM, WHEN GOVERNMENT ATTEMPTS TO WIELD POWER BEYOND THE LIMITED SCOPE ESTABLISHED FOR THEM BY CONSTITUTION, OR WHEN GOVERNMENT ATTEMPTS TO ACCRUE NEW POWERS—— BEYOND THOSE EXPRESSLY SET FORTH IN FEDERAL AND STATE CONSTITUTIONS. Such events AUGUR THE ONSET OF TYRANNY.

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SHALL NOT ABIDE TYRANNY, FOR TO DO SO AMOUNTS TO IRRECOVERABLE, IRREDEEMABLE MEEKNESS AND SUBMISSIVENESS, CAPITULATION AND ACQUIESCENCE, RESULTING IN OPPRESSION, SUBJUGATION, AND ENSLAVEMENT.

The American people do not rely on words alone to assert their dominance and sovereignty over Government, for they retain a formidable weapon themselves, to constrain a FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (and those other GOVERNMENTS, the STATES) that would usurp the authority of the people over Government—a TRANSGRESSION of NATURAL LAW, away from THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS—WHERE GOVERNMENT DARES TO REVERSE THE HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE EXISTENT BETWEEN PEOPLE AND GOVERNMENT, PROCLAIMING SOVEREIGNTY OVER THE PEOPLE, thereby unlawfully reducing the American Citizenry to a subordinate, subservient status in relation to Government.

For the Government to be able to accomplish the debasement of the American people, Government must arrogantly intrude on a sacred domain that the Constitution forbids. Government MUST NOT—MUST NEVER—INTRUDE UPON, TAMPER WITH, OR IGNORE THE AMERICAN PEOPLES’ BILL OF RIGHTS.

As a reflection of GOD’S NATURAL LAW, our Bill of Rights IS THE PREEMINENT DIRECTIVE to Government—A DIVINE DIRECTIVE NOT TO TREAD ON THE NATURAL LAW RIGHTS OF MAN.

Moreover, THE BILL OF RIGHTS IS NOT AT ALL LIKE THE ARTICLES OF THE CONSTITUTION.

THE ARTICLES ARE A SET OF MAN-MADE CONSTRUCTIONS THAT ARE WHOLLY UNLIKE THE BILL OF RIGHTS, EVEN AS NAYSAYERS WOULD FERVENTLY DISAGREE. FOR, IF THE BOR WAS NO DIFFERENT THAN THE ARTICLES—WHICH IS TO SAY, IF THE BOR WAS A SET OF MAN-MADE CONSTRUCTIONS NO DIFFERENT THAN THE ARTICLES IN THAT RESPECT, THEN THE BOR WOULD BE SUSCEPTIBLE TO AMENDMENT—DRASTIC MODIFICATION OR EVEN ABROGATION, IN WHOLE OR IN PART. IT ISN’T. THIS IS NOT TO SAY THAT AN UNSCRUPULOUS CONGRESS AND A MAJORITY OF STATES WOULD NOT—DIFFICULT AS IT IS—TRY TO AMEND THE BILL OF RIGHTS (WHICH HAS NEVER OCCURRED OR EVEN TRIED IN EARNEST (FORMALLY), TO THE EXTENT WE CAN ASCERTAIN (BUT SEE DISCUSSION INFRA AND ALSO ARTICLE V OF THE CONSTITUTION THAT LAYS OUT THE MANNER IN WHICH AN AMENDMENT MAY BE LAWFULLY CARRIED OUT)). BUT WOULD THAT CHANGE ANYTHING? NOT REALLY. FOR CHANGING WORDS OR ERASING WHOLE SECTIONS OF NATURAL LAW RIGHTS DOES NOT THEREBY ERADICATE THOSE RIGHTS BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT CREATED BY MAN. THEY ARE ETERNAL—AND LIKE THE DIVINE CREATOR, FROM WHICH ALL NATURAL LAW DERIVES—THAT NATURAL LAW IS NOT SUSCEPTIBLE TO GOVERNMENT CONSTRAINT, WHICH IS TO SAY, GOD-GIVEN LAW IS UNLIMITED AND ABSOLUTE, AND GOVERNMENT ATTEMPTS TO DENY MAN’S EXERCISE OF GOD-GIVEN LAW IS BOTH SINFUL, AS A MATTER OF MORALITY, AND UNDER THE U.S. CONSTITUTION, THE DENIAL OF OR CONSTRAINTS ON THE EXERCISE OF GOD-GIVEN RIGHTS IS ILLEGAL. FOR THE RIGHTS SET FORTH ARE UNLIMITED—THAT IS TO SAY—UNBOUNDED, UNLIKE THE ARTICLES OF THE CONSTITUTION WHICH DELINEATE THE POWERS OF EACH BRANCH, AND ESTABLISH THE BOUNDARIES OF A STATE’S EXERCISE OF THOSE POWERS.

IN THE BOR, THE FRAMERS CODIFIED PRE-EXISTING NATURAL LAW, THAT IS INHERENTLY UNBOUNDED, TIMELESS AND INTRINSIC IN MAN, AND THEREFORE PREEXISTS ALL MAN-MADE STRUCTURES AND ALL MAN-MADE INSTITUTIONS. THIS REALITY IS IMPLICIT IN THE BOR, BUT IN CODIFYING THE NATURAL LAW RIGHT OF SELF-DEFENSE (WHICH SUBSUMES THE NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE—WHICH LOGICALLY ENTAILS ONE’S RIGHT TO THE USE OF THE MOST EFFECTIVE MEANS IN EXISTENCE TO SECURE ONE’S PERSONAL LIFE AND SAFETY—THE FRAMERS MADE EXPLICIT THREE VITAL POINTS PERTINENT TO THE RIGHT OF (PERSONAL) SELF-DEFENSE). THESE INCLUDE:

ONE, “THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS” MEANS THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR “FIREARMS” (FOR FIREARMS ARE THE MOST EFFECTIVE MEANS OF SELF-DEFENSE AND HAVE BEEN SO FOR CENTURIES).

TWO, THAT RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.” THE PEOPLES’ EXERCISE OF THAT RIGHT IS NOT SUBJECT TO LIMITATION BY ANYONE OR ANYTHING. IT IS ABSOLUTE.

THREE, THE PEOPLES’ EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IS FOR THE PURPOSE OF MAINTAINING “THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE.” AS CONCERN THAT THE GOVERNMENT ITSELF MAY ONE DAY TURN AGAINST THE PEOPLEM THE SOLE SUPREME SOVEREIGN AUTHORITY OVER GOVERNMENT, THE PEOPLE MUST KEEP AND BEAR ARMS TO THWART GOVERNMENT TYRANNY WHEN IT ARISES. THE SECOND AMENDMENT DOESN’T PRECLUDE EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT FOR ANY OTHER LAWFUL PURPOSE OF SELF-DEFENSE. THE SECOND AMENDMENT WAS PROPOUNDED AS A CONSTANT REMINDER THAT GOVERNMENT EXISTS ONLY BY CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED—THUS IN SERVICE TO THE PEOPLE. THE CODIFICATION OF THIS VITAL RIGHT ALSO SERVES AS AN ALERT TO THE PEOPLE THAT THEY ARE ALWAYS TO REMAIN VIGILANT, FOR THE MAN-BEAST OF GOVERNMENT BEARS WITHIN IT THE SEEDS OF TYRANNY AND THAT MAN-BEAST IS THE MOST SERIOUS THREAT TO THE PRESERVATION OF FREEDOM AND LIBERTY THE (AMERICAN) PEOPLE WILL EVER FACE. THE THREAT IS CONSTANT AND FORMIDABLE AND ALL-ENCOMPASSING.

GOVERNMENT IS WELL AWARE THE PEOPLES’ EXERCISE OF THEIR NATURAL LAW RIGHTS, UNBOUNDED AND UNLIMITED, AS THEY ARE, POSE A POTENTIAL THREAT TO GOVERNMENT THAT IS PREDISPOSED TO ACCRUE MORE POWER AS TIME GOES BY. AND THIS HAS COME TO PASS. AND THE ACQUISITION OF MORE POWER OVER TIME COMES AT THE EXPENSE OF THE FREEDOM AND LIBERTY OF THE PEOPLE. THUS, GOVERNMENT ATTEMPTS TO PLACE CONSTRAINTS ON EXERCISE OF NATURAL LAW RIGHTS, PARTICULARLY THE NATURAL LAW RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS. THE GOVERNMENT INSISTS THESE CONSTRAINTS ARE PLACED ON EXERCISE OF THESE RIGHTS FOR THE WELL-BEING OF THE PEOPLE, AND FOR THE WELL-BEING OF GREATER WHOLE. NOT SO! NEVER SO! GOVERNMENT’S ACTIONS ARE ALL PRETENSE.

GOVERNMENT IS BOTH SUSPICIOUS OF AND JEALOUS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLES’ SOVEREIGNTY OVER IT, AND SEEKS TO REIN IN THE EXERCISE OF NATURAL LAW RIGHTS.

THUS, WHATEVER PARAMETERS OR CONSTRAINTS THE STATES AND/OR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SEEK TO PLACE ON THEM— THROUGH EXECUTIVE EDICT, LEGISLATIVE ENACTMENT, OR BY A SUBSIDIARY OF STATE GOVERNMENT (MUNICIPAL OR REGIONAL GOVERNMENT) REGULATION, OR ORDINANCE, OR BUREAUCRATIC RULE—THE NATURAL LAW RIGHTS THEMSEVES (SUBLIME, NON-MATERIAL, ETERNAL, ENTITIES), INHERE IN MAN, AND, SO, ARE NOT THE SORT OF THINGS THAT ARE CAPABLE OF BEING ERADICATED BY MAN, IRRESPECTIVE OF THE PHYSICAL ACTS OF GOVERNMENT MAY HAPPEN TO MAKE. AFTER ALL, GOVERNMENT IS COMPRISED OF MEN, AND IT IS MEN THEMSELVES WHO ARE THE AGENTS OF ILLEGAL ATTEMPTS TO CONSTRAIN EXERCISE OF NATURAL LAW, ESPECIALLY THE KEEPING AND BEARING OF ARMS.

Some legal scholars, namely, and particularly, Retired Justice John Paul Stevens, suggest amending the Second Amendment, but, what he proposes, would make the RIGHT ESSENTIALLY SELF-NEGATING AND NUGATORY, which obviously is what he wants to do. See further discussion infra. See also the article published on “AllGov,” on April 14, 2014. “. . . Stevens proposes a five-word change to the Second Amendment. As he would write it, it reads: ‘A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms when serving in the Militia shall not be infringed.’” That serves as an addition to Steven’s Dissenting Comment in Heller. Something he would have wish to place in the Heller case, but would not dare do so, for it would serve as an admission that the majority’s interpretation of the language of the Natural Law Right, was correct, after all.

Then there is California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has proposed a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to “enshrine” California’s restrictions on “THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS” to the entire Nation.

But, would not modifying the language of the Second Amendment adding such dubious California restrictions CONFLICT WITH AND CONTRADICT the phrase, “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED”, as a point of logic, apart from the legal and constitutional ramifications of such an amendment?

Stevens and Newsom, and others like them, plainly do not recognize the existence of “NATURAL LAW RIGHTS—RIGHTS THAT ARE NOT LEGALLY OR LOGICALLY REALLY SUSCEPTIBLE TO MODIFICATION OR REPEAL FOR THEY EXIST INDEPENDENTLY OF AND PRIOR TO GOVERNMENT AND TO ALL OTHER MAN-MADE ARTIFICES.

EVEN SO, IS A BILL OF RIGHTS SUFFICIENT TO KEEP A GOVERNMENT TYRANNY FROM TAKING ROOT THEREBY OVERPOWERING THE CITIZENRY, FORCING THE CITIZENRY TO PAY HOMAGE TO THE DICTATES OF THE TYRANT GOVERNMENT ON PAIN OF DEATH OR IMPRISONMENT?

IF SO, THEN, AT THAT POINT, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE NO LONGER RETAIN THEIR RIGHTFUL SOVEREIGNTY OVER GOVERNMENT, BUT ARE REDUCED TO SERVANTS OF AND “SUBJECTS” OF THE STATE, NOT SUPREME SOVEREIGN OVER THE STATE AND A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC CEASES TO EXIST.

If the Bill of Rights were merely a collection of Rights (and not Powers), then the American citizenry would be reliant on the good-will of Government alone to safeguard those Rights. But, as all Government is predisposed to Tyranny, and as there is, in the very suggestion that Government is the protector of those rights, the suggestion that the American people MUST NEED OR WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO PROTECT THOSE RIGHTS. THIS IS ABSURD.

WE, AMERICANS, DO NOT NEED OR WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO PROTECT OUR NATURAL LAW RIGHTS. WE CAN DO THAT VERY WELL OURSELVES. “THANK YOU VERY MUCH.”

To ask the Government, or expect the Government, or require that the Government protect our rights, or worst of all, desire the Government to protect of Natural Law Rights is asking for trouble. As the Government would then take it upon itself to determine when or how or if this or that person or persons can exercise a Natural Law Right and Government would also create a panoply of constraints on the exercise of our Natural Law Rights—declaring, like parent to child, that such impediments are for our own good and for the good of a well-ordered society. This is all nonsense. What Government does in prohibiting or restricting natural law rights is never for OUR GOOD, but for Government’s own peace of mind. Government, ever suspicious of the people, will come up with seemingly plausible reasons for constraining Americans’ exercise of their sacred rights. Nothing good can come of that. Nothing good has ever come from that, as we have seen in countless instances in the passing years and decades.

THE BILL OF RIGHTS INCLUDES TWO FORMIDABLE POWERS OF THE PEOPLE—AND IT IS THESE POWERS THAT THE GOVERNMENT HAS SPENT A LOT OF TIME, EFFORT, AND EXPENSE (OUR OWN TAX DOLLARS WORKING AGAINST US) TO CONSTRAIN.

NATURAL LAW RIGHTS THAT OPERATE AS POWERS INCLUDES SPEECH/DISSENT AND THE KEEPING AND BEARING OF ARMS.

THE BILL OF RIGHTS IS NOT ONLY A CODIFICATION OF NATURAL LAW RIGHTS, RETAINED BY THE PEOPLE. IT IS A BILL OF POWERS.

THE BOR CODIFIES TWO RIGHTS THAT, IN THEIR EXERCISE BY THE PEOPLE, MANIFEST AS EXTRAORDINARY POWERS AND THOSE RIGHTS QUA POWERS—INHERENT IN THE PEOPLE—PREVENT A TREACHEROUS, OVERBEARING GOVERNMENT, AND A DECEITFUL AND ARROGANT GOVERNMENT, FROM UNLAWFULLY IMPOSING ITS WILL ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

So, of course, Government seeks to place substantial constraints on them. But, as a reflection of GOD’S NATURAL LAW, our Bill of Rights IS THE PREEMINENT DIRECTIVE to Government and we must resist Government’s interference with those TWO Rights qua Powers.

WHAT ARE THOSE TWO NATURAL LAW RIGHTS THAT ALSO OPERATE AS NATURAL LAW POWERS?

THE TWO NATURAL LAW RIGHTS THAT OPERATE AS POWERS ARE SPEECH/DISSENT AND THE KEEPING AND BEARING OF ARMS. THE TWO ARE REALLY BUT TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN—AN AMALGATION OF WILL AND ACTION.

THE EXERCISE OF WILL AND ACTION PROTECTS ALL OTHER RIGHTS AND IS THE MECHANISM BY WHICH THE AMERICAN CITIZENRY MAINTAINS IT KEEPS GOVERNMENT IN CHECK AND SECURES ITS SOVEREIGNTY OVER GOVERNMENT.

Any instance of Government (Federal and State, also) that impinges on these Rights must be perceived as a deliberate, direct, and unlawful attack on the supreme sovereignty of the American people over Government. Thus, an attack on elemental rights is an attack on Freedom and Liberty, a manifestation of Government’s intention to usurp the sovereignty of the people.

This amounts to a direct violation of a sacred trust existent between the American people and the Government, for Government wields limited but great power.

But this awesome power is only to be used in DEFERENCE to, and in OBEISANCE to, and in SERVICE to THE INTERESTS of the American people—IN STRICT ACCORDANCE WITH THE STRICTURES OF THE THE U.S. CONSTITUTION.

Thus, “THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE” is MAINTAINED.

HOWEVER——

Where Government BETRAYS that sacred pledge to the PEOPLE and to the CONSTITUTION, by using its power TO THWART the WILL OF THE PEOPLE and to UNDERMINE THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE, then CORRECTIVE ACTION IS NECESSARY, MANDATED TO SET THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND GOVERNMENT BACK IN BALANCE WITH THE NATURAL ORDER.

GOVERNMENT FAILURE TO ABIDE BY ITS ROLE AS SERVANT TO THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE—FOR THE PEOPLE ARE THE SOLE AND SUPREME SOVEREIGN AND MASTER OVER GOVERNMENT—marks the onset of OPPRESSION AND TYRANNY AND, CONCOMITANTLY, THE TERMINATION OF FREEDOM AND LIBERTY.

WHERE GOVERNMENT DARES USURP THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE, WRONGLY PERCEIVING ITSELF AS SOVEREIGN AND MASTER OVER THE PEOPLE, AND THEREUPON TAKING UPON ITSELF THE ROLE OF SUPREME AND SOVEREIGN AND MASTER OVER THE PEOPLE IN DEFIANCE OF THE CONSTITUTION AND IN VIOLATION OF THE SACRED CONTRACT BETWEEN THE PEOPLE AND GOVERNMENT, THE NATURAL ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE IS AKILTER. The AMERICAN PEOPLE CANNOT and MUST NOT abide this INVERSION OF THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS. It is not for the PEOPLE to be reduced to SERVANT IN DEFEFERENCE TO AND OBEDIENT TO THE WILL OF THE TYRANT-STATE. THEIR RIGHTFUL STATUS AS SOLE AND SUPREME SOVEREIGN OVER GOVERNMENT, OVER THE STATE, MUST BE RECLAIMED. THE NATURAL ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE MUST BE RESTORED.

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SHALL NOT LONG ABIDE TYRANNY. FOR TYRANNY OF GOVERNMENT ENTAILS DEFILEMENT OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION, THE DEGRADATION AND DEBASEMENT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, THE DESECRATION OF NATURAL LAW.

It is then that the PEOPLE have a LEGAL and MORAL RIGHT and an ETHICAL OBLIGATION to take up ARMS AGAINST THE CORRUPTING AND DEVIANT GOVERNMENT, to REBEL against TYRANNY.

This ACT OF REBELLION IS in accord with the NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO RESIST TYRANNY as BOTH NECESSARY AND JUST. FOR, IF THE GOVERNMENT refuses to maintain “THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE,” then, BY FORCE OF ARMS, the American People will do so. There certainly will be sufficient Americans with the will and means to resist Tyranny. There certainly will be a sufficient number of Americans with the necessary will to resist Tyranny, and they have THE MEANS to successfully resist Tyranny.

LOOKING TO THE DISTANT PAST, AMERICA’S FIRST PATRIOTS HAVE SUCCESSFULLY PREVAILED AGAINST TYRANNY BEFORE—A LONG TIME AGO, TWO AND ONE-HALF CENTURIES BEFORE—AND AMERICA’S PATRIOTS TODAY, CAN PREVAIL AGAINST TYRANNY AGAIN.

The first time, America’s Patriots prevailed against an external threat to FREEDOM AND LIBERTY. In recent years, the threat to FREEDOM AND LIBERTY RESIDES WITHIN and, if TYRANNY of GOVERNMENT becomes too much in evidence to deny, America’s Patriots can take up arms once again and prevail against A TREACHERY manifesting within—TREASON ORIGINATING FROM AMERICANS’ OWN GOVERNMENTS (BOTH FEDERAL AND STATE).

Government wields powers to protect the Nation from threats to the Constitution and to the People—THREATS TO THE SANCTITY OF AND PRESERVATION of a FREE REPUBLIC. The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, sets forth,

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. [Emphasis our own]

BUT WHEN IT IS THE GOVERNMENT ITSELF THAT BECOMES THAT UNRULY THREAT TO THE SANCTITY OF AND PRESERVATION OF A FREE REPUBLIC, THEN THE AMERICAN PEOPLE MUST DISSOLVE THAT GOVERNMENT AND, AS THEY WISH, CONSTRUCT ANOTHER TO REPLACE THE ONE THAT BETRAYED THE SOVEREIGN PEOPLE AND FAILED TO COHERE TO THE PURPOSES FOR WHICH THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DEVISED AND IMPLEMENTED IT.

EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL THREATS TO THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE ARE HANDLED DIFFERENTLY TODAY.

AN EXTERNAL ENEMY THAT POSES A THREAT TO THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE IS HANDLED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S WELL-EQUIPPED, WELL-TRAINED, TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED MILITARY, AND BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S MULTI-FACETED AND SOPHISTICATED INTELLIGENCE AND POLICE APPARATUSES.

BUT, WHEN AN INTERNAL THREAT POSED BY A CORRUPT, ROGUE, RENEGADE GOVERNMENT OCCURS, WHICH IS ALWAYS POSSIBLE AND INEVITABLE, SINCE NO GOVERNMENT CAN ADEQUATELY POLICE ITSELF—OR, IF IT OCCURS THAT A ROGUE GOVERNMENT IS TAKEN OVER BY SHADOWY EXTERNAL FORCES, HAVING BRIBED OR THREATENED GOVERNMENT LEADERS AND BUREAUCRATS TO SERVE THE INTERESTS OF THOSE MALEVOLENT FORCES, AND NOT THE INTERESTS OF THE COUNTRY, IN STRICT ACCORDANCE TO THEIR OATH TO PROTECT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES—THEN THE OBLIGATION TO DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION FALLS TO THE CIVILIAN CITIZENRY, MILLIONS OF AMERICAN CITIZENS ARMED TO THE HILT, AS IT IS THE CITIZENRY (AND THE CITIZENRY ALONE, AT THAT POINT) WHO MUST TAKE ACTION, AS THE FINAL AND ULTIMATE FAILSAFE REMAINING TO PROTECT THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE AND ITS SOVEREIGNTY.

THE CIVILIAN CITIZENRY HAS THE MEANS, THE WILL, AND THE ABILITY TO OVERTHROW A ROGUE, TREACHEROUS, TREASONOUS GOVERNMENT—REASSERTING ITS RIGHTFUL POSITION AS THE SOLE SUPREME SOVEREIGN AUTHORITY OVER GOVERNMENT AND ULTIMATE PROTECTOR OF THE PEOPLES’ FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC.

A TREACHEROUS, TREASONOUS GOVERNMENT IS WELL AWARE OF THE AWESOME POWER POSED BY THE WELL-ARMED CITIZENRY THROUGH THAT CITIZENRY’S EXERCISE OF ITS FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE, GOD-GIVEN RIGHTS.

NO OTHER POPULATION ON EARTH HAS AN UNALIENABLE RIGHT RECOGNIZED AND ACKNOWLEDGED BY THAT POPULATION’S GOVERNMENT TO POSSESS WEAPONRY BY RIGHT OF NATURAL (DIVINE) LAW. IN EVERY OTHER NATION, IT IS ONLY BY THE GRACE OF THEIR GOVERNMENT THAT THE POPULACE KEEPS AND BEARS ARMS, IF THAT GOVERNMENT DEIGNS TO PERMIT ITS SUBJECTS TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS AT ALL.

ANY LANGUAGE TO THE CONTRARY THAT MIGHT SUGGEST AN UNALIENABLE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IS VACUOUS OR INTENTIONALLY DECEITFUL, FOR FURTHER LANGUAGE IN THOSE CONSTITUTONS (MEXICO’S CONSTITUTION AND GUATEMALA’S CONSTITUTION AS THOSE NATIONS ARE THE ONLY TWO NATIONS REMAINING TODAY, OTHER THAN OUR OWN, THAT EXPRESSLY MENTION A RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS), MAKE PLAIN THAT GOVERNMENT PLACES TIGHT RESTRICTIONS ON WHO MAY POSSESS A FIREARM, AND THE CIRCUMSTANCES INVOLVING POSSESSION OF A FIREARM.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT IN THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION MAKES THE POINT THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS TRULY IS A RIGHT THAT “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED,” AND THERE IS NO LANGUAGE ANYWHERE ELSE IN ANY OTHER PART OF THE NATION’S CONSTITUTION THAT EXPRESSLY SAYS OR IMPLIES HOWEVER SUBTLY, A LIMITATION ON OR QUALIFICATION OF THAT RIGHT. THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IS THEIR RIGHT INHERENTLY, PREEXISTING GOVERNMENT.

THAT RIGHT (AND FORMIDABLE POWER) IS NOT A CONTINGENT, TRANSIENT, OR EMPHEMERAL GIFT— BESTOWED ON ONE, OR NOT, OR BESTOWED ON ONE AND THEN RESCINDED AT WHIM AND DISCRETION BY THE GOVERNMENT (THE STATE).

ALL GOVERNMENT STATUTES, RULES, REGULATIONS, CODES, OR RULES THAT ASSERT OTHERWISE, ARE CONTRARY TO DIVINE LAW AS CODFIED CLEARLY, CONCISELY, AND CATEGORICALLY IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS.

IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS, IT THEREFORE BEFALLS TO THE CITIZENRY, NOT THE GOVERNMENT, TO MAINTAIN “THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE,” FOR THAT FREE STATE BELONGS TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, THE CITIZENRY. IT DOES NOT BELONG TO GOVERNMENT. THE GOVERNMENT IS A CARETAKER OF THAT FREE STATE, NOTHING MORE.

THE ARMED CITIZENRY IS NOT, THEN, THE BANE OF OUR COUNTRY THAT THE NAYSAYERS CONSTANTLY JABBER ABOUT. FOR THE ARMED CITIZENRY IS THE SOURCE OF OUR NATION’S INCONTROVERTIBLE STRENGTH, SUCCESS, POWER, RESILENCE, AND TENACIOUSNESS.

IT IS THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, NOT GOVERNMENT, THAT TRULY HAS A VESTED INTEREST IN THE SANCTITY AND INVIOLABILITY OF AND PRESERVATION OF A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC. BECAUSE THAT FREE REPUBLIC BELONGS TO THEM, NOT TO THE GOVERNMENT.

GOVERNMENT, FOR ITS PART, EXISTS TO SERVE THE PEOPLE AND THE PEOPLES’ INTERESTS, AND NO OTHER. GOVERNMENT DOES NOT EXIST TO SERVE ITS OWN INTERESTS NOR THAT OF ANYONE OR ANYTHING ELSE.

ALL THAT IS REQUIRED OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO PRESERVE THEIR NATION AND REPUBLIC IS THEIR ABILITY TO PERCEIVE A THREAT TO THEIR FREEDOM AND LIBERTY, ARISING FROM THE GOVERNMENT AND FROM THOSE ENEMIES, INSIDE OR OUTSIDE THE NATION THAT THE GOVERNMENT IS IN LEAGUE WITH. IN THE EVENT THAT THREAT ARISES, THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE THE STRENGTH OF WILL TO TAKE SUCH ACTION NECESSARY TO UTILZE THOSE SUPERNAL GIFTS BESTOWED ON THEM BY THE DIVINE CREATOR TO VANQUISH THAT TREACHEROUS GOVERNMENT AND ANY OTHER ENEMY THAT TREACHEROUS GOVERNMENT IS IN LEAGUE WITH.

A government that trends toward Tyranny invariably shows its hand by constraining or curtailing FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE, GOD-GIVEN RIGHTS —doing so through artifice. That is one prominent indication of a Government trending toward TYRANNY. And there are other indicators. Those indicators were on display for all to see during the previous Administration.

The present Trump Administration has much work to take on and to complete to contain and clear up the massive mess. And President Trump demonstrates he is up to the task. He hit the road running on his first Day in Office and has not letup. Those myriad malcontents in service to Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxist Internationalists complain that Trump is changing everything. That is not true. Trump ISN’T CHANGING ANYTHING if by that it means he is transforming the Country into something novel. He isn’t doing that at all. Rather, he IS REVERTING THE COUNTRY BACK to its sacred roots. Unlike his predecessors Obama and Biden, Trump has taken his Oath of Office seriously and has acted faithfully to that Oath of Office he swore on the day of his inauguration, first on January 20, 2017, when he served his first term, and now, on January 20, 2025 as he serves his second term in Office. Those who abhor Trump and his policies, do so because Obama and Biden had attempted and were well on their way to transforming the Nation into a thing completely alien to and antithetical to and incompatible with THE TENETS, PRECEPTS, AND PRINCIPLES OF INDIVIDUALISM, UPON WHICH A FREE REPUBLIC WAS ESTABLISHED.

THE NATION’S BILL OF RIGHTS ARE THE CLEAREST EXPRESSION OF “INDIVIDUALISM”—THE SANCTITY AND INVIOLABILITY OF MAN. Unlike the Trump Administration, the Administrations of Obama and Biden found the BILL OF RIGHTS repugnant because it is expounds the highest ideals of INDIVIDUALISM—a PHILOSOPHY and BELIEF SYSTEM inconsistent with the transformation of the COUNTRY they sought surreptitiously, deceitfully, and treacherously to overlay a FREE REPUBLIC, grounded on INDIVIDUALISM, in order to override THE FOUNDATION OF A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, THAT WAS FOUNDED ON INDIVIDUALISM—UPON WHICH OUR COUNTRY GREW TO PROMINENCE AND PREEMINENCE IN THE WORLD.

What these treacherous Administrations of Barack Obama and Joe Biden attempted accomplish was deformation of a FREE REPUBLIC, and TRANSFORMATION into a thing unrecognizable, and horrible: A MARXIST-COLLECTIVIST DESPOTISM BEHOLDING TO MALICIOUS, MALIGNANT ENTITIES COMMITTED TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE REPUBLIC, THE SUBJUGATION OF THE PEOPLE, THE DISSOLUTION OF THE CONSTITUTION and INTEGRATION into a WORLD EMPIRE, where our Nation’s natural resources and technological resources, our military assets and intelligence apparatuses, would be purloined to be utilized by THE RULERS OF A NEW DYNASTIC AND DESPOTIC GLOBAL EMPIRE, GROUNDED ON THE TENETS, PRECEPTS, AND PRINCIPLES OF COLLECTIVISM, THE ANTITHESIS of our own, and contrary to Natural Law Rights. Nothing good can come of a Nation grounded on “COLLECTIVISM.

Nothing ever good came from that. What has come from Nations grounded on COLLECTIVISM, and what continues to accrue on those populations where “COLLECTIVISM” dominates, is PAIN, ANGUISH, PENURY, MISERY, SUFFERING, AND DEATH.

The Framers of the United States Constitution, the Founders of our Independent, Sovereign Nation and Free Constitutional Republic, and generations of Americans since that have fought to maintain and strengthen our Country against external forces, jealous of our power and success (that have continually sought to crush us), would be absolutely horrified at the prospect, not merely of the loss of our Country, but that many of our Government leaders and influential business and financial interests would dare sell out our Nation out of a rapacious desire for wealth or the trappings of power, or would be motivated to transform our Free Republic into a Marxist-Collectivist State due to a decidedly peculiar appetite for Marxist-Collectivism along with a fondness for and admiration of regimes grounded on that ideology.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE TELL-TALE SIGNS OF TREASON AND TREACHERY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT?

A TREACHEROUS, TREASONOUS FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WILL ENACT LAWS AND ISSUE EDICTS, AND SECRET ORDERS ALL OF WHICH ARE PLAINLY DESIGNED TO OPPRESS THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, COAXING, CAJOLING, pr COMPELLING CONFORMITY of THOUGHT and ACTION.

A TREACHEROUS, TREASONOUS GOVERNMENT WILL DESIGN AND THRUST BIZARRE, ABSURD DOGMAS ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, DESIGNED TO CONFOUND THEM, MAKING THEM SUSCEPTIBLE TO DOMINATION AND SUBJUGATION.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONING CAMPAIGNS DELIVERED TO THE PUBLIC THROUGH A SEDITIOUS PRESS AND PERVERSE SOCIAL MEDIA, ARE DESIGNED TO RECONFIGURE THE PSYCHE OF THE PUBLIC, MAKING PUBLIC PLIANT, MALLEABLE, AND SUGGESTIBLE, AMENABLE TO ADOPTING NEW BELIEF SYSTEMS SENSITIVE TO AND ACCEPTING OF GOVERNMENT CONTROL OVER THE PUBLIC.

THE GOVERNMENT WILL ENCOURAGE THE USE OF ILLICIT DRUGS, BY THE PUBLIC—NARCOTICS—DESIGNED TO DULL THE HIGHER FACULTIES OF THE BRAIN DEVOTED TO REASONING, PRODUCING AN INDOLENT, DOCILE POLITY, NOT INCLINED TO WORK AND TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR ONE’S ACTIONS. THUS, THE POLITY BECOMES DEPENDENT ON GOVERNMENT TO SATISFY BASIC, MINIMAL NEEDS FOR THE PUBLIC’S SURVIVAL, AS THE POLITY IS REDUCED TO POVERTY.

IN SUCH A DEPENDENT STATE, THE TYRANNICAL GOVERNMENT WILL TAKE STEPS TO SUPPRESS EXERCISE OF THE PEOPLES’ FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE, ETERNAL NATURAL LAW RIGHTS.

SCHOOLS WILL NO LONGER TEACH THE YOUTH THE BASICS OF GOVERNMENT, AS ESTABLISHED IN THE CONSTITUTION—AND ESPECIALLY THE IMPORT OF THE NATION’S BILL OF RIGHTS. MILLIONS OF ILLEGAL, UNASSIMILABLE NATIVES FROM OVER A HUNDRED THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES WILL BE ENCOURAGED BY THE TYRANNICAL GOVERNMENT TO ENTER THE UNITED STATES. THEY WILL CONSTITUTE A NEW CLASS OF INDOLENT, DESTITUTE, AND DEPENDENT PLEBIANS THAT POSE NO THREAT TO TYRANNY OF GOVERNMENT. THIS NEW CLASS OF HELPLESS ALIENS WILL EVENTUALLY REPLACE THE PRESENT POPULATION, BECOMING A COMPLIANT SERVANT CASTE.

INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL CARTELS, TRAFFICKING IN PEOPLE, DRUGS, AND OTHER ILLEGAL COMMODITIES WILL BE FREE TO ROAM THE COUNTRY, MARKING NEW TERRITORY WHERE THEY CAN OPERATE AT WILL.

DOMESTIC CRIMINAL PSYCHOPATHS, SOCIOPATHS, LUNATICS, AND THE LIKE, FREED FROM PRISONS AND MENTAL ASYLUMS, ALONG WITH ILLEGAL ALIEN GANG MEMBERS, WILL BE FREE TO TERRORIZE THE PUBLIC. A LAX CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM WILL COMPOUND THE PROBLEM. COMMUNITY POLICE, DEFUNDED OR OTHERWISE CONSTRAINED FROM PROTECTING THE COMMUNITY, WILL BE UNABLE TO PROMOTE ORDER IN THEIR COMMUNITIES. THE TYRANNICAL GOVERNMENT WILL DELIBERATELY CREATE THE IMPETUS TO DESTABILIZE SOCIETY.

THE PROCESS OF DESTABILIZATION OF SOCIETY AND INDUCED DEMORALIZATION OF THE PUBLIC WILL ASSIST A TREACHEROUS GOVERNMENT IN THE PROCESS OF CONSOLIDATING ITS POWER OVER THE POLITY.

RABBLE CONSISTING OF MARXIST CULTISTS, ANARCHISTS, AND PAID AGITATORS WILL ALSO ASSIST THE TYRANT IN SOFTENING UP PUBLIC TO QUELL RESISTENCE TO TREASONOUS TAKEOVER OF GOVERNMENT.

THIS IS JUST A TASTE OF WHAT A GOVERNMENT IMPOSING ITS WILL ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE EMPLOYS AS IT CONSOLIDATES ITS POWER OVER THE PEOPLE.

The NAKED, BLATANT, UNLAWFUL SUPPRESSION OF AMERICANS’ FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE, AND ETERNAL RIGHTS amounts to a major volley IN A WAR commenced by the TYRANT GOVERNMENT against the PEOPLE, as the TYRANT aims to USURP the sovereignty of the American People, placing the mantle of THAT SOVEREIGNTY unlawfully on itself.

THIS ACT IS IN AND OF ITSELF THE ESSENCE OF TREACHERY AND TREASON AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION AND THE PEOPLE.

IF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DESIST and RELENT to TYRANNY, then THIS FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC DIES.

The Tyrant will attempt, unlawfully, to wrest sovereignty of the American people through subversive, seductive means, at first, to avoid direct violent confrontation.

By fomenting riots and causing societal destabilization, a Government trending toward imminent Tyranny, insidiously utilizes the horror it creates as an excuse to impose continuous noxious, and more draconian restrictions on the People, claiming all the while that the intent of Government is good, and right, and proper.

The inklings of Tyranny begin with constant, and increasingly repressive restrictions on Americans’ exercise of their fundamental right to freely express their thoughts, and freedom of association, and to restrict their access to arms and ammunition, and to surveil the people and invade their freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. But, the Tyrant will never say,

“I AM CENSORING SPEECH AND, AND I AM CONSTRAINING FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION, AND I AM DEMANDING ACCESS TO YOUR PRIVATE AFFAIRS, AND I AM CONFISCATING FIREARMS AND AMMUNITION, ALL TO SECURE MY POWER.”

Instead, the Tyrant will mask his reasons for amassing power unto himself.

The public will hear seemingly plausible—but, on cursory reflection, baseless reasons for curtailing freedom of speech and the right to keep and bear arms.

Arguments boiled down to slogans will aim to convince members of the public to accede to constraints on the exercise of their rights:

“‘HATE SPEECH’ WILL NOT BE CONDONED OR TOLERATED.”

“FREEDOM OF SPEECH” DOESN’T MEAN THAT ALL SPEECH IS PERMITTED.”

“SPEECH THAT IS DEEMED HARMFUL AND INJURIOUS TO SOCIETY IS DISINFORMATION AND MISINFORMATION AND WILL NEVER BE CONDONED, TOLERATED OR PERMITTED IN A FREE SOCIETY.”

“‘GUN VIOLENCE’ IS INTOLERABLE. IT RESULTS FROM TOO MANY GUNS IN THE COUNTRY AND EASY ACCESS TO THEM, AND THAT IS WHY MORE LAWS AIMED AT CONSTRAINING GUN OWNERSHIP AND POSSESSION ARE NECESSARY TO REDUCE ‘GUN VIOLENCE’ IN SOCIETY.”

“STRONG GUN LAWS REDUCE GUN VIOLENCE.” [But strong laws targeting whom? Those Americans who wish to exercise their Right to Keep and Bear Arms and who are not a threat to anyone? If so, is the argument for such laws truly intended to “Reduce Gun Violence” (Criminal Violence) which is an intractable problem in society due to inaction by Government? Or, is the argument for such laws intended to Disarm the Citizenry because the Armed Citizenry poses a threat, a quintessential threat, to THAT TYRANT GOVERNMENT, who, itself, poses an existential threat to “THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE”, thereby NECESSITATING NEED for THAT ARMED CITIZENRY?]

“NO CIVILIAN NEEDS AN ‘ASSAULT WEAPON’ OR OTHER ‘WEAPON OF WAR.’”

“RATIONAL, LAW-ABIDING AMERICANS DO NOT NEED OR WANT TO STOCKPILE GUNS AND AMMUNITION.”

“AMERICANS WHO KEEP FIREARMS ON THEIR HOME OR ON THEIR PERSON ARE MORE INCLINED, ONE DAY, TO COMMIT CRIMES OF VIOLENCE OR, THROUGH ACCIDENT, KILL OR MAIM THEMSELVES OR OTHERS WITH A GUN.”

“AMERICANS WHO CHOOSE TO OWN AND POSSESS FIREARMS TEND TO OBSESS OVER THEM TO THE EXCLUSION OF ENGAGING IN OTHER MORE SENSIBLE HOBBIES AND PURSUITS.”

“THE DESIRE TO OWN AND POSSESS FIREARMS IS UNHEALTHY AND IS A FORM OF MENTAL ILLNESS.”

“THE NOTION THAT THE PEOPLE HAVE A RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS AND THAT THIS RIGHT SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED, IS ARCHAIC, OBSOLETE, EVEN OBSCENE. IT HAS NO PLACE IN A WORLD GOVERNED BY INTERNATIONAL NORMS OF PROPER CONDUCT.”

________________________________________________

Many Americans are susceptible to this nonsense. They take these pronouncements at FACE VALUE, which means “OF VALUE TO THE TYRANT who controls the citizenry by restricting free speech and conduct, and banning civilian citizen ownership and possession of firearms and ammunition.

YET, WHAT HAPPENS TO BE DETRIMENTAL TO THE TYRANT, IS AT ONCE BENEFICIAL TO THE “THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE.”

Many in the academic community, and in the medical, scientific, and legal communities, and many Collectivists in Congress and in some of the States, PROPOUND the following inane and dangerous ideas, and THRUST then on an ill-informed public:

AMERICA’S ARCHAIC ‘BILL OF RIGHTS’ NEEDS TO BE REPEALED AND REPLACED WITH A NEW AND RELEVANT DOCUMENT OF HUMAN RIGHTS. THE UNITED NATION’S HAS CRAFTED A USEFUL ONE, CONSISTENT WITH INTERNATIONAL NORMS, MAKING NO MENTION OF A PERSONAL RIGHT OF SELF-DEFENSE, WHICH IS A FUNCTION OF THE STATE, NOT INDIVIDUALS, AND THE UNITED NATION’S PROPOSED DOCUMENT OF “HUMAN RIGHTS” MAKES NO MENTION OF A RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE. THIS ABSENCE OF A RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IS MORALLY REPUGNANT AND DANGEROUS TO THE WELL-BEING OF SELF AND OTHERS AND TO THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE. THE UNITED NATIONS DOCUMENT IS TITLED ‘UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS’ (UDHR). IT MAKES NO MENTION OF A RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS INTRINSIC TO THE PEOPLE BECAUSE THE UNITED NATION’S OBJECTIVE IS DIRECTLY AIMED AT ENSLAVING POPULATIONS, NOT FREEING THEM. A FREE PEOPLE POSES A THREAT TO THE POWER OF STATES TO EXERT CONTROL OVER THEIR PEOPLE.  MANY COUNTRIES HAVE USED THE UDHR AS A GUIDE WHEN CRAFTING THEIR HUMAN RIGHTS IN ACCORDANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL NORMS OF CORRECT THOUGHT AND BEHAVIOR IN A MODERN, CIVILIZED WORLD, MEANT TO CORRAL AND CONSTRAIN FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND ACTION, FOR FREEDOM AND LIBERTY ARE ANTITHETICAL TO THE WELL-ORDERED AND WELL-ENGINEERED COLLECTIVIST SOCIETY, DEMANDING ON UNQUESTIONED OBEDIENCE AND CONFORMITY.

AND, AS DIRECTED TO THE UNITED STATES, GROUNDED ON FREEDOM AND LIBERTY, AND ON THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE OVER GOVERNMENT, THE ARGUMENT AGAINST THESE SALIENT TRUTHS OF A DIVINE NATURAL ORDER, THE CONSTITUTION, THE BLUEPRINT OF OUR NATION, A FREE STATE, IS ATTACKED, EVEN MOCKED, INCESSANTLY, VEHEMENTLY, ESPECIALLY IN THE LAST FIFTEEN YEARS—BECAUSE, AS THE ARGUMENT GOES:

THE U.S. CONSTITUTION IS OLD, HANDED DOWN FROM A BYGONE ERA. THE U.S. CONSTITUTION IS AN ANOMALY, OUT-OF-TUNE WITH THE WORLD TODAY. IT IS WHOLLY INCOMPATIBLE WITH MODERN SOCIETY AND WITH THE INTERNATIONAL RULES-BASED LIBERAL WORLD ORDER. THIS DOCUMENT NEEDS TO BE DISSOLVED AND REPLACED WITH ANOTHER, A CONSTITUTION THAT IS IN ACCORD WITH INTERNATIONAL LAW AND NORMS, A CONSTITUTION THAT RECOGNIZES THE SUPREMACY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND NORMS, TAKING PRECEDENCE OVER THE RULES AND LAWS OF A THE UNITED STATES AS A FREE, INDEPENDENT SOVEREIGN NATION (BUT NO LONGER FOR THE UNITED STATES IS TO BECOME PART OF A GREATER WHOLE—A WORLD COLLECTIVEST EMPIRE.

THE THREAT POSED TO THE SUPREMACY OF OUR NATION’S CONSTITUTION OVER INTERNATIONAL LAW—AND, IN FACT—TO ITS CONTINUED EXISTENCE AS A FREE REPUBLIC, AS CRAFTED BY THE FRAMERS AND RATIFIED BY THE STATES, FACES CONSTANT VIGOROUS ASSAULT, IN A DIRECT AND DECISIVE MANNER TODAY THAT HAS NO PARALLEL TO THE PAST.

Some writers believe changes to the Constitution’s Articles can make for a more effective-running Government. But, more effective for whom? And, what would that portend for our Nation’s BOR? See the article titled, “Constitution in Crisis,” subtitled, “Has America’s founding document become the nation’s undoing?”, in the Leftist periodical, Harpers, published in October 2019. Several leading political Progressive scholars discuss the matter, in an open forum.

The forum discussion begins with a bold pronouncement from Louis Michael Seidman that the U.S. Constitution is “illegal.” The tacit assumption, then, is that what is illegal is, is unenforceable. In contract law, an illegal contract is “void ab initio.” Realizing he must provide an argument to support an outrageous assertion, Seidman asserts, Seidman asserts,

**************************

It’s not just the American Revolution but the Constitution itself that was an act of constitutional disobedience. At the time the Constitution was written, there was another binding document, the Articles of Confederation. It required the approval of every state legislature to amend it. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention arrived with the explicit instruction that they were to propose amendments to the Articles of Confederation.

When they met behind closed doors—­with no public input at all—one of the first things they decided was to disregard their instructions and just ditch the Articles. They agreed to have a method of ratification that was different from the one outlined in the Articles. The ratification was not to be done by the state legislatures; it was to be done by constitutional conventions, and it was not to be approved by unanimous consent, which was what the Articles provided, but rather would go into effect when nine of the states agreed.

So, from the beginning, the Constitution was in some sense illegal. It’s a neat trick to get from that to a time when people feel bound to respect the document.

******************************

This strikes us as sophistry, not hard argument. And one giveaway of is found in the sentence “the Constitution was in some sense illegal.” [Emphasis our own] The only trickery here is that coming from Seidman, who has an obvious motive. He wishes to eradicate the Constitution because it doesn’t cohere with his personal socio-political predilections. And, ostensibly, one way to do that is to exclaim that the U.S. Constitution is illegal in its inception and need not be adhered to. But then, what would replace it?

And, importantly, what becomes of our Nation in the interim and thereafter?

If the Constitution is illegal, then the Nation has no foundation, and simply dissolves into nothingness. That is something the Marxists would love to see. Apparently, Seidman would, too. In the quiet confines of academia, there is no hint of the turmoil such an outrageous disassembling of the Constitution would herald for the Nation and the People.

See also, the article, published in the Los Angeles Times on August 23, 2024, just eleven months ago, by the Progressive legal Scholar, Erwin Chemerinsky. His article is titled, “We’re living under a flawed Constitution. Let’s start fresh and rewrite it.” He begins his paper with this,

*****************************

No matter the outcome of the November [2024] elections [Trump won and Republicans won control of both Houses of Congress, no doubt to the chagrin of Chemerinsky], it is urgent that there be a widespread recognition that American democracy is in danger and that reforms are essential. No form of government lasts forever, and it would be foolhardy to believe that the United States cannot fall prey to the forces that have ended democracies in many other countries. . . . The framers of the Constitution, out of distrust for democracy, created the Electoral College so that elites would choose the president. However, never in the 20th century did the loser of the popular vote become president because of the Electoral College [Yes, well (“horrors”), Trump won both the Electoral Vote AND the Popular vote in November 2024] But population shifts and partisan realignment have made this a regular occurrence in this century. It happened in 2000 and 2016, and it almost happened in 2004 and 2020. In the last election, if just 42,921 votes had changed in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, Donald Trump would have been reelected president despite losing the popular election by almost seven million votes.

Although the causes are complex, many of today’s problems can be traced back to choices made in drafting the Constitution, choices that are increasingly haunting us. After 200 years, it is time to begin thinking of drafting a new Constitution to create a more effective, more democratic government.

****************************

By the way, Erwin Chemerinsky is no fan of the right to armed self-defense. Back on November 1, 2023, just before the U.S. Supreme Court heard Oral Argument in the Rahimi case, Chemerinsky wrote an article explaining the importance of that case. And keep in mind that, Antonyuk, involves two Petitions for a Writ of Certiorari.

In the closing paragraph of their Brief in support of striking down the New York Government’s amendments to the State’s Handgun Law—a measure taken in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in Bruen, (RE: THE ANTONYUK PETITIONERS’ FIRST PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERIORARI)—the Petitioners requested the U.S. Supreme Court to remand the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, rather than take up review of Antonyuk, immediately, in light of the upcoming Rahimi case that had not yet been decided at the time, but a decision was imminent.

There was a legal strategy behind Petitioners taking this tack, due to a couple of side issues in Rahimi. While of lesser importance to the disposition of Rahimi, those issues are crucial to Antonyuk: THE “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” requirement and application of THE “HISTORICAL TRADITION” test.

Clarification of those issues would also assist the Supreme Court in resolving future Court cases (BOTH STATE and FEDERAL) involving the constitutionality of State action impacting the core of “THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS.”

Concerning the “HISTORICAL TRADITION TEST,” Chemerinsky said this,

**********************************

From 1791, when the Second Amendment was written, until 2008, not once did the Supreme Court declare unconstitutional a federal, state, or local gun regulation. In the handful of cases about the Second Amendment, the court always said that it was about protecting a right to have firearms for militia service.

But in June 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the court declared unconstitutional an ordinance that prevented owning or possessing a handgun. In a 5-4 decision, with the majority opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court held that the Second Amendment protects a right of an individual to have handguns in the home for the sake of security. The court did not prescribe a test or level of scrutiny to be used in evaluating gun regulations.

The court did not decide another case about the meaning of the Second Amendment for 14 years until New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen in June 2022. The court, in a 6-3 ruling, declared unconstitutional a New York law that had been on the books for over a century that prohibited having a gun in public without a permit and that required a person to show cause, a safety need, for having such a permit.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion and said that a gun regulation would be allowed only if it was of a type that was historically permitted. He wrote, “To justify its regulation, the government may not simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest. Rather, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s ‘unqualified command.”

In other words, unlike all other rights in the Constitution, the usual levels of scrutiny are not applied; it does not matter under this approach whether there is a compelling government interest and no other way to achieve it. The court said that a gun regulation is constitutionally permissible only if it was historically allowed. The court expressly rejected any balancing of the government’s interests in regulating guns with a claim of Second Amendment rights. Justice Thomas wrote “the Second Amendment is the very product of an interest balancing by the people and it surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms for self-defense.

Zackey Rahimi physically abused his girlfriend while they were in a parking lot. When he realized that a bystander had seen this, Rahimi retrieved a gun and fired at the witness. The girlfriend ran away from Rahimi and he later called her and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone about the assault. Subsequently, a court in Texas, after a hearing, issued a restraining order against Rahimi for a two-year period. Among other things, the order prevented Rahimi from threatening, harassing, or approaching his former girlfriend or her family. The order also prohibited Rahimi from having a firearm and informed him that such possession would be a federal felony. A federal statute – 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(8) – prohibits the possession of firearms by a person subject to a restraining order in a domestic violence case.

Rahimi was later the suspect in a number of crimes where a firearm was used. The police obtained a search warrant and on searching Rahimi’s home found a number of guns and ammunition. He was indicted for violating the federal statute forbidding those covered by a protective order in a domestic violence case from having a gun.

Rahimi asked the federal district court to declare the federal law unconstitutional. After it ruled against him, Rahimi pled guilty and was sentenced to 73 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release.

On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit declared the federal statute unconstitutional. The Fifth Circuit explained that there were not such laws disarming domestic abusers in 1791 when the Second Amendment was adopted and that makes this law unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s approach prescribed in Bruen. The Fifth Circuit stated there is “no tradition— from 1791 or 1866—of prohibiting gun possession . . . for people . . . subject to civil protective orders.”

Both the United States and Rahimi focus on historical arguments in their briefs to the Supreme Court. The United States contends that “American legislatures have long disarmed individuals whom they have found to be dangerous, irresponsible, or otherwise unfit to possess arms” and that “Section 922(g)(8) fits within that history and tradition because it disarms persons who are not law-abiding, responsible citizens.”

Rahimi, by contrast, stresses, as did the Fifth Circuit the absence of laws in 1791 that prohibited possession of firearms by those under restraining orders in domestic violence cases. Rahimi says that “[f]ollowing the process laid out by Bruen, the outcome here is straightforward.’ Section 922(g)(8) severely punishes conduct protected by the plain text of the Second Amendment.” He says that the governments approach gives “Congress carte blanche to disarm and punish the exercise of a fundamental, enumerated right.”

The case is likely to be enormously important in clarifying how the court applies its test from Bruen. At what level of abstraction is the historical analysis to be done? Rahimi says that the focus is on whether in 1791 there were laws preventing possession of guns by those under restraining orders in domestic violence cases. But the United States says that is the wrong question; rather the inquiry should be whether there were restrictions on dangerous people having guns.

Also, there is the question of whether the court will adhere to what it said in Bruen and pay no attention to the government’s interest in keeping people under restraining orders from having guns. Toward the end of its brief, the government argues, “Congress may disarm persons subject to protective orders even if the Founders did not.” In 1791, there was little protection against domestic violence and restraining orders were non-existent. Should this determine the meaning of the Second Amendment in 2023?

The court’s decision will matter greatly as to the constitutionality of countless other gun regulations. Are federal and state laws prohibiting convicted felons from having firearms constitutional? Can the federal government and state governments prohibit “ghost guns,” guns without serial numbers? Can the government ban types of weapons – AR 15s and large capacity ammunition magazines – that did not exist in 1791?

Beyond the Second Amendment, there is the question of whether Bruen’s strictly originalist approach, rejecting any consideration of the government’s interest, will spread to other areas of constitutional law. It is a dramatic departure from how the court has approached rights and equal protection at least since the late 1930s.

Ultimately, United States v. Rahimi will provide a crucial sense of how far the court will go in protecting gun rights and how much it will adhere to a purely originalist approach to the Second Amendment and perhaps the Constitution. [Emphasis throughout, our own]

The Petitioners believed with good reason the Court would take up Antonyuk ONCE the Federal Appellate Court had reaffirmed its prior negative decision in the case (which the Antonyuk Petitioners anticipated the Federal Appellate Court would do, AFTER WHICH the Antonyuk Petitioners would file their SECOND PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI, anticipating that the U.S. Supreme Court WOULD take up the case (MUST TAKE UP THE CASE), because Antonyuk is THE MOST IMPORTANT CASE since Bruen, and because the Court had given every indication it would do so, thus showing a keen interest in having the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit handle the case expeditiously [See infra reference to 2023 interim order of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case captioned, Antonyuk vs. Nigrelli, 143 S. Ct. 481 (2023)].

Well, the Second Circuit did reassert its prior rulings in Antonyuk, as the Petitioners had correctly presumed.

The Federal Appellate Court then remanded Antonyuk back down to the lower U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York for further action consistent with the Appellate Court’s rulings.

This back and forth movement of the case from one Court to the other the Second Circuit would keep Antonyuk in a continuous state of flux as the Second Circuit surely intended—the very thing that Alito had warned the Government (to mean “the Second Circuit itself,”) to forbear from doing.

The Second Circuit was sympathetic to the New York Government’s position on “GUNS” and on CIVILIAN CITIZEN POSSESSION OF THEM and had sufficient reason, then, to keep the case from a final resolution. As long as the case was denied final resolution, the Hochul Government could then continue to enforce its Handgun Law in the manner it wished. For the Second Circuit HAD LIFTED THE STAY on the Petitioners’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction that the lower New York District Court had granted.

Thus, as long as the State could continue to enforce its Handgun Law, this served as a DE FACTO WIN FOR THE GOVERNMENT.

That is all the State could reasonably hope for, but it was enough since THE AMENDMENTS to the HANDGUN LAW are FACIALLY Unconstitutional, and the STATE KNOWS that to be so, and, were the U.S. Supreme Court to grant review, the Court would be compelled to strike down much if not all of the State’s amendments to its Handgun Gun Law. The Court must do this if the Court is to assure consistency in its handling of the prior Landmark cases, Heller and Bruen.

The Antonyuk Petitioners knew well the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit was deliberately delaying final resolution of the case, and the Antonyuk Petitioners would have none of that. They were not going to play that game, and Justice Alito had previously issued an order telling the New York Government (a message clearly meant for the Second Circuit) NOT TO DELAY PROSECUTION OF THE CASE.

The Second Circuit DELAYED the case anyway, ATTEMPTING TO HIDE ITS DECEPTIVE ACTIONS THROUGH LEGAL TRICKERY. This is in CLEAR DEFIANCE OF AN EARLIER SUPREME COURT INTERIM ORDER. The High Court told the Second Circuit not to delay resolution of the case. See Antonyuk vs. Nigrelli, 143 S. Ct. 481 (2023).

The Petitioners had appealed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit order, vacating the prior order of the lower Federal District Court that had granted Petitioners’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction, staying enforcement of the NY Government’s amendments to the New York Handgun Law that were in enacted in plain defiance of the Bruen rulings.

The Supreme Court denied the Petitioners’ “APPLICATION” to the High Court TO LIFT THE STAY but Associate Justice Samuel Alito added a comment, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.

Justice Alito’s comment suggests that BOTH HE AND Justice Thomas agreed to deny the Application to vacate stay BUT DID SO RELUCTANTLY. Both Justices were anxious to hear the case.

They both knew that High Court review of Antonyuk WOULD RESULT IN—MUST RESULT IN—THE COURT’S STRIKING DOWN THE GOVERNMENT’S UNCONCONSTITUTIONAL, UNCONSCIONABLE AMENDMENTS TO THE STATE’S HANDGUN LAW. FOR THE STATE’S JULY 2022 AMENDMENTS TO THE HANDGUN LAW DON’T MERELY OFFEND THE SECOND AMENDMENT, THEY OPERATE AS A DELIBERATE, BLATANT, AND CONTEMPTUOUS ACT OF DEFIANCE TOWARD THE SUPREME COURT’S BRUEN RULINGS.

Justice Alito writes,

The New York law at issue in this application presents novel and serious questions under both the First and the Second Amendments. The District Court found, in a thorough opinion, that the applicants were likely to succeed on a number of their claims, and it issued a preliminary injunction as to twelve provisions of the challenged law. With one exception, the Second Circuit issued a stay of the injunction in full, and in doing so did not provide any explanation for its ruling. App. to Emergency Application 2. In parallel cases presenting related issues, the Second Circuit has likewise issued unreasoned summary stay orders, but in those cases it has ordered expedited briefing. See, e.g., Order in Hardaway v. Nigrelli, No. 22-2933, 2022 U.S. App. LEXIS 36046 (CA2, Dec. 7, 2022), ECF Doc. 53; Order in Christian v. Nigrelli, No. 22-2987 (CA2, Dec. 12, 2022), ECF Doc. 40. [Emphasis our own]

The Petitioners thereupon filed their SECOND PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI, obviously mindful of the Comment in Antonyuk vs. Nigrelli—A PLAIN ADMONITION AND WARNING TO THE SECOND CIRCUIT, NOT TO PUSSYFOOT AROUND ON THIS MATTER OF THE HIGHEST IMPORTANCE TO AND SANCTITY OF A FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE, NATURAL LAW RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE, NECESSARY TO THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE. AND THE SECOND CIRCUIT WAS DELAYING RESOLUTION OF THE CASE IN DEFIANCE OF THE COMMENT OF JUSTICE ALITO. SO——

THE PETITIONERS WERE THEREFORE CONFIDENT THE SUPREME COURT WOULD GRANT CERTIORARI IN THE CASE AND THEY HAD EVERY REASON TO FEEL THIS WAY.

THE PRINCIPAL REASONS THE ANTONYUK CASE IS AMONG THE MOST IMPORTANT CASES THAT HAVE COME BEFORE THE COURT THIS TERM—AND, OF ALL THE SECOND AMENDMENT CASES, TO COME BEFORE THE COURT, THE ANTONYUK VS. JAMES CASE IS UNDOUBTEDLY THE MOST CRUCIAL SECOND AMENDMENT CASE TO WEND ITS WAY TO THE HIGH COURT SINCE NYSRPA VS. BRUEN. CONSIDER——

• THE SALIENT ISSUES HAD BEEN FULLY BRIEFED. SEVERAL AMICUS BRIEFS HAD BEEN FILED ON BEHALF OF ONE OR THE OTHER PARTY: ANTONYUK PETITIONERS OR RESPONDENT NEW YORK GOVERNMENT.

• THE SECOND CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS HAD CAUSED UNNECESSARY DELAY, ANGERING JUSTICES SAMUEL ALITO AND CLARENCE THOMAS AND, PRESUMPTIVELY ONE OR MORE OF THE PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S NOMINEES TO THE COURT, TOO.

• THE CASE IS OF MONUMENTAL IMPORTANCE TO THE PUBLIC.

• ANTONYUK INVOLVES THE EXERCISE OF A VITAL, NATURAL LAW RIGHT.

• THE ISSUES RAISED IN THE CASE ARE NOT ONLY PERTINENT TO THE RULINGS AND REASONING OF TWO PRIOR LANDMARK CASES, HELLER AND BRUEN, THE ISSUES ARE ESSENTIAL TO THE CONTINUED VITALITY OF HELLER AND BRUEN AND TO THE NATURAL LAW RIGHT CODIFIED IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

• A POSITIVE RULING IN THE CASE WOULD RAISE ANTONYUK TO THE LEVEL OF FOURTH LANDMARK SECOND AMENDMENT. AND THAT IMPORTANCE WOULD HAVE A POSITIVE IMPACT ON THE OTHER NATURAL LAW RIGHTS CODIFIED IN THE NATION’S BILL OF RIGHTS.

• THE NEW YORK LAW AT ISSUE IN THIS APPLICATION PRESENTS NOVEL AND SERIOUS ISSUES CRUCIAL TO BOTH THE SECOND AND FIRST AMENDMENTS.

• THERE IS A RIFT AMONG THE VARIOUS CIRCUIT COURTS INVOLVING THE IMPORT OF BRUEN.

• ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT STATES AND COURTS, PLAINLY ANTAGONISTIC TO AND SUSPICIOUS OF CITIZEN OWNERSHIP AND POSSESSION OF FIREARMS, AND PREDISPOSED TO SEARCHING FOR LOOPHOLES AROUND THE U.S. SUPREME COURT’S LANDMARK DECISIONS, REQUIRE THE COURT TO CONTINUE TO ISSUE MAJOR SECOND AMENDMENT RULINGS THAT CLOSE THESE “LOOPHOLES” AND CONSTRAIN ROGUE STATES AND COURTS FROM IGNORING AND DEFYING HIGH COURT RULINGS AND REASONING.

• SINCE THE U.S. SUPREME COURT PROPOUNDS ITS OWN RULES GOVERNING ITS PROCEDURES FOR ACCEPTING OR DENYING EXTRAORDINARY WRITS, INCLUDING APPEALS FROM LOWER STATE AND FEDERAL COURTS (ON PETITIONS FOR WRITS OF CERTIORARI), THE COURT IS NOT BOUND BY THOSE RULES AS THE COURT ALWAYS HAS DISCRETION TO GRANT OR DENY REVIEW OF A CASE OR CONTROVERSY THAT FALLS WITHIN ITS APPELLATE (AS OPPOSED TO ITS ORIGINAL) JURISDICTION. IT CAN, THEREFOR, ALWAYS ENTERTAIN AN EXCEPTION TO THE COURT’S GENERAL RULES OF PROCEDURE BY VIRTUE OF ITS SINGULARLY BROAD DISCRETION TO GRANT OR DENY REVIEW.

  THIS IS DONE IN CASES RAISING IMPORTANT ISSUES, AS IN THE CASE AT BAR, ANTONYUK. THE HIGH COURT CAN INVOKE ITS BROAD DISCRETION IN THE INTERESTS OF JUSTICE TO ENTERTAIN A CASE THAT IT WOULD OTHERWISE ROUTINELY DENY REVIEW OF FOR REASONS OF NONFINALITY.

  HENCE, WHERE, AS HERE, ONE CAN REASONABLY ARGUE, A FEDERAL CIRCUIT COURT INTENTIONALLY REFRAINS FROM BRINGING A CASE TO CONCLUSION, I.E., ACTS IN A MANNER THAT OBSTRUCTS JUSTICE, THEN THE U.S. SUPREME COURT CAN DRAW UPON AND HAS, IN THE PAST, DRAWN UPON ITS BROAD (ABSOLUTE) DISCRETION TO GRANT REVIEW OF A CASE THAT, ABSENT URGENT NEED OR GOOD CAUSE, WOULD ORDINARILY DENY REVIEW OF, GROUNDED ON THE LACK OF FINALITY OF THE CASE.

• AND, PERHAPS THE MOST PRESSING REASON OF ALL IS THAT ANTONYUK AROSE AS A DIRECT, POTENT CHALLENGE TO THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF NEW YORK’S AMENDMENTS TO ITS HANDGUN LAW THAT THE GOVERNMENT PROPOUNDED AS ITS RESPONSE TO THE BRUEN RULINGS THAT THE GOVERNMENT ABHORRED, AS THE GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK MADE PLAIN IN HER PRESS BRIEFINGS, WHICH THE SECOND CIRCUIT CLEARLY SYMPATHIZED WITH AND ISSUED ITS ORDERS ACCORDNINGLY. THIS RAISES THE SPECTOR OF BRAZEN DEFIANCE OF A STATE AND A FEDERAL APPELLATE COURT CONTEMPTUOUSLY, AND HARDLY SUBTLY, DEFYING SUPREME COURT RULINGS AND, BY EXTENSION, BRAZENLY IGNORING THE SUPREME COURT’S ARTICLE III POWERS.

Concerning the last bullet point, Antonyuk was, importantly, brought, as a direct challenge to New York’s Handgun Law, stemming directly from Bruen. And Bruen involved a facial challenge to a core feature of that Handgun Law: THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE “PROPER CAUSE” TEST.

Antonyuk is the linchpin of and starting point for any further work on Second Amendment law. From a LOGICAL PERSPECTIVE, the Antonyuk case is less a new Second Amendment case and more a continuation of the Landmark Bruen case. There is a linear process and progression found here and to be adhered to.

The U.S. Supreme Court has for the longest time treated the Second Amendment almost as an afterthought. The case law in this area is a fraction of what finds on First Amendment matters and in the area of Administrative law. Not without reason has Justice Thomas stated in frustration, even exasperation that the courts have wrongly treated and continue to treat Second Amendment jurisprudence as nothing more than a “Second-Class” Right.

CONSIDER——

THE IMPORT OF THE LANGUAGE OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT HAS, FOR TWO HUNDRED YEARS, FAILED TO ESTABLISH WITH A DEFINITIVE, INCONTROVERTIBLE CERTAINTY—AT LEAST IN THE MINDS OF SOME LEGAL SCHOLARS AND COURTS THAT WERE PREDISPOSED TO ABHOR THE SECOND AMENDMENT AND SOUGHT TO CONSTRAIN EXERCISE OF IT GIVEN THE INABILITY, THE SHEER IMPOSSIBILITY OF CURTAILING OR SEVERELY HAMPERING THE EXERCISE OF IT THROUGH CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.

ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT ACADEMIA, STATES, AND COURTS CONSISTENTLY MAINTAINED, ALBEIT ERRONEOUSLY, THAT——

THE ISSUE OF THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IS A COLLECTIVE RIGHT THAT ONLY MAY BE EXERCISED WHEN AN AMERICAN SERVES IN A MILITIA BUT OTHERWISE HAS NO EFFICACY VERSUS THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IS AN INDIVIDUAL RIGHT TO BE EXERCISED BY THE PEOPLE (EACH INDIVIDUAL AMERICAN) FOR SELF-DEFENSE—— AGAINST PREDATORY BEAST OR PREDATORY MAN OR (OF THE GRAVEST CONCERN TO THE SOVEREIGN CITIZENRY) PREDATORY MAN-BEAST GOVERNMENT.

HELLER RESOLVED THAT ISSUE, CATEGORICALLY, IF ANYONE HAD PRESUMED TO ENTERTAIN ANY DOUBT ABOUT THE MATTER, OR HAD DECEITFULLY WISHED TO OBFUSCATE THE MATTER DUE TO A DEEP-SEATED PREDILECTION AGAINST, OR OUTRIGHT HATRED OF AND ABHORRENCE TOWARD THE ARMED CITIZENRY.

The Heller case resolved that issue, categorically, if anyone should presume to have any doubt about that or if anyone deceitfully wish to obfuscate the matter.

STILL THE STATES OBJECTED TO HELLER’S APPLICATION, SOME OF THEM ANYWAY. THEY CLAIMED THAT HELLER ONLY APPLIED TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, NOT TO THEM.

THIS AROSE FROM THE IDEA THAT THE CITIZENRY HAS NOTHING EVER TO FEAR FROM THEIR OWN STATES—BUT ONLY FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, WITH ITS STANDING ARMY. BUT, THERE IS NO LIMITATION TO THE LANGUAGE OF ANY RIGHT CODIFIED IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS, INCLUDING THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS. THE RIGHTS CODIFIED IN THE BOR ARE NATURAL LAW. THAT MEANS THEY PREEXIST GOVERNMENT OF MAN, ALL GOVERNMENT, INCLUDING THE STATES WHICH ARE NO LESS GOVERNMENT THAN IS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.

AND THE MCDONALD CASE MADE THAT POINT CLEAR. THOSE WHO HATE THE NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE LOOKED FOR ANOTHER AVENUE TO CONSTRAIN EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT.

WHAT THESE STATES CAME UP WITH, OR OTHERWISE, CONTINUED TO EMPHASIZE WAS THAT, NOTWITHSTANDING THAT HELLER APPLIES TO THE STATES, THE STATES CAN CONSTRAIN EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT THROUGH EXERCISE OF THE STATE’S POLICE POWERS. THE SUPREME COURT WOULD LIKELY NOT DENY THE IMPORT OF THE POLICE POWERS OF THE STATE AS THAT GOES TO THE AUTHORITY AND OBLIGATION OF THE STATE TO PROVIDE FOR THE HEALTH, AND SAFETY, AND WELFARE OF THE COMMUNITIES WITHIN IT AND OF THE OVERALL WELFARE OF THE STATE AS A WHOLE.

WHAT ISN’T SO CLEAR, AS THE U.S. SUPREME COURT HAS NOT DEALT DIRECTLY WITH THE ISSUE, HAS TO DO WITH WHICH RIGHT/POWER TAKES PRECEDENCE OVER THE OTHER WHEN THE TWO POWERS CLASH:

THE RIGHT OF THE STATE, THROUGH EXERCISE OF ITS POLICE POWERS, TO CONSTRAIN EXERCISE OF THE NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE, TO MAINTAIN THE HEALTH, SAFETY, AND WELFARE OF THE STATE VERSUS THE UNALIENABLE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO PROVIDE FOR THEIR PERSONAL SAFETY THROUGH ARMED SELF-DEFENSE.

PRIOR TO HELLER, THE COURT EMPLOYED A BALANCING TEST—WEIGHING THE RIGHT OF THE STATE TO PROVIDE FOR THE PUBLIC SAFETY OF THE COMMUNITY WHICH THE STATE INVARIABLY CLAIMED REQUIRES CONSTRAINTS ON THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO PROVIDE FOR THEIR OWN DEFENSE, THEREBY HAMPERING, INHIBITING, FRUSTRATING THE INDIVIDUAL’S ABILITY TO PROVIDE FOR HIS PERSONAL SAFETY WITH THE MOST EFFECTIVE MEANS TO DO SO. HELLER THREW OUT “INTEREST BALANCING” AS THAT TENDED TO FAVOR THE STATES.

The States took as self-evident true that the mere volume of guns on the streets endangers public safety. The individual who wishes to exercise his fundamental right assumes the obverse: that the armed citizen by taking responsibility for his own safety also contributes to public safety in crime reduction. And the need for ARMED PERSONAL SAFETY becomes imperative when as the States often do a very poor job in protecting the public, compounding the problem by constraining the law-abiding citizen from protecting himself. Normative questions arise from this. Moreover, there is one BLACK LETTER LAW. Under the doctrine of SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY, the STATE HAS NO OBLIGATION TO ENSURE THE LIFE AND SAFETY OF ANY INDIVIDUAL MEMBER OF A COMMUNITY, EXCEPT IN VERY NARROW CIRCUMSTANCES, I.E., WHEN THE STATE, FOR ONE REASON OR ANOTHER, PROVIDES THAT SPECIAL PROTECTION TO A COMMUNITY MEMBER. MOST PEOPLE DON’T REALIZE THIS, AND THE STATE DOESN’T MAKE THIS KNOWN FOR THE OBVIOUS REASON THAT THE STATE WOULD BE ACKNOWLEDGING THAT, HOWEVER WELL OR POORLY THEY PROTECT THE COMMUNITY, THE STATE IS NOT RESPONSIBLE IN THE EVENT AN INNOCENT PERSON IS SERIOUSLY INJURED OR KILLED BY A CRIMINAL OR LUNATIC. THUS, THE ONUS IS ALWAYS ON THE INDIVIDUAL TO PROVIDE FOR HIS PERSONAL SAFETY.

Heller threw out INTEREST-BALANCING. opting for a new standard not prone to unconscious bias of the courts. The Heller invoked “HISTORICAL TRADITION.” The Court opined that, if there is a historical analogue for exercise of the police power, then the Court must defer to the State. But, if no historical analogue exists for the State action, then the Court must defer to the Individual. Bruen provided some clarity, but only a start. Three major problems arose as the Courts started to use “Historical Tradition.” First, what point in time should the Court utilize when assessing whether a State action in the past provides the necessary analog supporting the State action? Second, what constitutes an appropriate analog for comparison? Third, must a Court only look to past actions of the State where the Court has jurisdiction, or may the Court look to the actions of other States to secure an analog if none exists in the Court’s own jurisdiction? The las question also impacts the historical time period.

Concerning the Police powers of the State, the mechanisms employed present problems as Bruen recognize. The primary mechanism that the State uses today to constrain exercise of a person’s right to armed self-defense, is handgun licensing.

 THIS RAISES THE SPECTER OF INTEREST-BALANCING ONCE AGAIN. WHEN DO THE POLICE POWERS OF THE STATE OVERRIDE THE RIGHT CODIFIED IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT AND WHEN DOES THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS TAKE PRECEDENCE. WHEN STATES CONSTRAIN EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT BY CRAFTING HANDGUN LICENSING LAWS, THE STATE INTERPOSES ITSELF BETWEEN THE CITIZEN AND HIS EXERCISE OF A FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE RIGHT. A STATE THAT WISHES TO ARTIFICIALLY REDUCE THE NUMBER OF CITIZENS STATE WHO CAN CARRY A HANDGUN FOR SELF-DEFENSE OUTSIDE THE HOME—PRIOR TO BRUEN—HAD CRAFTED LEGAL DEVICES TO ENSURE THAT VERY FEW PEOPLE RESIDING OR WORKING IN THEIR STATE ARE ISSUED LICENSES—A PRECONDITION TO LAWFUL CARRYING A HANDGUN IN PUBLIC FOR SELF-DEFENSE.

THE USE OF A STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT ISSUED LICENSE ALLOWS A STATE TO MAINTAIN CONTROL OVER WHO MAY LAWFULLY CARRY A HANDGUN WHEN IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. AND STATE OFFICIALS HAVE OFTEN BEEN GIVEN GREAT DISCRETION IN GRANTING OR DENYING ISSUANCE OF A HANDGUN LICENSE.

IN BRUEN NEW YORK RESIDENTS CHALLENGED THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE STATE IMPOSING ON THE INDIVIUDAL ARTIFICIAL BARRIERS TO ACQUIRING A HANDGUN LICENSE.

NEW YORK HAD LONG UTILIZED A “PROPER CAUSE” TEST—A TEST THAT MAKES NO RATIONAL SENSE BUT SERVED FOR WELL OVER A CENTURY AS A HIGHLY EFFECTIVE MECHANISM FOR EXERTING MAXIMUM CONTROL OVER THE ALLOCATION OF LICENSES TO RESIDENTS. THE SUPREME COURT GRANTED REVIEW OF THE CASE, NYSRPA VS. BRUEN, AND STRUCK DOWN THE STATE’S “PROPER CAUSE” REQUIREMENT.

THE NEW YORK STATE GOVERNMENT THEREUPON AMENDED ITS HANDGUN LAW.  ON A SUPERFICIAL LEVEL, THE COURT APPEARED TO COMPLY WITH THE BRUEN RULINGS. THE STATE SIMPLY STRUCK DOWN “PROPER CAUSE” WHICH THE COURT COMPELLED IT TO DO, BUT THEN SIMPLY SUBSTITUTED “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER” FOR “PROPER CAUSE.” THIS WASN’T A PERFECT FIX BUT THE NEW YORK GOVERNMENT BOLSTERED IT BY CRAFTING A NEW LAW THAT SEVERELY HANDICAPPED AREAS OF THE STATE WHERE A PERSON CAN LAWFULLY CARRY A HANDGUN FOR SELF-DEFENSE. HENCE, IT WAS NEVER THE INTENTION OF THE GOVERNMENT TO COMPLY WITH THE BRUEN RULINGS. IT WAS ALL PRETENSE. LIKELY THE NEW YORK GOVERNMENT, UNDER GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL, KNEW THE PUBLIC WOULDN’T BE FOOLED. SHE KNEW A CHALLENGE TO THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE STATE’S AMENDMENTS TO ITS HANDGUN LAW WOULD BE FORTHCOMING. BUT SHE ALSO KNOW  THAT ANY CHALLENGE TO THE LAW WOULD TAKE TIME, MONEY, AND EFFORT ON THE PART OF ANY CHALLENGER TO THE STATE’S AMENDMENTS, AND TIME, MONEY, AND EFFORT WOULD ALWAYS BE ON THE STATE’S SIDE.

A CHALLENGE CAME SWIFTLY. THE CAPTION OF THE CASE WOULD CHANGE SEVERAL TIMES. THE CASE REMAINED THE SAME: ANTONYUK VS. JAMES.

THE CENTRAL THEME OF THIS ESSAY IS THAT THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE, ETERNAL, NATURAL LAW RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS RESTS BEYOND THE NAYSAYERS CLAIMS, HOWEVER ERRONEOUS, THAT ARMED CITIZENS AMPLIFY THE PROBLEM OF THIS THING THEY REFER TO AS “GUN VIOLENCE,” BY VIRTUE THAT ARMED CITIZENS ADDS TO THE NUMBER OF FIREARMS IN THE NATION AND THAT SO MANY MORE GUNS IN CIRCULATION COMPOUNDS THE TENDENCY FOR MORE “GUN VIOLENCE” EVEN AS THOSE LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS ARE NOT THE DIRECT CAUSE OF “GUN VIOLENCE.” THAT IS SIMPLY A MAKEWEIGHT TO RATIONALIZE THE DESIRE OF ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT PROPONENTS AND ZEALOTS FOR ENACTING MORE AND MORE INCREASINGLY RESTRICTIVE GUN LAWS TARGETING THE AVERAGE, RATIONAL, RESPONSIBLE, LAW-ABIDING CITIZEN. THERE IS A MAJOR INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT TO TRANSFORM THE UNITED STATES—THE MOST SUCCESSFUL, AND POWERFUL NATION ON EARTH TO SUBMIT TO THE INTERNATIONAL LIBERAL RULES BASED ORDER—THAT REQUIRES ALL NATION STATES TO ACCEPT THE SUPREMACY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW OVER THE NATION’S LAWS AND TO INCULCATE A NEW BELIEF SYSTEM AND A NEW SET OF VALUES THAT ARE ANTITHETICAL TO OUR BASIC PRINCIPLES GROUNDED THE SANCTITY AND THE INVIOLABILITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL OVER THE STATE (OVER GOVERNMENT). THIS COUNTRY’S BILL OF RIGHTS, ESPECIALLY THE RIGHT TO DISSENT AND THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS UPON WHICH OUR GREATNESS AS A NATION RESTS.

AS WITH THOSE STATES THAT ENACT COUNTLESS DRACONIAN LAWS RESTRICTING FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND THE RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE ON THE GROUND THAT SACRIFICING THESE THINGS BENEFITS SOCIETY AS A WHOLE—WHICH THEY PRESUME IS OR OUGHT TO BE THE PRIMARY GOAL OF A MODERN WORLD—EVEN IF IT INFRINGES ON THE FREEDOM AND SAFETY OF AN INNOCENT INDIVIDUAL, SACRIFICED FOR THE “GREATER” GOOD, THEN THE SACRIFICE OF THE INNOCENT INDIVIDUAL IS AN ACCEPTABLE LOSS. OUR PRINCIPLES FIND THIS IDEA ANATHEMA. YET, IT IS THE COMMON CURRENCY OF THE DAY PROPOUNDED AND ACCEPTED AS THE NEW GOSPEL TO BE THRUST ON OUR COUNTRY EVEN IF MANY AMERICANS MUST COME OVER TO THAT SIDE, KICKING AND SCREAMING.

GOVERNMENT, THE PRESS, SOCIAL MEDIA, NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGOs), PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND ASSOCIATIONS, THE ACADEMIA, THOSE IN ENTERTAINMENT—— EXCORIATE THE ENTIRETY NOT JUST THE SECOND AMENDMENT, BUT THE WHOLE OF THE CONSTITUTION. GOVERNMENT, THE PRESS, SOCIAL MEDIA, NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGOs), PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND ASSOCIATIONS, THE ACADEMIA, THOSE IN ENTERTAINMENT—— EXCORIATE NOT JUST THE SECOND AMENDMENT, BUT THE WHOLE OF THE CONSTITUTION. Of course, members of these Parties and affiliated groups hold to a belief system broadly falling into the category aptly referred to as “COLLECTIVISM,” a philosophical outlook embracing and drawing upon and infusing through a number of broad areas and fields, and institutions upon which those areas and fields are based: politics, economics, sociology, psychology, political science, to name a few.

COLLECTIVISM is incompatible with the belief system upon which the U.S. CONSTITUTION is grounded: INDIVIDUALISM.

But now, many who do not ascribe, overtly, at least, to the extreme views as propounded by outright Socialist, Marxists, Communists, Leninists and the like, also expound arguments against or forcefully remonstrate against the Constitution. Yet, those that do so, fail to realize that an attack on the Constitution—the primary components of it, the Articles and the Bill of Rights—are impliedly, if unknowingly, attacking a Free Constitutional Republic at its core. In other words, there is no scholarly, pleasant way, to suggest redrafting a blueprint of our Nation—let alsone dissolving the entirety of it with the aim of crafting a presumed “better one”—without destroying the essence of our Country: ITS HISTORY, HERITAGE, ETHOS, MORALITY, CORE VALUES—OUR NATION’S VERY PSYCHE.

We provide links below of websites suggesting ways to revise (as they wrongly assume, revitalize) the Constitution. Note, these ideas are of recent—21st Century. These links that we provide for your perusal are in no particular order and are but a handful selected at random. But, they all coalesce around the idea that our Constitution is OLD, and therefore archaic, requiring an overhaul, like remodeling a house, as if abstract ideas upon which a great Nation is based and that has functioned well for two and one-half centuries has an end-date, an expiration date—or ought to. The reader will note that the last two articles refer to a statement by the late eminent Associate Justice Antonin Scalia asserting, when asked, “off the cuff,” whether the Constitution should be amended. What can be gleaned from the light exchange between journalist and jurist is this, as posted by the National Constitution Center:

Ten years ago in a public conversation, journalist Marvin Kalb asked the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia what he would do if he could change the U.S. Constitution. Scalia replied that he would make the Constitution easier to change.

Scalia told Kalb that based on his calculations (which some have questioned), less than 2 percent of the population could prevent an amendment to the Constitution. “It ought to be hard, but not that hard,” Scalia said. [Emphasis our own]

If there is something more substantive to that conversation, we would like to hear about it.

But, truth be told, Scalia can be something of a wag, and the Leftist ABA recounts this much, which suggests that Scalia, like Trump, often likes to play mind-games with fools, and the fools take Trump at his word, like the fools they are, not realizing that it is all in jest.

And Scalia, too, was being facetious, hardly serious, and we need not spend time analyzing things said obviously in jest. But—perhaps realizing that a moron might take him seriously, he made plain that he was just kidding around. The ABA, at least, makes that plain. Other accounts do not. See article from ABAJournal.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg offered their views Thursday [April 21, 2014] on how they would amend the Constitution, if given the chance.

Ginsburg said she would pass the Equal Rights Amendment while Scalia said he would change the amendments provision to make amendments easier, report Legal Times and the Washington Whispers page of U.S. News & World Report. They spoke at the National Press Club in a session moderated by Marvin Kalb.

Ginsburg said a constitutional safeguard is important because legislation giving equal rights to women can be repealed. “So I would like my granddaughters, when they pick up the Constitution, to see that notion—that women and men are persons of equal stature—I’d like them to see that is a basic principle of our society.”

Scalia said fewer than 2 percent of the population could prevent enactment of a constitutional amendment. “It ought to be hard, but not that hard,” he said. But he does not favor holding a constitutional convention. “Whoa! Who knows what would come out of it?” Scalia said. [Emphasis our own]

Hat tip to How Appealing.

The ABA obviously realized that the Justice was talking in jest. What is not amusing is that less than two years after the session at the National Press Club and approximately nine months before the U.S. Presidential Election of 2016, Justice Scalia would be found dead at a resort in Texas, of “apparently natural causes” says The Texas Tribune. [Emphasis our own] There was no autopsy and the circumstances of the Justice’s death is murky, and remains so to this day. See article in the New York Post.

So the late Justice was simply joking, but many scholars would take a chainsaw to the Constitution if given half the chance.

One must wonder whether this zeal of some, for undertaking an extensive remodeling project or renovation of the U.S. Constitution that exploded in the last fifteen years or so, is just something that happened spontaneously and coincidentally, or if there is something sinister behind this, coming as it has with such intensity in the space of such a short space of time.

***********************************

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/sep/11/we-the-people-is-it-time-to-rewrite-the-us-constit/

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-united-states-unamendable-constitution

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/01/we-need-talk-about-amending-constitution/677065/ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/04/opinion/amend-constitution.html

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/constitution-experts-make/story?id=18470122

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/how-difficult-should-the-constitution-be-to-amend https://dc.medill.northwestern.edu/blog/2022/02/01/we-the-people/

https://opinion.inquirer.net/111746/should-we-amend-the-constitution-2

https://opinion.inquirer.net/111746/should-we-amend-the-constitution-2

https://constitutioncentr.org/blog/how-difficult-should-the-constitution-be-to-amend

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/01/08/scalia-was-right-make-amending-the-constitution-easier-526780

*************************************

What is chilling about this fervent desire that has taken hold of so many scholars, is that some conservative scholars are hawking the same thing, operating from the same premises as the Radical Leftist groups and ostensibly Moderate Progressives, starting with the idea that the Constitution is “old,” “archaic,” “anachronistic,” “a relic,” “by-gone,” “antiquated,” “outmoded,” “obsolete.”
See, e.g., the article, titled “Our Outdated Constitution,” subtitled, “How our founding document undermines effective government—and why we need a more powerful presidency,” published on June 2, 2016, by the ostensibly politically Conservative organization,” Hoover Institute,

The article, served as an introduction and promotion of a book that was published on April 26, 2016, argues the need for redrafting the Constitution to operate effectively in a Country that is much more complex today than at the time the Constitution was drafted and ratified. The authors, Terry M. Moe, a Senior Fellow of the Hoover of the Hoover Institution (with William G. Howell), writes, in pertinent part,

Why is the nation so poorly governed? This is the question that we address in our new book, Relic. What we show is that the fundamentals of an answer can be traced to the Constitution—which, for all its admirable qualities, imposes a structure of government that has long been outdated, and is ill-suited to modern times.

Congress is right at the center of the nation’s modern-day dysfunction. As a decision-maker, it is inexcusably bad. It is immobilized, impotent, and utterly incapable of taking effective action on behalf of the nation. A common refrain among today’s cognoscenti is that polarization is to blame—and that, were a more moderate brand of politics to emerge, Congress could get back to the good old days when it did a fine job of making public policy, and all would be well. But all would not be well, because the good old days were not good.

With some exceptions, Congress has never been capable of crafting effective policy responses to the nation’s problems, a fact that is well documented (see, for instance, Peter Schuck’s comprehensive assessment of the evidence in Why Government Fails So Often). Polarization has made a bad situation worse, but it is not the underlying cause of Congress’s core inadequacies—which are baked into the institution and not of recent vintage. Congress is an ineffective policymaker because it is wired to be that way by the Constitution, whose design ensures that legislators are electorally tied to their local jurisdictions and highly responsive to special interests. Congress is not wired to solve national problems in the national interest. It is wired to allow hundreds of parochial legislators to promote their own political welfare through special-interest politics.

With Congress’s pathologies rooted in the Constitution, the ultimate problem is the Constitution itself. The founders crafted a government 225 years ago for a simple agrarian society of just four million people, some 700,000 of whom were slaves. Of the free population, 95 percent were farmers. Government was not expected to do much, and the founders—mainly concerned about avoiding “tyranny of the majority”—purposely designed a byzantine government that couldn’t do much, separating authority across the various branches of government and filling it with veto points that made coherent policy action exceedingly difficult.

When government has been able to act, moreover, congressional lawmaking has typically led—due to the built-in nature of legislators’ incentives—to cobbled-together policy concoctions crafted to attract disparate legislators with disparate interests into the necessary support coalitions, not to provide the most effective means of addressing social problems. (See, for example, Steven Brill’s account of the Affordable Care Act, America’s Bitter Pill.) Legislators and special interests have gotten what they wanted. But their political intent has not been to create policies that are serious, coherent, well integrated, intellectually justifiable solutions to the problems they allegedly address—and the result is that problems have festered and rarely been resolved.

This approach to governance may have been fine for the late 1700s. But that era is long gone, and it isn’t coming back. Within 100 years, the nation grew to fifteen times its original population, stretched all the way to the Pacific, and was developing explosively into a modern industrial society—generating countless problems along the way, from rapacious monopoly to tainted meat to unregulated drugs, that the founders never anticipated and their antiquated government was never designed to solve. It was already a relic of the past. . . .

What can we do? A practical strategy is to seek out small, low-risk constitutional changes that promise big pay-offs for effective government. Here, specifically, is an approach that makes eminently good sense: with Congress the prime source of dysfunction, it should be moved to the periphery of the policymaking process where its pathologies can do less damage—and presidents should be moved to the center where they can do the most good.

Why presidents? Because their wiring is very, very different from Congress’s, and actually propels them to be the champions of effective government. This is so regardless of whether they are liberals or conservatives, Democrats or Republicans. Quite unlike most legislators, presidents think in national terms about national problems, and their overriding concern for their historical legacies drives them to seek durable solutions to pressing national problems. Needless to say, they are not always right or successful. And conservatives would seek very different policy solutions than liberals. But all presidents aspire to be the nation’s problem-solvers-in-chief. And if policymaking power can be shifted in their direction—and away from Congress—the prospects for effective government will be much improved. . . .

But what, you might ask, if Donald Trump were to become president? Or Bernie Sanders? The fact is, even if a president favored policies you consider extreme or troubling, fast track would hardly make that president a dictator. Both houses of Congress would still need to give their separate consent before any proposal becomes law—policy would be a three-way decision, not a presidential decision—and the court system and separation of powers would remain intact, along with the Bill of Rights. The entire constellation of checks and balances would continue to limit what presidents could do, much as it has for more than 200 years.

To be fair, we have not read the book, “Relic,” so our comments of it can only apply to and are meant to apply to the article, a synopsis of what we infer to be the salient points of the book. And we note that the book was published during Trump’s First Term in Office, and four years before Joe Biden was ensconced in the Oval Office through the machinations of the Democrat Party and likely a slew of powerful sinister forces.

Hence, the author could not have reasonably foreseen and could not have imagined the extent of damage Congress could do to a sitting President. Thus, his remarks that Congress is dysfunctional, only presumes that Congress at worse, can stall the operation of Government. The author says,

Congress is right at the center of the nation’s modern-day dysfunction. As a decision-maker, it is inexcusably bad. It is immobilized, impotent, and utterly incapable of taking effective action on behalf of the nation.

First, the author fails to consider that Congress is quite capable of doing much more damage than bringing Government to a grinding halt. As the Democrat Party has aptly demonstrated, it is capable of upending Government—misusing the taxpayers money to harm their duly elected leader, preventing the President from following through on his campaign promises, and from faithfully executing the Laws of the Land as Congress deliberately and unconscionably impedes the President from performing his duties and complying with his Article II obligations. That Trump could accomplish several of his objectives and make headway on many others in the face of constant obstacles says this President has incredible fortitude and stamina and strength of will—the very qualities that most men lack.

Second, the author of the book “Relic” fails to consider that, while the President is the Chief Executive of the MASSIVE BUREACRACY, the many Departments, Bureaus, and Agencies, including, POLICE, MILITARY, INTELLIGENCE, among many others, compel the conclusion that this BUREACRACY, this ADMINISTRATIVE STATE, is a beast. It operates as it wants.

Moreover, what the ADMINISTRATIVE STATE WANTS is often at odds with what the President and the American people want and what is truly in the Country’s best interests. And, the public has little to no recourse, for the THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE—this FEDERAL BUREAUCRACY—isn’t accountable to the people. This BEHEMOTH is impenetrable, inscrutable, enigmatic.

This ADMINISTRATIVE STATE (FEDERAL BUREAUCRACY) that the public DOES NOT SEE, AND ISN’T ALLOWED TO SEE, exists as a Government WITHIN A Government that the public is allowed to see (just an iota of the “OPEN” Government).

THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE EXISTS AS A SHADOW SPECTOR—LURKING BENEATH GOVERNMENT AND DOING WHAT IT WANTS.

If the Shadow Government happens to agree with the President’s policy positions and initiatives, then all is well and good. However, if the Shadow Government takes exception to those policy positions, then it is capable of doing substantial damage to the President and to the people. THE SHADOW GOVERNMENT CAN SLOW WALK OR IGNORE THOSE POLICY DIRECTIVES OR THE IT CAN COUNTER-MAND THOSE POLICY DIRECTIVES—DOING THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE PRESIDENT HAS DIRECTED THE GOVERNMENT TO DO.

TO SLOW-WALK, OR IGNORE, OR COUNTERMAND A DIRECTIVE OF A PRESIDENT AMOUNTS TO ILLEGAL, UNCONSTITUTIONAL, AND ACTIONABLE FEDERAL CRIMES AMOUNTING TO TREASON, IN WORST CASES, AND, IN OTHERWISE TO SERIOUS CRIMES OF SEDITION, ESPIONAGE, AND SABOTAGE.

During his first term in Office—Trump a strong-willed, and highly intelligent and capable leader of the Country, well aware enemies skulked about throughout the EXECUTIVE BRANCH.

These enemies, often within his midst were many, and they were enraged the Electorate had voted him into Office. But, during this First Term, although a quick-study, he had much to learn on the fly, and his naïvety of the SHADOW GOVERNMENT he could not have perceived without a previous understanding of the inner workings of that HIDDEN GOVERNMENT, but even the OUTER GOVERNMENT that he could see required him to gain understanding of matters of Government that one could not learn from a textbook.

And his enemies took advantage of him during that FIRST TERM IN OFFICE. Trump had much to learn and eight years to do so. He did not make mistakes in his SECOND TERM.

Lastly, the author of “Relic” mentions in passing that “. . . the court system and separation of powers would remain intact, along with the Bill of Rights.” [Emphasis our Own]. Is the author assuming that the court system is operating efficiently, effectively, expeditiously, and would continue to do so? This, notion, we feel, from what we can observe, is presumptuous in the extreme.

Securing the efficacy of the Bill of Rights is among the Court’s most important and sacred functions and obligations, implied in Article III of the U.S. Constitution. The first clause of Section 2 of Article III of the Constitution, says,

“The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; . . . .”

THE HIGH COURT DOES NOT APPEAR UP TO BE UP TO THE TASK. THIS IS PARTICULARLY UNFORTUNATE AND DISHEARTENING, AND MARKEDLY DISTURBING AND DISCONCERTING, GIVEN THE SHEER NUMBER OF VITALLY IMPORTANT CASES THAT HAVE BUBBLED UP TO THE COURT THIS TERM. THE CASES INVOLVE ROGUE FEDERAL DISTRICT COURT AND FEDERAL APPELLATE COURT DECISIONS THAT BLATANTLY FAIL TO ADHERE TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION’S DOCTRINE OF SEPARATION OF POWERS, AND ALL TOO MANY STATES THAT BRAZENLY IGNORE PRECEDENTIAL U.S. SUPREME COURT RULINGS ON THE VITAL SECOND AMENDMENT “RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS,” “A RIGHT THAT SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.” MANY STATES, INCLUDING NEW YORK, NEW JERSEY, ILLINOIS, CALIFORNIA, HAWAII, AND OTHERS, ROUTINELY IGNORE BOTH SECOND AMENDMENT STRICTURE AND HOLDINGS OF THE SUPREME COURT IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY LANDMARK CASES: HELLER, MCDONALD, AND BRUEN.

THIS FAILURE OF STATES AND LOWER FEDERAL DISTRICT AND APPELLATE COURTS, AND CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS, TO ADHERE TO THE CONSTITUTION AND TO SUPREME COURT CASE LAW AND JURISPRUDENCE IS SO WIDESPREAD AND ILLUSTRATES SUCH CURIOUS CONSISTENCY, THAT A PERSON MUST SUSPECT UNETHICAL OR ILLEGAL COLLUSION AMONG INSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT AND JUSTICE TO UNDERMINE OUR FREE REPUBLIC. AND, THE U.S. SUPREME COURT SEEMS TO BE INDIFFERENT TO THIS.

FORCES BOTH WITHIN OUR NATION, AND OUTSIDE IT, ARE COLLABORATING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY FROM WITHIN. IF NOTHING IS DONE TO CONSTRAIN THIS, THE ACT OF DOING LITTLE OR NOTHING SERVES TO SUSTAIN THE INCREMENTAL DISMANTLING OF OUR REPUBLIC.

The salient tactic of these malevolent forces in accomplishing their goal to destroy a Free Republic, involves constraining Americans’ sacred right of freedom of thought and freedom to bear arms.

This is where the U.S. Supreme Court comes in. The High Court can stop these efforts at destroying our Country from within.

The Supreme Court can buttress our fundamental God-Given rights when a case or controversy comes to the Court on appeal.

Yet, to date, the Court has done little to protect the BOR, without which our Nation is open to Tyranny. Why is the Court remiss in their sacred obligation to protect the U.S. Constitution?

There is no excuse for their reluctance to strengthen American’s basic, unalienable rights. The Court would likely disagree. But, there is evidence of the Court’s failure to do its job, especially in the area of the Second Amendment.

Several prominent cases have come up on a writ of certiorari to the Court. Two of these cases, namely Antonyuk vs. James and Snope vs. Brown, deal with the very core of the Second Amendment. They demand review.

But the Court has demurred.

Snope involves the issue of whether a State can deny access to semiautomatic weapons that are in common use.

The Court made clear in District of Columbia vs. Heller, the first truly landmark Second Amendment case in over 200 years, that firearms in “COMMON USE” by the American people, fall within the core of the Second Amendment. The failure of the Court to take up the Snope case—a direct challenge to a State’s disregard of Heller, amounts not only to an attack on the Second Amendment, but also an attack on the Court’s own precedential rulings.

Failure to take up the case and strike down an unconstitutional State law weakens the Second Amendment, and, more, harms the Court’s credibility.

The Court also failed to take up the Antonyuk case. The failure to do so is even more devastating to the Second Amendment Right, and damning to the Court’s credibility because Bruen arose as a direct challenge to the Constitutionality of New York’s HANDGUN LAW.

Instead of complying with those rulings, the New York Government, under Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul and the State Legislature in Albany, New York, dominated and controlled by Democrats brazenly defied the Court’s Bruen rulings.

The Antonyuk case arises on a challenge to the constitutionality of amendments the New York Government made to the Handgun Law.

The amendments are the State’s answer to the Court’s rulings in the NYSRPA vs. Bruen—the third Landmark case. In Bruen the Court struck down, as facially unconstitutional, the State’s “Proper Cause” standard that the New York Government enacted in 1913, two years after it instituted handgun licensing. The aim of handgun licensing is to constrain the right of the American people to keep and bear arms. Handgun licensing has caused a legal quagmire in our jurisprudence as the application of it is inconsistent with operation of the Second Amendment.

APPLICATION OF HANDGUN LICENSING ILLEGALY INTERPOSES ITSELF BETWEEN A FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE RIGHT, AND A CITIZEN’S EXERCISE OF THAT RIGHT. HANDGUN LICENSING IS FOR THAT REASON, LIKELY, UNCONSTITUTIONAL. THE COURT NEVER ISSUED A CLEAR RULING ON THAT, WISHING TO AVOID DEALING WITH IT. INSTEAD THE COURT TINKERS AROUND THE EDGES.

In Bruen, the Court left handgun licensing intact—refusing to take up that salient issue—but it did resolve the narrow issue directed to the Constitutionality of the State’s use of “Proper Cause.”

An applicant who desires to secure a New York concealed handgun carry license for self-defense, when out in public, must demonstrate, to the satisfaction of the licensing examiner, that the applicant “extraordinary need” for the license, that is to say, need for armed self-defense that extends beyond the danger that an average New Yorker faces when out and about in an inherently dangerous locale, that New York City unequivocally and indisputably is.

The Petitioners challenged the constitutionality of New York Law that requires a person to provide a reason to carry a firearm for self-defense when self-defense should be reason enough and presumed when an person files an application for a carry license.

The Court agreed with the Petitioners and struck down “Proper Cause as facially unconstitutional. Since striking down the standard logically entails entails a finding that the right to armed self-defense is integral to the right of the people to keep and bear arms, the Court not only struck down “Proper Cause” as unconstitutional, but held that armed self-defense falls within the core of the Second Amendment and that right does not begin and end at the doorstep to one’s home. It extends when that person is out in public, which, it is reasonable to infer, places a person in a more precarious situation to life and well-being than when one is at home.

The Court’s rulings meant that New York cannot require a person to justify his need to carry a handgun for self-defense. Self-defense is baked into” the fundamental right to armed self-defense and can therefore be presumed as reason enough to be issued a concealed handgun carry license.

The New York Hochul Government was outraged at the ruling.

Striking down the “Proper Cause” requirement severely weakens the State’s Handgun Law that had been enforced for over 110 years. The New York Government would not countenance a devastating defeat that essentially guts a Handgun Law that had for over century served to strangle exercise of the fundamental right to armed self-defense in New York.

The Government crafted a workaround to soften the blow to its Handgun Law. Anticipating a negative ruling after Oral Argument that took place in November 2021, and given the complexity of the amendments to the State’s Handgun Law, the Government had likely worked on crafting amendments to the Law for seven months with the aim of providing an adequate workaround for “Proper Cause”—and one that would appear, at a glance to comply with Bruen, even though the Hochul Government would have certainly expected that the public wouldn’t be fooled and would challenge the amendments. And the public wasn’t fooled. A challenge came at once—within two weeks of the Senate passing the amendments to the Handgun Law and Hochul’s signing the amendments into law.

The amendments that the New York State Senate enacted and that Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law, on the same day—which was one scarcely week after the Court came down with its rulings— effectively negated the import of the High Court’s rulings.

New York handgun Licensees saw through the State’s ruse and challenged the State’s amendments (called the “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” or CCIA). Companion cases were filed in other New York Federal District Courts and were merged with Antonyuk. Antonyuk is now well over two years old, and remains unresolved even though the salient issues have been fully briefed by both the Petitioners and the Respondent State. A plethora of amicus briefs have also been filed.

A second Petition for Writ of Certiorari came up to the Court, with the expectation the Court would hear it, as the Court provided to the Parties, every indication it would. The Court did not. No reason was given. The denial of review was terse—merely a notation to the Clerk of the Supreme Court, one of many other denials. Yet, the Antonyuk case was no ordinary case to come up to the Court.

Those states that plainly, abhor the NATURAL LAW RIGHT codified in the Second Amendment HAVE ROUTINELY DEFIED the Court’s prior landmark Second Amendment rulings.

One would think the Court would take to task these rogue States. Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would do so. Apparently, the Chief Justice and Trump’s three nominees do not feel the pressing need or, otherwise, are afraid of releasing another landmark decision. This reticence only emboldens renegade states and Anti-Second Amendment members of Congress to continue to defy the High Court’s Second Amendment rulings.

The U.S. Supreme Court has the authority and the obligation to compel compliance on matters involving the citizenry’s sacred rights, but, since the death of the late, eminent Associate Justice, Antonin Scalia, the Court has done little to strengthen the right of the people to keep and bear arms. This failure allows Anti-Second Amendment zealots in Congress, and in Anti-Second Amendment States, and in Anti-Second Amendment courts to encroach on this sacrosanct, inviolate right and to ignore outright, or utilize tortuous, convoluted legal and illogical reasoning to avoid complying with the holdings and crucial dicta of the High Court’s three seminal Second Amendment cases.

This lack of further High Court scrutiny of unconstitutional actions by the States and the Federal Government, and by lower State and Federal Courts that stamp their imprimatur on unconstitutional Government action, suggests that the U.S. Supreme Court is either sympathetic to these actions and, hence, refuses to reign in the unconstitutional actions of government that continually and contemptuously defy Supreme Court rulings and the plain import of fundamental rights as codified in the BOR, or the Court is simply afraid of the States and of Congress, and public opinion and so allows unconstitutional swipes at fundamental rights to continue. But the High Court should contain its concerns or fears and carry out its principal duty: To defend the Constitution of the United States. Yet, the Court continues to shirk its responsibility.

The Court’s position on our Nation’s Second Amendment right is untenable.

The Court’s dismissive attitude comes across to the public and to Anti-Second Amendment actors in the Federal Government and the States as a sign of cowardice.

This failure of the Court to defend the Bill of Rights comes across as callous disregard to the FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS OF THE CITIZENRY.

THIS FAILURE TO ACT IS INJURIOUS TO THE CONSTITUTION AND TO THE COURT’S REPUTATION. AND, ULTIMATELY, THIS FAILURE TO ACT WHEN IT OUGHT TO ACT, WEAKENS THE FOUNDATION OF A FREE REPUBLIC.

The constitutionality and legality of every Government act impacting CITIZENS’ VOLITION and ACTION involving their FUNDAMENTAL and UNALIENABLE and ETERNAL and UNMODIFIABLE Rights MUST BE reviewed by the United States Supreme Court.

President Trump recognizes this. In an article published in USA Today, titled, “Trump DOJ wants Supreme Court to bring down hammer on gun rules” and reposted in MSN news, Trump has asked the Supreme Court to deal with rogue states that impair citizens’ exercise of their right to armed self-defense.

Those Government actions that constrain or curtail the CORE of our Fundamental Rights must be struck down.

The BILL OF RIGHTS is a statement of, and binds our Nation to, the PRECEPTS OF INDIVIDUALISM. Intimated in THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, the TRUTH contained therein became an insurmountable force capable of defeating the British Empire, a formidable, mighty, and seemingly unconquerable foe.  

Upon defeating the British Empire, America’s Patriots, its FIRST CITIZENS, utilized The Declaration Of Independence to formulate a practical framework for the nascent Republic.

The Constitution has a bipartite structure, comprising the Articles and the Bill of Rights.

The Articles provide the framework for a centralized (FEDERAL) Government and define the POWERS and AUTHORITY of the THREE SEPARATE, CO-EQUAL BRANCHES. Nine of the Thirteen States ratified the Constitution on June 21, 1788. The Bill Of Rights came after, ratified on December 15, 1791.

See article on ratification published on constitutioncenter.org.

See the article posted on History On The Net.

Why was the Bill of Rights added to the constitution?  . . .  Proposed following the often bitter 1787–88 debate over the ratification of the Constitution, and written to address the objections raised by Anti-Federalists, the Bill of Rights amendments add to the Constitution specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights, clear limitations on the government’s power in judicial and other proceedings, and explicit declarations that all powers not specifically granted to the U.S. Congress by the Constitution are reserved for the states or the people. The concepts codified in these amendments are built upon those found in earlier documents, especially the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), as well as the English Bill of Rights (1689) and the Magna Carta (1215). . . . Since the most powerful states in the Union would not have ratified the Constitution if not for the Bill of Rights, the Founding generation would be its most ardent defenders. Gun control should never be considered; the “Fairness Doctrine” should never reach the floor of Congress for a vote; the Patriot Act, which allows the government to use unconstitutional powers, should be revised, amended, or placed in the trash-can; religious liberty, including the free expression of religious faith during government functions and prayer in public schools, should be defended; the burden of proof in a case involving “violations “of federal “regulations” should be placed on the government, not the accused; federal disregard for private property should cease. In short, federal activity should be severely curtailed.

****************************

See also https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/bill-of-rights; https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-day-the-constitution-was-ratified

https://www.history.com/articles/articles-of-confederation

https://www.history.com/articles/articles-of-confederation

https://csac.history.wisc.edu/document-collections/constitutional-debates/bill-of-rights/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bill-of-Rights-United-States-Constitution

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights/how-did-it-happen

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/billofrightsintro.html

https://www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/bill-of-rights/

https://csac.history.wisc.edu/document-collections/constitutional-debates/bill-of-rights/ *

https://nccs.net/blogs/americas-founding-documents/bill-of-rights-amendments-1-10

https://nccs.net/blogs/americas-founding-documents/bill-of-rights-amendments-1-10

https://www.history.com/articles/articles-of-confederation

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bill-of-Rights-United-States-Constitution

https://teachingamericanhistory.org/resource/fafd-home/fafd-fed-antifed-bor-debate/

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-ushistory1/chapter/the-federalists-and-the-bill-of-rights/

https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/brawl-between-federalists-and-anti-federalists-1788

https://csac.history.wisc.edu/document-collections/constitutional-debates/bill-of-rights/

https://socialstudieshelp.com/american-history-lessons/the-debate-between-federalists-anti-federalists/

https://teachingamericanhistory.org/resource/fafd-home/fafd-fed-antifed-bor-debate/

https://csac.history.wisc.edu/document-collections/constitutional-debates/bill-of-rights/

****************************************

Where MAN-MADE LAW conflicts with GOD’S MORAL CODE, the Moral Code overrides man-made law. THAT IS WHAT FOUNDERS OF OUR FREE REPUBLIC BELIEVED, AND THAT IS WHAT MOST OF US, AMERICANS, TODAY, BELIEVE AND HAVE INTERNALIZED—TO THE CONTINUED SUCCESS OF OUR NATION AND THE WELL-BEING OF OUR PEOPLE.

Reflecting GOD’S LAW and WILL the BOR resides above and is superior to all MAN-MADE LAW. It is paramount and is not subject to revocation, abrogation, modification or meddling with. That it occurs with such frequency today, does not make this desecration right or proper or acceptable, even it such seems so too many people. That this defilement occurs casually and has become commonplace is no reason to concede to it or take this to be morally right or legally sound.

Yet, there are Americans who act with casual disregard to our Rights, or taken an active part in loudly exclaiming and proclaiming the BOR to be outdated and no longer relevant in a changing Country and a changing world and that much should be said of the entirety of the Constitution.

There are many such people in our Country who think thus.

They include politicians, pundits, podcasters, jurists, and scholars, historians, bureaucrats, and members of the polity at large who, mesmerized by, and sympathetic to the nonsense spouted, suspend all reasoning, mindlessly echoing the simplistic sentiments they hear from the chorus. 

Many people assume wrongly, that, as a component of the U.S. Constitution, the BOR must be subject to amendment, just as any other portion of the Constitution is subject to amendment. We have discussed this matter earlier in this essay. Let us explore this notion a bit further.

It is true Article V establishes both the authority to amend the Constitution and the steps involved in accomplishing it.

For more information on this topic, see articles at the below links:

**************************************

https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution

https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution/article-v.html.

******************************

Those malevolent forces, secretly at work in our society, intent on destroying a Free Republic desire to carry this off quietly—using the mechanisms of the Constitution itself either through the Electoral Process, or through the statutory or bureaucratic process, or even by Constitutional amendment if they gained enough control of the Congress and the states.

But our Elections are messy affairs, and even when conducted with integrity, don’t ensure the outcomes, even if many members of the Electorate, bombarded by incessant, surreptitious, mind-numbing, relentless propaganda are receptive to the inane messaging.

Easily distracted by irrelevant matters, operating in unison via a mob mentality, much of the populace robotically votes against its own interests and that of the Country. The results are catastrophic —disruptive to the maintenance of a free Constitutional Republic.

We have seen the results of this before. The Democrats and their shadowy donors and funding apparatuses would not leave the Electoral Process to chance.

Every attempt to remove President Trump from Office during his first term, failed.

Determined to defeat Trump from serving a second term in office, that would him to implement his policies to return our Country to its historical and cultural roots as he promised—the malevolent forces that seek our Nation’s Destruction, realized the need to manipulate the Electoral to prevent Trump’s assured election in 2020. And they succeeded.

They seated a stooge in the Oval Office: a demented, dementia-riddled, physically and emotionally weak, morally corrupt, selfish, and self-absorbed harlequin, who would do whatever his lords and masters asked of him. Realizing an urgency, they returned to their game plan in earnest, reversing Trump’s many accomplishments of his first term: economically, socially, geopolitically, societally.

The forces that crush would bring the Nation to ruin as quickly as possible, thereby making it near impossible for Trump to repair the damage if he were ever to return to Office.

Working with frenetic energy, realizing they had very little time to accomplish their agenda, lest the American public reject their aims—the dissolution of the Republic—they opened our borders wide, shepherding millions of unassimilable aliens from a multitude of third world countries to flood through our borders and throughout the Country. The demands of these hordes of illegal aliens were infinite, our resources limited.

On the International stage, the puppet masters instituted polices designed to weaken the United States, geopolitically, and weakening our military. They brought shame to our Country in the eyes of both foe and ostensible friend, as they had designed to do. Our economy was in shambles. Our cities and towns neglected. Our Criminal Justice System in shambles, our legal system devolving to a system of ad hoc law—meaning no legal structure in place. Our basic rights ignored or routinely degraded. No longer constrained to keep their terrible, horrific plans from the American people——indeed, they could not, so extensive was the damage, that these malevolent forces wrought, they could no longer keep their agenda and aims to destroy the Country a secret from the people. Four years later, the Country found itself in chaos and abject ruin.

As rank and file Americans got wind of the extent of the deception, and as the RNC, under new leadership, shut down the mechanisms that Congressional Democrats and their agents had employed to purloin the 2020 Election, preventing a new dimwit and patsy, from completing the agenda to tear down our society that commenced with Barack Obama, that would have continued under Hillary Clinton had the Electorate voted her into Office as the smug Destructors of the Nation had presumed would happen but did not, they continued with another dimwit, after Biden expended his shelf-life. They thrust Kamala Harris, on the public and Democrats obediently voted for her. With her in Office, the forces that crush would complete their agenda, disemboweling our Nation. That would mean eradication of the Constitution and the subjugation of the citizenry. But this would not occur.

The Electorate abhorred what four years had wrought for the Country, under Biden and under Obama and that the Country rebounded under Trump.

Despite the massive power that the puppet masters exerted over our Government, over many of the States, and over our institutions, they could not prevent a resounding victory for the people and the Nation when Trump came into Office. And he went to work like a prize race horse out of the gate. By cleaning up the mess of the prior Administration, he also cast a bright light on the agenda of that corrupt Administration and the shadowy forces behind it. Trump thrust the insanity of the whole corrupt enterprise before the public.

The puppet-masters learned that unlawful, unethical manipulation of the Nation’s Electoral Process had proved inadequate for continuing in power. The FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC would regain its prior statute. The Forces that seek our Nation’s demise would have to look elsewhere to take Trump down.

But the forces that seek our destruction are as tenacious as Donald Trump. He is unstoppable, a positive good, and a force to be reckoned with. “Lawfare” failed to convince the public to deny him a second term in office. The public saw through the misapplication of the judicial process and were appalled by it and by those that used it in the attempt to destroy the life, honor, and finances of the man.

At their wits end the forces that crush resorted to the one tactic they sought to avoid: assassination. But, fortunately, by the Grace of God, they failed in that too.

Trump came into Office with purpose and working with the same feverish intensity of our Nation’s foes—from January 20, 2020 to January 20 2024—he began to set thing aright for our Nation, Constitution, and People on the day of his inauguration. Indeed, he had worked months before on curtailing the horrendous executive orders and actions of his predecessor. On day one, Trump sprang into action.

But, even with Trump in command of the Executive Branch, and with Republicans in control of both Houses of Congress (if only barely), there are destructive forces in Government that have placed obstacles in Trump’s path. They had decades before taken control of the massive Government Bureaucracy, the Administrative State, that has a life of its own.

Although the Constitution says nothing about a massive Bureaucracy perpetually existing to confound the operations of the President, elected by the people, it is here to stay and it is a boon to those powerful interests to maintain control of the Nation and its people.

The Framers of the Constitution could not imagine the manner in which this Federal Government could amass so much power, and yet hide that power from the people, and usurp power and use that power and the public’s own hard-earned money, against them.

But, among the Framers, the Antifederalists envisioned the danger a massive Federal Government would one-day pose to the existence of a Free Republic even if they could not foresee the shape of that monster.

The Antifederalists would be shocked and appalled by both the elaborate complexity of and dire impact the Government has had on and citizenry.

Likely, the Federalists, who envisioned a strong central government would no less be abhorred at the danger posed to a Free Republic, by this Behemoth.

Weaknesses existent in the Constitution’s Articles, allow scurrilous people, both inside the Government and outside it to take control of it.

And the monolithic BUREAUCRACY IN LEAGUE with Congressional Democrats—those who now brazenly, even proudly, boast of using the phrase “Democrat Socialists” (a.k.a. Marxist-Communists), as a descriptor for them, and those other Democrats (such that remain) who, while considering themselves politically “moderate” but plainly completely cowed by them—continue, willingly, even gleefully to undermine Trump and, by extension, thereby undermine the will of the American people who elected Trump to serve a second term.

Fortunately, the Founders made difficult any attempt to amend the Constitution—thus preventing a treacherous, treasonous Congress and such treacherous, treasonous States that exist from affecting the disassembling of the Constitution, by use of mechanisms in the Constitution itself: as shocking as it is and as ironical as it is ever to imagine happening.  

Elaborate reconfiguration of the Nation’s Constitution to dissolve itself through the Amendment process—something at once diabolical and foolproof—is impractical, and empirically impossible. The Framers saw the possibility of malefactors using the Constitution against itself and made the attempt to undo it extremely difficult and unlikely, although possible.

This raises the most pressing question:

CAN THE BILL OF RIGHTS REALLY BE UNDONE?

The claim rests on a dubious assumption. The assumption is that the BOR is a man-made construction. IF SO, it would then follow that the BILL OF RIGHTS is itself amenable to modification in whole or in part. Many there are who assert today—and with sincerity, albeit audaciously, that one or more RIGHTS can and ought to be either modified or erased.

But that idea misconstrues the nature of the Bill of Rights.

Yes, the BOR is drafted by Man, and it has material existence because it is set down in writing. Its essence though isn’t in that writing.

The import of the BOR is that the Rights set forth in it express a NONPHYSICAL, ETERNAL REALITY, incorruptible and absolute that preexist any artifice of man. Therefore, what man has not created, man cannot destroy.

THESE IDEAS BECAME MANIFEST, FIRST IN OUR DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, AND SUBSEQUENTLY IN THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION, RATIFIED BY THE STATES AND PERMANENTLY CONCRETED IN STONE IN THE TENETS, PRINCIPLES, PRECEPTS OF INDIVIDUALISM, RECOGNIZING, AND ACKNOWLEDGING THE SANCTITY AND THE INVIOLABILITY OF GOD’S CREATION—MAN.

The essence of this philosophy posits the SANCROSANCTITY of MAN’S MIND and BODY, and SOUL and SPIRIT.

The salient characteristics are conveyed in the notions of “THOUGHT/WILL and ACTION. The FREEDOM OF SPEECH and THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS conveys these two vital modes of HUMAN expression.

The Nation’s BILL OF RIGHTS therefore grounds and undergirds GOD’S MORAL CODE, ORDER, and DIVINE SET OF STRICTURES.

This BOR/MORAL CODE/ORDER/SET of STRICTURES presumptively conflicts with the notion of a ruling “global order” originally referred to as a NEW WORLD ORDER (NWO) and variously described today AS——

THE LIBERAL INTERNATIONAL ORDER (LIO), THE RULES-BASED INTERNATIONAL ORDER (RBIO) (or RBO), GLOBAL GOVERNANCE via GLOBAL GOVERNANCE INITIATIVE (GGI), GLOBAL ORDER, WORLD SYSTEM, THE CONSTITUTIONAL INTERNATIONAL ORDER (CIO), THE INTERNATIONAL REGIME, etc.

Under whatever name, the idea expressed alludes to DISSOLUTION of the Nation-State through dominance of, and reliance on multilateral, world organizations such as the UNITED NATIONS (UN), THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION (WTO), THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY BOARD, and numerous other world INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (IGOs) and NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGOs).

A sinister, not-so-subtle idea underlies the purpose of and rationale for these dubious organizations, although cloaked in benign or neutral language, or sanctimonious and smug, seemingly moral certitude. See, e.g., article in worldjurisprudence.com.

https://worldjurisprudence.com/international-organizations-and-human-rights/

“International organizations serve a critical function in the promotion and protection of human rights globally. They provide a framework for establishing universally accepted standards, fostering dialogue among nations, and facilitating cooperation in addressing human rights issues. Their efforts in monitoring, reporting, and advocating for compliance with human rights norms are vital for fostering accountability.

Organizations such as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court play pivotal roles in this realm. They initiate humanitarian interventions, support the creation of legal instruments, and provide technical assistance to countries in need. These entities also help establish independent mechanisms to investigate violations and promote adherence to international human rights law across member states.

Additionally, international organizations engage in capacity-building efforts, equipping governments and civil society with the tools necessary for effective human rights governance. Their extensive networks enable collaboration with various stakeholders, ensuring that local voices are heard in the international arena.

This multifaceted approach underscores the significant influence of international organizations on advancing human rights protections.

In summation, international organizations are instrumental in shaping the landscape of human rights, driving forward initiatives that uphold dignity and justice worldwide.

Their ongoing commitment to these ideals reinforces the interdependence of global governance and the fundamental rights of individuals.”

Of course they do, as do the hundreds of Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs). Just take a look at the Open Society Foundations of George Soros and the wonderful work this Billionaire has done to reshape our Nation into a Communist Dystopia, in strict accordance with THE PRECEPTS, TENETS, and PRINCIPLES of COLLECTIVISM.

https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/george-soros As the website says,

“Under George Soros’s leadership, the Open Society Foundations support individuals and organizations across the globe working to advance human rights, equity, and justice.”

That may sound appealing to some people absent close analysis. The human rights he advances, along with “equity” (such a wonderful magical word), and justice, has worked well for psychopathic murderers, rapists, and child molesters, international cartels making a cozy living trafficking in illicit drugs and other contraband; and in the trafficking of people, inducing forced servitude, and forced sexual exploitation of women (including, sexual exploitation of children), and moving tens of millions of destitute, unassimilable, and ill people illegally across our borders and across the borders of the EU (with the blessing of Brussels).

See the following links pertaining to the The Soros NGOs: https://thewillcountynews.com/install/index.php/2020/01/11/complete-list-of-u-s-organizations-funded-by-george-soros/ and others are instrumental in destabilizing our Nation and others. Recently, these NGOs, dedicated to the destabilization of American society and that of other western countries by funding Marxists and Communist prosecutors and district attorneys in the major cities of the  U.S., and by organizing and funding riots across the Nation, have grown even more ambitious. They have spent exorbitant sums of money, grooming sociopaths for mayoral runs in major cities, organizing and funding social media campaigns to secure their flunkies’ nominations to high office. See, e.g., the slick website for the New York City frontrunner, Marxist/Communist Zohran Mamdani, described by the nebulous euphemism, “Democrat Socialist.”

With a perpetual obscene smile, this COMMUNIST MONSTER, who openly loathes our Country, our culture, our Constitution and our people, will, if elected, which he is on course to secure, tear down NYC in short order. He hasn’t tried to hide his policy aims. See, e.g., the articles at these pertinent articles at these links: 

https://legalunitedstates.com/zohran-mamdani-policies-reshape-nycs-future/

https://www.foxnews.com/us/aoc-backed-socialist-mayoral-candidate-backtracks-after-calling-dismantle-police-2020?msockid=246f9b70d2576a632dd68d5fd3c56b4c

On its webpage, the Communist website, jacobin.com, attempts to place a positive spin on the destruction of New York City. It is laughable.

Can there be a better combination for destabilizing a major City, demoralizing the residents, and holding the public hostage, than banning guns, defunding the police, and emptying the prisons.

See also, articles at the links below:

***************************

https://www.outkick.com/culture/zohran-mamdani-ban-guns-tweet-reactions  

https://tjvnews.com/local/new-york/radical-mayoral-hopeful-zohran-mamdani-questioned-the-very-existence-of-prisons-and-wants-to-let-criminals-walk-free/

https://nypost.com/2025/07/11/opinion/dont-fall-for-the-blue-washing-drive-to-hide-mamdanis-cop-hate/

******************************

There is a nexus between the aims of the Neoliberal Globalist elites, and the Neo-Marxist Internationalist Cultists, as they both seek the destruction of all western nation-states. The Dismantling of the U.S. as an independent sovereign nation-state, the Destruction of a Free Republic, the Dissolution of the U.S. Constitution, and, especially, of the Nation’s Bill of Rights, the eradication of the Country’s Judeo-Christian ethical heritage and system of laws and jurisprudence, the erasure of our national identity and national ethos, and the ruination of our economy and societal order are the most pressing goals for both these large, amorphous groups because of this Nation’s unparallel power and natural and human resources—economically, and technologically, and militarily—pose an insurmountable obstacle to realization of the objective of the Neo-Marxists and the Neoliberal Globalists to create a Global Empire if the U.S. continues alone among all other western nation-states to exist as a independent, sovereign Nation and Free Constitutional Republic.

With IGOs and NGOs becoming more influential in the world, moving the world toward a UNITED GLOBAL EMPIRE ruled by an insular cadre of rulers, there exists no possible ground upon which a multilateral, multicultural, socio-political-economic structure can co-exist with the might of the United States as a unilateral, independent socio-political-economic entity and powerhouse in the world. One or the other must give way.  

See, e.g. the Stimson report.

With multilateral institutions and the international legal order under pressure and facing an extreme liquidity crisis, states and civil society partners committed to collective security, sustainable development, human rights, and multilateral diplomacy must step up to defend and champion a stronger, reformed, and more capable global governance system.

A growing financing gap and weakening political support for the Paris Agreement further threaten progress on tackling the world’s most urgent challenge: climate change. Against a backdrop of political division and mistrust among major powers, world leaders convened the Summit of the Future in September 2024 to renew international commitments and reimagine how aging institutions can better cope with twenty-first century risks and opportunities.

The Global Governance Innovation Report 2025 (GGIR’25) offers tools for assessing and promoting implementation of the summit’s outcomes—the Pact for the Future, Global Digital Compact, and Declaration on Future Generations—and explores how to overcome barriers to change ahead of the Pact’s official high-level review in September 2028. It further analyzes and offers novel policy and institutional reform proposals to grapple with the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution—an underemphasized issue at the summit.

GGIR’25 finds a slow yet visible headway to date in realizing key goals of the Pact. Its success hinges on effective multilateral diplomacy, sustained United Nations (UN) leadership, civil society engagement, and a rigorous follow-through.

The powerful, ruthless forces behind these efforts remain hidden. But the organizations they have constructed lay bare the insidiousness of their aims.

Recall the raison d’être for the creation of the European Union was less political and more economic—to make it palatable to the national governments if not palatable to the populations of those countries. See the article on Profolus.com.

The primary purpose of the European Union has been adopted from the collective goals and objectives of the European Economic Community. To be more specific, EU has the purpose of developing and maintaining a single market within Europe with goals and objectives revolving around free trade or free movement of goods and services, as well as the free movement of people and capital. [Emphasis our own]

As an aside, Profolus.com acknowledges something that cannot be avoided even as the site wishes to avoid mention of it. Profolus.com claims, somewhat disingenuously, to make the ceding of political power by the member states to the governing body of the EU to be a good thing, conceding, as it must, innate problems inherent with that.

For, the creation of an economic union logically implies a political union of the member states, which requires member nations to willingly cede political power to the EU (more and more as time goes by as we learn).

“Remember that the EU organization is not just an economic bloc. Another purpose of the European Union is to promote political cooperation and foreign relations among its member-countries. Part of the ideas about European integration comes from the need to maintain political stability across the continent through diplomacy or foreign relations.

However, it is important to note that international relations, in general, remains largely an intergovernmental matter, with EU member-countries controlling their foreign affairs to a large degree. Of course, there have been several instances when the EU operated as a single political actor in the international arena, particularly during trade agreements and energy matters.

There is also a unified mechanism for security and defense diplomacy and actions. EU has the Common Foreign and Security Policy department primarily responsible for such. It coordinates with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization regarding territorial defense. It also develops and participates in international peacekeeping missions and security policy forums. . .

Essentially, the EU has several issues that all boil down to bureaucracy. The integration of different governments under a single supranational government entity has brought forth conflicts due to differences or disagreements in positions. The complications and issues have represented some of the significant criticism toward the EU and toward political and economic integration within the region.” [emphasis our own]

Government Bureaucracies are as much a problem with independent nation-states as with transnational entities (empires) like the EU, as both trend toward DESPOTIC TYRANNY, if they do not commence as DESPOTIC regimes at the outset.

The insidious thing about Government—those ostensibly democratic governments, no less than those that have no pretense of being democratic although the rulers refer to their governments as democratic—is the claim that they promote human rights.

Profolus.com says,

Internally, the EU promotes and protects conventions pertaining to the rights of EU citizens. Note the organization has also been founded based on values the respect human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, and the rule of law. Member-states are required to enforce treaties signed and ratified by the EU such as the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union based on the Lisbon Treaty that took effect in 2009. [Id.]

Such documents as the EU’s Charter of Human Rights” are vacuous for this salient reason.

A GOVERNMENT/STATE CANNOT RATIONALLY/LOGICALLY PROTECT/ENFORCE ELEMENTAL, FUNDAMENTAL, NATURAL LAW, ETERNAL RIGHTS BECAUSE THOSE RIGHTS PREDATE/PREEXIST STATE.

This means that Government (the State) cannot create what already exists in Man. To assert or suggest otherwise contradicts the IMPORT AND CONCEPT OF AND REALITY OF NATURAL LAW AS EXISTENT IN MAN PRIOR TO THE EXISTENCE OF GOVERNMENT, i.e., “THE STATE.”

TRUE DESCRIPTIONS OF RIGHTS OF MAN SET FORTH IN CONSTITUTION MUST BE UNDERSTOOD AS MERE CODIFCATION OF PREEXISTENT LAW, AND NOT LAW CREATED BY MAN.

But a perusal of Documents purporting to be expressions of Human Rights make plain that the Rights set down in Law are ENFORCED/ENFORCEABLE by the STATE and are subject to modification by the State. Hence, the assertion/suggestion that these Rights are “FUNDAMENTAL” may, on a superficial level, sound noble, righteous, but comes across as something much less—on a mere cursory analysis—as a thing ostentatious and fatuous. And the Government/State comes across as supercilious for crafting a bill of Rights at all.

If a Government/State does not intend to acknowledge and acquiesce to a “Bill of Rights” that it does not to honor and that consists of qualifications and regulations, then that government/state would do well, to desist from crafting one since to create one, under false pretenses, suggesting that its “bill of rights” has purpose—to benefit its populace—then the government would be expected to fulfill its commitment. But that is never the case. Moreover, the salient, principal purpose government is to provide for the common defense of the nation and beyond that, avoid interfering with the lives of its people. Thus, a bill of rights, such as one crafted in the EU, is, at best, redundant, and, worse, vacuous and fatuous, and, worst of all, a deception that masks Government conduct that injures the populace all the while proclaiming a false intention to serve the people that fall under that government’s rule.

Fundamental Rights—TRUE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS (i.e., NATURAL LAW RIGHTS)—such as the RIGHT OF SELF-DEFENSE, which entails THE RIGHT TO ARMED [EFFECTIVE] SELF-DEFENSE, and the RIGHT OF FREE EXPRESSION cannot legally, ethically, rationally be modified or abrogated by amendment because these rights preexist Government. These rights are inherent in man. They are SUPREME authority. Those Rights of LIFE, LIBERTY, and PROPERTY, in our BOR, supersede all man-made enactments. The Rights laid down in the BOR are not man-made laws.

What is written down are representations of Divine Law, which supersede all an-made law when man-made law comes into conflict with Divine Law.

See more about this infra.

How do these ideas connect to or conflict with government?

“Government” is man’s most conspicuous and prominent artifice.

Government claims to benefit man, but eventually, inevitably, unavoidably, and invariably harms man. For men comprise government. And all men have failings.

Even people with integrity and honesty can fall into error and vice.

Those who wield some power will desire, at some point, to wield more power. That desire will grow into an overwhelming, insatiable urge to accrue further power— well beyond the limitations imposed by the Constitution. And, who, inside the Government or outside it is there to apply the brakes on a runaway Government.

The Framers of the U.S. Constitution were aware of this trait in men. To keep the urge to exercise power constrained within bounds, the Framers crafted a Government of limited powers, carefully circumscribed and demarcated among THREE CO-EQUAL BRANCHES.

The Framers hoped the novel government they envisioned and crafted would rein in willful, spiteful, selfish, contemptuous men from exerting powers and authority beyond those precisely delineated in the Constitution.

Through diligent effort they crafted a centralized “Federal” Government to provide for the common defense of the Nation—the salient purpose of it—yet would not pose a danger to the American people who are and remain the true and sole sovereign authority over Government that exists only by grace of the American people who consent to it, and retain the power to dissolve it when it devolves into Tyranny.

But for all their effort to rein in this beast, would not that Government, in time, grow immensely powerful and, forgetting those whom it exists to serve and the purpose for which that government exists, threaten the sovereign authority of THE PEOPLE, whom that government is meant to work tirelessly for and to devote its sole efforts to—becoming, in the end, the very thing feared—A DESPOTIC TYRANT?

And if that about face were to occur, that the Federal Government behemoth would become, ironically, the very thing these first American Patriots had successfully fought a war of independence to defeat, would not the horror and absurdity of that outcome, a TRAVESTY, CAUSING THE DOWNFALL of the Nation they sought to bring to fruition give them pause? And, would they not feel all the more defeated in having spent considerable time, energy, and debate, only to create a monstrosity destined to wreak havoc more ruinous to the American people than the empire they had miraculously vanquished?

The possibility of such a devastating end to a nascent Free Constitutional Republic must have been uppermost in their minds.

The Framers knew full well that the most assiduously crafted government may slow down the rise of a Despotic Government, A TYRANNY, but nothing at all—within the confines of the Government itself, and however well-conceived and assiduously crafted—could prevent the Government’s collapse and descent into TYRANNY.

The Tyrant-Government would invariably dismiss the suggestion that IT IS a Tyrant, arguing that the powers wielded, beyond the parameters set by the Constitution, are not something desired, but, rather, powers that are needed TO MAINTAIN ORDER AND TO PROMOTE HARMONY in an increasingly complex society and world.

This is self-delusion—delusion thrust on the people themselves, where oppression is sold to the American citizenry as peace, tidiness, and harmony.

Yet ostensible quest for “ORDER” AND “HARMONY,” were it true, predicated in good faith, would be nothing of the sort— self-delusion at best. TYRANNY would invite THE INVERSE — “DISORDER,” AND “DISSONANCE,” where a Country loses its Soul.

Americans have in the past three decades, perceived a likelihood of the gravest fear of the Founders of the Republic coming to fruition. Yet, the urgency of the threat now upon us, took 240 years to get here, which suggests the Framers of the United States Constitution did a credible job in having perspicaciously perceived a likely dire future for Americans—GIVEN THE NATURE OF ALL GOVERNMENT— BUT FORESTALLING IT FOR WELL OVER TWO CENTURIES.

And something could be said for that, for having conceived and crafted perhaps the best possible government, if a centralized “Federal” Government were necessary at all, as the FEDERALISTS, among the FRAMERS, firmly believed and insisted upon.

And, through the passing decades, as the Federal Government grew by leaps and bounds into a gargantuan institution—the GOVERNMENT WHICH THE PUBLIC SEES and a SECOND GOVERNMENT, ONE OPAQUE, SECRET, SINISTER—that the public does not see—one MORE POWERFUL THAN THE SEEMINGLY TRANSPARENT, OPEN, INNOCUOUS BENEVOLENT GOVERNMENT THAT THE PUBLIC HAS AT LEAST SOME COGNIZANCE OF.

Are we in the midst of a calamity? As is invariably the case, the Destroyers of our Free Republic, claim disingenuously and hollowly, that the upending of our Nation, the disembowelment of our Constitution, the eradication of a Country grounded on a socio-political precept of Individualism, a callous reconfiguration of the American psyche, and major upheaval of America’s institutions and transformation of society, is essential to bring about something new, something better: but better for whom and in what way?

A Country devoid of territorial borders, the erasure of the concept of ‘citizenship,’ and the concept of ‘National Identity,’ the destruction of ‘Natural Law’ and of Moral Stricture (derived from ‘THE DIVINE CREATOR’), is doomed TO DECAY and RUIN.

The IDEA of such a calamity occurring is nothing new. The REALITY of it is awful to contemplate and face.

Such attempts by those who profess belief in the ideology of COLLECTIVISM, that is intricately connected with/inextricably bound to DESPOTISM and TYRANNY, has never succeeded—at least not yet—but EIGHT YEARS OF OBAMA AND FOUR MORE THE DEMENTED AND DEMENTIA-RIDDLED JOE BIDEN, must give one pause.

GOVERNMENTS GROUNDED ON the IDEOLOGY OF COLLECTIVISM, will invariably cause political strife, economic ruin, social and moral decay, and abject human misery, resulting in ANARCHY and CHAOS, and PROCEEDING THEN TO TOTALITARIANISM, requiring of the populace unquestioning and absolute obedience to the regime and its rulers. DISORDER OF THE FORMER DOES NOT MANIFEST AS ORDER IN THE LATTER BUT SIMPLY INTO A NEW KIND OF DISORDER. DICTATORIAL RULE IS DISORDER CLOAKED AS ORDER BECAUSE AD HOC EDICTS OF DESPOTS DO NOT BESPEAK LAW AND ORDER BUT ABSENCE OF LAW, PROMOTING DISORDER.

The lessons of Leninist and Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge Movement in Cambodia, Castro’s Cuba, the “People’s Republics” in Africa, and the regime of North Korea, under Kim Jong Un—to name a few—all murderous dictatorships, and all rooted in COLLECTIVISM, bear this out. They are tenuous political constructs, always on the cusp of annihilation, as the Despots, growing ever more paranoid, clamp down harder on the people, jailing and killing more and more of the populace, leading inevitably to rebellion. But the lessons of COLLECTIVISM/TOTALITARIANISM are never learned and therefore doomed to be repeated.

THE FIRST INDICATION OF A TREND TOWARD DESPOTIC RULE IS SEEN IN A BAN ON CIVILIAN POSSESSION and OWNERSHIP OF FIREARMS and AMMUNITION.

A DESPOT/TYRANT will never suffer an armed citizenry. It cannot. It is in the realization of the people that a DESPOT cares nothing for their well-being that the people do indeed pose a threat to RULE by DECREE—DECREE THAT GROWS MORE AND MORE ARBITRARY AND MORE AND MORE DRACONIAN—THAT DESPOTIC DECREE BECOMES INTOLERABLE, and REVOLT occurs.

To forestall Open Revolt, THE DESPOT will resort to imposition of increasingly extreme measures to retain power. And, the first measures will commence with confiscation of firearms and ammunition, and subjugation of the people will follow in due course.

BUT WHAT IMPULSES DRIVE OUR NATION TOWARD DESPOTISM AND TYRANNY?

The attempt to destroy our Free Republic, replacing it with Communist-Collectivist autocracy, cannot be rationally explained since we were and are the most successful Nation on Earth: economically, culturally, institutionally, jurisprudentially, societally and politically.

Had this Country devolved into a failed state, upheaval would be natural. But why rebel against success? The only answer is that outside influences seek to destroy our Nation BECAUSE we are SUCCESSFUL AND POWERFUL — MILITARILY, TECHNOLOGICALLY, FINANCIALLY, AND CULTURALLY. Our Nation has an abundance of natural resources and talent.

THE OBSTRUCTORS/DESTRUCTORS OF OUR COUNTRY WANT CONTROL OVER ALL OF THIS.

Free Republics devolve into Tyranny for many reasons. As we have maintained, all governments trend toward Despotism. It is bad enough when Americans, working in Government accrue power for their own ends. It is worse when outside forces bribe, cajole, or threaten to betray their Country.

ALL GOVERNMENTS EVENTUALLY, BECOME INSTRUMENTS WORKING AGAINST THEIR POPULACE FOR IT IS GOVERNMENT THAT WIELDS GREAT POWER BY WHICH IT MAY EXERT CONTROL OVER ITS PEOPLE

The desire to tear down our Republic is not a new invention or a new plan. It is one that existed immediately after the Revolution that allowed a Free Republic to be created.

Powerful interests were enraged by this and became more so, the more powerful and successful we became through time.

Neoliberal Globalist interests coupled with Cultural Marxist interests have a similar aim: creation of a World Empire. And the United States is an important component of that, and the continued prominence of the United States “GETS IN THE WAY” of realization of WORLD EMPIRE.

But MOST Americans are not interested in that. So Powerful interests in modern times, orchestrated a plan to deal with the intransigent American.

These powerful, ruthless interests devised  a plan. That plan would take time to carry out, about eighty years—from the Mid-Twentieth Century through the first few decades of the Twenty-First.

The plan they devised and implemented was devious. They would cultivate a false history of America: OPPRESSOR VS. OPPRESSED. They introduced false constructs such as IDENTITY POLITICS and DEI, TRANSGENDER IDEATION, and MORAL RELATIVISM, and thrust these on both our children and adults.

These powerful interests also influenced crass opportunists in Government to open up our borders, deliberately bringing in multitudes of destitute, and unassimilable people to ravage society, economically and socially.

They crafted an elaborate illusion about America to convince the polity to destroy itself.

Most Americans saw through this, and they voted Donald Trump into Office to turn around the pending disaster to our Nation. He succeeded.

Many Americans who otherwise were oblivious to an internal National threat learned of the threat confronting them.

The Destroyers of our Nation could not entice, cajole, or threaten Trump to join their cause or temper his actions, as he was devoted to securing the well-being of the Country and its people.

Having failed to dislodge Trump through scathing articles in the Press, fabricated legal actions and impeachment, and even an attempt at assassination, these forces realized they had a real battle on their hands.

They have tried, with minimal success, to convince the public that Trump is a threat to “DEMOCRACY,” without bothering to define what term means. Some Americans bought into the nonsense, becoming avid cultists of fanciful dogma to entreat them. Most Americans saw through the idiocy of the dogmas thrust on them and were outraged at the attack on the Country and on themselves. They aren’t buying any of this.

They see through the lies, recognizing at once where the real threat to our Nation is emanating from.

The threat to the well-being of the Nation can’t be rationally placed on the Trump administration.

Trump is the preventive medicine, not the cause of the Nation’s perilous movement.

The first inkling of a major threat posed to the well-being of the Republic and “to the security of a Free State”, came during the Obama period.

Eight years later, the American people had had enough.

Most pollsters and the legacy Press missed this, or perhaps their preconceptions that Hillary Clinton had the 2016 election in the bag—that the upstart, Donald Trump could not feasibly win—caused the pollsters and legacy media to refuse to countenance a Trump victory. The American people had other plans. They saw where the Country was headed under Obama and wanted none of that. The legacy Press, for its part, did nothing to hide the fact that Hillary Clinton would continue the policies and agenda of Obama; nor did Clinton herself. https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2015/10/21/Hillary-Clinton-Presidency-Means-Four-More-Years-Obama-Policies

The person the puppet masters selected as their useful idiot to play the role of U.S. President was an effete, slothful, mentally and emotionally feeble, physically frail, incorrigibly corrupt, grossly incompetent, and an inveterate liar, a person without conviction, or scruples—a person with no positive virtue or trait required of one serving in the most important, demanding position in the Country.

It would not surprise anyone that this person, Joe Biden, would go down in history as the worst U.S. President this Nation ever had, bar none. The Country he would leave to the American people would aptly reflect his personal characteristics: a veritable train wreck.

So, Biden was President in name only—the pyrrhic holder of the Office, not the decision-maker. That truth, suspected by many, despite attempts to keep it hidden, became painfully plain to the most obtuse person, having viewed Biden’s disastrous debate performance on June 28, 2024.

One did not need to be a medical doctor to conclude that Joe Biden was noticeably riddled with dementia. See, e.g., article in time.com.

So, who or what ran the Executive Branch of Government from January 20, 2021 to January 20, 2025? The American people may never know but should know. This is not an academic matter.

The first sentence of Section 1, Article II, of the U.S. Constitution, says,

“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

Section 2 of Article II delineates those powers exercised by the President.

Article II makes plain there is one, and only one, President of the United States. He is the ultimate Decision-Maker, as the U.S. Constitution dictates.

Under 3 USCS § 301, the U.S. President can delegate some executive functions to subordinates, but he cannot transfer the powers of the U.S. President to those subordinates.

Joseph Biden never attempted to transfer power to anyone because, from his first day in Office to his last, he never wielded the power of the U.S. President.

See article on Presidential delegation of authority in legalclarity.org.

Article II of the U.S. Constitution doesn’t provide for or allow a titular President. If an individual elected to that Office cannot perform the duties of that Office, he cannot serve as President in Office.

Since Biden wasn’t fit to serve as President and did not, effectively, serve as President, then this Country did not have a President during that period in time.

Americans lived in a State of Tyranny, for they had no President.

Unknown, unelected elements, whoever they are, had taken over the Executive Branch of Government. Americans lived in a totalitarian State but few recognized that.

If crafting policy and making decisions fell to unelected persons, unbeknownst to Biden, then they and he have perpetrated a terrible fraud on the American people.

Those Biden years severely weakened the Nation, economically, geopolitically, and societally, and endangered the Nation, the safety and well-being of the citizenry, and the sanctity of our laws and Constitution.

This cannot be attributed to incompetence or error alone. The extent and intensity of the ruin bespeaks design, a master plan—treachery to Nation, people, and our laws.

Whoever or whatever force drove our Country to the brink of ruin, meant to do so, and, if the “Democrat” Party retained control of the Executive Branch, the dissolution of our Country would have come to fruition.

Secretive, shadowy, malevolent, ruthless forces had taken control of the Executive Branch of Government, in defiance of the Constitution and the will of the people. How they accomplished this is unknown. That they did accomplish this cannot be reasonably doubted and denied.

The inescapable conclusion is that a well-crafted government, even one assiduously designed to minimize despotism, may still fall prey to treachery, turning against the people whose interests it was meant to serve, devolving into the obverse of its designers’ intent.

Therefore, while governments may be established with the intention of serving their populace, even the most well-intentioned contain underlying risks or vulnerabilities—malignant seeds that eventually bear poisonous fruit.

During the Biden era, this Nation did not have a functioning government if by the phrase, “functioning government,” we are to mean one working under the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the Land, and one serving the interests of the American people.   

Like an automobile with its gas gauge pointing to “empty,” our Free Republic was riding on fumes, cascading close to a full stop.

All forms of government inevitably tend over time, toward disorder (entropy).

Our governments (State and Federal, local and regional) aren’t immune to this because evil people, and crass opportunists, will, in time, gain unlawful control over the levers of government, and, once gaining control of government, will manipulate and reengineer government to operate to their advantage.

This is axiomatic, and, so, unavoidable.

Our Federal Government, one designed with “checks and balances” can forestall but not, of itself, prevent collapsing into a state of tyranny and eventual destruction.

It is also axiomatic that no artifice of man can effectively police itself, to prevent the rise of despotism.

A Free Constitutional Republic that falls to Despotic rule is appropriately called “Tyranny.”

To prevent this calamitous outcome, and not merely forestall it, something outside government is needed.

No other Nation on Earth but our own has crafted an effective failsafe mechanism—one capable of preventing Tyranny from arising or, if, perchance, tyranny comes to fruition, then successfully crushing it, were it spring forth.

That mechanism is our Bill of Rights.

In the next article we explain how our Bill of Rights differs from that of any other Nation.

We also explain how it is concomitant on OUR NATION’S THIRD BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT, THE U.S. SUPREME, to come to fulfill its obligations to protect and serve the Constitution in the capacity that only this Court, among the THREE BRANCHES can effectively serve. For, only the U.S. Supreme Court has ultimate authority, and the final last word to interpret the meaning of the Constitution or Congressional legislation if conflict arises.

Other nations claim to include something akin to our bill of rights, but ours is the “genuine article.” The others are effectively nugatory, a hoax perpetrated on the public, designed to deceive a populace into the false belief that their government recognizes and accepts such fundamental, unalienable rights as tangibles over which government has no lawful power to undermine.

The BILL OF RIGHTS is “the genuine article. It differs dramatically from the bill of rights of all other nations, and from the one crafted by the United Nations and offered for adoption by member states.

For ours is a TRUE Bill of Rights, unlike the UN’s, called the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (UDHR).

Despite the glowing name, the UDHR is a vacuous document. For it does not recognize the fundamental, unalienable rights it proclaims, because that UDHR, and any bill of rights crafted from it, by a government, clarifies that such rights are allocated to the people by government and enforced by that government, and are not, therefore, construed as truly intrinsic to the people.

And, since those governments are the sole provider and protector of the rights, those governments must be understood as the source of the rights. Therefore, they are man-made rights, bestowed on the people by the government and rescinded by the Government as the government so wills.

Such rights are tenuous, arbitrary, conditional—the opposite of Natural law. Such documents of fundamental rights serve merely to placate a population’s desire for freedom and liberty but offer nothing and recognize nothing.

Ratification of our TRUE Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution occurred on December 15, 1791. It comprises Ten Amendments to the Constitution.

The Bill of Rights exists today, 234 years later, exactly as it did on the date ratified.

There is no need for amendment [nor there can be] as the rights are, concisely, categorically stated.

Retired Associate Justice John Paul Stevens evidently disagrees. He has proposed modifications to six of the Amendments to the Bill of Rights, in a book published on September 24, 2024:  “Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution.” ment proceeds from his abhorrence of it. He proposes an amendment to make plain, his belief that, if the Amendment is not to be repealed outright, it should at least be rewritten to make plain that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” is to be taken to mean a COLLECTIVE RIGHT—emphasizing the DEPENDENT CLAUSE preceding the INDEPENDENT CLAUSE, which reads, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state.”

This idea of his is laid out in detail in his lengthy dissent in the 2008 Landmark Second Amendment case, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA vs. HELLER.

The majority opinion was penned by the late eminent Justice, Antonin Scalia. The opinion makes poignantly clear—after well over 200 years of obfuscation by the Supreme Court—that the right of the people to keep and bear arms asserts an INDIVIDUAL RIGHT, unconnected to one’s service in a militia.

This is plain in the text of the Amendment. Scholars who dislike the import of the text claim vagueness or ambiguity where none exists.

Heller resolves the issue, ending the impulse to write into the text of the Natural Law Right what doesn’t exist except in the minds of those people who dislike the import and purport of the Law.

Retired Justice John Paul Stevens is one of those individuals.

Stevens’ proposed modification is a declaration of his distaste for the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms.

Stevens claims the prefatory dependent clause in the text as ratified is to be understood as a limitation on the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and not what the majority takes to be a qualification or rationale for the right. Stevens claim makes no sense, on either grammatical or logical grounds.

From a GRAMMATICAL STANDPOINT, dependent clauses have no purport on their own, but for the independent clause they modify, clarifying, in the instant case, the salient purpose for/reason for the right beyond the obvious one—that of providing an effective means of self-defense against predatory beast or predatory man. Since that is a given, no more would be needed than the words, “THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.” But those words would be redundant since the right to SELF-DEFENSE is a fundamental NATURAL LAW RIGHT. The right to keep and bear arms simply means that, if a person has a right to self-defense that must include the right to use adequate means to ensure one’s defense against predatory threats. And no better tool for self-defense exists today than it did at the time of the American Revolution (and four  hundred years before that when firearms first came into common use for military use and for personal self-defense). A firearm is the best means of survival against predatory attack.

The use of the prefatory clause of the Second Amendment obviously alludes to the necessity of firearms to defeat tyranny, as it served America’s first Patriots well. For without firearms, America’s Patriots could not have had any chance of success in their War for Independence from Tyranny, as imposed on them by the British Monarch, George III.

The Framers of the Constitution had no desire to be the cause of instituting, albeit unintentionally, another Tyranny of their own making if the Nation’s fledgling new central “Federal” Government would one day turn on the American people, the very Sovereign Citizenry for whom it exists to serve.

Hence, the codification of the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a plain and solemn reminder to the Federal Government that by the exercise of this Sacred Right the American people can best ensure their LIFE AND LIBERTY, AND PROPERTY against Government Tyranny.

The words also convey the message that the American people shall not suffer tyranny, especially a tyranny that comes in the guise of the people’s own government.

Hence, a firearm serves as an effective means to counter the predatory man-beast of Government, no less than it effectively counters any other predatory threat to life and well-being.

Stevens’ argument against the Second Amendment fails utterly to pay heed to the singular reason that the prefatory clause appears in the Second Amendment. It is not meant to be a constraint on the keeping and bearing of arms by the citizenry (since the natural law right is unlimited and absolute) but a constraint on Government (whose powers are not unlimited and are not absolute).

The Second Amendment also serves as a constant reminder, one that it must never forget for whom the Government serves and that it is in service to the people it has any reason to exist at all.

Stevens doesn’t care about any of that. In fact, in an Op-Ed, posted in the New York Times, March 27, 2018, under a title that has no pretense of subtlety, and likely was crafted by the NY Times Editorial Board — “John Paul Stevens: Repeal the Second Amendment,”— the author appears to acknowledge that the prefatory clause was, as the Majority in Heller said, a rationale for the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and not a limitation on the right, which he asserts and then dismisses out-of-hand, when he writes, “Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides that “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. Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.” [emphasis our own]

As recited supra, any attempt at amending or repealing a Natural Law Right would not defeat an American’s right to exercise it because Natural Law Rights are not crafted by man. They are crafted by the Divine Creator and are codifications of Divine Law. Hence, if any one or more of the Rights of the BOR were modified by amendment or repealed through the steps  outlined in the Constitution, the Rights would not “go away” because they have divine origin. The FRAMERS OF THE CONSTITUTION—both FEDERALISTS and ANTIFEDERALISTS took this as self-evident.

The Federalists, among the Framers, saw a document of natural laws as redundant and as self-limiting if codified since there are likely many, whether enumerated or not.

If nothing about them is explicit, then nothing can be modified or abrogated. The Federalists have a point. GOD-GIVEN LAW NEED NOT BE EXPLICITLY STATED TO BE EFFECTIVE, AS LONG AS GOVERNMENT RECOGNIZES SUCH LAW AND ACCEDES TO IT. But therein lies the rub. Suppose Government does not accede to acknowledging Natural Law.

Truth be told, NATURAL LAW ISN’T SUBJECT TO LAWFUL FEDERAL GOVERNMENT MANIPULATION BECAUSE NATURAL LAW, UNLIKE MAN-MADE LAW IS ETERNAL, NOT CONTINIGENT AND TEMPORARY. IT PREEXISTS GOVERNMENT AND IS INTRINSIC TO MAN’S BEING, NOT EXTRINSIC TO MAN AS STATUTORY CONSTRUCTS OR GOVERNMENT EDICTS EXIST EXTRINSICALLY AS THINGS CRAFTED BY MAN.

NATURAL LAW that is set down in a writing, DOES NOT thereby transform NATURAL LAW into MAN-MADE LAW but, as the ANTIFEDERALISTS MADE THEIR CASE, THERE IS SOUND REASON FOR CODIFYING NATURAL LAW IN A WRITING.

LET’S CONSIDER THE ARGUMENTS PRO AND CON FOR CODIFYING THE NATURAL LAW RIGHTS IN OUR BOR.

If set down in writing, an unscrupulous Government might, of course, one day seek to erase that natural law, claiming that the erasure of it in writing, serves to erase THE FACT OF IT, and the American people can no longer lawfully exercise that natural law.

Thus, if natural law rights were reduced to writing, some may claim that the phrase, “Natural Law Rights” is a misnomer—that “natural law rights” do not exist, and that all rights codified in law are man-made law, subject to modification or outright repeal.

That is the position of many scholars and politicians. But, if that is the case, then reason enough exists for codifying Basic Rights. For, if codified, then, until they are repealed, they have the force of law even if one believes that all law is man-made. And, since amending any portion of the U.S. Constitution is difficult—deliberately so, codification of “IMPORTANT LAW” even if construed as only MAN-MADE by some still has substantial efficacy.

The FEDERALISTS, though, as with the ANTIFDERALISTS accepted as CLEAR and AXIOMATIC that FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS qua GOD-MADE LAW cannot be undone lawfully by MAN since MAN DOES NOT CRAFT GOD-MADE LAW.

Thus, CODIFICATION OF NATURAL LAW MERELY “INSTANTIATES” AN ABSTRACT, ETERNAL ENTITY. The codification of Natural Law is, then, no more than a material man-made symbolic representation of a profound SUPERNAL REALITY.

THE FEDERALISTS thereupon point out the absence of any need to represent in a writing what exists outside materiality as that makes light of the immanence of such NATURAL LAW in MAN as a product of the DIVINE.

Thus, a good argument can be made that all fundamental, unalienable rights ought to remain unenumerated. And that is one reason evinced by the FEDERALISTS for refraining from codifying the NATURAL LAW RIGHTS.

The second reason the FEDERALISTS evince for refraining from codifying such Natural Law is that GOVERNMENT may deny, and refuse to recognize and adhere to NATURAL LAW that is unenumerated but only to NATURAL LAW RIGHTS that are enumerated. Thus, the need to enumerate as many Natural Law Rights the Framers can conceptualize may likely lead to omitting some rights that need to be enumerated but never were. Thereafter, Government can claim not to be bound or constrained from precluding the citizenry from exercising rights recognized after the fact but inadvertently missed at the time such LIST of NATURAL LAW RIGHTS were enumerated and ratified by the States as it would be difficult to add others after the fact, given the difficulty in amending the Constitution. And, as all the Framers plainly agreed that the Constitution should not be a document easily amended, lest the public or Government attempt to amend the Constitution out of existence (which many politicians and scholars, supportive of NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISM and/or NEO-MARXIST INTERNATIONALISM are desirous of doing, being of the mind to look upon the entirety of the Constitution, as old, archaic, and no longer relevant in a modern world tending toward a massive socio-political-economic empire ruled by GLOBALIST-MARXIST “ELITES,”—DICTATING NORMS OF BEHAVIOR to the vast populations of lower human-kind.

The Antifederalists, among the Framers, insisted on the codification of God-given law.

And they had a good reason for doing so. For, if these basic rights were not set down in writing, a rogue Government would one day deny their existence and that they never existed.

But once these rights are set down in writing, a treacherous government could not plausibly deny their existence.

And, even if such a government would deny such “natural law rights,” and claim that the rights in the Bill of Rights are only man-made law, crafted by man and therefore subject to modification or abrogation by man, that government would still be compelled to acknowledge the existence of them.

That rogue government must either bow to them or try banning the exercise of them—not outright—that would be difficult. The people would justifiably take strong exception to that.

If the Government sought to ban them outright, that would at once make known to the people that the Government has turned its back on the people—that it has become a tyrant.

Even the Democrat Party-controlled Government, here in the United States, that loathes the power of the Bill of Rights has not dared try to eradicate it or go through the trouble of attempting to repeal it outright, a lengthy and impossible process, as the Framers intended.

So, the Bill of Rights persists as a constant reminder and a thorn in the side of would-be tyrants that our eternal rights are here to stay. The Antifederalists knew this. That is why they insisted that the most emphatic of the fundamental rights be reduced to writing.

For, even if some Americans, inside or outside the Government, would argue that such “Natural Law” is really “Man-Made law” subject to change through amendment or statutory modification, they must still concede there is something in those laws, as they exist as tangibles, peremptorily, in the Constitution, and therefore cannot be ignored.

Our Bill of Rights serves another purpose too. Eternal, God-given rights are not amenable to the whims of man or fashion. Unlike the Articles, there is nothing in the recitation of the Rights to suggest defined limits. Thus, as written, they express the will of the Divine Creator.

This is a point that the Leftists in this Country refuse to accept. But, because the Bill of Rights exists in the Constitution, they must contend with it, acknowledging that to most Americans the Bill of Rights is not a statement of man-made law but of God-made law.

And, as God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and morally perfect, the rights he has instilled in man express the absoluteness of God’s will. Therefore, the natural law, as an embodiment of God’s will, must be absolute—allowing for nothing that would denigrate the idea.

The American people as bearers of natural law assert their status as sole and supreme sovereign over government.

The Federalists relented, likely perceiving the logic behind the Antifederalists desire and insistence on a physical codification of Divine Law that could not be readily and perfunctorily denied by a Federal Government that tended toward Tyranny even if that Tyrant refuses to accept the Bill of Rights as Natural Law. The power infused in the law is evident in the manner in which the Framers codified it, leaving little to the imagination as to the emphatic import and purport of it.

No Government whether Federal or State can override or dismiss Divine Law, as it stands outside man-made law. And, given the strength of the law as codified, even a Tyrant must accept the power emanating from it.

But, if a Tyrant could effectively ban operation of the Bill of Rights, its light burns in the heart of America’s Patriots. That light cannot die.  

So even if tyranny takes hold here, or the Constitution is amended to change or remove the Bill of Rights, the rights themselves would persist because their reality does not exist in the temporal world. The codification of the Law would persist as an angry ghost to haunt any would-be Tyrant.

These Rights that exist in Man, through Divine Will, not by the will of the State, have several salient characteristics. They are——

•  FUNDAMENTAL

• UNALIENABLE

• NONPHYSICAL

• ETERNAL

• UNLIMITED

• IRREDUCIBLE

• INDIVISIBLE

• ABSOLUTE

No government or other governing entity crafted by man can lawfully override or disavow what it has not created and cannot itself create.

This doesn’t mean that subjugation of the American people cannot occur. But any ban on exercising fundamental rights is illegal.

The American people have a right and moral obligation to disobey illegal Government action that betrays our Constitution and Natural Law Rights.

Considering “Natural Law”—

The most important right, on this material plane—an unenumerated right, bundled in the Ninth Amendment of the BOR—is THE RIGHT OF AN INDIVIDUAL TO BE INDIVIDUAL.

THIS RIGHT LOGICALLY ENTAILS THE ABSOLUTE SANCTITY AND INVIOLABILITY OF MAN’S BODY AND MIND, AND SOUL AND SPIRIT.

The vehicles through which a citizen of the United States expresses this sublime right is through two enumerated rights—the right of FREE SPEECH (an umbrella term that includes the RIGHT TO DISSENT) and THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS. This latter enumerated right follows from the broader, unenumerated RIGHT of SELF-PRESERVATION, which implies one’s RIGHT TO PRESERVE HIS LIFE AND WELL-BEING AND THAT OF HIS FAMILY THROUGH USE OF THE BEST MEANS AVAILABLE AGAINST BEAST, MAN-BEAST, OR THE MAN-BEAST OF GOVERNMENT, (AND ITS AGENTS).

Those ruthless forces bent on turning aside our RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE, realize the difficulty of the effort, but also the need to accomplish it. For the United States cannot suffer defeat if they remain armed.

The Electorate has fortunately learned a valuable lesson from the horror launched against the public by the previous Administration.

The present President, Donald Trump, has stated numerous times that he supports and will protect and strengthen the right codified in the Second Amendment, in one of his first Executive Orders (the obverse of an Executive Order signed Joseph Biden) cancels Biden’s Order. See Fact Sheet of February 7, 2025.

Yet, Trump has plenty of issues to deal with, as the enemy to our Nation, to our Constitution, and to our People, is many.

That enemy is well-organized and well-funded. That enemy is also tenacious and relentless. And, that enemy is determined to reverse the promise of the Revolution of 1776. The Citizenry must hold fast to its history, heritage, national identity, and core ethical values. To lose any of those is to jeopardize our Free Republic and the sovereignty of the American people over Government.

Trump must deal with a myriad of issues. This prevents him from taking action to strengthen the natural law right to armed self-defense under constant and merciless attack.

And Congress is ineffectual in protecting this vital Rights. That leaves us to rely on the Third Branch of Government.

It is the Judicial Branch (more commonly known and called the U.S. Supreme Court) that can do the most to protect and strengthen the right to keep and bear arms.

While the President can issue executive orders and actions protecting this sacred right, those orders and actions do not have constancy. Another Administration can counter them by issuing new executive orders. And, the Administrative State (Bureaucracy) can issue rules with the effect of law, but those, too, can be modified or done away with.

Congress can enact laws impacting the right to keep and bear arms, but most constrain exercise of the right, not defend and strengthen it. And any statutes that Congress enacts, Congress can repeal.

Congress, the President, and the Administrative State should not interfere with natural law right. Even those Executive Actions, Congressional Acts, or Administrative Rules that support and strengthen the exercise of the sacred right to armed self-defense pose a glaring problem.

If the Government involves itself with our Natural Law Rights, it treads on sacred ground the Constitution forbids. It should proceed with caution.  

Executive and Congressional action should be circumspect and narrowly drawn.

That leaves the Judicial Branch.

The Judicial Branch (commonly and aptly called the U.S. Supreme Court) as a Branch of the Federal Government must be careful in its rulings, as it alone has authority to interpret laws and Constitution and place finality on that interpretation. The Court must ensure its rulings protect and not infringe those rights.

The Heller, McDonald, and Bruen cases, unlike the Second Amendment cases before them, did much to strengthen the right embodied in the words, expressing Natural Law.

But, after June 23, 2022, when the Bruen case came down, something pernicious occurred. This is markedly true in matters of the Second Amendment.

This term (which the Court has extended through July), the Court has denied review of three cases that strike at the core of the Second Amendment and at the Supreme Court’s rulings in its first three landmark cases: Heller, McDonald, and Bruen.

The most important Second Amendment case this term is Antonyuk vs. James. The Court’s failure to grant certiorari comes at a bad time, and is the latest bad example of a Court that has lost its way.

The Court has shown a dismissive stance toward Second Amendment rights and, by not addressing the actions of certain states and courts, it is seen as effete. This opens itself up to further exploitation by rogue States and rogue courts, and by Political Progressives and Marxists both in the States and in Congress.

The High Court should look closely at its own behavior. It frequently lacks strength when needed.

The first line of the first paragraph of Section 2 of Article III of the U.S. Constitution says,

“The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority.”

Although tacit, effectuating the intent of the Framers in protecting the Bill of Rights from State or Federal Government tampering is monumentally important to preserving a Free Republic.

Unfortunately, through time, Congress, and the Executive Branches, have done much more harm than good and the Supreme Court has come across as indifferent, diffident and sometimes inconsistent in its treatment of it—all too often passing on cases it ought to take up. It is shirking its obligation, and in matters involving the Second Amendment—the most vital of our Rights—dismissing the most important cases.

The case Antonyuk vs. James is the most important case to come before the Court since NYSRPA vs. Bruen.

The odd thing about this case is that, through a perusal of its history, the Court has more than intimated that it sees this case as crucial to solidifying the import of the three Landmark cases, Heller, McDonald, and Bruen.

Yet, at the Eleventh Hour, when the expectation was high that the Court would finally grant review after three years of back and forth on it—from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, then up to the High Court twice, then back down to the Second Circuit, and back up to the Supreme Court a third time—what does the Supreme Court do? It quietly, meekly disposes of the case without explanation and no further direction or instruction to the Second Circuit.

The few commentators that discuss this latest perfunctory denial of review either assert astonishment at the Court’s dismal action and propose odd and unsatisfactory rationalizations for it, or make note of it and suggest there will be other Second Amendment cases to deal with. Thus, organizations that purport to defend the right of the people to keep and bear arms (the raison d’etre of these groups), lamely say it is time to move on.

We intend to stay on this. Antonyuk vs. James must be taken up by the High Court. The case is in abeyance. Apparently the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is sitting on it. And counsel for the Petitioners isn’t doing anything to urge either the Second Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court to take this case up.

In our next few articles we will take a deep plunge into the failings of both the Supreme Court, the Second Circuit, and the Pro-Second Amendment organizations, too, as they have all dropped the ball on this. We, at the Arbalest Quarrel will not let this matter rest.

Antonyuk is the linchpin for the survival of the Supreme Court’s rulings in the three Landmark Second Amendment cases. Failure to take up Antonyuk, first, and Snope, second, place the seminal cases at risk of drying up in dormancy, as rogue states and the rogue elements in the Federal Government brazenly ignore the rulings of these cases, resulting in an increasingly weakened condition for the Natural Law Right to Armed Self Defense. And Pro-Second Amendment groups aren’t much better. Dealing with new cases when the most important case—a “murder” case—the murder of “Antonyuk” is patently ignored, severely weakens the entire body of Second Amendment jurisprudence and has a decisive negative impact on the whole body of Natural Law Rights, without which a Free Republic—OUR FREE REPUBLIC—cannot survive.

________________________________

*AQ has substantially reworked this article since going to publication on July 22, 2025. The first revision was made on July 23, 2025. The second expansive revision to the essay is dated July 25, 2025. This latest revision was completed this evening, July 27, 2025.

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT CANNOT PERMIT NEW YORK TO MISUSE ITS POLICE POWERS TO FRUSTRATE EXERCISE OF OUR FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE.

Antonyuk vs. James is the most important Second Amendment case since the 2022 case, NYSRPA vs. Bruen. Yet, after SCOTUS denied review of Antonyuk— without direction and instruction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, wherefrom the appeal was taken—the case languishes in a perpetual limbo. Where in fact is it?

The case should be in the hands of the Second Circuit. If so, what is the Court doing with it? Anything? Nothing? What are the Petitioners doing about it? Anything? Nothing? Have the Courts and Petitioners washed their hands of the most important Second Amendment case to come to the attention of New York’s federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court since the 2022 Bruen case?

What has transpired with this case during the last three months?

On April 7, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the Antonyuk Writ of Certiorari. The Court denied it without comment. The case citation is Antonyuk vs. James, 127 F.4th 941 (2nd Cir. 2024), cert. den. (No. 24-795) LEXIS 1384, 221 L. Ed. 2d 646 (April 7, 2025).

AQ first reported this on May 8, 2025, in our article titled “The Roberts’ Court Has Gone Rogue: Failure to Grant Review in Antonyuk vs. James Defies Law and Logic, Undermining Both The U.S. Constitution and the Court’s Credibility.”

Ammoland Shooting Sports News posted a summary of that May 8 article, on May 14, 2025, under the title, “Antonyuk Deserved More: The Court’s Denial Isn’t Just a Letdown —It’s A Warning.”

In the absence of a strenuous dissent from either one or both of the two senior Associate Justices, Clarence Thomas, or Samuel Alito, the casual observer would likely infer, albeit erroneously, that the case must have little of significance for any of the Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.

If the public perceived it that way—assuming the public considered the Antonyuk case at all—several Associate Justices, including the Chief Justice, would view that positively, even while aware that  review of and favorable decision in the case, one favorable to the Petitioners, is crucial to maintaining the potency, ascendancy and the precedential value of Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, the three previous landmark Second Amendment cases.

And the legacy Press has, for the most part, also remained silent, suggesting that the case is of no consequence to Second Amendment jurisprudence.

Such news accounts and commentaries that did mention the Antonyuk case had little of substance to say concerning it, making only cursory note of it. We know, we checked.

Scanning two major leftist legacy newspapers, The New York Times, and The Washington Post (“WAPO”), we could not find mention of the case let alone extensive discussion of it. But these publishers, and the reporters, editorialists and editors, must have been exuberant over the denial of certiorari.

Antonyuk vs. James isn’t just a noteworthy Second Amendment case, it is of paramount importance to the sanctity of the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

Bruen arose as a challenge to the legality of and constitutionality of New York’s century old Handgun Law, where the Government of New York not only interposed itself between the fundamental, unalienable, eternal natural law right to armed self-defense codified in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights and the peoples’ exercise of that Right, but laid claim to a false idea that informs all that the State does to illegally, unconstitutionally constrain exercise of the right. The State has presumed, wrongly, that it lawfully exercises its sovereign “police power” to regulate, i.e., strangle, exercise of the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms.

And the legacy Press is fine with this.

The abject failure of SCOTUS to constrain New York’s abuse of a sacred and inviolate right, permitting a rogue State to defiantly run roughshod over the Court’s own rulings against State abuse of its frightening, terrible “POLICE POWER” to maintain CONTROL over the citizenry demonstrates the inherent frailty of the Roberts’ Court and an unethical Press that supports the Court’s abject failure to rein in unconstitutional, unconscionable actions of a State Government that sinks into depravity.  

The Press avidly supports a State that abuses its powers to deny the citizenry’s exercise of a fundamental, unalienable natural law right to armed self-defense, thereby inviting and tacitly supporting Government Tyranny. For the slow, incremental, inexorable accretion of power is an intrinsic characteristic of and feature of Government—ALL Government. Domination of and control of a population is the ultimate end-goal of Government.

There exists only one countervailing force to SUPPRESS this TENDENCY of A STATE to inexorably GROW in size and EXPAND its POWER EXPONENTIALLY—THE WELL-ARMED CITIZENRY.

There are three major issues attendant to our examination of the Court’s failure to take up the Antonyuk case:

• The Vital Importance Of This Case To The Preservation Of The Second Amendment

• The Lack Of A Sound Reason For The Court’s Denial Of The Petitioners’ Writ Of Certiorari

• The New York Government’s Misuse Of Its Police Power To Illegally Interfere With The Citizenry’s Exercise Of Its Fundamental Right To Armed Self-Defense

We will take up the issue of State “Police Power” first, as little is said about it, and we find that the issue of a State’s misuse of its police power is the foundation of all the problems proceeding from New York’s illegal handgun law.

Exercise Of State Police Power Versus Exercise Of The Right Of The People To Keep And Bear Arms

We begin with this: A State Government—ANY State Government—cannot lawfully regulate the peoples’ exercise of a right that preexists Government unless the State itself has the lawful authority to do so. Note: we are not here denying a State has inordinate power to constrain or deny exercise of the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms. The same is true of the Federal Government.

But, if a State Government and the Federal Government had sufficient power, today, to take control over civilian citizenship arms and ammunition, this would have occurred. They cannot do this. Many States would not want to do this as they self-regulate.

This could change if a new government took control of those states. Other States, such as New York have, since their inception, sought to control their population. This could also occur if another rogue Administration, like the Biden Administration, were to take over the Executive Branch of Government. And that is possible, as a substantial portion of the Electorate is predisposed or conditioned to welcome the destruction of the Republic.

The Antonyuk case serves as a useful focal point for getting a handle on the tension here between the natural tendency of government to exert maximum control over its populace, necessitating confiscation of firearms, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a populace (or a sizable percentage of it) resisting that Government control over their firearms and ammunition.

A Government suspicious of the people will attempt to gain control over any mechanism by which the people can thwart or overthrow a despotic, tyrannical government.

The U.S. Government has an incomparable arsenal at its disposal, comprising a massive military, intelligence apparatus, and federal police forces.

The States also have a formidable power to use against the population under its purview, through which they constrain the portion of resident citizenry of their States. The use of its POLICE POWER.

And that raises the question: “Where does the Police Power of a State derive?

The police power of a state is not derived from the Federal Constitution but exists independently as part of the state's inherent sovereignty.

This power was never surrendered to the federal government when the Constitution was ratified. House v. Mayes, 219 U.S. 270 (1911)

The police power is defined as the power to protect life, liberty and property, to conserve the public health and good order, which always belonged to the states, and was not surrendered to the general government, or directly restrained by the constitution. See, Arkansas v. Kansas & Texas Coal Co., 183 U.S. 185, Plumley v. Massachusetts, 155 U.S. 461.

But what happens if a State doesn’t protect life, liberty and property, and fails to conserve the public health or provide for public order (PUBLIC SAFETY)?

Doesn’t the need for PERSONAL SAFETY, which is not the duty or obligation of the State, become that much more important? How better for the citizen to provide for his PERSONAL SAFETY, than through wielding a firearm? This points to a curious paradox of “Blue” States, such as New York.

The Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul argues ad nauseum that it is the obligation of the State to provide “PUBLIC SAFETY.” True, and we don’t quarrel with that pronouncement, that we hear incessantly.

But it is also true that Americans have the right to provide for their own “PERSONAL SAFETY.” Bruen makes that point plain. And that right doesn’t rest within the confines of one’s home. It continues in the public domain. That is a central holding of the case.

One’s right to armed self-defense goes with the person, wherever that person goes, so, too, his right to armed self-defense against threats to life and well-being goes with him.

The right to armed self-defense doesn’t stop at the doorstep of a person’s house. An American has the natural law right to armed self-defense while in the public domain no less than when at home. But, it is that contention—a ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in Bruen—that enrages Governor Hochul, and the officials in her Administration, and Democrat law-makers in Albany. They contend, without proof, that an armed citizenry makes her job tougher. How so? She never explains. Meanwhile she allows violent predators to roam freely about the City and State, free to prey on innocent lives.

Hochul has done nothing to protect New Yorkers from random and horrific acts of violence—especially in New York City.

Law-abiding Americans who reside or work in the City are in constant danger of violent assaults. Random acts of violence go unchecked. Hochul has done nothing except complain about law-abiding Americans carrying handguns in public to protect themselves from the very threats Hochul doesn’t do anything to curtail.

The Criminal Justice System is ineffectual, police are understaffed, and police policies prevent officers from effectively protecting the community at large. Indeed, they, too, are regularly assaulted by illegal alien gangs, and lunatics. Hochul’s indifference to this is not lost on the psychopaths who prey on innocent New Yorkers, with abandon.

Hochul can’t have it both ways. If she abhors the idea of citizens carrying handguns for their own protection, then she must provide effective police protection for the public. If the community is safe from incessant random acts of extreme violence, then members of that community will be less inclined to carry a handgun, perceiving no need for one. But the communities are not safe from random acts of violence, hence the need of New Yorkers to arm themselves.

Moreover, there is a dangerous myth surrounding police obligations that most Americans in New York and in cities around the Country aren’t aware of, and it is one that public officials, including Hochul don’t bother to mention. It is this——

Although Police departments do have an obligation to protect their respective communities, that obligation doesn’t extend to individual members of a community. The police do not have any duty to ensure the safety of each member of a community. That isn’t the obligation of the Government.

Under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, police departments and police officers are indemnified against damage, or loss, or legal liability for the failure to protect an individual who has suffered property loss or physical harm.

This means that a person who is the victim of a violent assault, does not have legal claim against the police—something that victims learn after the fact. In the case of death due to a predatory attack against an innocent member of a community, the family of the deceased will not be able to collect damages in a wrongful death action against the police or other governmental entity.

The Arbalest Quarrel published three comprehensive articles on the issue of “sovereign immunity,” apropos of the police, several years ago. They include——

“CAN WE, AS INDIVIDUALS, RELY ON THE POLICE TO PROTECT US?”, posted on October 25, 2019”;

“CAN WE, AS INDIVIDUALS, RELY ON THE POLICE TO PROTECT US? A REPRISE OF OUR EARLIER [October 25, 2019] Article” (adding extensive new material to the original article), posted on November 21, 2019); and,

“THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT PROTECT YOU!  YOU MUST PROTECT YOURSELF!,” posted on July 31, 2020;

Ammoland Shooting Sports News reposted a condensed version of these articles, formatted for their website.

Our October 25, 2019 article, “Can We, As Individuals, Rely On The Police To Protect Us?,”, was posted on Ammoland, on November 26, 2019.

Our November 21, 2019 article, “Can We, As Individuals, Rely On The Police To Protect Us?, A Reprise of Our Earlier [October 25, 2019] Article”, was posted on Ammoland under the title, “Police Have No Duty To Secure The Life Of Americans From Threat Of Physical Harm”, on November 27, 2019; and

Our July 31, 2020 article, “The Government Cannot Protect You!  You Must Protect Yourself!,” was posted on Ammoland, on August 6, 2020.

Given the fact of incessant random acts of extreme violence done to innocent people, on a daily basis, as they are simply trying to go about their lives unmolested by rampaging hordes of psychopaths and lunatics that freely roam the City looking for prey, it stretches credulity that the Hochul Government endorses a lax criminal justice and handcuffs the police, leaving the public in a constant vulnerable condition, but detests the idea of armed civilian citizens protecting themselves. But that is reality in New York City.

Governor Hochul has made it difficult for those citizens—residing or working in the City—who simply wish to defend their life and well-being with the best means available, a handgun. Carrying a handgun is both a fundamental, unalienable right, and an outright imperative when one resides in a concrete jungle.

Hochul plainly denies the notion of “ARMED PERSONAL SAFETY” which she won’t dare mention, invariably framing the conversation of “safety” around the notion of “PUBLIC SAFETY”——strongly suggesting that “SAFETY” is solely a GOVERNMENT ENDEAVOR and a GOVERNMENT RESPONSIBILITY.

But ensuring “PUBLIC SAFETY,” which goes to the idea of ensuring the health, safety, and well-being of the community—which, Hochul does a very poor job in providing—has, in any event, nothing to do with ENSURING and SECURING THE HEALTH, SAFETY, AND WELL-BEING of each particular member of THE COMMUNITY.

The “POLICE POWER” OF A STATE is THE FOUNDATIONAL BASE of its POWER and and GOVERNING AUTHORITY.

The Supreme Court has recognized the police power was reserved to the states. This general power of governing is possessed by the states and not by the federal government. Nat'l Fed'n of Indep. Bus. v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519 (2012).

Despite the broad nature of state police powers, those powers are not unlimited.

The Supreme Court has established that——

"the police power of a State, while not susceptible of definition with circumstantial precision, must be exercised within a limited ambit and is subordinate to constitutional limitations." Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Co. v. State Highway Com., 294 U.S. 613 (1935) [emphasis our own]. THOSE CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATIONS INCLUDE, IN PRINCIPAL PART, THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IN THEIR PERSONAL DEFENSE AGAINST PREDATORY MAN, AND TO MAINTAIN ARMS AGAINST THE THREAT OF A PREDATORY GOVERNMENT.

The Court has further clarified that "as the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land, anything in the Constitution or statutes of the States to the contrary notwithstanding, a statute of a State, even when avowedly enacted in the exercise of its police powers, must yield to that law." Connolly v. Union Sewer Pipe Co., 184 U.S. 540 (1902) [emphasis our own] This passage means that fundamental, unalienable rights override a state’s exercise of its police powers if they infringe a citizen’s exercise of a fundamental, unalienable right.

Thus, Extrapolating From These U.S. Supreme Court Decisions, A Hierarchy Exists In Our Legal Jurisprudence Where Our Natural Law Rights Codified In Our Nation’s Bill Of Rights Take Precedence Over State Police Powers When The Two Come Into Conflict.

The Police Powers Of The States Preexist The U.S. Constitution, Just As The Natural Law Rights Of The People Preexist The U.S. Constitution.

However, The Police Powers Of The State Come Into Existence With The Emergence Of The State——An Artificial Gpvernmental Construct, To Which Those Police Powers Attach.

Hence, The Police Powers Of A State Are Not Eternal, Unlike Natural Law Rights Of The People, Which Are Eternal, Not Transitory, i.e., they are Without A Beginning Or An End. The most that can be said of the States is that their sovereignty precedes the sovereignty of the Federal Government, and that fact is recognized in the United States Constitution which only came into existence because the States ratified it, ceding some but not all sovereign authority to the new Federal Government.

The Federal Government exercises powers as set forth in the Articles of the Constitution. All other powers reside in the states or the people. This is recognition of the concept of Federalism that undergirds the Constitution.

The Federal Government exercises sovereignty, and the States exercise sovereignty. However, above both rests the sovereignty of the American people who retain supreme sovereignty over the Federal Government and the States. This is exemplified in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

The Predominace And Preeminence Of The Natural Law Right To Armed Self-Defense Over The Police Powers Of The State Stem From Both Its Eternal Nature, Grounded On And Inextricably Bound To The Natural Law Right Of Self-Preservation And On An Essential Constitutional Feature, Trait, Character, Or Attribute)——Namely, As A Right Cemented In The Bill Of Rights Of The U.S. Constitution.

Therefore, When A State’s Police Powers Collide And Clash With The Right Of The People To Keep And Bear Arms, Such State Law That Is Grounded On A State’s Police Powers Must Be Struck Down As Illegal And Unconstitutional—In Deference To The Preeminence Of The Preexisting And Predominant Right To Armed Self-Defense.

The tension between a state’s police powers and the Natural Law Right to Keep and Bear Arms, codified in the Second Amendment, derives from the different origins of these legal concepts.

State police powers predate the Constitution and were reserved to the states, not surrendered to the federal government. House v. Mayes, 219 U.S. 270 (1911).

These powers enable states to legislate for public health, safety, and welfare. Arkansas v. Kansas & Texas Coal Co., 183 U.S. 185 (1901).

The Second Amendment, however, is part of the Constitution, which is "the supreme law of the land." Connolly v. Union Sewer Pipe Co., 184 U.S. 540 (1902)

WHEN STATE POLICE POWERS AND CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS COME INTO CONFLICT, THE SUPREME COURT HAS ESTABLISHED A CLEAR HIERARCHY: CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS PREVAIL. THE COURT HAS EXPLICITLY STATED THAT——

“no right granted or secured by the constitution of the united states can be impaired or destroyed by a state enactment, whatever may be the source from which the power to pass such enactment may have been derived.” Connolly v. Union Sewer Pipe  Co., 184 U.S. 540 (1902)

This principle applies to the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, which cannot be impaired by state regulations enacted under police powers.

This raises a salient and perennial question—one that concerns firearms licensing—namely:

Is State Firearms Licensing Constitutional?

IMPORTANT NOTE: The discussion below is based on early Twentieth Century Law that considers the tension between application of state police powers contra exercise of the right to keep and bear arms from the standpoint of “interest balancing”—that reviewing courts utilized to determine the constitutionality of state action prior to the Heller case.

The Heller case abolished INTEREST BALANCING in favor of “HISTORICAL TRADITION” analysis that reviewing courts must henceforth use when determining the constitutionality of a state action that impacts exercise of the natural law right codified in the Second Amendment. Nonetheless—

The tension existent between THE POLICE POWERS of a State and the NATURAL LAW RIGHT OF TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE has always existed, compounded by State adoption of firearms licensing, which States utilized in a deceitful attempt to circumvent the inherent supremacy of the natural law right (codified in the Second Amendment) over illegal, intrusive application of State Police Power to rein in exercise of the right to armed self-defense.

Licensing requirements for firearms represent an exercise of state police powers aimed at protecting public safety.

However, when such requirements effectively burden or restrict the exercise of Second Amendment rights, they create a tension with the constitutional protection of those rights, then one must give way to the other. Ninety years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court made clear that when operation of a State’s POLICE POWERS infringe the NATURAL LAW RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, it is the POLICE POWERS of the STATE that must accede to the superior

The Supreme Court has established that state police powers "must be exercised within a limited ambit AND IS SUBORDINATE TO CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATIONS." Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Co. v. State Highway Com., 294 U.S. 613 (1935). [Uppercase and Emphasis our own]

The Court has further clarified that under the police power, "there is no unrestricted authority to accomplish whatever the public may presently desire." Id. Instead, the police power permits reasonable regulation of rights and property in particulars essential to the preservation of the community from injury. Id. But, suppose the State isn’t protecting the community from injury and, in fact, is, through its ineptitude or reckless indifference to the community is causing injury to that community and its residents. What then? Can the State legally prevent the public from taking responsibility for its own protection through use of the most effective means available—a firearm? The answer is a resounding, “no.” Yet many jurisdictions are doing little to nothing to perform their obligation, secure a community’s PUBLIC SAFETY, and simultaneously frustrate the members of the public from taking action to provide for their own PERSONAL SAFETY. This isn’t a hypothetical matter. This is the situation in New York under the Hochul Government. And the U.S. Supreme Court has done nothing to prevent the State from running roughshod over its residents.

The key question in New York is, today, the same as it was when the Court dealt a blow to New York’s indifference to the plight of New Yorkers when the Court came down with the Bruen decision in late June 2022. Nothing has changed. If anything, matters have gotten worse. Criminals, lunatics, and illegal alien gangs run amok and the innocent New Yorkers still have to run through hoops to obtain a New York concealed handgun carry license. And, if they eventually secure one, they find their use of a handgun for self-defense is constrained by a myriad of “SENSITIVE PLACE” restrictions, preventing lawful use of a handgun for self-defense.

If licensing schemes effectively prevent or significantly hinder law-abiding citizens from exercising their Second Amendment rights, they must be deemed unconstitutional under the Supreme Court's framework laid down in Heller, McDonald, and Bruen. And the Court should have shut the door on the reprehensible Hochul Government by granting review of Antonyuk. The Roberts’ Court unconscionably denied review of the case by taking a another and even closer look at New York’s handgun licensing regime.

Whether licensing requirements create a logical contradiction with the fundamental nature of the Second Amendment right turns on how we understand the relationship between rights and privileges. This isn’t difficult to resolve. For, if the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms is to be treated as the fundamental right that it is, a right predating the Constitution, then any State that requires a license as a condition precedent to exercising the right—is blatantly, not surrepticiously, converting a fundamental right into a privilege granted by the state, thereby contradicting the fundamental nature of the right.

The Supreme Court has established well over one hundred years ago that state enactments are not permitted to impair, let alone destroy, constitutionally protected rights.

New York’s amendments to its Handgun Law do just that. In some ways the amendments are worse than under the old system utilizing “PROPER CAUSE.”

If licensing requirements effectively transform a fundamental right into a state-granted privilege, those licensing requirements run counter and unconstitutionally infringe exercise of the natural law right of the people to keep and bear arms. State licensing of firearms is the crux of the problem raised by all State regulation of firearms that utilizes a “State Licensing Framework.” And this is the crux of a problem that the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged but refused to rule on in Heller since the Court plainly said that the issue concerning the legality of State licensing of firearms, rested outside the scope of the issues of the Heller case. Still, the late eminent Justice, Antonin Scalia, who penned the majority opinion in Heller, obviously realized that the matter of firearms licensing—arising or materializing from operation of a State’s Police Powers must someday be tackled by the Court in a comprehensive and unequivocal fashion, and not left as in a slipshod condition. Given, deliberate transgressions by rogue States to misuse Government firearms licensing to surmount the emphatic fundamental, unalienable right of the people to armed self-defense, there is reason enough for the Court to bring resolution to this matter. Roberts apparently doesn’t have the stomach for it, nor, apparently, do the Trump nominees, with the possible exception of Neil Gorsuch.

The Bruen case dealt obliquely with the constitutionality of handgun licensing but never directly on it, and never ruled definitively on the constitutionality question apart from asserting, in dicta, that handgun licensing in some “May Issue” States doesn’t offend the Constitution because Government licensing officials don’t exercise unbridled discretion in those jurisdictions. Still, any use of discretion, unbridled or not, still reduces a fundamental, unalienable right to the status of a naked privilege since the State interposes itself between the person and the Right.

The New York Government’s deliberate defiance of Bruen through enactment of amendments to its Handgun Licensing regime, are apparent.

The drafters of the amendments plainly intended to convey the impression of a law that passes constitutional muster without doing so. It is all pretense. As enacted by the Senate in Albany, and signed into law by Hochul, the amendments operate as a blatant attempt at an end run around the Bruen rulings, and not surprisingly, sparked an immediate and angry challenge. Neither Hochul, nor the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, really cared. As long as the State could enforce its unconstitutional Handgun Law, it could chalk it up as a win, which it is since the Government is enforcing the new law, and adding a number of other unconstitutional laws, impacting the core of the right as codified in the Second Amendment.

Three years later, New York is still enforcing its Handgun Law in open defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen rulings. And the Roberts’ Court has allowed this, and, in so doing, has destroyed the Court’s credibility, severely weakened the natural law right to armed self-defense, endangered the legal precedents set in the Court’s prior landmark Second Amendment case rulings, and invited Tyranny into the Nation, having permitted the Anti-Second Amendment States to continue unlawfully constraining exercise of the fundamental, natural law right of the people to keep and bear arms.

We, for our part, will not abide the U.S. Supreme Court’s obeisance to and capitulation to the States on matters involving our most sacred natural law right, without which our Free Republic cannot persist. We will continue to call the Court out for its weaseling out of its sacred duty to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Our examination of the impact of the Court’s denial of review of Antonyuk continues.

________________________________

THE ROBERTS’ COURT HAS GONE ROGUE: FAILURE TO GRANT REVIEW IN ANTONYUK VS. JAMES DEFIES LAW AND LOGIC, UNDERMINING BOTH THE U.S. CONSTITUTION AND THE COURT’S CREDIBILITY

Let us be patently clear:

Exercise of the fundamental, unalienable, natural law right of the people to keep and bear arms has suffered its most consequential defeat, and we lay it all at the feet of the third Branch of Government, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Highest Court in the Land. And, more particularly, we place principal blame for this on Chief Justice John Roberts.

In the U.S. Supreme Court “Order List” of Monday, April 7, 2025, the Court seemingly casually, peremptorily, perfunctorily, and, to our mind, heedlessly, denied a Petition for Writ of Certiorari of the most important Second Amendment case to come before it since New York State Rifle and Pistol Association (NYSRPA) vs. Bruen, a case decided on June 23, 2022.

That case is Antonyuk vs. James.

Some there are among the proponents of our sacred right to armed self-defense, who, while expressly acknowledging their disappointment with the Supreme Court for failing to grant Petitioners’ Writ of Certiorari in Antonyuk vs. James, suggest it isn’t the end of the world because there will always be other Second Amendment cases.

In fact, there are several presently awaiting consideration on this term’s Court docket.

But is such a casual attitude appropriate and sensible where, as here, the very core of the Second Amendment is involved, and more to the point, where, as here, the case directly implicates a prior Supreme Court ruling?

Sure, there are dozens of Second Amendment cases slowly, inexorably proceeding through the federal or state courts. However, most of these cases won’t be reviewed by the High Court.

Is the filing of a request seeking review of a case involving issues that strike at the heart of the Second Amendment to be viewed like any other Second Amendment case?

In that regard is a challenge to federal or state governmental action that attacks the essence of the Second Amendment no more important than a challenge to a governmental action that does not happen to strike at the core of the Second Amendment? Is that sensical?

Does not every governmental action aimed at regulating the exercise of the right to armed self-defense affect its essence? If so, should not the High Court review all such cases, and any other case directly impacting the Bill of Rights, especially when a case involves a government action negatively impacting the most important right—the right of the people to keep and bear arms? Why would the Court not take up such a case?

Yet, getting the Supreme Court to consider a case for review, any case (pertaining to the granting or denying of a petition) is no easy task.

And, if the Court denies a petition for writ of certiorari, what then? The entire case collapses, reverting back to the decision of the appellate court that issued the adverse ruling. That is the usual outcome since the Court grants review in only a few dozen cases among the thousands filed during any Court term. See article in “The Legal Dictionary.”

The U.S. Supreme Court is very selective about which cases it will hear, accepting cases only when at least four of the justices believe the case raises a significant federal question that is in the public’s interest. . . .

While there is some confusion as to what effect a refusal to issue a Writ of Certiorari has, it basically means the Supreme Court has decided to do nothing. Denial of certiorari does not mean the court approves of the decision made by the lower court, it is simply the practical result of the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court receives more than 5,000  Petitions for Writ of Certiorari each year, of which it only agrees to hear about two percent. A denial of certiorari often only means that the minimum of four justices did not feel the case should be heard.”

So, then, the failure of the Supreme Court to grant review in Antonyuk means the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit stands. And that means the New York Hochul Government remains free to enforce the amendments to the State’s Handgun Law, the horrendous, plainly unconstitutional, and unconscionable Government response to the Bruen rulings—encapsulated in and referenced by the phrase, “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (CCIA).

Are Americans honestly to believe the High Court denied the Antonyuk Petition for no other reason than because it lacked the time and resources to review the case even though the Court believed the case merited serious scrutiny? Or, worse, did the Court reject the Antonyuk Petition because the Court felt the case lacked merit?

Or did the Court reject the Petition because the Court concluded that it fell short due to a procedural matter in the case, unrelated to the merits of it? We don’t know. We can only speculate as to the reason or reasons for the failure of the Court to grant the Petition because the Court failed to provide a reason. And that in itself is unusual.

Past practice points to dissenting comments by the Justices who often express their anger when a matter of high importance—such as government constraints on the exercise of a fundamental right—is at stake. Justices Thomas and Alito have, on more than a few occasions, expressed their dissatisfaction, vehemently, and with exquisite attention to detail when the Court fails to take up a Second Amendment case involving government infringement of the right to armed self-defense and, as in the Antonyuk case, where State Government action brazenly contravenes the Court’s own rulings. Yet, Justices Thomas and Alito remain silent here. Why is that?

Can the Court hide behind the argument that it would have liked to have granted review, but could not do so because of its extraordinary case load? See the article in History.com.” Some may assert that the denial of the Antonyuk petition is due to that and nothing more. But, then, doesn’t an extraordinarily important case demand the Court’s attention in spite of that extraordinary case load?

The Supreme Court can only accept between 100 and 150 cases a year out of the 7,000 cases that it’s asked to review.

[And] Law clerks do much of the heavy lifting of reviewing petitions to the Supreme Court. Each justice hires three to four law clerks . . .who read through a portion of those 7,000 petitions and write memos . . . making recommendations on whether the Supreme Court should hear them.” See the article on site “History,” titled, “Steps the Supreme Court Takes to Reach a Decision.”

Okay, we get that. Given the sheer volume of petitions that come before the Court, their Law Clerks must be careful in the handling of petitions to the Court—culling the wheat from the chaff so that the Justices consider the merits of the most important cases at conference when granting or denying review.

But these facts do not suffice to explain the Court’s denial of certiorari in Antonyuk vs. James. Rather, these facts highlight why this case does demand recognition due to its singular importance to the Nation.

Deference to the sanctity of the Bill of Rights and the High Court’s responsibility to ensure that the Federal Government and the States adhere to the strictures of the God-given rights codified in it should be the Court’s highest priority.

Indeed, since a Law Clerk obviously felt the Antonyuk case important enough to draft a memo about it, summarizing the details of the Petition concerning it, requiring the Court to pour over it, and, given that the High Court was well apprised of the case, going back to July 2022, the Court was, then, well aware of the New York Government’s defiance of Bruen and its clear contempt for the Court. Would these facts not constitute reason enough to grant review of Antonyuk? Apparently, not, as the Court did not grant review.

Is the denial of review a matter of obtuseness, or does it bespeak obeisance to the New York State Government?

The actions of the U.S. Supreme Court defy rational explanation here. And, unlike some advocates of the Second Amendment, we will not simply chalk this up to a lack of time and resources on the Court’s part to grant review of a case it would have liked to take up but could not do so for pragmatic reasons or apropos of law-related procedural ones.

The High Court always has discretion to hear a case. That discretion is plenary—absolute! See the article in “legalpedia.”

A Second Amendment case—any Second Amendment case —is not to be taken lightly by the Supreme Court.

All of these cases are important.

For, Government action that infringes the right of the people to keep and bear arms directly and dramatically and emphatically impacts the Sanctity and Inviolability of the Nation’s Constitution, the Preservation of our Free Republic, i.e., “the Security of a Free State,” and the continued and supreme and sole Sovereignty of the American people over Government.

When a Second Amendment issue arises in a matter before a lower state or federal court, that issue takes precedence over almost any other matter of the Court.

It is of monumental importance—second only to an Emergency Petition by the U.S. President. The latter of which the High Court would (or should) take up at once. This brings up the issue of the use of Supreme Court Rule 20, “Procedure on a Petition for an Extraordinary Writ.”

Might not the Petitioners in Antonyuk have filed a Petition for Extraordinary Writ? Could not Petitioners reasonably argue exceptional circumstances necessitating immediate U.S. Supreme Court intervention, reviewing the case on the merits or, at least, requesting the High Court to vacate the orders of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and issue a stay of enforcement of the New York Government’s “Concealed Carry Improvement Act,” pending ultimate resolution of whatever non-final issues exist that need to be dealt with by the lower U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York?

We will deal with this and other Supreme Court and lower court procedural and substantive issues in the next article.

Suffice it for now for us to point out that the New York Government has intentionally, and brashly, and undeniably defied the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen rulings.

And keep in mind that the Bruen case arose over the unconstitutionality of the basic premise of New York Handgun Licensing. New York’s Handgun Law denied American citizens who reside or work in New York from obtaining a concealed handgun carry license absent a showing of “extraordinary need.

The New York Government had cunningly crafted and implemented a device, Proper Cause, for the sole purpose of decreasing the number of concealed handgun carry licenses issued to applicants.

To obtain one, an Applicant had to show “extraordinary need” for such a license.

Few could prove to the satisfaction of handgun licensing officials (the Government gatekeepers) that extraordinary need existed.

These State licensing officials exercised have, for decades, exercised near absolute discretion in issuance of a license for concealed handgun carry.

An applicant denied a license could, of course, appeal an adverse decision to the New York State Courts, and the Courts would claim that this right of appeal to the Courts for relief from a negative decision of a licensing official provided sufficient safeguard against overzealous and abusive State actors.

This right to appeal an adverse decision of a State official to a Court of competent jurisdiction is of little value. The plaintiff has a difficult burden to overcome. He must prove arbitrary and capricious action on the part of the State Government official, amounting to abuse of discretion. That requires an applicant to delve into the mind of the official—not an easy task for the plaintiff. It is rare that an aggrieved plaintiff applicant will obtain the relief sought: An order by the Court directed to the licensing official, compelling the official to issue the license. In the vast majority of cases, the Court rules in favor of the Government. Then, too, it is a lengthy, expensive process to file a Court action (Article 78). Few applicants have the requisite funds and can spare the time to attempt to obtain the relief sought. The Government knows this, which raises the question why should the average, responsible, rational American citizen, residing or working in New York, be required to demonstrate “extraordinary need” to exercise the natural law right to armed self-defense, codified in the Second Amendment, in the first instance.

The State’s mechanism for wholesale denial of a NY State concealed handgun carry license “Proper Cause” is on its face an affront to an American’s God-given right and duty to provide for his personal defense against a dangerous threat.

And as that right preexists government, government cannot lawfully constrain that right. Moreover, exercise of that right logically implies one’s right to own, possess, and utilize a firearm to secure life, safety, and well-being because a firearm is the best means yet devised to protect life and well-being against a dangerous threat.

New York places an unnecessary, illegal, and unconstitutional burden on a person, interfering with that person’s sacred right to armed self-defense. New York doesn’t care about that, and the New York Courts ruled that the use of “Proper Cause” is legal and Constitutional. Moreover, the Courts left to each jurisdiction in New York to determine how one might demonstrate extraordinary need sufficiently to support the issuance of a concealed handgun carry license.

There is no uniformity in this. And, even in a jurisdiction, such as New York City, that developed an elaborate scheme to ascertain “extraordinary need,” the application of it varied from one license officer to another in the NYPD License Division, leaving the matter, in the first and last instance, completely to the discretion of the NYPD licensing officer to determine if this or that applicant met the legal standard—one ultimately effectively and hopelessly arbitrary and ad hoc.

In other jurisdictions, the licensing officer would simply determine if the applicant was a VIP—for example, a judge, or politician, or wealthy, powerful businessman.

This is plainly unconstitutional. But how would a person prove that a jurisdiction utilized such a standard grounded on elitism? He could not. And, no New York jurisdiction would have codified such an absurd standard for ascertaining “Proper Cause” in code, or rule, or regulation, anyway—since such a standard is obviously facially illegally discriminatory and unconstitutional.

Applicants residing or working in such a jurisdiction would know this, and many New York residents would not bother to apply for a concealed handgun carry license.

That is precisely what the Government sought. Few people making application for a concealed handgun carry license means less use of Government resources to deal with the matter, and fewer people yet actually obtaining a coveted New York concealed handgun carry license.

“Proper Cause” reduces the exercise of the fundamental right to keep and bear arms then to a naked privilege—a condition precedent that must be met before one can exercise the right that only a lucky few successfully meet.

The logic behind this is nonsensical but, nonetheless, that logic (prior to the Bruen decision) was cast in stone, as black letter law in New York. And that was the law in New York for almost a hundred years, until, that is, someone in New York had had enough, and challenged the idiocy. It took time and money, and it slowly wended its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

No doubt Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito insisted that the matter be taken up. Justice Roberts and others agreed, if only reluctantly.

The Bruen case became the Third Landmark case.

The majority struck down the “Proper Cause” edifice along with the notion that a person must demonstrate extraordinary need, or, for that matter, any need, to carry a concealed handgun for personal protection.

The rabidly Anti-Second Amendment Hochul having realized that “Proper Cause” would be struck down, once Oral Argument concluded in Bruen, in November 2021, had begun in earnest in the months following to devise a workaround through which the Government could effectively salvage the highly restrictive handgun licensing regime conceived and installed back in 1911. The workaround effectively negated the efficacy of the Bruen rulings.

Although the New York Government had to issue more concealed handgun carry licenses, it would take its good time in doing so and, of the new licenses issued, they would have little practical value, as the Government drastically restricted the places where a person could lawfully carry and thereby utilize a handgun for self-defense. Thus, all UNRESTRICTED concealed handgun carry licenses would henceforth all be reduced to HIGHLY RESTRICTED licenses.

A challenge to the constitutionality of this new set of amendments to the Handgun Law came immediately, within a week after New York Governor Hochul signed the amendments into law. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York that heard the case—a case thereafter referred to by the New York Courts as a Antonyuk I, as a short descriptor for convenience, determined that the Petitioners’ Complaint and tandem Motion for a Preliminary Injunction to enjoin the Hochul Government from enforcing the CCIA, that was due to take effect on September 1, 2022, had merit.

But the District Court dismissed the case on a procedural technicality. It ruled that one of the parties did not have standing to bring action against the Government.

Governor Hochul hailed the decision as a victory—a victory short-lived because the District Court dismissed the case WITHOUT PREJUDICE.

This meant the sole remaining Party Plaintiff could refile, and the District Court had made plain in its opinion, albeit tacitly, that the sole PROPER PARTY PLAINTIFF, Ivan Antonyuk, should refile his case. He did so and he added other individual New York Handgun Licensees to the new case—one that would henceforth go by the short descriptor, Antonyuk II.

The U.S. District Court thereupon granted Ivan Antonyuk and the five other individual Party Plaintiffs the Preliminary Injunction they sought, thereby enjoining the Hochul Government from enforcing the CCIA.

The Hochul Government was furious. The State Attorney General, Letitia James, appealed the adverse judgment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

The Government requested the Federal Appellate Court to vacate the lower Court’s injunction. The Appellate Court, sympathetic toward the Government’s antagonistic position on guns and civilian citizen possession of them, happily obliged. Well over two years later, Kathy Hochul and the other Anti-Second Amendment fanatics have effectively neutralized challenges to the amended State Handgun Law.

Antonyuk Petitioners’ Petition isn’t its first. They filed their initial one several months before. The second petition is essentially a mirror image of the first. The arguments and the issues remain the same.

But, in the first petition the Antonyuk Petitioners had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to remand the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit so that the Federal Appellate Court would have an opportunity to reconsider its original adverse decision once the High Court had ruled on another Second Amendment case that Petitioners felt might have bearing on the case at bar. A decision was forthcoming.

That case is United States vs. Rahimi. The U.S. Supreme Court obliged.

It granted the Petition, vacated the Second Circuit’s Order, and remanded the case to the lower Federal Appellate Court to reconsider its prior decision the High Court decided Rahimi.

And, once the Rahimi decision came down, the Second Circuit did reconsider the applicability of that case to Antonyuk, but determined that Rahimi did not alter the Court’s earlier rulings, which it reinstated. The Second Circuit thereupon remanded the case to the trial Court, i.e., the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, where the case originated, to handle those issues that the Second Circuit had not yet decided the merits on.

Likely, the Antonyuk Petitioners anticipated the Second Circuit would confirm its earlier rulings but thought it worthwhile, perhaps, to have the Second Circuit make plain its open hostility to the Second Amendment, thereby assuring the High Court would grant the Writ of Certiorari.

The Antonyuk Petitioners had no desire to play the game the Second Circuit desired of them—essentially to keep the case going indefinitely on this or that issue left to be decided until the Petitioners tired of the case or ran out of money to continue to prosecute it.

From the Government’s perspective, though this matters not.

For, as long as it could enforce the CCIA, that would be enough. Therefore, the Government would consider the matter a de facto win if the case happened to continue indefinitely.

Moreover, Kathy Hochul and the Democrat Party Majority in Albany apparently felt that, given the political climate—with an ill-informed contingent of the public rabidly in favor of massive curtailment of the armed citizenry the New York State Hochul Government likely expected, and would have certainly hoped, the U.S. Supreme Court would deny review of the Antonyuk case.

After all, the major issues in Antonyuk are well-defined and have long since been fully briefed by both the Government and Antonyuk Petitioners. And the U.S. Supreme Court was well-versed in the arguments of both Parties.

The importance of the case to the sanctity of the Second Amendment is plain. And the harm undergone by Petitioners and by the many thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of New York residents who sought to exercise their right to armed self-defense and who were daily harmed by a recalcitrant, arrogant, unrepentant, contemptible New York State Government, ever disdainful of the fundamental right codified in the Second Amendment was and is also plain. The insolence of the New York State Government and that of several other jurisdictions projected onto the High Court cannot be rationally denied.

When the Bruen decision came down, Governor Hochul’s response to the decision and to those Justices who rendered it, was immediate and much more than disrespectful. Her remarks were, in tone, brash, curt, derogatory and derisive. She plainly baited the Court, and made clear, in no uncertain terms, that New York Law preempted the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court. If there were any doubt about this, the amendments to the Handgun Law made abundantly clear that New York would not abide by the Bruen rulings and that Hochul would use her authority as Governor of New York, to continue to constrain civilian citizen exercise of the right to armed self-defense in the State and further, that she would encourage Government officials to delay action on applications, to encourage the State to pass more laws constraining exercise of the right to armed self-defense, to implement policies, making the application process more expensive, and more convoluted.

After the Bruen decision, Hochul has made good on her intentions to defy the Roberts Court. The State has enacted more and more oppressive Handgun laws—daring the U.S. Supreme Court to rein in the Government.

Moreover, any Second Amendment case—especially this one—is noteworthy and of acute interest to the public as the outcome of it has decided and decisive impact on the Second Amendment going forward.

Given more and more egregious constraints on firearms ownership and ownership in New York, how could the U.S. Supreme Court not grant the Antonyuk Petition for Writ of Certiorari? Plainly, it cannot. But it did! The High Court deny the Petition out-of-hand?

The Court’s denial of certiorari here is deeply perplexing and disconcerting. What would motivate the Court to surrender its authority and permit a State Government to act contemptuously toward it?

To be sure, had the High Court granted the Antonyuk Petitioners’ Petition for Writ of Certiorari, the petitioners would still have had to wait several more months before the Court rendered its decision—one that, presumably, would be the correct decision—the only one it could rationally render to remain consistent with Bruen and thereby avoid a charge of hypocrisy, destroying the Court’s credibility and undermining the sanctity of our Natural Law Rights.

If the Court acted rationally, it would have to grant Antonyuk Petitioners Writ of Certiorari, for the express purpose of striking down—and in no uncertain language—the New York Government’s amendments to the State’s Handgun Law (the CCIA). Doing so, the Court would thereby reaffirm Bruen, and, by extension, reaffirm the plain meaning of the natural law fundamental, unalienable, eternal “right of the people to keep and bear arms" a right that “shall not be infringed”—a right that must never be infringed, under any circumstance and for any claimed reason, lest the Republic be lost!

The Antonyuk Petitioners therefore rightly expected the Court to grant review of their case and to strike down the New York State Government’s amendments to its Handgun Law, that had triggered the initial challenge back in July 2022. And, in their decision in Antonyuk, the Court should have then made clear that any future attempt to derail the Court’s rulings in Antonyuk and in Bruen, and in the first two seminal Second Amendment cases, Heller and McDonald, the Court would hold the New York Government in contempt of Court, and impose sanctions on the State, and make clear that the Court will require the Government to show cause why the Court should not impose remedial action sua sponte (on its own motion).

Were the High Court to come to its senses, the American public could thereupon reasonably discern a light at the end of the tunnel, with a Fourth Landmark Second Amendment case, Antonyuk vs. James in the offing.

Yet, if the Roberts Court took up the case only to render an absurd decision, one wholly inconsistent with the import and purport of that important Natural Law Right of armed self-defense, that would, ostensibly, place the Country—not merely the aggrieved citizens residing or working in New York, who filed the petition—in a worse position than before the filing of the Writ. Ostensibly, the entire Country would find itself in a dire situation.

Because of the mere possibility of this latter worst-case scenario occurring in Antonyuk vs. James, Associate Justices Alito and Thomas would wish to refrain from voting for review and would encourage others on the Court to follow their lead and deny Petitioners’ Writ of Certiorari, lest the case be taken up and lead to a horrible outcome.

That, at least, is the inference one would reasonably draw for the Court’s denying Antonyuk Petition for Writ of Certiorari, and this inference is predicated on the general truism that an awful High Court decision on a Second Amendment matter would be worse to countenance than had the Court refrained from taking up the case for review.

Denying the Petition would, of course, keep the awful New York State Handgun Law amendments intact, but, presumably, the damage done to the right to armed self-defense would be confined to the jurisdiction wherefrom it originated—New York.

A horrible decision would not, then, have expansive application across the Country. That, at any rate, is perhaps the idea seemingly reasonably held by some, if only tacitly (although not expressly to the extent that we can surmise) providing one explanation behind the Court’s denial of the Petition.

Yet, although, on a superficial consideration, that reasoning may seem plausible, it does not, to our mind, bear up under scrutiny.

Of course, if the case were taken up and if a Court majority on the High Court were to affirm the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, finding the New York Hochul Government’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act to be Constitutional, the liberal wing of the High Court certainly, and (we cannot rule out) a few others among the presumptive or quasi-conservative wing of the Court, possibly, would be pleased, perhaps even ecstatic, to use the Antonyuk case to rein in civilian citizen exercise of the elemental, natural law right to armed self-defense.

And since a negative decision in Antonyuk would also weaken the import of the three previous landmark Second Amendment cases—District of Columbia vs. Heller, McDonald vs. City of Chicago, and New York State Rifle and Pistol Association (NYSRPA) vs. Bruen—as they all cohere and as each case builds upon the prior case, amplifying and clarifying the rulings and reasoning of the one immediately preceding it—this would entice the two remaining TRUE Conservative-wing Justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, to vote against review of the Antonyuk case. They would coax the other quasi (or pseudo) Conservative-wing justices to refrain from voting to take up the case since, presumably, they don’t share the sensibilities of the Liberal-wing Justices (or do not share those sensibilities to the extent that the Liberal-wing of the Court does).

Since the Liberal-wing of the Court presently consists, thankfully, at the moment at least, of only three Justices, that wing of the Court would be one vote shy of the four votes required to grant review.

Likely the Chief Justice and one or more of the Trump nominees felt the best course of action was to deny Antonyuk a hearing. But is this sound reasoning?

Democrats in Congress and Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions around the Country already tend to ignore the prior three seminal Second Amendment cases.

Would not these Anti-Second Amendment elements simply look on the High Court’s reticence in granting review of Antonyuk as acquiescence to, perhaps obeisance to, or even outright capitulation to the unconstitutional maneuverings of a renegade New York State Government?

Would not these elements take the High Court’s actions as something more than tacit acknowledgment that the Court would no longer demand even the appearance of adherence to its major Second Amendment rulings? And, if that is true, then there is nothing to more to be gained from the High Court denying certiorari in Antonyuk than were the Court to grant certiorari only to rule against Petitioners.

To date, most Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions operate as they wish, contrary to the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court. And they are becoming more obstreperous, as the High Court becomes increasingly blasé, plainly, excruciatingly painfully indifferent to the State and Federal Courts blatantly ignoring the High Court’s landmark Second Amendment rulings.

Passive acceptance of State action that is plainly contemptuous of U.S. Supreme Court rulings is no better than active affirmance of disdainful conduct. In fact, in the latter situation, the effect may be marginally better. At least the public would no longer live under the illusion that the U.S. Supreme Court gives a damn about it and about the sanctity of the Nation’s Bill of Rights, as the Federal Government and Anti-Second Amendment States continue to whittle away at the import and efficacy of the Second Amendment.

Therefore, from a logical standpoint, denial of Petitioners Petition is no better than and marginally worse than the granting of the Petition and then rendering an adverse decision.

Hence, we feel a few Second Amendment cases exist, of which Antonyuk is one such, that do not fall within the general principle that refraining from review of a case, that would likely lead to a bad decision, is preferable to taking up a case that would likely generate a bad result.

Hence, we feel a few Second Amendment cases exist, of which Antonyuk is definitely one, that do not fall within the general principle that refraining from review of a case, that would likely lead to a bad decision, is preferable to taking up a case that would likely generate a bad result.

To our mind, Antonyuk is a prime example of the inapplicability of the general principle. And this is not a matter of first impression on our part.

We clearly and categorically made clear, three months ago, back on February 12, 2025 (after the Antonyuk Petitioners had filed their second Petition) that the High Court’s act of denying certiorari here is no better than had the Court taken the case up on review and affirmed the decision of the Second Circuit, against Petitioners, finding the Hochul Government’s amendments to the Handgun Law to be legal and Constitutional.

In our February 12, 2025 article, titled, “SCOTUS, STOP THE MERRY-GO-ROUND ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT ANTONYUK CASE IMPACTING BRUEN, GRANT THE WRIT OF CERTIORARI, AND EXPEDITE REVIEW ON THE MERITS” (reposted in Ammoland Shooting Sports News one day later, on February 13, 2025, under the title, “SCOTUS Must Step In: The Antonyuk Case & the Fight for 2nd Amendment Rights”), we stated,

IT IS TIME TO STOP THIS RIDICULOUS MERRY-GO-ROUND. THE U.S. SUPREME COURT MUST NOT ALLOW LOWER COURTS TO PLAY THEIR GAME OF DELAY AND APPEASEMENT ON BEHALF OF THE FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS THAT  CONTINUE TO DEFY U.S. SUPREME COURT DECISIONS THEY DON’T LIKE AND THAT ARE CONTRARY TO THEIR AIMS AND AGENDA. THEY WANT THIS THIRD BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT TO BE A RUBBER-STAMP FOR THEM, NOT AN INDEPENDENT BRANCH THAT THWARTS THEIR WILL. THAT MUST NOT BE!

ONE OF THE TOP OBJECTIVES OF THESE RUTHLESS AND DESTRUCTIVE FORCES IS THE ELIMINATION OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT. THEY ATTACK ALL ATTEMPTS BY CITIZENS TO STRENGTHEN IT.

TREACHEROUS FORCES OPPOSE AN ARMED CITIZENRY WHICH EXISTS TO SECURE BOTH LIFE AND LIBERTY. THESE FORCES SEE THE ARMED CITIZENRY AS A COUNTER-FORCE THAT WOULD PREVENT A STRONG CENTRAL GOVERNMENT EXERTING CONTROL OVER THE PEOPLE. THEY CANNOT ABIDE THIS.

BUT, WITH BIDEN OUT OF OFFICE AND TRUMP IN OFFICE, THEY SEE THEIR WELL-ENGINEERED PLANS TO TRANSFORM OUR COUNTRY INTO A DESPOTIC STATE QUICKLY UNRAVELING. THEY ARE ENRAGED AND DISTRAUGHT BY RECENT EVENTS.

THE ARMED CITIZENRY IS THE MOST EFFECTIVE DETERRENT TO THE REALIZATION OF THEIR OBJECTIVES—INSTITUTION OF TYRANNY OF GOVERNMENT. THE FORCES THAT SEEK TO DESTROY THIS COUNTRY KNOW THAT THE ARMED CITIZENRY WAS AND REMAINS THE BEST DETERRENT TO TYRANNY.

THIS IS WHY THESE FORCES THAT CRUSH ARE OBSESSED WITH DESTROYING THE SECOND AMENDMENT AND THE ARMED AMERICAN CITIZENRY.

IF THESE FORCES ARE SUCCESSFUL IN THEIR TREACHEROUS ENDEAVORS, THEY CAN EASILY SUBJUGATE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, CONTROLLING THEIR THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS.

LET US NOT BE DISTRACTED FROM THE SALIENT CRISIS AT HAND. IT IS FRONT AND CENTER AND IT IS DIRE.

We now await the U.S. Supreme Court decision whether to grant or deny the Writ once they return from recess.

The U.S. Supreme Court must take up this case. If it fails to do so, that means the New York Hochul Government has won. And further weakening of a citizen’s right to keep and bear arms in New York will continue to be eroded until nothing is left of the right.

As important as the pending Snope case is (which the U.S. Supreme Court continues to delay voting to grant review or not), the ANTONYUK case is, without doubt, THE MOST IMPORTANT SECOND AMENDMENT CASE TO COME BEFORE THE COURT SINCE BRUEN BECAUSE IT DIRECTLY IMPACTS BRUEN IN A WAY THAT NO OTHER PENDING CASE DOES. THE NEW YORK STATE CCIA IS BOTH A DIRECT RESPONSE TO BRUEN AND OPERATES IN OPEN AND BLATANT DEFIANCE OF IT.

If the U.S. Supreme Court does not take up any other Second Amendment case, this term, it must take up Antonyuk.

If the Court does review this case, IT MUST STRIKE DOWN the guts of New York’s amendments to its Handgun Law. If it rules in favor of the New York Government, then the Court slits its own throat by undermining its own decision in Bruen, and it opens the Country up to Tyranny. BRUEN WOULD BE FUNCTIONALLY DEAD AS WOULD THE SECOND AMENDMENT, FREEDOM, AND LIBERTY.

Nor can the Court take a pass on this case. For the result is the same.

The New York Government has treated THE BRUEN RULINGS as garbage and has treated the Court, the THIRD BRANCH OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, as a Branch without credible authority.

If New York can arrogantly, defiantly violate the Bruen rulings, which were, after all, directed, first and foremost at New York, then any other jurisdiction will feel confident it may do the same, perceiving it has tacit “license” to do so. The Bruen rulings will cease to have meaning and significance.

Anti-Second Amendment states would then see the Court in the same vein as the world has perceived the demented, dementia-riddled Joe Biden, and his Administration—as effete, ineffectual, frightened, and imbecilic little creatures, to be taken advantage of or simply ignored.

Anti-Second Amendment states and local jurisdictions would be constantly emboldened to continue violating the citizen’s fundamental right to armed self-defense, and they would act aggressively—flagrantly violating the law and the Constitution.  

In time, the right to armed self-defense in the public domain and even in the home would be second-guessed. That would result in a deleterious domino effect. Heller and McDonald, will in turn be weakened. For, each case depends on and clarifies points of each of the others. They are all connected.

We hope and pray that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have as much sway over Chief Justice Roberts as had the late eminent Justice, Antonin Scalia.

They must impress on Chief Justice Roberts, and on the other ostensibly Conservative-wing Justices, the imperative need to take up Antonyuk this term and to strike down New York’s ridiculous and dangerous Handgun Law. And they must hold that the date of ratification of the Bill of Rights, in 1791, is the date on which the methodological test of “Historical Tradition” in Second Amendment cases must rest. Antonyuk will thereupon become THE FOURTH LANDMARK SECOND AMENDMENT CASE.

This never came to pass.

Plainly, whatever John Roberts feelings are concerning the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms, it bears asserting and emphasizing HE DID sign onto the majority opinion (both reasoning and rulings) in Bruen and in the two seminal Second Amendment cases that preceded it.

So, if the Chief Justice did not wish to strengthen the three seminal decisions, he would, then, seek to deny the Antonyuk Petitioners’ petition.

For, he cannot both affirm the ludicrous decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and at one and the same time plausibly claim logical and legal consistency having voted with the majority in the previous three major Second Amendment cases.

Similarly, the Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney-Barrett (President Trump’s nominees during his first term in Office) had all signed onto the majority Bruen decision, even as two of them added their own concurring opinion.

And, notwithstanding that none of the three nominees of President Trump’s sat on the U.S. Supreme Court when the first two landmark decisions came down, they could not claim consistency with their remarks and voting record in Bruen, (and with Heller and McDonald, for the three cases are inextricably bound) were they to rule against the Antonyuk Petitioners had the case garnered four votes necessary for a review.

But all this insistently still begs the question why Antonyuk had not been granted certiorari. The reason may have to do with psychology.

Unlike politicians, many of whom, constantly contradict themselves and are troubled not by their lack of consistency in their positions that they vociferously defend one day only to turn around the next and claim duplicitously that they never changed their position at all or otherwise that they never held onto a position that they actually did hold onto—tortuously attempting to weasel around the obvious contradiction when confronted with it.

U.S. Supreme Court Justices scrupulously avoid inconsistency in their opinions. If they are prone to reverse themselves, they acknowledge the change in position, striking down cases if they believe, on reassessment, that they had wrongly decided them.

Is Chief Justice John Roberts, for one, prepared to assert that the majority opinions in Heller, McDonald, and Bruen were wrong, even though he signed onto them? But, these are major Landmark cases involving the most significant Fundamental Right without which a Free Republic can survive. And these cases are all fairly recent. So, Justice Roberts is not prepared to assert error even if he were a reluctant signatory on the three Landmark Second Amendment cases. But, he doesn’t want to add a Fourth Landmark case to the list, perceiving denial of certiorari in the Antonyuk case as the best course of action to maintain at least a modicum of consistency. One or more Trump nominees may feel the same way toward the Second Amendment.

So, then, in an attempt to avoid a charge of inconsistency, ergo, hypocrisy, Chief Justice Roberts and one or more or all three of Trump’s High Court nominees may have felt that denying the Antonyuk Petitioners Petition for Writ of Certiorari would be preferable to a claim of abject hypocrisy—a way then (a partial way, perhaps, as he sees it) to save face.

One thing is clear: Roberts doesn’t want to sign onto, let alone pen, another landmark Second Amendment decision.

Antonyuk would be the Fourth Landmark case. Snope vs. Brown would be the Fifth.

And, after several delays in either granting or denying Petitioners’ Petition in Snope, the High Court is evidently wrestling with that case, knowing that continued civilian citizen ownership and possession of semiautomatic weapons, a class of weapons in common use is a hot-button issue and bellwether case that— depending on the outcome of a Supreme Court decision on it (as with Antonyuk)—would either strengthen the previous seminal case decisions or severely weaken them and thereby weaken exercise of the natural law right to armed self-defense.

The issue of the constitutionality of civilian citizen ownership and possession of semiautomatic weapons had first come up on a Petition for review a decade ago in the Friedman case.

The Court quickly and summarily rejected granting certiorari. That failure to review the case prompted a vociferous, comprehensive, plainly scathing dissenting comment by Justice Thomas. The late eminent Justice, Antonin Scalia joined him. Now the Snope case is before the Court. The case has come up in conference several times, and the Court continues to procrastinate a vote on it, which suggests that Justices Thomas and Alito are demanding review of it, as the case meets all the requirements:

• CONFLICT IN THE CIRCUITS

• DIRECT AND DECISIVE IMPACT ON A FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE RIGHT

•  IMPACT ON THE COURT’S PRIOR LANDMARK SECOND AMENDMENT CASES AND,

• TREMENDOUS AND ACUTE PUBLIC INTEREST.

But, having quickly denied Antonyuk, it is likely the Court will ultimately deny the Snope Petition as well. See our article on the Snope case, posted in the Arbalest Quarrel, on January 12, 2025, one month before we posted our first major article on Antonyuk.

The Roberts Court plainly does not want the Court to issue any further landmark Second Amendment cases. Yet, the Chief Justice may feel obliged to take up another Second Amendment case or two this term. But, none will have the gravitas of the Antonyuk and Snope cases.

Snope is of penultimate importance, second only to Antonyuk in importance. Thematically they raise issues directly impacting and are bound to the three seminal cases.

If Antonyuk were taken up by the High Court, the Court would be hard-pressed not to take up Snope, thereafter. But eschewing the one, the Court can eschew the other, with the understanding that both should have been granted review, as they, too, are intertwined with Heller, McDonald, and Bruen.

Failing to grant review in Antonyuk, denying review of Snope would be straightforward. So, then, why has the Court continually delayed a vote to grant or deny certiorari on Snope and yet denied granting of Antonyuk out-of-hand?

The Roberts Court has effectively boxed in and quarantined Heller, McDonald, and Bruen. That is the Court’s intent. And Justices Alito and Thomas are having none of it. But, in the absence of sufficient support from the Trump nominees—obviously not forthcoming—and with Scalia (conveniently for Roberts and the Progressive Wing of the High Court) out of the picture—the hands of Justice Thomas and Justice Alito are tied.

This leads to other suppositions.

Some believe that Chief Justice Roberts is compromised. Possibly. Recent bizarre Court decisions against Trump, on the immigration front and public comments by the Chief Justice only adds to the uncomfortable thought that Roberts is compromised. That is to suggest powerful interests behind the scenes compelled Roberts to issue public comments, the content of which is singularly odd and harmful to the credibility and integrity of a truly independent Court, and to take an active part in the crafting of odd, perplexing decisions, inconsistent with the Doctrine of Separation of Powers and contrary to both U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudential concerns and sound application of legal principles, and damaging to the well-being of the Nation.

In response to the lawsuit—and apropos of discussion among Congressional Republicans pertaining to possible impeachment launched against crooked judges in the District Courts—Roberts recently said, in part, “In our constitution, the judiciary is a coequal branch of government, separate from the others, with the authority to interpret the Constitution as law and strike down acts of Congress or acts of the president,” . . . and that innovation doesn’t work if the judiciary is not independent.”

The sentiment while true is not at all reassuring, given, one, the justified impetus for President Trump’s lawsuit against the Chief Justice, and, given, two, the impetus for Congressional House Republican discussion of possible impeachment of rogue judges on the lower federal courts who, apparently take their cue from or remain unconcerned over possible repercussions from Roberts, as Justice Roberts has done little to rein these rogue Judges in.  

The Third Branch of Government is deliberately, maliciously, and unconstitutionally impeding President Donald Trump, deliberately waylaying the President and hijacking the Second Branch of the Federal Government.

The Roberts Court is preventing President Trump from exercising his Article II authority, undermining his ability to faithfully execute the laws of Congress and the Constitution of the United States the U.S. Constitution to the best of his ability, in accordance with and consistent with his Oath of Office, set forth in the Constitution, and his promises to the American Electorate that voted him into Office.

From what we perceive, the Chief Justice seems to be taking his marching orders from unelected and secretive interests who are now using the U.S. Supreme Court in a scurrilous attempt to further the Neoliberal Globalist Socialist agenda, previously undertaken by the Progressive and Marxist Democrats in Congress, who had previously done the heavy lifting for the shadowy, powerful world empire builders who controlled them.

But these reprehensible Congressional Representatives and U.S. Senators can no longer effectively serve their masters, even as they wish to do so.

They are hamstrung, unable, though they try, to hijack the Second Branch of Government, first because they do not control either House of Congress, and second because Trump has learned well from his first term how better to insulate his Administration from leaks and outright acts of sabotage.

Justice Roberts talks sanctimoniously and duplicitously about the independence of the Third Branch of Government. Yet, all the while he uses the Third Branch of Government to intrude aggressively, disconcertingly, and arguably unlawfully, on the very independence and domain of the Second Branch of Government, the Office of the Chief Executive of the Nation.

To assist him in this injudicious, unethical, likely unlawful attack on the Second Branch of Federal Government, Chief Justice Roberts subtly taps into the Activist Marxist Cultist State Judges (voted into office by uninformed voters systematically brainwashed by a powerful seditious Press, working with powerful, wealthy Soros NGOs) as they work in tandem with the scores of Federal Judges (nominated by past Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and subsequently confirmed by a Democrat Party Senate Majority, whom Senate Republicans were powerless to prevent).

Through his actions, Justice John Roberts appears clearly intent on preventing President Trump High Court President Trump from faithfully executing the laws of Congress and from defending the U.S. Constitution to the best of his ability, in accordance with his Oath of Office.

The question is not whether the Roberts Court is independent—which it is, as that is how the Framers of the U.S. Constitution had assiduously constructed the Federal Government—but whether the Supreme Court (THIS Third Branch of the Federal Government) is consciously and deceitfully misusing that independence as a shield while it intrudes, with abandon, on the terrain of the second branch of government, and doing this for the purpose of disrupting the effective operation of the second branch.

If so, and this is the inference we draw, then the actions of the Chief Justice and that of the lower Federal Courts, that Roberts defends, which visibly thwart President Trump from lawfully exercising his authority in accordance with his obligations under the Constitution, are clearly, blatantly unconscionable.

President Trump and Republicans in Congress have every right, as well as the obligation, to stop the deliberate encroachment of the Judiciary on the domain of the U.S. President.

We see the effects of this on many fronts, including the profound failure of the Supreme Court to constrain government actors that illegally, unconstitutionally, frustrate Americans’ exercise of their fundamental, unalienable right to armed self-defense, codified in the Second Amendment, and to clamp down on state government actors that contemptuously defy U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

The decision to deny certiorari in Antonyuk could simply mean that Roberts was never pleased with the Heller decision that he signed onto and seeks to atone for by quietly, inexorably weakening Heller and the two succeeding Landmark cases he signed onto.

And, with the architect of the Heller decision, dead, the defenders of the Bill of Rights who remain, Associate Justices Thomas and Alito cannot, alone, stop him and the three Liberal-wing Justices.

It may well be that one or more of President Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court nominees may not be pleased with the Bruen decision either, despite having signed onto the decision in that THIRD LANDMARK SECOND AMENDMENT CASE.

If there were reluctance, or misgivings before or after the fact, that helps explain—perhaps that may best explain—why the Antonyuk case has become effectively a dead letter now.

But, then, what explains the existence of Bruen at all? With so much misgivings among the majority of Justices, why did Bruen happen to come about as the THIRD LANDMARK SECOND AMENDMENT CASE?

The most reasonable explanation is that Bruen arose through the singular, momentous efforts of two Justices, i.e., Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. These two Justices may have insisted that the Court take up Bruen, ever since the failure of the Roberts Court to grant review of a prior Second Amendment case also coming out of New York, referred to colloquially as the “Gun Transport” Case.

Having agreed to take up Bruen, if only reluctantly, it may be that Chief Justice Roberts, and the three Trump nominees—the quasi-Conservative-wing Associate Justices—agreed to this with the implicit understanding that the Roberts Court would not thereafter accept review of a FOURTH LANDMARK Second Amendment case, which Antonyuk certainly would have been. And the Snope case would then be the Fifth.

Surely, if Justice Roberts held the same concern for the sanctity of the fundamental right to civilian citizen armed self-defense, then he, together with Justices Thomas and Alito, would certainly be able to cobble together two more quasi-Conservative-wing Justices to join them, assuring a favorable majority ruling in that case.

It is patently clear to us that Justice Roberts does not hold the Second Amendment in high regard, even if other factors exist that inform his present actions. And the Trump nominees also seem to have little regard for the sanctity of the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

In the next couple of articles, we will delve into the claim—which is abjectly false—that the Roberts Court could not grant review in Antonyuk, had it wanted to, because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had not rendered a final decision on all the issues in that case.

As we noted, supra, that bald assertion isn’t true, even as some Second Amendment organizations including, prominently, NRA, as well as some Second Amendment weblogs, postulate that the case isn’t in condition for review by the High Court.

For, if that were true, Antonyuk Petitioners would have refrained from filing their second Petition for Writ of Certiorari. That they did not refrain from filing their second Petition, it is plain to us, as they argued in their Brief, that the major issues are ripe for review on the merits by the Supreme Court.

If the Court felt otherwise, they should have made plain their reasons why they denied certiorari and should have acted as they had in the Antonyuk Petitioners’ first Petition.

The Court would then have granted certiorari, vacated the Second Circuit’s previous order, and remanded the case to the Second Circuit with specific directions on how to proceed to place the Antonyuk case in condition for review. And, in that order, the Court would have further made clear that, while the Hochul Government could certainly file its response to the third Petition, presenting its arguments in support of the constitutionality of the CCIA, the U.S. Supreme Court would grant certiorari of Antonyuk Petitioners’ third Petition.

That latest U.S. Supreme Court order would be consistent with its prior rulings in Antonyuk which made plain the Court’s interest in Antonyuk, and for a plethora of reasons, not least of which involves its direct impact on Bruen.

Yet, the Court did nothing. The immediate and perfunctory denial of Certiorari leaves Petitioners, and tens of millions of Americans who cherish their fundamental right to armed self-defense, in an uncomfortable, disquieting, bewildering situation—a veritable state of limbo.

There is much going on here. But for the two stalwart defenders of our Free Constitutional Republic, Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the Court would have long ago lost its bearings.

Plainly the Court’s actions (and non-actions) demonstrate it is rattled, unsure of how to respond to major cases before it in a Country divided between those who wish to preserve our Country intact as the Framers crafted it, and those who wish to destroy the whole of it.

And, with the Court prepared to revisit Birthright Citizenship after well over one hundred years, those ruthless interests here and abroad that seek to bring our Country to ruin, may see that objective coming inexorably to fruition, notwithstanding another major setback after the majority of the American Electorate demonstrated their ability to repulse incessant propaganda fomented by the Nation’s many enemies both inside the Country and outside it, orchestrating for the Nation’s dissolution, having voted Donald Trump as U.S. President, and having given Republicans control over both Houses of Congress.

But the would-be destroyers of our Nation seem to have infinite patience.

And these would-be destroyers of our Nation have an abundance of patience—due, perhaps, from the belief, that time ultimately is on their side. They feel they can wait out Trump and they see that, in through the very strength of our Constitution—and apart from the Bill of Rights—there is weakness, as the vast numbers of the public are easily manipulated, and the much of the Constitution can be successfully sidestepped or simply ignored.

They have well-nigh infinite resources in money and organization ability, and they have legions of supporters, and substantial control over the Nation’s institutions. They are now exerting that influence on the High Court.

They are now exerting or extending influence over the High Court.

There seems to be, then, substantial limits on what Congressional Republicans and the U.S. President can achieve, notwithstanding control of two House of Congress and the incomparable fortitude of President Trump. The public should prevail on Republicans in Congress and President Trump to undertake investigations of the Court and of those rogue elements in Congress and society imperiling the Nation, the Constitution, and the American people. Serious course-correction is necessary to prevent the loss of our Republic and loss of our ability to exercise our natural law, God-given Rights—especially our sacred unalienable right to keep and bear arms.

As for the Third Branch of Government—the U.S. Supreme Court—it seems there is little that two Justices Thomas and Alito can alone accomplish on behalf of the High Court, absent the ballast that Antonin Scalia provided. This is unfortunate for us American Patriots.

The three Justices were able to preserve an independent, non-political Third Branch of Government—the U.S. Supreme Court—beholding to and desirous of securing, preserving our Nation’s Constitution, a Free Republic, and securing a Sovereign well-armed American Citizenry.  Without them, the Heller case would never have transpired.

These three Justices, together, have stood firm against the tidal forces around the world moving with alacrity against us—the only truly FREE and SOVEREIGN people on Earth—as those forces aim with a single-minded focus to bring about our total, irrevocable and irretrievable demise. We, American Patriots, must support Justices Thomas and Alito in their efforts to protect and strengthen our sacred right to keep and bear arms, codified in the Second Amendment. Justice Thomas has correctly and repeatedly cautioned against treating the right to armed self-defense as a “second-class right.”

All too many ill-informed Americans have deluded themselves into believing this sacred right should go the way of the dinosaurs. Would they wish to see a Free Republic and a Free and Sovereign people also going the way of the dinosaurs?

That so many Americans extol the horrors of Marxism, seeing this abomination as a virtue, and as they have little or no understanding of the importance of our Bill of Rights, one might feel the urge to admit utter defeat, lamenting “all is lost.”

However, if we stand strong against the evil that continues aggressively to assault us, we will not be defeated. Americans prevailed once against the long odds, almost two and half centuries ago. We can continue to do so as we once did through Faith in the Almighty Creator, Faith in Ourselves, and a Firm Hold on Our Arms and Ammunition.

__________________________________                          

BRUEN IS DEAD! SCOTUS MURDERED IT AND, IN SO DOING, HAS SLIT ITS OWN THROAT

The worst thing that could happen in a Second Amendment case has happened.

During its conference on Monday, April 5, 2025, SCOTUS declined to review Antonyuk vs. James. Who or what could have caused this inexplicable, horrid turn of events?

Why didn’t SCOTUS, through John Roberts’ influence as the Chief Justice, make Antonyuk happen?

This didn’t happen because Chief Justice Roberts didn’t want it to happen. And the late preeminent Justice Antonin Scalia isn’t with us who would otherwise have made it happen.

This tragic turn of events comes as a shock to us at the Arbalest Quarrel, as any bad SCOTUS decision would, even though this one does not come as a complete surprise.

Recent Court decisions in non-Second Amendment cases, decided against President Trump, where Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Amy Coney-Barrett joined the Liberal-wing, might have provided an inkling of bad tidings to come.

But this doesn’t explain why two seemingly “Conservative-wing” Justices, would turn against the American people.

Has the Chief Justice, along with one or more of Trump’s three nominees from his first term, been personally compromised?

If so, this means nothing less than the loss of the independence of the High Court: The Third Branch of the Federal Government.

It is not ridiculous to think this. This failure of the Court to take up Antonyuk, after several delays, quietly, perfunctorily, and without explanation—where such failure destroys the sanctity of the High Court’s prior seminal Second Amendment rulings going back seventeen years, to Heller—is as inexplicable to us, as it is profoundly disturbing.

Realizing the extraordinary importance of a final resolution in the Antonyuk case, apropos of the sanctity of the fundamental, unalienable right to armed self-defense against the predatory beast, the intractable predatory man-beast, and the perennial predatory man-beast of government, we fervently believed Antonyuk was on track to become the fourth seminal Second Amendment case, augmenting the rulings in the prior three landmark cases. And we inferred Snope vs. Brown to be the second most important case, after Antonyuk. How could the Court not grant review of this case? We were wrong.

There is no limit to the inscrutability of Government and of the venality of those operating within its labyrinthine corridors.  

In a series of articles published on our website in February and March of this year, reposted in abridged format in Ammoland Shooting Sports News, we discussed at length why the Antonyuk and Snope cases are, bar none, the two most important, consequential Second Amendment cases to come before the U.S. Supreme Court since Bruen.

And, as these two cases involve the most important natural law right, without which a free Constitutional Republic and a Sovereign People, cannot exist, these two cases are the most important to come before the Court, of all the thousands that have wended their way to the Court, in the last couple of years, regardless of the nature of the legal issue.

We considered possible Supreme Court scenarios once Snope vs. Brown and Antonyuk vs. James came to the Court, and the ramifications were the Court to deny review, or accept review and rule for the State against the Petitioners.

We did expect the High Court would make a decision about Snope vs. Brown before tackling Antonyuk, since the Court had pushed back final disposition of Snope several times before taking up even Antonyuk, at conference.

So, we were puzzled at what transpired at conference, on April 5, 2025.

That the Court decided to delay a vote on Snope vs. Brown, turning its attention to Antonyuk, and thereupon denying certiorari in Antonyuk, suggests to us the Court won’t vote to grant review in Snope, either.

This doesn’t mean SCOTUS won’t grant review of some other 2A case this term. It does mean that any future Second Amendment case the Court may grant review of means nothing because the Court has just told the American people the right to armed self-defense, as a fundamental right, is and shall always remain a second-class right, as Justice Clarence Thomas had long feared and had scolded the Court for tacitly proclaiming it to be so.

The Second Amendment is on its deathbed. This is not exaggeration.

Back on February 12, 2025, in our article titled, “Scotus, Stop the Merry-Go-Round On The Second Amendment Antonyuk Case Impacting Bruen, Grant the Writ of Certiorari,” we stated,

The U.S. Supreme Court must take up this [the Antonyuk] case. If it fails to do so, that means the New York Hochul Government has won. . . Further weakening of a citizen’s right to keep and bear arms in New York will continue . . . until nothing is left of the right.

As important as the pending Snope case is . . . , Antonyuk is, without doubt, the most important Second Amendment case to come before the Court since Bruen because it directly impacts Bruen in a way that no other pending case does. The new York State CCIA is both a direct response to Bruen and operates in open and blatant defiance of it. . . .

If the Court does review this case, it must strike down the guts of New York’s amendments to its Handgun Law. If it rules in favor of the New York Government, then the Court slits its own throat by undermining its own decision in Bruen and it opens the Country up to tyranny. Bruen would be functionally dead as would the second amendment, [and] freedom, and liberty.

Nor can the Court take a pass on this case. For the result is the same.

The New York Government has treated the Bruen rulings as garbage and has treated the Court, the Third Branch of the U.S. Government, as a Branch without credible authority.

If New York can arrogantly, defiantly violate the Bruen rulings, which were, after all, directed, first and foremost at New York, then any other jurisdiction will feel confident it may do the same, perceiving it has tacit “license” to do so. The Bruen rulings will cease to have meaning and significance.

Anti-Second Amendment states would then see the Court in the same vein as the world has perceived the demented, dementia-riddled Joe Biden, and his Administration—as [an] effete, ineffectual, frightened, and imbecilic little creature, to be taken advantage of or simply ignored.

Anti-Second Amendment states and local jurisdictions would be constantly emboldened to continue violating the citizen’s fundamental right to armed self-defense, and they would act aggressively—flagrantly violating the law and the Constitution.  

In time, the right to armed self-defense in the public domain and even in the home would be second-guessed. That would result in a deleterious domino effect. Heller and McDonald will in turn be weakened. For, each case depends on and clarifies points of the others. They are all connected.

We hope and pray that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have as much sway over Chief Justice Roberts as had the late eminent Justice, Antonin Scalia.

They must impress on Chief Justice Roberts, and on the other ostensibly Conservative-wing Justices, the imperative need to take up Antonyuk this term and to strike down New York’s ridiculous and dangerous Handgun Law. And they must hold that the date of ratification of the Bill of Rights, in 1791, is the date on which the methodological test of “Historical Tradition” in Second Amendment cases must rest.”

Jump forward to April 5, 2025. Antonyuk is dead—a case that has taken well over two years to make it to SCOTUS on a final appealable order. And Bruen has died with it.

Our guess is that Justices Thomas and Alito are, understandably, apoplectic with rage at the cowardice exhibited by the other ostensibly Conservative-wing Justices to support them. So, they likely didn’t, this time, bother to write a dissenting comment that would have supported taking up the case, striking down the CCIA.

Plainly these two stalwart Justices could not muster support from at least three other Justices to strike down the unconstitutional, unconscionable New York “Concealed Carry Improvement Act.”

So, rather than voting to grant certiorari—which only requires four votes—Chief Justice Roberts may have offered Justices Thomas and Alito a choice to allow the petition for review to die at conference or to accept review of the case where a majority of the Court would eventually find the “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (CCIA) constitutional.

The effect of such a “choice” is dire, amounting to no real choice at all.

Still, the Liberal-wing would love to see the case taken up only to rule in favor of New York.

Chief Justice Roberts and at least one other Associate Justice would have gone along with a ruling favoring the New York Government, thereby creating a narrow majority, sufficient to defeat the Petitioners’ hope for redemption after well over two years of enormous effort and the expenditure of substantial funds to vindicate the Bruen rulings.

The abject failure of the U.S. Supreme Court to enforce its own rulings is painful to behold. Where are the originalists and textualists among the Justices?

This methodology—employed by the late Associate Justice Scalia, a methodology that was, for decades, the mainstay of jurisprudential analysis at the High Court—is at an end.

The two remaining adherents of that methodology, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, cannot maintain it by themselves.

And Trump’s three nominations were, we see, not up to the task.

Here, then, is a newsflash for the legacy Press: The U.S. Supreme Court does not sit six Conservative-wing Justices. There remain only two after Scalia’s death—the preeminent Associate Justice of our time.

Of the remaining seven Justices on the Court, there are three far-left Internationalists, and four anemic, inconsistent fence-sitters, ever buffeted hither and yon by the prevailing political wind.

SCOTUS need now only throw Bruen into a ditch and cover it with dirt. The Court can bury Heller and McDonald with it.

The rulings in all three cases are frozen in time, to be systematically whittled away by the Marxist State Governments.

Snope is now an afterthought. For, the decision not to review Antonyuk does not bode well for that Snope.

Snope is important, but not as important as Antonyuk because Antonyuk was the only case operating as a direct challenge to Bruen.

Mainstream media simply refers to the Court’s decision to deny review of Antonyuk, as a decision to forego reviewing New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA), “Sensitive Place” restrictions” mandate and the “Good Moral Character” requirement.

Yet, the impact of the High Court’s failure to review Antonyuk goes far beyond a failure to review two major components of the New York’s CCIA.

The Duke Center for Firearms Law views the denial of the Writ for Certiorari as an attack on a core aspect of Bruen and Heller—the standard of review to be employed by reviewing courts when testing the constitutionality of a governmental action that impacts the core of the Second Amendment.

The Duke Center for Firearms Law said,

The Court re-distributed Antonyuk—the New York post-Bruen sensitive places and licensing case—for last week's conference and denied cert this morning.  This development can be read as at least an implicit endorsement of the Second Circuit's observation that "[i]t would be incongruous to deem the right to keep and bear arms fully applicable to the States by Reconstruction standards but then define its scope and limitations exclusively by 1791 standards."

If true, this suggests that SCOTUS wishes to avoid any discussion of the historical tradition standard, aware that it is a nebulous, essentially unworkable concept. But that is how Chief Justice Roberts and, apparently, several other Justices wish to leave it, rather than tackling the problem with this standard, head-on.

In a short statement about the Court’s denial of the Writ of Certiorari, that appeared on the Governor’s official website, Kathy Hochul said,

New York's strong gun safety laws save lives, and gun violence has declined by 53 percent since a pandemic-era peak. In 2022, after the Supreme Court decided to overturn New York's century-old concealed carry laws, I fought to pass new legislation to keep our streets and subways safe from gun violence — and we got it done. Today, the Supreme Court has officially rejected an attempt to block this critical legislation, ensuring the core tenets of the law I signed in 2022 will remain in effect. Public safety will always be my top priority, and I'll continue fighting to keep New Yorkers safe.

Public safety was never Hochul’s concern despite her assertion to the contrary, judging by the continuous criminal violence plaguing New York and the insouciance of the State’s Criminal Justice System to rid the streets of legions of psychopathic killers and dangerous lunatics running amok. But, as for her remark that, “the Supreme Court has officially rejected an attempt to block this critical legislation, ensuring the core tenets of the law I signed in 2022 will remain in effect,” she is, unfortunately, correct.

SCOTUS has stamped the  “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” with its official imprimatur. Hochul will use that imprimatur to add further draconian measures to the New York Handgun Law.

Other States will take notice of this. They will pay even less heed to the High Court, now.

But blame for this New York CCIA abomination rests principally with the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court has effectively struck down Bruen, and, with that, it has destroyed its own authority and credibility.

America’s Patriots must harbor no illusion as to the deadly import of this awful decision by the Court. For, the failure to grant review in Antonyuk operates as no less than a decision, and the worst possible decision, had it granted review of the case, and ruled for the New York Government. The effect of denial of Certiorari is the same. The Court has essentially destroyed Bruen, McDonald, and the parent case, Heller, and has, thereby, slit its own throat.

The only upside to this is that the citizenry should now realize that the Right of the people to keep and bear arms does not rely, nor ought it ever rely, on Congress, on the President, on the U.S. Supreme Court, or on the States, or on any other transitory, man-made contrivance.

Rather, the God-given Right rests, ultimately, where it had always rested and must always reside—intrinsically, inextricably, eternally—in the American people themselves.

___________________________________

THE DIRE STATE OF CIVILIAN CITIZEN ARMED SELF-DEFENSE IN THE “DIRE STATE” OF NEW YORK AND ELSEWHERE IN THE NATION

The Arbalest Quarrel commends Ammoland Shooting Sports News for posting three recent back-to-back articles that highlight the nature of the problem plaguing exercise of the fundamental, unalienable, non-transitory, absolute right to civilian citizen armed self-defense.

The problem rests on a peculiar mindset of Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions that perceive the armed citizen as a scourge rather than as an effective solution to  intractable violent crime in those jurisdictions.

Two of the articles are authored by F Riehl, Editor in Chief of Ammoland. One, posted on March 5, 2025, is titled “Report: Notorious NYPD License Division Drags its Feet on Gun Permits.” The second, posted one day later, on March 6, 2025, is titled “More Gun Owners Take NYPD to Court Over Concealed Carry License Delays.”

Both articles draw attention to the notorious New York State handgun licensing scheme.

The March 6, 2025, article cites an AQ paper, posted almost three years earlier, on May 27, 2022, indicative of a continuous and stubborn matter affecting the NYPD and, by extension, a matter negatively impacting Americans residing or working in New York City who desire to exercise their fundamental, unalienable, natural law right to keep and bear arms.

Only through the carrying of a handgun can these Americans ensure their life and safety, navigating an unpredictable and often hostile environment that New York City poses.

The AQ article, as posted in abridged format in Ammoland, is titled “Corruption & Unfairness Plague The NYPD Firearms License Division.”

The AQ paper published in unabridged format as an essay is available for viewing on the AQ website, under essentially the same title, “Corruption And Unfairness Plague The NYPD Firearms License Division.”

The paper was published in AQ on  April 13, 2022. That paper is one of a series of essays serving as an exposé of problems attendant to New York City’s “Concealed Handgun Carry” schema.

Even after the U.S. Supreme Court in the third landmark Second Amendment case NYSRPA vs. Bruen struck down the “Proper Cause” standard—which had been in force for decades and which had led to summary and illegal denial of thousands of applications for concealed handgun carry licenses—the NYPD hasn’t let up.

Since the NYPD License Division can no longer easily and casually deny issuance of concealed handgun carry licenses outright, it now resorts to a tactic long in use and designed to frustrate Americans’ exercise of their right to armed self-defense: NYPD License Officers deliberately or negligently delaying, the final resolution of applications for handgun licenses.

The State Handgun law requires processing of firearms applications within 6 months of filing. A six month wait is too lengthy; yet, the License Division often delays its decision, to grant or deny issuance of a license far beyond that six month period, without providing a written explanation to the applicant, explaining the reason for the delay. And, importantly, such delay, regarding the applicant, can only be for “good cause.” Yet that written explanation often goes wanting.

This dismissive attitude demonstrated by the NYPD License Division, involving a serious matter—one’s exercise of his fundamental, unalienable right to armed self-defense—is unconscionable and unconstitutional. Yet this occurs with regularity.

NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (4-b), sets forth,

Processing of license applications. Applications for licenses shall be accepted for processing by the licensing officer at the time of presentment. Except upon written notice to the applicant specifically stating the reasons for any delay, in each case the licensing officer shall act upon any application for a license pursuant to this section within six months of the date of presentment of such an application to the appropriate authority. Such delay may only be for good cause and with respect to the applicant. In acting upon an application, the licensing officer shall either deny the application for reasons specifically and concisely stated in writing or grant the application and issue the license applied for.

The NYPD License Division routinely delays final action on an application well beyond the six month deadline. This might be due to administrative inefficiencies, or there might exist a more sinister reason for non-compliance with deadlines——

The State Government’s long-standing antipathy to civilian citizen ownership and possession of firearms (going back to the dawn of the Republic), and its ability—since the advent of handgun licensing—to effectively engage in delaying issuance of licenses helps explain the City Government’s disheartening, lackadaisical and callous attitude toward handgun license application processing and extends to the processing of rifle and shotgun permits as well, which New York City code also requires, even though the State doesn’t require a permit to own and possess a rifle and shotgun that isn’t “semiautomatic” in operation.

How can the Governor’s Office and the NYC Mayor’s Office so easily, mindlessly shirk their obligation under the law of New York?

The Government is able to evade its obligation for lack of any penalty attaching for bad cause or no cause delay in processing applications. And how can that be? Could the State Legislature in Albany have forgotten to include a penalty for non-action on an application against a police department when the Legislature drafted  NY CLS Penal § 400.00. That defies belief. This lack of a penalty provision in the Handgun Statute must be deliberate.

For renewal applications, State law establishes rigid deadlines for the filing of all such “renewal” applications yet leaves to the licensing authorities the power to craft their own deadlines when submitting new applications for handgun licenses, along with supporting documents for those applications.

Applicants must adhere firmly to policy directives when applying for a handgun license for the first time. These policy directives have the force of law. And a New York licensing official will not accept an excuse for failure of an applicant to comply fully with every policy directive, and to respond truthfully in response to every question and to be honest in every declaration made.

Failure to provide all necessary documentation as requested (i.e., demanded) by the licensing officer results in summary rejection of the application. And false statements can subject the applicant to criminal liability and prosecution.

Renewal applications, unlike first-time applications, fall under NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (10-b). Failure of timely recertification operates as an automatic revocation of one’s license.”

All licensees shall be recertified to the division of state police every five years thereafter, except as otherwise provided in paragraph (d) of this subdivision. Any license issued before the effective date of the chapter of the laws of two thousand thirteen which added this paragraph shall be recertified by the licensee on or before January thirty-first, two thousand eighteen, and not less than one year prior to such date, the state police shall send a notice to all license holders who have not recertified by such time. Such recertification shall be in a form as approved by the superintendent of state police, which shall request the license holder’s name, date of birth, gender, race, residential address, social security number, firearms possessed by such license holder, email address at the option of the license holder and an affirmation that such license holder is not prohibited from possessing firearms. The form may be in an electronic form if so designated by the superintendent of state police. Failure to recertify shall act as a revocation of such license. If the New York state police discover as a result of the recertification process that a licensee failed to provide a change of address, the New York state police shall not require the licensing officer to revoke such license.

See also NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (10-d). The date for recertification of a license issued under NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (2) (f) is three years from the last date of issuance.

NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (10-d) provides,

Licenses issued under paragraph (f) of subdivision two of this section shall be recertified or renewed in the same form and manner as otherwise required by this subdivision, provided however, that such licenses shall be recertified or renewed every three years following the issuance of such license. For licenses issued prior to the effective date of this paragraph that were issued more than three years prior to such date, or will expire in less than one year from such date shall be recertified or renewed within one year of such date.

And, for failure to recertify a license for a “semiautomatic rifle,” a person faces punitive penalties as well as revocation of his license and faces summary denial of any future license for any kind of firearm.

NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (10-c) sets forth,

A license to purchase or take possession of a semiautomatic rifle as defined in subdivision two of this section shall be recertified to the applicable licensing officer every five years following the issuance of such license. Failure to renew such a license shall be a violation punishable by a fine not to exceed two hundred fifty dollars, and such failure to renew shall be considered by the licensing officer when reviewing future license applications by the license holder pursuant to this chapter.

AQ must emphasize here that the problems attendant to handgun licensing are not to be ascribed to rank and file police officers. They don’t craft police policy. They don’t enact laws. They carry out official edicts that come from their superiors. The problems with handgun licensing in New York therefore stem from the laws that legislators pass and the policies that high Government officials craft to turn those laws, rules, codes, and regulations into operational policy directives.

In New York City, the Police Commissioner sets the policies of the Department. The Commissioner is appointed by the Mayor of the City, and is beholden to him and, will, as is invariably the case, accommodate the Mayor, by instituting policies that adhere to the Mayor’s personal beliefs toward firearms and to the Mayor’s personal predilections concerning civilian citizen ownership and possession of firearms.

The New York City Police Commissioner’s sentiments will also cohere with those of the Governor. This means that the Police Commissioner’s policies will reflect Governor Hochul’s and Mayor Adam’s antipathy toward those citizens who seek to carry a handgun in public, for self-defense.

Keep in mind that, that the New York City Police Commissioner is not elected by the people and is not, therefore, answerable to the people.

Traditionally, the mayors of New York City and the State’s Governors vehemently oppose the arming of civilians. This is reflected in State firearms laws and local rules, codes, and regulations, which are themselves reflected in the policies of the NYPD Department.

County Sheriffs unlike municipal Police commissioners are elected by the people of the respective counties. Many of the Counties in New York are predominately conservative-oriented and have a strong belief in the sanctity of the right of the people to keep and bear arms as codified in the U.S. Constitution.

Those sheriffs—consistent with the will of and attitudes of their constituency—do not share the sentiments views of municipalities that are controlled by Democrats, who vehemently oppose the arming of civilian citizens.

Corruption, endemic in the upper echelons of the NYPD, which can trickle down to the lower echelon leadership, is not the same thing as bad law and bad policies that lend themselves to corruption, although the two often go hand-in-hand. Bad law entices corruption.

Corruption in the NYPD is at the moment de minimis to the extent we can infer—likely due to prominent and negative Press coverage.

But the possibility of corruption is always close where Government officials and rank and file officers, too, wield inordinate power, where opportunity for great ill-gotten financial gain (bribery) exists, and where one’s feelings of grandiosity can incubate. In the NYPD license Division, there once was a time, and not that long ago, when officers working in the Division wielded essentially absolute discretion in the awarding of coveted concealed handgun carry licenses.

The old proverb, “absolute power corrupts, absolutely” remains is no less true today than it did back in the Nineteenth Century when the British Politician Lord Acton first coined the proverb.

The discretion of Government officials must be constrained. The human appetite for power, especially rampant in Government is insatiable. If not constrained, then the courts must step in. But, the courts, too, wield inordinate power. Judges and magistrates are no less immune from feelings of superiority, and that superiority is often reflected in biased orders and legal opinions.

The U.S. Supreme Court realizes all of this, and has acknowledged the problem in Bruen. Bad laws and policies lend themselves to an atmosphere where corruption may flourish.

Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito know this well. Through a perusal of their many rulings, their strong love toward our fundamental rights, especially the right of the people to keep and bear arms, has consistently shone forth. Their judicial opinion on Second Amendment issues is clearly established. They have never wavered on their adoration of the Bill of Rights and, especially, the Second Amendment.

So, too, had the late eminent Justice Antonin Scalia long strove to strengthen the eternal right codified in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. It is left now primarily to Justices Thomas and Alito to rein in the rambunctiousness of callous States and municipalities that go astray.

For the worst sacrilege to our Nation founded as the only truly Free Constitutional Republic, involves devolving into Tyranny. This is not only possible or probable, but a certainty if a citizen’s right to armed self-defense is weakened to the point of becoming de facto void.

This would occur if those elements operating in every institution of this Country would have their way, and their say, in this. And they have worked methodically and tirelessly for decades to destroy the natural law right to armed self-defense.

If that right goes, the rest of the Bill of Rights and the entirety of the Constitution goes with it.

Many journalists and academicians have, in the last few years, feel emboldened in their call for abolition of the Second Amendment, and strict reining in of the First.

They openly express their disdain for our Constitution, and they deny the idea that “natural law” rights preexist government. They believe that natural law rights like any other right or law is a manmade construct to be ignored, rejected and annulled when whim or circumstance, as they see it, dictates.

They believe the time is now at hand to dismantle the Bill of Rights and to rewrite the rest of the Constitution, the Articles, both of which they detest.

Where the natural law right to armed self-defense, and freedom of expression, and association are attacked, the Republic teeters on disaster. One sees this occurring in States and localities run by Marxists. They have always existed in the Nation—albeit often resting dormant, lurking in the shadows. Lawlessness and corruption follows them wherever they.

Corruption in New York (and particularly, in New York City), became problematic with the inception of handgun licensing, over 111 years ago with enactment of the “Sullivan Act,” in 1911.

The sponsor of the Sullivan Act, a Democrat Party Politician and New York State Senator, Timothy Daniel Sullivan—referred to by various mobster-like identifiers, including “Big Tim,” “Big Feller,” “Dry Dollar,” and the “King of the Bowery”— was, himself, a corrupt politician—a powerful political leader of New York City’s influential “Tammany Hall” machine. See, e.g., story in historynet.com and article in NY Irish History.

Thus, New York’s handgun licensing regime came into being. Through the passing years and decades, this licensing regime would become more and more extensive, convoluted, and bloated.

The application of the “Proper Cause” standard to the Sullivan Act in 1913—which gave essentially absolute discretion to handgun licensing officers—allowed for the inception of corruption in the issuance of coveted handgun carry licenses.

This “Proper Cause” standard was the signature achievement of those who loathe the natural law right to armed self-defense. The addition of “Proper Cause” to the Sullivan Act in 1913, became the impetus for the development of an increasingly oppressive, handgun licensing scheme, crafted to undermine the exercise of the fundamental right to civilian citizen armed self-defense.  

The New York Courts were keenly aware of this legal blemish, but lamely allowed it to continue, instead of striking it down as they should have done. In fact, these New York Courts strengthened “Proper Cause,” ruling it lawful and constitutional, and stamping that finding in stone, with their official judicial imprimatur.

They opined, rationalized really, that, if an applicant for a concealed handgun carry license was aware of abuse of discretion on the part of a licensing official, he had recourse available to him. He could simply appeal, to the courts, the refusal of the licensing official to issue a handgun carry license to him, thus securing “due process.”

All this is well and good, but the standard the State Courts have adopted to reverse a decision of a licensing official—a finding of “arbitrary and capricious” conduct on the part of the licensing official—rests on the applicant to demonstrate.

The applicant must prove, to the Court’s satisfaction, that the licensing official has abused his discretion. The burden of proof to substantiate “abuse of discretion” on the ground of “arbitrary and capricious” conduct falls on the party asserting it.

Proof of “abuse of discretion” is a difficult burden to bear—and, therefore, one very rarely sustained. Moreover, filing a Court action is an expensive, tedious, time-consuming process, and a psychologically debilitating ordeal.

Understandably, it is one that few applicants for a handgun license, including the coveted concealed carry license is able or willing to bear. Most applicants simply give up.

They surrender to the sad reality that they will never be able to effectively defend themselves against a life-threatening assault, whether that assault is random or planned. Either one is a distinct possibility in New York City.

But this result—forsaking one’s quest for a handgun license—is precisely what the New York Government wants and what it expects to happen.

With enactment of New York’s “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (CCIA) on July 1, 2022, the Hochul Government crafted an adequate if not, to its liking, an ideal replacement for “Proper Cause” after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that standard.

The State now uses a bolstered “Good Moral Character” standard to defeat substantial numbers of applications. And State licensing authorities, like the NYPD, simply continue the unlawful, and certainly unethical, practice of delaying issuance of concealed handgun carry licenses—for a lengthy stretch of time, as if waiting six months weren’t long enough. See New York Statute provisions, supra.

Such deliberate defiance of U.S. Supreme Court rulings and the State’s constant insufferable actions undertaken to frustrate the issuance of handgun carry licenses has led to a plethora of lawsuits being filed in Federal Court.

Now, well over two and a half years since the Bruen decision came down the pike, a satisfactory resolution to the Hochul Government’s illegal actions continues to remain elusive, awaiting a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court whether to grant or deny Petitioners’ Writ of Certiorari in the New York case, Antonyuk vs. James.

A THIRD RECENT AMMOLAND SHOOTING SPORTS NEWS ARTICLE

On March 7, 2025, a third article dealing with the problem plaguing exercise of the right to civilian citizen armed self-defense in New York City appeared in the Ammoland Shooting Sports News website.

Authored by NRAHQ, titled “CPRC: The Many Ways Concealed Carry Permitees Enhance Public Safety,” the article makes a solid case for national concealed carry reciprocity.

The NRA mentions notable Second Amendment scholars such as Gary Kleck and John Lott whose work supports the inference that persons who lawfully carry have “defended themselves or others from a criminal attack.” This assertion contradicts the erroneous claim perpetuated by “gun control proponents that continue to insist that concealed carrying has no public safety benefits and that lawfully armed civilians simply escalate the risk to first responders and others nearby.”

We, at the Arbalest Quarrel, find it serendipitous that the March 5 through March 7 articles have come out on Ammoland Shooting Sports News at a time when AQ has been strenuously engaged, in the last few months, researching matters most acute to the sanctity and, indeed, the survival of the fundamental, unalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms, in the years and decades to come.

Back in early 2013 when AQ commenced operation, writing first on the New York Safe Act, we knew the issue of the constitutionality of “firearms licensing” would need to be dealt with by the U.S. Supreme Court. For no other “device” has served Anti-Second Amendment proponents better than utilization of licensing schemes to undermine a citizen’s natural law right to armed self-defense.

We knew that, after the seminal Heller case, the legality of state licensing of firearms would have to be addressed head-on. And the Bruen case only made this realization plainer.

Another crucial issue to be addressed pertains to the concept of “Public Safety” in relation to the concept of “(Armed) Personal Safety.”

New York Governor Kathy Hochul and other Anti-Second Amendment Governors constantly harp on the need to provide for “Public Safety.”

Yet, these same Governors fail miserably at providing this thing, “Public Safety,” if we grant that ensuring “Public Safety” is truly a concern of these Governors at all.

We have our doubts, given rampant violent crime that continues unabated, due to a lax criminal justice system and the lack of a necessary complement of police and the handcuffing of police who do serve but are unable to maximize their ability to protect both themselves and their communities due to a plethora of Governmental Progressive/Marxist idealogues infesting so many States and localities.

More to the point, these Anti-Second Amendment political leaders never mention “Personal Safety”—whether armed or otherwise—in their discourse. We find that both odd and disturbing.

Might it be that these politicians don’t recognize the import of “Personal Safety,” or the reality of “Personal Safety” concerns? Or, perhaps, they simply and tacitly subsume the concept of “Personal Safety” into the concept of “Public Safety,” and presume, albeit erroneously, that, one, these concepts are co-extensive when they aren’t, and, two, that, because the State takes upon itself the obligation to provide, through its Tenth Amendment Police Powers the role of both protector of society as a whole and protector of the individual members of it, there is no need for the citizen to take that responsibility upon himself by keeping and bearing arms for self-defense. 

Apropos of the latter false belief, the State argues that the armed citizen—far from serving a worthy purpose by being armed—compounds the problem that the State refers to as “Gun Violence.”

This idea is ludicrous in the assertion, and dangerous to the security and well-being of a Free Constitutional Republic, grounded on the sovereignty of the American citizenry over Government.

Why ought not the two, “Public Safety” and “Personal (Armed) Safety,” be seen as complementary, working in tandem and in harmony with each other and not in marked opposition to each other? There is no logical antithesis between the existence of the armed citizenry as the protector of a “Free State,” and a State’s obligation to provide for public safety, but for the State believing the two are in opposition.

ON the other hand, the State may be well aware of the falsity of the proposition, but, nonetheless, feels the need to cajole or seduce the target population to accept as self-evident true that the armed citizen poses an inherent threat to the State.

State Governments led by Progressive/Marxist leaders perpetrate and perpetuate the lie through continuous, incessant campaign of noxious psychological conditioning and mind control directed to the public. Through repetitious spouting of the nonsense they hope to hypnotize the public into accepting the lie as truth.

The public, so conditioned to accept the lie, becomes a zombie force, a useful tool, operating on behalf of the State to disavow and dissolve the armed citizenry.

One then comes to the realization that the State isn’t fearful of an armed citizenry as a criminal element in its own right, compounding “Gun Violence” the State seeks to contain, but, rather, is fearful of an armed citizenry that recognizes encroaching—incipient—tyranny the State has come to embrace and therefore intends to destroy lest the citizenry rebel against and topple that tyranny.

The import of and success of the American Revolution at the hands of the armed citizenry would likely invade the thought processes of the Tyrant who feels a need to prevent a brewing rebellion against that Tyranny. Is the NRAHQ for one, aware of this?

See “CPRC: The Many Ways Concealed Carry Permitees Enhance Public Safety.” Id. Supra. The NRAHQ writes,

Since 2007, the percentage of adults with carry permits has increased by about threefold. This exponential growth in permits and permitless carry coincides with “a general linear decline in rates of violent crime offenses. Violent crime fell from 4.77 per 10 million people in 2007 to 3.64 per 10 million people in 2023, a 24% drop.” The rise in lawful concealed carrying alone isn’t likely to be responsible, given the complexity of what drives changes in crime rates, but at the very least this shows there’s no “obvious positive relationship between permits and crime.” Additional details and studies are available in the CPRC’s amicus brief filed with the United States Supreme Court in the NYSRPA v. Bruen case.

The brief points out that the “debate surrounding the Second Amendment sometimes includes a simplistic, false dichotomy which can be summarized as: Guns versus safety.” The opposition to national public carry laws frames this as expanded public carry has no public safety benefits and will only intensify violent crime. Citizens, so the rhetoric goes, may have either guns or safety, but not both. If the gun control doomsayers were right about law-abiding citizens carrying in public allegedly fueling “the gun violence epidemic,” Baltimore, where lawful carry was until recently all but impossible, should have been the safest place in America. [emphasis our own]

A Tyrannical State doesn’t give a damn whether the armed citizenry correlates with reduction in violent crime or not. Given the laxness of Progressive/Marxist State officials attitude toward “Gun Violence” or Criminal Violence committed by any other means, due to the prevalence of psychotic and psychopathic members of criminal gangs and international cartels, infesting our Country.

And given that the Tyrannical State devotes much of its time, money, and energy constraining the average, responsible, rational, law-abiding citizen from keeping and bearing arms—rather than directing its attention to the hardened violent criminal and the psychotic maniac—we know wherefrom the Tyrant’s anxiety springs, and that anxiety does not arise from the psychopathic killer or rabid maniac.

Note: The phrase, “Guns versus safety,” that the NRAHQ utilizes, we refer to as “Personal (armed) Safety” versus “Public Safety.” (We will deal with this matter in detail in a future article).

Why should some States treat the two safety considerations as legal polarities?

We have explained, above, our explanation for this. Such appears to be the case when a government views the citizenry with suspicion. Suspicion directed to the populace is a feature of authoritarian and totalitarian governments.

It is also a feature of those free republics that turn one hundred and eighty degrees toward tyranny.

Despotic regimes view the armed citizenry as an inherent danger to that regime’s supreme power and authority.

Governmental leaders that espouse Political Progressivism, a.k.a. Marxism, are Despots. They exude despotism. They feign concern for the well-being of the populace.

The concern is always for “groups,” when viewed conveniently in the abstract, but Progressives demonstrate a noticeable lack of concern for individuals in the concrete. This is a point made by Victor Davis Hanson, “Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services.” He is spot on.

Recall the failure of Joe Biden and his Director of DHS, Alejandro Mayorkas, and Progressives in Congress who would never bother to mention or recite the names of innocent female Americans, brutally raped and murdered by psychopathic illegal aliens.

Yet these same Progressives/Marxists incessantly exclaim their concern over the welfare of millions of illegal aliens—failing to mention that these people—having broken our immigration laws, by entering our Country illegally, have no lawful right to be in our Country at all.

The ill-will of Despots toward the safety and well-being of individual citizens is expressed in the policies they craft and implement. And Progressives/Marxists are all onboard with this. But why is that?

It has everything to do with exerting control over the thoughts and actions of the citizenry, and little if anything to do with their safety, security, and well-being.

These Despots demand conformity, compliance, and blind obedience—a citizenry reduced to lassitude and impotence. The millions of illegals—who are looking for handouts, free housing, free medical care, free meals, and free education for their young—realize the boon they receive from a Government and become willing servants to that Government, that they may continue to receive handouts. They are freeloaders.

They become an underclass that, in sheer number—and yes—can serve to replace the American citizenry, who, steeped in adoration of our Constitution and natural law rights, are a difficult, obstinate force to control. Most Americans realize that, under the previous Administration, millions of illegals were encouraged to enter our Country and the Biden Administration spent, in the four years of their awful rein, to expend tens of billions of taxpayer dollars on illegal aliens, to buy their allegiance. The entry of millions of illegals into our Country wasn’t the result of simple incompetence. No! It was by design. A majority of the Electorate, aware of the Biden Administration’s treachery, elected Donald Trump to clean up the mess.

But our Country doesn’t belong to a treacherous Government. The Government is the servant of the American people, not its master. The Government, be it State or Federal, as run by Despots, see this, and are frightened by what they see.

An armed citizenry is an omnipresent threat to the power of Despots.

There is, then, no tenable concept of personal safety, not really. For that requires a Despot to acknowledge the sanctity and inviolability of the individual.

IF THE “INDIVIDUAL” HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE, THEN “PERSONAL SAFETY” HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE EITHER.

THE CONCEPT OF “PERSONAL SAFETY”—ARMED OR NOT—IS THEN DEVOID OF VALUE. A ready-made subservient caste, composed of millions of illegal aliens, has no need for, or understanding of, Personal Safety as a concept that comes within. They look instead to the Government Despot to provide all the “Safety” they need. And the Despot obliges them. The Despot methodically, inexorably moves American society toward a new societal construct—one grounded on “Collectivism,” and not “Individualism.”

IN A SOCIETY GROUNDED ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM, THE CONCEPT OF “PERSONAL SAFETY” NOT ONLY HAS MEANING, BUT IS AN ESSENTIAL FEATURE OF, AND  A SALIENT FIXTURE IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM. IN A SOCIETY GROUNDED ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF COLLECTIVISM, ON THE OTHER HAND, “PERSONAL SAFETY” IS VIEWED AS AN ABERRATION.

“Personal Safety” is a broad-based concept. It is one that embraces “Personal ARMED Safety” but gun control zealots abhor this latter concept and even harbor doubts about the former, GENERAL “Personal (UNARMED) Safety” if that is to mean the individual is ultimately responsible for his own survival.

Under COLLECTIVISM, the INDIVIDUAL has no purpose and no reality other than his service to and as a member of the GREATER WHOLE—THE GREATER COLLECTIVE.

Collectivists prefer to “SAFETY” in the context of “Public (COMMUNAL, i.e., COLLECTIVE) Safety”—as provided solely by and as both a RIGHT and DUTY of the State Government.

Governor Hochul and others believe that the State alone, through operation of its “Police Powers,” possesses the right to promote and provide for the Safety of the community, and this extends to the individuals of the community as well—hence, personal safety, as such, becomes, at best, merely a function of public safety, but otherwise has no independent reality—AS APPLIED TO THE PROLES—THE MASSES.

When the State does a satisfactory or, at least, adequate job providing for the well-being of a community, as a whole, i.e., promotes and provides some modicum of “Public Safety,” that will suffice to appease some members of a community—those who don’t reflect on the need to provide for their own personal and effective safety, which only the keeping and bearing arms can provide. They happily let the police provide for their safety, not realizing the police don’t have a duty to ensure the safety and security of anyone, except in very narrow, defined circumstances.

POLITICAL “PROGRESSIVISM A.K.A. “MARXISM” ADHERES TO THE PRECEPTS AND TENETS OF COLLECTIVISM, NOT TO THE PRECEPTS AND TENETS OF INDIVIDUALISM.

The Progressive/Marxist “elites” have a narrow, compartmentalized view of PERSONAL SAFETY, as a thing a thing intrinsic in themselves, GOVERNING RULERS. They are aware of the need for “Personal Safety” for themselves, but, since they can afford to hire armed security for themselves and their families, or derive security from the Government itself, as GOVERNING RULERS, they bear a dismissive attitude toward those Americans who, unlike themselves, are not so well-off and who are not RULERS. Most of us must provide for our own effective Personal Security, and that entails keeping and bearing arms ourselves. We are our own private security, then.

See the two AQ articles posted on Ammoland Shooting Sports News dealing with the fact that the Government has no duty or obligation to protect any individual American.

Plainly, the duty to provide for the well-being of the community does not extend to or imply a duty or obligation to provide and ensure the well-being of any particular member in that community.

Most Americans don’t realize this, and the Press, for its part, that detests the armed citizenry, no less so than the Progressive/Marxist politicians, avoids any mention of the limited role of the police in our society.

And the politicians don’t bother to enlighten the public about this incontrovertible truth either. For, if they did acknowledge the truth, the public would either demand that the police ensure the life, safety, and well-being of the individual—which is impossible—or accede to the individual’s demand that he keep and bear arms for his own defense—a right that is his intrinsically and eternally.

But many Americans don’t believe that they, as individuals and citizens of the United States, do have a fundamental, unalienable right to keep and bear arms that is not subject to lawful constraint by the State. And many Americans believe that Government has a right and duty to constrain exercise of the right, which they perceive as manmade, not natural law.

One of our articles on the concept of ‘sovereign immunity’ as applied to the State, is titled, “The Government Cannot Protect You! You Must Protect Yourself!”, posted on August 6, 2020. Another article on the subject of sovereign immunity is titled, “Can We, As Individuals, Rely On The Police To Protect Us?”, posted on November 26, 2019.

Public Safety, crafted into policy, is really a manifestation of a State’s exercise of its Tenth Amendment “Police Powers.” But what happens (as is the case in many a State now) when that State shirks its right and obligation to protect the community to such a degree that the State’s failure to provide for the safety of the community, generally, becomes noticeable to the life, well-being, and safety of the individual members of it?

What happens when the members of a given community come to the nightmarish realization that their individual (personal) safety and security are at enormous risk and the police are nowhere to be seen because there aren’t enough of them to effectively provide for the welfare of the community, or they find their hands tied, preventing them from doing their job.

Ineffectual Governor Tyrants like New York’s Kathy Hochul, and Arizona’s Katie Hobbs, and New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham, and Illinois’ JB Pritzker, and California’s Gavin Newsome, and Maine’s Janet Mills, and so many others like them, perfunctorily refuse to uphold the sacred, inviolate right of the people to keep and bear arms, to secure their Personal Safety, from predatory beast, and from predatory man, and from the predatory man-beast of Government, even as these Governors fail miserably to promote “Public Safety” which they point to incessantly.

These Governors are, of course, MOST CONCERNED over what they perceive as the threat posed by the armed citizen, who may well need to protect himself from them—these Governors—AS THE INCARNATION OF THE MAN-BEAST OF GOVERNMENT.

The exercise of a State’s “Police Powers” in a feigned (plainly dishonest) desire to promote “Public Safety” under the auspices of the Tenth Amendment ought not be at odds with a citizen’s exercise of his fundamental right to keep and bear arms to ensure his “Personal Safety” under the fundamental, unalienable right as codified in the Second Amendment.

Yet, the two are perceived by gun control politicians as competing antithetical notions or, otherwise, these gun control politicians use their image makers and the Press and media to create the illusion that the concepts of PUBLIC SAFETY and PERSONAL SAFETY are antithetical and incompatible; or, that the LATTER IS SUBSUMED IN THE FORMER, and THE TWO ARE TO BE PERCEIVED THEN AS EQUIVALENT, OR AN AMALGAM, under the auspices and control of the Government alone.

Or perhaps it is the case that the Government chooses to treat the LATTER AS UNREAL, AN INSUBSTANTIAL SPECTER, THAT SIMPLY DISSOLVES AWAY INTO THE AETHER. And there would be a reason for Government to presume this and to induce the public to presume this as well.

FOR, PERSONAL SAFETY including PERSONAL (ARMED) SAFETY is embodied in the concept of PERSONAL ARMED SELF-DEFENSE, in the absence of which a FREE REPUBLIC and a SOVEREIGN CITIZENRY cannot continue to exist. We, Americans, must see that the RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE DOES CONTINUE TO EXIST AND THAT THE REALITY OF IT AND THE NEED FOR IT BE FIRMLY IMPRESSED IN THE PSYCHE OF EVERY AMERICAN.

This is the ground upon which our fight exists. This is the ground upon which we, as the only truly Free People on Earth, must draw a clear and firm line in the sand.

FORTHCOMING IN THE ARBALEST QUARREL

In future articles that we are presently working on, the Arbalest Quarrel will deal in depth with the concepts of “State Police Powers,” “Personal (Armed) Safety,” “Public Safety,” the relationship between “Public Safety” and “Personal Safety,” State “Firearms Licensing,” Permit-less Concealed Handgun Carry, and the import of the concept of ‘Citizen,’ and the ever-present danger of Tyranny of government.

All these concepts and issues play an enormous part on the continued viability of the fundamental, unalienable right to civilian citizen armed self-defense and have a decisive impact on whether and to what extent we, Americans, can retain a truly free Constitutional Republic in form and substance as the Founders of our Nation intended.

_________________________________________

AT THE UPCOMING CONFERENCE, WILL THE U.S. SUPREME COURT FINALLY AGREE TO GRANT REVIEW OF THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT SECOND AMENDMENT CASES TO COME BEFORE IT SINCE BRUEN: SNOPE AND ANTONYUK?

On February 24, 2025, the website, “Bearing Arms,” in an article titled, “Sixth Time the Charm for Snope at SCOTUS?”, the author Cam Edwards, wistfully answers the question he poses in the title of his article, writing,  

We can only hope. The Supreme Court has once again scheduled both Snope v. Brown and Ocean State Tactical v. Neronha for debate in conference this week, keeping hope alive that the justices will grant cert to one or both cases next week. 

This Friday's [February 28, 2025] conference will be the sixth appearance for Snope (which is the challenge to Maryland's ban on so-called assault weapons), while Ocean State Tactical (taking on Rhode Island's ban on "large capacity" magazines) is up for its seventh go-round behind closed doors as the justice decide what cases they'll accept. The good news is that neither of these cases were disposed of in today's orders, but that still doesn't mean that either or both are guaranteed to be heard by SCOTUS in the future. . . .

I have to say that I'm still cautiously optimistic as well. Both Snope and Ocean State Tactical have been heard in conference since mid-December (December 4, in the case of Ocean State Tactical), which is more than enough time for Justice Thomas, Gorsuch, or Alito to write a dissent from denial of cert. 

Of course, that's also plenty of time for four justices to vote to hear one or both of these cases, and that doesn't appear to have happened yet either.

We, at the Arbalest Quarrel also fervently hope the High Court will garner at least four votes necessary to review the case. But our expectation is that it won’t. The issue presented for review, as succinctly stated in the Petitioners’ Brief in support of their Writ, is, we believe, too hot for Chief Justice Roberts to touch.

Whether the Constitution permits the State of Maryland to ban semiautomatic rifles that are in common use for lawful purposes, including the most popular rifle in America.

Yet, at some point the Court is going to have to take a stand on whether semiautomatic weapons fall within the core protection of the natural law right codified in the Second Amendment, or not. A positive ruling, consistent with the plain meaning of the Second Amendment and with the Court’s previous landmark rulings and reasoning, would make Snope the fourth landmark case.

As of the posting of this article on our site, the evening before the Court’s conference, we just don’t know what the Court will do.

We do fervently hope the Court will garner the four votes necessary to review the case.

But, our expectation is that it won’t, and would not be inclined to do so unless the Conservative wing of the Court is certain it has a clear majority were the case taken up, and that the majority will then proceed to posit a plain, emphatic, broad and bold ruling, not a tepid, watered-down narrow ruling.

THE CALCULUS OF HIGH COURT VOTES ON WHETHER TO GRANT OR DENY A PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI

If the Conservative wing Justices have any serious doubt about securing a consensus among the majority of the Court, they will vote to deny granting the Petitioners’ Writ of Certiorari. They won’t risk a negative ruling if the Court garners four votes necessary to grant review of the case.

Now, when we refer to the “Conservative wing” of the Court we mean the true “Conservative wing.”

This true “Conservative wing,” consists, in our estimate, of just two Associate Justices, namely, Clarence Thomas (author of the Bruen decision) and Samuel Alito (author of the McDonald decision), both of whom supported the Heller decision, penned by the late eminent Justice Antonin Scalia.

If four Justices vote to grant review of Snope, this means that at least five members of the Court—a narrow majority—do in fact exist, sufficient to provide a favorable ruling for the Petitioners in Snope.

We do fervently hope the Court will garner the four votes necessary to review the case. But, our expectation is that it won’t, and would not do so unless the Conservative wing of the Court is certain it has a clear majority were the case taken up. If they have any doubt about the matter, they won’t risk an adverse ruling.

Too much is at stake, i.e., whether semiautomatic weapons fall within the core protection of the natural law right codified in the Second Amendment, or not.

By reference to the Conservative wing of the Court, we are referring to the true Conservative wing. That true Conservative wing consists presently of just two Associate Justices, Clarence Thomas (author of the Bruen decision) and Samuel Alito (author of the McDonald decision), both of whom supported the Heller decision, penned by the late eminent Justice Antonin Scalia.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito will not vote to grant the Snope Petition unless they know beforehand that Associate Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney-Barrett are fully onboard with them.

Worse than not taking up Snope is taking the case up only to have a ruling in Snope that semiautomatic weapons do not fall within the core protection of the Second Amendment. Such a ruling would be catastrophic to the survival of the fundamental, unalienable, natural law right codified in the Second Amendment and, by extension, a negative ruling—one against Petitioners—would be catastrophic for Heller, McDonald, and Bruen as they must be taken as inextricably tied together. If one falls, so do the others.

If the High Court does grant certiorari in Snope vs. Brown and the Court comes down with a clear, emphatic, categorical, and comprehensive ruling that semiautomatic weapons fall within the core of the Second Amendment’s protection, then Snope will become the fourth landmark Second Amendment case.

This ruling will, then, further strengthen the natural law right to armed self-defense, eventually making it impregnable to attack.

Chief Justice John Roberts would go along with this majority even if he would prefer not to. The reason why is this: Roberts would not side with the three Liberal wing minority dissenting Justices in a major Second Amendment case.

Moreover, having previously voted with the Conservative wing in Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, Chief Justice Roberts could not rationally explain away his inconsistency to others, no less to himself, why he would dissent from the majority in Snope. This is why he would prefer voting to deny the Petition and trust that the other nominally Conservative wing Justices as heretofore mentioned, would also vote to deny the granting of Certiorari.

WHY SNOPE IS OF CRUCIAL IMPORTANCE

State governments that detest Heller and McDonald have long frowned on civilian citizen ownership and possession of any class of firearms. These governments particularly detest civilian citizen ownership and possession of semiautomatic firearms, referring to them by erroneous wholly contrived appellations for political purposes, such as “assault weapons” and “weapons of war.”  They do this to create the illusion in the psyche of the public that these weapons are of no useful purpose. Mental laziness among many Americans makes them susceptible to dangerous psychological conditioning.

These Anti-Second Amendment governments thereupon find it relatively easy to enact laws, codes, rules, and regulations aimed at severely constraining or denying outright most civilian citizen possession and ownership of semiautomatic weapons, likening them—erroneously—to fully automatic weapons, or to selective fire weapons, and various other weapons and components of weapons that fall under the purview of the constitutionally dubious National Firearms Act (NFA).

The Snope case isn’t the first case involving a challenge to state government banning of semiautomatic firearms to come before the U.S. Supreme Court. It is simply the most recent.

This matter cane to the fore several years ago. Few people may remember a prior case that landed before the Court, but we would like to jog the memory of those Americans who may have forgotten.

Go back ten years. In 2015, the case Friedman vs. Highland Park came to the Court on a writ of certiorari. The salient issue in that earlier case is the same as in the present case, Snope vs. Brown.

Friedman dealt with the constitutionality of commonly owned semiautomatic weapons.

The Court rejected review of the case, realizing of course that the Court lacked at least five Justices that would vote to strike down a local government’s illegal outright ban on semiautomatic weapons. Justice Thomas was livid, and he wrote a lengthy and vigorous—even scathing—dissenting comment, laying out why the Friedman case ought to have been taken up. Had the Court done so, the American citizenry would have been spared having to suffer, these long years, the continuous barrage sprouted about semiautomatic weapons by the Press, media, and government. Americans would also have been spared having to expend substantial time, exorbitant amounts of money, and considerable effort filing lawsuits challenging unconstitutional firearms laws.

If the Court agrees to hear Snope, all this wasted time, money, and effort could henceforth be avoided.

Likely, John Roberts has Thomas’ dissent fresh in mind and that could be reason enough to encourage denying Petitioners’ writ, in Snope.

The late Justice Antonin Scalia obviously was no less appalled than was Justice Clarence Thomas by Chief Justice Roberts’ and Associate Justice Kennedy’s hesitancy in agreeing to take up the Friedman case.

Friedman could well have become, and should have become, the third Landmark Second Amendment case decision, in 2015, had Roberts and Kennedy agreed to join Scalia, Thomas, and Alito in taking up the case and ruling in favor of Petitioners.

Perhaps Roberts and Kennedy declined to accept review of the case, because, unlike in Heller, they could not perceive a way to dilute a positive ruling in Friedman. The case does not allow for narrowing the holding. Semiautomatic weapons either fall within the core of the Second Amendment’s protection or they do not. If they do fall within the core of the Second Amendment, then these state governments are stopped in their tracks from banning them. The use of rhetorical appellations like “assault weapons” or “weapons of war” to describe them would dissipate into the nothingness from which these rhetorical devices arose.

Unfortunately, Justice Scalia cannot help Justices Thomas and Alito to cajole Chief Justice Roberts and to urge other Justices to take up Snope because fourteen months after the Friedman case fell by the wayside, Scalia would be found dead in a hotel room in Texas, and under most mysterious circumstances, with precious few details ever forthcoming about the nature or cause of death.

JUSTICE THOMAS’ COMMENT IN FRIEDMAN

What did Thomas have to say about Friedman, that Scalia heartily agreed with? Given its similarity to Snope, Thomas’ comment can be lifted almost verbatim and utilized as the ruling in Snope, were the Court to take up the case. We provide Thomas’ dissent in full here.

[O]ur central holding in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637 (2008), was “that the Second Amendment protects a personal right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, most notably for self-defense within the home.” McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 780, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894 (2010) (plurality opinion). And in McDonald, we recognized that the Second Amendment applies fully against the States as well as the Federal Government. Id., at 750, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3026, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894, 903; id., at 805, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3058, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894, 938 (THOMAS, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment).

Despite these holdings, several Courts of Appeals—including the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in the decision below — have upheld categorical bans on firearms that millions of Americans commonly own for lawful purposes. See 784 F. 3d 406, 410-412 (2015). Because noncompliance with our Second Amendment precedents warrants this Court’s attention as much as any of our precedents, I would grant certiorari in this case.”

The city of Highland Park, Illinois, bans manufacturing, selling, giving, lending, acquiring, or possessing many of the most commonly owned semiautomatic firearms, which the City branded “Assault Weapons.” See Highland Park, Ill., City Code §§136.001(C), 136.005 (2015), App. to Pet. for Cert. 65a, 71a. For instance, the ordinance criminalizes modern sporting rifles (e.g., AR-style semiautomatic rifles), which many Americans own for lawful purposes like self-defense, hunting, and target shooting. The City also prohibited “Large Capacity Magazines,” a term the City used to refer to nearly all ammunition feeding devices that “accept more than ten rounds.” §136.001(G), id., at 70a.

The City gave anyone who legally possessed “an Assault Weapon or Large Capacity Magazine” 60 days to move these items outside City limits, disable them, or surrender them for destruction. §136.020, id., at 73a. Anyone who violates the ordinance can be imprisoned for up to six months, fined up to $1,000, or both. §136.999, id., at 74a.

Petitioners — a Highland Park resident who sought to keep now-prohibited firearms and magazines to defend his home, and an advocacy organization — brought a suit to enjoin the ordinance on the ground that it violates the Second Amendment. The District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granted summary judgment to the City.

A divided panel of the Seventh Circuit affirmed. The panel majority acknowledged that the prohibited weapons “can be beneficial for self-defense because they are lighter than many rifles and less dangerous per shot than larger-caliber pistols or revolvers,” and thus “[h]ouseholders too frightened or infirm to aim carefully may be able to wield them more effectively.” 784 F. 3d, at 411.

The majority nonetheless found no constitutional problem with the ordinance. It recognized that Heller “holds that a law banning the possession of handguns in the home . . . violates” the Second Amendment. 784 F. 3d, at 407. But beyond Heller’s rejection of banning handguns in the home, the majority believed, Heller and McDonald “leave matters open” on the scope of the Second Amendment. 784 F. 3d, at 412. The majority thus adopted a new test for gauging the constitutionality of bans on firearms: “[W]e [will] ask whether a regulation bans weapons that were common at the time of ratification or those that have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, . . . and whether law-abiding citizens retain adequate means of self-defense.” Id., at 410 (internal quotation marks omitted).

Judge Manion dissented, reasoning that “[b]oth the ordinance and this court’s opinion upholding it are directly at odds with the central holdings of Heller and McDonald.” Id., at 412.
II

The Second Amendment provides: “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.” We explained in Heller and McDonald that the Second Amendment “guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.” Heller, supra, at 592, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2797, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 657; see also McDonald, supra, at 767-769, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3036-3037, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894, 914-916. We excluded from protection only “those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” Heller, 554 U. S., at 625, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2815, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 677. And we stressed that “[t]he very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon.” Id., at 634, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2821, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 682 (emphasis deleted).

Instead of adhering to our reasoning in Heller, the Seventh Circuit limited Heller to its facts, and read Heller to forbid only total bans on handguns used for self-defense in the home. See 784 F. 3d, at 407, 412. All other questions about the Second Amendment, the Seventh Circuit concluded, should be defined by “the political process and scholarly debate.” Id., at 412. But Heller repudiates that approach. We explained in Heller that “since th[e] case represent[ed] this Court’s first in-depth examination of the Second Amendment, one should not expect it to clarify the entire field.” 554 U. S., at 635, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2821, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 683.We cautioned courts against leaving the rest of the field to the legislative process: “Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad.” Id., at 634-635, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2821, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 683.

Based on its crabbed reading of Heller, the Seventh Circuit felt free to adopt a test for assessing firearm bans that eviscerates many of the protections recognized in Heller and McDonald. The court asked in the first instance whether the banned firearms “were common at the time of ratification” in 1791. 784 F. 3d, at 410. But we said in Heller that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” 554 U. S., at 582, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2792, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 651.

The Seventh Circuit alternatively asked whether the banned firearms relate “to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” 784 F. 3d, at 410 (internal quotation marks omitted). The court concluded that state and local ordinances never run afoul of that objective, since “states, which are in charge of militias, should be allowed to decide when civilians can possess military-grade firearms.” Ibid. But that ignores Heller’s fundamental premise: The right to keep and bear arms is an independent, individual right. Its scope is defined not by what the militia needs, but by what private citizens commonly possess. 554 U. S., at 592, 627-629, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2797, 2817-2818, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 657, 678-680. Moreover, the Seventh Circuit endorsed the view of the militia that Heller rejected. We explained that “Congress retains plenary authority to organize the militia,” not States. Id., at 600, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2802, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 662 (emphasis added). Because the Second Amendment confers rights upon individual citizens—not state governments—it was doubly wrong for the Seventh Circuit to delegate to States and localities the power to decide which firearms people may possess.

Lastly, the Seventh Circuit considered “whether law-abiding citizens retain adequate means of self-defense,” and reasoned that the City’s ban was permissible because “[i]f criminals can find substitutes for banned assault weapons, then so can law-abiding homeowners.” 784 F. 3d, at 410, 411. Although the court recognized that “Heller held that the availability of long guns does not save a ban on handgun ownership,” it thought that “Heller did not foreclose the possibility that allowing the use of most long guns plus pistols and revolvers . . . gives householders adequate means of defense.” Id., at 411.

That analysis misreads Heller. The question under Heller is not whether citizens have adequate alternatives available for self-defense. Rather, Heller asks whether the law bans types of firearms commonly used for a lawful purpose—regardless of whether alternatives exist. 554 U. S., at 627-629, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2817-2818, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 678-680. And Heller draws a distinction between such firearms and weapons specially adapted to unlawful uses and not in common use, such as sawed-off shotguns. Id., at 624-625, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2815-2816, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 676-677. The City’s ban is thus highly suspect because it broadly prohibits common semiautomatic firearms used for lawful purposes. Roughly 5 million Americans own AR-style semiautomatic rifles. See 784 F. 3d, at 415, n. 3. The overwhelming majority of citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful purposes, including self-defense and target shooting. See ibid. Under our precedents, that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons. See McDonald, 561 U. S., at 767-768, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3036-3037, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894, 914-915; Heller, supra, at 628-629, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2817-2818, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 679-680.

The Seventh Circuit ultimately upheld a ban on many common semiautomatic firearms based on speculation about the law’s potential policy benefits. See 784 F. 3d, at 411-412. The court conceded that handguns — not “assault weapons” — “are responsible for the vast majority of gun violence in the United States.” Id., at 409. Still, the court concluded, the ordinance “may increase the public’s sense of safety,” which alone is “a substantial benefit.” Id., at 412. Heller, however, forbids subjecting the Second Amendment’s “core protection . . . to a freestanding ‘interest-balancing’ approach.” Heller, supra, at 634, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2821, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 683. This case illustrates why. If a broad ban on firearms can be upheld based on  conjecture that the public might feel safer (while being no safer at all), then the Second Amendment guarantees nothing.
III

The Court’s refusal to review a decision that flouts two of our Second Amendment precedents stands in marked contrast to the Court’s willingness to summarily reverse courts that disregard our other constitutional decisions. E.g., Maryland v. Kulbicki, ante, at 1 (per curiam) (summarily reversing because the court below applied Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668, 104 S. Ct. 2052, 80 L. Ed. 2d 674 (1984), “in name only”); Grady v. North Carolina, 575 U. S. 306 , 135 S. Ct. 1368, 191 L. Ed. 2d 459 (2015) (per curiam) (summarily reversing a judgment inconsistent with this Court’s recent Fourth Amendment precedents); Martinez v. Illinois, 572 U. S. 833, 843 , 134 S. Ct. 2070, 2077, 188 L. Ed. 2d 1112, 1120 (2014) (per curiam) (summarily reversing judgment that rested on an “understandable” double jeopardy holding that nonetheless “r[an] directly counter to our precedents”).

There is no basis for a different result when our Second Amendment precedents are at stake. I would grant certiorari to prevent the Seventh Circuit from relegating the Second Amendment to a second-class right.”

WHAT ABOUT THE ANTONYUK CASE THAT IS ALSO PRESENTLY UP FOR A VOTE BY THE COURT ON A PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI?

Apart from Snope, there is another case that, in one important respect, is, at the moment, even more pressing than Snope. The case is Antonyuk vs. James.

While the Snope case flows naturally from Heller from the standpoint of Court meticulously reviewing categories of firearms that fall within the core protection of the Second Amendment, the Antonyuk case addresses a matter that goes directly to the authority of the U.S. Supreme Court as the Third Branch of the Federal Government that the New York State Government openly defies.

The Antonyuk case challenges New York’s defiance to adhere to the Bruen rulings. If the U.S. Supreme Court fails to take up this case, it effectively capitulates to state Governments, allowing them to blatantly ignore High Court rulings they happen to take exception to.

The Court must take up Antonyuk and strike down New York’s amendments to its Handgun Law, for those amendments are patently unconstitutional.

The enforcement of them by New York constitutes a direct attack on the legitimacy of the High Court to have the final word on the meaning and the purport of the Second Amendment.

Both Antonyuk and Snope are extremely important to the inviolability of our natural law rights, and, particularly, that right in our Nation’s Bill of Rights without which a Free Constitutional Republic and a sovereign citizenry cannot truly continue to exist—"the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” a right that “shall not be infringed.”

______________________________________________

SCOTUS, STOP THE MERRY-GO-ROUND ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT ANTONYUK CASE IMPACTING BRUEN, GRANT THE WRIT OF CERTIORARI, AND EXPEDITE REVIEW ON THE MERITS

"THE FATE OF THE HIGH COURT'S DECISIONS IN HELLER, MCDONALD AND BRUEN AND THE FATE OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT ITSELF, HANG IN THE BALANCE!”

Will the U.S. Supreme Court, at long last, review, on the merits, the first and most prominent Second Amendment case to come down the pike since the Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022)?

We had our doubts but now have some hope, given New York Gun Owners filing of their PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI, requesting review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

This is the Antonyuk Petitioners SECOND request for review.

Petitioners filed their Second Petition for Writ of Certiorari last month, on January 22, 2025. The citation is 2025 U.S. S. CT. BRIEFS LEXIS 219 (No. 24-795).

The case has gone through several captioning iterations since Petitioners’ first filing challenging the New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s amendments to the State’s Handgun Law following the publication of Bruen on June 23, 2022.

In the first case, captioned Antonyuk vs. Bruen, referred to as Antonyuk I (an abbreviation that serves as a useful shorthand descriptor), Petitioners brought their lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.

The District Court dismissed the case “without prejudice,” on motion of the Court itself having found some of the parties to the action did not have standing to sue and, therefore, that the Court did not have subject matter jurisdiction. Dismissal of the case without prejudice meant that the proper party to the suit, could refile the case.

The District Court opined that the sole individual Party Plaintiff, Ivan Antonyuk, did have standing to bring his action against the New York Government.

Ivan Antonyuk promptly refiled his case in the same Court, and Other individuals joined him as Party Plaintiffs.

Shortly, after filing their Complaint, in a case referred to by the courts as Antonyuk II, the Plaintiff Petitioners filed their motion for Preliminary Injunction to prevent the Hochul Government from lenforcing the amendments to the Handgun Law while the Parties litigated the issues presented at trial, on the merits.

The District Court granted Petitioners’ injunction and enjoined Governor Hochul from enforcing the core provisions of a sizable set of the amendments enacted immediately after the Bruen decision came down. The New York Government appealed the District Court’s granting of the Preliminary Injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

The Second Circuit’s decision is found in the case captioned Antonyuk vs. Chiumento, 89 F.4th 271 (2nd Cir. 2023), decided on December 9, 2023. Several other plaintiffs filed actions in NY sister Federal District Courts (the Southern and Western District Courts of New York) and their cases were merged with the U.S. Northern District of New York case.

But, the original Antonyuk II case would always remain the lead case challenging Governor Hochul’s amendments to the State’s Handgun Law, in response to Bruen, as reflected in the name of the principal plaintiff, whose case set in motion all actions since filed against the Hochul Government’s amendments to the New York Handgun Law.

What provoked these challenges? Responsibility falls on the NY Government.

Governor Hochul did not comply with the High Court’s rulings and she made plain that her Government had no intention of complying with the Bruen rulings.

In our system of law and justice the High Court can’t act on its own initiative to force compliance of an impudent State, until a cause of action comes before it.

The Court needs a case and controversy brought before it for the Court to have jurisdiction sufficient to preside over it. That requires a legal cause of action brought by an injured party, and and NYSRPA versus Bruen is just such a case. The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association brought action against Kevin Bruen, in his official capacity of Superintendent of the New York State Police alleging serious constitutional violations inherent in the New State Handgun Law.

Associate Justice, Clarence Thomas laid out the cause of action in the first two paragraphs of the case decision.

The State of New York makes it a crime to possess a firearm without a license, whether inside or outside the home. An individual who wants to carry a firearm outside his home may obtain an unrestricted license to “have and carry” a concealed “pistol or revolver” if he can prove that “proper cause exists” for doing so. N. Y. Penal Law Ann. §400.00(2)(f ). An applicant satisfies the “proper cause” requirement only if he can “demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community.” E.g., In re Klenosky, 75 App. Div. 2d 793, 428 N. Y. S. 2d 256, 257.

Petitioners Brandon Koch and Robert Nash are adult, law-abiding New York residents who both applied for unrestricted licenses to carry a handgun in public based on their generalized interest in self-defense. The  State denied both of their applications for unrestricted licenses, allegedly because Koch and Nash failed to satisfy the “proper cause” requirement. Petitioners then sued respondents—state officials who oversee the processing of licensing applications—for declaratory and injunctive relief, alleging that respondents violated their Second and Fourteenth Amendment rights by denying their unrestricted-license applications for failure to demonstrate a unique need for self-defense.  The District Court dismissed petitioners’ complaint and the Court of Appeals affirmed. Both courts relied on the Second Circuit’s prior decision in Kachalsky v. County of Westchester, 701 F. 3d 81, which had sustained New York’s proper-cause standard, holding that the requirement was “substantially related to the achievement of an important governmental interest.” Id., at 96.

In Bruen, published on June 23, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the “Proper Cause” standard, which had stood for decades as the core of the Handgun law that severely impacted a person’s right to armed self-defense in the public domain.

The Government had long utilized that standard to justify (really rationalize) severely restricting the number of concealed handgun carry licenses it issued to civilian citizens residing or working in New York. Application of “Proper Cause” severely handicapped an American citizen’s fundamental right to armed self-defense.

Forced to delete “Proper Cause” from the State’s Handgun Law, the Hochul Government crafted a mechanism to mask use of that standard under the rubric of “Good Moral Character,” which presently existed in the Handgun Law. The U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule on the constitutionality of that.

So, the State utilized that seeming lapse by the Court, to imbue “Good Moral Character” with increased functional utility to serve as an adequate, if not ideal, substitute for the “Proper Cause” standard, thereby allowing the State to continue to constrain issuance of concealed handgun carry licenses, despite Bruen.

Yet, the State Government would still be compelled to issue many more concealed handgun carry licenses under the “Good Moral Character” standard than under the “Proper Cause” standard because the Government could not so easily arbitrarily and capriciously deny the issuance of concealed handgun carry licenses as they once had done through application of “Proper Cause.” So the Government had to devise a new strategy—one that would lessen the usefulness of a concealed handgun carry license for self-defense by restricting the places where a holder of a concealed handgun carry license could LAWFULLY CARRY and LAWFULLY USE a handgun for self-defense.

To that end the Government enacted a stringent set of “sensitive location” restrictions that precluded lawful carry and use of a handgun for self-defense purposes in those locations.

Instituting sensitive location restrictions, that had not previously existed, effectively transformed a licensee’s unrestricted concealed handgun carry license into a restricted concealed handgun carry license.

New York—and especially the City of New York—has become a veritable patchwork quilt of “PATCHES” consisting of LAWFUL CARRY (SAFE) and UNLAWFUL CARRY (UNSAFE) of hopscotch squares, that severely inhibit the exercise of a person’s right to protect him or herself against a dangerous predatory threat to life and safety that New York City, in particular, is inundated with.

The very thing that Justice Thomas, the author of the Bruen decision, had warned the New York Government not to do, Kathy Hochul and the Democratic Party majority Legislature in Albany machinated to do anyway, and did so in bold, blatant defiance to the Court’s stated admonishment to the Hochul Government.

The Government packaged these amendments under the label, “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (CCIA), a misleading and truly absurd name for an awful set of legal provisions, crafted to hide the incongruity and unconstitutionality of the Hochul Government’s actions, all directed to avoiding and overriding the Bruen rulings.

The State Senate in Albany passed the CCIA into Law on July 1, 2022, eight days after the High Court published the Bruen decision, and Kathy Hochul signed the Act into law the same day.

The law enacted would take effect on September 1, 2022, and the Government began enforcement of the CCIA on that day.

Petitioners filed their complaint, on July 11, 2022, challenging the CCIA, in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, just ten days after Hochul signed the CCIA into law, on July 1, 2022. That signing occurred just eight days after the Supreme Court decision in Bruen.

The case, Antonyuk versus Bruen, 624 F. Supp. 3d 210 (N.D.N.Y. 2022), was the first case out of the gate to challenge the constitutionality of the amendments to the New York Handgun Law.

The Petitioners, Ivan Antonyuk, and three organizations, Gun Owners Of America, Inc.; Gun Owners Foundation; And Gun Owners Of America New York, Inc. alleged violations of their rights under the First, Second and Fourteenth Amendments, and also under 42 USCS § 1983 of the Civil Rights Act (Deprivation of Rights). On July 20, 2022, Petitioners filed their Motion for a Preliminary Injunction against enforcement of the CCIA—that was to take effect on September 1, 2022—until the Court had ruled on the merits of their case.

The Defendant, Kevin P. Bruen, in his official capacity as the Superintendent of the New York State Police, at that time, opposed the Complaint and Motion.

But, the District Court recognized the merits of the Petitioners cause of action and recited his arguments in a lengthy opinion. Yet, the Court dismissed the case without prejudice, for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, because Petitioner organizations did not have standing to bring suit. They had brought action in their own right and they could not legally argue injury-in-fact, apart from such injury suffered by their members whom they did not name.

However, since the District Court dismissed the case “without prejudice,” against the organizations only, this meant that Ivan Antonyuk, in his individual capacity, was the lone Petitioner who had standing to sue and could refile his complaint against the Government.

Still, the Court could not ethically tell Ivan Antonyuk to refile the case, but, seemingly the Court, subtly, encouraged him to do so, suggesting that, if he were to do so, the Court would likely grant a motion for preliminary injunction. The Court made that plain in its lengthy opinion.

The granting of preliminary injunction is grounded in part on the party filing the motion presenting a strong argument supporting the inference that the movant will prevail on the merits once the case proceeds to trial.

Hochul didn’t bother to consider the import of the Court’s ruling. She took the dismissal of the case as a win, not bothering to inform the Press or the Public that a world of difference exists, in law, between the court’s dismissal of a case “with prejudice” and the court’s dismissal of a case “without prejudice,” and that such a dismissal of a case without prejudice for lack of standing is oft a technical error, easily corrected through the refiling of a case with the same set of facts and law but with the proper parties as plaintiffs.

Hochul evidently thought she could play up this win as politically advantageous to her Administration, although only temporarily, despite the legal marsh her Government was and is stuck in. But, “the optics” played well, in the Press, at least for a time. The idea she sought to convey is that the New York courts were all on her side. Well, some of them were and are, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. But, it would be a while before a case would wind up before the Federal Appellata Court.

Hochul must have known the Petitioner, Ivan Antonyuk, would refile the case, and he did so. Her staff attorneys would likely have told her that challenges to the CCIA were not going away. And, Ivan Antonyuk did refile his case.

The courts would henceforth refer to the new case as Antonyuk II.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, did grant the Petitioners their Motion for Preliminary Injunction, as they had every reason to expect.

The Government opposed the granting of the motion. That, too, was expected.

Eventually, the Antonyuk case wended its way to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where the Second Circuit merged it with a few other similar cases, filed in other New York District Courts.

The Second Circuit’s first major decision came down on December 8, 2023. The case is captioned Antonyuk versus Chiumento, 89 F.4th 271 (2nd Cir. 2023).

True to form the Second Circuit sided with the Government. It vacated the stay of enforcement of the CCIA in place after the U.S. District Court granted the Antonyuk Petitioners’ motion for preliminary injunction. The Government was once again free to enforce its “Concealed Carry Improvement Act.”

Petitioners thereupon appealed the adverse decision to the U.S. Supreme Court through their Petition for Writ of Certiorari. What happened?

The High Court DID GRANT the Petitioners FIRST WRIT but delayed its review of the case on the merits, seemingly oddly, by request of the Antonyuk Petitioners themselves.

Petitioners had made a strong case for review of their case in 2024, but in the last paragraph of their Brief, they asserted the possible application of another case that the Petitioners said might have an impact on Antonyuk. That case is United States versus Rahimi. The Petitioners therefore requested the Court to delay its review of Antonyuk, pending the possible application of Rahimi, once the Court decided that case.

Back in February 2024, the Court had not yet completed its review of  Rahimi, or, otherwise, the Justices had not finalized their drafts and were not prepared at that point to publish their decision. But is Rahimi applicable to Bruen and to Antonyuk? Petitioners had a good reason for believing so, and their reason for asking the Court to delay review goes to an analysis of the test of “Historical Tradition” that replaced “interest balancing.”

This was first discussed and dealt with in Heller and analyzed at length in Bruen. Rahimi dealt with “Historical Tradition” if only tangentially. But Rahimi would be helpful to resolution of Antonyuk if the Court could tie up the loose strands in the methodology of “Historical Tradition” that were left in Bruen.

Even so, the delay gave the Roberts Court some respite.

Both the Chief Justice and the Liberal Wing of the Court must have been relieved. They could continue to delay a reckoning on Antonyuk. That certainly wouldn’t displease Governor Hochul and the Democrat Party Legislators in Albany. If the Government could enforce the CCIA unimpeded, that would be enough.

In its Order issued on July 2, 2024, the High Court said it is remanding the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

In its remand to the Second Circuit Appellate Court, the U.S. Supreme Court said,

On petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Petition for writ of certiorari granted. Judgment vacated, and case remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for further consideration in light of United States v. Rahimi, 602 U. S. ___, 2024 U.S. LEXIS 2714 (2024).

On June 21, 2024, the Court decided Rahimi. The citation is now complete: United States versus Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680; 144 S. Ct. 1889 (2024).

The Second Circuit had to act. Still, the Second Circuit Court did not issue its decision until late October 2024, over three months from the date the U.S. Supreme Court remanded Antonyuk to its jurisdiction.

The Appellate Court stated, not surprisingly, that, having considered the High Court’s decision in Rahimi, it stands by its earlier decision. It was that adverse decision that led Petitioners’ to file their request for review to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Second Circuit Court once again vacated most of the lower District Court’s granting of Petitioners’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction that had stayed enforcement of the core of Hochul’s CCIA.

The case citation is Antonyuk versus James, 120 F.4th 941 (2nd Cir. 2024), decided on October 24, 2024.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals then remanded the case to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, ordering the lower Court to review the case anew in light of the Second Circuit’s latest findings.

This is the same District Court that took up Petitioners’ FIRST CHALLENGE to Governor Hochul’s amendments to the State’s Handgun Law. And that case was, on information and belief, the first case anywhere, directly challenging the constitutionality of New York’s “Concealed Carry Improvement Act.”

We will provide a more detailed timeline of the litigation and provide more in depth analysis of the cases and the stakes involved in an upcoming essay on our website.

Antonyuk has great significance to the sanctity of the Second Amendment because no other Second Amendment case to date has such a direct impact on Bruen. A final resolution of Antonyuk is now at hand, and the U.S. Supreme Court must not squander this opportunity.

After the Second Circuit reiterated its conclusion that the core of Hochul’s amendments to the State’s handgun law are legally and constitutionally sound and therefore do not offend Bruen, and, after the Court remanded the case back down to the same Court that dealt with the case over two and half years earlier—which bought more time for the New York Government and for the Second Circuit Court—the Antonyuk Petitioners were not going to continue to allow the Government or the New York Courts to play any more games with time, constantly delaying a final reckoning on the constitutionality of the CCIA and, thence, on the legality of continued State enforcement of the CCIA.

Petitioners informed the U.S. District Court that they intended to file an immediate appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court——their SECOND WRIT OF CERTIORARI. They would not bother filing a request to the Second Circuit for reconsideration of the Court’s adverse decision. That would be a colossal waste of time, effort and money. And further litigation at the District Court would also be a waste of both time and valuable resources.

The District Court—that had granted Petitioners’ motion for Preliminary Injunction back in 2022, only to have the U.S. Court of Appeals stay execution of the Injunction—agreed to continue its own stay of the original case, pending the filing of the Writ.

That original case (with proper party plaintiffs), Antonyuk II, was, at the time, formally captioned Antonyuk versus Hochul.

The District Court of New York entered its stay by “Text Order,” dated December 2, 2024.

Petitioners then were free to file their second Writ of Certiorari, and, on January 22, 2025, they did so. The document is 2025 U.S. S. Ct. Briefs Lexis 219 (No. 2475 January 22, 2025).

This second appeal includes much of the argument presented in their first Writ to the High Court.

The Petitioners arguments are as sound now, both legally and logically, as they were back in 2024.

Petitioners reiterated the questions for review and argument in support of granting the Writ but now point to the Rahimi case as critical in explaining a definitive temporal locus to be employed in factoring in the test of “Historical Tradition” in judging the constitutionality of state actions impacting the sacred right of the people to armed self-defense.

This is why, it has become apparent, that, in Petitioners’ FIRST Petition for Writ of Certiorari, they decided to request a remand of the case rather than immediate review of Antonyuk, on the merits, even though a remand to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, would serve to delay final resolution of the case yet again. They felt awaiting a Rahimi decision, if favorable, would be worth the delay. The case has proved beneficial to Petitioner’s cause of action apropos of the temporal element of “Historical Tradition” that courts must use when reviewing State action impacting the core of the Second Amendment. This is a crucial part of Petitioners’ argument for striking down the CCIA. The issue of the temporal point at which “Historical Tradition” should frame court review of the constitutionality of a State’s action impacting the core of the Second Amendment is decisive of a reviewing court’s determination of constitutionality of that State action. That is one reason the Antonyuk Petitioners had sought delay in review of their case.

Moreover, as the Supreme Court had granted the Petitioners’ FIRST WRIT—albeit resulting in a remand of the case to the Second Circuit and further delay of final resolution—still this granting of the first Writ means the High Court is well-aware of and sensitive to the issues and arguments of the Petitioners and and is amenable to granting the SECOND WRIT, and is ready to spring into action with an expeditious ruling, consistent with Bruen and, therefore, beneficial to the Antonyuk Petitioners.

TIME MAY WELL HAVE BEEN ON THE SIDE OF THE NEW YORK HOCHUL GOVERNMENT SINCE ENFORCEMENT OF THE CCIA HAS CONTINUED FOR WELL OVER TWO YEARS. BUT TIME IS RUNNING OUT FOR NEW YORK. AN ULTIMATE RESOLUTION OF THE CASE IS, WE BELIEVE, AT HAND.

These are the opening remarks and questions for review as presented in the Antonyuk Petitioners’ SECOND PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI:

Moments after this Court issued N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), striking down New York's discretionary firearms licensing regime, state politicians decried the decision as "reprehensible," vowing to resist the "insanity" of "gun culture" that "possessed . . . the Supreme Court." Rather than following Bruen, New York enacted a "Concealed Carry Improvement Act" that makes it more difficult to bear arms than before Bruen was decided.

A panel of the Second Circuit upheld much of this law in an opinion this Court vacated in light of United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024). But on remand, the panel doubled down, reissuing a nearly identical opinion and dismissing Rahimi as having "little direct bearing on our conclusions." Relying almost entirely on a few late-19th-century outlier laws rather than Founding-era practice, the panel again affirmed New York's requirement of "good moral character" as a precondition to public carry, along with most of its gun bans in all manner of nonsensitive public places. These holdings clearly contravene Bruen's rejection of discretionary "suitability" assessments and warning not to declare all of Manhattan a "sensitive place." The questions presented are:
1. Whether the proper historical time period for ascertaining the Second Amendment's original meaning as applied to the states is 1791, rather than 1868; and

2. Whether "the people" must convince government officials of their "good moral character" before exercising their Second Amendment right to bear arms.

The Antonyuk Petitioners then proceed to lay out the reasons for the High Court’s granting of their Petition for review of their case.

REASONS FOR GRANTING THE PETITION

THIS CASE PRESENTS AN EXCEPTIONALLY IMPORTANT QUESTION WHOSE ANSWER WILL AFFECT MANY SECOND AMENDMENT CASES.

Bruen and Rahimi Left Unresolved the Appropriate Temporal Focal Point for Second Amendment Analysis.

Although acknowledging "an ongoing scholarly debate on whether courts should primarily rely on the prevailing understanding" when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, or when the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, Bruen ultimately left the question unresolved "because . . . the public understanding . . . in both 1791 and 1868 was . . . the same. . . . " . Yet Justice Barrett anticipated that this question "might make a difference in another case," explaining that "1791 is the benchmark" and "Reconstruction-era history" alone is "simply too late" and "too little." Id. at 82 (Barrett, J., concurring). Cautioning the lower courts, Justice Barrett rejected any "freewheeling reliance on historical practice from the mid-to-late 19th century. . . .” Id. at 83.

But following Bruen, the lower courts have failed to coalesce on this temporal question and, like Bruen, Rahimi did not "resolv[e] the dispute." Rahimi at 692 n.1. And like Justice Barrett in Bruen, Justice Jackson called the temporal question an "[e]xtremely pertinent inquir[y]" which "await[s] resolution. . . ." Id. at 746 n.4 (Jackson, J., concurring). Indeed, there is a multi-way circuit split on the question, and the district courts are in disarray, with divergent approaches continuing to multiply as to which historical sources to use.

This case presents an excellent vehicle for this Court to resolve the debate between 1791 and 1868, which presents at all stages of litigation. Below, the panel relied – almost exclusively – on historical laws enacted well after the Second Amendment's ratification, with the earliest being nearly half a century after the Founding. Strikingly, Bruen considered and rejected each of the three earlier purported analogues the panel did reference. Thus, the panel's singular focus on mid-to-late 19th-century sources was outcome-determinative in this case because, "apart from a handful of late-19th-century jurisdictions" (Bruen at 38), no historical tradition exists to justify the CCIA. Resolution of the temporal question not only will correct the panel's errors below, but also will provide critical guidance to innumerable lower courts analyzing similar challenges.

This Court's Second Amendment Decisions Confirm 1791 Is the Proper Focal Point.

Note: the Antonyuk Petitioners make plain that the “historical tradition” test of Bruen is resolved in Rahimi—

COURTS SHOULD INVOKE 1791—THE DATE OF RATIFICATION OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS—AS THE APPROPRIATE, DEFINITIVE TEMPORAL ARBITER FOR COURT REVIEW OF AND TESTING OF THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF STATE OR FEDERAL ACTS THAT IMPACT THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

In other words, reviewing courts should defer to the text of the Second Amendment itself for determining whether government action infringes the core of the Second Amendment.

IT IS TIME TO STOP THIS RIDICULOUS MERRY-GO-ROUND. THE U.S. SUPREME COURT MUST NOT ALLOW LOWER COURTS TO PLAY THEIR GAME OF DELAY AND APPEASEMENT ON BEHALF OF THE FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS THAT  CONTINUE TO DEFY U.S. SUPREME COURT DECISIONS THEY DON’T LIKE AND THAT ARE CONTRARY TO THEIR AIMS AND AGENDA. THEY WANT THIS THIRD BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT TO BE A RUBBER-STAMP FOR THEM, NOT AN INDEPENDENT BRANCH THAT THWARTS THEIR WILL. THAT MUST NOT BE!

ONE OF THE TOP OBJECTIVES OF THESE RUTHLESS AND DESTRUCTIVE FORCES IS THE ELIMINATION OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT. THEY ATTACK ALL ATTEMPTS BY CITIZENS TO STRENGTHEN IT.

TREACHEROUS FORCES OPPOSE AN ARMED CITIZENRY WHICH EXISTS TO SECURE BOTH LIFE AND LIBERTY. THESE FORCES SEE THE ARMED CITIZENRY AS A COUNTER-FORCE THAT WOULD PREVENT A STRONG CENTRAL GOVERNMENT EXERTING CONTROL OVER THE PEOPLE. THEY CANNOT ABIDE THIS.

BUT, WITH BIDEN OUT OF OFFICE AND TRUMP IN OFFICE, THEY SEE THEIR WELL-ENGINEERED PLANS TO TRANSFORM OUR COUNTRY INTO A DESPOTIC STATE QUICKLY UNRAVELING. THEY ARE ENRAGED AND DISTRAUGHT BY RECENT EVENTS.

THE ARMED CITIZENRY IS THE MOST EFFECTIVE DETERRENT TO THE REALIZATION OF THEIR OBJECTIVES—INSTITUTION OF TYRANNY OF GOVERNMENT. THE FORCES THAT SEEK TO DESTROY THIS COUNTRY KNOW THAT THE ARMED CITIZENRY WAS AND REMAINS THE BEST DETERRENT TO TYRANNY.

THIS IS WHY THESE FORCES THAT CRUSH ARE OBSESSED WITH DESTROYING THE SECOND AMENDMENT AND THE ARMED AMERICAN CITIZENRY.

IF THESE FORCES ARE SUCCESSFUL IN THEIR TREACHEROUS ENDEAVORS, THEY CAN EASILY SUBJUGATE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, CONTROLLING THEIR THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS.

LET US NOT BE DISTRACTED FROM THE SALIENT CRISIS AT HAND. IT IS FRONT AND CENTER AND IT IS DIRE.

We now await the U.S. Supreme Court decision whether to grant or deny the Writ once they return from recess.

The U.S. Supreme Court must take up this case. If it fails to do so, that means the New York Hochul Government has won. And further weakening of a citizen’s right to keep and bear arms in New York will continue to be eroded until nothing is left of the right.

As important as the pending Snope case is (which the U.S. Supreme Court continues to delay voting to grant review or not), the ANTONYUK case is, without doubt, THE MOST IMPORTANT SECOND AMENDMENT CASE TO COME BEFORE THE COURT SINCE BRUEN BECAUSE IT DIRECTLY IMPACTS BRUEN IN A WAY THAT NO OTHER PENDING CASE DOES. THE NEW YORK STATE CCIA IS BOTH A DIRECT RESPONSE TO BRUEN AND OPERATES IN OPEN AND BLATANT DEFIANCE OF IT.

If the U.S. Supreme Court does not take up any other Second Amendment case, this term, it must take up Antonyuk.

If the Court does review this case, IT MUST STRIKE DOWN the guts of New York’s amendments to its Handgun Law. If it rules in favor of the New York Government, then the Court slits its own throat by undermining its own decision in Bruen, and it opens the Country up to Tyranny. BRUEN WOULD BE FUNCTIONALLY DEAD AS WOULD THE SECOND AMENDMENT, FREEDOM, AND LIBERTY.

Nor can the Court take a pass on this case. For the result is the same.

The New York Government has treated THE BRUEN RULINGS as garbage and has treated the Court, the THIRD BRANCH OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, as a Branch without credible authority.

If New York can arrogantly, defiantly violate the Bruen rulings, which were, after all, directed, first and foremost at New York, then any other jurisdiction will feel confident it may do the same, perceiving it has tacit “license” to do so. The Bruen rulings will cease to have meaning and significance.

Anti-Second Amendment states would then see the Court in the same vein as the world has perceived the demented, dementia-riddled Joe Biden, and his Administration—as effete, ineffectual, frightened, and imbecilic little creatures, to be taken advantage of or simply ignored.

Anti-Second Amendment states and local jurisdictions would be constantly emboldened to continue violating the citizen’s fundamental right to armed self-defense, and they would act aggressively—flagrantly violating the law and the Constitution.  

In time, the right to armed self-defense in the public domain and even in the home would be second-guessed. That would result in a deleterious domino effect. Heller and McDonald, will in turn be weakened. For, each case depends on and clarifies points of each of the others. They are all connected.

We hope and pray that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have as much sway over Chief Justice Roberts as had the late eminent Justice, Antonin Scalia.

They must impress on Chief Justice Roberts, and on the other ostensibly Conservative-wing Justices, the imperative need to take up Antonyuk this term and to strike down New York’s ridiculous and dangerous Handgun Law. And they must hold that the date of ratification of the Bill of Rights, in 1791, is the date on which the methodological test of “Historical Tradition” in Second Amendment cases must rest.

Antonyuk will thereupon become THE FOURTH LANDMARK SECOND AMENDMENT CASE. This would be a fitting gift to the American people in 2025, and a feather in the cap of President Trump.

President Trump will thus be remembered as the leader who reclaimed, for the American people, their Nation’s ancestral history, heritage, culture, and moral stature. He will also be remembered as the leader who restored the Nation to its former grandeur. May this all come to pass!

_________________________________________

NEW YORK GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL TALKS A GOOD GAME ABOUT COMMON-SENSE GUN LAWS BUT IS MUM ON COMMONSENSICAL ARMED SELF-DEFENSE

To say the New York Hochul Government, like the Cuomo Government before it, detests armed self-defense is the mother of all understatement.

While guns in the wrong hands threaten society, firearms in the right hands protect society. This is a truism that Anti-Second Amendment States like New York deny out-of-hand.

A seditious Press and medical organizations give these Anti-Second Amendment States ammunition to continue their false, noxious, monotonous, zealous tirades over “GUNS” and over the loaded phrase, “GUN VIOLENCE,” which has become a ludicrous stand-in for “CRIMINAL VIOLENCE” that, disturbingly, is rarely mentioned. The reason why is plain.

The phrase ‘CRIMINAL VIOLENCE’ directs one’s attention to the sentient agent of that violence. The phrase ‘GUN VIOLENCE,’ on the other hand, draws attention to the inanimate object, alluding to “THE GUN” as the threat to “PUBLIC ORDER AND SAFETY”— obscuring and minimizing the AGENT who CAUSES the violence, for it is the AGENT who bears sole responsibility for commission of a heinous crime. It is not the object that the AGENT happens to use to commit an act of violence that bears responsibility.

But that’s why “ANTI-GUN” proponents continue to use the phrase “GUN VIOLENCE.” They intend to focus attention solely on the implement used in violence, not the perpetrator of it.

But concomitant with that purpose, there is an insidious design element here. An “ANTI-GUN” government seeks to frustrate the law-abiding citizen’s access to firearms.

The New York Government historically has abhorred the civilian citizen’s access to firearms. The State’s harsh and extensive firearms’ laws exemplify that abhorrence.

The State talks incessantly about a need to fight “Gun Violence” to give short shrift to any discussion of the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms.

How is it that an inanimate object can cause violence? It can’t. Only a sentient agent can operate as a “causal” agent.

The New York Government detests both “THE GUN” and those individuals who wish to exercise their GOD-GIVEN RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS.

Defeating exercise of the right is an ever present, ever-insistent goal of the New York Government, insinuating and sliding through and infiltrating every policy touching upon public safety.

To be sure, promoting public safety is an obligation of a state. It is an important function if not THE MOST IMPORTANT function of a state. But, exemplifying the State function of promoting and ensuring PUBLIC SAFETY does not mean that the citizen has no responsibility providing for HIS PERSONAL SAFETY.

Of course, if New York’s Hochul Government had demonstrated quantifiable success in providing for PUBLIC SAFETY, many New Yorkers might perceive less reason to provide for, and be less predisposed to take action to secure their PERSONAL SAFETY from random violence.

They would exhibit less anxiety over that, notwithstanding the responsibility for securing one’s own SAFETY and WELLBEING rests today—as it always has—ON THE INDIVIDUAL, NOT ON THE STATE.

The Arbalest Quarrel has written extensively on this. See our articles in Ammoland Shooting Sports News: one titled, “The Government Cannot Protect You! You Must Protect Yourself!”, posted on August 6, 2020, and a second titled, “Can We, As Individuals, Rely On The Police To Protect Us?”, posted on November 26, 2019.

Government bears no responsibility for ensuring the safety of individuals within its jurisdiction except in rare, carefully defined circumstances.

In promoting PUBLIC SAFETY a state, and the regional and local governmental bodies, bear responsibility to provide for the safety and security of their respective communities as a whole, not the individual members who comprise those communities.

But Kathy Hochul has done a lousy job as the leader of New York in securing public safety. And New York City Mayor, Eric Adams, hasn’t done any better protecting the residents and workers of this immense metropolitan area.

The draconian State handgun law coupled with the NYPD’s numerous handgun codes and regulations have consistently frustrated the efforts of the citizens residing or working in NYC from ensuring their personal safety when traveling through the State—especially when navigating in, around, under, and through the concrete jungle of the State’s largest metropolitan center and one of the largest in the U.S., “THE BIG APPLE”—New York City.

Hochul jealously guards the State’s prerogative in promoting public safety and continuously fails. And at once, she frustrates a civilian citizen’s fundamental, unalienable, natural law right to provide for his own safety, utilizing the most effective means to do so, a firearm. Her obstinacy is insufferable.

Every word spoken about guns and every action taken by the Hochul Government to thwart exercise of the fundamental and unalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms serves as a testament to the New York Government’s contrariness toward both the certitude of the natural order of things in God’s creation and to the certainty of eternal natural law rights.

The Right of Self-defense of Mind, Body, and Soul is predominant in God’s Creation. This one Right subsumes all other natural law eternal rights.

This preeminent NATURAL LAW RIGHT grounds the SANCTITY and the INVIOLABILITY of the INDIVIDUAL (“THE COMMON MAN)”, in undeniable truth, demanding the subservience of government to the sovereignty of the COMMON MAN.

Here the COMMON MAN is the American citizenry—each and every one of us—in whose name the government (be it federal, state, or local) is permitted to function, and upon our will, is permitted to exist and persist.

But this requires government to serve OUR interests, consistent with the dictates of the Articles of the U.S. Constitution, the amendments thereto, and our original Bill of Rights.

The Sanctity and Inviolability of the Individual pervades the U.S. Constitution. This is by design.

The Sanctity and Inviolability of the Individual is concreted in the doctrine and philosophy of Individualism.

INDIVIDUALISM ENTAILS FREEDOM AND LIBERTY.

The lack of FREEDOM and LIBERTY impelled America’s FIRST PATRIOTS to action—their WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE—against the Tyrannical Rule of King George III of England.

Without extraordinary courage and the formidable power of their firearms and cannon, these Patriots could not have begun to effectively confront Tyranny, much less defeat it.

That they succeeded, is a testament to the indomitability of the individual spirit to confront Tyranny firmly, but no less is that success due to the caching of and efficaciousness of their weaponry and ammunition without which these First Patriots could not feasibly vanquish Tyranny.

THE RIGHT OF ARMED SELF-DEFENSE FOLLOWS FROM THE NATURAL INSTINCT TO SELF-PRESERVATION AND IS EMBODIED IN THE GENERAL RIGHT OF SELF-DEFENSE.

The RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE isn’t something distinct from but is implied in the general expression, “RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENSE.”

A person cannot ably defend himself from a dire threat to Self without the necessary tools to do so.

For the average person, this means becoming adept in the use of one’s firearm and having the will to use it when necessary to protect self and family.

The firearm is the beyond doubt the best defense against a violent predatory attack. And that holds true whether such predatory attack emanates from a beast of prey, or a predatory man that preys on innocent men, or the predatory man-beast of Government that—having abandoned all service to the interests of the citizenry and the Constitution that it is sworn to serve—malevolently, unlawfully, and ruthlessly turns against that citizenry, finding a new purpose in preying upon it.

THE KEEPING AND BEARING OF ARMS PURCHASED THE COMMON MAN’S FREEDOM FROM TYRANNY AND ONLY THROUGH THE KEEPING AND BEARING OF ARMS WILL TYRANNY OF GOVERNMENT REMAIN AT BAY.

PREDATORS ABOUND THROUGHOUT SOCIETY AND WITHIN GOVERNMENT.

It is a paradox rarely if ever mentioned, and, if mentioned, then vociferously denied by advocates of BIG GOVERNMENT, and of the “WELL-ENGINEERED SOCIETY.”

Both Government and Society are nothing more than social and political artifacts. They serve a vital function but only if they function on behalf of the Common Man. Unfortunately, though, through time, these artifacts tend to grow in size.

They become bloated, obese, and are extraordinarily expensive to operate. They forget whom they were created to serve. They serve only themselves and other craven beings who satisfy their wants. They transform into predatory creatures.

And, the American citizenry, the Common Man, suffers from the usurpation of lawful authority that rests in and with that citizenry, that Common Man—the American people.

The predator on the streets of a city continues to prey with abandon on the innocent citizen because Government and Society allow it, tolerate it, perhaps even encourage it.

The common man reacts to this. A GOVERNMENT MAY BELLOW ALL IT WANTS ABOUT ITS CONCERN FOR THE COMMON MAN AND ITS DESIRE TO PROVIDE FOR PUBLIC  SAFETY. BUT, the old adages, “WORDS ARE CHEAP, and “THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING” take on renewed significance—especially in New York.’

Just two days after the Bruen decision came down, NY Governor Kathy Hochul issued a statement, on her official website.

The Supreme Court’s reckless and reprehensible decision to strike down New York’s century-old concealed carry law puts lives at risk here in New York,  . . . Since the decision was released, I have been working around the clock with our partners in the legislature to craft gun safety legislation in response to this ruling that will protect New Yorkers. My number one priority as Governor will always be to keep New Yorkers safe.

Two years later, Hochul commended the U.S. Supreme Court, when it issued the Rahimi decision, all the while reciting the same tiresome platitudes such as “gun safety laws save lives,” and exciting the passions with colorful but vacuous phrases such as “deadly weapons of war,” and extolling the virtues of New York’s gun laws.

Today’s Supreme Court decision reinforces a simple point: common-sense gun safety laws save lives.

In New York, we have some of the nation's strongest laws to keep people safe from gun violence and protect survivors. Our nation-leading efforts to expand Red Flag Laws and restrict access to deadly weapons of war are continuing to improve public safety. And in this past year's Budget, we invested more than $40 million to crack down on abusers like Zackey Rahimi and provide resources for survivors.

But our work is not over. The Bruen decision, and countless other lawsuits filed in its wake, are a chilling reminder that our gun safety laws are consistently under attack. New York will not stand by, and I’m committed to doing everything in my power to keep New Yorkers safe.

Yet, the Hochul Government has done little to nothing “to keep New Yorkers safe.”

“Crime in New York State 2022 Final Data” tells the tale:

Index crime in New York State increased (+22%) in 2022 compared to 2021, with 421,322 Index crimes reported. The increase was driven by a 25 percent increase in all three property crimes and increases in the violent crimes of robbery (+25%) and aggravated assault (+9%). Murder (-11%) and rape (-4%) both decreased. The state’s Index crime rate declined by 3 percent when comparing 2013 and 2022. During the same time period, the violent crime rate increased 11 percent and New York State experienced a 36 percent increase in firearm-related homicides when comparing 2013 to 2022 (See page 4 for additional details). This significant increase mirrored trends that occurred nationally.

New York City Index crimes increased 27 percent in 2022 compared to 2021, with increases in both vio lent crime (+15%) and property crime (+32%). Three of the four violent crimes saw increases: rape (+6%), robbery (+25%), and aggravated assault (+12%). Murder was the only violent crime to decrease (-10%). All three property crimes increased during the same period: burglary (+26%), larceny (+33%), and motor vehicle theft (+31%). Non-New York City Index crimes increased 16 percent in 2022 compared to 2021, largely due to an 18 percent increase in property crime. Violent crime increased about 1 percent, with decreases in murder (-11%) and rape (-11%), and increases in robbery (+9%) and aggravated assault (+3%). Property crime increased 18 percent, with increases reported in all three crimes: burglary (+10%), larceny (+20%), and motor vehicle theft (+13%). Appendix 3 lists crime rates by county for 2022 and Appendix 6 details crime counts by county for 2021 compared to 2022.

See also report of the New York State Comptroller.

What can the average, honorable, responsible man do to ensure his own safety and well-being and that of those dependent upon him from a PREDATORY THREAT, whatever the nature of THAT THREAT and wherever that THREAT LURKS?

One noteworthy person, Jocko Willink, a former U.S. Navy Seal, writer, podcaster, instructor, and businessman, has advice for THE COMMON MAN, going about his daily activities, not looking for trouble, but coming face-to-face with a vicious predator that is out to cause trouble, looking for an easy target. See the article in Business Insider:

Willink says,

If someone attacks me and they want to punch or kick me, I can just run away. They're not holding onto me. I can get away from them. It's when someone grabs you that you need some technique to get out of there, or someone takes you to the ground — that's when you need some technique to get out of there. If someone just wants to punch me, well, I'll walk away from them or run away from them. That's OK.

Hi, I'm Jocko Willink. I'm retired from the military and just wrote a book called Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual.

Obviously, I am a fan of jiu-jitsu. No. 1: It's very practical, like I said, for self-defense. And again, the goal of jiu-jitsu in self-defense isn't to take someone down to the ground — the goal in jiu-jitsu for self-defense is actually to be able to defend yourself on the ground, get up, and get away from an attacker. That's what the goal is.

Now, some people might think: ‘Well, Jocko, I don't want to run away if somebody wants to fight me. I want to fight them.’ Well, let's think about where that might end up for you. No. 1: You don't know if this person has a weapon or not. What if they have a knife? What if they have a pistol? What if they've got three or four friends? And now you're getting either shot, stabbed, mutilated, or otherwise maimed and killed. That's not what you're looking for on a Friday night as you're walking down the street.

OK, so let's say you're so tough that the other guy — he doesn't have a knife, he doesn't have a gun, he doesn't have any friends — and you take him out and break his arm, choke him, and put him to sleep. Well now guess what happens? You're getting arrested. Now you're getting in a lawsuit. Now you have to pay this person money that you actually wanted to beat up.

So it's a lose-lose situation to get in a confrontation on the street. If you can break contact and get away, break contact and get away. That's what you should learn self-defense for. Obviously, if someone is doing something that they're attacking someone in your family and you have to step in to defend yourself, well, that's why you continue training all the time — because that might happen, and you have to be prepared for that. Optimally, you get out of there: You break contact, you get away. If you have to stand and fight, you train yourself so that you're able to do it.

Sure, it helps to be physically strong and to become adept in the martial arts. But that takes a modicum of time and money, and a presumption of physical prowess many people lack, including not a few senior citizens and young (or old) physically disabled individuals, women (of all ages) generally, and those Americans who have suffered grievous injury serving their Country in war. And likely, such an elderly person or a disabled civilian or veteran of combat cannot easily run or outrun a predator intent on committing physical assault or murder. What does a person do, then?

Willink has an answer for that, too, but it is one that a “left-center bias” website like Business Insider likely frowns on, and, so, refrains from mentioning.

But another website we came across that cites this Navy SEAL’s remarks on personal defense, does not display such reticence. We point to that site, a military website, for the answer. See “We are the mighty”:

When it comes to self-defense . . . Jocko Willink . . . has some answers. And they are surprising. . . .

When it comes to self-defense, Willink’s top recommendation isn’t a martial art in the strictest sense. It’s a gun and concealed carry. [emphasis our own]

‘If you are in a situation where you need to protect yourself, that is how you protect yourself,’ he said, noting that potential adversaries will have weapons, they will be on drugs or suffer from some psychotic condition. ‘If you want to protect yourself, that is how you do it.’”

Bar none, a handgun is the best defense against a dangerous threat. You can’t “reason” your way out of a threat posed by a lunatic hopped up on drugs or a psychopathic killer looking to have some “fun” at the expense of an innocent citizen. If these creatures were sane and reasonable, they would not engage in physical violence.

But suppose—notwithstanding the Bruen rulings—a jurisdiction effectively denies the citizenry from carrying a handgun in public for self-defense through the enactment of extremely onerous, expensive,  time-consuming, and frustratingly incoherent licensing schemes.

Jocko Willink continues,

Okay, great. That works in the states that have ‘constitutional carry’ or ‘shall issue’ carry laws. But suppose you are in California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Rhode Island, or Delaware which the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action notes are ‘Rights Restricted – Very Limited Issue’ states where obtaining a concealed carry permit is very difficult?

Willink then recommends Brazilian jujitsu, followed by Western boxing, Muay Thai, and wrestling (the type you see in the Olympics, not the WWE – no disrespect to the WWE). Willink is a proponent of jujitsu in particular – recounting how he used it to beat a fellow SEAL in a sparring match who had 20 years of experience in a different martial art.” Id

But, even protecting yourself without a firearm is fraught with peril.

Again, Jocko Willink knows this, and finds this so disconcerting, he feels it important enough to mention and and we reiterate [see citation infra].

OK, so let’s say you’re so tough that the other guy — he doesn’t have a knife, he doesn’t have a gun, he doesn’t have any friends — and you take him out and break his arm, choke him, and put him to sleep. Well now guess what happens? You’re getting arrested. Now you’re getting in a lawsuit. Now you have to pay this person money that you actually wanted to beat up.

So it’s a lose-lose situation to get in a confrontation on the street. If you can break contact and get away, break contact and get away. That’s what you should learn self-defense for. Obviously, if someone is doing something that they’re attacking someone in your family and you have to step in to defend yourself, well, that’s why you continue training all the time — because that might happen, and you have to be prepared for that. Optimally, you get out of there: You break contact, you get away. If you have to stand and fight, you train yourself so that you’re able to do it.”

Just ask Daniel Penny about lawsuits and criminal indictments. See the article in the Daily Mail. This is the situation that a person defending himself or others,

A grand jury has indicted former Marine Daniel Penny for the chokehold killing of homeless man Jordan Neely during a subway confrontation last month, sources have told The Post — even as Penny’s attorneys vowed to ‘aggressively defend’ their client in court.” Daniel Penny indicted in chokehold death of Jordan Neely. Fortunately, a jury found Penny not guilty of criminally negligent homicide, after an acquittal on the more serious manslaughter charge.

See also the 2007 article by Marko Kloos, titled, “Why the Gun Is Civilization,” in “The Patriot Post.”

Those jurisdictions that restrict armed self-defense, such as New York, typically impose limitations on basic self-defense measures, not just firearms. That is the point raised by Jocko Willink. He knows well that this world is not civilized. Dangerous predators abound all around us. He doesn’t mince words. That is refreshing. And obdurate governments like New York’s Hochul Government refuses to acknowledge the world is as uncivilized today as at any time in the past.

Claiming that disarming the public will somehow promote safety is imbecilic if in fact government leaders truly believe that. All it will succeed in doing is making society less safe, opening it up to more, not less, predation.

So, then, why do governments, like the Hochul Government, make a pretense of concern over the well-being of the Common Man—the Public?

The only reasonable answer is that governments themselves are predatory beasts. They do their best to disguise that fact by claiming that universal disarmament protects us all. That is all a cloak.

Instead, universal disarmament opens up predation to the worst of predators: the Man-Beast of Government.

Willink is one man standing up to monsters.

And the Hochul Government is one such monster.

The Government does nothing to reduce the ever-present danger to the Common Man. Instead, it exacerbates it.

It allows predators to rampage in New York, and, at once, frustrates the innocent New Yorker who simply wishes to mitigate a danger directed against himself, be it from a lunatic on the street or—not inconceivably—from the psychopathy of the Government itself, inching ever closer to Tyranny.

__________________________________________________________

THE SNOPE CASE CAN BLOW ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT FOES OUT OF THE WATER BUT ONLY IF THE CONSERVATIVE WING OF THE U.S. SUPREME COURT HAS THE WILL TO DO SO

[THIS ARTICLE WAS SUBSTANTIALLY EDITED AND PROOFED ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 12, 2025]

IT IS HIGH-TIME THE HIGH COURT HOLDS THAT AMERICANS NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS EXTENDS TO ALL SEMIAUTOMATIC WEAPONS

AS THIS ESSAY GOES TO PUBLICATION ON THE ARBALEST QUARREL, THE U.S. SUPREME COURT HAS VOTED [FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 2025], ON THE CASES IT WILL REVIEW THIS TERM, BUT THE COURT HAS NOT AS YET RELEASED ITS REPORT ON THOSE CASES. THE COURT SAYS IT WILL DO SO ON MONDAY, JANUARY 13, 2025, AT 9:30 AM. See “Today at the Court - Friday, Jan 10, 2025”

In this essay we discuss why we feel the U.S. Supreme Court should review Snope vs. Brown and we also explain why it is—perhaps seen as paradoxical—that we have doubt the Court did vote to grant the writ.

The Court has made its decision, which the public will come to know on Monday, January 13.

We do fervently hope the Court did garner the four votes necessary to review the case. But, our expectation is that it did not, and would not be inclined to do so unless the Conservative wing of the Court has a clear majority.

By reference to the conservative wing, we mean the true, consistent Conservative wing, consisting presently of just two Associate Justices, Clarence Thomas (author of the Bruen decision) and Samuel Alito (author of the McDonald decision), both of whom supported the Heller decision, penned by the late eminent Justice Antonin Scalia.

If four Justices have voted to grant review of Snope, sufficient to support the granting of the writ of certiorari, this means that at least five members of the Court—a majority—do exist, sufficient to provide a favorable ruling for the Petitioners.

Now, if Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh are in agreement with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the Court will have the five votes necessary to warrant review of the case, and Snope vs. Brown will, in the ensuing months, become the fourth landmark Second Amendment case.

This case will, then, strengthen the Second Amendment, making the fundamental, natural law “right of the people to keep and bear arms” impregnable to defeat from the foes of the Second Amendment.

Now, if Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh are in agreement with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, they will have the five votes necessary to warrant review of the case, and Snope vs. Brown will become the fourth landmark Second Amendment case, strengthening the Second Amendment, making the natural law “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” impregnable to defeat.

Chief Justice, John Roberts, would go along as well even if he would prefer not to grant Petitioners’ writ for certiorari.

The reason why is this: Roberts would not be caught dead siding with the three liberal wing dissenting Justices in a major Second Amendment case. Moreover, having previously voted with the Conservative wing on Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, he could not rationally explain away his inconsistency here were he to dissent with the liberal wing in Snope.

There are presently three Second Amendment cases before the Court on a writ of certiorari this term.

The Court will not likely grant review of more than one Second Amendment case if they grant review on any. And of the three writs to be voted on, the question in Snope focuses attention squarely on a State’s claim that it can ban civilian ownership and possession of semiautomatic weapons and that doing so does not conflict with the import of the language of the Second Amendment. This is the most contentious Second Amendment claim and it is the salient legal issue on a writ of certiorari before the U.S. Supreme Court.

This issue is as contentious as the question concerning the legality/constitutionality of abortion. The legacy Press has made it a contentious issue, a cause célèbre: “GET RID OF THESE EVIL TERRIBLE ASSAULT WEAPONS,’”—so the Press and Democrats, and the foes of an armed citizenry say.

And many uninformed, gullible Americans, not realizing the dire import and impact of what that portends for the future of a FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, buys into the simplistic rhetoric and sloganeering, and march compliantly to the drumbeat.

But, unlike the issue of abortion and, contrary to the contention of some that the deliberate killing of an unborn child amounts to a fundamental right, which it isn’t and never was, and, which, on reflection is an abomination, much, much less than a “right,” ithere is no question that the right of the people to keep and bear arms IS a fundamental right.

No one can reasonably doubt the framers of the Constitution felt that armed self-defense is in fact a right, a fundamental and unalienable right and one crucial enough to the safe-keeping of one’s own life and well-being and that of his Country, to inscribe that right in stone. And the framers of the U.S. Constitution did so, even if some people today believe the framers should never have done so, as having done so drives these people apoplectic with rage.

Those people must now contend with the fact that, in the United States, the fundamentality of the nature of armed self-defense as a natural law right is self-evident, true, and not up for debate.

They don’t try to contend with that. Instead, they argue that it no longer matters.

These nay-sayers draw attention to other countries. They assert no other country accepts this, and we shouldn’t either, and that, for these Anti-Second Amendment proponents and zealots, this is the end of the matter. But did it ever occur to such nay-sayers that, perhaps, the belief systems of these other countries, from a moral as well as from a functional, pragmatic standpoint, are faulty—that freedom and liberty, True FREEDOM and LIBERTY, is not likely attainable, and definitely not sustainable, where the people remain unarmed?

But, be that as it may, from a LEGAL STANDPOINT, the United States is an independent, sovereign Nation, subject to its own Constitution and not beholden to or under the legal jurisdiction or command of any other nation or conglomerate of nations, or of any other political entity. In our Nation, unlike any other, “THE COMMON MAN” is, always was, and shall ever remain the SOLE SOVEREIGN OVER GOVERNMENT.

GOVERNMENT IS NOT, WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE, AND WILL NEVER BE A SOVEREIGN AUTHORITY OVER THE COMMON MAN—NOT IN OUR COUNTRY.

THIS IS NOT BLUSTER BUT ONLY AS LONG AS THE AMERICAN CITIZEN REMAINS WELL-ARMED. AND THE FATHERS OF OUR COUNTRY, THE FRAMERS OF OUR CONSTITUTION, THE FOUNDERS OF A TRULY FREE REPUBLIC KNEW THIS. THAT IS WHAT THEY INTENDED. THAT IS WHAT. IN THEIR HEARTS THEY WANTED. THAT IS WHAT THEY ALL AGREED TO, EACH OF THEM, TO A MAN. THAT IS WHAT THEY FOUGHT TO ACHIEVE AND DID ACHIEVE. THAT IS WHAT THEY ALL INSISTED UPON. AND THE EXISTENCE AND PRESERVATION OF THE ARMED CITIZENRY IS THE ONLY REASON THIS NATION HAS SURVIVED AND THRIVED AS A TRULY FREE REPUBLIC, THE MOST POWERFUL, PROSPEROUS, AND SUCCESSFUL NATION THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN.

Whatever Chief Justice John Roberts thinks about preservation of the Armed Citizenry, he likely doesn’t see the issue important enough to embroil the Court in a matter that he wishes to place the Court once again in the crosshairs. Hence, it is unlikely that the Court will take up a case, namely Snope vs. Brown, that will cause consternation among some of the Justices even if Snope is a case the Court should take up as it brings up a matter long overdue—a matter central to the continued existence of a Free Constitutional Republic. The Maryland ban on civilian ownership and possession of semiautomatic weapons cannot be allowed to stand. It creates a dangerous precedent to our Free Republic.

Unfortunately, even if one or more of the Associate Justices, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney-Barrett, do tend to agree with Justices Thomas and Alito, that Maryland has irresponsibly, reprehensibly, unconscionably, and plainly unconstitutionally trampled on a sacred right, the Court may balk from taking up a deeply contentious matter at this time, as important as the Second Amendment is to the security of a Free State, especially in view of how close this Country had come to fall irrevocably, irretrievably into a state of abject tyranny under the Biden-Harris Administration.

A second case before the Court on a writ of certiorari, Gray vs. Jennings also raises a question concerning a State’s draconian ban on semiautomatic weapons but this one, coming out of Delaware, does not deal with the issue of semiautomatic weapons squarely, but only tangentially, in the context of a “preliminary injunction.”

And, as with Snope, as discussed infra, the parties, in Gray, describe the salient issue differently.

The Petitioners in Gray as the Petitioners in Snope, have drafted the issue concisely and emphatically,

“Whether the infringement of Second Amendment rights constitutes per se irreparable injury.”

Petitioners argue that, where a State (in the case at bar, Delaware) summarily places——

. . . bans on common firearms and magazines (which the State dubs “assault weapons” and “large capacity magazines”) without even inquiring into whether those bans are likely unconstitutional, . . . [t]hat refusal to treat the harm inflicted by the loss of the Second Amendment rights as per se irreparable squarely conflicts with the decisions of the Seventh and Ninth Circuits, which have held that the irreparability analysis “does not change where the constitutional violation at issue is a Second Amendment violation [and not a First Amendment violation]. . . .

And by treating violations of the First Amendment as inherently irreparable but not violations of the Second, the decision below demotes the right to keep and bear arms to “a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.” New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 70 (2022) (quoting McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 780 (2010) (plurality)). No monetary damages can adequately compensate a plaintiff for the loss of his inalienable constitu tional rights. The Framers charged this Court and the Nation’s other “independent tribunals of justice” with “resist[ing] every encroachment upon rights expressly stipulated for in the Constitution by the declaration of rights,” 1 ANNALS OF CONG. 439 (1789) (statement of Rep. James Madison). . . .

Petitioners argument boils down to the assertion that, where constitutional rights are at stake, irreparable harm must be presumed—thus requiring the court of competent jurisdiction to grant a preliminary injunction, staying execution of a challenged State law enactment infringing those rights, until the merits of the case are heard and adjudicated by the court.

The Respondent, Attorney General of Delaware, in the Gray case argues that a finding of per se irreparable harm here is improper, and that Petitioners lack standing to bring a claim for injunctive relief, because, as a matter of law, they cannot demonstrate imminent, irreparable harm.

The questions presented by the Delaware Attorney General, on behalf of the State, allude to the manner in which Delaware would like the U.S. Supreme Court to review this case if the High Court takes up the case at all:

1. Whether the court of appeals correctly rejected Petitioners’ attempt to sidestep the ordinary preliminary injunction inquiry with a rule of per se irreparable harm for Second Amendment claims.

2. Whether Petitioners lack Article III standing to challenge either law

The Arbalest Quarrel cannot find the U.S. Supreme Court’s own recitation of the issue were it to agree to grant Petitioners’ writ of certiorari. This suggests to us that the Court has decided to deny the writ.

Gray vs. Jennings alludes to Antonyuk vs. James, which also dealt with a petition for preliminary injunction.

The Second Circuit had reversed the decision of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York that had, in treat part, granted Petitioners’ preliminary injunction.

This meant that New York’s Hochul Government was free to enforce the “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (“CCIA”)—the State Government’s unlawful and arrogant response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in the 2022 Bruen case.

The New York State Senate’s passage of the CCIA and Hochul’s signing it into law the same day—all of which took place only one week after publication of the Bruen decision (strongly suggesting the Hochul Government and the Legislature in Albany had anticipated a negative decision in Bruen after oral argument in November 2021 had taken place, seven months before the decision came down)—led, as justifiably expected, to an immediate challenge, commencing with the Antonyuk case in early July 2022.

A flurry of filings followed, along with a plethora of additional cases brought in other U.S. District Courts around the State. Most of those cases, including the lead Antonyuk case, remain mostly unresolved, well over two years after the filing of the original complaint and petition for injunctive relief.

With the New York Government and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second Circuit, taking their sweet time to respond to the challenges (since the Second Circuit had allowed the Hochul Government to continue enforcement of the CCIA, apart from some minor tinkering around the edges), and Antonyuk bogged down with no appreciable Appellate Court relief in sight, after Antonyuk Petitioners filed a writ of certiorari to the High Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court remanded the case to the Second Circuit, with Justice Alito strongly cautioning the Hochul Government not to dawdle. But dawdle the Hochul Government did.

Once the Second Circuit had entered a final judgment in the case, finding the Government’s CCIA constitutional, and with Petitioners’ second writ before the U.S. Supreme Court, the High Court granted the case for review. This was expected since the CCIA is wholly and pretentiously inconsistent with the Bruen rulings. The Hochul Government hardly conceals its contempt for the High Court and for the Court’s rulings.

The Petitioner’s second writ of certiorari should, in our estimate, have asked plainly and categorically for a decision on the merits. But, a bit inexplicably, the Petitioners asked the Court to remand the case to the Second Circuit in light of another pending case before the Court that Petitioners discerned might have bearing on the “Good Moral Character” requirement, a major component of New York’s amendments to its pretensious, and rigid handgun licensing schema.

And the U.S. Supreme Court gave Petitioners no more than the innocuous relief it had asked for: The Court remanded the case to the Second Circuit.

The case Petitioners’ Brief in support of their writ of certioriorari referred to and which the High Court had subsequently decided is United States v. Rahimi.

Rahimi, although a Second Amendment case, strikes us as essentially irrelevant to the matters before the Court—certainly unncessary to a consideration of teh merits of Antonyuk—since the Antonyuk case involves a direct, undeniable challenge to the constitutionality of the State’s amendments to its rigid handgun licensing regime, a direct and undeniable affront to Bruen.

After all, what more would the High Court wish get its hands on and deal with than a recalcitrant Government and U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that snubs the U.S. Supreme Court—telling the Court essentially: “We don’t like the Bruen decision (nor for that matter, the Heller decision upon which Bruen is based) so we will not follow it and we trust you will do nothing about that.”

Just imagine how Justice Antonin Scalia would have responded to this. Likely, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, too, would wish to have taken up Antonyuk immediately: no more dawdling on this.

The three Associate Justices would have demanded that New York’s insufferable affront to the Court, along with the acts of a willful, wayward Federal Appellate Court would compel the Chief Justice to strike down New York’s CCIA, reaffirming the primacy of its holdings and reasoning in Bruen and Heller, making plain to both the Federal Government and to all state governments and to both state courts and to lower federal Courts, that the U.S. Supreme Court, the highest Court in the Land, that it would not suffer unnecessary delays or defiant responses from obdurate governments and lower courts.

That being so, we cannot understand the Antonyuk Petitioners’ seemingly sheepish request for a remand in its Brief in suppport of its writ of certiorari.

Perusing Petitioners’ Brief, the Petitioners have provided, for the U.S. Supreme Court, everything the Court needs to overturn the New York Hochul Government’s defiant response to Bruen. The

Petitioners have effectively written the Court’s Opinion.

But, because the U.S. Supreme Court remanded Antonyuk to the Second Circuit, the New York Circuit Court of Appeals took the opportunity to simply reaffirm its earlier decision and thereupon remanded the Antonyuk case to the District Court, thereby assuring a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the merits won’t be seen for yet another year or more—if ever it happened to wend its way back to the High Court.

This means more unnecessary delays, and a massive failure of justice for the citizens residing in New York and, by extension a failure of justice for citizens residing in other states, around the Country.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, has now used the occasion of the High Court remand, as one would expect it would do, essentially reiterating its past stance, and remanding the case to the lower District Court, thereby ensuring that the Hochul Government can continue to enforce its unconscionable and unconstitutional handgun regime, and delay final resolution by the U.S. Supreme Court, effectively indefinitely.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals asserted, in principal part,

On June 21, 2024, the Supreme Court decided United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. , 144 S. Ct. 1889, 219 L. Ed. 2d 351 (2024), upholding the facial constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), which criminalizes the possession of firearms by certain individuals subject to a domestic violence restraining order. In the wake of Rahimi, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Antonyuk, summarily vacated our judgment in that case, and remanded the case to this Court for further consideration in light of Rahimi (as it did with all other Second Amendment cases then pending before it). Having reconsidered the prior decision in light of Rahimi, and the parties' supplemental briefing regarding the effect of that decision on our reasoning in this case, we now issue a revised opinion in Antonyuk. We reach the same conclusions that we reached in our prior consolidated opinion. Accordingly, we AFFIRM the district court's injunction in part, VACATE it in part, and REMAND the case for further proceedings consistent with this amended opinion.

The bottom line here is that New York’s handgun licensing schema still exists in essentially the same form as it has existed for over a hundred years. “Good Moral Character” has become the stand-in for the “Proper Cause” standard that was struck down as patently unconstitutional. Illegal government action, infringing the most important right of the American people now continues, unabated, and worse, the lower courts are reckoning with a weak U.S. Supreme Court, and using the opportunity to affirm unconstitutional actions by the state governments they preside over, rubber-stamping unlawful actions. None of this bodes well for New York handgun owners.

For, even though the State has issued more handgun licenses than it had hithertoo issued, the State has watered down the usefulness of those licenses through enactment of a new Statute that created a plethora of “sensitive places” where a licensee cannot lawfully carry a handgun for self-defense. Thus, for those New Yorkers who had previously acquired a handgun license under the original “Proper Cause” requirement, those licensees find themselves with something less than they had before the High Court struck down “Proper Cause”—a handgun license that has become as “restricted” concealed handgun carry license whereas before they had possessed an unadulterated “unrestricted” concealed handgun carry license.

The Hochul Government has deliberately, arrogantly, and more than a trifle diabolically, and definitely unconstitutionally, managed to sidestep the Bruen decision.

Again, why Petitioners in Antonyuk had diluted their own writ of certiorari, by requesting a remand to the Second Circuit instead of requesting a review on the merits of a case ongoing for well over two years since the Bruen decision came down and since the New York Legislature passed and the Governor signed into law the horrendous CCIA, is mystifying to us.

For in its brief, Petitioners had laid out a convincing case for High Court review and for a decision on the merits in their favor.

The Hochul Government’s “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (“CCIA’) serves as a case study in deliberate, contemptuous defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen rulings. The Court would likely have reviewed the case and struck down the CCIA had Petitioners plainly requested the Court to review the case. And, Antonyuk would have gone down in our jurisprudence as the fourth landmark Second Amendment case. That didn’t occur and likely never will, as the New York Courts will keep Antonyuk in perpetual motion spiralling up and down the Federal Court system, never making its way back up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

This is remarkable because Petitioners had done the difficult work for the Court, effectively having written the High Court’s opinion, if Petitioners had simply asked for review of the case instead of suggesting a remand to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, on the basis of Rahimi which, to our mind is hardly relevant.

We cite the Antonyuk Petitioners’ Brief in support of their writ of certiorari at length, below. It is excellent.

Moments after this Court issued N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), striking down New York's discretionary firearms licensing regime, New York politicians decried that decision as "reprehensible," vowing to resist the "insanity" of "gun culture" that "possessed . . . the Supreme Court." Rather than following this Court's decision, New York sought to nullify it through a "Concealed Carry Improvement Act" that makes it more difficult to exercise the right to bear arms in public than before Bruen was decided.

Relying almost entirely on a few outlier laws from the late 19th century, rather than common practice at the time the Second Amendment was ratified, the Second Circuit affirmed most of New York's " Bruen response bill," sanctioning the requirement that carry license applicants demonstrate their "good moral character" to licensing officials despite Bruen's rejection of discretionary "suitability" determinations. The Second Circuit also endorsed New York's firearm bans in all manner of nonsensitive public places, rendering carry licenses of almost no value.” . . .

"The Second Amendment's plain text . . . presumptively guarantees . . . a right to 'bear' arms in public for self-defense."  N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 33 (2022). But just days after that statement was made, New York defiantly enacted its " Bruen response bill," purporting to comport with this Court's decision, but instead seeking to nullify it. Intent on maintaining its de facto prohibition on public carry, New York decided that, if it must issue licenses to ordinary citizens after Bruen, it first would do whatever it could to discourage applicants by imposing novel and onerous licensing requirements, and then render any remaining licenses a practical nullity by prohibiting carry virtually everywhere in the State by declaring a multitude of brand new "sensitive locations."

Although the district court issued a "thorough opinion" that carefully applied the framework established in Bruen, found Petitioners "likely to succeed on a number of their claims," and enjoined large portions of the New York law, the Second Circuit ("the panel") quickly stayed that order without providing "any explanation for its ruling."  The Second Circuit has now issued an opinion largely vacating the district court's injunction, affirming only as to two of the least defensible provisions of the New York law.

To justify New York's widespread carry ban across much of the State, the panel below concocted a historical tradition composed almost entirely (and at times exclusively) of mid-to-late 19th-century statutes that reveal nothing about what the Second Amendment meant to those who ratified it. And to justify New York's requirement that a person prove so-called "good moral character" to licensing officials before being "entrusted" to exercise an enumerated right, the panel sanctioned the very sort of "open-ended discretion" to determine "suitability" that Bruen explicitly prohibited.

If New York's challenged law was its "Bruen response bill," then the panel's decision represents the Second Circuit's" Bruen response opinion." Brazenly, the panel repeatedly justified wholesale rejection of Bruen's methodology, claiming that Bruen was an "exceptional" case, and that in "less exceptional" cases—like this one, apparently—courts are free to contrive their own approach. Audaciously, the panel repeatedly chastised the district court for having hewed too closely to Bruen. And in one instance, the panel faulted the district court for having "failed to properly appreciate" a historical analogue that appears never to have existed.

The panel's repudiation of Bruen was no accident. In support of its rejection of this Court's holdings, the panel referenced a law review article written as a playbook for "lower courts" to "mitigate" Bruen by "engag[ing] in the time-honored practice of 'narrowing Supreme Court precedent from below.'"

This Court's intervention is necessary for several reasons. First, to correct the panel's flagrant methodological errors which conflict with this Court's precedents. Second, to repudiate the panel's unabashed refusal to abide by the Bruen framework. And third, to provide lower courts that actually desire to follow this Court's directive with critical guidance on how to analyze Second Amendment cases.

The lower courts need a definite pronouncement that the proper time period for ascertaining the scope of the Second Amendment is at the Founding—not the last two decades of the 19th century, as the panel apparently believed. And this case would allow this Court the opportunity to clarify that government may not selectively disarm law-abiding members of "the people" whenever licensing officials feel they are of poor character, potentially dangerous, or otherwise unworthy of enjoying the natural right to self-defense with which they were endowed by their Creator. These necessary course corrections not only would rectify the errors in the panel's decision, but also would provide critical guidance to the lower courts who are struggling with (and split on) the questions presented here. . . .

When this Court decided District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), its recognition of a pre-existing, individual Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was met with swift and widespread resistance in the lower courts. Nearly uniformly, the lower courts refused to believe that Heller's rejection of "a freestanding 'interest-balancing' approach" would deny to them the "power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon." Id. at 634. Many years of constitutional infidelity followed, during which courts invented atextual tests applying their own conceptions about which laws ran afoul of the Second Amendment.

Expressing concern over this Court's hesitancy to review those decisions, Justices Thomas and Scalia observed that "[t]he Court's refusal to review a decision that flouts . . . our Second Amendment precedents stands in marked contrast to the Court's willingness to summarily reverse courts that disregard our other constitutional decisions." Friedman v. City of Highland Park, 577 U.S. 1039, 1043 (2015) (Thomas, J., dissenting from the denial of certiorari).

[Note: we discuss the Friedman case infra, quoting Associate Justice Thomas’ dissent, and we are pleased the Petitioners have cited it in their Brief in support of their writ; for Friedman is not only relevant to but critically important to both Heller and Snope].

Absent substantive vindication of the Second Amendment in the years that followed, Justice Thomas reiterated this concern, observing that "the lower courts seem to have gotten the message" that "[t]he right to keep and bear arms is apparently this Court's constitutional orphan." Silvester v. Becerra , 583 U.S. 1139, 1149 (2018) (Thomas, J., dissenting from the denial of certiorari).

With N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), this Court corrected this "message" and decisively ended the Second Amendment's relegation to constitutional steerage. Declaring the Second Amendment a "second-class right" no longer, Bruen reaffirmed the traditional American right to carry arms in public, rejecting a New York law that treated the right as a mere privilege conditioned upon an applicant's demonstrating "proper cause" to licensing authorities. Id. at 70. This Court repudiated the Courts of Appeals' atextual, ahistorical, "judge-empowering 'interest-balancing,'" and explicitly reaffirmed Heller's standard of review "centered on constitutional text and history." Id. at 22. Reiterating Heller's first principles, Bruen instructed the lower courts to ascertain the scope of the right to keep and bear arms as originally understood by the people who adopted it. Id. This standard rightly places the burden on the government to prove affirmatively that its interposition between "the people" and their right to "keep and bear arms" comports with early American practice. Id. at 24. . . .

Even before Bruen's ink was dry, New York Governor Kathleen Hochul decried the decision, calling it "disturbing," "shocking," "reckless," and "reprehensible." 3 Alarmed at the prospect of an armed populace empowered to defend against New York's criminal element, the Governor made her plan clear: "This decision [is] not what New Yorkers want. And we should have the right of determination . . . [we] have a moral responsibility to do what we can . . . because of . . . the insanity, of the gun culture that has now possessed . . . the Supreme Court." 

Governor Hochul's "Concealed Carry Improvement Act" ("CCIA") passed almost immediately. This "swift and bold action" to combat this Court's "senseless[]" decision was New York's answer to "the resulting increase in licenses and in the number of individuals who will likely purchase and carry weapons" in Bruen's wake. Accordingly, the CCIA maintains business as usual in the Empire State where, one way or another, the ordinary citizen is not to be permitted to carry a firearm in public for self-defense. Although Bruen abrogated "may-issue" licensing, the CCIA — by design and intent — makes the licensing process so onerous, and the list of newly "sensitive" places so expansive, that in New York it is as if Bruen was never decided.

The CCIA effectuates its Bruen nullification scheme first by overhauling New York's licensing regime. In place of the discretionary "proper cause" standard that Bruen invalidated, the CCIA requires an applicant to demonstrate "good moral character," defined as "having the essential character, temperament and judgement necessary to be entrusted with a weapon and to use it only in a manner that does not endanger oneself or others." App.436. To implement this ahistorical morality test, the CCIA demands character references, information about cohabitants and adult children, a personal "interview" with a licensing official, more than two full days of firearms training, a list of social media accounts, and "such other information" as might be demanded. App.438-39.

For those who persevere through this process, the CCIA then restricts where in public a licensee may carry a firearm, declaring not just "the island of Manhattan" but virtually the entire landmass of New York a "sensitive place," making public carry so risky that even the hyper-law-abiding CCIA licensee would not dare to carry. In fact, when asked where New Yorkers could carry under the CCIA, Governor Hochul responded "[p]robably some streets."  These so-called "sensitive locations" comprise 20 categories, and more subcategories, including the most ordinary locations normal people visit as they go about their daily lives. See App.432-34. Finally, filling the gaps in this disarmament scheme, the CCIA effectively commandeers all private properties in New York, declaring them "restricted locations" where firearms by default are prohibited unless the owner posts "clear and conspicuous signage" or "giv[es] express consent." App.431.

C.  Procedural History

Petitioners filed suit in the Northern District of New York on September 20, 2022, challenging various of the CCIA's provisions under the First, Second, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Following briefing and oral argument on a motion for preliminary injunction, the district court issued a lengthy opinion partially granting preliminary relief on November 7, 2022, enjoining enforcement of many of the CCIA's licensing requirements and sensitive locations. App.216-428.

Respondents appealed the district court's preliminary injunction to the Second Circuit, seeking an emergency interim stay of the injunction and a stay pending appeal. The Second Circuit reflexively granted New York a "temporary stay" before Petitioners could respond, and later a stay pending appeal without analysis.

On December 21, 2022, Petitioners sought emergency relief from this Court to vacate the Second Circuit's unexplained stay. Although this Court declined to intervene at that preliminary stage, Antonyuk v. Nigrelli, 143 S. Ct. 481 (2023), Justices Alito and Thomas issued a statement explaining that "[t]he New York law at issue in this application presents novel and serious questions under both the First and the Second Amendments," and noting that the district court's "thorough opinion" found "that the applicants were likely to succeed . . . as to twelve provisions of the challenged law." Id. (Alito, J., joined by Thomas, J., statement respecting the denial of the application to vacate stay).

After briefing, and oral argument on March 20, 2023, the panel issued its opinion in a consolidated appeal on December 8, 2023. App.1-215. Distinguishing Bruen as an "exceptional" case (App.35, 112), the Second Circuit vacated much of the district court's injunction, finding virtually all of the CCIA to be facially constitutional under the Second Amendment.

REASONS FOR GRANTING THE PETITION

I. THIS CASE PRESENTS AN EXCEPTIONALLY IMPORTANT QUESTION WHOSE ANSWER WILL AFFECT HUNDREDS OF SECOND AMENDMENT CASES.

A. Bruen Left Unresolved the Appropriate Temporal Focal Point for Second Amendment Analysis.

Although Bruen "acknowledge[d] . . . an ongoing scholarly debate on whether courts should primarily rely on the prevailing understanding" when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, or when the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, the Court ultimately left the question unresolved, determining that it "need not address this issue today because . . . the public understanding of the right to keep and bear arms in both 1791 and 1868 was ... the same with respect to public carry." Bruen at 37-38. But while unnecessary to answer in Bruen, this question is central to this and many other Second Amendment cases. Indeed, Justice Barrett's concurrence seemed to anticipate that the Court soon would be called on to resolve this important question, and suggested that "1791 is the benchmark" because "Reconstruction-era history" alone would be "simply too late" and "too little." Id. at 82 (Barrett, J., concurring). Cautioning lower courts, Justice Barrett warned that the Court's "decision should not be understood to endorse freewheeling reliance on historical practice from the mid-to-late 19th century. . . ." Id.

Although it has been nearly two years since Bruen was decided, the lower courts have failed to coalesce around a definitive answer to the question of 1791 versus 1868. There is a multi-way circuit split on the question, and the district courts are in disarray. See Section III, infra. If anything, the lower courts' approaches have only continued to diverge and multiply, since this issue arises in most Second Amendment challenges.

This case presents an excellent vehicle for this Court to resolve the debate between 1791 and 1868. Below, the panel relied—almost without exception—on historical laws enacted well after the Second Amendment's ratification, with the earliest being nearly half a century after the Founding. Strikingly, of the three earlier analogues the panel did reference, every one was considered and rejected in Bruen. And the only time the panel did examine a series of Founding-era statutes, it affirmed that part of the district court's injunction.

In other words, the Second Circuit's singular focus on mid-to-late 19th-century history was outcome-determinative in this case. And, "apart from [this] handful of late-19th-century jurisdictions" ( Bruen at 38), the panel would have been forced to admit that no historical tradition exists and affirm the district court's injunction. Thus, in addition to correcting the errors in the opinion below, resolution of this important structural questionwould provide critical guidance to innumerable lower courts analyzing similar challenges.

B. This Court's Second Amendment Decisions Confirm 1791 as the Proper Focal Point.

Although Bruen found it unnecessary to definitively answer the 1791 vs. 1868 "scholarly debate," that does not mean the lower courts were left without guidance. Far from it. Not only Bruen, but also Heller and McDonald, provided significant confirmation that the Second Amendment should be construed as originally understood in 1791. To the extent that earlier or later sources are utilized, it is only to confirm the understanding that existed at the Founding. Indeed, Bruen stated that this was the Court's "general[] assum[ption]." Id. at 37.

In Heller, although not addressing a state law, the Court explained that "[c]onstitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them. . . . " Heller at 634-35. Noting that, "[i]n the aftermath of the Civil War, there was an outpouring of discussion of the Second Amendment," the Court explained that "those discussions took place 75 years after the ratification of the Second Amendment, [and thus] do not provide as much insight into its original meaning as earlier sources." Id. at 614. Thus, after primarily examining sources from the Founding era ( id. at 582-603), the Court secondarily considered sources "through the end of the 19th century" ( id. at 605), which served only to confirm what the Court already had established ( id. at 605-25). Thus in Heller, as in Bruen, the tradition of both time periods was "the same. . . ." Bruen at 38.

McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), provides further confirmation. There, the Court reiterated its rejection of "'the notion that the Fourteenth Amendment applies to the States only a watered-down, subjective version of the individual guarantees of the Bill of Rights,'" refusing "to apply different standards 'depending on whether the claim was asserted in a state or federal court.'" Id. at 765. And, as had Heller before it, McDonald examined "[e]vidence from the period immediately following the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment," but only because it "confirms that the right to keep and bear arms was considered fundamental." Id. at 776; see also at 780. 

Unsurprisingly, Bruen did not upset the apple cart, instead providing significant further confirmation that 1791 is the focal point to determine the Second Amendment's meaning. First, the Court described the "Second Amendment" as being "'intended to endure for ages to come,'" noting that "its meaning is fixed according to the understandings of those who ratified it. . . " Id. at 28. Second, the Court reaffirmed that constitutional rights have the same meaning "against the States . . . as against the Federal Government." Id. at 37. Third, the Court noted that "we have generally assumed that the scope of the protection applicable to the Federal Government and States is pegged to . . . 1791." Id. (emphasis added). Fourth, the Court again made clear that 19th-century history provides—at best—murky insight and "'do[es] not provide as much insight into [] original meaning as earlier sources.'" Id. at 36.  And fifth, the Court explained that, to the extent 19th-century evidence is to be consulted at all, it can only be to provide "'mere confirmation of what the Court thought had already been established.'" Id. at 37.

Heller, McDonald, and Bruen thus provide unwavering confirmation that the Second Amendment is to be understood based on the original "public understanding of the right" when it was adopted in 1791.

C. This Court's Other Precedents Confirm 1791 Is the Proper Focal Point.

In addition to Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, other decisions indicate that 1791 is the appropriate focus for determining the original meaning of the Bill of Rights. Indeed, Bruen referenced several such decisions ( Bruen at 37, collecting cases), which make several analytical precepts clear. . . .

There is no question that this uniform 1791-centric approach should apply to Second Amendment cases, as the Second Amendment is not "subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees." McDonald at 780. The above principles apply to the Second Amendment with equal force, regardless of the entirely academic "ongoing scholarly debate" as to 1791 or 1868. Bruen at 37. Indeed, such academic debate has long been laid to rest. See id. at 82 (Barrett, J., concurring). Yet the panel found otherwise, charting its own path, and claiming "1868 and 1791 are both focal points" of analysis. App.39 (emphasis added). This Court should grant certiorari to correct that obviously erroneous holding and to make clear that 1791 is the singular focal point for Second Amendment analysis.

II. THE DECISION BELOW DEFIES THIS COURT'S PRECEDENTS.

A. The Second Circuit Boldly Stated Its Intent to Evade Bruen's Framework.

Repeatedly, the panel advanced the remarkable theory that it was not bound to apply the Court's methodology in Bruen. Labeling Bruen a case of "exceptional nature," the panel surmised that courts are not required to follow Bruen's lead "in cases challenging less exceptional regulations." App.35. The panel repeated this claim no fewer than four times, each time justifying circumvention of a portion of Bruen's framework on the theory that Bruen came out the way it did only because it was "exceptional." See App.28, 35 ("a lack of [historical] precedent was . . . dispositive in Bruen. But that was due to [its] exceptional nature. . . ."); App.37 ( Bruen rejected analogues affecting "'minuscule [and] territorial populations'" only because of "the exceptional context. . . . In less exceptional contexts," the lack of historical analogues "does not command the [same] inference. . . ."); App.112 ("True, Bruen did utilize the number of states . . . and their relative populations as indicia of the orthodoxy and representativeness . . . but New York's requirement was exceptional. . . .").

But although Bruen was a landmark decision, there was nothing "exceptional" about the framework of historical analysis the Court articulated. Rather, even Justice Breyer in dissent agreed that the Court was establishing rules to be used in future cases. Id. at 111. As the Court explained, Bruen's methodology is the "[o]nly" way to analyze Second Amendment challenges. Id. at 17.

Not so, according to the panel. Justifying its refusal to strike down the apparently "less exceptional" provisions of New York law in this case, the panel disagreed with Bruen that "[t]he government must . . . justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." Id. at 24. Rather, the panel claimed, "the absence of a distinctly similar historical regulation ... can only prove so much." App.33.

In support of this Bruen-defying conclusion, the panel cited (App.34 n.10) to a recent law review article that calls Bruen "unsatisfying," claims that Bruen "places outsized importance . . . on historical silence," and suggests "possible judicial . . . responses to the decision" in order to "read[] Bruen narrowly" and "engage in the time-honored practice of 'narrowing Supreme Court precedent from below.'" Jacob D. Charles, The Dead Hand of a Silent Past: Bruen, Gun Rights, and the Shackles of History, 73 DUKE L.J. 67, 67-149 (2023). Maligning this nation's historical tradition as "the dead hands of the past," the article recommends that, "though the Supreme Court may desire to sit as a superlegislature over nationwide gun policy, lower courts ... need not easily cede the people's ultimate authority." Id. at 71, 155.

Even the panel's reference to this law review article is disturbing, as it boldly recommends "pathways for . . . lower courts to implement [ Bruen]" with "significant refinement" and to decide cases "without voiding all reasonable attempts to regulate guns," advocating for judicial opinions designed to make this Court "rethink whether the test Bruen mandated should be continued." Id. at 80, 146, 154. But the panel did not stop there. After referencing this detailed plan to defy this Court, the panel implemented the playbook in its opinion.  Cf. Charles at 148, with App.35; Charles at 148-49, with App.33; Charles at 149, with App.22.

B. Freed from Bruen, the Second Circuit Manufactured Its Own Framework.

Having rid itself of Bruen, the panel engaged in precisely the sort of "freewheeling reliance on historical practice from the mid-to-late 19th century" that this Court implicitly -- and Justice Barrett explicitly -- indicated is not permitted. Bruen at 83 (Barrett, J., concurring).

First, the panel upheld many of the CCIA's novel restrictions despite admitting to having located no Founding-era analogue at all.  See, e.g., App.70 n.31 (conceding that "[l]icensing schemes" requiring good moral character "were a post-Civil War phenomenon"); App.111 (referencing the "absence of 18th- [or even] 19th-century regulations prohibiting firearms in medical establishments"); App.145 (recognizing "statutes banning firearms in analogous places [to parks] such as 'commons' or 'greens' were ... absent from the historical record"). These concessions are in open war with Bruen's teaching that "the lack of a distinctly similar historical regulation addressing that problem is relevant evidence that the challenged regulation is inconsistent with the Second Amendment." Id. at 26.

Second, the panel fabricated its own "historical record" piecemeal, based entirely on a smattering of late-in-time analogues, mostly from the 1860s and later. See, e.g., App.67-70 (upholding "good moral character" by relying entirely on "firearm licensing schemes from the years immediately following ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment"); App.143-44, 146-51, 154-57 (finding a tradition banning firearms in "parks and zoos" in various state, territorial, and city laws enacted between 1861 and 1897); App.106-19 (upholding firearm ban in healthcare settings based on three state laws enacted nearly half a century after the Founding); App.167 (upholding firearm ban in bars and restaurants based entirely on laws from 1867 through 1890); App.187-88 (approving firearm ban in "theaters" using five laws dating from 1869 through 1890).

Seeking to justify its polestar reliance on post-Reconstruction laws, the panel demurred that "evidence from Reconstruction regarding the scope of the right to bear arms incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment is at least as relevant as evidence from the Founding Era," and this "period of relevance extends past 1868 itself." App.68 n.27 (emphasis added). See also App.71 n.32 (claiming that even "[t]wentieth-century evidence is ... not weightless"). On the contrary, this Court has made clear that "19th-century evidence [i]s 'treated as mere confirmation of what the Court thought had already been established.'" Bruen at 37.

Third, the panel claimed to have discovered three Founding-era sources to uphold various portions of the CCIA: (1) the 1328 Statute of Northampton; (2) a 1786 Virginia statute; and (3) a 1792 North Carolina statute. App.147-48. The panel relied on these three laws repeatedly throughout its opinion. App.149-51, 153, 157, 187, 189-90. But, as this Court has already explained, the Statute of Northampton "has little bearing on the Second Amendment adopted in 1791." Bruen at 41. And laws like the 1786 Virginia statute "merely codified the existing common-law offense of bearing arms to terrorize the people," and thus "provide no justification for laws restricting the public carry of weapons." Bruen at 47; see also at 122 (Breyer, J., dissenting) (identifying the "1792 . . . North Carolina . . . law" and noting "[t]he Court discounts these laws primarily because they were modeled on the Statute of Northampton. . . .") In other words, Bruen considered and rejected the only three pre-Reconstruction-era laws on which the panel relied.

Fourth, the panel frequently chided the district court for its faithful adherence to Bruen's methodology, insisting that it was error to assume that Bruen meant what it said. See, e.g., App.75 (criticizing that "[t]he district court . . . seemed to draw strong and specific inferences from historical silence. . . ."); App.145, 160 (disparaging as "analogical error" the district court's observation that "statutes banning firearms in analogous places [to parks] such as 'commons' or 'greens' were . . . absent from the historical record"); App.167-68, 175 (rejecting the district court's distinction between 19th-century laws which, at most, prohibited firearm possession by intoxicated persons and New York's law banning firearm possession by anyone in the presence of alcohol, finding them "analogous enough"). The panel even faulted the district court for having "failed to appreciate" the seemingly non-existent 1792 North Carolina statute, claiming this "tainted the rest of the district court's analysis." App.190, 157-58. See n.15, supra.

Fifth, the panel minimized—or simply ignored and—Petitioners' showings of relevant   Founding-era traditions contrary to New York's prohibitions. See, e.g., App.159 ("unconvinced by [Petitioners'] argument that the former use of Boston Common and similar spaces as gathering grounds for the militia undermines a tradition of regulating firearms in urban public parks."); App.166-76 (ignoring Petitioners' evidence that firearms and alcohol were ubiquitously mixed during colonial times); App. 176-91 (ignoring Petitioners' contrary Founding-era historical tradition demonstrating that firearms were regularly carried in assemblies and taverns akin to "theaters"). Yet Bruen made clear that "we do not consider . . . 'instructive' . . . 'legislative improvisations[]' which conflict with the Nation's earlier approach" or "when it contradicts earlier evidence." Bruen at 66-67.

Thus, despite marshaling not even one non-repudiated Founding-era law to support the statute below, the panel upheld infringement after infringement based on a smattering of Reconstruction-era statutes it claimed demonstrated the sort of enduring historical tradition Bruen requires. The earliest of these sources arose nearly half a century after the Second Amendment's ratification, with the vast majority occurring well after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment—stretching even into the 1890s. Each time the district court determined there to be no Founding-era tradition and enjoined the statute on that basis, the panel scolded and reversed. And when Petitioners pointed to contrary Founding-era traditions, the panel ignored them.

Declaring this Court's emphasis on original meaning "implausible," the Second Circuit instead offered the Bruen-rejecting acumen that public understanding of constitutional rights can evolve "over the preceding era"—and beyond. App.39-40. But Heller rejected this sort of revisionist living constitutionalism when it announced that "[c]onstitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them. . . ." Id. at 634-35. Bruen was similarly unequivocal: the meaning of constitutional rights is "pegged to the public understanding . . .  when the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791." Id. at 37. In contrast, the panel's decision was pegged to nothing, allowing a few post-Reconstruction statutes to pry the Second Amendment's meaning from the cold "dead hands" of the Founders. . . .

IV. REQUIRING NEW YORKERS TO "PERSUADE" THE GOVERNMENT THEY CAN BE "ENTRUSTED" WITH ENUMERATED RIGHTS CONFLICTS WITH BRUEN AND CREATES A CIRCUIT SPLIT.

A. The Second Circuit's Decision Upholding New York's "Good Moral Character" Requirement Conflicts with Bruen .

In Bruen, this Court rejected New York's requirement that, to be authorized to bear arms in public, citizens first must demonstrate "proper cause" — defined as "a special need for self-protection." Id. at 12. Here, the panel sanctioned New York's stand-in requirement that citizens convince licensing officials of their "good moral character" prior to licensure. As the district court explained, New York simply "replaced" proper cause with good moral character, "while retaining (and even expanding) the open-ended discretion afforded to its licensing officers." Antonyuk v. Hochul, 635 F. Supp. 3d 111, 133 (N.D.N.Y. 2022) (partially granting temporary restraining order).

Rejecting the "proper cause" requirement in Bruen, this Court explained the problem with such a standard: it grants licensing officials "discretion to deny concealed carry licenses even when the applicant satisfies" ostensibly "objective criteria," without any historical evidence that such practices would have been permitted in the Founding era. Bruen at 14, 11; see also at 70-71, 79 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (rejecting the grant of "unchanneled" and "open-ended discretion to licensing officials"). Importantly, this Court contrasted 43 so-called "shall issue" states, "where authorities must issue concealed-carry licenses . . . based on . . . 'narrow, objective, and definite standards,'" with six so-called "may issue" regimes where "authorities have discretion to deny concealed-carry licenses. . . ." Id. at 13, 38 n.9, 14 (emphasis added). As the Court explained, under "may issue" regimes, applicants may be denied if they fail to "demonstrate[] cause or suitability for the relevant license," based on a licensing official's "'appraisal of facts, the exercise of judgment, and the formation of an opinion.'" Id. at 14-15 (emphasis added), 38 n.9. While Bruen specifically addressed New York's "discretion" to determine "proper cause," its broader analysis of "discretion" — and its specific reference to a "perceived lack of need or suitability" ( id. at 13, emphasis added) — points to other impermissible forms of discretion.

New York's "good moral character" standard is just such a prohibited "suitability" determination and, as the district court noted, is merely a surrogate for the "proper cause" standard that was struck down in Bruen. App.217. As this Court explained, a New York "license applicant . . . must convince a 'licensing officer' . . . that . . .  he is of good moral character. . . ." Bruen at 12 (emphasis added); see also at 11 (emphasis added) (license issued "only if that person proved 'good moral character'"). The district court understood the same. See App.321 (emphasis added) ("unless he or she can persuade a licensing officer that he or she is of 'good moral character'"). Indeed, under the CCIA, New York officials decide whether a person "ha[s] the essential character, temperament and judgement necessary to be entrusted with a weapon. . . ." App.436 (emphasis added).

It is quite difficult to understand Bruen's criticism of "suitability" not to include "good moral character." And it is even more difficult to believe that this Court would approve the discretionary power to deny carry licenses to "all Americans" unless they first "convince a 'licensing officer'" of their general morality. Indeed, some courts already have found that "good moral character" means "suitability." See Srour v. New York City, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 190340, at 39-40 (S.D.N.Y. 2023) ("the very notion[] of 'good moral character' [is] inherently exceedingly broad and discretionary. . . . Such unfettered discretion is hard, if not impossible, to reconcile with Bruen."); see also People v. Mosqueda, 97 Cal. App. 5th 399, 411 (2023).

But reaching the conclusion Srour found "impossible" seemed easy for the panel. Although seeming to admit that "suitability" and "good moral character" are the same thing, the panel pointed to the licensing regimes of Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island, which facially contain suitability requirements, but which this Court nevertheless believed operate as "shall-issue" in practice, conferring no discretion on licensing officials. App.83; Bruen at 13 n.1. Indeed, this Court also noted that Delaware law allows open carry without a permit. Id. None of this commentary demonstrates the resounding affirmation of a "good moral character" test that the panel claimed Bruen contains.

Nevertheless, the message the panel took from Bruen is that not all licensing discretion is bad, amorphously distinguishing between "discretion in the strong sense" versus "a certain bounded area of discretion" or a "modicum of discretion," and asserting that " Bruen does not forbid discretion" but rather only "impermissibly discretionary" licensing regimes. App.67, 55-56. But Bruen drew no such nebulous distinctions, instead contrasting "discretion" with "narrow, objective, and definite standards" ( Bruen at 38 n.9) — which New York's shapeless concept of "good moral character" certainly is not. The panel's attempt to find broad support for "good moral character" in Bruen's passing discussion of "shall issue" regimes is tenuous at best.

Dissenting in Kanter v. Barr, 919 F.3d 437 (7th Cir. 2019), then-Judge Barrett explained that any "power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns ... extends only to people who are dangerous." Id. at 451 (Barrett, J., dissenting) (finding no "evidence that founding-era legislatures imposed virtue-based restrictions on the right"); see also id. at 462 (rejecting the notion that "the legislature can disarm [persons] because of their poor character, without regard to whether they are dangerous"). Bruen was consistent on this point, noting that "shall issue" regimes "ensure" applicants " are, in fact, 'law-abiding, responsible citizens.'" Bruen at 38 n.9 (emphasis added).

The panel took a starkly divergent view, claiming that "good moral character" represents " a proxy for dangerousness," whereby licensing officials predict whether applicants are " deemed likely to pose [] a danger" based on " reasoned determination." App.55, 63, 59 (emphases added). The panel readily admitted that "'good moral character'" is a "spongy concept susceptible to abuse,"  which licensing officials may use "as a smokescreen to deny licenses" on such bases as "lifestyle or political preferences." App.64-65. Nonetheless, the panel concluded that this hugely discretionary standard comports with Bruen because "the core" and "[t]he gravamen of the 'character' inquiry is" dangerousness. App.63.

On the contrary, constitutional rights are not "spongy concept[s]." Bruen explicitly rejected the notion that licensing officials can exercise "discretion" — open-ended, "spongy," or otherwise — in determining whether Americans are worthy of Second Amendment rights.

The panel's opinion also conflicts with the decisions of the Third and Fifth Circuits. Flatly rejecting the notion that the Second Amendment only protects "law-abiding and responsible citizens" (App.60), the Third Circuit recently noted "th[at] phrase . . . is as expansive as it is vague. . . . We are confident that the Supreme Court's references . . . do not mean that every American who gets a traffic ticket is no longer among 'the people'...." Range v. AG United States, 69 F.4th 96, 102 (3d Cir. 2023); see also at 102-03 (rejecting "devolv[ing] authority to legislators to decide whom to exclude from 'the people'" by exercising "'unreviewable power to manipulate the Second Amendment by choosing a label'").

Likewise, the Fifth Circuit recently opined that "the legislature cannot have unchecked power to designate a group of persons as 'dangerous' and thereby disarm them," which would "render the Second Amendment a dead letter." United States v. Daniels, 77 F.4th 337, 353 (5th Cir. 2023).  This decision is entirely incompatible with the panel's conclusion that a historical tradition exists which permits any designated "local official" (not even an elected "legislature") to make an "individualized assessment" (far different than a "group . . . designat[ion]") whether individual applicants can be "entrusted" with Second Amendment rights. App.67, 74, 63.

This case presents an excellent vehicle to resolve the sharp circuit split on this important issue. No other constitutional provision is subject to a government precog's  guess as to whether a member of "the people" can be "entrusted" to exercise enumerated rights responsibly. And the Second Amendment is not "a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees." McDonald at 780. This Court should grant the petition and set the record straight.

One final issue deserves mention. Currently pending before this Court is United States v. Rahimi, No. 22-915. During oral argument, several Justices expressed concerns at how the amorphous concepts of "dangerousness," "responsibility," "virtuous[ness]," and "law-abiding" status might be applied in the context of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8)'s ban on firearm possession by those under domestic violence restraining orders. See United States v. Rahimi, Oral Argument (Nov. 7, 2023). Those questions have some overlap with the second question presented here, namely, whether a carry license can be denied based on a government official's discretionary determination that an applicant lacks "good moral character." Petitioners believe this Court's review of this case is warranted on both questions presented, but a decision on whether to grant review of the "good moral character" issue could be held pending a merits decision in Rahimi.

Petitioners squishy conclusion gives the Court an excuse NOT TO TAKE UP THE CASE. And, to our mind, it is not really clear what bearing Rahimi has on Antonyuk (as tacitly, and almost certainly acknowledged by the Second Circuit that discussed the case, at least in passing, because it had to do this, for after all, the Rahimi case was the ostensible basis for the High Court’s remand of Antonyuk to the Second Circuit).

The Remand would cost New York’s handgun owners another wait, another indefinite span of years, before the U.S. Supreme Court would again look at the case, if ever.

And all this predictably and disturbingly proceeds from a State Government that defiantly and caustically, flaunts a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

The New York Government—always abhorring civilian armed self-defense, instituted its Handgun licensing regime more than 110 years ago. Unconscionable in its inception, the Government has only become more emboldened over time. Its hostility toward and its contempt toward the gun owner is apparent as it crafts more and more draconian laws and regulations, effectively legislating exercise of the Second Amendment away.

THE SNOPE CASE

This discussion now brings us to the import of the Snope case. The Snope case—more than any other Second Amendment case in the last few years, including Antonyuk—flows naturally from Heller. But, as much as we would like the U.S. Supreme Court to grant review, we believe the Court—which has, this past Friday, already voted on what cases it will review—likely has skipped out on Snope.

Apart from the reasons we have given for this conclusion, supra, there is another matter to consider, and it is one that rests more on what we believe to be the conservative complement’s misgivings about taking the case up than on the liberal wing’s position on the case—thus inclining us to believe that the failure to grant the writ of certiorari is a foregone conclusion. We hope and pray we are wrong. We will determine the fate of Snope and the negative repercussions emanating from that failure to review Snope on January 13, 2025.

One thing concerning whether a case on a writ before the U.S. Supreme Court is granted or denied involves what the Justices likely believe the outcome of a case will be. Since the cases are fully briefed beforehand, it seems to us that each of the Justices know full well ahead of time how he or she will vote, and they have a good handle on how their brethren will vote.

On Second Amendment matters——

The conservative wing will not take up Snope nor any other Second Amendment case unless it can be assured of a decision supportive of the Second Amendment, especially if a decision will have a clear impact on the three previous seminal cases, Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, and this is certainly understandable and, in fact, an imperative consideration as to whether a writ is granted.

The liberal wing would lover to take the Snope case up on review if they knew they could obtain five votes to affirm the Maryland ban on semiautomatic firearms. If that occurred, then the rulings in the three landmark Second Amendment cases would be severely, likely fatally eroded, and that eventuality would inevitably lead to the overturning of Heller, McDonald, and Bruen. The horrific effects would have a cascading effect on all State and lower Federal cases.

Justices Thomas and Alito will never allow that to happen.

There is, then, just too much at stake to risk diluting three previous landmark cases that strengthen the natural law right to armed self-defense. And even with those cases, Anti-Second Amendment Governments have routinely ignored unambiguous rulings of the Court. Imagine if a ruling came down that on its face eroded those landmark cases. That is why we are unhappy that the High Court did not review Antonyuk on the merits. There was no reason that we can see why Petitioners in that case requested a remand on the basis of Rahimi. The liberal wing of the Court, and likely the Chief Justice as well, were happy to oblige.

One does not need to be a prognosticator to know how the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit was going decide that case and further handle it when the High Court remanded the case to the lower Court.

But a bad decision in Snope, were the High Court to take it up, would be infinitely worse than what we have seen with the handling of the Antonyuk case.

For, worse than a failure to review any of the Second Amendment cases, and especially the Snope case, is a vote to review a case that is an assured loss—severely eroding the Second Amendment and the seminal cases that have strengthened it.

The Country cannot risk even an improbable negative decision in the Snope case. Too much is at stake.

A defeat in Snope, severely weakens Heller, and will inevitably lead to further erosion and to its inevitable demise. And that means de facto repeal of the Second Amendment.

The seriousness of Snope—its far reaching effect and impact—is the salient reason we believe John Roberts and some other Justices would be hesitant  to take this case up on review.

There are far too many malevolent malignant forces in this Country who are constantly scheming to eradicate the Second Amendment.

If one thinks this morose fact is something too awful to contemplate, one should keep in mind that retired Associate Justice John Paul Stevens has called for a redrafting of the Second Amendment to make clear that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is no more than a mere collective right only (an argument he made in his dissenting opinion in Heller, but, while sitting on the Court, he wouldn’t dare suggest a rewriting of the language of the Second Amendment).

Compunctions of custom no longer restrained him once he retired from the High Court. In his book, titled, “Six Amendments,” and subtitled, “How And Why We Should Change the Constitution,” that was published on February 18, 2014, Stevens lays out how he would rewrite the Second Amendment.

A few years later, on March 27, 2018, in an Op-Ed published in The New York Times, the retired Associate Justice, went even further—calling for outright de jure repeal of the Second Amendment.

The unlikelihood of such a thing happening is beside the point. That an American citizen would suggest such a thing—especially a jurist who had once sat on the U.S. Supreme Court—is heresy.

Attacks on the Second Amendment and on the U.S. Constitution, generally, are no longer fringe ideas. Newspapers and magazines are routinely discussing these things. And academicians abound who posit this apostasy, and they have an audience.

While such bizarre, discordant views can be readily dismissed at the moment at least, but the slow whittling away of Heller and eventual overturning Heller and, by logical implication, the two other seminal Second Amendment cases is not inconceivable.

America came perilously close to seeing this horrible happenstance coming to fruition if the Attorney General, Merrick Garland, had worn the robe of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. He has already inflicted substantial damage to the Nation’s jurisprudence. Now just imagine the damage he would have inflicted on the Nation and on our sacred Bill of Rights had the U.S. Senate confirmed him to sit on the High Court?

Fortunately, Senate Majority Leader at the time, Mitch McConnel had prevented that from happening. The Senate had utilized its “advise and consent” authority and determined that it would not consent to a person who had no desire to strengthen the Nation’s Bill of Rights, but, rather, would inflict irreparable injury to it.

We explained our concerns and the serious damage he would inflict on the Second Amendment, grounded on actions he had taken as a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District Columbia Circuit.

Ammoland Shooting Sports News published our concerns in an article posted on March 18, 2016. This article was based on a letter we had written, back in 2016, to both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel and to the then Senate Judiciary Committe Chairman, Chuck Grassley, explaining our serious reservations concerning then Judge Merrick Garland, nominated by U.S. President Barack Obama to sit as a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

It is highly likely that the U.S. Senate would have confirmed Garland to sit as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court if a Hearing had taken place. It would be the height of irony and not in a good way for Garland to become a U.S. Supreme Court Justice on the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

In an article, published on March 16, 2016, CNN cited a prior Clerk to Justice Thomas, who had this to say of such a happenstance:

This seat could be transformational to the court because Justice Scalia’s fidelity to the Constitution was a real anchor for the court. If he were replaced by an Obama nominee that would give the court a solid five votes for enacting an extremely liberal agenda that the American people will not be comfortable with,” Carrie Severino, of Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative group opposed to any candidate getting a hearing until after the election. It would shift the court –that is somewhat balanced –to a liberal stronghold. She is a former clerk of Justice Clarence Thomas.”

Congress and the American public can never take our Freedom and Liberty for granted. We must always be on alert, for ruthless forces exist, both at home and abroad, who wish to destroy us. This is not a new phenomenon. There are many guardrails in place to protect our Freedom and Liberty, but there is but one sure defense to effectively repulse the insinuation of Tyranny on our Nation-State. That defense is the last FAIL-SAFE mechanism available to a FREE PEOPLE: “THE WELL-ARMED AMERICAN CITIZENRY.”

Of the three present Second Amendment cases up for a vote this term—which the U.S. Supreme Court has, on Friday, January 10, 2025, voted to grant or deny review on—the most important one is the Snope Case. The central issue in Snope—in fact the only issue before the Court in Snope vs. Brown is one that deals squarely with the right of the people to keep and bear semiautomatic weapons.

Do semiautomatic weapons in the hands of the civilian citizen fall within the core of the Second Amendment, consistent with the reasoning of Court majority and the rulings of the Court, or don’t they?

Ammoland Shooting Sports News gave its readers a heads-up on this case and others in its article posted on October 29, 2024, and followed that article up with another posted on January 7, 2025.  See also Alan Gottlieb’s article on the Snope case, posted on January 9, 2025.

The CCRKBA and the Second Amendment Foundation are among the Petitioners in the Snope case. In his Article on the Snope case, Alan cites to the Managing Director of the CCRKBA, Andrew Gottlieb, who points out,

“We’re definitely hopeful the high court agrees to take this case again and schedules oral arguments soon. . . .

An affirmative ruling by the Court which settles the question whether modern semiautomatic rifles are protected by the Second Amendment will have a far-reaching impact across the country. A decision that removes any doubt about the right of the people to keep and bear modern rifles is long overdue.

“Frankly . . . considering the emphasis anti-gunners place on the reference to the militia within the Second Amendment, it would clearly protect such firearms. The gun ban lobby obviously didn’t think their argument through very far. ”

As of the posting of this Article, the High Court has not yet voted on whether to review the Snope case or any of the others. If the Court does so, it likely will take up only one Second Amendment case. It should be the Snope case, but we have our reservations.

We fully agree with the points made in Alan’s article. He lays out succinctly why Snope is crucially important to strengthening our Natural Law Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Yet, it is that importance and the far reaching scope of the case that makes us less hopeful that the High Court will take the case for review. It is in the very need for review of and positive outcome of the Snope case that our wariness derives.  

The Snope case is the most important Second Amendment case to come before the High Court since Heller. This is not to lessen the impact of McDonald and Bruen, but Snope goes straight to the heart of the Second Amendment and to matters discussed in Heller.

If the High Court decides to take up just one of the three cases, it must be the Snope case.

The reason is this: Snope is the natural continuation of the First seminal 2A case of the 21st Century, District of Columbia vs. Heller.

Snope builds upon the specific reason for the Second Amendment’s inclusion in the Bill of Rights—why the Antifederalists insisted upon it. And the Snope case rebuts a claim continually espoused by the Anti-Second Amendment proponents, zealots, and outright fanatics. That claim can be phrased accurately as this:

Semiautomatic weapons are “assault weapons,” properly considered “weapons of war,” as they are “in the style of” military weapons. The Second Amendment doesn’t protect the right of any civilian citizen to keep and bear such weapons because they are offensive weapons, having no utility for self-defense.

IS THERE ANY JUSTIFICATION FOR THIS CLAIM? NO, THERE IS NONE—NOT IN LAW, NOR LOGIC, NOR MORALITY!

The claim isn’t merely false, it’s patently ridiculous. Yet, the foes of the Second Amendment take it as presumptively true.

In a nutshell, the claim appears, in various portions of the State’s Brief in Opposition to Petitioners Brief in Support of the granting of the Writ for Certiorari,as assumption, and argument, and inference,

The foes of the individual right of the American people to keep and bear arms contend wrongly that Heller supports this claim. It does not. They shred Heller, reconstructing it by reshaping parts of it to comport with their belief system.

That belief system isn’t simply antithetical to the existence of and preservation of the armed citizenry, it undercuts the principles of Freedom and Liberty that make a truly Free Constitutional Republic possible.

The armed citizenry is the mainstay of a Free Constitutional Republic, and of a Nation where the Common Man is the Sole Sovereign over Government.

The Destructors of our Nation, present both within the Country and outside it, know that a Free Republic will withstand all attempts, militarily or through quiet subterfuge, to defeat it so long as the armed citizenry exists.

The myriad attempts of these Destructors to chisel away at the Second Amendment bespeak a raw fear and rage exhibited toward America’s armed citizenry.

These attempts range from, ONE, overt unconstitutional enactments of Congress, State Goverments, and localities, and through illegal administrative regulations crafted by federal agencies like the ATF, to, TWO, cunning covert psychological tools involving deflection and misdirection directed to reshaping the American psyche.

Associate Justices, like Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and the late Antonin Scalia, were well aware of this. District of Columbia vs. Heller was their response to the danger presented to our Free Republic. They intended to bring to a screeching halt the myriad efforts crafted by ruthless forces bent on destroying Freedom and Liberty.

Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Anthony didn’t want to take Heller up on review. But, such was the indomitable will of Scalia, strengthened through strong support from Thomas and Alito, that Roberts and Kennedy acquiesced.

The latter two Justices knew that Heller would be the premier Bill of Rights case to save the Republic, thereupon sparing the Country from what otherwise would lead eventually, inexorably, inevitably to its decline and eradication. Perhaps, this explains why Roberts and Kennedy agreed, if reluctantly, to cast their votes to review Heller.

We have no doubt it took prodigious effort on the part of Justice Scalia, with the avid assistance of Justices Thomas and Alito, to prevail on the Chief Justice to allow Heller to be taken up and to gain assurances from the two, Roberts and Kennedy, that they would not subvert the effort to strengthen the Second Amendment, once the writ of certiorari was granted.

Once the Heller Holdings came down, the Destroyers of our Country knew it would be well-nigh impossible to defeat the natural law right of the people to keep and bear arms apart from overturning the case, and that too would be impossible.

The best that the foes of our Republic and of the sovereignty of the Common Man could hope for, to circumvent the will and strength of Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, was to attempt to subvert the rulings of Heller and of the two other landmark cases, McDonald and Bruen.

But Heller would remain the premier Second Amendment case. It would remain the crucial key to be exploited by those intent on eradicating the armed citizenry. Those courts predisposed to harm Heller, employed legalese to distort and contort the holdings and the legal dicta supporting the Heller holdings.

Renegade American Governments at all levels would also ignore the rulings. And sympathetic Courts would engage in legal, logical, and syntactical gyrations to give their imprimatur to their legally dubious and logically fallacious, unconstitutional rulings.

And a friendly Press would urge public support through manipulation of the American psyche.

Malevolent courts hated Heller.

They figured that if they could treat Heller like a puzzle—a jigsaw puzzle—they could simply spill the tiles on the floor, recut them, and reassemble them to form a new scene—one more to their liking.

The wily Antonin Scalia knew that Heller would be—must be—only the first of several cases to come, to return the Second Amendment to its rightful prominence and purpose in our Free Constitutional Republic, as a bulwark against the encroachment of Tyranny.

WITH THE SECOND AMENDMENT AS THE MAINSTAY OF TRUE FREEDOM AND LIBERTY, AND WITH THE HELLER CASE AS THE LINCHPIN TO STRENGTHENING IT, THIS MEANS THAT——

Government—all Government, be it Federal, State, regional, or local—cannot be permitted to insinuate TYRANNY on the American people. And the American people must never acquiesce to dilution of THE MOST POWERFUL VEHICLE OF LIBERTY the world has ever seen or will ever see. TYRANNY MUST NEVER GAIN A FOOTHOLD IN OUR COUNTRY.

The singular import of Heller, conveyed in Scalia’s recitation of the history of the Second Amendment underscores the salient holding: THE RIGHT of the people to keep and bear arms is an INDIVIDUAL RIGHT NOT a collective right tied to a person’s connection to a militia or to any other military body.

This Nation alone, of every other Nation or political entity in the world, recognizes and posits: “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The assertion logically entails that the United States belongs to the people—the Common Man—and not to, NEVER TO, a few elite oligarchs or to a solitary monarch. EXERCISE OF THE NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE PREVENTS THIS.

The natural law right to armed self-defense does not, then, exist as mere wish-fulfillment.

THE RIGHT MUST BE EXERCISED, NOT MERELY ACCEDED TO. IF A MAN KEEPS AND BEAR ARMS, HE KEEPS THREATS, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE AT BAY.

The power and sovereignty of the Common Man reigns supreme in this Land and the language of the Second Amendment is the written embodiment of the eternal promise that this Land shall always remain so, FREE, but only so long as the people bear arms from the threat of beast, man, and the man-beast of Government.

Some people argue that the Second Amendment is vague. It is not!

There is nothing—absolutely nothing—in the Second Amendment to suggest that the right mentioned requires clarification, refinement, reappraisal, or reassessment. And it does not mean something less than the absolute commandment recited.

That commandment serves as a strong imperative, cautioning Government, ALL Government:

DO NOT TREAD ON THIS RIGHT! IF YOU DO, THAT SHALL BE TO YOUR DETRIMENT AND TO YOUR EVERLASTING SHAME!

THIS NATURAL LAW RIGHT IS PLAIN AND ABSOLUTE.

The words of the Second Amendment, in the Bill of Rights, serve merely as a stand-in for the reality from which the right derived: The Divine Creator.

The Antifederalists insisted on codifying the fundamental right along with the others, as a constant reminder to the obtuse among us and to those in Government who would deny the existence of this and other natural law rights if not written in stone.

Fortunately, the Antifederalists, among the Nation’s framers, demonstrated profound prescience, grounded on their cognizance of the nature of presumptuous, ruthless men predisposed to wield power and authority over other men. Such malevolent, rude, malignant men who dare exert dominion over other men have always existed and always will.

Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, like the Antifederalists, have known this as well, even if the other Justices did not and do not wish to contemplate that sad truth.

This natural law right exists in man intrinsically, bestowed upon him, by the Creator. Therefore this right cannot be lawfully bestowed upon, denied, or rescinded on man by other men, or by the Government and its agents.

The right is fundamental, unalienable, unmodifiable, and eternal.

Among the holdings in Heller, the Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, said clearly, concisely, and categorically:

“In sum, we hold that the District's ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment.”

Note: this holding applies universally, across the United States, and it would have ramifications for the constitutionality of other firearms that fall within the purview of natural law right of the people to keep and bear arms.

Chief Justice John Roberts and retired Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy demanded restraint in the drafting of the majority opinion if the true Patriots—Scalia, Thomas, and Alito—were to obtain the votes of Roberts and Kennedy, who likely were hesitant to sign onto Heller.

The latter two Justices were well aware that Heller would be the most important Second Amendment decision to come out of the U.S. Supreme Court up to that time and that it would continue to have a profound impact on all Second Amendment cases that would arise thereafter.

But John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy had hoped that the constraining language would prevent wholesale disruption of Government attempts to rein in application of “THE WELL-ARMED CITIZEN.”

Even so, Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Kennedy could not prevent Associate Justice, Antonin Scalia, from laying substantial groundwork for subsequent landmark Second Amendment decisions. He did this through carefully worded prose. Scalia was a “SLY FOX,” and a MASTER OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Despite what Anti-Second Amendment proponents and zealots wrongly presume but constantly assert, nothing in Heller suggests the right of the people to keep and bear arms is limited to the right to own and possess handguns only. Moreover, there is nothing in that holding to suggest any limitation on the types of handguns Americans can keep and bear, be those handguns single or double action revolvers, or semiautomatics. And there is nothing in the holding to suggest a limitation on the caliber or type of ammunition handguns may be chambered for.

More to the point, Heller poses no limitation on other kinds of weapons the citizen can keep and bear, apart from an ostensible sop Scalia, Thomas, and Alito gave to Roberts and Kennedy.

The Respondent, the Attorney General for the State of Maryland, in Snope, either doesn’t see this or has deliberately chosen not to in subservience to the State Government—a Government that manifests CONTEMPT AND ABHORRENCE TOWARD THE ARMED CITIZEN.

To seemingly placate Roberts and Kennedy, Scalia opines,

“We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time.’ 307 U.S., at 179, 59 S. Ct. 816, 83 L. Ed. 1206. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons’” [citations omitted].

This paragraph serves as an apparent sop to Roberts and Kennedy.

But, even with that, Scalia demonstrates his subtle trickery against the foes of our Nation’s Bill of Rights.

The phrase “common use” must be scrutinized, as it comes up frequently, nowadays, as Scalia knew it would.

Were the government to decide to take weapons from the public that it presently keeps and bears, might not THE GOVERNMENT thereafter say,

“Well, such weapons that were once in common use are not in common use any longer, so we can now take those weapons from the public, and the public cannot be heard to complain and, more, has no legal recourse if it sought to challenge THAT TAKING.

DO NOT CONSIDER THIS A TRIVIAL OR MEANINGLESS POINT, FOR IT ISN’T!

This brings up our concern for the notorious “National Firearms Act of 1934” (NFA).

Once enacted, its enforcement began to tightly regulate machine guns, short-barreled shotguns, submachine guns, assault rifles, and such components as suppressors—weapons and items that likely were at one time in “common use” but had after enactment of the NFA become difficult to obtain a license for—and such weapons and components then, effectively, could be said to be no longer in common use. But, that happened only because Government had artificially stepped in to make such weapons “uncommon.”

Might not Government interference with civilian citizens keeping and bearing semiautomatic weapons tend to do the same thing?

Did Scalia have anything to say about that? Yes, he did! He had much to say about this.

Two paragraphs down from referencing “dangerous and unusual weapons,” in seeming deference to Miller, Scalia opines,

It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M-16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment's ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right” [emphasis our own]

The above paragraph certainly weakens, and more likely negates the notion that the Miller test of “dangerous and unusual weapons” precludes Second Amendment protection for civilian citizen ownership and possession of those weapons.

The expression “dangerous and unusual” is legally suspect and logically vague. Let’s parse this.

Many items can be construed as “dangerous” if one wishes, just by saying so.

Such items as firearms, yes, but also knives, cars and trucks, and chainsaws can be construed as dangerous. But it is the person, the sentient agent, not the inanimate object, in whom the concept of ‘danger’ rests. For, it is solely within the nature of the person—in the nature then of that agent who wields the object—through which the danger does or does not manifest.

The expression ‘unusual’ is also legally suspect and logically vague. The concept, as applied to an object, has meaning only in the sense that and manner in which the sentient agent chooses to think of it. And, what a person happens to think of an object often is a function of time or place, custom and tradition, and circumstance. And who is to be the ultimate arbiter of what is deemed to be unusual?

Is it the Individual? A Few Men? A Plurality? A Majority? An Entire Population? The Leader of the Nation? A Legislative Body? A Judicial Body? An Administrator?

Scalia was well aware of the nebulousness of terminology. And we may rightly infer that he likely found the intentional misuse of language to undermine the natural law rights of the American citizen to be especially repugnant. He knew, then, exactly what he was doing as he carefully, adroitly phrased the holdings and reasoning of the Heller majority opinion to appease Roberts and Kennedy.

Thomas and Alito understood well what Scalia was doing and were pleased at the result of the opinion as drafted notwithstanding changes made to the draft, to appease the concerns of Roberts and Kennedy.

The three Justices—Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito—were plainly appalled by attempts of Courts to continuously reframe legal opinions to comport to their own personal ideologies.

Roberts and Kennedy were likely aware of Scalia’s linguistic interpolations and nuanced exposition, designed to give the impression of watering down the breadth of Heller to placate those two.

Scalia had hoped that recitation of prior U.S. Supreme Court case law, like Miller, would serve to give the illusion of constraining the broad contours of Heller as he penned what would become a landmark  opinion. One can readily surmise how Scalia would have boldly drafted Heller had John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy allowed him a free hand to write the opinion as he had wished and as his brethren Thomas and Alito would also certainly have wished.

But as drafted, what was presented to Roberts and Kennedy was enough to get the two on board. That gave the true conservative wing—Scalia, Thomas, and Alito—the majority needed so that the right of the people to keep and bear arms would have a fighting chance to survive future attacks by the Anti-Second Amendment zealots. Those zealots would maintain an indefatigable resolve to eradicate the Second Amendment, and with that accomplished, dissolve the Republic forthwith.

Moreover, Scalia discusses “ARMED SELF-DEFENSE” as if to suggest this might mean nothing more than armed self-defense against predatory man or predatory beast, only. But, plainly, Scalia means much more than this.

His salient concern, was, as was the concern of Justices Thomas and Alito, the same as that of the Founders of the Republic—the man-beast of Government, Tyranny.

In that regard, Heller makes patently clear that MILITARY PERSONNEL WEAPONS ARE WHAT THE SECOND AMENDMENT SPEAKS OF—PRECISELY THOSE KINDS OF WEAPONS THAT FALL WITHIN THE PROTECTED PURVIEW OF THE LANGUAGE OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

True, the question in Snope, doesn’t address that.

But, then, Petitioners don’t need to address this. The Petitioners in their August 21, 2024, petition for writ of certiorari pose the question for review by the High Court as:

Whether the Constitution permits the State of Maryland to ban semiautomatic rifles that are in common use for lawful purposes, including the most popular rifle in America.

THAT RECITATION OF THE ISSUE IS ENOUGH. NO MORE NEED BE SAID FOR THE IMPORT OF THE ASSERTION TO BE UNDERSTOOD.

In its Response filed on November 12, 2024, the Respondent Attorney General for the State of Maryland framed the question on review differently and not at all concisely, urging the Court to deny review and, if the Court were to review the case, then the Attorney General urged the Court to render a decision favoring the State, rebuffing Petitioners.

The Attorney General for Maryland posed the question for review by the Court as this:

Should this Court decline to grant certiorari to consider the constitutionality of Maryland’s assault weapons ban where

(1) that ban is consistent with this Court’s recognition in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), that jurisdictions may ban ‘weapons that are most useful in military service—M-16 rifles and the like’;

(2) the Fourth Circuit faithfully applied New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), to conclude that Maryland’s law is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of ‘regulating those weapons that were invented for offensive purposes and were ultimately proven to pose exceptional dangers to innocent civilians,’ Pet. App. 69a; and (3) there is no need to resolve a conflict among the lower courts?”

It need be said that Respondent’s recitation of the question to be taken up by the Court IS NOT the question the Court has agreed to take up if it votes to review the case, but that of Petitioners.

THE COURT HAS ACCEPTED THE QUESTION AS FRAMED EXACTLY BY PETITIONERS.

This is no small matter, as the question as proposed by Petitioners and as accepted by the High Court, goes to the crux of the matter, hearkening back to the message hidden in the contours of Heller.

The Attorney General for Maryland assumes that military weapons or military ‘style’ weapons are not the sorts of firearms protected by the Second Amendment. Since this is the foundation for the banning of semiautomatic weapons in Maryland, the State’s Brief stands or falls on this false presumption, and this false belief is the faulty foundation upon which the entire argument rests and falls. The Attorney General makes plain at the outset that military weapons aren’t protected by the Second Amendment. That is a marked and naked assumption:

This Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), left intact its pronouncement in Heller that “M-16 rifles and the like” are weapons that “may be banned.” Nonetheless, this Court vacated an earlier appellate decision in this case and remanded for consideration in light of Bruen. The en banc Fourth Circuit, in turn, reaffirmed the principles set forth in Heller and held that the assault weapons covered by Maryland’s law fell outside of the Second Amendment’s protection because, like the M-16, they are militaristic weapons that are ill-suited for self-defense.”

The AG for Maryland then goes on a polemic about “assault weapons.” His Brief in Opposition comes across more as a policy tract for organizations like “Everytown for Gun Safety” and the “Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence” than as a cogent legal Brief addressed to the U.S. Supreme Court. No one on the Court can reasonably be impressed by it. Sure, the liberal wing would affirm the decision of the Maryland Court of Appeals not for what Respondent has to say, but, rather, in spite of Respondent’s remarks. The liberal wing of the Court is after all in bed with Anti-Secondment foes. The liberal wing is ideologically predisposed to eradicate “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

The argument presented is simply wrong and begs the very question at issue. Does the citizen solider have an unalienable right to keep and bear military personnel weapons?

Heller neither expressly stated nor implied that M-16 selective fire weapons or those weapons the State considers to be like military weapons are not protected by the Second Amendment because such weapons “are ill-suited for self-defense.”

If such weapons are not suited for self-defense, then, really, how? Are such weapons ill-suited as a defense against Tyranny, or is it, rather, that they are aptly suited as a defense against tyranny?

Isn’t the citizenry’s keeping and bearing arms suitable for defense against tyranny the raison d’être of the Second Amendment?

And what is the best weaponry available to counteract Tyranny if not military weapons in the hands of a couple hundred million citizens, well-trained in their use, primed for rebellion against a Tyrannical Government? For what does a Tyrannical Government fear more than the “WELL-ARMED CITIZENRY”—WELL-ARMED AND WELL-VERSED IN THE USE OF MILITARY WEAPONS TO REPEL TYRANNY?

The High Court can deal effectively with these questions, thrusting the very abhorrence the Tyrant has against the Armed Citizen right back at him, but only if the Court garners at least four votes to take up the Snope case. We will see.

There is reason enough for the Court to take up Snope vs. Brown now, especially in light of so many  decades of propaganda spouted by Anti-Second proponents and zealots in Anti-Second Amendment organizations, in the Democrat Party, and in the Legacy Press, in blind obedience to Government hell-bent in creating Tyranny.

Is it not HIGH TIME NOW FOR THE HIGH COURT TO CEMENT THE SECOND AMENDMENT DOWN SO THERE IS NO MISTAKE AS TO ITS PURPOSE AND ITS INTENT?

A Federal Government, knowing its place, beholding to and properly subservient to the Sovereign Authority in the Land—the AMERICAN PEOPLE—has no reason to fear the people. It only does so, if it seeks to usurp that authority. And that is what we Americans were and are always faced with.

Is it not unsurprising that the Progressive-Marxist Democrats who go on about how they are the true Defenders of “Democracy” (albeit without ever bothering to explain what they mean by the word) and at one and the same time harangue Americans who insist on keeping and bearing arms? Whither that thing “Democracy” (if what is meant by it is not, “FREEDOM AND LIBERTY”) and a citizen army to defend that Democracy?

Recall, what Justice Kavanaugh said, when he cast the deciding vote, at the behest of the Chief Justice in the 2020 case, N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. City of New York.

Kavanaugh stated—in an odd and unconvincing concurring opinion, joining the majority liberal wing and Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion, contra the dissenting opinion of Associate Justices Alito and Thomas—

I share Justice Alito’s concern that some federal and state courts may not be properly applying Heller and McDonald. The Court should address that issue soon, perhaps in one of the several Second Amendment cases with petitions for certiorari now pending before the Court.” [So why couldn’t the Court address that concern in the case at bar?]

Whether Kavanaugh meant what he said, the Bruen case, in any event, followed in 2022.

Snope vs. Brown should be the next major case taken up by the Court.

State Governments that detest the rulings in Heller and McDonald have long enacted laws and regulations severely constraining or denying outright civilian citizen possession and ownership of semiautomatic weapons, likening them to weapons falling under the purview of the unlawful and unconstitutional National Firearms Act (NFA).

This came to the fore several years ago. Few people remember, but we would like to jog the memory of those American who may have forgotten.

Go back ten years. In 2015, the case Friedman vs. Highland Park came up to the Court on a writ of certiorari. The salient issue in that earlier case is the same as in the present case, Snope vs. Brown.

Friedman dealt with the constitutionality of commonly owned semiautomatic weapons. The Court rejected review of the case, realizing of course that insufficient Justices would vote to strike down the Government’s outright ban on semiautomatic weapons. Justice Thomas was livid, and he wrote a vigorous dissent.

The late Justice Scalia, who obviously was also appalled by the reticence of Chief Justice Roberts and Kennedy to vote to take up the Friedman case and provide for a third Landmark decision, in 2015, had joined him. Justice Scalia would be found dead fourteen months later, in a hotel room in Texas, and under most mysterious circumstances, with precious few details ever forthcoming about the Justice’s death.

CBS News, for one, would assert this much about the matter, in its article, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia found dead in Texas - CBS News

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead Saturday, CBS News has confirmed. A spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service said he appeared to die of natural causes.

According to the San Antonio News-Express, which was first to report his death, Scalia was found dead in his room at a West Texas resort.

Scalia, 79, was one of the staunchest conservative members of the court. He was nominated in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan and is the longest-serving member on the court.

He championed the philosophy of "orginalism," meaning he interprets the Constitution according to what he believes the original authors intended over 200 years ago. . . .

In a statement on behalf of the Supreme Court and retired Justices, Chief Justice John Roberts called Scalia, "an extraordinary individual and jurist, admired and treasured by his colleagues."

"His passing is a great loss to the Court and the country he so loyally served. We extend our deepest condolences to his wife Maureen and his family," he added.

It is singularly odd that an extraordinary Jurist and dominant personality on the Court, without whom the Heller case would probably never have materialized, would be lost to the Country forever, scarcely one year after Friedman—followed by many more Second Amendment cases coming down the pike plainly due to the Heller rulings.

What did Thomas have to say about Friedman, that Scalia heartily agreed with? Given its similarity to Snope, we provide Thomas’ dissent in full to our readers. Thomas’ comments can be readily applied as rulings in Snope if the Court did vote to hear it. The public will learn the fate of this case, on Monday, January 13.

Likely the Roberts Court has Thomas’ dissent fresh in mind. What Thomas opined is either the reason the Court voted, this past Friday, to grant the writ of certiorari, or it was for fear of Thomas’ dissent in Friedman, that the Court denied the writ—a second time:

“[O]ur central holding in” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637 (2008), was “that the Second Amendment protects a personal right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, most notably for self-defense within the home.” McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 780, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894 (2010) (plurality opinion). And in McDonald, we recognized that the Second Amendment applies fully against the States as well as the Federal Government. Id., at 750, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3026, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894, 903; id., at 805, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3058, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894, 938 (THOMAS, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment).

Despite these holdings, several Courts of Appeals—including the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in the decision below — have upheld categorical bans on firearms that millions of Americans commonly own for lawful purposes. See 784 F. 3d 406, 410-412 (2015). Because noncompliance with our Second Amendment precedents warrants this Court’s attention as much as any of our precedents, I would grant certiorari in this case.”
I

The city of Highland Park, Illinois, bans manufacturing, selling, giving, lending, acquiring, or possessing many of the most commonly owned semiautomatic firearms, which the City branded “Assault Weapons.” See Highland Park, Ill., City Code §§136.001(C), 136.005 (2015), App. to Pet. for Cert. 65a, 71a. For instance, the ordinance criminalizes modern sporting rifles (e.g., AR-style semiautomatic rifles), which many Americans own for lawful purposes like self-defense, hunting, and target shooting. The City also prohibited “Large Capacity Magazines,” a term the City used to refer to nearly all ammunition feeding devices that “accept more than ten rounds.” §136.001(G), id., at 70a.

The City gave anyone who legally possessed “an Assault Weapon or Large Capacity Magazine” 60 days to move these items outside City limits, disable them, or surrender them for destruction. §136.020, id., at 73a. Anyone who violates the ordinance can be imprisoned for up to six months, fined up to $1,000, or both. §136.999, id., at 74a.

Petitioners — a Highland Park resident who sought to keep now-prohibited firearms and magazines to defend his home, and an advocacy organization — brought a suit to enjoin the ordinance on the ground that it violates the Second Amendment. The District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granted summary judgment to the City.

A divided panel of the Seventh Circuit affirmed. The panel majority acknowledged that the prohibited weapons “can be beneficial for self-defense because they are lighter than many rifles and less dangerous per shot than larger-caliber pistols or revolvers,” and thus “[h]ouseholders too frightened or infirm to aim carefully may be able to wield them more effectively.” 784 F. 3d, at 411.

The majority nonetheless found no constitutional problem with the ordinance. It recognized that Heller “holds that a law banning the possession of handguns in the home . . . violates” the Second Amendment. 784 F. 3d, at 407. But beyond Heller’s rejection of banning handguns in the home, the majority believed, Heller and McDonald “leave matters open” on the scope of the Second Amendment. 784 F. 3d, at 412. The majority thus adopted a new test for gauging the constitutionality of bans on firearms: “[W]e [will] ask whether a regulation bans weapons that were common at the time of ratification or those that have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, . . . and whether law-abiding citizens retain adequate means of self-defense.” Id., at 410 (internal quotation marks omitted).

Judge Manion dissented, reasoning that “[b]oth the ordinance and this court’s opinion upholding it are directly at odds with the central holdings of Heller and McDonald.” Id., at 412.
II

The Second Amendment provides: “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.” We explained in Heller and McDonald that the Second Amendment “guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.” Heller, supra, at 592, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2797, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 657; see also McDonald, supra, at 767-769, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3036-3037, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894, 914-916. We excluded from protection only “those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” Heller, 554 U. S., at 625, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2815, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 677. And we stressed that “[t]he very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon.” Id., at 634, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2821, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 682 (emphasis deleted).

Instead of adhering to our reasoning in Heller, the Seventh Circuit limited Heller to its facts, and read Heller to forbid only total bans on handguns used for self-defense in the home. See 784 F. 3d, at 407, 412. All other questions about the Second Amendment, the Seventh Circuit concluded, should be defined by “the political process and scholarly debate.” Id., at 412. But Heller repudiates that approach. We explained in Heller that “since th[e] case represent[ed] this Court’s first in-depth examination of the Second Amendment, one should not expect it to clarify the entire field.” 554 U. S., at 635, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2821, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 683.We cautioned courts against leaving the rest of the field to the legislative process: “Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad.” Id., at 634-635, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2821, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 683.

Based on its crabbed reading of Heller, the Seventh Circuit felt free to adopt a test for assessing firearm bans that eviscerates many of the protections recognized in Heller and McDonald. The court asked in the first instance whether the banned firearms “were common at the time of ratification” in 1791. 784 F. 3d, at 410. But we said in Heller that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” 554 U. S., at 582, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2792, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 651.

The Seventh Circuit alternatively asked whether the banned firearms relate “to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” 784 F. 3d, at 410 (internal quotation marks omitted). The court concluded that state and local ordinances never run afoul of that objective, since “states, which are in charge of militias, should be allowed to decide when civilians can possess military-grade firearms.” Ibid. But that ignores Heller’s fundamental premise: The right to keep and bear arms is an independent, individual right. Its scope is defined not by what the militia needs, but by what private citizens commonly possess. 554 U. S., at 592, 627-629, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2797, 2817-2818, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 657, 678-680. Moreover, the Seventh Circuit endorsed the view of the militia that Heller rejected. We explained that “Congress retains plenary authority to organize the militia,” not States. Id., at 600, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2802, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 662 (emphasis added). Because the Second Amendment confers rights upon individual citizens—not state governments—it was doubly wrong for the Seventh Circuit to delegate to States and localities the power to decide which firearms people may possess.

Lastly, the Seventh Circuit considered “whether law-abiding citizens retain adequate means of self-defense,” and reasoned that the City’s ban was permissible because “[i]f criminals can find substitutes for banned assault weapons, then so can law-abiding homeowners.” 784 F. 3d, at 410, 411. Although the court recognized that “Heller held that the availability of long guns does not save a ban on handgun ownership,” it thought that “Heller did not foreclose the possibility that allowing the use of most long guns plus pistols and revolvers . . . gives householders adequate means of defense.” Id., at 411.

That analysis misreads Heller. The question under Heller is not whether citizens have adequate alternatives available for self-defense. Rather, Heller asks whether the law bans types of firearms commonly used for a lawful purpose—regardless of whether alternatives exist. 554 U. S., at 627-629, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2817-2818, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 678-680. And Heller draws a distinction between such firearms and weapons specially adapted to unlawful uses and not in common use, such as sawed-off shotguns. Id., at 624-625, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2815-2816, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 676-677. The City’s ban is thus highly suspect because it broadly prohibits common semiautomatic firearms used for lawful purposes. Roughly 5 million Americans own AR-style semiautomatic rifles. See 784 F. 3d, at 415, n. 3. The overwhelming majority of citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful purposes, including self-defense and target shooting. See ibid. Under our precedents, that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons. See McDonald, 561 U. S., at 767-768, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3036-3037, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894, 914-915; Heller, supra, at 628-629, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2817-2818, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 679-680.

The Seventh Circuit ultimately upheld a ban on many common semiautomatic firearms based on speculation about the law’s potential policy benefits. See 784 F. 3d, at 411-412. The court conceded that handguns — not “assault weapons” — “are responsible for the vast majority of gun violence in the United States.” Id., at 409. Still, the court concluded, the ordinance “may increase the public’s sense of safety,” which alone is “a substantial benefit.” Id., at 412. Heller, however, forbids subjecting the Second Amendment’s “core protection . . . to a freestanding ‘interest-balancing’ approach.” Heller, supra, at 634, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2821, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 683. This case illustrates why. If a broad ban on firearms can be upheld based on  conjecture that the public might feel safer (while being no safer at all), then the Second Amendment guarantees nothing.
III

The Court’s refusal to review a decision that flouts two of our Second Amendment precedents stands in marked contrast to the Court’s willingness to summarily reverse courts that disregard our other constitutional decisions. E.g., Maryland v. Kulbicki, ante, at 1 (per curiam) (summarily reversing because the court below applied Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668, 104 S. Ct. 2052, 80 L. Ed. 2d 674 (1984), “in name only”); Grady v. North Carolina, 575 U. S. 306 , 135 S. Ct. 1368, 191 L. Ed. 2d 459 (2015) (per curiam) (summarily reversing a judgment inconsistent with this Court’s recent Fourth Amendment precedents); Martinez v. Illinois, 572 U. S. 833, 843 , 134 S. Ct. 2070, 2077, 188 L. Ed. 2d 1112, 1120 (2014) (per curiam) (summarily reversing judgment that rested on an “understandable” double jeopardy holding that nonetheless “r[an] directly counter to our precedents”).

There is no basis for a different result when our Second Amendment precedents are at stake. I would grant certiorari to prevent the Seventh Circuit from relegating the Second Amendment to a second-class right.

Note, there is no suggestion here that civilian possession of military weaponry is to be considered unlawful. The idea is subtle and tacit and rebuts the notion that semiautomatic weapons must be banned because of a presumptive association with military weaponry. Again, Heller doesn’t shy from acknowledging the historical significance of having an armed citizenry precisely to deal with military matters—whether emanating externally by foreign actors or through internal Government treachery directed against Americans, portrayed as “Domestic Terrorists” by the present head of the DOJ Merrick Garland, and the present head of the FBI, Christopher Ray, both of whom will soon be sent packing and good riddance to both.

Now, Thomas does reference “weapons specially adapted to unlawful uses and not in common use, such as sawed-off shotguns” as falling outside the purview of Second Amendment protection. [emphasis our own]

But, by using phraseology like “sawed-off shotguns” rather than the standard phraseology, “short-barreled shotgun” (SBS) and “short-barreled rifle” (SBR) Thomas appears to be poking fun at political neologisms and colloquialisms bandied about for rhetorical flourish as if they are proper terms of art (they are not). Such terminology is imprecise at best, not recognized by or utilized by the military or by the trade industry.

Think of Anti-Second Amendment terminology like “assault weapons” and “weapons of war.” Such phrases are fictions devised to confound the ill-informed, for the purpose of achieving a political goal.

That terminology has no consistent definition among politicians and the Press and are otherwise so amorphous as to be nonsensical. As defined in the laws of various States, there is no common agreement among these States, and the language is subject to change, leading to rampant confusion for everyone.

CONSIDER——

Now I might have no legitimate, lawful use for a “sawed-off shotgun.” But I can conceive of the utility of a “short-barreled shotgun” in my house, or in a truck when out and about driving in the wild or if I were to find myself in an urban cesspool like Chicago, Seattle, Oakland, LA, SF, or NYC, to name a few such areas around the Country.

And, if I can purchase a “Mossberg Shockwave” or a “Remington Tac-14” quite readily from a licensed gun dealer with little effort, why must I fill out the appropriate ATF Form and pay a fee for an SBS to lawfully to do the same, when the additional hoops I have to jump through are not required for the former two firearms.

And this fact is all the more remarkable since it is easier to learn to master a shotgun with a stock, i.e. an SBS, than it is to master the aforementioned Mossberg or Remington sans stock—outfitted with a birds head pistol grip.

Let us hope the High Court has voted to take up the Snope case. We shall soon know.

If so, then, once that is accomplished, let us prevail on Congress to repeal the NFA.

With Americans well-armed with military personnel weapons, this Free Constitutional Republic will be able to successfully withstand the worst tyrannies thrown at us.

_____________________________________________

THE GREATEST GIFT TO AMERICA FOR THE NEW YEAR, 2025: PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY HERALDS A GOLDEN AGE FOR AMERICA: A WELCOME CONTINUATION OF HIS FIRST TERM IN OFFICE AND A PROMISE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FOR DECADES TO COME

Future Historians and U.S. Presidential Scholars—untainted by Progressive Politics and Marxist ideology pervading American society and proliferating unchecked through our many   institutions of Federal, State and local Governments, Education and Academia, Business and Finance, the Press, Broadcast and Cable News, Social Media, the Arts and entertainment, and even Science, Technology, and Medicine—will admonish Joe Biden, casting him, undeniably, as among THE Country’s worst Presidents, likely ranking him dead last.

Contrariwise, these future experts will identify Donald Trump as one of the Nation’s best Presidents, and, not improbably, America’s Best President since the founding of our Republic.

We base this conclusion on four major factors: Trump’s personal characteristics and abilities required of a successful leader; his singular accomplishments; the steadfastness of the man in grappling with and contending with dire threats to the security of a free state and to the well-being of the Country and its people; and the pernicious actions directed against Trump, in both his official and personal capacities.

Concerning this last factor, the nature, expansiveness, and inventiveness of, and the feral ferocity, constancy, and duration of actions taken against Trump, are unprecedented.

And they are ongoing.

In the annals of American history, no other President has undergone such vile, virulent invective that Donald Trump has endured; nor has any other U.S. President suffered and yet endure such savage, brutal, unwarranted actions—actions all in defiance of the Constitution, Congressional Statutes, and Congressional Rules of Order. A lesser man would have crumpled long ago.

From the moment he first entered the political arena, vying for President as the Republican Party candidate in the 2016 race, Trump faced merciless attack.

The Leftist cable news network CNN took its first jab at Trump.

On June 15, 2015, CNN reported that Donald Trump had launched his run for the Presidency. The news account gives an inkling of the Media’s distaste for a Trump Presidency:

The real estate mogul and TV reality star launched his presidential campaign Tuesday, ending more than two decades of persistent flirtation with the idea of running for the Oval Office.

“So, ladies and gentlemen, I am officially running for president of the United States, and we are going to make our country great again,” Trump told the crowd in a lengthy and meandering 45-minute speech that hit on his signature issues like currency manipulation from China and job creation, while also taking shots at the president and his competitors on the Republican side.

“Sadly the American dream is dead,” Trump said at the end of his speech. “But if I get elected president I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before.”

. . . Trump made his announcement at the lavish Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York, laying out a vision to match his incoming campaign slogan, ‘Make America Great Again.’

. . . But Trump showed Tuesday that he won’t shy away from the out-of-reach luxury and opulence that makes up his day-to-day lifestyle.

Instead, he flaunted his wealth and success in business as a centerpiece of his presidential platform, and he began that officially on Tuesday, trumpeting his whopping $8.7 billion net worth during his announcement speech. Trump’s net worth was previously estimated at roughly $4 billion. . . .

The CNN news report hardly masks its contempt and jealousy of Trump. That contempt and jealousy would be replicated in the coming weeks and months and would become more and more scathing. CNN and other legacy news media would treat Trump as pompous, and worse, they would treat him as a person motivated exclusively by self-interest. They were wrong.

CNN and the rest of the Leftist Press and Social Media have always “GOTTEN IT WRONG.”

Trump’s business success and his well-earned pride in his abilities as a businessman and as President of the United States were never meant as a conceit. Had they been so, he would never have suffered the slings and arrows that almost took his life—literally. On July 13, 2024, the New York Post reported:

Former President Donald Trump was wounded on a Pennsylvania campaign stage by a sniper’s bullet Saturday night in an apparent assassination attempt that nearly claimed his life, law enforcement sources told The Post.

Trump, who was speaking at a packed outdoors rally in Butler, Pa. when bullets started flying, later posted on his Truth Social site saying he “felt the bullet ripping through [his] skin,” and that it “pierced the upper part of my right ear.”

“I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin,” said the 78-year-old presumptive Republican presidential nominee. “Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening.”

The gunman was later identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, sources told The Post.

Shots broke out just after 6:10 p.m. as Trump showed off a chart of border crossing numbers. Footage shows him grabbing his ear as shots are fired — with the crowd screaming behind him — and then someone yelling “Get down, get down, get down, get down!” as Secret Service agents piled on top of him to shield him.

If Trump’s vying for the U.S. Presidency were grounded on self-interest, he would not have run for President, ever.  He would not place his life in danger and suffer the incessant, unjustified and blistering savage personal attacks launched upon him.

Moreover, if his motivation for gaining the U.S. Presidency were governed by anything less than unabashed love for his Country, and for the American people, and concern for the survival of our Free Constitutional Republic, he would have bowed out once an assassin’s bullet almost took his life. He never wavered in his resolve to protect our Nation, our Constitution, and our people from all threats, both foreign and domestic.

His clenched fist held high in the air, with blood soaking his ear and clothes, and defiantly voicing the word “Fight” over and over, reverberated and rippled over the crowd, and would be remembered by the Nation forever, as a continuing testament to our Nation’s indefatigable courage and indomitable will, existent from our first War against Tyranny in 1776, to the present time. See New York Post article posted July 13, 2024, with incredible, indelible, ineradicable photograph.

Trump’s hairbreadth escape from certain death served only to cement his intention and resolve to regain the Presidency in November 2024. Another assassin attempted to murder Trump on September 15, 2024. That attempt, fortunately, also failed. See NBC News report, updated September 17, 2024.

Trump remains ever unperturbed. His spirit is indomitable—what more demonstrates the mark of a born leader?

But a pressing question remains and the American public must demand answers.

Did these Assassins operate alone? Not likely. Yet, Biden’s DOJ, FBI, and the Secret Service remain, to the present day, peculiarly reticent about the assassins and about the attempts on Trump’s life, relaying little information of value to the public.

Such comments made are noticeably vague, inconsistent, and even nonsensical. Clearly, these Government organizations are hiding information from the American people. And in the last several weeks, the public has heard nary a word. Why is that? There is only once reasonable inference and that inference in not grounded on simple incompetence or mistake.

Plainly, powerful, ruthless interests residing in the shadows want Trump dead, and they have orchestrated a plot to accomplish that end, as nothing else they did sufficed to dissuade Trump or to deter him from fulfilling his Oath of Office.

Utilizing the power they wield over the Federal Bureaucracy, they have crafted and implemented a multitude of comprehensive, multivarious sophisticated schemes and stratagems directed against Trump, against the MAGA agenda and aims, against his his Administration, and supporters—and all of that at taxpayer expense, no less.

Trump’s removal from Office took precedence over every other pressing issue affecting the Country—as if Trump himself were THE MOST pressing issue. And, for those destructive influences who seek the dissolution of the Republic, TRUMP’S REMOVAL FROM OFFICE IS OF PARAMOUNT AND SOLE IMPORTANCE.

Everything Americans have seen for the last eight years—from the time Trump stepped into the political arena up to this present moment within a few weeks of Trump’s Inauguration, as the 47th President of the United States, speaks to that.

All the unlawful, reprehensible, endless attempts to prevent Trump from performing his official duties and to remove him from Office since his inauguration as the 45th U.S. President, on January 20, 2017, followed by the illegal manipulation of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election that prevented Trump from serving a second term, commencing January 20, 2021, and the subsequent unlawful, unconstitutional, heinous attempts to discourage him or prevent him from running for President in 2024 have failed.

Two monstrous attempts to Assassinate Trump, are shocking, but not surprising in light of the expansiveness of, costs and deviousness of the efforts that cruel, vindictive forces have contemplated and undertaken to forestall a second Trump term.

Assassination is the last gambit of desperate, frustrated secretive men that see Donald Trump as much more than a mere annoyance. He is a major hindrance, an insurmountable and intractable obstacle, effectively thwarting their carefully laid plans for the eventual, inexorable takeover of the Country from the American people, so that their dream of a monolithic Marxist world empire can finally come to fruition—with the remains of America serving as their prized trophy.

The aims of these cruel men and groups, engineering the Nation’s distructions are plain to those who have watched or studied what has befallen the Country since the mid-1960s. The extent of that frustration and desperation has become painfully visible, manifesting in two assassination attempts. Will more follow?

There is an agenda, and that agenda too is no longer hidden from the American people. Americans see that agenda plainly: the transformation of the Nation into a hideous Collectivist Autocracy—a cog in a mammoth Global Empire. Trump stands in the way of that.

A seditious Legacy Press and Media handles the information side of the Collectivist agenda package, feeding the public with noxious, false, imbe narratives of the evil of Trump, MAGA, and of the Electorate that supports Trump.

This Legacy Press and Media doesn’t hide its own Collectivist socio-political, economic proclivities.

The Legacy Press is one more institution that plays to these powerful, but shadowy interests that dominate Government, Business, Finance, Education, Academia, Entertainment, social media, the medical profession, and science and technology. The aims of the Press reflect a philosophy that is antithetical to that philosophy reflected in our Nation’s sacred documents: the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution and especially in that part of the Constitution that sets forth the fundamental freedoms of the American people: The Bill of Rights.

Collectivism—the ideology of Collectivism—is the opposite of Individualism, the ideological tenets and precepts upon which the U.S. Constitution exists and has persisted.

COLLECTIVISM is incompatible with Freedom and Liberty.

The precepts and principles of Collectivism are inconsistent with and antithetical to Natural Law Fundamental Rights, including the right of Free Speech and Free Association, the right of the individual to possess and have exclusive use of and enjoyment of his personal property, and the Right of the Common Man to keep and bear Arms against Government Tyranny.

A Trump Presidency represents an existential threat to the agenda and aims of those elements both at home and abroad that seek to destroy the United States as an independent, sovereign Nation and Free Constitutional Republic.

Prior to Trump’s first term in Office, these ruthless forces had implemented policies directed to achieving their ultimate goal: bringing the most powerful, vibrant, successful, prosperous, and scientifically and technologically advanced Nation the world has ever seen, “to heel.” But, to succeed, they realized they must engineer Donald Trump’s defeat.

During his first term in office, the Nation’s enemies sought to disrupt Trump from achieving his policy goals.

They could not prevent Trump from accomplishing many of his tasks and making substantial headway in meeting many others, consistent with his campaign promises to the Electorate and with his Oath of Office.

Trump had successfully undercut the reprehensible work his predecessors, Bush and Obama, had laid for other Presidents to follow—all directed to dismantling a Free Constitutional Republic, driving citizens to penury, and to dependency on the Government for satisfaction of all their basic wants and needs.

The forces that seek our Nation’s demise could not and would not countenance a second Trump term.

They planned and schemed and machinated for months to sabotage the integrity of the Nation’s Electoral Process. Using unethical and outright illegal schemes, these forces stole the 2016 election from the people.

They succeeded in planting a puppet in the Oval Office: an enfeebled, corrupt, depraved, dementia-riddled, surly creature—a person who had all the traits they were looking for in an effective puppet—and a few more to boot, traits demonstrative of weakness and of someone worthy of contempt—a shell of a man, exhibiting servility, complacency, indolence, and apathy.

Joe Biden fit the bill. Biden, or, rather, what was left of him, had commenced his “Presidency” happily, even elatedly, like a child in a toyshop. He took the Oath of Office like an actor reading a script for a play. Biden was a man who could betray a sacred Oath and betray that Oath he did.

Likely he was too far gone to know what the Oath of Office of the U.S. President meant. And if he did know, he didn’t care, as borne out by his subsequent actions—an exquisitely painful disgrace to behold, to the Country, to the  Constitution, to the American people, and not least of all, to the Divine Creator, in whose name Biden took the Oath of Office. Given the depth and breadth of his betrayal, Biden’s Soul is likely in grave jeopardy. All the money he has accrued selling out his Country to the Nation’s competitors and outright enemies will not serve him to buy his way into heaven.

But here on Earth, Biden would do his masters’ bidding. Like a child, he happily luxuriated in the trappings of power, albeit wielding none. The lack of wielding actual power mattered not to him.

Joe Biden signed all papers placed before him that required a “President’s” imprimatur. Americans’ tax dollars—hundreds of billions of dollars at least—went out the door, wasted.

Hard earned tax-payer money not only failed to be placed in service to Americans and America’s interests, but severely harmed the public and severely harmed those interests.

The taxpaying citizens of the Country never received anything of benefit from Joe Biden and his Administration, and both he and his Administration placed the security of the Country in jeopardy.

But Biden did serve his masters, well—those masters who were instrumental in placing him in the Oval Office. They demanded payment, and he paid them well. He did everything they asked of him—that they had demanded of him.

Biden, his Administration, and the bloated Federal Government Bureaucracy—at the behest of and likely on the orders of secretive financial and business interests—instituted and implemented policies designed to weaken the Country from within, irrevocably—from the disastrous open border policies, to the inculcation of Marxist ideology in all of the institutions of the Country, to the disastrous foreign policies, and to the wasteful spending.

And the Puppet Biden and the captured Federal Government did indeed weaken the Country from within and, in so doing, harmed the Country’s standing in the world, thereby priming the Country for eventual takeover by its enemies in the East, CCP China and China’s allies, and by its ostensible but false friends in the West, the Neoliberal Globalist and Central Bank Empire Builders.

But, before 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, the Puppet Masters’ had had enough of Joe Biden who was failing him due to his increasing decreptitude, and they prevailed on their Democrat Party Leadership lackeys to replace him. For Biden could not feasibly assist them in completing the task of bringing about the Nation’s dissolution because his physical and mental decay had grown so pronounced that such enfeeblement and infirmities could no longer plausibly be denied, or even implausibly be denied or hidden.

The Puppet Masters induced the Democrat Party leadership to toss the Biden Puppet aside, like a rag doll, and appoint a suitable, or, at least, seemingly adequate, replacement.

The Party Leadership—Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Barack Obama, and other high Party functionaries—decided on “coronating” Biden’s Vice President, Kamala Harris, as the presumptive Democrat Party replacement to contend with Republican Party nominee Donald Trump for U.S. President, in 2025.

Joe Biden was unsurprisingly irate at this turn of events—how quickly and casually his ostensible “friends” would cast him aside. He understood well enough THAT they intended to get rid of him.

But, with a mind so riddled by dementia, as it was, he could not comprehend why they would carelessly throw him out like so much trash; nor could he appreciate that the people who had discarded him were, after all, just like him, no less contemptible, reprehensible, and ruthless than he.

To this day, after the election, Biden remains convinced that he could beat Trump, when Harris could not. Biden is delusional, yet the question remains how badly Democrats would have lost to Trump had Biden remained as the Party’s choice.

But that didn’t happen. Pelosi and the other Party Leadership strongly urged, or compelled, Biden to stand aside from running for a second term in Office. He would not and never did concede that Kamala Harris had a better chance of defeating Trump.

The most that he would acknowledge—before the fact of her actual defeat to Trump on November 5, 2024—is that he would give a younger person a chance, doing so for the good of the Party. He likely didn’t believe that, and he may now even derive some malicious joy in whatever active part of his brain still functions, that Harris lost to Trump.

Biden’s address to the Nation was written for him as all of his addresses doubtless were and still are—in these last few weeks before Trump’s inauguration, to the extent the Party allows Biden to utter words to the public at all.

In hindsight, he plainly placed his trust in the wrong people. But there is nothing he might do about that now, but pout, and throw tantrums like a petulant child that he, in his diminished state of mind, has devolved into.

And, once again, perhaps, he may find some small solace in the fact that with the Party and its leadership in disarray, they are no better off than he.

Be that as it may, the fact remains that this odious Biden puppet is out, and the other repulsive member of the Administration, Kamala Harris—the smug, cackling, imbecilic hyena—is also out.

And the contemptible Marxist-Democrat Party is in tatters, left to feed on itself.

The Puppet-Masters, for their part, are likely upset at everyone: Biden, Harris, the Democrat Party and the Party leadership for failing in achieving their aim: the dissolution of the Country.

The Puppet-Masters likely now realize, albeit a bit late in the day, that reliance on the Democrat Party for use as their principal instrument in bringing about the demise of the United States was a bad investment. They failed to see the fatal flaw existent in the Party itself.

Unwilling to relinquish its insufferable belief system—a system that has grown increasingly more ludicrous and revolting over time—the Democrat Party is caught in a vise.

Unable to reflect on and to come to terms with its arrogance, it cannot extricate itself from its misfortunes which are of its own making. Instead, it blames and lashes out at the American public and engages in acts of self-flagellation.

The Democrat Party has effectively destroyed itself, but that is a good thing for the American people. The Party will remain inert and ineffectual for years and, possibly, for decades to come—and hopefully will wither and die on the Democrat Party vine.

So, Biden is out, and that other smug, odious member of the Administration, Kamala Harris, is also out.

The Majority of the Electorate has fortunately escaped from the mental asylum the Democrat Party Marxist Cultists and the sinister forces that had whipped them into a frenzy of whirling dervishes had thrust the Country into.

Having elected Donald Trump as the Nation’s 47th President, America’s Patriots have closed the door to the madhouse and have locked it behind them, leaving the Democrats and the rest of the lunatic fringe to themselves to fee on themselves.

The Country has a chance now to remove the fog from its brain and clean up the mess left by the maniacs.

This will be a lengthy process and an expensive one but a necessary one if our Country is to turn to its roots as a Truly sovereign, independent Nation and Free Constitutional Republic—a Free Republic where the American People are and remain sole sovereign over Government and where they adhere to the tenets, precepts, and principles of INDIVIDUALISM, upon which our Constitution and our Greatness and Success as a Nation rests.

It is left to Trump once again to repair the extensive damage to the Country and to its people wrought by the Democrats and the Demented Harlequin Biden, his imbecilic Administration, and the bloated, profane Bureaucracy that catered to them.

Trump’s signature slogan, “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” a motto, representing a return of the Country to its roots and to its former prosperity, remains now, on the eve of Trump’s ascendancy as the Nation’s 47th President on January 20, 2025, as it had more than a decade earlier when he served the Nation as its 45th President, that commenced on January 20, 2017.

This phrase, “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” is much more than a mere campaign slogan. It serves as both a Promise made, and a Promise kept.

The American Electorate yearns for a return to its past Greatness, and for release from the absolute lunacy of the Biden years and from the awful Obama years and from the disastrous Bush years before that.

And Americans can justifiably lay much of the blame for the ruination of America on the Legacy Press as well as on the Federal Government.

This seditious, treacherous and loathsome Legacy Press—a foe of and contributor to the decline of America’s influence, power, prowess, and greatness—has, if historically, only tacitly, but in recent years, conspicuously willingly, acknowledged its complicity in abetting that harm to the Nation. The Press hides behind the First Amendment’s Freedom of the Press, betraying the rationale behind it.

And what is the nature of the harm that the Legacy Press and companion news networks and social media organizations have acknowledged and have openly, absurdly, and even grotesquely dignifed? It is the presence of a monstrous, malodorous, oily contagion seething and congealing just below the surface of our Free, Constitutional Republic.

This monster, wrapping its tentacles around the United States, is TYRANNY.

The word ‘Tyranny’ has several definitions, all of which refer to oppressive, unrestrained, and arbitrary Government rule.

More to the point, as applied to a Country such as, and namely, the United States, a Country conceived and crafted as a Free Constitutional Republic, “TYRANNY” ENTAILS THE FEDERAL GOVERMENT’S UNCONSTITUTIONAL USURPATION OF POWER AND AUTHORITY EXCLUSIVELY in the “COMMON MAN,” THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, the SOLE SOVEREIGN of the NATION.

Although powerful, ruthless interests have sought to overturn our Nation’s Free Republic since its founding, with ratification of the Constitution on June 21, 1788, the Republic has withstood every challenge.

However, in the first 25 years of the 21st Century, but for a four year reprieve, when the Electorate voted Donald Trump into Office as the 45th U.S. President whose mandate, “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” encompassed reaffirmation of the founding precepts of a Free Constitutional Republic, the Country’s future, as a Free Republic, was uncertain because powerful interests plotted to place their puppet in the White House.

The corrupt, weak-willed, physically lame, brain-addled puppet, Joe Biden, became the willing instrument of powerful, shadowy forces that wasted no time reinstating the devious, scurrilous agenda, actively and avidly pursued by Trump’s predecessors, Bush and Obama, that remained in effect in the 8 years prior to Trump’s inauguration, on January 20, 2017, and that would then return in the 4 years after Trump’s First Term in Office—due to a GRAND THEFT OF THE ELECTORAL PROCESS IN 2020.

Once the Obstructors and Destructors of our Nation’s Republic had securely ensconced their Puppet, Biden, in the White House, the compliant, complicit Legacy Press and social media went to work.

They engaged in a massive propaganda campaign to confound and reconfigure the psyche of the polity, to redefine the socio-political and economic fabric of the Nation, and to redefine what it means to be an “American.”

Educators across the Nation, held hostage to, or otherwise sympathetic to, the aims of the powerful National Education Association (“NEA”), did their part, to mold and reshape the psyche of the youth of our Nation.

Marxist Academicians in the Colleges and Universities did the same.

The CENTRAL DIRECTIVE and aim: To Psychologically Condition—”BRAINWASH”—Americans TO LOATHE their Nation’s history, heritage, and founding principles, and to feel antipathy toward the Nation’s Founders and first Patriots.

Controlled by an agenda imposed on the Country by Biden and his Administration at the behest of and under the control of unelected secretive, malevolent masters whom they owe allegiance to, Americans’ impulses have slowly and inexorably, quietly and softly below the threshold of conscious thought, turned away from their Country and from their birthright as Americans.

Many Americans began to shun their Nation’s glorious past, to spurn their faith in the Divine Creator, and to reject fundamental moral truths derived from the Creator.

These Americans began to display disdain toward the precepts and tenets of INDIVIDUALISM upon which a Free Constitutional Republic rests.

These deluded Americans expressed doubt toward and even contempt toward the sanctity and inviolability of our Natural Law Rights and Liberties—Fundamental Rights and Liberties, codified in our Nation’s Bill of Rights.

Fundamental Rights and Liberties are intrinsic to man, bestowed on man by the Divine Creator. These Sacred Rights and Liberties ARE NOT external gifts possessed by Government or its agents, bestowed on, rescinded, or denied to man by Government, an artificial construct.

Four years living under the dictates of the Biden-Harris Administration, the United States drew perilously close to a state of Tyranny—one grounded on Marxist principles, a manifestation of Despotism falling in the broad domain of COLLECTIVISM, as practiced in CCP China and in China’s puppet state, North Korea; in Trudeau’s Canada, and in other Countries of the British Commonwealth; and in the Countries of the European Union (EU).

Marxism, Socialism, Communism are all representations of and are subsumed in the AUTOCRATIC-TOTALITARIAN domain of COLLECTIVISM.

THE IDEOLOGY OF COLLECTIVISM is the POLAR OPPOSITE of INDIVIDUALISM, the latter of which is the foundation FREEDOM AND LIBERTY and of AMERICAN REPUBLICANISM.

No Country, other than the United States, exists as a truly Free Constitutional Republic because no Country, other than the United States, proclaims that Government exists only by the will and consent of the people.

This means that the American people are and remain the sole legitimate sovereign over Government. This also means that Government exists for the sole purpose of serving the interests of the American people, consistent with the Articles of the Constitution, in deference to Americans’ Bill of Rights. All this is inconsistent with Marxist ideology.

The Marxist rebuke of Capitalism, Private Enterprise, American ingenuity, the sanctity and the inviolability of the Common Man, the sovereignty of the American citizenry over Government, and the Marxist rebuke of absolute rights and liberties, as a genuine reality, which exist inherently in man INDEPENDENT OF ANY GOVERNMENT, have slowly been inculcated into the psyche of Americans.

The most intrusive and destructive idea concomitant with Marxist thought, and one anathema to the American spirit, pertains to THE FALSE IDEA OF THE conditional, impermanent, unimportant, and unnecessary nature of man.

To the Marxist the individual man is nothing more than a malleable physical creature, whose temporary existence on Earth has no meaning or purpose other than to serve the State, as a servile cog in a machine. To the extent he dutifully devotes himself to that service, he has utility.

If that “cog” is unable or unwilling to serve the State, then that “cog” is unceremoniously dispensed with. Utility to the State is the sum total measure of a man’s worth in a Marxist regime—of very little worth in the grand scheme of the Marxist World Order.

Marxist ideology therefore entails the denial of fundamental, unalienable Rights and Liberties, intrinsic to man and to his inherent nobility, irrespective of Government.

Marxism has no use for “RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES.” For Rights and Liberties of Man are incompatible with and detrimental to the well-being of the finely tuned and engineered Marxist State. Marxism demands conformity and rigidity in thought and conduct, defined solely by the State. Deviation is not tolerated.

The Marxist sees Elemental Rights and Liberties as insubstantial, illusory objects or tokens and perceives the notion of Fundamental Rights and Liberties as wholly antithetical to the construction of and to the maintenance of the Marxist State.

America’s Bill of Rights, codifying fundamental, unalienable Rights and Liberties that emanate from God, means that Rights and Liberties are much more than mere objects or tokens. They are tangible, unmodifiable, unconditional, absolute and eternal reflections of God—internal to man’s Being that define a man and that are for his use for his well-being. The exercise of them defines the “SELFHOOD.”

These ideas are not fathomable to Marxists. They dismiss them out-of-hand.

The Marxist sees such a Man, this Common Man—the intelligent, responsible, independent-minded, independent-thinking, educated, and well-armed American Citizen—as an existential threat to the existence of and well-running of the Marxist State.

From both an ideological and pragmatic point of view, the Marxist, then, cannot abide such a person. The Marxist sees a FREE-THINKING, ARMED MAN, JUSTIFIABLY SUSPICIOUS of GOVERNMENT, as a Deviant.

To the Marxist, GOVERNMENT, i.e., THE STATE, IS GOD—the MAKER of MAN’S LIFE AND PURPOSE ON EARTH. THE STATE IS THE ONLY GOD TO THE MARXIST.

For the Marxist, Socialist, Communist—whatever the flavor—they are Despotic ideologies all.

MARXISTS SEE FREEDOM AND LIBERTY AS ARCHAIC, ANACHRONISTIC IDEAS OF NO PRACTICAL USE OR BENEFIT TO THE STATE. THEY MUST THEREFORE BE CAST ASIDE.

True Americans disagree with COLLECTIVISM. So, does Trump. He thought the matter of concern was important enough to mention it, in an address to Congress and the Nation.

Recall President Trump’s promise to the American people as asserted in his 2019 State of the Union Address, delivered to Congress and the American people. As reported by Fox Business,

Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence — not government coercion, domination and control. We are born free, and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will NEVER be a socialist country.

Trump can now keep that promise to the American people once he is sworn in as the 47th U.S. President on January 20, 2025.

Indeed, Trump, the de facto President, is already at work, and has been working on behalf of the Country and the American people, while Biden, still de jure “President,” for a short time remaining, is off on another vacation, probably slumbering away.

Trump’s promise to the American people that America would never become a “Socialist State”—the most profound and important promise he, or any President, could make—would have been unmet had Kamala Harris become President, a frightening thought.

Trump made certain his promise to the American people would be kept.

After the disastrous Bush and Obama Administrations, when Trump first came into Office as the 45th U.S. President, he commenced the difficult task of returning America to its former prosperity and to its pride and confidence in itself. Americans grasped a sea change in perspective and saw that it was good.

Trump began the work of repairing a wounded Republic and a wounded American people on January 20, 2017.

“MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” became a battle cry and the raison d’être of Trump’s Presidency from January 2017 to January 2021.

Trump must once again begin the arduous task of repairing the damage wrought by Joe Biden and his Administration, and by those secretive fixtures behind the scenes, that had controlled Biden and the Biden-Harris Administration—the public faces of the unseen masters who had plotted the Biden Administration’s every move, and likely plotted to keep the Administration going with their new puppet, Kamala Harris. That may well have come to pass had Trump been felled by an assassin’s bullet. One cannot but wonder whether the plotters who controlled Biden and his Administration were not behind the attempt to murder Trump. Will they try to do so again?

Can Trump and the American people trust the leadership of the Secret Service to protect him?

The days and weeks since the 2024 U.S. Presidential election saw Trump victorious, seem interminable. January 20, 2025, cannot come soon enough. The American people need Trump in Office NOW!

In the next couple of articles we will concentrate on each of the factors that make for effective leadership, and which Trump has in abundance.

We will turn first to a consideration of the dire threats faced by our Country from its inception, and the manner in which our past Presidents have effectively dealt with them, juxtaposing and comparing those past threats to the present threats directed to Trump and to our Country.

POSTSCRIPT

The purpose of this essay is twofold:

The first is to provide further evidence to support our conclusion that Donald Trump is the best President this Country has ever had. We believe his second term will serve to cement the truth of this conclusion.

The second purpose of this essay is to lay out what we expect of Republicans in Congress to assist Trump in his efforts to “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”

Trump’s service to our Country as President is vital to safeguarding our Nation’s heritage and our core values, both for our future and for the future of Americans yet to come.

But we American Patriots must demand that Congressional Republicans work together assist Trump in his efforts to strengthen our Country against the forces at large that dare to destroy it. Congress cannot sit idly by or squabble. We have won a major battle, true. But the war continues.

The war against THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE will always exist. America must ever protect its sacred Rights and Liberties.

Ultimately, the fate of our Country rests with the American Patriot, as always. He must ever be strong of will, independent in spirit, and well-armed that he may effectively stave off all threats, both foreign and domestic.

_________________________________________

CASTING TEA LEAVES ANYONE? WHO WILL WIN THE 2024 RACE: TRUMP OR HARRIS? WE PLACE OUR MONEY ON TRUMP!

_________________________________________

NOTE TO OUR READERS: AQ IS UNDER A TIME CRUNCH TO POST THIS ESSAY ON NOVEMBER 4, 2024. IT IS ALMOST 12:00 MIDNIGHT AS WE PLACE THIS ESSAY ONLINE.

WE ARE PUBLISHING THIS ARTICLE NOW IN ROUGH DRAFT, PRIOR TO EDITING SO THAT THE READER UNDERSTANDS THAT THIS ARTICLE HAS IN FACT BEEN POSTED BEFORE THE 5TH OF NOVEMBER (ELECTION DAY) AND THAT OUR COMMENTS HEREIN REFLECT NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE OF THE RESULTS OF THE ELECTION.

UPDATE: 7:00 A.M. EASTERN STANDARD TIME: WE HAVE CONCLUDED MAJOR EDITING OF THIS ARTICLE. WE WILL CONTINUE TO PROOF IT. WE ENCOURAGE EVERY ELIGIBLE PERSON TO VOTE TODAY (D-DAY) IF HE OR SHE HAS NOT ALREADY DONE SO. AND FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR OWN WELL-BEING AND THAT OF YOUR FAMILY AND OF YOUR COUNTRYMEN AND OUR NATION, AND FOR GENERATIONS OF AMERICANS TO COME, WE URGE YOU TO CAST YOUR VOTE FOR DONALD TRUMP.

DONALD TRUMP HAS PROVEN TO BE AN EXEMPLARY STEWARD OF OUR GREAT NATION AND IS DESERVING OF A SECOND TERM THAT WAS UNCONSTITUTIONALLY DENIED HIM IN 2020.

THIS IS OUR LAST CHANCE TO PRESERVE THE NATION IN THE FORM THE FOUNDERS GAVE IT TO US: A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC.

THERE WILL BE NO THIRD CHANCE IF HARRIS PREVAILS.

THERE ARE TWO COMPETING VISIONS OF AMERICA ON THE TABLE. THEY CANNOT BE RECONCILED. THEY ARE INCOMPATIBLE.

ONE VISION SEEKS TO PRESERVE THE IDEALS OF THE FOUNDERS OF OUR COUNTRY, CONSISTENT WITH THE U.S. CONSTITUTION THEY CRAFTED—ONE THAT HAS STOOD THE TEST OF TIME.

THE OTHER VISION SEEKS TO UPTURN OUR NATION—TURN IT INSIDE OUT. THE AIM OF THE PROPONENTS OF THIS VISION IS THE CREATION OF A MARXIST STATE. THE U.S. WILL CEASE TO EXIST. THIS NATION WILL BE BUT ONE MORE COG IN A MAMMOTH WORLD EMPIRE THAT BODES ILL FOR OUR NATION AND FOR WESTERN CIVILIZATION.

WHICH VISION DO YOU WISH FOR: THAT OF HARRIS AND THE SOROS OPEN SOCIETY A.K.A. THE INTERNATIONAL RULES-BASED ORDER CONTROLLED BY POWERFUL AND RUTHLESS FINANCIERS AND TECHNOCRATS WHO ARE BEHOLDEN TO NO NATION AND NO CULTURE, AND WHO DISAVOW A SYSTEM OF ETHICS BASED ON NATURAL LAW, IN FAVOR OF ABSURD UTILITARIAN MORAL RELATIVISM?

WE CAN PRESERVE THE PROMISE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION UNDER TRUMP OR EMBRACE THE NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST, MARXIST COUNTERREVOLUTION, DISPLACING OUR NATION’S SOVEREIGNTY/INDEPENDENCE AND THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE OVER GOVERNMENT. WHAT WE HAVE WITNESSED AND LIVED THROUGH UNDER THE BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION IS JUST A FORETASTE OF WHAT THIS COUNTRY WILL SUFFER UNDER A HARRIS ADMINISTRATION, THAT CONTINUES THE DISASTROUS POLICIES OF THE PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATION.

THE CHOICE IS YOURS. THIS IS OUR LAST CHANCE TO PRESERVE OUR COUNTRY AND OUR CORE VALUES.

THIS IS OUR FINAL BATTLE. VOTE FOR TRUMP AND PRESERVE OUR COUNTRY AS A TRULY FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC AS THE FOUNDERS INTENDED, OR INVITE CHAOS AND SUFFERING AND THE LOSS OF OUR HERITAGE UNDER A MARXIST DICTATORSHIP.

_______________________________________

The Premier “Soothsayer” Statistician of Polling, Nate Silver—who dislikes the descriptor “Pollster” that the Press continually applies to him” because he knows that too many ”Pollsters” deliberately skew results—sees a tight race leading up to the U.S. Presidential Election, now upon us. See the article in the New York Post, published on November 1, 2024.

For Nate Silver, accuracy in polling correlates with his personal integrity in positing inferences drawn from use of precision analytical tools, shunning the insertion of statistical content meant to mislead the Electorate. The use of dubious statistical data is, unfortunately, the hallmark of many scurrilous “Pollsters” whose findings reflect their personal bias—hence Nate Silver’s distaste for the term, as sloppily applied to him by news media.

Nate Silver is a person to rely on for accurate information on the state of an electoral race.

He is not, therefore, a Pollster, despite the continual use of the appellation by the Press in mentioning him, as illustrated in the news report, below.

Pollster Nate Silver has become the person many Americans look to for an election prediction they can trust on the strength of his reliable track record.

With Election Day on Tuesday, many will be looking to Silver again, especially with the polls showing that the race remains extremely tight, with any leads enjoyed by Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump being by just a few percentage points, often within the margin of error.

Silver, who founded 538 but is no longer affiliated, has essentially said the same thing, writing that "50-50 is the only responsible forecast," in an October 23 column for The New York Times.

Newsweek has rounded up what Silver has said about Harris, her chances of winning, how she could achieve a victory and what other election outcomes are possible for her. Newsweek has contacted the Harris campaign, via email, for comment.

Silver put Harris' winning odds at 46.2 percent on Thursday, calling it a "very close to a coin flip."

Both Harris and Trump would have to "beat their polls" to win, he said, before explaining how polling, and different methods used, could be underestimating either candidate. . . .

Silver, a self-described journalist and an applied statistician, shares his predictions through his Substack publication, the Silver Bulletin, which is a model he calls a "direct descendent of the FiveThirtyEight election forecast," which is famous for correctly predicting the outcome in 49 of the 50 states in the 2008 U.S. presidential election and all 50 states in 2012.

In 2016, when 538 gave Donald Trump a 29 percent chance of victory, Silver was one of the few analysts to stress this pointed to a real chance he could win. In 2020, 538 correctly predicted that Joe Biden would win.

The Silver Bulletin, which weights reliable polls more heavily, had Harris in the lead with 48.5 percent to Trump's 47.4 percent as of Thursday. But it also put Harris in the lead in just two—Michigan and Wisconsin—of seven swing states.

“If she loses Pennsylvania, Harris's Plan B would have to involve a two-state parlay: either Georgia or North Carolina plus either Arizona or Nevada, or both Georgia and North Carolina," Silver wrote.

With Trump having a 0.8 percentage-point lead in Pennsylvania, according to the Silver Bulletin's averages, Nate asked whether Harris should have picked Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate instead of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, which he made a case for in August, calling Shapiro an "extremely popular governor of what is by far the most important swing state." [See Microsoft encapsulation of Newsweek article].

Plausible Individual Election Day Scenarios show either Trump or Harris as victor, but no given set of plausible scenarios favor one side or the other.

Silver says one factor cuts across all the plausible scenarios, shaping who will emerge the victor: VOTER TURNOUT!

Voter turnout will likely be the deciding factor in the razor-thin presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, according to polling expert Nate Silver.

"It's a cliché," Silver wrote on Silver Bulletin, his Substack publication, "but turnout—particularly whether Donald Trump can turn out his marginal voters...may determine who wins."

Enthusiasm among voters will likely sway the results, particularly in key battleground states where demographics and past voting trends could drive turnout variability, he said.

Silver projects a total national turnout of approximately 155 million voters, with a confidence interval ranging from 148 million to 162 million, according to his model. He said that's significantly higher than in 2016, when 137 million went out to vote for president, but slightly lower than 2020's record turnout of 158.7 million.

"I think I feel OK about projecting a very slight decrease," Silver said. "The 2020 election was outlier-ish from a turnout standpoint, perhaps in part because people had so many ways to vote (and so little else going on) during COVID." [MSN citing recent Newsweek article]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/what-nate-silver-has-said-about-kamala-harris-chances/ar-AA1tpUYf

No Pollster has, to our knowledge, dared—even up to this moment—to predict a clear victor in the U.S. Presidential race.

As of November 3, 2024, the Polling Company, “538,” provides, at best, probabilities, having run one thousand simulations. Its findings:

Trump wins 53 times out of 100 in our simulations of the 2024 presidential election. Harris wins 47 times out of 100. There is a less than 1-in-100 chance of no Electoral College winner.

Trump 533

Harris 465

No winner 2

[See project 538 projections]

In other words, a toss-up.

One soothsayer Allan Lichtman, though, claims to know who will win. He has a system, and truth to tell, it has proved uncannily prescient in the last nine of ten U.S. Presidential cycles. His only one inaccurate prognostication came in the 2000 Bush vs. Gore race. Lichtman said Gore would win that race. See recent article from “Real Clear Politics” and accompanying video.

In that bitter hotly contested November 7, 2000 involving the State of Florida, it was the U.S. Supreme Court that had the last word in declaring the winner. It wasn’t the voter. The Court ruled in favor of George W. Bush.

See, e.g., the article published by “Constitution Center.”

https://www.newsweek.com/kamala-harris-weak-spot-ukraine-allan-lichtman-1971358

So, a reasonable argument could perhaps be made that Allan Lichtman wasn’t (entirely) wrong in declaring Al Gore the victor in the 2000 U.S. Presidential race, after all, given the peculiarities of it.

What sort of Pollster is Lichtman? Lichtman ISN’T ANY kind of Pollster. On even the loosest definition of ‘Pollster,’ Lichtman can’t properly be discerned as a Pollster at all. In fact, Allan Lichtman eschews polls. To hear him describe his methodology, and to peer into it, one would wonder he poses as a clairvoyant? He doesn’t claim to be, but one cannot help but think he might be one. And several news sources have recently equated him, ostensibly, if tongue-in-cheek, as a modern day Nostradamus—suggesting that Allan Lichtman is some sort of Magician. And, if so, the hallmark of the system he has created “TO PREDICT” winners (and losers) of U.S. Presidential contests does seem to have more in common with the esoteric magical system devised (or “discovered”) by the Sixteenth Century Magician, John Dee than to either a typical “Pollster” or to Nostradamus, the latter of whom didn’t establish a specific, unique methodology or system for divining the future, even as both he and many modern day Pollsters, claim to be prognosticatores of future events.

BUT NOW, ON TO ALLAN LICHTMAN——

Would Lichtman prefer the appellation ‘MAGICIAN’ to ‘POLLSTER’ if one or the other Descriptor were to be attached to him? Our guess is that, if he were forced to accept one label over the other, he would prefer to be called a “MAGICIAN”, or more accurately: “OCCULT FORECASTER OF THE OUTCOME OF U.S. PRESIDENTIAL RACES.” And, if so what sort of OCCULT FORECASTER OF U.S. PRESIDENTIAL RACES DOES LICHTMAN PURPORT TO BE?

He doesn’t construct and interpret natal horoscopes. He doesn’t cast Rune Stones or divine meaning from a Crystal Ball. He doesn’t read Tarot Cards, consult the Chinese “Book of Changes,” or Evoke Demons in an attempt to elicit our Nation’s fate through the choices, very good, or very, very bad that the Electorate makes.

Lichtman’s background is more mundane. He is an American historian and Professor at American University. His Curriculum Vitae is impressive.

SO THEN, TO CUT TO THE CHASE: What is Lichtman’s system for discerning, discovering, determining (“divining”) U.S. Presidential race outcomes? IT IS UNIQUE. A person who delves into it, must give Lichtman points for creative imagination, if nothing else.

His system involves the application of 13 factors, facets, or determinants—or what he prefers to call “KEYS,” (AN OCCULT TERM IF EVER THERE WAS ONE), which he claims are objective determiners of U.S. Presidential races. His assertion of these tools of his trade—“KEYS”—sure sound like he is utilizing a DIVINER’S tool, no less so than those abstruse occult mechanisms abovementioned. And truth to tell, it may be a personal quirk or an intentional if quixotic attempt to allude to ancient occult enterprises that he happens to use the word, ‘KEYS,’ to refer to the components of his unique system.

But for all the pretense or allusions to the Esoteric Arts (not unlike the ancient Natural Philosophers of olde), Allan Lichtman, insists his system is objective, grounded in down-to-Earth, practical quantitative measures, and, so, firmly grounded in physical, everyday reality. But is it, really? See, e.g., articles in Newsweek, and Economic Times/India Times. AND LICHTMAN HAS DECLARED (OR “DIVINED”) A WINNER IN THIS 2024 RACE.

ONE WEEK BEFORE ELECTION LICHTMAN DECLARES HARRIS TO BE THE VICTOR. See, e.g., the article in USA Today.

With the most important Presidential race in modern times, and perhaps in all of U.S. History, just days away, major media sources have taken a close look at Lichtman’s stated prediction.

He asserts a Harris victory. Lichtman, by the way, is a diehard Democrat, who detests Trump, and has unsubscribed to the leftist Washington Post, as many other Political Progressives and Marxists have done in recent days—to protest the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, for having nixed endorsing any candidate for 2024. So Lichtman is capable of displays of animosity despite an attempt at appearing stoical, and above the fray of emotion.

Yet the fact remains, Lichtman is very much concerned about the outcome of the race. And THAT FACT says, to our mind, MUCH MORE about whom Allan Lichtman wishes would win the election and a GOOD DEAL LESS about whom he truly believes will be the likely winner.

Still, Lichtman insists his personal feelings about Trump and his wish fulfillment for a Harris victory on the 5th of November have nothing to do with his decision in the matter at hand. That his personal socio-political leanings do not cloud his judgment. But is that true? Might not those personal socio-political proclivities not help but cloud his judgment?

To be sure, Nate Silver (who scoffs at Lichtman, no less so than the crafter of the “THIRTEEN KEYS” scoffs at Silver) will, as with Lichtman, vote for Harris, too. He has said so. See Newsweek article, published September 12, 2024. But he has not so much as intimated that Harris WILL BE THE WINNER on November 5.

Silver’s doesn’t make prognostications. He only lays out what he deems the probabilities that favor this Candidate or that Candidate, at a particular moment in time.

Silver relies solely on statistical analysis. And to this moment in time, he “DOES NOT PROCLAIM” a WINNER.

The tools of his trade don’t support declaring a winner before the fact, and he would not make a bold pronouncement in any case, even if he wishes, in the instant case, that Harris would win this race for President of the United States.

Can the same modesty be applied to Allan Lichtman? Not by a long shot. He proclaims Kamala Harris indisputable victor over Trump, and his TOOLS OF THE TRADE (HIS THIRTEEN “KEYS”) ARE DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR DIVINING THE FUTURE—PROGNOSTICATING THE ACTUAL WINNER WITH CERTAINTY.

His five takeaways for a Harris victory are presented in an article out of Brandeis University.

But what are these 13 “Keys” that Lichtman created and utilized in his determination of a Harris victory on November 5? The Keys are stated in many news sources, but the best source to view them and to obtain a handle on them and the meaning for them and behind them, is from a paper written by the creator of them, Allan Lichtman himself. See article from the site Social Studies.

These then are the 13 Keys that Lichtman utilizes in inferring the outcome of United States Presidential races——

• KEY 1 (Party Mandate):  After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than it did after the previous midterm elections.  

• KEY 2 (Contest): There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination.

• KEY 3 (Incumbency): The incumbent-party candidate is the sitting president.

• KEY 4 (Third party): There is no significant third-party or independent campaign. [Note article from The National Review apropos of “Third Parties”].

• KEY 5 (Short-term economy): The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.

• KEY 6 (Long-term economy): Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.

• KEY 7 (Policy change): The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.

• KEY 8 (Social unrest): There is no sustained social unrest during the term.

• KEY 9 (Scandal): The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.

• KEY 10 (Foreign/military failure): The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. FOR TRUMP

• KEY 11 (Foreign/military success): The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. FOR TRUMP

• KEY 12 (Incumbent charisma): The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.

• KEY 13 (Challenger charisma): The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. FOR HARRIS

Lichtman says: “The Keys are statements that favor the reelection of the incumbent party. When five or fewer statements are false, the incumbent party wins. When six or more are false, the challenging party wins.”

Another way of saying this is as the Politically Progressive slanted magazine, “The Atlantic,” asserts:

“Each of the 13 keys can be defined as a true-or-false statement. If eight or more of them are true, the incumbent-party candidate will win; seven or fewer, and they will lose.” See also the article in Newsweek.

Lichtman says that Keys 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 13 (EIGHT OUT OF THIRTEEN) are true for Harris, and thus favor her to win this year.

BUT——

OF THE THIRTEEN “KEYS,” ONLY TWO ARE TRULY OBJECTIVE CRITERIA, LENDING TO A CLEAR TRUE OR FALSE ANSWER SANS ANY SUBJECTIVE INTERPRETATION.

STILL, WHETHER THESE TWO “OBJECTIVE” “KEYS” IN TANDEM WITH THE OTHERS ARE TO BE TREATED AS STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT PREDICTORS OF U.S. PRESIDENTIAL RACES, HAS NOT BEEN SCIENTIFICALLY ESTABLISHED, SUGGESTING THAT, WHAT SEEM TO BE PREDICTIVE OF PRESIDENTIAL OUTCOMES ARE ONLY DESCRIPTIVE OR PRESCRIPTIVE INDICATORS, NOT PREDICTIVE, EVEN IF UNCANNILY PRESCIENT. A good hunch is, for all that, still a hunch. Flip a coin a hundred times. Suppose it comes up heads ninety-nine times. Now, toss it one more time. Assuming the coin isn’t weighted or asymmetrical, the odds of that coin turning up heads on the next toss remains as it did on the first toss, 50/50, and will ever remain so or nearly so should one toss the same coin a million times (accounting for a slight fluctuation due, for example to wobble when flipping the coin, or due to minute fluctuations in the minting of the coin, according to the latest theory).

Can one logically apply the coin-toss analogy to Lichtman’s system of his having seemingly “predicted” nine out of ten U.S. Presidential races, or has his own intellect tricked him into believing his system is something more than it actually is—akin to reading of tea leaves. And is Lichtman attempting to trick us, the American Electorate into thinking that a Harris victory is, for all intents and purposes, fated to happen. 

Note: Lichtman is reticent when it comes to explaining how he makes his decisions. See, e.g., the article posted in Newsweek on August 14, 2024.

The premier pollster, Nate Silver, vehemently disagrees with Lichtman’s strategy for determining a Presidential victor, and, hence, his prognostication that Harris will emerge the victor. Silver concludes that Lichtman’s methodology is flawed and his apparent application of it is grounded on hunch only, not sound logical analysis.

Silver, who draws his inferences through application of the tools of sound statistical analysis says this race is too close to call. It has remained so for several weeks:

Last update: 10:45 a.m., Saturday, November 2. At this point, there’s enough new polling that it’s hard to know exactly what’s influencing the model, but Harris is gaining in our forecast, and it’s converging toward a truly 50/50 forecast. A strong set of YouGov polls, plus a Washington Post poll showing her ahead by 1 point in Pennsylvania, are surely part of the reason why. Her win probability remains ever-so-slightly below Trump’s but is the highest it has been in two weeks.” [See the article in Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin].

[NOTE: NATE SILVER DREW THIS INFERENCE THREE DAYS AGO, NOVEMBER 2, 2024, AS NOTED ABOVE. HIS LATEST PREDICTION, THIS MORNING, JUST A FEW MINUTES AFTER MIDNIGHT, IS SET FORTH BELOW. IT IS FOUND IN THE SAME LINK SET FORTH ABOVE].

Last and final update: 12:30 a.m., Tuesday, November 5. Happy Election Day! At exactly midnight on Tuesday, we ran our simulation model for the final time in this election cycle. Out of 80,000 simulations, Kamala Harris won in 40,012 (50.015%) cases. She did not win in 39,988 simulations (49.985%). Of those, 39,718 were outright wins for Donald Trump and the remainder (270 simulations) were exact 269-269 Electoral College ties: these ties are likely to eventually result in Trump wins in the U.S. House of Representatives. [NATE SILVER ADDS THIS]—I’m not quite sure what to say about this, but we’ll have a newsletter out for you later tonight/this morning and link to it here once it’s ready. See

Most pollsters agree with Nate Silver’s conclusion that this race, IS NOW as it HAD BEEN, FOR SEVERAL WEEKS, A TOSS-UP.

Lichtman, for his part, adamantly disagrees with Silver’s recent and past assessments.

Lichtman claims the election is in the bag for Harris.

Further, Lichtman insists that his “KEYS” ARE MUCH BETTER PREDICTORS OF U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OUTCOMES than POLL FORCASTING.

See what he says about his methodology in the article published in the “Harvard Data Science Review” (HDSR), published just a few days ago, on October 30, 2024.

Allan Lichtman says in his “Abstract” to the Article:

This article revisits my predictive model, the Keys to the White House, which I presented to HDSR readers 4 years ago. In 2020, the model predicted that Joe Biden would defeat Donald Trump, primarily due to Trump’s failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This article demonstrates that the Keys model remains valid despite the turmoil of Trump’s felony convictions, Biden’s withdrawal from the election, and the nomination of a woman of color. It provides the rationale for predicting that Trump will fail to regain the White House in 2024 and Kamala Harris will become the next American president.

In the body of the article proper, Lichtman says, in principal part:

The Keys to the White House follow the premise that governing, not campaigning, primarily determines the outcomes of American presidential elections. The Keys comprise 13 true-false questions that gauge the strength and performance of the party holding the White House, with an answer of true favoring the incumbent’s reelection. If six or more of the keys are false, the incumbent party is a predicted loser; otherwise, they are a predicted winner. The Keys gauge the big picture of a president’s record, such as midterm election results, internal nomination contests, third-party challenges, the short- and long-term economy, policy change, social unrest, scandal, and foreign and military failures and successes. Only two keys relate to the presidential candidates.

I developed the Keys in 1981 through collaboration with Vladimir Keilis-Borok, founder of the International Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics in Moscow. To develop our model, we reconceptualized presidential elections not as Ronald Reagan vs. Jimmy Carter, Republican vs. Democrat, or liberal vs. conservative, but in geophysical terms. Stability meant that the party holding the White House stayed in power, and the earthquake meant the party lost power. We began our study in 1860 when most African Americans were enslaved and women could not vote. There were no automobiles, airplanes, radios, or televisions, and America was still an agricultural nation dominated by White people of Northern and Western European descent. Thus, our analysis covered vast changes in American society, politics, demography, and economics.

To develop this model, we applied a simple pattern recognition algorithm known as the Hamming distance to two binary vectors. We coded elections from 1860 to 1980 where the incumbent party prevailed as Class I (0) and those where the challenger won as Class C (1). The second vector consisted of true or false answers to questions that are answerable before an upcoming election. The model phrases the indicators so that an answer of true favors stability and an answer of false favors earthquake. For example, Key 5 states, ‘The economy is not in recession during the election year.’ Rather than randomly trolling through history, we followed my theory that presidential elections primarily reflect the electorate’s up-or-down vote on the strength and performance of the party in power. Thus, the Keys are grounded theoretically and empirically.”

Newsweek published an article on October 1, 2024, detailing the tête-à-tête between the premier pollster, and the so-called “Nostradamus” Lichtman. At times the arguing between the two became heated, derisive.

“The back and forth continued with Lichtman calling Silver ‘a compiler of polls, a clerk,’ . . . .” See the article in newsweek, dated October 1, 2024.

“Lichtman continued to accuse Silver of misinterpreting the purpose of his model, and claimed that he [Silver] doesn't have the faintest idea how to turn the keys.” Id.

At another point in the same Newsweek article, the reporter for magazine says,

“In early September, Lichtman released his official prediction for the 2024 race, confidently asserting that Kamala Harris would be the next president of the U.S. and again receiving criticism from Silver.”

On Friday, Silver responded to Lichtman's forecast, writing on X: ‘At least 7 of the keys, maybe 8, clearly favor Trump. Sorry brother, but that's what the keys say. Unless you're admitting they're totally arbitrary?’ [See the article in the New York Post, dated November 1, 2024] [NOTE: AQ SETS FORTH ITS OWN APPLICATION OF THE LICHTMAN KEYS WITH OUR RATIONAL, INFERRING THEY ALL FAVOR TRUMP. SEE OUR ANALYSIS INFRA].

On both X and TikTok, Lichtman continued to accuse Silver of misinterpreting the purpose of his model, and claimed that he “doesn't have the faintest idea how to turn the keys.” [See the article in Newsweek posted October 1, 2024] [Allan Lichtman’s use of the cryptic and esoteric/occult sounding phrase “turn the keys” gives one pause). What does that phrase mean? Is Lichtman suggesting that deciphering the KEYS requires abstruse knowledge (or hidden knowledge that only Lichtman is privy to—suggesting that his ability to “TURN THE KEYS” is something only he, as the crafter of the KEYS is able to successfully perform? If so, if his methodology for reading the KEYS cannot be replicated by others, than both his KEYS and whatever it is that he does to decipher the KEYS isn’t science at all, but mysticism].

Yet, Lichtman insists his Thirteen Keys (all of which are given equal weight) are objective and valid indicators of the outcome of an election between incumbent and challenger. That may be, but those KEYS are not to be construed as science. Lichtman seems to want it both ways. HE SAYS THAT HIS KEYS WORK, SO THEY ARE AS PREDICTIVE AS IS A LAW OF PHYSICS, BUT HE HAS NOT EXPLAINED AND WILL NOT EXPLAIN TO OTHERS HOW HE APPLIES THESE KEYS TO DEDUCE THE TRUE/FALSE ANSWERS FOR EACH KEY, FROM WHICH HE PREDICTS THE WINNER IN A U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CONTEST. SO THEN, IF THESE KEYS ARE A SOUND PREDICTIVE TOOL, BUT THE APPLICATION OF THEM IS INSCRUTABLE, THEN HE CANNOT SERIOUSLY CLAIM THAT HE IS ENGAGING IN SCIENCE. HIS SUCCESSES ARE MERELY A SET OF LUCKY HUNCHES, AS NATE SILVER ARGUES. LICHTMAN MAY HAVE HAD A RUN OF SUCCESSES, BUT A RUN OF FAILURES IS NOW PAST DUE.

“Lichtman encourages viewers to disregard polling data, emphasizing that his 13 ‘keys’ are grounded in underlying forces that historically determine election outcomes. He assigns a ‘true’ or ‘false’ designation to each key, with eight of them pointing to Harris and the Democrats maintaining control of the White House.” See, e.g., the article in The Economic Times, as reported by MSN.” See also, the article in The Independent.

The Pollster, Nate Silver, isn’t alone in his criticism of Lichtman. In an earlier article published in Newsweek.

Despite its track record—it has correctly predicted nine of the last 10 elections—the model has come under scrutiny, with some critics calling it "superficial" and "prone to bias."

The model has come under a particularly harsh spotlight amid President Joe Biden's decision to not seek re-election in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris. Lichtman called the pressure on Biden from Democrats to drop out of the race was a "foolish, self-destructive escapade," and that the president had enough "keys" to win.

Speaking to Newsweek for this article, Lichtman said: "The Keys became the hottest model in forecasting."

"Any successful forecasting model, especially one that challenges the approach taken by pundits and pollsters, will attract critics."

And attract them it has.

Lars Emerson and Michael Lovito are two reporters and alumni of American University, where Lichtman teaches, who earlier this year (saying that they cared about their "alma mater's reputation") wrote a detailed critique of the model for The Postrider and said Lichtman was "dishonest" when he said he correctly predicted the outcome of the 2016 election.

Lichtman's model was designed to correctly predict the winner of the popular vote, which it did, up until 2016 when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but Donald Trump won the Electoral College.

Despite that, Lichtman is one of the few people credited with predicting Trump's win. [BUT DID HE? LICHTMAN’S MODEL AS POSITED [SEE DISCUSSION SUPRA AND INFRA] IS DESIGNED TO BE PREDICTIVE OF THE POPULAR VOTE, ONLY, AND NOT THE ELECTORAL VOTE WHICH IS DECISIVE]. He won the Stekler Award for Courage in Predictions and was invited to present the model at the American Political Science Association Convention. Political scientist Gerald M. Pomper said in a 2016 book about that year's election that Lichtman continued "his perfect record of election predictions, using simpler evaluations of the historical setting."

Emerson and Lovito argued that Lichtman rewrote "history to obfuscate that his model only predicted the popular vote, which Trump lost."

"This defamatory claim does not withstand scrutiny," Lichtman told Newsweek. He cited a September 2016 Washington Post interview where he said, "Based on the 13 keys, it would predict a Donald Trump victory [...] But I would say, more to the point, they point to a generic Republican victory."

"Also, at the same time, I predicted that Trump would be impeached after his election--, which made no sense if I were talking about the popular vote," he added to Newsweek.

Since 2016, Lichtman has taken to predicting the election winner, not who won the popular vote.

"By claiming he's never been wrong, he's done his model a disservice," Emerson and Lovito said in an email to Newsweek. "It's totally fine to have been wrong in 2016, almost everyone was, that requires some self-reflection and transparency about what could be done better."

In response, Lichtman told Newsweek that Emerson and Lovito "have sought to make a name for themselves by gratuitously attacking me and the Keys model with misleading, ad hominem claims."

Emerson disagreed with Lichtman's assessment of their Postrider article and told Newsweek "we fully stand by all of our reporting and obviously do not feel we've engaged in any kind of defamation."

Nate Silver would agree with the Emerson and Lovito analysis of Lichtman’s model, and Silver has stated the Lichtman “KEYS” are “totally arbitrary.” See the article in USA Toady, posted October 31, 2024. Lichtman doesn’t seen to care what his detractors say.

Still, given Lichtman’s undisguised hatred of Trump, one cannot help but come to infer that an inherent, if unconscious, bias against Trump exists that influences the decision he reached in this present U.S. Presidential Election cycle. It is one that makes Lichtman’s determination that Harris will defeat Trump in the upcoming Election, suspect.

Then too, the inherent abstruseness attached to the application of the Lichtman KEYS is a matter that should not be ignored, which unlike the KEYS, Lichtman will not explain, although the application of them seems to be straightforward even if the use of them to predict U.S. Presidential Elections strikes us as more akin to engaging in a parlor game rather than in a serious scientific pursuit. This raises the question: How, after all, DOES Lichtman interpret/apply his KEYS. And, if no one but Lichtman can “TURN THE KEYS” (OBVIOUSLY USING THE PHRASE AS A METAPHOR, ALLUDING TO TURNING A KEY TO OPEN A DOOR OR DRAWER OR TO UNLOCK A SAFE) what is it he is hiding from Pollsters or from the Press or from the Public? And, why the subterfuge?

Lichtman’s perfunctory, even smug, dismissal of Nate Silver’s criticism of the KEYS through Lichtman’s assertion that Silver ‘doesn't have the faintest idea how to turn the keys,’” doesn’t engender confidence in Lichtman’s assessment of the outcome of the Election. How, after all, does one “TURN THE KEYS”? Does a person need occult knowledge to do that. The phrase itself is cryptic, abstruse. Lichtman doesn’t explain how he assessed his “KEYS.” He says he utilized the KEYS to come to an assessment, but never explains how he did this. Does an assessment require, itself, occult, arcane knowledge that only he, Lichtman possesses?

If the “the keys in question are judgmental, not subjective”, as Lichtman claims, then anyone should be able to duplicate the results. Lichtman doesn’t claim to hold a patent on unlocking the secret for assessing the KEYS to see into the future, as if looking into a crystal ball. Lichtman seems to be toying with his detractors. Or perhaps he is simply a charlatan, who having been lucky is playing his lucky streak to get Press coverage. If so, then, that is plain enough. See newsweek article.

In his “five key takeaways [“key” NOT THE “KEYS”], Lichtman defends his assessment of the outcome of 2024 election but by discussing matters tangential to, but not directly related to “THE KEYS,” apart from one,(KEY 12), pertaining to the charisma of the incumbent Party candidate for U.S. President, but that assessment is notoriously subjective, heavily emotionally laden. At best, it would require a consensus among a majority of the Electorate to come to a rational conclusion.

Our guess is that most Americans would rate General George S. Patton and President John F. Kennedy, as two individuals who have true Charisma—a characteristic cutting cuts across Party Lines, and can be deduced from the many books and news articles about these past notable individuals. But does anyone truly believe that Kamala Harris has native charisma? Not even Lichtman has claimed that. And one need not have access to arcane knowledge to deduce that to “TURN THAT KEY” (in Lichtman’s parlance).

Democrats themselves turned away from Harris—not so long ago in 2020, during the 2020 Primaries. If Harris didn’t have Charisma then—and from what one can see of Harris now—would she ever have that quality—something more innate, than acquired?

Charisma is an intrinsic characteristic, internal to one’s nature. It is not a thing external to—artificially created by image makers in the Press or by Public Relations Experts—a person, to be tacked onto someone like a label, if that person doesn’t naturally have that quality.

Apropos of that, consider the word, ‘incumbent’, a major aspect or component of Lichtman’s KEYS.

Does the word ‘incumbency’ correctly apply in this instance to Harris given the circumstances of her ascendancy to the status of Democrat Party Candidate for U.S. President.

Kamala Harris’ ascendancy is a result of behind-the-scenes machinations of the Party Leadership, and has nothing to do with merit, or ability to convince rank and file Democrats of her worthiness to ascend to station of Democrat Party’s choice for U.S. President. See discussion infra.

Joe Biden remains de jure President, even if he isn’t treated as such, which suggests a thing more concerning to or that ought to be concerning to Americans. How can a man be divested of his status of U.S. President simply by Party Operatives who have tired of him? What does that say of Biden, and those who have banished him to relative obscurity in his remaining days as President? And what does that say about the sanctity and authority of the Office of President under Article II of the U.S. Constitution if a President can unceremoniously be cast aside, unconstitutionally, by underlings who have tired of him?

And, more to the point to the theme of this essay, what does this say of the failings of Lichtman’s KEYS, which do not deal with the peculiar fluctuations concomitant with political states of affairs that are always in flux. Perhaps, as Nate Silver asserts, Lichtman will have to create several more “KEYS” to account with so many dodgy disparities and myriad matters that cannot be foreseen.

"The White House party (Democrats) loses key 1, the mandate key, because they lost US House seats in 2022. They lost key number 3, the incumbency key, because the sitting president is not running. They lose key number 12, the incumbent charisma key, because whatever you may think of Harris, she's only been a candidate for a little while. She's not reached the status of a Franklin Roosevelt. And she loses key number 11, the foreign policy failure key, because the Middle East is a disaster, a humanitarian crisis with no good end in sight," the professor lists. See article in Conflict Watcher.

Lichtman eventually includes KEY TEN as a loss for Harris, as well.

Let us use these Keys to see if Lichtman’s application of the Keys bear up against scrutiny apropos of Nate Silver’s concerns along with our own analysis. AND, WE ACKNOWLEDGE BEFORE THIS EXERCISE, THAT WE DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO ARCANE KNOWLEDGE “TO TURN THE KEYS.” We just use reason and what we have gained from empirical observation of events.

KEY ONE—WHO CONTROLLED THE HOUSE AFTER THE 2022 MIDTERM ELECTIONS?

Although the 2022 Midterm Elections did not see a “Red Wave,” the Republicans DID nonetheless retake the House, if only by a narrow margin.

The turnover of the House in 2022 is a fact that isn’t subject to interpretation. It is objectively determinative and is ONE of only TWO “KEYS” that are OBJECTIVELY TRUE OR FALSE. It is an EITHER/OR PROPOSITION. The event either occurred or it did not. But that doesn’t tell us—despite Lichtman’s claim to the contrary—why it is that THIS KEY OR ANY OTHER KEY, FOR THAT MATTER, is to be deemed PRESUMPTIVELY VALID FOR DEDUCING THE WINNER AND LOSER OF A U.S. PRESIDENTIAL RACE. HOW IS IT THAT ANY “KEY SHOULD BE DEEMED TO BE STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT, or SCIENTIFICALLY PREDICTIVE OF STATES OF AFFAIRS IN THE REAL WORLD?

Now, why it is this matter OF WHICH PARTY CONTROLS THE HOUSE SHOULD HAVE any rational bearing on the outcome of a future election, Lichtman never explicates. The American public is to take on faith, apparently, that the methodology is logically sound because it works (until of course it doesn’t).

In any event, KEY NUMBER ONE IS FALSE FOR HARRIS, AND IS THEREFORE TRUE FOR TRUMP AND, THUS, FAVORS TRUMP OVER HARRIS.

KEY TWO—THERE IS NO SERIOUS CONTEST FOR THE INCUMBENT-PARTY NOMINATION.

Lichtman says this Key is “TRUE” for Harris, and therefore “FALSE” for Trump.

But is this KEY even applicable here? Remember, Biden IS STILL THE incumbent U.S. President, NOT Harris, even if he “dropped out” of the race (likely under protest. THAT WOUL MAKE HIM UNDERSTANDABLY BITTER). Even so, he remains, de jure, U.S. President, until January 20, 2025, when the new U.S. President is inaugurated. The only way Kamala Harris would stand, today, as de jure, not merely de facto, U.S. President is if she and Biden’s Cabinet invoked the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to formally remove Biden from Office. This didn’t happen. Biden dropped out of the race, whether voluntarily or not, but HE DID NOT RESIGN THE PRESIDENCY.

Curiously, Lichtman has maintained that the Democrats best shot at victory have, all along, rested in Biden as the incumbent Party Candidate coupled to the fact that he is still the present U.S. President.  

Secondly, there was no primary. PARTY LEADERSHIP SIMPLY INSTALLED THE VICE PRESIDENT AS INCUMBENT-PARTY CANDIDATE, EVEN IF THE PARTY LEADERSHIP MAKES MUCH OF THE FACT THAT THE DELEGATES VOTED HARRIS AS THE INCUMBENT-PARTY CANDIDATE, ALBEIT THROUGH AN UNPRECEDENTED “VIRTUAL VOTE.” THAT WAS ALL A SHOW—A PRETEXT TO GIVE HARRIS THE APPEARANCE OF HAVING BEEN POPULARLY ELECTED PARTY CANDIDATE FOR u U.S. PRESIDENT TO RUN AGAINST TRUMP. SEE DISCUSSION, INFRA.

Back in 2020, Harris was one of the first people to drop out of the Democrat-Party Primary Race—having done so after she commenced her campaign with great fanfare only to see it “fizzle” rapidly, mirroring her artificially crafted meteoric rise after the Democrat-Party Convention in 2024.

Back in 2019, NBC News said this about Harris’ dropping out of the 2020 race:

Sen. Kamala Harris of California dropped out of the Democratic presidential race on Tuesday, ending a once-promising campaign that began with an explosion of enthusiasm but fizzled quickly.

An aide told NBC News that the senator had notified her staff Tuesday that she was dropping out and the campaign emailed the news to supporters soon after.

In the email, Harris said her campaign "simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue."

"I'm not a billionaire. I can't fund my own campaign," Harris continued. "And as the campaign has gone on, it's become harder and harder to raise the money we need to compete. In good faith, I can't tell you, my supporters and volunteers, that I have a path forward if I don't believe I do."

She added, "So, to you my supporters, it is with deep regret — but also with deep gratitude — that I am suspending my campaign today."

Her exit comes just weeks before the deadline to get off the ballot in California, a move that could spare her some embarrassment if she thought she would lose in her home state. She had already qualified for the debate on Dec. 19 — the only candidate of color to have done so at the moment.

A senior aide to Harris told NBC News that the senator made the decision to drop out on Monday after talking with family and top advisers. Harris, over the weekend, conducted a full audit of the campaign's finances and questioned the sustainability of the cash-strapped campaign. Harris' campaign has not been on the airwaves for months and had laid off several dozen staffers last month.

Harris, according to the aide, did not want to continue to ask supporters to fund the campaign because the current financial situation made Harris feel the path forward to success in Iowa and beyond was no longer possible.

Harris, the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, launched her campaign to great fanfare on Jan. 21, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Days later, she held her first rally in front of a crowd of more than 20,000 people in Oakland.

In April, she reported raising $12 million in the first quarter — second only to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who raised $18 million.

Then, at the first Democratic debate in June, she drew notice for attacking former Vice President Joe Biden for his stance on busing and school segregation. After that, her polling numbers shot into the double digits, including registering at 13 percent in the national NBC/WSJ poll.

But her fundraising began lagging over the summer (she reported in July having raised $11.8 million in the second quarter — trailing South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg's $24.9 million, Sen. Elizabeth Warren's, D-Mass., $19.1 million, and Sanders' $18.2 million) and was put on the defensive on health care at the second Democratic debate at the end of July.Following that debate, her polling numbers dropped to the single digits — and never really recovered.

Amid those problems, Harris' campaign reorganized — laying off some staffers in early states to focus its resources and attention on Iowa.

The latest RealClearPolitics average of recent polling showed Harris with just 3.4 percent support nationally, and just 3.3 percent and 2.7 percent backing in the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, respectively.”

Apart from New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris was the first major contender for the 2020 Democrat-Party nominee for U.S. President to drop out of the race—before the first Primary, held in Iowa.

The term ‘NOMINEE,’ has a specific meaning under our Constitutional framework. As stated on the Cornell Law School website, the word ‘NOMINEE’ means “A person elected or designated by a convention, caucus, or any elective body to serve an office, appointment, or award.”

The Democrat Party Leadership forced Biden to relinquish running for a second term. With a proverbial gun pointed at his head, he reluctantly (UNCONVINCINGLY AND VERY RELUCTANTLY) agreed to do so. And, if that were so—if he did not wish to resign, and there is no evidence that he wished to do so (to the contrary, he proclaimed a desire to continue to run for a second term and stated he believed he was the only person who could defeat Donald Trump), then machinations behind the scenes suggest a true illegal, unconstitutional coup took place.

Apart from a truly voluntary decision to refrain from running for a second term, Harris cannot replace Biden, unless Biden suddenly dies or otherwise is incapacitated. If the Latter, then, Harris, as Vice President, AND Biden’s Cabinet, would have to invoke the 25th Amendment to oust Biden from Office.

If successful, that means Biden NO LONGER IS THE SITTING PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. AT THAT MOMENT, KAMALA HARRIS BECOMES THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, AND THE PRESUMPTIVE DEMOCRAT PARTY NOMINEE FOR U.S. PRESIDENT—PERHAPS—BUT NOT NECESSARILY SO.

LET’S BACKTRACK A BIT.

Can a Party’s First Term President who SEEKS TO RUN for a Second Term be legally prevented from doing so, apart from invoking the 25th Amendment. Yes, but it has happened only once in American history. See, e.g., the NPR article, when the Democrat Party prevented the 14th President, Franklin Pierce, from running for a Second Term. “When Democratic delegates gathered in Cincinnati for their convention in 1856, it was clear that they had had enough of Pierce. James Buchanan, who had been defeated by Pierce for the nomination four years earlier, won the nomination on the 17th ballot.” The major takeaway here is that Democrat Party Delegates elected Buchanan to replace Pierce. See article in NPR.

OF COURSE THE 25TH AMENDMENT DIDN’T EXIST IN 1856 AND WOULDN’T BE RATIFIED UNTIL OVER 110 YEARS LATER, IN FEBRUARY, 1967. But, even if the Amendment was available a century earlier, it could not be invoked because Buchanan was not incapacitated. The Democrat Party simply wanted to get rid of him.

There is a parallel between the Buchanan episode in 1856, and the Biden episode in 2024. Had Biden not made a fool of himself in the Debate with Trump, the Party Leadership likely would have been happy to keep him on. He wasn’t running anything. He was simply a messenger, a compliant tool. If it appeared he could win the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, they would have kept him on. Of course, the Leadership may have come to the realization that Biden’s dementia had progressed to the point that his dementia could not be plausibly ignored or explained away as an acute problem of stuttering. The Leadership may have orchestrated the debate (it was after all held months before such Presidential debates traditionally occur. The Party Leadership likely knew that Biden would fail miserably, demonstrating Dementia such that Biden’s deterioration physically and mentally could not be plausibly denied.

The Leadership needed sufficient time to push Biden aside (not an easy task because Biden did wish to run for a second term and the Leadership did not wish to invoke the 25th Amendment against him as that would proclaim loudly to the public that the Democrats (along with a Press that had colluded with the Party), had perpetrated a massive fraud on the public. That would doom any chance of securing control of the Executive Branch, no matter whom they dropped on the public.

Whatever the Party Leadership did to urge or cajole Biden to give up his run for a second term, he did so reluctantly, and, as is apparent, angrily, and it took time. Eventually they succeeded. They had a “LADY IN WAITING”—another willing lackey, perfectly happy to play the part of President—securing the trappings of the Office, but no power.

The Leadership installed Kamala Harris as the new puppet. But, Biden would retain the Presidency—at least until January 20, 2025—and that proved to be awkward for the Party and increasingly embarassing to the Party as Joe Biden would emerge at inopportune moments, making a fool of himself that extended to Harris, and to the Party as a whole. The first matter was to create the illusion that it was the Party Delegates who elected Harris as the Party’s Nominee. It was all a charade.

“Vice President Kamala Harris (D) won the Democratic presidential nomination on August 2, 2024, during a virtual roll call vote of Democratic convention delegates. Harris received 4,563 delegate votes, which amounted to 99% of the delegates. Almost all of the delegates were unbound following President Joe Biden's withdrawal from the race.” The “Virtual Roll Call Vote” of Delegates here lacks substance, if it appears fine in form. See the article in ABC News.

“Technically, other candidates can still run in the virtual roll call. They must meet the party and legal qualifications to be president, file their candidacy formally with the DNC and secure the signatures of supporting delegates before the nomination vote. They also must be Democrats, not registered as independents or with another party.”

This never happened. The Party Leadership had set machinery in motion weeks before the Convention—

• First to remove Biden from contention,

• Second, to replace Biden with Harris as the “Nominee,”

• Third, effectively prevent/preempt the other candidates (that had waited patiently in the wings) from campaigning before an open Convention, and

• Fourth, turning the Convention into a vacuous conjuror’s side-show to rally public support for the new puppet, Harris.

NOTE THE “PETER PRINCIPLE” AT WORK——

THE “PETER PRINCIPLE” POSITS THAT AN EMPLOYEE IN AN ORGANIZATIONAL HIERARCHY CONTINUES TO BE PROMOTED UNTIL HE REACHES HIS LEVEL OF INCOMPETENCE.

ONE CANNOT HELP BUT BE ASTOUNDED AT THE MULTITUDE OF LEVELS KAMALA HARRIS HAD RISEN TO AFTER LAW SCHOOL AND EVENTUALLY PASSING THE CALIFORNIA BAR (APPARENTLY AND ARGUABLY THE MOST DIFFICULT TASK SHE HAD EVER ACHIEVED AS SHE HAD NO ONE THAT COULD ACT AS A STAND-IN FOR HER. AFTER THAT SINGULAR DIFFICULT HURDLE, SHE COULD ACHIEVE THE TRAPPINGS OF POWER, HIDING BEHIND OTHERS TO DO THE ACTUAL WORK. SHE BEGAN BY IMMEDIATELY RISING TO HER FIRST LEVEL OF INCOMPETENCE: DEPUTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY OF OAKLAND. THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN WHERE SHE STOPPED. BUT, SHE THEN ROSE TO THE POSITION OF DISTRICT ATTORNEY OF OAKLAND. AT THIS POINT THE PETER PRINCIPLE IS REDUCED TO ABSURDITY SINCE HARRIS CONTINUES TO RISE HIGHER LEVELS OF OFFICE DESPITE INCOMPETENCE REACHED LONG AGO. SHE BECOMES ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CALIFORNIA, AND THEN PROCCEDS TO U.S. SENATOR. SHE THEN RUNS FOR DEMOCRAT PARTY NOMINEE FOR U.S. PRESIDENT IN 2020. SHE FAILS MISERABLY AND IS ONE OF THE FIRST MAJOR CANDIDATES TO DROP OUT OF THE RACE.

YET, MYSTERIOUSLY, AND DISCONCERTINGLY, SOMEONE APPOINTS HER TO SERVE AS VICE PRESIDENT TO BIDEN. DID BIDEN CHOOSE HER? NOT LIKELY. YET, THERE SHE IS, DOING NOTHING, AND BLAMING HER STAFF FOR HER OWN LAZINESS INCOMPETENCE, AND LIMITED INTELLIGENCE. AND, NOW, HERE SHE STANDS AS THE DEMOCRAT PARTY NOMINEE FOR U.S. PRESIDENT.

SOMEONE OR SOME GROUP OF VERY POWERFUL PEOPLE HAVE BEEN GUIDING HER RISE FROM THE DAYS SHE PASSED THE STATE BAR.

What is incomprehensible is that Lichtman pointed out that it is not enough for Biden to remain in Office as President if he has agreed to stand down from campaigning for a Second Term. For, if he remains in office, the question is why ought he not continue to campaign as the Incumbent Party Nominee? If not, then there is no good reason for him to remain in office, for he appears as what he is—a useless, ridiculous appendage. That is how he appears to both the Electorate and to the leaders of nations around the world. Yet, the useless, ridiculous appendage sticks around. And Lichtman uses HIS KEYS AS MUCH MORE THAN A MERE PREDICTIVE TOOL BUT AS A CAUSAL AGENT AFFECTING CHANGE. PERHAPS HE IS A CONJURER AFTER ALL, IF HE CAN PULL THAT OFF, FOR LICHTMAN NEVER WANTED THE PARTY LEADERSHIP TO FORCE BIDEN OUT.

BUT, HAVING DONE SO AND YET ALLOWING HIM TO REMAIN AS PRESIDENT EVEN AS HE NO LONGER IS THE INCUMBENT PARTY NOMINEE, PLACES HIM IN A STATE OF LIMBO, A STATE OF BEING THAT WEAKENS BOTH THE PARTY AND MORE, THE NEW INCUMBENT PARTY NOMINEE, KAMALA HARRIS. SHE IS CHAINED TO BIDEN AND THAT IS DEMONSTRATED BY HER INABILITY TO EXPLAIN A COHERENT POLICY UPON WHICH TO ESTABLISH A PLAUSIBLE REASON FOR THE ELECTORATE TO CAST A BALLOT FOR HER. SHE SAYS SHE IS NOT BIDEN. THAT IS A TRIVIAL POINT. BUT THE REAL POINT GOES TO POLICY. IF SHE IS NOT BIDEN, IN TERMS OF POLICY, THEN WHAT IS SHE? SHE HAS NEVER EXPLAINED AND AT ONE POINT SHE STATED AFFIRMATIVELY THAT SHE IS BIDEN.

Allan Lichtman’s methodology doesn’t bother with the many problematic features of and circumstances inherent in the 2024 Democrat Party Campaign. He should have asserted that given this odd state of affairs, affecting the notion of “INCUMBENCY” here, this SECOND KEY ought to simply be cast aside, as inapplicable, or otherwise checked as TRUE FOR TRUMP AND FALSE FOR HARRIS. But Lichtman didn’t do that.

LICHTMAN RATES THE SECOND KEY TRUE FOR HARRIS AND FALSE FOR TRUMP.

AQ WOULD RATE THIS KEY AS EITHER TRUE FOR TRUMP OR ARGUE IT IS  INAPPLICABLE IN THIS U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CYCLE. BUT, IF WE MUST USE IT, TO BE CONSISTENT WITH THE METHODOLOGY THAT ALL KEYS MUST BE TABULATED, THEN WE WOULD RATE THIS KEY AS TRUE FOR TRUMP, AS WE DISAGREE WITH LICHTMAN’S DECISION.

The American public may rightly demonstrate outrage over the irregularities of and oddities inherent in the Democrat Party’s actions here. 

KEY THREE—THE INCUMBENT-PARTY CANDIDATE IS THE SITTING PRESIDENT. Lichtman says this factor is FALSE for Harris because, although Biden is the INCUMBENT-PARTY PRESIDENT HE NO LONGER IS THE INCUMBENT-PARTY CANDIDATE. That is true. And it is a clear, objective truth. BUT, IT IS FALSE FOR HARRIS. THAT IS THE IMPORTANT POINT. AND IT IS THEREFORE TRUE FOR THE CHALLENGER PARTY NOMINEE, TRUMP, AND SO THIS KEY, KEY THREE, FAVORS TRUMP.

KEY FOUR—THERE IS NO SIGNIFICANT THIRD-PARTY OR INDEPENDENT CAMPAIGN. Had he remained in the Race, Robert Kennedy Jr. would, arguably, be a significant Third-Party Candidate.

However, not only did Kennedy drop out of the Race he then joined ranks with Trump, THEREFORE STRENGTHENING, AND SOLIDIFYING TRUMP’S DOMINANCE IN THE RACE FOR U.S. PRESIDENT.

Furthermore, there remains no other viable, tenable, Third Party Candidate in the running. Jill Stein, for one, doesn’t come close. And notwithstanding that the Secretary of State of Michigan refuses to remove Kennedy’s name from the ballot, even after Kennedy has made clear he is not running as an independent candidate, his name on the ballot serves as nothing more than a nugatory placeholder.

Perhaps it is enough for Allan Lichtman to proclaim this KEY as TRUE for Harris. But this is where Lichtman’s bias shows.

Had RFK, Jr. remained in the race, Lichtman would have rated the Fourth Key TRUE for Trump, as mudding up the water, although, once again, analysis doesn’t say, that, in this election cycle a THIRD PARTY CANDIDATE WOULD BE MORE HARMFUL FOR HARRIS RATHER THAN TRUMP.

Lichtman assumes a strong Third Party Candidate’s run, as SPOILER, would operate invariably to harm the INCUMBENT PARTY NOMINEE. But, taking that as a given, would not Kennedy’s endorsement of and active, avid campaigning for Trump support Lichtman’s own argument that this THIRD KEY emphatically assistsTrump, as the SPOILER’S VOTE WOULD GO ENTIRELY OR PREDOMINATELY FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY NOMINEE HERE, TRUMP, INSTEAD OF FOR THE INCUMBENT PARTY NOMINEE, HARRIS?

By accepting this KEY AT FACE VALUE, rather than for the MEANING BEHIND IT in this instance, Lichtman’s methodology is inherently flawed. It is incompatible with THE REALITY of present circumstances.

LICHTMAN DOESN’T CARE. HE RATES THIS KEY TRUE FOR HARRIS AND FALSE FOR TRUMP. AQ DISAGREES.

WE RATE THIS KEY FALSE FOR HARRIS AND TRUE FOR TRUMP, UNDER ANY REASONABLE APPLICATION OF THIS KEY THAT WE CAN SEE.

KEY FIVE—THE ECONOMY IS NOT IN RECESSION DURING THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN. The Economy is not, at the moment, in a recession and notwithstanding that the economy may fall into one in the next few months—and, more likely than not, would worsen significantly under a Harris Presidency. Harris would continue the policies HARRIS-BIDEN ADMINISTRATION THAT CREATED ECONOMIC CALAMITY IN THE FIRST PLACE.

STILL, TAKEN, AT FACE VALUE, SINCE THERE IS NO RECESSION AT THE MOMENT, KEY FIVE IS TRUE FOR HARRIS, CONSISTENT WITH LICHTMAN’S FINDING. KEY FIVE IS THEREFORE FALSE FOR TRUMP, THEREFORE FAVORING HARRIS.

THE BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION HAS DEVASTATED THE AMERICAN ECONOMY. ONCE AGAIN LICHTMAN RATES HIS KEYS ON A BASIC WHITE-BLACK FRAMEWORK, WITHOUT GIVING ANY THOUGHT TO THE IMPACT OF EVENTS. IT IS, AFTER ALL, VOTERS, WHO VOTE, AND WHAT IMPACTS THEM IS GROUNDED ON A MULTITUDE OF FACTORS, GROUNDED ON THE EVENTS AFFECTING THEM AS THEY PERCEIVE THEM AND UPON THEIR PREDISPOSITIONS, WEIGHTING EMOTIONS, AND INTELLECT, AND BELIEF SYSTEM, ACCORDING TO THEIR PRESENT LIFE CONDITIONS AND NATIVE INTELLIGENCE.

LICHTMAN RATES THIS KEY TRUE FOR HARRIS, AND THEREFORE FALSE FOR TRUMP.

AQ WOULD PREFER TO RATE THIS KEY INAPPLICABLE. BUT WE ARE REQUIRED TO TABULATE ALL THE KEYS.

SO, TAKEN, AT FACE VALUE, SINCE THERE IS NO RECESSION AT THE MOMENT, KEY FIVE IS TRUE FOR HARRIS, CONSISTENT WITH LICHTMAN’S FINDING. KEY FIVE IS THEREFORE FALSE FOR TRUMP. THE KEY FAVORS HARRIS.

KEY SIX—REAL PER-CAPITA ECONOMIC GROWTH DURING THE TERM EQUALS OR EXCEEDS MEAN GROWTH DURING THE PREVIOUS TWO TERMS. This is a matter of both fact and perception. And it is often, of itself, the salient indicator of how a U.S. Presidential election will turn out, but as stated supra, Alan Lichtman GIVES EACH KEY EQUAL WEIGHT. Moreover, by taking them at FACE VALUE, he fails to consider or adamantly refuses to consider that events in any given ELECTION CYCLE may require modifying how a KEY ought to be rated.

Should a determination not cohere with events?

At worst, comparison of the economy between the Biden-Harris Term and Trump’s term is a toss-up. And, of course, Trump had to deal with the COVID Pandemic during the last year of his Term. Even as between Trump’s economy and the second term of Obama’s (Obama’s First Term came on the Heels of the “Great Recession), there are positive and negative correlates to consider.

Economics is an abstruse subject even as, for Americans, among both Democrats and Republicans, it ranks as first in importance. Inflation is a mess under Biden-Harris. It is what the majority of Americans feel even if the far smaller wealthy class remains unaffected by it, given that their wealth from investment reduce the import of inflation to a nullity for them. The phrase, “Are you worse off under the Biden-Harris years or Under the Trump years” has become an adage and as a question, it is rhetorical.

So, if the economists argue that, how the real economy fares under Biden-Harris and under Trump, is a toss-up, as some factors work to Trump’s benefit and other’s to Biden and as is likely the case, economists vehemently disagree as to whether the economy fared better or worse under a given Administration and at a given point in time, given a plethora of variables, the fact is that for average Americans the reality of inflation hits hard in a very real physical sense during the Biden-Harris tenure and under the Obama tenure in office than under Trump’s.

We would add, in reference to this KEY, that, despite Lichtman’s academic credentials, impressive though they be, Lichtman is not an economist. He doesn’t pretend to be and yet claims this KEY is TRUE for Harris and therefore FALSE for Trump. But is Lichtman correct on this?

He has not, to our knowledge, consulted with any economist. And, from what we have found, reviewing the thoughts of several economists, this matter is not clear-cut. We would prefer not to tabulate this KEY, given the nebulousness of economics, or otherwise rate it in favor of Trump in terms of the average negative impact that inflation has had and continues to have on tens of millions of American families.

LICHTMAN RATES THIS KEY AS TRUE FOR HARRIS AND THEREFORE FALSE FOR TRUMP.

AQ WOULD THEREFORE RATE THIS KEY AS INDETERMINATE PREFERRING NOT TO GIVE IT CONSIDERATION IN A FINAL TALLY, BUT, SINCE LICHTMAN INSISTS THAT ALL KEYS MUST BE TABULATED, WE WOULD BE COMPELLED TO ARGUE THIS KEY IS TRUE FOR HARRIS, AND FALSE FOR TRUMP. This is consistent with Lichtman’s findings. We therefore tick it for Harris, contra TRUMP.

As we note, several of these KEYS simply have no practical application in the present circumstances, and some appear to be of dubious value under any set of circumstances and THEREFORE OUGHT TO BE ignored altogether. But Lichtman doesn’t do that. To do so is anathema to him and disrupts the integrity of his methodology.

So, to cohere with THE RULE that all KEYS MUST BE TABULATED AND GIVEN EQUAL WEIGHT, WE WILL COMPLY WITH THAT RULE. See the articles in “Money”, “Forbes”, and the BBC.

KEY SEVEN——(POLICY CHANGE): THE INCUMBENT ADMINISTRATION EFFECTS MAJOR CHANGES IN NATIONAL POLICY.

THIS KEY IS INCONGRUOUS. Is Lichtman implying that any major change in national policy from that of the preceding Administration is an inherent positive? If so, half the Country would disagree with that interpretation. If the KEY does not intend to assume that no association is to be made as between GOOD or BAD NATIONAL POLICY, only that THE POLICY BE SUBSTANTIALLY DIFFERENT FROM THAT OF THE PRIOR ADMINISTRATION, THEN THE POLICY OF THE PRESENT ADMINISTRATION IS CERTAINLY THAT. But if so, then that makes the KEY inherently incongruous.

A MAJOR CHANGE IN POLICY THAT IS ONE INHERENTLY BAD FOR THE COUNTRY, AT LEAST AS SEEN FROM THE STANDPOINT OF ONE HALF OF THE ELECTORATE, WOULD RENDER THIS KEY EITHER IMPOSSIBLE TO RATE FOR BOTH THE INCUMBENT NOMINEE OR THE CHALLENGER, AND SO MEANINGLESS, OR OTHERWISE, PATENTLY ABSURD.

AND, IF MORE THAN ONE-HALF OF THE COUNTRY SEES THE INCUMBENT NOMINEE’S “MAJOR CHANGES” AS A NEGATIVE, OR IF SUCH CAN BE LOGICALLY DEDUCED AS NEGATIVE, AS AQ HAS CONCLUDED, THEN LICHTMAN’S RATING OF THIS KEY IS BIZARRE AND INCOHERENT.

CONSIDER——

Lichtman rates this KEY TRUE FOR HARRIS AND THEREFORE FALSE FOR TRUMP. How Lichtman comes to this conclusion is puzzling. From DAY ONE of the BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION, EVERY MAJOR POLICY ACHIEVEMENT AND POLICY AIM OF TRUMP WAS REVERSED BY EXECUTIVE ORDER.

THE NATION’S SOUTHERN BORDER WAS FLUNG WIDE-OPEN, ALLOWING MILLIONS OF ILLEGAL ALIENS FROM OVER ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY COUNTRIES TO ENTER WITHOUT VETTING. THOUSANDS OF MURDEROUS CARTELS ENTERED AS WELL. DISRUPTION TO OUR SOCIETY PLAYED OUT IN EVERY STATE. SOCIETAL INSTABILITY HAS OCCURRED APACE. THIS IS THE BIDEN-HARRIS GOAL AND ITS LEGACY. FOREIGN POLICY IS A COMPLETE DISASTER. INFLATION HAS SKYROCKETED. BIZARRE ALIEN DOGMAS, INCOHERENT, AND INCOMPATIBLE WITH OUR NATION’S JUDEO-CHRISTIAN ETHIC AND INCONSISTENT WITH OUR NATION’S CORE VALUES, CULTURE, AND HERITAGE, HAS TAKEN ROOT AND ARE NOW EMBEDDED IN GOVERNMENT AND OTHER INSTITUTIONS.

DEPARTMENTS OF GOVERNMENT AND BUREAUS AND AGENCIES OPERATE AGAINST THE VERY PEOPLE THEY WERE CREATED TO SERVE. INFLATION HAS SKY-ROCKETED. OUR ENERGY POLICY IS IN RUINS. THE BIDEN-HARRIS AIMS ARE DISJOINTED AND THE OBVERSE OF TRUMP’S POLICIES TO REINVIGORATE OUR ECONOMY, STRENGTHEN OUR NATION, MILITARILY, AND RETURN OUR NATION TO ITS HISTORICAL ROOTS, CONSISTENT WITH OUR CONSTITUTION AND NATURAL LAW.

LICHTMAN RATES THIS KEY TRUE FOR HARRIS. AQ CANNOT DISAGREE MORE WITH THIS PRONOUNCEMENT. WE WOULD RATE IT TRUE FOR TRUMP AND FALSE FOR HARRIS, THEREBY FAVORING TRUMP. IN THE ALTERNATIVE, WE WOULD STATE THIS KEY, IN THE ABSENCE OF ANY DECLARATION THAT SUCH MAJOR CHANGE MUST BE “GOOD” (AT LEAST IN THE MIND OF LICHTMAN), ISN’T MERELY INAPPLICABLE, IT IS, ON ITS FACE, LOGICALLY INCOHERENT.

BUT, AGAIN, BECAUSE WE HAVE TO BE CONSISTENT IN TABULATING ALL KEYS HOWEVER INCONGRUENT, WE DO SO, AND RATE KEY SEVEN TRUE FOR TRUMP, AND FALSE FOR THE INCUMBENT PARTY CANDIDATE, HARRIS. IN OUR ESTIMATE, KEY SEVEN FAVORS TRUMP.

KEY EIGHT—— (SOCIAL UNREST): THERE IS NO SUSTAINED SOCIAL UNREST DURING THE TERM.

The problem with this KEY and many of the others is that the salient expression—in this case, the phrase, “SOCIAL UNREST”—is vague.

What kinds of events constitute “UNREST” sufficient to warrant the appellation of the phrase, “SOCIAL UNREST?” How WIDESPREAD, that is to say, how EXPANSIVE in scope must such “UNREST” be to constitute “SOCIAL UNREST?” How SEVERE a “DISTURBANCE” must there be to warrant the descriptor “SOCIAL UNREST?” How many people must be involved? And what is the nature of the response required? Must THE DISTURBANCE be of a magnitude such as to require a SUBSTANTIAL POLICE RESPONSE including, perhaps, a FIRE DEPARTMENT RESPONSE, AND, IF SO, HOW MASSIVE, must THE DISTURBANCE or the DISRUPTION BE, AND HOW MANY POLICE AND FIRE DEPARTMENT PERSONNEL, including EMT PERSONNEL WOULD BE REQUIRED TO QUASH THE DISTURBANCE, and to ASSIST MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC HARMED BY THE DISTURBANCE, and to RESTORE DAMAGED BUILDINGS? WOULD SUCH DISTURBANCE, RISING TO THE LEVEL OF “SOCIAL REQUEST” REQUIRE A GOVERNOR TO CALL ON THE STATE’S NATIONAL GUARD? AND MUST “SOCIAL UNREST” BE OF SUCH A NATURE AS TO ACTUALLY REQUIRE “SUBSTANTIAL” DAMAGE TO STRUCTURES AND HARM TO INDIVIDUALS?

Consider, millions of illegal aliens have been released into our Country by the present Administration, as a matter of policy. That policy has resulted in TERRORISTS and MURDEROUS INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL CARTELS UNLEASHED INTO OUR MIDST? HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF ILLEGAL ALIEN CHILDREN ARE UNACCOUNTED FOR.

RAMPANT DRUG TRAFFICKING, SEX TRAFFICKING, AND MURDEROUS, VIOLENT ASSAULTS HAVE BEEN INFLICTED ON AMERICAN CITIZENS, PRIMARILY WOMEN, INCLUDING CHILDREN.

THE BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION DISMISSES THE SEVERITY OF THIS ASSAULT ON OUR NATION’S COMMUNITIES AND THE EXTENT OF THE NEGATIVE IMPACT ON OUR COMMUNITIES’ RESOURCES. The Government deliberately “keeps a lid” on this. A compliant, seditious Press doesn’t investigate any of this, or otherwise doesn’t report what it has uncovered.

LICHTMAN, DETERMINING THERE IS NO “SOCIAL UNREST”, RATES THIS KEY AS TRUE FOR HARRIS AND THEREFORE FALSE FOR TRUMP THEREBY FAVORING HARRIS. AQ WOULD ARGUE THE OBVERSE, INFERRING THAT SOCIAL UNREST IS GRAVE ACROSS THE COUNTRY, SIMMERING, AND READY TO EXPLODE IN AN ACTUAL CONFLAGRATION OF VIOLENCE.

AMERICAN SOCIETY IS ALREADY IN THE THROES OF DECAY. OUR INSTITUTIONS ARE CRUMBLING, THE PHYSICAL SAFETY AND WELL-BEING OF AMERICANS HAS ERODED AS HAS THEIR FINANCIAL SECURITY.

WE RATE THIS KEY TRUE FOR TRUMP, FALSE FOR HARRIS, AND THEREFORE FAVORING TRUMP.

KEY NINE—— (SCANDAL): THE INCUMBENT ADMINISTRATION IS UNTAINTED BY MAJOR SCANDAL.

While this KEY—unlike KEY SEVEN—is LOGICALLY COHERENT, it is, like most of the KEYS, nebulous, because Lichtman fails to define the salient terminology. Those words or phrases require refinement in meaning.

Furthermore, in the context of actual events, the terms employed in the KEYS ought to be explicated in reference to the nature of events, past and present, and their impact on our society and the world, and the terms and phrase must, or, at least, ought to be explicated in reference the factors that impact and shape the ELECTORATE’S view of the PRESENT ADMINISTRATION, sufficient for a rational decision to be made concerning a particular KEY.

The SALIENT PHRASE “UNTAINTED BY MAJOR SCANDAL” as applied to the BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION, requires explication.

It is true that members of BIDEN’S ADMINISTRATION, including BIDEN, himself, have not been impeached, but not for lack of trying on the part of Republicans in the HOUSE. Biden is corrupt. The Heads of DOJ and DHS have utilized their authority to further the corruption and to debase the INSTITUTIONS in their charge. To conclude as Lichtman has that KEY NINE IS TRUE FOR HARRIS and THEREFORE FALSE for TRUMP demonstrates that Lichtman has tacitly applied a very narrow definition to the phrase, “UNTAINTED BY MAJOR SCANDAL.” Rather, the entire Biden-Harris Administration is tainted by scandal. THE ADMINISTRATION has wholly corrupted the Executive Branch. The Administration, or those unelected individuals behind the scenes who are using the public faces of THE ADMINISTRATION to thwart the will of the American people and to subvert THE U.S. CONSTITUTION, have gained such massive control over the Government, that the corruption has now grown so pervasive that it is essentially unnoticeable. CORRUPTION IS CONCOMITANT WITH THIS ADMINISTRATION.

LICHTMAN RATES THIS KEY TRUE FOR HARRIS AND THEREFORE FALSE FOR TRUMP. AQ WOULD RATE THIS KEY FALSE FOR HARRIS AND TRUE FOR TRUMP, THEREBY FAVORING HIM, NOT HARRIS.

KEY TEN (FOREIGN/MILITARY FAILURE)—THE INCUMBENT ADMINISTRATION SUFFERS NO MAJOR FAILURE IN FOREIGN OR MILITARY AFFAIRS

KEY ELEVEN (FOREIGN/MILITARY SUCCESS)——THE INCUMBENT ADMINISTRATION ACHIEVES A MAJOR SUCCESS IN FOREIGN OR MILITARY AFFAIRS.

We can treat these two KEYS together.

THE BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION’S FOREIGN POLICY, ALONG WITH ITS HANDLING OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS WAS AND IS, TO SAY THE LEAST—ABYSMAL AND UNEQUIVOCALLY HORRIFIC. FROM THE TRAGIC, IDIOTIC HANDLING OF THE AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL, WHICH LED DIRECTLY TO PUTIN’S ENTRY INTO T UKRAINE, AND TO THE HORRIFIC MASSACRE OF INNOCENT ISRAELIS BY PSYCHOPATHIC AND/OR PSYCHOTIC HAMAS TERRORISTS, WORKING AT THE BEHEST OF IRAN, THE WORLD IS IN THE THROES OF THE GRAVEST DISASTER SINCE THE END OF THE COLD WAR.

CHINA AND NORTH KOREA, TOO, ARE FLEXING THEIR MUSCLE. CHINA IS THREATENING TAIWAN AND ENCROACHING ON THE ISLANDS OF THE PACIFIC. NORTH KOREA IS DEVELOPING NUCLEAR WEAPONRY. AND IN THE MIDDLE EAST, IRAN IS DOING THE SAME. THE ADMINISTRATION’S STRATEGY OF APPEASEMENT WITH AN AGGRESSIVE CHINA AND AN EQUALLY AGGRESSIVE IRAN HAS CAN LEAD TO A CONFLAGRATION IN THE PACIFIC REGION OR IN THE MIDDLE EAST. AND THE LACK OF ANY COHERENT POLICY FOR DEALING WITH RUSSIA CAN ALSO LEAD TO A CONFLAGRATION IN EUROPE.

ON THESE TWO KEYS, LICHTMAN RATES THEM TRUE FOR TRUMP, AND FALSE FOR HARRIS. THEY BOTH THEREFORE FAVOR TRUMP.

KEY TWELVE (INCUMBENT CHARISMA)—THE INCUMBENT-PARTY CANDIDATE IS CHARISMATIC OR A NATIONAL HERO.

KEY THIRTEEN (CHALLENGER CHARISMA)—THE CHALLENGING PARTY CANDIDATE IS NOT CHARISMATIC OR A NATIONAL HERO.

THESE LAST TWO KEYS HAVE DUBIOUS VALUE EVEN IF IT IS POSSIBLE TO MAKE A SOUND DETERMINATION OF WHAT ‘CHARISMATIC’ MEANS AND WHAT ‘NATIONAL HERO’ MEANS. AND EVEN THEN, HOW DO YOU ASCRIBE IT TO A PERSON THAT A MAJORITY OF THE ELECTORATE MAY HAPPEN TO AGREE WITH. AND WOULD THAT DETERMINATION COHERE WITH THE ACTUAL DETERMINATION MADE BY LICHTMAN?

THEORETICALLY, BOTH THE INCUMBENT-PARTY CANDIDATE, AND THE CHALLENGING PARTY CANDIDATE CAN BE DEEMED CHARISMATIC (OR A NATIONAL HERO) OR BOTH CAN BE DEEMED NON-CHARISMATIC (OR NOT A NATIONAL HERO).

MAKING KEYS TWELVE AND THIRTEEN DICHOTOMOUS DOESN’T SERVE TO MAKE THE KEYS ANYTHING OTHER THAN REDUNDANT, EXCEPT IN ONE INSTANCE. LET’S CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITIES.

FOR EXAMPLE, SUPPOSE THAT THE INCUMBENT PARTY CANDIDATE IS CHARISMATIC OR A NATIONAL HERO, AND THE CHALLENGING PARTY CANDIDATE IS NOT-NOT CHARISMATIC OR A NATIONAL HERO, WHICH MEANS THAT THE CHALLENGING PARTY IS ALSO CHARISMATIC OR IS A NATIONAL HERO. IN THAT CASE, THE TWO KEYS CANCEL EACH OTHER OUT.

THE SAME IS TRUE IF BOTH PARTIES ARE DEEMED NOT CHARISMATIC OR A NATIONAL HERO. THE KEYS CANCEL EACH OTHER OUT.

IN THE INSTANT CASE LICHTMAN FINDS HARRIS NOT CHARISMATIC OR A NATIONAL HERO IN REFERENCE TO KEY TWELVE. SO KEY TWELVE IS FALSE FOR HARRIS, AND, GIVEN THE TWO TRUTH-VALUE SYSTEM USED IN THIS METHODOLOGY, KEY TWELVE MUST BE TRUE FOR TRUMP.

FOR KEY THIRTEEN HE FINDS THAT TRUMP IS NOT CHARISMATIC OR A NATIONAL HERO EITHER. SO KEY THIRTEEN IS FALSE FOR TRUMP AND THEREFORE KEY THIRTEEN MUST BE TRUE FOR HARRIS.

KEYS TWELVE AND THIRTEEN WOULD THEREFORE CANCEL EACH OTHER OUT.

ONLY IN THE INSTANCE WHERE EITHER THE INCUMBENT PARTY CANDIDATE IS DEEMED CHARISMATIC OR A NATIONAL HERO AND THE CHALLENGER IS NOT DEEMED CHARISMATIC OR A NATIONAL HEROR, OR VICE VERSA, DO THE KEYS NOT CANCEL EACH OTHER OUT.

BUT IT IS STILL DIFFICULT TO DEFINE THE TERMINOLOGY WHICH PLAGUES THE ENTIRE SYSTEM THAT LICHTMAN DEVISES.

HARRIS IS UNCHARISMATIC—ALWAYS WAS AND ALWAYS WILL BE. AS FOR TRUMP, AT LEAST HALF OF THE ELECTORATE WOULD SAY TRUMP IS CHARISMATIC. TO SAY THAT TRUMP IS CHARISMATIC OR A NATIONAL HERO MEANS THAT KEY THIRTEEN MUST MEAN THAT THE KEY WHICH SAYS THE CHALLENGING PARTY CANDIDATE IS NOT CHARISMATIC OR A NATIONAL HERO IS FALSE FOR TRUMP SINCE WE ARGUE THAT HE IS CHARISMATIC. SO, THE TRUTH VALUE, FALSE, MUST BE A POSITIVE HERE FOR OTHERWISE KEY THIRTEEN COULD NEVER WORK TO FAVOR THE CHALLENGING PARTY CANDIDATE, WHETHER DEEMED CHARISMATIC OR NOT.

To sum up, Lichtman rates EIGHT KEYS FAVORING HARRIS TO TRUMP’S FIVE. HE THEREFORE PREDICTS A WIN FOR HARRIS.

We find, as set forth in detail supra, many KEYS inapplicable and would prefer to discount them entirely. But, since we have to make use of all of them, we would argue that ELEVEN KEYS FAVOR TRUMP AND TWO KEYS FAVOR HARRIS. ACCORDINGLY WE “PREDICT”, UNDER LICHTMAN’S “KEYS,” TRUMP IS THE VICTOR IN THE 2024 U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

The only other thing to add here is that the methodology of POLLING and the methodology of LICHTMAN’S “KEYS” all go out the door if rampant Democrat Party cheating occurs in this Election as it had occurred in the 2020 U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

Let us hope that whatever cheating does occur is de minimis and doesn’t negatively impact on the integrity of the 2024 election taking place on November 5, 2024.

WE PLACE OUR MONEY ON DONALD TRUMP, AS VICTOR IN THE 2024 U.S. PRESIDENTIAL RACE—NOW IMMINENT, AS THE FIFTH DAWNS, AS AQ CONCLUDES THIS ESSAY.

_________________________________________

NYC’S SENECA SPORTING RANGE LEADS THE CHARGE FOR FFLs TO GET GUN OWNERS TO VOTE FOR TRUMP!

“As an FFL and gun range owner in NYC I want to do my part in getting the vote out for Donald Trump. It is especially important that gun owners vote to protect our right to keep and bear arms. Since August, I have helped over 300 people register to vote and hope to double this number before the election only a few weeks away. I urge every FFL and gun range owner in every state to follow my example and do the same. Together we will make a difference especially in the swing states that have so many gun owners that don't vote. A Trump win is critical!”

~Message from John Deloca, owner and operator of Seneca Sporting Range, located in Ridgewood, Queens, New York Included is a panorama of the range.  

Getting Donald Trump elected this November comes down to a “numbers” game.

John Deloca, for one, is doing his part to ensure Trump wins this November but he cannot go it alone. He can only pave the way for others to follow. And he is doing that.

Over 10-million-gun owners have not registered to vote in this 2024 U.S. Presidential election. See the Arbalest Quarrel essay, “Millions of America’s Gun Owners Are Not Registered to Vote. Why?”, posted on July 17, 2024, on the AQ website.

Ammoland Shooting Sports News reposted a summary of this July AQ essay, on September 5, 2024, under the title, “Millions Of America’s Gun Owners Are NOT Registered To Vote. WTF!”

And see the September 28, 2024, Arbalest Quarrel essay titled, “You, The American Gun Owner, Will Determine Trump’s Victory This November 2024—But Only If You Vote!” As a lead-in to AQ’s September 28 essay, Alan M. Gottlieb, Founder & Executive Vice President of the Second Amendment Foundation and Chairman, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, points out how disconcerting it is that——

“WITH AMERICANS’ FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO OWN FIREARMS UNDER DIRECT THREAT IN THIS ELECTION YEAR, IT IS AMAZING THAT 10 MILLION GUN OWNERS ARE NOT EVEN REGISTERED TO VOTE.”

Mr. Gottlieb continues with an observation about the Democrat Party candidate, Kamala Harris, and the inference to be drawn from that observation,

“ONE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE HAS THREATENED TO IMPOSE MANDATORY ‘GUN BUYBACKS’ ON 100 MILLION LAW ABIDING AMERICANS. THAT IS RAW AUTHORITARIANISM, AND THE BEST WAY TO FIGHT IT IS WITH THE VOTES OF EVERY LEGAL GUN OWNER IN OUR BELOVED NATION.”

See also AQ’s follow-up essay, titled “NRA’s Doug Hamlin Is Right: Armed Self-Defense Extends To All Other Rights,” posted on October 13, 2024, on the AQ site.

Ammoland Shooting Sports News reposted a synopsis of the AQ “Hamlin” essay, on October 16, 2024, under the title, “Call to Action: Armed Self-Defense is the Key to Preserving All American Freedoms.”

But the preservation of our most important fundamental right is well-nigh impossible with millions of gun owners disdaining the act of voting—a form of speech that is not to be taken lightly. Is it preferable to take up arms against tyranny, when tyranny can be effectively defeated at the ballot box and at significantly less cost?

These 10 million unregistered gun owners (and there are likely many more), who act so dismissively toward the upcoming 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, probably include many of the same individuals who did not register to vote in the 2020 election.

Had they done so, the result would have been an election win for Donald Trump “Too Big To Rig.”

America’s gun owners lost their chance in 2020. They can make things right this go-around but only if they make a concerted effort—THIS TIME—to register to vote and cast their ballot for Donald Trump. Rarely, do people get a second chance. They better take it. They should not expect a third. There won’t be any.

THIS 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION MUST BE AN ELECTION—AS TRUMP SAYS PLAINLY AND UNEQUIVOCALLY— “TOO BIG TOO RIG!”

Democrats continually attack and poke fun at Trump’s use of “catch-phrases” that crop up at his rallies and in town halls and at other gatherings of his supporters, even as they ignore Harris’ use of catchphrases at gatherings of her supporters.

But “To Big Too Rig” is one phrase that worries and enrages Democrats because it is less a slogan and more a watchword.

It is one expressing an inner truth—a truth that the Democrat Party leadership won’t dare acknowledge publicly, but probably whispers among themselves privately—That the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election was in fact stolen from Trump and from a majority of the Electorate.

Democrats and their powerful benefactors did hatch a plot to secure Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. There is too much evidence pointing to that.

They could not remove him, try as they did, plotting to oust him from his first term, and they would not stomach Trump serving a second term. Thus, they hatched their final scheme to ensure he could not win the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.

What they meticulously planned was no simple one-off criminal escapade. It was a major illicit undertaking. Their contempt for the integrity of our Electoral Process reverberates down to the present time to this present Election cycle. They concocted an elaborate scheme, one with many facets, to defeat Trump.

The Democrat Party Leadership engaged in a massive seditious conspiracy, one involving many individuals and groups, both inside and outside the Government, operating in unison, with a common interest: to defeat a person, whose one “unforgivable sin” was a fervent desire simply To Make America Great Again.

What could possibly be more commonsensical and rational than that? And that is what Trump aimed to accomplish, and he made great strides in achieving that aim during his First Term in office, even as so many forces sought to sabotage his efforts and to ruin him. Strengthening America was not something that his detractors wanted. That wasn’t their agenda. That wasn’t their gameplan.

They would have none of it. Their single-minded objective is to hobble the Country and, so, destroy it—true in the Obama years and true in the Biden-Harris years. And they have been doing a good job of it these past several years through their compliant instrument.

Can the destroyers of our Country cheat their way to an election victory in 2024 as they had done in 2020? It is not so easy this time.

With the upcoming election on a razor’s edge, and a Republican National Committee (RNC) proactively engaged in ensuring the integrity of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, Democrats and their proxies, must operate more circumspectly, less boldly, in attempting to rig this Election.

“Too Big To Rig” is Trump’s salient message. And it should be every gun owner’s mantra. That is how America’s True Patriots will take back their Country from those who seek to eviscerate it.

See, e.g., a clip from one of Trump’s many “Town Halls.” See also the article, titled, “Trump returns to Georgia determined to win in ‘too big to rig’ landslide” posted a few days ago in the Washington Examiner.

Georgia is a particular sore spot. Democrats flipped the State for Biden in 2020, by a mere 12,300 votes out of nearly 5 million votes cast!

In 2024, there were (and maybe there still are) over 350,000 unregistered gun owners in Georgia.

See AQ article in Ammoland, referred to above. How many of those Georgia gun owners failed to cast a ballot for Trump in 2020?

TOO MANY GUN OWNERS SHY AWAY FROM VOTING, UNLIKE THOSE WHO ABHOR GUNS AND WHO ARE CONTEMPTUOUS OF GUN OWNERS

Perhaps no topic divides voters more deeply than the role that firearms have in American life.

By overwhelming margins, Joe Biden’s supporters prioritize gun control over gun rights and say gun ownership does more to reduce than increase safety; roughly eight-in-ten Biden supporters (83%) say the increase in guns in the U.S. is at least somewhat bad for society.

By comparable or even somewhat larger margins, Donald Trump’s supporters express opposing views on all three measures [See Pew Research Study].

Although New York isn’t considered a “Swing State,” every State is important in this election. Trump hasn’t ignored any State, and no gun owner should either. Yet, many do. They take the position that their State will swing for Trump and therefore Trump does not need their vote, or they take the position their State is going for Harris, so their vote is tantamount to a futile gesture. In either instance, the gun owner’s logic is faulty. And that faultiness can mean Trump loses the election. And that entails a bigger loss for the Country.

John Deloca is not presuming Harris will take New York.

In fact, Trump is mindful that many Democrats in New York, and around the Country, are looking at the condition of their home State and the Nation. They are not pleased by what they are seeing. Many are rethinking their continuous commitment to their Party. But will those Democrats actually vote for Trump?

John Deloca, for his part, is not relying on what disaffected Democrats may or may not do. He is actively assisting New York gun owners to register so they can vote for Trump and preserve their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Every vote of a gun owner counts in a major way. John knows that, and Trump knows that, and YOU should know that, too!

John is doing everything he can to make a Trump victory happen.

He blasted out a News Release, informing New Yorkers of a special meeting to be held at Seneca Sporting Range on August 17, 2024.

The purpose of the meeting was directed to explaining a notice issued by the NYPD and titled, “Adoption Of Emergency Rules Relating To Non-Resident Applicants For Carry Licenses And To Purchase And Registration Authorizations.”

The Arbalest Quarrel posted an article on its site on August 12 of this year. The article is titled, “The NYC Mayor And NYC Police Commissioner Suggest That ‘Non-State Residents’ Can Acquire A Concealed Carry Handgun License. But Is That True?”

Stephen L. D’Andrilli, President of Arbalest Group, LLC., and one of the Co-Founders of the Company’s weblog, “The Arbalest Quarrel,” (www.arbalestquarrel.com) was the presenter at the event.

Fortunately, John doesn’t stand alone in this critically important endeavor in protecting an American citizen’s right to keep and bear arms. One powerful voice in support of our cherished right is that of Sheriff Rich Giardino of Fulton County, New York.

During the presentation at the Seneca Sporting Range event, Stephen played a recent interview he had with Fulton County Sheriff Rich Giardino on the Rich Giardino Show, discussing the importance of having gun owners register asap and vote. Please watch or listen to the interview at the Rich Giardino Show, which can be found on X, Apple, You Tube, Facebook and Spotify. This is the URL: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjwotncy5OJAxWHKVkFHTJvCB8QtwJ6BAgLEAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D0xl2Jt7oENw&usg=AOvVaw0o8DqyU4sUUmylfI1swkZI&opi=89978449

See also the AQ article posted on Ammoland about Sheriff Giardino’s efforts to protect New York gun owners’ Second Amendment right. The article, posted on March 20, 2023, is titled, “Fulton County Sheriff Giardino Stands Firm Against NY’s Unconstitutional Handgun Scheme.”

Please share the interview and subscribe to the Show on any of the platforms. The Sheriff is a strong 2A supporter and a former District Attorney and a Retired Superior Court Judge. The Rich Giardino Show, a podcast based on where the Constitution, Crime and Politics meet.

The purport of the event hosted by Seneca Sporting Range was not limited to an academic discussion of the importance of our fundamental, unalienable right to armed self-defense. For that means little if a powerful, treacherous Government can shred it. Americans must play an active part in protecting their cherished right.

The most important task one can undertake to protect one’s unalienable right to armed self-defense is also the easiest one to perform: Registering to vote and then making a point to cast a ballot for that candidate who will defend that right.

Of the two candidates for U.S. President in this election, one candidate will preserve and strengthen that right. That person is Donald Trump. The other candidate has made plain her intention to constrict exercise of that right to the point of eradicating it. That person is Kamala Harris.

At the event, John Deloca provided the attendees with a voter registration form and assisted them in completing the form and submitting it to the NYC Board of Elections.

He has since helped over 300 New Yorkers to register and is continuing in this endeavor.

There is a plethora of sites on the internet that assist citizens who reside in New York, in registering to vote. Links to a few of them are below.

https://www.vote.nyc/. https://elections.ny.gov/register-vote https://www.voteearlyny.org/ https://vote.gov/register/new-york Similar websites are easy to access for citizens who reside in any other State or who reside in the District of Columbia.

JOHN DELOCA HAS HIS HANDS FULL

Owning and operating a business in New York City is not an easy thing to do, especially running a full-service gun range.

The Government has made this difficult to do, by design.

New York has always had a negative view toward civilian citizen ownership of handguns. The State has for decades made it difficult to own a handgun for self-defense at home, and nearly impossible for a person to lawfully carry one for self-defense.

If the Government could get away with it, the entire State would be converted into one massive “Gun Free Zone.”

The U.S. Supreme Court in a third landmark Second Amendment case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association versus Bruen, chastised the State Government for its handgun licensing scheme.

The State had crafted an unconstitutional “Proper Cause” standard to restrict the number of people who can qualify for a concealed handgun carry license.

The State has utilized that standard for decades to illegally constrain average, law-abiding, responsible, rational Americans from exercising their unalienable right to armed self-defense in the public sphere. The State struck down New York’s “Proper Cause” standard as facially unconstitutional.

In defiance of Bruen, the Democrat Party legislative majority in Albany passed a new set of highly restrictive handgun laws, referred to as the “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (“CCIA”), and the Governor promptly signed it into law. This new set of laws operates much like the old “Proper Cause” standard, hardly masking the Government’s objective to constrain exercise of the right to keep and bear arms.

John Deloca fully complies with all State and Federal laws and requirements in providing services to New York City residents who seek to acquire a concealed handgun carry license and the Seneca Sporting Range is certified by New York State to conduct the required handgun safety course.

Although not required to do so, John goes a step further in one important respect. He supplements the practical safety course with a seminar, conducted by a New York State Attorney. He doesn’t have to do this, but he does.

The attendees become versed in the nuances of New York’s handgun law.

AMERICA’S GUN OWNERS MUST NOT SIT THIS ELECTION OUT

It is unforgivable for gun owners to sit out this election given the stakes. They must vote.

FFLs in New York and across the Country can and should take an active role in getting gun owners to vote.

These FFLs can take their cue from Seneca Sporting Range’s John Deloca.

“As of June 2021, the ATF has reported that there are 133,716 FFLs in all 50 states, districts, and territories across all nine different types that are available,” with 3,897 in New York alone. See the FFL Report. See also the article in Orchid Advisers.

Just imagine if every FFL dealer in New York alone would register just 10-gun owners to vote. That would amount to close to 40,000 additional citizens who could cast their vote for Trump.

And, if all FFLs in the Country would register just 10 voters that would mean close to 1.4 million additional votes for Trump. That is certainly doable and would make a difference in the election.

John Deloca has paved the way for other FFL gun dealers to follow. But time is quickly running out.

The upcoming U.S. Presidential election is only a few short weeks away.

The Democrats, plainly concerned that voter support for Harris/Walz is collapsing just a few weeks before the election, are hoping that voter turnout for Trump—millions of gun owners—will simply fail to happen.

If we lose this election, that will break the back of our Republic, and our Bill of Rights will be erased. That is unacceptable.

Americans must not let this happen, and it need not happen. But it will happen, and our fate will be sealed if ten-million or more-gun owners decide to sit this election out.

Simply wishing the best for Trump, and for our Country and doing nothing to ensure he prevails, is a major cop-out and the surest way to see the Marxist puppet, Kamala Harris, seated in the White House—a circumstance that most of the Electorate doesn’t want but a unhappy situation that will transpire if gun owners refrain from voting, whether due to laziness or through some lame excuse they concoct.

Each vote by a gun owner does count: one plus one plus one plus one. . . and so on. . . equals millions more votes for Trump, even tens of millions—a true landslide, a thing “Too Big To Rig.”

In 1984 Ronald Reagan won 525 electoral votes, crushing the Democrat, Walter Mondale. The Democrats took only Minnesota and the District of Columbia in that election cycle.

Republicans cannot be expected to duplicate Reagan’s feat. But a concerted effort by America’s massive base of gun owners can still result in a convincing victory for Trump and our Nation.

Every American gun owner who, by State or Federal Law, is not prohibited from lawfully owning a firearm and who happens to own one or more firearms, has a personal stake in the upcoming 2024 U.S. Presidential Election.

The momentum is with Trump. He can win this election, and he must win it, for our own sake, for that of our Country, and for future generations of Americans.

Let’s make this happen!

NRA’S DOUG HAMLIN IS RIGHT: ARMED SELF-DEFENSE EXTENDS TO ALL OTHER RIGHTS

This post is authored by Stephen L. D’Andrilli, Co-Founder of The Arbalest Quarrel.

On May 20, 2024, the NRA’s Board of Directors elected Doug Hamlin the “NRA's new Chief Executive Officer and Executive Vice President.” Doug Hamlin recognizes the stakes. 

In his first message to NRA members, posted in the July 2024 issue of “America’s 1st Freedom,” Hamlin stated clearly and forcefully,

We are resolute. We know our mission. We are all in this together . . . There has never been a more important time for us to get back on our feet than right now. The American people want their freedom. No, they demand their freedom. And now the NRA has righted its course . . . Now is the time to come together. Now is the time to be bold.”

The Executive Vice President’s address to NRA members stuck a chord with me, especially his statement— “Now is the time to be Bold.” Those words prompted me to respond.

The NRA posted my letter in the “Mail Call” section of the October 2024 issue of America’s 1st Freedom, where I cited the remark, “Now is the time to be bold,” along with Hamlin’s remarks that “We need to vote and make sure all gun owners vote. If we do, we will retain our freedom.”

My business partners and I are in complete agreement with the Executive Vice President’s remarks. If we do not heed them, all is lost, forever.

Freedom and Liberty hard fought for in 1776 and won, have been under constant assault in the centuries since. Ruthless, powerful forces intend to wrest our Republic from us.

These past four years, the unelected ruling forces behind the scenes crafting policy for the Biden-Harris Administration have come very close to accomplishing their objective: The creation of a Marxist Dictatorship, to be merged, eventually, into a Marxist empire, spanning the globe.

Had Trump emerged victorious in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, the Marxist aims would have been crushed. Our Republic would have been preserved. Yet, the Destroyers of our Nation, in a frenzy over Trump’s win in 2016, could and would not abide that. They pulled out all the stops to ensure a Biden-Harris victory in 2020.

Even so, gun owners could have prevented a Democrat Party victory in 2020 if they had troubled themselves to vote. 

Apart from rampant unethical and outright illegal stratagems devised by Democrat Party leaders and implemented by legions of Party operatives that gave Joe Biden an edge in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, gun owners didn’t do Donald Trump, or themselves, a favor by withholding their vote in that Election.

Had all those gun owners cast their ballot for Trump, instead of sitting out the race, the Election would likely have gone to Trump instead of Biden because ten million more votes cast for Trump would have amounted to an election “to big to rig.”

Likely, those gun owners who refrained from voting in the 2020 General Election are the same individuals who have planned to sit out the 2024 race as well. We know that because they have not registered to vote in the upcoming Election. If they don’t register and vote, that would be a major, and more—fatal—mistake.

See the Arbalest Quarrel article reposted on Ammoland Shooting Sports News on September 5, 2024.

Rarely does a person get a second chance to undo a past horrible mistake. We, Americans, do have that chance now. But this 2024 Election cycle will be the last chance available to us, to turn this Country around from a path leading inexorably, inevitably, and irrevocably to Despotism.

Don’t expect a third opportunity to come along in 2028. It won’t.

In our recent article, posted on the Arbalest Quarrel website, on September 28, 2024, we laid out in detail what is in store for all Americans if Democrats retain the U.S. Presidency.

What these past four years have wrought will pale in significance to what the next four years will bring under a Harris/Walz Presidency.

The goal of a Marxist Dictatorship will come to fruition. There will be no reprieve, NO RETURN for any of us. The damage done to our Republic will be devastating, complete. The Constitution will be rewritten; our sacred Bill of Rights eviscerated. All of this is avoidable, BUT ONLY WITH TRUMP IN THE WHITE HOUSE.

For a comprehensive overview of and detailed analysis of the stakes involved in the upcoming U.S. Presidential Election, America’s True Patriots are encouraged to read Dick Morris’ Book, “The Return,” published in 2022 by Humanix Books, and should also take a look at three other books by the same Book publisher: Jody Hice’s book “Sacred Trust,” published in 2024, and two books authored by David Horowitz, “Dark Agenda,” published in 2018, and “Final Battle,” published in 2022.

This coming U.S. Presidential election is as tight as a drum and that worries Democrats and their wealthy benefactors. They have plenty to worry about, as we, the people, can dash their plans for a Marxist Dictatorship. But then, we, as well, have plenty to worry about—the loss of our Free Republic to that Marxist Dictatorship.

Americans would have no doubt about the danger posed to our Country, our people, and our sacred fundamental, unalienable, eternal Rights, if they would but observe and reflect on what has transpired but for a temporary reprieve and brief return to sanity under the tutelage of Donald Trump:

• Four Years suffering under the weight of the Biden/Harris Administration

• Eight Years languishing under the ghastly Obama/Biden Administration, and

• Eight Years enduring the awful Obama/Cheney Administration that crafted the mammoth and monstrous Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), ushering in the massive Surveillance State, and a Shadow Government that has dogged and harassed and prosecuted and persecuted Trump and “MAGA” supporters ever since.

THE NATION IS DIVIDED INTO TWO FACTIONS——ONE ADHERES TO THE PRINCIPLES OF INDIVIDUALISM THAT HAS ITS GREATEST EXPRESSION IN THE SUCCESS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION; AND ANOTHER FACTION ADHERES TO THE PRINCIPLES OF COLLECTIVISM THAT HAS ITS GREATEST EXPRESSION IN GLOBAL-MARXISM THAT SEEKS A COUNTERREVOLUTION TO OVERTHROW OUR FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC

Two mutually exclusive visions of America’s future are on the table. Each is the inverse of the other. Only one can prevail. Doug Hamlin understands this well.

His remarks to the NRA membership, that I quoted supra—that we, American gun owners, must vote to retain our freedom—serve as both a plea to cast our ballot for Trump, and a warning if we fail to do so. This is our chance—our second and last chance—to turn this Country around. It would be criminal for us not to take it.

Don’t expect a THIRD CHANCE to retake the White House in 2028. That will be a pipedream. Whatever Americans do this November will mark the fate of America, henceforth, forever.

WILL DEMOCRATS WITH THEIR MASSIVE WAR CHEST AND A SEDITIOUS PRESS AND SOCIAL MEDIA AT THEIR BECK AND CALL SUFFICE TO HAUL A DECIDEDLY WEAK AND PUERILE, SUPERCILIOUS, SUPERFICIAL IMPOSTER OVER THE FINISH LINE NEXT MONTH?

The Democrats and their backers thought they had the coming election in the bag. They thought that dropping Biden and inserting a new puppet in his stead— a fresh face and one that, unlike Joe Biden, EMBRACES, IN THE VERY CORE OF HER BEING, IDEOLOGICAL MARXISM, including the TWIN DOGMAS of “IDENTITY POLITICS” and “DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION.” engrained in her since her childhood—would ensure their victory.

Their overconfidence may prove their undoing—but only if gun owners, with their vast numbers, come out in force to vote for Trump.

Sitting this election out—merely hoping that Trump wins—is not a tenable option. We must make sure he wins in November. If every gun owner does his part, a very easy task, casting his or her vote for Donald Trump, he will emerge victorious. He will serve out a second term that was wrongly denied him in 2020. He will become the 45th/47th U.S. President.

Once Trump takes the Oath of Office in January 2025, he will return the Federal Government and the Nation back to its rightful owners— The American People. Our rights will be secure.

If, however, gun owners fail to vote, in force, this will result in a disastrous replay of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. But what will ensue for us this go-around will be much more unpleasant than what has transpired these past four years.

A full-fledged Marxist toady occupying the seat of power, Kamala Harris, would ensure that the Destroyers of our Nation—having firm control of the most powerful Branch of Government—will effectively merge the other two Branches, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, into one massive Executive Branch. Our Free Republic will collapse into Despotism and Tyranny.

The Sovereign American People, Master over Government, will become the Slave of it. The Country will be transformed, overnight, into a Totalitarian State.

The resulting Dictatorship will see the completion of the process that had started in January 2021——

The Harris/Walz Administration will inject Marxist Dogma into every institution of the Country, and into the psyche of every American.

Government agents will force the people to comply to new Government edicts. And Americans will learn quickly that they either conform to those edicts or face the dire consequences for refusing to do so.

No American will escape the clutches of this Tyrannical Government.

Doug Hamlin recognizes the threat. His is a powerful voice that meets the threat head-on.

In that same October 2024 issue of America’s 1st Freedom, he posted what must be taken to be the most important message to NRA Members. Everything NRA has warned its members about previously, is but a prelude to his message today. He writes in pertinent part,

“In this election—Nov. 5—your freedom is unequivocally on the ballot. It is therefore critical.”

He sums up the stakes of the upcoming election with this:

. . . [E]nemies of our freedom truly hate the Second Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights because it acts as a keystone to our freedom. A keystone (or capstone) is the wedge-shaped stone at the apex of a masonry and it is the final piece placed during construction and locks all the stones into position, allowing the arch (in this case the Constitution to bear the weight). This natural right enshrines in the U.S. Constitution, by its very nature, also protects other elements of our individual rights that extend above government. Without the individual ability to defend our lives and our loved ones, none of the other rights are usable. That is what is at stake in this election.

I, and my business partners, agree with Hamlin’s stark but honest points. They should resonate with all Americans.

Yet some people, including, unfortunately, those within the Board of Directors of the NRA, apparently have reservations about Hamlin’s message—a message that conveys the transcendent importance of the Second Amendment.

This suggests that Hamlin’s detractors don’t understand the singular importance of our Second Amendment in securing a Free Constitutional Republic. Or they disagree with it. Or perhaps the Executive Vice President’s detractors feel obliged to soften and qualify the Executive Vice President’s remarks, reframing his remarks in a way more palatable to them: emphasizing the importance of the First Amendment Freedom of Speech, and deemphasizing the importance of the Second Amendment Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms.

One of these apparent detractors is NRA Board Member, John C. Sigler.

While acknowledging that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” is an important right, Sigler claims the First Amendment right of free speech, and the other panoply of rights set forth in the First Amendment, precede, in importance, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, a right that “shall not be infringed”.

In an article posted in Ammoland Shooting Sports News on October 7, Sigler writes,

“There is a reason the First Amendment is listed first in the Bill of Rights – it is listed first because the rights contained in the First Amendment are the bedrock upon which individual freedom is built and that make democracy possible. The Founders knew that that is why it is listed as ‘the First Amendment.’”

No, Mr. Sigler! You are wrong!

The First Amendment, while important to the existence of a Free Democratic Republic, (the right to Dissent, the Right to Express one’s Thoughts), ISN’T the bedrock upon which individual freedom is built. And it ISN’T the bedrock which makes democracy possible (when perceived, as it almost invariably is, as a right distinct from the right codified in the Second Amendment). [see discussion infra].

To the contrary, it is the Second Amendment that is the bedrock upon which individual freedom is built (what Doug Hamlin describes as the “keystone” to our freedom).

I, along with my business partners in the Arbalest Quarrel, acknowledge and defend Sigler’s right to express his personal opinion (and we note, the disclaimer at the end of his article, establishing that “The opinions expressed . . . are those of the author [John Sigler] and do not necessarily represent those of any person or organization with whom he may be affiliated”).

A person has the right to express his thoughts subject to narrow exceptions—including, prominently, threatening physical harm to another, as posited by the United States Supreme Court. Still, John Sigler’s association with the NRA is clear.

He must know that his words carry weight even with the disclaimer, as posted at the end of his article. They are clearly at odds with the Executive Vice President’s remarks. They are clearly at odds with my own thoughts and that of my business partners at the Arbalest Quarrel.

Thus, notwithstanding the disclaimer accompanying Sigler’s words, as posted in Ammoland Shooting Sports News, the fact they come as they do at a critical time with the U.S. Presidential election just around the corner, his words tend to blunt the import of Doug Hamlin’s words, as posted in the July issue of “America’s 1st Freedom. A reader of the article must wonder, then, did Sigler intend to do that?

If so, then what is he doing on the Board of Directors of the NRA. If it was not his intention to weaken Hamlin’s message, then he is naïve. Clearly, Sigler has strong views about the importance of the First Amendment which color and diminish his views about the Second.

If Sigler felt compelled to write about the importance of the First Amendment—for that is the salient theme of his entire article—he should have refrained from laying out his personal beliefs until after the November 5 election. Failing in tact, he has opened himself up to justified criticism, my own and that of my business partners.

By emphasizing, in no uncertain terms, that the First Amendment is “the bedrock upon which individual freedom is built,” Sigler lets it be known that, as he sees it, the Second Amendment plays a subordinate role to the First in the scheme of our Bill of Rights. I couldn’t disagree with that assumption more. The assumption is nothing new and lends nothing constructive and beneficial to any discussion of our fundamental God-given Natural Law, eternal rights.

NRA Board member Sigler undermines the import of Hamlin’s urgent message to the membership base. This cannot be condoned.

To say that the Second Amendment protects the other fundamental rights is true, but trivially so. The previous Executive Vice President of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre—whom, one must wonder whether he ever truly believed the remarks he made—happened to make that remark more for effect than out of conviction, as it rankles Progressive and Marxist politicians and the Press. More to the point, to claim that the Second Amendment exists, primarily or exclusively, to protect all of the other Rights—and principally the First—implicitly denigrates the importance of the Second as fundamentally important in its own right, and also undercuts the crucial point Hamlin makes.

Hamlin’s remarks to the NRA membership, underscore the very reason for NRA’s existence and of the many other organizations devoted to protection of our right to keep and bear arms, namely——

TO PROTECT OUR FREE REPUBLIC AND THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FROM GOVERNMENT USURPATION OF THEIR ULTIMATE SOVEREIGNTY OVER GOVERNMENT.

WORDS EXPRESSIVE OF OUR FREE REPUBLIC OR DESTRUCTIVE OF THAT FREE REPUBLIC ARE BOTH PROTECTED UNDER THE FIRST AMENDMENT AS THEY OUGHT TO BE, AS THEY MUST BE.

But reality sets in quickly when those forces that seek to destroy freedom and liberty (as a composite good)—and claim a need to do so disingenuously and disdainfully in the name of protecting it—may do just that but for force of arms of the COMMON MAN which equates with FREEDOM AND LIBERTY, independently of words. That is to say——

THE ARMED CITIZENRY IS IN ITSELF THE VISIBLE AND OBJECTIVE MANIFESTATION OF AND EMBODIMENT OF THAT FREEDOM AND LIBERTY

Sigler’s message going on about the singular importance of the natural law rights embodied in the First Amendment is unsound from a logical perspective, and the temerity of his having expressed it at this critical time has no practical value that I can see.

Concerning the analytical failings of this Board member’s remarks, consider——

Of what worth has a thing if it happens to exist at a singular moment in time but fails to persist over time? Would our Free Republic exist at all without the will and the weapons to make that happen? And if successful in overthrowing tyranny and creating a Republic free of tyranny, would that Republic continue to exist through the passing years, decades and centuries if the citizenry did not remain armed?

Clearly, it is the Right to Armed Self-Defense that makes a Free Republic possible, in the first instance, and it is THAT Right that enables a Free Republic to continue and to grow ever stronger over time.

IN THE ABSENCE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE, OUR COUNTRY GROWS MORE ATTENUATED, AS THE NATURAL PROPENSITY OF GOVERNMENT—THIS FEDERAL GOVERNMENT—TO BECOME TYRANNICAL COMES TO FRUITION. We see this occurring now, and with rapidity. It is impossible to ignore. It is impossible to deny.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH—THE FREEDOM TO EXPRESS ONESELF, TO DISSENT —ISN’T DISTINCT FROM ARMED SELF-DEFENSE, A THING UNTO ITSELF. RATHER, THE TWO ARE INTERRELATED, INEXTRICABLY BOUND TO EACH OTHER.

THE EXERCISE OF ARMED SELF-DEFENSE IS FREE EXPRESSION IN ITS MOST EMPHATIC FORM. IT IS THE ESSENCE OF SPEECH, NOT DERIVATIVE OF IT OR SUBORDINATE TO IT. THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IS AN IMPERATORIAL RIGHT, WITHOUT WHICH NO OTHER RIGHT IS SECURE.

The exercise of one’s right to armed self-defense is THE ASSERTION to anyone who would dare intrude on one’s sanctum—anyone who would dare intrude on one’s Will TO BE, TO REMAIN WHOLE, in Body and Mind, and in Soul and Spirit, and who would intrude on one’s external domain, one’s private property—that no one may thrust his will on another or take possession of that which belongs to oneself and claim it as his own, and NO “THING” (i.e., GOVERNMENT) can force obeisance from a FREE MAN.

The armed citizen sends a powerful message to government, and it is a message that is meant to be heeded by a grasping, selfish, government—a government bent on obtaining and maintaining control over the people.

It is a message to be heeded by THIS Federal Government, poised to wield and impose absolute power over Americans. Two-thirds of the Nation’s people are armed. But how many of them realize the tenuousness of their exercise of that Right. This Right is not a thing to take for granted. Yet, the Government’s skilled propagandists have successfully seduced many Americans into inculcating false beliefs, noxious dogma, that psychically injure them. They have become an army of mindless drones of the Government, turned loose on other Americans who are not susceptible to noxious psychological conditioning.

Thus, the would-be destroyers of our Nation don’t rely on Government alone to bring low the Nation’s people.

They turn the American people against themselves, and against each other, and with a sympathetic, seditious Press, hiding behind a mask of “THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS”—that “Fourth Estate” uses its own ostensible freedom to suppress true Freedom and Liberty residing intrinsically in the American people.

The success of a long-standing, vigorous, and expansive campaign of mind control over the populace is evident by the fact that half the Electorate supports an avowedly Marxist Candidate for U.S. President.

The Founders of our Republic would be appalled.

It is up to the other half of the Nation, especially that portion of the Electorate, who unreservedly cherishes the unalienable right to armed self-defense, to see to it that this Marxist candidate, Kamala Harris, and her inordinately wealthy and powerful benefactors do not prevail in the coming Election. For if they prevail, the first order of business will be to develop a bold and brash strategy to confiscate millions of semiautomatic weapons in the possession of the citizenry.

If all gun owners who are not registered to vote in this Presidential election DO REGISTER and then cast a ballot for Trump, there is no way in hell that Democrats and their wealthy benefactors could “fix” this election for Harris/Walz.

That is true today, just as it was true in the 2020 Presidential Election.

We laid this out plainly in our previous article, titled “YOU, THE AMERICAN GUN OWNER, WILL DETERMINE TRUMP’S VICTORY THIS NOVEMBER 2024—BUT ONLY IF YOU VOTE!”

We posted the article on September 28, 2024. We provided substantial evidence that, had all the unregistered gun owners in the Swing States in 2020—which are the same Swing States that will determine who prevails in the 2024 Election—troubled themselves to register and vote for Trump in 2020, the Election, Trump would now be serving his second term instead of Biden/Harris, and the Country and the citizenry would have been spared the horror now unfolding.

Even with massive Democrat Party cheating Trump would have prevailed. That election would have been “too big to rig,” just as the present Election will be, but only if non-registered gun owners do register to vote and then cast their ballot for Trump. This is clear and irrefutable.

Consider——

How many Americans own firearms? Ammo.com conducted a survey. From the survey Ammo.com posits there are 107 million Americans who “personally own” a firearm, almost one-third of the Electorate.

See also the article in Havokjournal.com.

Granted, 20 percent of gun owners present themselves as Democrats, according to a July 2024 report, by the Pew Research Center, but if they think their right to bear arms is secure with Kamala Harris ensconced in the White House, they are delusional.

The Founders of our Nation, the Framers of our Constitution codified THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS——A RIGHT THAT SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED——expressly in THE BILL OF RIGHTS of the U.S. Constitution to keep Government in check and serving both as a reminder to the Federal Government that it exists to serve the people; the people do not exist to serve the interests of a predatory Government. Our Constitution makes that point plain.

And that salient purpose is conveyed in the NRA’s mission statement:

NRA mission statement is “to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, especially with reference to the inalienable right of the individual American citizen guaranteed by such Constitution to acquire, possess, collect, exhibit, transport, carry, transfer ownership of, and enjoy the right to use arms.” The statement emphasizes the difference it makes in the life of the people it serves by ensuring that their rights are not only respected but also enforced. This mission statement by the NRA has the following components:

1. Protection of the U.S. Constitution

2. Granting Americans their rights

In the first component, the NRA (National Rifle Association) comes out as a defender and protector of the supreme document of the land – the United States constitution. By concentrating all its efforts and resources on constitutional matters, the NRA confirms its historical legacy of remaining consistent with its mandate. In fact, it is evident that this body has never erred or abandoned this mission. The second component relates to the first one as it elucidates why NRA remains adamant in the protection of the constitution. The primary reason as shown in this second component is to ensure the American people enjoy their right to own and keep arms for their personal protection without any form of victimization.” [See the article in “Mission Statement Academy”].

See also the article in nra.org.

The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) is an American nonprofit whose primary mission is [to] protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. . . especially the right to keep and bear arms. Founded in 1871, the group has informed its members about firearm related bills since 1934, and it has directly lobbied for and against legislation since 1975.”

In protecting the Constitution, and particularly, the Second Amendment, the NRA’s tacit purpose is to protect our Free Constitutional Republic from the throes of Tyranny.

That purpose has remained constant since the formation of the NRA in 1871, making the NRA the oldest Civil Rights organization in the Country. Hamlin seeks to revitalize the NRA’s core mission.

Those Americans who wish to preserve our Free Constitutional Republic as the Founders intended, but have forgotten how that was achieved, should keep in mind that,

America’s First Patriots did not gain their independence by simply holding books and pamphlets aloft in defiance as the British Monarch’s army descended upon them to annihilate them.

The Declaration of Independence got the English Monarch’s attention, to be sure. But those First Patriots only gained their independence from Tyranny by effective use of musket and cannon against a Despot. Weaponry in the hands of the citizenry is the one thing all Tyrants dread.

The Democrat Party Leadership and its benefactors—a shadowy network of inordinately wealthy and powerful financial global empire builders who are intent on destroying our Free Republic—know full well the awesome power of America’s armed citizenry. That explains——

• THEIR ABHORRENCE OF TENS OF MILLIONS OF FIREARMS CIRCULATING IN THE UNITED STATES

•  THEIR RAW FEAR OF THE ARMED AMERICAN CITIZENRY

•  THEIR SINGLE-MINDED FOCUS ON DISARMING THE ARMED CITIZENRY

• THE DEVELOPMENT OF AND IMPLEMENTATION OF POLICIES DIRECTED AT CHANGING AMERICANS’ ATTITUDES AND PERCEPTIONS TOWARD FIREARMS—PERVERSE POLICIES DIRECTED AT INDUCING (THROUGH PROGRAMS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONING), PATHOLOGICAL FEAR OF FIREARMS IN THE PSYCHE OF AMERICANS, AND STRONG FEELINGS OF CONTEMPT TOWARD THOSE AMERICANS WHO OWN AND POSSESS THEM

• THE CONTINUOUS CRAFTING OF NEW—AND REINTRODUCTION OF OLD —ANTIGUN SCHEMES AND STRATEGIES TO FRUSTRATE AND CONFOUND AND HARASS THOSE AMERICANS WHO INSIST ON EXERCISING THEIR RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS

• THE EXECUTION OF INCREASINGLY AGGRESSIVE AND EXPANSIVE STATE CONFISCATORY STRATEGEMS TO DISARM THE CITIZENRY

• ATTEMPTS TO INDUCE IN THE PSYCHE OF THE CITIZENRY, THE IDEA THAT GOVERNMENT NOT THE INDIVIDUAL, HAS SOLE RESPONSIBILITY FOR PROVIDING FOR THE WELFARE AND SAFETY OF THE CITIZENS IN THE STATE, THEREBY BRINGING ABOUT A CONDITION OF DEPENDENCE ON AND DEEP RELIANCE ON THE GOVERNMENT TO PROVIDE FOR ALL ITS NEEDS

All this horror will come to pass if Harris and the Democrats win the White House.

America will have fallen to Despotism and Tyranny and what remains of it will exist in perpetual stagnant stasis.

This is plain. Why, then, would anyone doubt the singular importance of an armed citizenry?

The right to armed self-defense is a necessary precondition for the existence of a truly Free Republic and, but for the retention of an armed citizenry in perpetuity, a free Republic could not and would not continue but would lapse and fall into our Republic’s logical opposite and there remain in THAT STATE in perpetuity.

John Siegler claims that the Freedom of Speech is the principal safeguard of a Democratic Republic, even as this Government through its proxies in the Press and in and in Broadcast and Cable “news,” and in social media and Big Tech, have shredded the Freedom of Speech. But it is plain that Freedom of Speech IS NOT the principal safeguard of a Democratic Republic, as our Democratic Republic is falling quickly into Tyranny. So, Freedom of Speech cannot secure our Republic. And “Freedom of the Press”—which isn’t a Natural Law Right at all but a societal construct—has simply been tacked onto Freedom of Speech because some of the Framers of the First Amendment believed that the Press—as an institution—would keep the other institution, Government in check. The Founders were wrong on that score. The Formal institution of the Press has become merely an adjunct of a corrupt, Tyrannical Government.

The Arbalest Quarrel is a small voice in the storm as are many non-formal voices. But the destroyers of our Republic would eventually turn their attention on us too, if they succeed in sitting their latest stooge, Kamala Harris, in the White House.

Where then would the First Amendment as the salient protector of Freedom and Liberty be found, if the Tyrant prevents all dissident speech?

Only the armed citizenry will remain, and the Government knows that removing firearms from two-thirds of the public will not be so easy a task as divesting the public of its Right of Free Speech.

But Siegler insists, nonetheless, that the First Amendment Freedom of Speech is first in importance in the Bill of Rights. How so?

Siegler doesn’t say. He simply points to the numbering of the Amendments in the Bill of Rights as proof of the subordination of the Second Amendment to the First Amendment. Is that so?

The claim that the Founders of our Republic considered the First Amendment Freedom of Speech, and the panoply of other Rights codified in that Amendment, as preeminent among all other Rights, as demonstrated by having listed it first, is a widely held belief among many Americans. The belief is false.

An explanation for the ordering of the Ten Amendments is more mundane.

The Bill of Rights has an order, but it has nothing to do with the relative importance of the rights. James Madison, who whittled down the long list of amendments proposed during constitutional ratification, argued that all changes to the Constitution should be incorporated into the text itself rather than tacked on the end. Connecticut’s Roger Sherman disagreed and won the argument, giving us the numbered list of 10 amendments we have today. The order of that list, however, still reflects Madison’s view: They come in the same order as the sections of the Constitution that they would have modified. . . .

The now-sacred First Amendment was originally slated to sit in the far less distinguished third position . . . [T]he First Amendment relates to the powers of the legislature, which come later in the Constitution than does the structure of Congress.” [See the article in Slate Explainer by Brian Palmer].

This matter is explicated fully in a book titled, “Madison's Music: On Reading The First Amendment,” By Burt Neuborne. New York, NY: The New Press, 2015, 272 pages. A review of this book is published 95 Tex. L. Rev. 591 (February 2017), by David A. Anderson. The Reviewer says,

“Madison didn't compose a poem. He didn't envision a First Amendment at all; he wanted to insert the various guarantees that became the First Amendment into Article I, Section Nine, of the original Constitution, between the clause prohibiting bills of attainder and the clause prohibiting direct taxation. [Moreover,] Madison didn't originate the language in his proposal to protect freedom of speech and press; he lifted it almost verbatim from the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1788 . . . [Ultimately], [t]he final language of what became the First Amendment was chosen by a House—Senate conference committee.”

Any Fundamental God-Given Right (and any subordinate, i.e., man-made Right) means little in practice if the citizen cannot exercise it.

So, the Right of Free Speech that Sigler makes much of in his Ammoland article doesn’t mean a damn thing if the Federal Government prohibits the exercise of it, which has occurred with alacrity and speed by the Biden-Harris Administration, and that practice would continue in a Harris Administration.

The treacherous Biden-Harris Administration has surreptitiously, through its proxies—social media, the Press, and all with the blessing of Congressional Democrats—illegally suppressed Free Speech, making significant inroads in denting the exercise of it by policing dissent through censorship and through harassment of those whose words and conduct conflict with the aims of Government.

This Administration no longer attempts to hide its actions but openly defends the purported need to clamp down on speech that it asserts harms the State and the people. [But harms what “people”: Progressives and Marxists? Illegal aliens? The reporters and editors in the seditious Press? Others whom the Tyrant happens to mention as a pretext for its own nefarious ends?]

Free unhampered exercise of Speech operates as an impediment to Government control over the Common Man. The Tyrant must impose conformity in thought and conduct to effectively control the masses lest they rise up and topple the Tyrant. So, the Tyrant must keep exercise of “Speech,” in all its manifestations, in check. That is not easy, but not insurmountable.

But what keeps the Government itself in check is not Speech but the armed citizenry. And it is the armed citizen whom the Government most fears because THAT ARMED CITIZEN has the means to counter the usurpation of power of a Tyrannical Government—BACKING UP HIS WORDS WITH HIS FIREARMS! 

Government, as Americans know full well, has attempted, through these passing years and decades, to impose more constraints on the exercise of the Second Amendment than on any of the other fundamental rights.

This is plain from the expansive list of Government laws, executive orders, rules, regulations, and codes existent in Federal, State, local, and regional Government.

And, yet, for all that, the Government at all levels, while placing constraints on the exercise of the Right, and, in the last few years, actually calling for the eradication of it, has failed at every turn.

The American people have, instead, grown more suspicious of Government as Government has grown noticeably more tyrannical. And, as their suspicions have grown, so, too, their defiance toward Government has grown. As the predatory Government’s intrusion on the thoughts and actions of Americans has become more intensive and extensive, Americans—most of us—have grown, justifiably, more resentful of Government, and more defiant toward it. More and more Americans are coming to their senses and understand that one God-given right transcends all the others in keeping an insolent, arrogant Government shackled.

WHAT IS IT THAT KEEPS THE SECOND AMENDMENT SO RESISTENT TO THE MANY ATTEMPTS OF A PREDATORY GOVERNMENT TO CONSTRAIN EXERCISE OF IT, MUCH LESS TO ERASE IT?

The right to bear arms has always been viewed as a ‘fundamental right.’  For example, John Locke maintained that the right to armed self-defense was ‘so necessary to, and closely tied with, a man's preservation, that he cannot part with it but by what he forfeits his preservation and life together.’ Likewise, William Blackstone recognized that the right to bear arms in the English Bill of Rights acknowledged ‘the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.’ One of the most prominent early American commentators, St. George Tucker, described the Second Amendment as equivalent to Blackstone's ‘right of self-defence [which] is the first law of nature.’ Consistent with this view, Federalist No. 28 recognizes an original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government.” “The Second Amendment And The Supreme Court,” 6 Geo. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 591, (Summer 2008), By Douglas G. Smith.

There are many Natural Law Rights. Many are unenumerated, which explains the import behind the Ninth Amendment.

And——

All Natural Law Rights are sacrosanct and inviolate and absolute.

They all go together. In the Mind of God, these Rights are One and Indivisible, as the Divine Creator is One and Indivisible. It is only in the mind of a finite being that they appear separate, perhaps even disparate.

But——

If one wishes to collapse all Natural Law Rights into one single Natural Law Right, the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms is the best descriptor for the whole of them.

All other rights are subsumed in that one right. Many people would dismiss this idea out-of-hand. But on reflection it makes perfectly good sense on reflection.

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is more generally understood, as explained supra, as the right to armed self-defense, which is broadly subsumed in a general right of self-defense.

A person’s right to armed self-defense simply speaks to the right of a person to employ the most effective means to protect self and well-being, which for centuries has come to mean the right to bear firearms for one’s personal defense.

Drilling down further, the right to self-defense is synonymous with the right to self-preservation—the most basic of all rights.

The right of self-preservation is inherent in every living thing, down to the simplest one-celled creature.

As for Man, alone, the right of self-preservation extends to the sanctity and inviolability of his mind his psyche, and that of his Soul and Spirit.

The Marxist-Globalist forces wielding increasing power in our Country today have constructed a new mannequin to serve them as the visible representation of their power—the vacuous, soulless, corrupt Kamala Harris.

Marxists accept as axiomatic that the “whole” man is nothing more than Body—that Mind is merely a product of Body, and that the concepts of Soul and Spirit are meaningless constructs of Christianity that have no reality and must be erased from memory. This erasure is taking place in our Nation’s public schools through systematic indoctrination into the core constructs of Marxism.

Marxists seek to constrain thought as they would constrain the body, through radical social engineering. If successful they will have achieved their goal—a world governed solely by the principles concocted centuries ago by Karl Marx (in whose name the horrific socio-political and economic ideology and dogmas thrust on Americans today have come to be).

Marxists believe that a world governed by these principles would amount to the epitome of societal perfection.

Since everything reduces to the physical for adherents of Marxism, they are, understandably enraged by “the sheer physicality of firearms” in the hands of the masses, which to Marxists, is subversive and destructive of the Country and the world they seek to remake.

As I have said and now emphasize: To Keep and Bear Arms is not distinct from Speech.

It IS speech in its most ardent form. It is a form of speech that Marxists find dangerous, abhorrent, for the armed citizen is speaking in a form they know can defeat them—speech they have no control over.

The person who exercises the Right to armed self-defense is stating matter-of-factly to other Men and to the Man-Beast of Government——

“I have the God-Given Right to Exist Whole in Body, Mind, Soul, and Spirit. You are Forbidden to Invade or Tamper with any aspect of my life and being and property—under pain of your own destruction.” This is something America’s First Patriots knew, and which today’s Patriots know. It is something that the Marxist-Globalists know as well, and that they dread.

Let us win at the ballot-box in November so that a potential catastrophic effect of a dangerous misstep by an arrogant Government can be avoided.

__________________________________

YOU, THE AMERICAN GUN OWNER, WILL DETERMINE TRUMP’S VICTORY THIS NOVEMBER 2024—BUT ONLY IF YOU VOTE!

YOU, THE AMERICAN GUN OWNER, WILL DETERMINE TRUMP’S VICTORY THIS NOVEMBER 2024—BUT ONLY IF YOU VOTE! *

__________________________________

THE STAKES FOR ALL AMERICANS CANNOT BE HIGHER FOR OUR COUNTRY AND OUR PEOPLE.

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION IN OUR NATION’S HISTORY. YOUR VOTE WILL DETERMINE THE OUTCOME. ~See Donald Trump’s speech delivered at the Trump Tower in New York City, on September 26, 2024

*****

“WITH AMERICANS’ FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO OWN FIREARMS UNDER DIRECT THREAT IN THIS ELECTION YEAR, IT IS AMAZING THAT 10 MILLION GUN OWNERS ARE NOT EVEN REGISTERED TO VOTE.

ONE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE HAS THREATENED TO IMPOSE MANDATORY ‘GUN BUYBACKS’ ON 100 MILLION LAW ABIDING AMERICANS. THAT IS RAW AUTHORITARIANISM, AND THE BEST WAY TO FIGHT IT IS WITH THE VOTES OF EVERY LEGAL GUN OWNER IN OUR BELOVED NATION.”

~Alan M. Gottlieb, Founder & Executive Vice President of the Second Amendment Foundation and Chairman, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

******

This is not the time to be apathetic about or flippant over the upcoming 2024 U.S. Presidential Election or to treat the act of voting as a trivial matter for this Country is in a DEATH SPIRAL to TYRANNY.  

YOU, THE GUN OWNER, CAN PREVENT THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR COUNTRY BUT ONLY IF YOU HAVE THE WILL TO DO SO—OTHERWISE ALL IS LOST TO YOU, TO ME, TO EVERY AMERICAN NOW ALIVE OR YET TO BE BORN.

IF YOU CHERISH YOUR SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, YOU MUST MAKE IT A POINT TO VOTE.

If you never voted in a U.S. Presidential election, or you have, in the past, voted in some elections but not all, and you have decided to sit out this U.S. Presidential Election, YOU SHOULD SERIOUSLY RETHINK THAT DECISION!

THE HARRIS ADMINISTRATION IS DEEPLY EMBEDDED IN THE SOROS OPEN-SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS AGENDA TO DESTROY OUR FREE REPUBLIC. THE BILL OF RIGHTS AND AN ARMED CITIZENRY HAS NO PLACE IN A COUNTRY RULED BY TYRANTS.

KNOW WELL——

YOUR RIGHT TO CONTINUE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IS ON THE LINE IN THIS ELECTION. IN FACT, YOUR LOSS OF WILL AND ACTION—THE INHERENT RIGHT OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO BE INDIVIDUAL—SHALL BE ROUGHLY TAKEN FROM YOU IF THE PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRAT PARTY MACHINE (BACKED BY AND FUNDED BY THE WEALTHY GLOBALIST-MARXISTS AND THEIR NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGOS), INCLUDING, MOST PROMINENTLY, THE MAMMOTH GEORGE SOROS OPEN-SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS) IS SUCCESSFUL IN SEATING IN THE OVAL OFFICE, THE MACHINE’S RADICAL LEFT MARXIST HAND PUPPET, THE UNTRUSTWORTHY, UNCHARISMATIC, PLAINLY DECEITFUL, INARTICULATE, DULL-WITTED KAMALA HARRIS. See George Soros - Open Society Foundations.

Note: George Soros and his son, Alex, have not tried to hide their commitment to Kamala Harris [See e.g., the articles in Fox News, and in the New York Post].

George Soros openly, even brazenly, endorsed her nomination. And that nomination should, more accurately, be described as an appointment/anointment of powerful PARTY LEADERSHIP—OPERATING behind closed doors, NOT IN ACCORD WITH PARTY RULES.

The Party Leadership then proceeded, audaciously, to present Harris, falsely, AS the RANK-AND-FILE PARTY ELECTORATE’S CHOICE (AS IF A FORMAL PRIMARY HAD TAKEN PLACE (BUT IT DIDN’T), OR AS THE DECISION BY VOTE OF THE DELEGATES AT THE PARTY’S CONVENTION (BUT THE DELEGATES never had the opportunity to consider the pros and cons of each potential candidate in an extensive field of potential candidates).

The Convention should have been utilized for that purpose, but it wasn’t. The Convention had no serious purpose at all. It had been reduced to a ridiculous, raucous, gala celebration—more akin to a self-congratulatory Hollywood “Oscars Night” than to a serious attempt to ascertain whom best exemplifies the policies of the Democratic Party, as a body politic.

Kamala Harris emerged simply BY AD HOC ROYAL FIAT).

But THE PRESS promptly fell in line, as did many RANK AND FILE PARTY DEMOCRATS and as did the PARTY DELEGATES TO THE CONVENTION. And all of this transpired after the fact.

Democrat Party Leadership only adhere to Law, Rules, and Procedures when those things cohere with their aims.

Biden, remember, was quietly and unceremoniously kicked out, just months before the 2024 Election. And Harris did not win a single primary vote during the primary season of 2020 as the Democratic Party Electorate hated her—she dropped out early, and was the first, or among the first, do so).

Does the Democratic Party Electorate truly love her now, in 2024?

In the absence of a primary or a Convention to determine if that is so, how does anyone know? Apparently, this doesn’t matter to Democrats or, at least, to the Party Leadership. The Leadership is happy and so is the Soros clan.

The ever-obedient Mainstream News Media (MSM) tries to deny the close relationship between Soros and the Biden-Harris Administration.

Plainly, the SOROS OPEN-SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS’ structure has disturbingly close ties to the Administration, assisting if not controlling, the extreme left-wing agenda for Biden and Harris.

George Soros has now handed over control of this multi-billion dollar non-profit tax-exempt 105(c) mega-group socio-political cartel to his son Alex.

The Agenda of the Soros Open-Society is plainly directed to the destabilization of and eventual disembowelment of the United States as a Free Constitutional Republic.

Long content to hide in the shadows, George and Alex Soros have come out into the open, apparently quite confident that Harris will win the 2024 election.

The Soros Agenda will become more prominent and certainly more entrenched in American politics, policy, and platform if Harris does emerge victorious in November. That doesn’t bode well for the Nation and the American people.

After experiencing life these past four years under the Biden-Harris Administration. Americans already have a good taste of what to expect from a Harris Administration if she emerges in the November 2024 Election.

Alex Soros and other unelected power brokers will wield enormous power over the Country through the Nation’s public persona, Kamala Harris. Harris, like Biden, will wield no actual Article II power. It is all a façade. The real power lurks behind the scenes dictating policy to their puppet in the White House and to the puppet’s Cabinet.

The Nation’s enemies know this. The Nation has grown weak, economically and militarily. American society is in shambles. It is in the grip of decay. There is a noticeable loss of will. This is all by design.

The Nation is being hollowed out, not unlike a company that is in the throes of a takeover by a Private Equity Consortium. Our enemies can surmise this. And what they surmise and observe will continue to embolden them.

A recent obviously staged photograph of Kamala Harris’ VP, Tim Walz, shows him standing with Alex Soros, in Soros’ multi-million-dollar New York City Apartment.

The photograph illustrates to the American Electorate, as it was plainly meant to, the fact of and extent of the close connection/alliance of Soros and Harris.

And the figure of Tim Walz standing submissively with bowed head, while Alex stands confidently at the window of the apartment, pointing to the New York Skyline, tells the world—BEFORE THE FACT—that the United States has A NEW MASTER, AN UNELECTED TYRANT, ALEX SOROS AND THE POWERFUL “OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS.” See, e.g., the July 2024 Jerusalem Post article with photo.

Recall how, for years, Soros money and influence operated at the local and State level in “Blue States” like California, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey, where it has effectively funded elections of those State Prosecutors whose purpose IS NOT to prosecute criminals, BUT to dismantle the State Criminal Justice System. And they have become very effective at it.

But the “Open Society Foundations” have now expanded their reach to the Federal Level. Now, clearly deeply entrenched in the Democrat Party, the powerful Soros Network, through its money, influence, and organizational prowess can wield substantial control over the expansive and powerful apparatus of Government—the police, military, intelligence, communication and information—formulating (and even dictating/deciding) policy.

Alex Soros won’t be acting alone. Other powerful Neoliberal Globalist and Neo-Marxist elements both at home in the U.S. and in the European Union (EU) will have a hand IN THE UNMAKING OF AMERICA.

The phrase “Rules-Based International Order” (RBO) (sometimes referred to as the “Liberal International Order) (LBO), that politicians and Biden-Harris Administration officials such as Anthony Blinken have from time to time bandied about, are not just loose descriptors for the active coordination of economic, political, social, cultural, and legal affairs of wealthy, powerful functionaries operating behind the scenes in western nations. It is much more than that.

As with the European Union itself that had begun as a loose confederation of several Western European Countries—France, West Germany (BEFORE WEST GERMANY’S UNION WITH EAST GERMANY), Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands in 1957—and which solidified into SINGLE massive social, political, economic, financial, and legal structure in its own right, with its own Government in Brussels, other western nations, including the United States and the British Commonwealth Countries, are destined, through the machinations and intrigues of the RBO (or LBO), to formally merge with the EU, resulting in the creation of a colossal Neo-Marxist Empire, spanning the Globe.

The United States, with its powerful military and intelligence apparatuses, technological prowess, scientific acumen, and mineral resources, is not to be denied access to and control by these Empire Builders.

America’s culture is to be undermined, and its institutions reorganized; its Constitution is to be reconfigured if possible, or, if it cannot, then simply erased.

What the MANIPULATORS-DESTROYERS of our society have long desired and that had commenced as a slow disassembly of a society grounded on the principles, precepts, and tenets OF INDIVIDUALISM is NOW RAPIDLY COMING TO FRUITION.

During these past four years, under DICTATORIAL THUMB OF THE BIDEN-HARIS ADMINISTRATION, our society has seen an enormous transformation in its SOCIAL STRUCTURE as it is now grounded ON NEW AND ALIEN philosophical and ideological principles and concepts including MULTICULTURALISM, MORAL RELATIVISM, AND IDENTITY POLITICS.

The proponents of these destructive concepts have crafted DOGMAS, CODES OF CONDUCT, and what constitute PROPER and IMPROPER THOUGHT PROCESSES around these concepts. Such Dogmas and Codes of Conduct have been infused in the policies of Government and in other institutions across America.

But these DOGMAS, CODES OF CONDUCT, and the POLICIES that spring from them, cannot be reconciled with an AMERICAN CULTURE, HONED BY nearly two hundred and fifty years of our EXISTENCE as an INDEPENDENT, SOVEREIGN NATION-STATE— NOT RULED BY OR BEHOLDEN TO ANY OTHER NATION OR ANY OTHER POLITICAL ENTITY—AND A FREE, SOVEREIGN PEOPLE RESIDING IN A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC.

And these Dogmas, Codes of Conduct and Government policies cannot be reconciled with CONCEPTS like MORAL CERTAINTY and MORAL ABSOLUTISM.

MORAL CERTAINTY and MORAL ABSOLUTISM are indicators of our Country’s adherence to the JUDEO-CHRISTIAN ETHICAL SYSTEM. That system is grounded in our Nation’s faith in a singular OMNIPOTENT, OMNISCENT, OMNI-PRESENT, MORALLY PERFECT, AND BENEVOLENT DIVINE CREATOR.

Our Nation’s Moral Belief system cannot be reconciled with alien ideas propounded by and placed into effect in Government and in many private institutions across the Country by the present Administration.

And THE CONCEPT of the SANCTITY and INVIOLABILITY of the INDIVIDUAL that grounds the UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION—THE BLUEPRINT THAT ESTABLISHES THE FRAMEWORK OF OUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND MAN’S RELATIONSHIP TO IT and MAN’S SUPREMACY OVER IT—cannot be reconciled with an idea promulgated by the MARXISTS, that the INDIVIDUAL is NOT important. They believe that the GROUP, THE COLLECTIVE, THE STATE, THE HIVE—is all-important. The individual has value only to the extent that he serves THE STATE. If he does not or cannot or will not, then his life is not only unimportant, it constitutes a burden to the well-being of the STATE—to the well-being of the COLLECTIVE. Americans see this idea at play in the manner in which Democrats (who have immersed themselves in MARXIST IDEOLOGY) view Americans and craft policies. Americans are viewed in terms of groups and group dynamics. As individuals, they have no relevance at all.

The Biden-Harris Administration’s policies as actualized in Government and in many other institutions, private, public, and quasi-public, across the landscape of the Country demonstrate something NOT ONLY different but abhorrent to the traditional concepts that ground our Nation’s sensibilities and our core values and that have shaped our Nation and led our Nation to economic prosperity, innovation and inventiveness, and great power.

The Biden-Harris Administration has cast all of that aside.

By emphasizing and extolling the importance of physical characteristics and corresponding identification with a particular GROUP, rather than on emphasizing and extolling individual achievement and merit, and one’s pride in personal accomplishment—this Biden-Harris Administration has besmirched and diminished the American Citizenry.

This Administration and the one to follow if Harris wins the U.S. Presidential Election in November turns American values upside down.

The Biden-Harris Administration (and the Harris Administration to follow) raises MEDIOCRITY to the status of a VIRTUE and lays the groundwork for man’s DEPENDANCY on the STATE for his essential needs, health, and well-being.

Harris who constantly goes on about the importance of EQUITY, would craft policy that stymies American initiative and crushes independence of thought. This can only lead to destruction of a person’s Self-esteem, a person’s sense of Self-worth—indeed, the destruction of one’s very Selfhood.

This evidently is what the Biden-Harris Administration wanted, what its policies have been designed to engender, and what has occurred.

In the present Administration’s policies, Americans bear witness to a complete inversion of what has made both them and their Country successful.

Implementation of the Administration’s policies are antithetical to the principles Americans cherish, of what generations of Americans have lived by, and what have provided the impetus for personal success that has then been magnified many times over to become the Nation’s success.

But this is not what Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their wealthy, powerful benefactors want. What they seek is something much different. The policies crafted and implemented have served to devastate the lives of tens of millions of Americans and to devastate the Country. And that is a price the Administration is willing to pay. For what they wish to achieve is control over the lives of Americans.

Rather than to push each American to succeed, they wish each American to fail. They don’t say this openly, only obliquely.

But, in their policies and in the abasement of Americans and in the ruination of the Country, this is plain.

The Biden-Harris Administration has designed policies meant to subjugate Americans.

Subjugation allows for trouble-free control over the masses. It leads to laziness and listlessness, apathy and malaise. This is what the Administration wants. This is their vision of the future for America that Kamala Harris will create. This is the America that is taking shape. It presently exists as an overlay on the social fabric of the Nation. If Kamala is elected U.S. President, this overlay will become permanent. The United States will be hollowed out. Its resources harvested, its people reduced to penury, hopelessness, and helplessness. The masses will be completely dependent on the Harris Administration for its sustenance.

DE FACTO ERADICATION OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS—BEGINNING WITH AN AMBITIOUS ASSAULT ON CIVILIAN OWNERSHIP AND POSSESSION OF SEMI-AUTOMATIC WEAPONS—WILL BE THE FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS OF A HARRIS ADMINISTRATION.

FIREARMS ARE AMONG THE FIRST THINGS ON THE AGENDA OF THOSE POWERFUL INTERESTS WHOSE END GOAL IS THE ERASURE OF YOUR RIGHTS, THE DISSOLUTION OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION, AND THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR COUNTRY.

A subservient America implies a powerless America. The Federal Government cannot control a populace that is armed. And the Harris Administration will not and cannot abide an armed citizenry.

No Tyrannical Government will tolerate an armed citizenry. THE ARMED CITIZENRY MUST BE IMMEDIATELY DISARMED.

PLANS FOR DISARMING THE CITIZENRY WILL BE KEPT QUIET. IMPLEMENTATION WILL BE DONE WITH LITTLE NOTICE BEFOREHAND AND THEN WILL BE UNDERTAKEN QUICKLY. MUCH OF THIS WILL BE DONE BY EXECUTIVE FIAT.

From her past actions and remarks Kamala Harris is plainly predisposed to erase the Second Amendment. Erasure of the other Fundamental Rights will follow by Executive Action.

Both Biden and Harris demonstrate their personal abhorrence toward civilian possession of firearms. Hence, her comment during the so-called “Debate” with Trump (a set-up by the Harris Campaign and ABC News to place Trump on the Defensive throughout the Debate), Harris asserted she has no intention of “taking everyone’s guns away.” That is a damnable lie—the most obvious of the many Harris lies uttered in that excuse for a debate. This is here bald-faced lie:

“This business about taking everyone's guns away — Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We're not taking anybody's guns away, so stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.” See transcript of the Harris-Trump ABC News debate.

Anti-Second Amendment politicians are notorious for prefacing their remarks with language that they expect, wrongly, will allay the concerns and suspicions of gun owners.

We routinely hear remarks to the effect: “Of course I support the Second Amendment, but——” or “I, myself am a gun owner——I’m not going to take your guns,” or “Most Gun Owners agree with me that no one needs an ‘assault weapon,’” or “You can have a gun but you don’t need a ‘weapon of war.’”

When Donald Trump justifiably and truthfully exclaimed at several points during his confrontation with Kamala Harris, that Biden’s failed policies are her policies, Harris, plainly primed for Trump’s declaration, during her coaching sessions, quipped sarcastically at one point (to deflect the damning truth),

“You’re not running against Joe Biden. You’re running against me.”

That’s true, but trivially so. But the deflection hides the obvious point and one that Harris never convincingly explained away at the Debate, or at any point thereafter, that Biden’s policies WERE her policies.

Keep in mind, Biden made it a point of expressly referring to his Presidency as THE BIDEN-HARRIS PRESIDENCY.

No other U.S. President has ever suggested let alone expressly stated that his Presidency operates as an equal partnership of President and Vice President.

Traditionally, Vice Presidents have little power. They are not members of the President’s Cabinet and are often delegated minor or inconsequential tasks if the President deigns to give them anything.

Consequential tasks of a Vice President are those established by law such as breaking tie votes in the U.S. Senate.

Dick Cheney, as Bush’s VP, DID, however, exercise considerable power. Still, Bush never referred to his Presidency as the Bush-Cheney Presidency. A Vice President’s one consolation is the implicit understanding that the VP spot often serves as the steppingstone to the U.S. Presidency for him or herself, or, at least, a chance at grasping the “Brass Ring.” Other than that, the Vice President is relegated to the Executive Department’s cellar unless a calamity arises—the U.S. President is incapacitated by serious illness, or dies while in Office, or is assassinated.

But, apart from Harris’ false retort to Trump about her not taking Americans’ guns from them, it’s the seeming equivocation about her influence on policy that leads to some ambivalence, among a few Americans, at least, as to whether Biden’s policies really were/are her policies. And, if so, then it is plain, that she would continue those disastrous policies in a Harris Administration. If one should have any doubt about that, Biden, thereafter, set the record straight.

As a guest on Whoopie Goldberg’s “The View,” on September 26, 2024, “President Biden praised his Vice President Kamala Harris for handling ‘everything from foreign policy to domestic policy’ under his administration.” Biden says Harris handled 'everything from foreign policy to domestic policy' under his administration | Fox News. And that is something she has not denied or tried to deny, or can deny, even as her campaign tries to position Harris as THE “CHANGE CANDIDATE.”

Biden’s remark also serves to confirm a point made by Biden’s Communication Director, a month earlier.

“‘Vice President Harris has been the governing partner for every key decision that the president has made in his term in office,’ Biden White House communications director Ben LaBolt proudly proclaimed during an MSNBC ‘Morning Joe’ interview back in mid-August.’”

'Utterly Disconnected': Ted Cruz Expertly Explains Why the Kamala Harris 'Change Agent' Act Isn't Working – RedState

So, then, Kamala Harris must be pleased with her policies and the results that arose from them. She would only lie about this because most Americans ARE NOT pleased with those policies and with THE NEGATIVE IMPACT THOSE AWFUL POLICIES have had NOT ONLY ON their OWN LIFE BUT on that of the COUNTRY, and, further, on the WORLD.

GIVEN THE IMPORTANCE OF THE COMING U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION AS DETERMINATIVE OF THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY—IF WE WILL STILL HAVE A NATION THAT IS IN FACT AND NOT MERELY IN NAME A TRULY FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, WHERE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE SOLE SOVEREIGN OVER THEIR GOVERNMENT, WHY IS IT THAT SO MANY GUN OWNERS DO NOT INTEND TO VOTE IN THIS NOVEMBER 2024 ELECTION?

THE CASUAL ATTITUDE OF TEN MILLION OR MORE AMERICAN GUN OWNERS IS MIND-BOGGLING, INEXPLICABLE, GIVEN THE STAKES INVOLVED FOR AMERICANS, PERSONALLY, AND FOR THE COUNTRY GENERALLY.

The 2016 U.S. Presidential Election was significant. Many Americans were stunned Trump had won. The Press and Pollsters were, for the most part, equally stunned. And the powerful Globalists were stunned. Even the populations in countries around the world were stunned. Trump represented a sea-change not only in the manner of his governance, but in the values reflected in his governance and in his policy aims.

The Electorate that voted Trump in Office intended for him to follow through with his promises to “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” which, much more than a slogan, meant a return to traditional values, consistent with the duties of the U.S. President under Article II of the Constitution, and in conformance with the sanctity of the Nation’s Bill of Rights.

The Neoliberal Globalist and Neo-Marxist Cultural agenda directed to the slow, quiet, inexorable, methodical process to unwind the social fabric of our Nation and to weaken the Natural Law Rights of the citizenry had commenced in earnest at the dawn of the 2lst Century.

Many Americans saw clearly what was happening, and they were appalled by what they saw: The slow dissolution of their natural law rights and loss of control over their own life.

This was the impetus needed to sweep Trump into Office. His successes were immediate and could not be reasonably denied. For Example, during his first few weeks in Office, he made clear to Congress that he would veto any attempt to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that Obama had worked on in secret.

This economic package if signed into law would have been a boon to multinational companies, enabling them to easily circumvent Federal or State Law to enhance their fortune at the expense of U.S. manufacturing, accelerating the decline of the manufacturing sector.

Enactment of the TPP would have lowered American wages, leading to working class poverty. See, e.g., the article on the BBC website.

A powerful coalition among Democrats, Globalists, and Marxists, with the assistance of a seditious Press, worked furiously to rid themselves of Trump.

They failed. Life for Americans had improved immensely under Trump’s watch. That is not something the Progressive Democrats, the Globalists, and the Marxists wanted the American people to see.

Another Trump term commencing in January 2021 would dash whatever hope the forces that sought to crush America and its people had achieved prior to Trump’s first term in Office. But a Trump Second Term in Office in 2021 would not come to pass. Biden was ensconced in Office, albeit under arguably dubious circumstances.

Life under the Biden-Harris Administration was a bust. It should surprise no one then, that these powerful forces that hated Trump would pull out all the stops to prevent Trump from prevailing in the 2024 race, which, if the Election were fairly run, would see a probable victory for Trump.

SO, VOTER TURNOUT FOR KAMALA HARRIS IS CRUCIAL FOR THE ANTI-AMERICAN PROGRESSIVE-MARXIST DEMOCRATS. THEY SEEK TO PREVENT DONALD TRUMP, THE POPULIST PRESIDENT FROM SERVING A SECOND TERM THAT WOULD SEE A STRONG, REVITALIZED AMERICA. THIS IS WHY IT IS EQUALLY IMPORTANT FOR REPUBLICANS TO MAXIMIZE VOTER TURNOUT.

THE FORCES SUPPORTING HARRIS INTEND TO CREATE A DIMINISHED AMERICA TO HERALD A NEW WORLD ORDER WHERE ALL NATION-STATES WOULD BE REDUCED TO PAWNS IN SERVICE TO THE WORLD EMPIRE GOVERNED BY A POWERFUL CORPORATIST-MARXIST OLIGARCHY. OBAMA HAD PAVED THE WAY FOR THAT. HILLARY CLINTON WOULD HAVE CONTINUED THE AGENDA SET BY OBAMA. THAT WASN’T A SECRET. THE PRESS PROUDLY PROCLAIMED THAT FACT. TRUMP’S VICTORY DASHED THAT HOPE. IT COULD ONLY BE REGAINED IF TRUMP WERE PREVENTED FROM SERVING A SECOND TERM. AND WITH BIDEN IN OFFICE, THE DEMOCRATS AND THEIR WEALTHY, SECRETIVE BENEFACTORS WASTED NO TIME IN UNDOING ALL THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF TRUMP. THEY RAPIDLY RESUMED THE COURSE SET BY OBAMA AND MOVED RAPIDLY APACE TO ACCOMPLISH AS MUCH AS THEY COULD TO WEAKEN THE UNITED STATES, ECONOMICALLY, FINANCIALLY, SOCIALLY, EVEN MILITARILY—TO READY IT FOR INCLUSION IN WHAT THEY CONCEIVED AS A GREATER ONE WORLD EMPIRE.

TO ACCOMPLISH THEIR GOAL, THESE DESTROYERS OF A POWERFUL NATION-STATE WOULD NEED ANOTHER FOUR YEARS. A HARRIS PRESIDENCY WOULD ENABLE THEM TO ACCOMPLISH THEIR OBJECTIVES. THEY NEED TO ENHANCE VOTER TURNOUT FOR HARRIS AND TO REDUCE VOTER TURNOUT FOR TRUMP.

THE INTRICATE, WELL-OILED DEMOCRAT PARTY MACHINE AND ITS WEALTHY, POWERFUL BENEFACTORS DON’T WANT TRUMP SUPPORTERS TO VOTE.

IN PARTICULAR, THEY DON’T WANT AMERICA’S GUN OWNERS TO VOTE. THIS MEANS——

THEY’RE URGING YOU NOT TO VOTE. THEY ARE DOING THIS THROUGH USE OF TWO KINDS OF MESSAGING:

ONE THAT IS OVERTLY BOMBASTIC AND SENSATIONALIST AND THE OTHER SUBVERTLY SUBTLE AND SUBLIME.

THE GOAL IS TO REDUCE YOUR INTEREST IN THE SIMPLE ACT OF CASTING A BALLOT, AND TO UNDERMINE YOUR CONFIDENCE IN A TRUMP VICTORY IN NOVEMBER.

IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT YOU DIAL OUT THIS RUINOUS MESSAGING!

THAT MESSAGING IS MEANT TO DECEIVE YOU. THE ELECTION IS NOT IN THE BAG FOR DEMOCRATS. AND THE WEALTHY, POWERFUL FORCES BANKROLLING THE EFFORT AND ORCHESTRATING THE HARRIS CAMPAIGN KNOW THAT.

THE RACE IS TIGHT. THAT SURPRISES, FRIGHTENS AND ENRAGES DEMOCRATS AND THEIR BENEFACTORS.

DESPITE THE SIZE OF THEIR WAR CHEST AND THEIR NEAR ABSOLUTE CONTROL OVER THE PRESS, CABLE, AND BROADCAST NEWS MEDIA, AND SOCIAL NEWS MEDIA, THE NEEDLE HASN’T BUDGED. HARRIS HAS LOST WHATEVER “BOUNCE” SHE DERIVED FROM THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONVENTION AND FROM THE ABC TELEVISED DEBATE, SHE HAS SINCE LOST THAT “BOUNCE” IN THE POLLS.

THE AMERICAN PUBLIC REMAINS DEEPLY SUSPICIOUS OF HARRIS’ CHARACTER, AND PERSONALITY, AND ABILITY, AS WELL AS HARRIS’ AIMS AND AGENDA—THE LAST OF WHICH IS A DIRECT CARRY-OVER FROM THE BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION. AND ALL OF THIS IS REFLECTED UNIFORMLY IN THE POLLS.

THE COUNTRY IS IN DECLINE UNDER THE PRESENT BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION AND WILL RUPTURE UNDER A CONTINUATION OF THAT ADMINISTRATION UNDER HARRIS. MUCH OF THE ELECTORATE KNOWS THIS, OR, AT LEAST, STRONGLY SUSPECTS THIS, AND IT IS NOT ENAMORED AT THE PROSPECT OF A CONTINUATION OF THE BIDEN-HARRIS AGENDA, WHICH THE ELECTORATE SEES COMING DESPITE ALL THE EFFORT TO DISGUISE THE TRUTH FROM THE ELECTORATE.

AMERICANS ARE WELL AWARE OF THE FLAWS OF KAMALA HARRIS ON BOTH A PRAGMATIC AND INTUITIVE LEVEL.

THIS ELECTION IS AS TIGHT AS A DRUM. THAT MEANS YOUR VOTE, AS A GUN OWNER, IS CRUCIAL TO GETTING TRUMP ELECTED. YOU CAN’T RIDE THIS ELECTION OUT. THE ELECTION IS UP FOR GRABS.

VOTE EARLY IF YOUR STATE ALLOWS FOR IT OR CAST YOUR VOTE ON ELECTION DAY—BUT DO VOTE! YOU MUST VOTE! YOUR VOTE IS NECESSARY TO ENHANCE THE PROSPECT OF AND PROBABLY ENSURE TRUMP’S VICTORY IN NOVEMBER.

If you fail to vote and to cast your ballot for Trump, and Harris ekes out a victory, then—— YOU ARE LETTING DOWN NOT ONLY YOURSELF BUT YOUR FAMILY, YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR FELLOW CITIZENS, AND YOUR COUNTRY.

YOU MUST VOTE LIKE YOUR LIFE AND WELL-BEING AND THAT OF THE COUNTRY DEPENDS ON IT. FOR IT DOES.

If you dismiss the importance of this Election—the most important event of our time, as Trump, himself, has repeatedly and truthfully asserted—you are disavowing the sanctity of your Nation’s NATURAL LAW RIGHTS, including a Right that no other Government on Earth recognizes or has ever recognized and that few of the “COMMON PEOPLE” in any other Country are “privileged” to enjoy.

THAT RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IS NOT SOMETHING TO BE TAKEN LIGHTLY BY ANY AMERICAN.

YOUR RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IS A NATURAL LAW RIGHT BESTOWED ON AND IN YOU BY THE DIVINE CREATOR.

IT IS NOT TO BE SEEN AS A MERE PRIVILEGE TO BE GRANTED YOU OR DENIED TO YOU BY GOVERNMENT BASED ON MERE WHIM.

POSSESSION OF FIREARMS IS NOT TO BE PERCEIVED AS THE ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT PROPONENTS SEE IT: AS A DANGEROUS FRIVOLITY OF THOSE WHO INSIST ON HAVING THEM. IF YOU WANT TO POSSESS A FIREARM, SO THEY INSIST, SUCH POSSESSION SHOULD BE STRICTLY CONTROLLED BY THE STATE, AND FOR A CAREFULLY DEFINED PURPOSE, NONE OF WHICH HAPPEN TO BE THE PREEMINENT REASON FOR WHICH THE FRAMERS CODIFIED IT IN THE NATION’S BILL OF RIGHTS.

Sure, you can use a firearm for many worthwhile pursuits, a few of which the Anti-Second Amendment proponents recognize—at least for the moment.

You can use a firearm for sport, and you can use a firearm for hunting, or for competitive purposes in formal or informal competitions. You can use a firearm target-shooting for enjoyment. Perhaps you collect firearms for personal exhibit at home or for investment. You can use a firearm for all of these things you may be doing or have done or are thinking of doing—at least in most jurisdictions in the United States.

THE NATURAL LAW RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SUBSUMES ALL THESE AFOREMENTIONED ACTIVITIES, to be sure.

BUT ALL THESE ACTIVITIES ARE AUXILIARY MATTERS, PASTIME PURSUITS, AND IN THE GREAT SCHEME OF THINGS, OF LESSER IMPORTANCE EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT THEY IMPACT THE SALIENT PURPOSE FOR WHICH THE NATURAL LAW RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS EXISTS.

WHAT IS IMPORTANT IS WHAT THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IS REALLY ABOUT.

IT IS ALL ABOUT SELF-PRESERVATION AS AGAINST ANYONE OR ANYTHING THREATENING YOUR LIFE AND WELL-BEING AND THAT OF YOUR FAMILY, BE IT:

•  VICIOUS PREDATORY ANIMAL, OR

• VICIOUS PREDATORY MAN, OR

• VICIOUS PREDATORY GOVERNMENT OF MEN

THE CODIFICATION OF THE NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO ARMED SELF DEFENSE IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION IS GOD-ORDAINED, NOT MAN-MADE. AS SUCH, THE RIGHT IS:

•  ABSOLUTE, NOT PARTIAL OR CONDITIONAL

• ETERNAL, NOT TRANSITORY

• PERMANENT, UNCHANGING; NOT EPHEMERAL, FLEETING, MODIFIABLE

• RIGHTEOUS AND JUST, NOT IMMORAL OR UNFAIR

ONE CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES ACKNOWLEDGES THIS, KNOWS THIS, INTENDS TO PRESERVE THIS RIGHT. THAT CANDIDATE FOR U.S PRESIDENT HAS PRESERVED AND DEFENDED THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS ONCE BEFORE—WHEN HE WON THE RACE FOR U.S. PRESIDENT IN 2016, DEFEATING THE DEMOCRAT PARTY CANDIDATE, HILLARY CLINTON. THAT MAN IS DONALD J. TRUMP.

Back in June 2016, roughly five months before the U.S. Presidential Election that brought Donald Trump to the White House, where he served his First Term in Office, and he began repairing much of the damage caused by his predecessor, Barack Obama, the online news magazine, “Investor’s Business Daily,” posted an article that clearly, if tacitly, promoted Trump, knowing that Democrats intended to subvert the Bill of Rights.

In that article, titled, “Democrats Attack 3 Of The 10 Amendments In The Bill Of Rights,” the editorial staff warned that Hillary Clinton, Democratic Party nominee for President for that General Election cycle, and the Party leadership were primed to chisel away at the Nation’s Bill of Rights.

The editorial staff wrote,

“Hillary Clinton and other leaders in her party always talk about how they want to grant new rights to Americans. They talk about the ‘right to affordable health care,’ the ‘right to a college education,’ the ‘right to a livable wage’ [and, to this list in reference to the present election cycle, we would add, ‘the unqualified right of a woman to an abortion’]. But at the same time, many of these same Democrats have been agitating to restrict or outright repeal existing rights enshrined in the Constitution's Bill of Rights.”

Discussing the Democrats’ targeting of the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms, a right that shall not be infringed, the “Investor’s Business Daily” wrote,

. . . Democrats are increasingly calling not just for restrictions on purchases for would-be terrorists or bans on ‘assault rifles,’ but to scrap the 2nd Amendment entirely.

‘The Second Amendment needs some changing, because Americans don't agree with it and we’ve had it,’ Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., declared last week.

After Gabby Giffords was shot, liberal talk show host Bill Maher said that the Democratic party should ‘come out against the 2nd Amendment.’ Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., responded, ‘I sure wish they would.’

Retired liberal justice John Paul Stevens wrote on op-ed saying the 2nd Amendment should itself be amended, so that the right to own guns only would apply to those who are actively serving in a militia.

Three years after the publication of John Paul Stevens op-ed, on April 11, 2014, in the Washington Post, as cited in the “Investor’s Business Daily,” the Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice—apparently fearing that even a tightly controlled citizen militia would pose a visible, dangerous, and unacceptable threat to the Federal Government— went further in his attack on the Second Amendment—much further.

In an opinion piece published in the NY Times on March 27, 2018, and under a title appearing in bold, oversized font—Stevens’ called for outright repeal of the Second Amendment!

Not an easy task to accomplish. Many Americans know the Framers crafted the U.S. CONSTITUTION in a manner to make amendment to the Constitution very difficult. THAT WAS NO ACCIDENT.

Having successfully overthrown one Tyranny—THE ENGLISH MONARCHY—the Founders of our Free Republic had no desire to lay the foundation for another one, and this one, ironically, of their own making, albeit only unintentionally.

They were astute thinkers. They assiduously constructed the United States as a Free Constitutional Republic—A TRULY FREE REPUBLIC—with the American people, alone, as sole sovereign of their Country and of their Government.

TAKE A LOOK AT ANY GOVERNMENT AROUND THE WORLD TODAY. ALL ARE INHERENTLY DESPOTIC, OR NEARLY SO, OR HAVE BECOME SO, DESPITE ALL CLAIMS MANY OF THEM MAKE TO THE CONTRARY.

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES IS DIFFERENT.  FROM ITS INCEPTION THE FRAMERS OF OUR CONSTITUTION DESIGNED OUR NATION TO BE A TRULY FREE REPUBLIC, AND THE CENTRAL (“FEDERAL”) GOVERNMENT WAS CAREFULLY CRAFTED TO OPERATE WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THAT FREE REPUBLIC, TO PRESERVE, AS THE SOLE AND SUPREME SOVEREIGN OF THEIR NATION AND THEIR GOVERNMENT, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THEMSELVES.

BUT WILL WE AMERICANS CONTINUE TO RESIDE IN A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC? THAT REMAINS TO BE SEEN—A MATTER TO BE DECIDED BY THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE ON NOVEMBER 5, 2024.

Most governments on Earth are DESPOTIC from the get-go, DESIGNED TO BE SO. Others, commencing as OSTENSIBLE DEMOCRACIES of one sort or another, to some extent or another, become Despotic over time, devolving first into AUTHORITARIAN REGIMES and, eventually, into pure, full blown TOTALITARIAN REGIMES.

WE CALL THE AWFUL TRANSFORMATION OF GOVERNMENTS DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENTS into oppressive, repressive DESPOTIC GOVERNMENTS— TYRANNIES.

The Framers of our Constitution knew well that EVERY government that ever existed, if not DESPOTIC at the outset and designed to be so, would inexorably devolve into DESPOTISM over time. For every government has within it THE SEEDS OF DESPOTISM—HOWEVER BENEVOLENT, BENIGN, AND SEEMINGLY BENEFICIAL TO THE CITIZENRY, IT STARTS OUT TO BE.

Those individuals in government, wielding some power over the populace, wish eventually to wield more power—ultimately, immense power. This is part and parcel of human nature of many people—impossible for sociopathic or outright psychopathic individuals—WHO BETRAY AN INCLINATION FOR OR AN IMPULSE TOWARD EXERTING POWER OVER OTHERS, to constrain. Such people relish the idea of controlling the lives of millions of denizens (“citizens”).

Even if such people intend initially to utilize the power, they wield, to benefit the populace, they eventually become susceptible to corrupting influences if they do and they usually exhibit such tendencies within their early ascension to power.

One of America’s Founding Fathers, a profound thinker, and our Nation’s Fourth President, James Madison, elucidated the intractable problem of government clearly and succinctly in “Federalist 51”:

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

AND WHAT ARE THOSE AUXILIARY PRECAUTIONS THAT JAMES MADISON PROPOSED?

Madison proposed a Government with powers described, demarcated, and distributed to distinct Branches—each Branch operating as a check on the power of the other. But would the APPLICATION of the DOCTRINE OF CHECKS AND BALANCES be enough to constrain and contain the slide of a Republican form of Government toward Tyranny? Unfortunately, no.

POWERFUL CENTRALIZED GOVERNMENTS TEND TO AMASS MORE POWER AND CONTROL THROUGH TIME. AND THE LARGE, BLOATED U.S. GOVERNMENT IS NO DIFFERENT. THIS MASSIVE GOVERNMENT CONTINUES TO GROW IN SIZE AND POWER AND THE STRUCTURE IS CHANGING AND CONVERGING INTO ONE SINGULAR BEHEMOTH. THE TREMENDOUS GROWTH OF THE GOVERNMENT IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY HAS INCREASED EXPONENTIALLY IN THE FIRST COUPLE OF DECADES OF THE TWENTY-FIRST. THIS EXTRAORDINARY GROWTH IS EMBLEMATIC OF THE TENDENCY TOWARD DESPOTISM.

CONSIDER, THE CREATION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, DHS, FOR EXAMPLE:

“With the passage of the Homeland Security Act by Congress in November 2002, the Department of Homeland Security formally came into being as a stand-alone, Cabinet-level department to further coordinate and unify national homeland security efforts, opening its doors on March 1, 2003.”

EVEN THE NAME ALLUDES TO AND EXUDES DESPOTISM: DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY.

GERMANY’S “THIRD REICH” WAS OFTEN REFERRED TO AS THE “FATHERLAND,” AND STALIN’S RUSSIA, WAS OFTEN REFERRED TO AS THE “MOTHERLAND.” IS NOT USE OF THE TERM, ‘HOMELAND,’ A NOT-SO-SUBTLE ALLUSION TO THESE PAST TOTALITARIAN REGIMES?

SEVERAL YEARS AGO, IN A BRIEF COMMENT TO AN ARTICLE APPEARING IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE ARBALEST QUARREL POINTED TO THE DISTURBING SIMILARITY OF THE DESCRIPTORS. WITH HUNDREDS OF OTHER COMMENTS IN THE NY TIMES, OURS WAS SUMMARILY REJECTED. WE HAD NOT EXPECTED THAT, BUT, IN HINDSIGHT, WE SHOULD HAVE ANTICIPATED THAT OUR REMARK WOULD BE REJECTED BY THE “TIMES.”

DESPOTIC REGIMES AND THEIR DUTIFUL PROPAGANDA MILL DO NOT LIKE ANYTHING OR ANYONE DRAWING ATTENTION TO THE TRUTH. THE OBJECTIVE IS REPRESSION OF ALL DISSENT. RECALL THE PREPOSTEROUS ATTEMPT BY DHS TO CREATE A “DISINFORMATION BOARD.”

The Biden-Harris Administration and its DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas did not anticipate the public outcry. Or, perhaps they did, and were merely testing the waters, to see how far they could go in their inexorable push toward TYRANNY.

In a statement posted on the DHS website, the DHS stated—notably one without any suggestion of apology:

The Department welcomes the recommendations of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, which has concluded that countering disinformation that threatens the homeland, and providing the public with accurate information in response, is critical to fulfilling the Department’s missions. We thank the Subcommittee for its work, which required extensive fact gathering and analysis over a short period of time.
In accordance with the HSAC’s prior recommendation, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas has terminated the Disinformation Governance Board and rescinded its charter effective today, August 24, 2022.  
With the HSAC recommendations as a guide, the Department will continue to address threat streams that undermine the security of our country consistent with the law, while upholding the privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties of the American people and promoting transparency in our work.”

With THE GROWTH OF BIG GOVERNMENT and CONSOLIDATION of POWER IN THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH and the slow MERGER OF and FUSION OF THE THREE BRANCHES into ONE SUPER BRANCH [ALTHOUGH THE U.S. SUPREME COURT TENACIOUSLY RESISTS THE EFFORT TO SQUASH ITS ARTICLE III POWER], THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS BECOMING THE VERY THING THE FOUNDERS OF OUR REPUBLIC WARNED ABOUT AND TOOK STEPS TO AVOID AS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TODAY HAS SLOWLY BECOME THE ANTITHESIS OF WHAT THE CONSTITUTION HAS ORDAINED. THE FEAR OF THE FOUNDERS IS MANIFESTING IN FRONT OF US.

When Trump became U.S. President in January 2017, he attempted with some success to constrain the size of the Government and to make it answerable to the people. Powerful interests fought him. They sought to create the very TYRANNY that both the Nation’s Founders, and Trump as President, abhorred and sought to prevent. They plotted and orchestrated a massive campaign to subvert Trump’s policies and initiatives, and eventually to oust Trump from power, once they realized he could not be flattered, or bribed, or cajoled, or threatened, “to play the game of pretending to make policy and to make decisions” as Bush, and Obama, and Clinton had willingly done.

THE POWERS BEHIND THE SCENES, CONSPIRED TO DESTROY BOTH TRUMP AND HIS PRESIDENCY, INCLUDING THOSE CLOSEST TO HIM, PROFESSIONALLY AND PERSONALLY, DEVISING A PLETHORA OF STRATEGEMS.

Treacherous individuals within his own Administration sabotaged Trump’s efforts, gloating over their betrayal.

A seditious Press lauded the efforts of these saboteurs. But they failed to dent Trump’s policy achievements, grounded on the promises he had made to the Electorate that supported him, believed in him and had voted him into Office.

Trump’s detractors continued to strategize ways to oust him. All of those efforts proved fruitless.

The fortitude of the man to thwart the efforts and fury of the plotters to remove him from office was as tenacious and as formidable as anything the plotters could and did throw at him. Still, there is just so much one man is capable of doing to resist the weight of the fury of the forces unleashed against him.

WHAT POWER, IF ANY, EXISTS SUFFICIENT TO REPEL THAT OF THE FORCES MARSHALED AGAINST OUR PEOPLE, OUR CONSTITUTION, OUR COUNTRY, AND AGAINST A PRESIDENT WHO ACTUALLY SERVES THE PEOPLE, CONSTITUTION, AND COUNTRY, IN STRICT ACCORDANCE WITH THE OATH HE TAKES.

THE PRESENSE OF AN ARMED CITIZENRY IS THE EQUALIZING FORCE AGAINST RAPACIOUS AND POWERFUL EVIL.

THE ARMED CITIZENRY—THOSE WHO PERCEIVE THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF THE THREAT TO THE SECURITY OF OUR FREE STATE—REMAINS THE NATION’S LAST AND BEST GUARDIAN-PROTECTOR.

BUT FOR ALL THAT, IT IS THAT VERY ARMED CITIZENRY THAT CONSTITUTES THE GRAVEST THREAT TO THE AGENTS OF THIS NATION’S DESTRUCTION.

THE ARMED CITIZENRY HAS THE MEANS AND THE WILL TO PREVENT THE AIMS OF THE DESTRUCTORS OF THE NATION FROM ACHIEVING THOSE AIMS.

WHERE A FREE PRESS FAILS THE AMERICAN PEOPLE—AS OUR PRESS HAS FAILED THE PEOPLE—THE ONLY FORCE REMAINING CAPABLE OF SECURING THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE FROM THE FORCES THAT WOULD DARE CRUSH IT IS THE ARMED CITIZENRY. THIS, THE FOUNDERS OF OUR REPUBLIC KNEW WELL TO BE A SINGULAR TRUTH, OUR LASTING HOPE TO PRESERVE A FREE STATE, OUR LAST “FAIL-SAFE” TO PROTECT THE NATION AND ITS PEOPLE FROM TYRANNY.

THERE IS, IN THIS COMING ELECTION IN NOVEMBER, A CLASH OF TITANS——

A CLASH BETWEEN TRUMP AND HIS SUPPORTERS, A MASSIVE SWATH OF THE ELECTORATE ON ONE SIDE, AND, ON THE OTHER SIDE, THE GLOBALIST ELITE AND PROGRESSIVE/MARXIST PORTION OF THE ELECTORATE, INCLUDING THE PRESS

WHICH SIDE WILL PREVAIL WILL NOT BE KNOWN UNTIL AFTER THE BALLOTS HAVE ALL BEEN TABULATED ON NOVEMBER 5, AND THE ELECTORAL VICTOR EMERGES. ARE THERE AMONG THE ELECTORATE, A SUFFICIENT NUMBER TO DEFEAT THOSE AMONG US, SO BESOTTED WITH “KAMALA”—NOT SO MUCH A PERSON AS A FICTITIOUS PROJECTION THRUST ON THE PUBLIC THROUGH THE ART AND ARTIFICE OF HOLLYWOOD AND BY THE FAIRY TALE NARRATIVES CONCOCTED BY PSYCHOLOGISTS AND THE PRESS?

IT IS UNFORTUNATE THAT A SIZABLE PORTION OF THE ELECTORATE THAT HAS ALREADY VOTED, OR PLANS TO VOTE, FOR THE HARRIS-WALZ TICKET, FAILS TO APPRECIATE THE TRUE THREAT TO OUR COUNTRY THAT THESE AGENTS OF DESTRUCTION POSE. THESE AMERICANS HAVE BEEN PLAYED THE FOOL AND HAVE NO REALIZATION OF THAT FACT.

With advances in information technology and mind control, unscrupulous power-mongers operating with impunity both inside the Country as well as outside it, have successfully taken control over the thought processes and actions of a great swath of the Electorate. They hope to maximize voter turnout for Kamala Harris—the corrupt and mindless shell whom they can control just as they have controlled Joe Biden, their previous figurehead—who has made abundantly clear to THE NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST AND NEO-MARXIST FORCES THAT CRUSH that she will gladly do their bidding in return for the trappings of prestige and power.

WHAT CAN YOU, THE AMERICAN GUN OWNER, DO, WHO CHERISHES HIS OR HER RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE TO ENSURE THAT YOUR CHERISHED RIGHT IS PRESERVED AND YOUR RIGHT TO LIVE FREE FROM THE THREAT OF GOVERNMENT OPPRESSION? SIMPLE: YOU MUST VOTE. BUT ARE YOU ALLOWED UNDER THE LAW TO VOTE?

KEEP IN MIND——

ONLY CITIZENS WHO ARE 18 YEARS OF AGE CAN LEGALLY VOTE IN FEDERAL ELECTIONS.

BUT YOU MUST FIRST REGISTER TO VOTE TO BE ABLE TO CAST A BALLOT. THE TIME TO REGISTER IS NOT OPEN-ENDED.

SOME STATES HAVE IMPOSED A THIRTY DAY CUTOFF (REGISTRATION THIRTY DAYS PRIOR TO ELECTION DAY) TO VOTE.

CONTACT YOUR BOARD OF ELECTIONS FOR INFORMATION ON REGISTERING TO VOTE. DO SO AT ONCE! DO NOT PUT THIS OFF!

See this link at Vote.org to determine the time limit for registering to vote in your State.

The act of registering to vote and casting a ballot are simple things to accomplish—among the simplest of tasks any American can be called upon as an American Citizen to undertake. But these simple tasks are not to be taken lightly. VOTING IS A SACRED RIGHT AND AN EXTREMELY IMPORTANT DUTY.

MAKE NO MISTAKE AS TO THE IMPORTANCE OF THE 2024 U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

THIS IS NOT JUST ANY U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION IN OUR NATION’S HISTORY! THIS IS OUR LAST CHANCE, BAR NONE, TO PRESERVE OUR FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC. IF WE LOSE THIS ELECTION. IF THE NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALISTS AND NEO-MARXIST CULTISTS PREVAIL AND SEAT THEIR PUPPET, KAMALA HARRIS, IN THE OVAL OFFICE IN JANUARY 2025, YOU AND I BOTH KNOW WHAT SHE WILL DO. SHE WILL IMMEDIATELY SIGN EXECUTIVE ORDERS THAT WILL DESTROY THIS REPUBLIC AND OUR NATURAL LAW RIGHTS—ALL OF THEM! HARRIS SAYS HER VALUES HAVE NOT CHANGED AND, INDEED, THEY HAVE NOT. SHE IS A MARXIST WHO BELIEVES IN THE DISSOLUTION OF OUR NATION-STATE AND THE SUBJUGATION OF THE CITIZENRY TO THE WILL OF THE COLLECTIVE—THE HIVE—THE DICTATES OF THE STATE! SHE WILL NEED NO PRODDING FROM HER MASTERS—SOROS AND OTHERS—TO COMPLETE THE PROCESS OF AMERICAN SOCIETAL ANNIHILATION COMMENCED UNDER HER FIRST TERM WITH BIDEN.

We have already remarked on the SEVERITY AND EXTENT OF THIS THREAT in this Essay/Bulletin, and we will continue to do so because the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election IS THAT IMPORTANT!

Trump made poignantly clear the stakes for Americans in the election back in May 2024, seemingly a lifetime ago, when he delivered his address to NRA. To protect our Constitution and our Bill of Rights, it is incumbent on all gun owners to vote. If you don’t, and Trump loses the election, don’t cry the blues. You will have only yourself to blame.

In pertinent part, Trump said this:

The NRA has stood with me from the very beginning, and with your vote, I will stand strong for your rights and liberties. Four or more years in the White House, we’re going to do things like nobody can believe. We’re going to turn our country around. We’re going to, quite simply, make America great again. But one thing I’ll say, and I say it as friends, we’ve got to get gun owners to vote because you know what? I don’t know what it is.

Perhaps it’s a form of rebellion because you’re rebellious people, aren’t you? But gun owners don’t vote. What is that all about? I’ve heard that. I heard it a few weeks ago. If the gun owners voted, we would swamp them at levels that nobody’s ever seen before. So I think you’re a rebellious bunch, but let’s be rebellious and vote this time. Okay? If you go out and vote . . . I understand exactly why you don’t, but we have to win this election. It’s the most important election in the history of our country. [See also YouTube video on this point Donald Trump: 2024 election the ‘most important’ in history of United States (youtube.com)]

You’ve got to get all your friends, all the gun owners. They have to go, and they have to vote. If they vote, there’s nobody that can beat us, nobody. So it’s very important, and I want to thank the NRA president, Charles Cotton, your first vice president, Bob Barr, and interim executive vice president, Andrew Arulanandam. That’s a terrific group of people.” ~Selective quotes from Donald Trump’s speech at the NRA Leadership Forum held in Dallas, Texas where Trump addresses attendees on May 18, 2024. [Roll Call Factbase - Speech: Donald Trump Addresses the NRA Leadership Forum in Dallas - May 18, 2024. See also transcriber’s (“@rev”) transcription of event].

Trump has reiterated the importance of voting many times since the address to attendees of the Convention. And he has made clear we must make this Election “Too big to rig.”

The Anti-American forces that intend to carry their new puppet—the smug, vacuous and insufferable Marxist Kamala Harris across the finish line in November—don’t see the election that way AND YOU SHOULDN’T EITHER!

You Must Vote and You Must Cast Your Vote for Donald Trump! But to be able to vote in the upcoming election, you must be registered to vote. You must do so at once!

The two Co-Authors of this Essay and Co-Founders of the Arbalest Quarrel understand, acutely, the absolute horror that will be unleashed on our Nation if the forces that dare to crush our Nation and our people succeed in seating their “PARLOR TRICK,” Kamala Harris in our Nation’s highest Office. This Nation will be at an end.

The swiftness of our demise will be as sudden and as catastrophic as a lightning bolt from the heavens. These past four years under Biden that swiftly undid all the myriad accomplishments of Trump are no more than a foretaste of the terrible times ahead for all Americans if he loses this race. THIS, IN A NUTSHELL, is the impetus for the work that went into drafting and posting this comprehensive Essay/News Bulletin.

This Essay/News Bulletin draws on what we, at the Arbalest Quarrel, have observed, what we have investigated, what we have analyzed and synthesized, and what we have inferred from that extensive, expansive legal and political research, observation, and investigation, over a span of eleven plus years. We started the Arbalest Quarrel website in early 2013.

Recently, Stephen L. D’Andrilli, one of the authors of this essay responded to an article written by NRA’s Executive Vice President, Doug Hamlin, titled “The NRA Is Back,” published in the July 2024 edition of NRA’s magazine, “America’s1st Freedom.”

In his letter to the Editor, Stephen stated, in important part, “Along with the many voters on our side, the millions of new gun owners and the many NRA members who are coming back to the fold, [Doug Hamlin] declares, ‘Now is the time to be bold,’ and ‘We need to vote [in the upcoming U.S. Presidential Election] and make sure all gun owners vote. If we do, we will retain our freedom.’” Stephen ends his letter with this exclamation, “We should all heed [Doug Hamlin’s] words.”

NRA published Stephen’s letter in the recent October 2024 “Mail Call” Section of “America’s First Freedom.

The NRA titled Stephen’s response to the Executive Vice President’s article with the last three words of Stephen’s letter: “HEED THESE WORDS” [Pointing to the Paramount Importance of Guns Owners, ALL GUN OWNERS, TO TAKE ACTION.

GUN OWNERS MUST SUPPORT TRUMP BY CASTING THEIR VOTE FOR HIM IN THIS ELECTION. IT MAY, FOR ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES, BE OUR LAST ONE. REPUBLICANS WILL NEVER AGAIN HAVE A TENABLE CHANCE OF GETTING A TRUE CONSERVATIVE IN THE OVAL OFFICE—A PATRIOT WHO, LIKE DONALD TRUMP, CHERISHES THE FREE REPUBLIC OUR FRAMERS CRAFTED FOR US AND DIVINE NATURAL LAW RIGHTS THAT THOSE FRAMERS INCORPORATED INTO OUR CONSTITUTION.

SITTING OUT THIS ELECTION IS NOT A TENABLE OPTION!

AQ has often wondered why it is that no other person in recent memory has suffered such continuous vehement, venomous, insatiable, unrelenting assault professionally and personally than Donald Trump, and how it is and why it is that no other person in modern American history has garnered more animosity and outright hatred by such broad coalitions at home and overseas than our 45th U.S. President.

We did some digging and serendipitously came across a lengthy, comprehensive, and provocative interview of Eric Weinstein, a mathematician, economist, and a former Managing Director of the Global Macro Hedge Fund, Thiel Capital. See YouTube video.

The interviewer, Chris Williamson, host of “Modern Wisdom Podcast,” began his interview of Weinstein (who incidentally hosts his own podcast), by recapping something Weinstein had told Williamson back in January of this year.

Williamson said,

“When we spoke at the beginning of the year [January 2024], you said that it is much too close to November to switch anybody out [referring to the Democrat Party leadership replacing Biden with someone else to run against whomever the Republican voters selected during the primary season to run against Biden].”

Williamson added, “It turns out I was wrong.”

With a wry smile Weinstein replied (referring to himself with feigned modesty), “Beginner’s Luck.”

Williamson continued, “You said, ‘What are the odds that Joe Biden has a debilitating event between now and November, including death? . . . A debilitating event could have been a debilitating public event [the Trump/Biden Debate, it turns out].” 

Weinstein responds, “I purposely left [“the nature of the debilitating public event”] vague. And, I didn’t say the other part of it, which I now feel comfortable saying, which is, I don’t know whether Donald Trump will be allowed to become President.”

Eric Weinstein - Are We On The Brink Of A Revolution? (4K) (youtube.com) Note: The interview aired approximately three weeks ago as of the posting of this article.

The sentence—

“I don’t know whether Donald Trump WILL BE ALLOWED TO become President”—we, at the Arbalest Quarrel, find deeply disturbing.

The suggestion is that powerful and ruthless forces have a personal, vested interest in seeing the demise of our Nation and of all nation-states, in favor of a singular monolithic neoliberal international world order that replaces the very concept of nation-state. This is something we have long surmised, and this has become the focal point of all the work we have done on AQ to date.

And here was a brilliant theorist providing support for our own inference.

But the idea that these ruthless forces would go so far as to attempt to “take out” Trump literally, through assassination, is something we had buried deep in our subconscious, not wishing to give credence to such a horrific thought.

The idea that these attempts on Trump’s life are simply the product of “lone wolves” we have all heard before, but this is a Gordian Knot that the FBI and USSS has not bothered to untangle for us.

Instead, they lob it out to the public, suggesting we make sense of this—either that or take on faith as truth, the ridiculous non-answers they give us, knowing how ridiculous their remarks are but not caring that we know that we are being given a mouthful of nonsense.

So, then, two maniacs operating on their own initiative, with no assistance from anyone, decide to assassinate Trump. Sure!

Even worse than the insouciance of the FBI and Secret Service whom we know have become rogue Government organizations, is the dismissive attitude of the Press and some Democrats and the Radical Left commentators that do little to hide the fact that they find the near assassinations understandable, even rational. They would be perfectly happy to see Trump assassinated. They gloat over the prospect of just such a horrific occurrence and have not let go one iota of their vicious, vile, ludicrous, and defamatory assertions that Trump is a Dictator and a Racist.

THERE IS AFTER ALL A MASSIVE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY TAKING PLACE IN AMERICA.

TRUMP, “MAGA” SUPPORTERS, AND EVEN OUR NATION’S BLUEPRINT—THE U.S. CONSTITUTION—ARE VIEWED AS OBSTRUCTIONS TO A NEW WORLD ORDER THAT PROGRESSIVES AND MARXISTS AND GLOBALISTS SEE AS GOOD AND PROPER AND, MORE, INEVITABLE.

The wealthy, powerful secretive Neoliberal Globalist class perceives the very concepts of ‘nation state’ and of ‘citizen’ as archaic and detrimental to their interests in a modern Globalized world THAT, OF COURSE, BENEFITS, THEM, TO THE EXCLUSION OF THE AMERICAN CITIZENRY.

They perceive Donald Trump as a dangerous obstacle to their gameplan and to their salient objective: Construction of a one-world empire with them at the helm.

Weinstein deals with this matter in depth, which makes the interview an important “listen” for America’s Gun Owners, especially.

We point out that Weinstein’s puzzling remark about Trump, that he may not be allowed to become President IS NOT TO SUGGEST that Weinstein doesn’t want Trump to win the Election in November. Frankly, we don’t know.

Weinstein stays noncommittal on his position which he alludes to as “neutral.” He says, “I don’t have a dog in this fight.” It is difficult to believe that any person can take a neutral stance on this Election with so much at stake—whether the United States continues as a Free Constitutional Republic and independent, sovereign State or not.

But Weinstein’s lengthy and weighty exchange with Williamson does much to establish that powerful, secretive interests DO HAVE “a dog in this fight” even if Weinstein, himself, does not, and they intend to prevent Trump from becoming U.S. President to serve a second term and, further, they have the means and the will to do just that.

Weinstein suggests WE AMERICANS ARE TRULY IN THE MIDST OF WITNESSING THE POSSIBLE OVERTURNING OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION WITH ALL THAT SUCH A CATASTROPHE ENCOMPASSES.

Weinstein’s remarks support the Arbalest Quarrel’s own concerns which have remained consistent since we started this legal-political website for educational purposes.

There is, though, in that interview, an Audio/Video clip that comes toward the end of the Weinstein interview which we listened to intently and relistened to, and having done so, leads us to reassess and controvert ideas we have propounded about Harris’ native intelligence. Her presentation as a near moron, and mumbling fool like Biden (who, unlike her, is ravaged by dementia) may be a front, a façade, a fabrication.

But why she and her image makers and propagandists would wish to create such a persona of her is confounding to us unless they feel that the projection of such a persona would help her electoral chances.

But what does that say of that portion of the Electorate who supports her run for the U.S. Presidency?

Still, what Weinstein happens to say about Harris’ belief system we are confident does confirm and support our position as stated infra—that Harris, unlike Biden, is a true believer of Marxism and a person who is dead set on bringing about to fruition the Marxist vision for humanity and the world. Karl Marx propounded that vision in elaborate detail in in his many works, prepared and published in the Mid-1800s. The powerful forces intent on our Nation’s demise, don’t need a complete, dementia-riddled fool like Biden to push their agenda.

Kamala Harris, after all, is a true believer (there is no question about that), and if she is highly intelligent—most U.S. Presidents are—she may actually be one of the architects of our Nation’s dissolution. If so, it would be wrong of us to think of her simply as, and simply classify her, as another “messenger boy.”

Two hundred and fifty years later, coincidental with where the U.S. now stands since the founding of a Free Republic, Karl Marx’s vision will become true if Harris does win the U.S. Presidency. The profound irony would be that the United States, having its birth as a truly Free Constitutional Republic and having become the most powerful, prosperous Nation in the world, and thence, the envy of the world, would now become the harbinger of both its destruction and that of the world—a Marxist world dictatorship. That is the exact opposite of what the Founders of our Republic had envisioned, had crafted and had made a reality.

Our Nation, our Constitution, our Institutions will have suffered not only complete defeat, but annihilation and what would emerge would be our utter corruption and that of the world. We, Americans, will have fallen from grace and taken the world with us. The irony would not be lost on Karl Marx. He would find it most fitting and would be quite pleased. The Audio clip of the interview isn’t long but is definitely worth a close listen.

Powerful Globalist and Neo-Marxist interests are firmly entrenched in the western civilization and have become noticeably more prominent since the turn of the 21st Century—and most disconcertingly in our own Country. They know that the World Empire they wish to impose on the world isn’t possible if America remains a sovereign, independent Nation and free Constitutional Republic. This Nation’s inclusion is necessary to their plans. This Nation’s fall is therefore of the highest priority for them.

Donald Trump, and one-half of the Electorate that fervently supports him and his mission to preserve our Republic, stand in their way. And, so, Trump and what the Press and Progressives and outright Marxists—these and all the other elements of the RADICAL LEFT—describe always vituperatively as “MAGA AMERICANS,” are routinely ridiculed, censured, and reviled. Trump and the MAGA PEOPLE must be dealt with harshly.

We point to the powerful negative influence (no secret) that the powerful Radical Left Extremist George Soros has had on our Nation, and the powerful negative impact he (and now his son, Alex) continues to exert on our Nation and our people.

Donald Trump, as an American Populist, has made patently clear and has poignantly demonstrated he is firmly committed in preserving the United States as an independent sovereign Nation, consistent with the Oath he had once taken and would take again as U.S. President in 2025:  TO PRESERVE AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.

The Globalists, along with the multi-cultural Neo-Marxists, clearly do not want and will not abide a President who serves in fact, not merely in title, as U.S. President, responsive to the American Electorate that voted him into Office. For such a man upends the overthrow of our Republic that its Destroyers have long planned for and that they swiftly and happily see coming to fruition with Kamala Harris firmly ensconced in the Oval Office.

This is the core of what the Globalists and Marxists see as the problem posed for them by Trump and so-called “MAGA” Americans. Trump and a large portion of the Electorate obstinately refuse to accede to the transformation of their Nation from a Republic to a Marxist Dictatorship. These sinister shadowy forces have developed, cultivated, implemented and long nourished, on an industrial scale, a complex, profound campaign of psychological conditioning, directed against Americans. The purpose is to insinuate into the minds of Americans a new socio-political paradigm that is antithetical to our Nation’s ideals and to the principles established in our Nation’s Constitution and to the core values that have for generations been embedded in the psyche of the American people. They want to disrupt and sever Americans’ connection with their past. Contrariwise, Trump and most of the American Electorate want to reinforce that memory and connection with the past and to preserve and secure that past for generations of Americans to come.

Unfortunately, it has come to pass, slowly and inexorably, that many Americans, especially the Nation’s young, have inculcated in their psyche a sensitivity to a paradigm shift in thinking. The youth of our Nation have become the product of systematic indoctrination and brainwashing, amenable to the vision of Karl Marx.

Many Americans, susceptible to persistent, vigorous psychological conditioning, have succumbed to a new way of thinking that is detrimental to their own best interests.

These Americans have not only turned away from the wondrous Country the First Patriots crafted and built for themselves and for us Americans who came after—a Nation that evolved to become the most powerful, prosperous, and successful Nation the world has ever seen—but have come to abhor our Country and our Founders, and our history, heritage, culture, and Judeo-Christian ethical system, despite the remarkable achievements.

This is not happenstance. It is all according to plan—A PLAN TO TURN AMERICANS AGAINST THEMSELVES AND AGAINST EACH OTHER SO THAT THEY BECOME UNABLE TO RESIST THE COMING ARMAGEDDON.

Many Americans are inured to this systematic brainwashing and appalled at what they are seeing.

A profound schism is the result. And, with Americans fighting among themselves, the Country is ripe for a takeover.

THE COMING ELECTION WILL DETERMINE WHETHER THE SUCCESS AND PROMISE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION OF 1776 IS PRESERVED OR IS LOST—LOST FOREVER—HAVING BEEN REPLACED AT THE BALLOT BOX BY THE NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST/NEO-MARXIST COUNTERREVOLUTION.

The architects of America’s destruction want a Messenger Boy (or Girl) who knows his or her place and acquiesces to the will and dictates of the powerful, unelected forces, operating mostly in the shadows.

Their agenda and interests, posited as right and proper and consistent with the norms of a preposterous “Rules-Based International Neoliberal Global Order,” are wholly antithetical to the interests and security of our Nation and to the security and well-being of the American people.

Yet, Trump stubbornly perseveres and so do his supporters. And this infuriates the forces that crush and enrages those Americans who have fallen to the seductive influences of the Press and to the rhetoric of those Politicians who have betrayed us, whose sentiments are in lockstep with the aims and agenda of those intent on destroying us.

HOW FAR ARE THESE FORCES THAT CRUSH COUNTRIES AND CIVILIZATIONS WILLING TO GO? We know the answer. And it is disheartening, even horrifying.

At the time of the Williamson/Weinstein interview, there was already one attempt on Trump’s life and a second attempt would come soon after the interview.

Desperate people are capable of desperate acts, and we are not referring here to the maniacs, Crooke and Routh. Those two pathetic creatures, one dead and the other presently under wraps [perhaps to wind up dead in detention to keep him from talking] are but mere instruments of desperate people who happen to be extraordinarily wealthy, extremely powerful, and sharply focused on achieving their end game.

Such people have the both the means and the will to carry out the murder of leaders and possible leaders of countries, including a past President of the United States who may be elected again this November, to serve his second term in office—a term that was unlawfully denied both him and the Electorate who voted him into Office in November 2020.

These forces are, apparently, able to easily find, train, equip, and control the lunatics who attempt to carry out assassinations. And we must assume there are many such lunatics available.

And these sinister forces have powerful aides.

The leadership at the DOJ, DHS, FBI, AND INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY allow events to unfold in accordance with the will and wishes of these ruthless, amoral impenetrable forces whom they serve.

Even FOX news will do no more than provide hints at the apparent complicity of these Government bureaucracies but will avoid any mention of the forces lurking behind them.

Conservative pundits, however, DO SEE through the implausibility of Federal agencies, bureaus, and departments that have budgets of billions of dollars conveniently screwing up when it comes to defending the life of Donald Trump, and these pundits are delineating the specifics of those “screw-ups,” if in fact that is what they are. We have serious doubts that these seeming happenstances are just screw-ups due to ineptitude, and, so, must ask:

ARE THESE SCREWUPS JUST THAT—THE PRODUCT OF MERE INEPTITUDE—OR ARE THEY INDICATIVE OF SOMETHING MORE AT PLAY HERE?

We definitely believe there is more going on here, and FOX news anchors such as Jesse Watters, Greg Gutfeld, Laura Ingraham, and others are, to our mind, as we listen to them, becoming increasingly more open and forthright about their suspicions even as most other news organizations and the Press seem curiously uninterested in investigating these assassination attempts.

THE PROPAGANDIST NEWS ORGANIZATIONS AT MSNBC AND CNN, AND MANY OTHERS, NONSENSICALLY blithely, insultingly, and idiotically claim and proclaim that Trump, himself, is solely responsible for the assassination attempts directed against him. And in making such ridiculous remarks in such a straightforward way, the listener must infer that, these “news” commentators are complicit in what is rapidly taking shape as a major coverup.

Still, as powerful as these Globalists and Neo-Marxists are—and the hold they have over the Press, social media, and the Federal Government itself is apparently extensive—they are no match for determined Americans who hold firmly to their heritage, culture, and God-Given Natural Law Rights.

You, the Gun Owner, are one of these people—among our Nation’s true Patriots. Be mindful of the stakes here.

Your Life and Well-Being and that of your Children and Grand-Children, and of generations of Americans yet to come, depend on the outcome of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election.

If tens of millions of gun owners VOTE AS ONE, we can defeat the Globalists and Marxists at their own game.

The outcome of the U.S. Presidential Election therefore comes down to you and what you do or fail to do in the next few weeks. 

Whether this Country continues as a Sovereign, Independent Nation and Free Constitutional Republic, or is reduced to a mere cog in some greater world empire—an empire that has little regard for the needs and wants of Americans and even less regard for the notion of the sanctity and inviolability of the individual soul (which they see as an altogether bizarre and irrelevant notion)—depends on your active participation in this 2024 U.S. Presidential Election.

That we feel compelled to draw attention to this matter is due to the predilection of many gun owners—all too many—TEN MILLION OR MORE of you who have not yet registered to vote and who, apparently, do not intend to vote this Fall.

This is unconscionable and unforgivable, given the stakes.

Such a casual attitude toward this Election ought to be unthinkable. We implore you to take this election seriously as if your life and well-being depend on it. For, in fact, it may.

Some Commentators have routinely said and continue to say this election is the most consequential in our lifetime. IT IS, but that remark is only half-true.

This coming election is, AS TRUMP HAS REPEATEDLY SAID, and as we stated, supra, THE MOST IMPORTANT U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION EVER—AND, WE WOULD ADD—GOING BACK TO OUR NATION’S EARLIEST DAYS.

HOW FAR BACK?

WE WOULD SAY, WITHOUT HYPERBOLE, A DATE GOING BACK BEFORE RATIFICATION OF OUR CONSTITUTION: TO THE VERY BEGINNING OF OUR HISTORY: TO THE ADOPTION OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE ON JULY 4, 1776. THAT MARKED THE DATE THE FIRST PATRIOTS THREW THE GAUNTLET AT THE FEET OF THE TYRANT—GEORGE III.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THAT EVENT, WE FIRMLY BELIEVE PREDATES RATIFICATION OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION, ON JUNE 21, 1788, AND THE RATIFICATION OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS THEREAFTER, ON DECEMBER 15, 1791.

THE DRAFTING OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE WAS OUR RALLYING CRY, LEADING TO OUR REVOLUTION AND THE OVERTHROW OF TYRANNY THROUGH THE PROWESS AND EFFORTS OF AMERICA’S FIRST PATRIOTS, AND BY THE DINT OF ARMS. AND NOW, ON THE EVE OF THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, WE AMERICANS SHOULD BE REMINDED OF THE IMPORTANCE OF THAT YEAR, 1776. ARE OUR NATION’S YOUTH ANY LONGER TAUGHT OF THAT MOMENTOUS YEAR?

Trump has reiterated and underscored the importance of this Election often. See, e.g., Donald Trump: 2024 election the ‘most important’ in history of United States (youtube.com)] He has pointed this out at a campaign event in Las Vegas, Nevada. Trump says Election Day is 'most important day in the history of our country at the Vegas rally - Las Vegas Sun News. He remarked on this during his speech at the Republican National Convention on July 19, 2024. Trump paints a familiar vision in his RNC speech, after recounting his brush with death: NPR. And, during a 20-minute speech at Mar-a-Lago on Super Tuesday, March 5, 2024, he said, “November 5 [2024] will be the most important day in U.S. history.” Trump says Nov. 5 will be the most important day in U.S. history | AP News.

And he has made this point most recently in his address to the Nation from Trump Tower in New York City just the other day, September 26, 2024. See Donald Trump’s full speech at Trump Tower in New York (Sept. 26, 2024) | wfaa.com as mentioned supra.

Left-wing commentators and reporters shrug off the remark as one more example of Trump’s use of superlatives for emphasis, or as an example of Trump’s predisposition toward embellishment, or exaggeration, or for excess, generally. But is it any one of those things, really? The answer is, “No.”

A declaration is either true or false. Exaggeration doesn’t make the statement one or the other. The factual event that the declaration refers to is determinative of truth or falsity. Emphasis that provides rhetorical flourish doesn’t make a declaration “truer” or “falser.” The declaration is simply “true”, or it is “false.”

Curiously, these same commentators don’t suggest that Trump has lied here, which amounts to a tacit acknowledgment that our 45th President simply conveyed nothing less than the Truth and emphasized the importance of the TRUTH EXPRESSED.

The fact remains that, now in 2024, as, then, back in 1776, we LIVE OR DIE as a Nation of TRULY FREE AND SOVEREIGN PEOPLE this November 5, 2024.

This coming Presidential election is of another order of magnitude to any election that has come before. For, this election, truly is our last chance to save our Free Constitutional Republic.

The forces that crush only need the next four years, commencing in January 2025, to complete the process they set in motion many years before and which moved rapidly ahead with Biden in the White House.

Consider the efficacy of Trump’s pronouncement from the standpoint of a further remark Trump has made—one that no commentator or reporter has made light of because they happen to make the same remark, as has Kamala Harris, herself.

The remark, recited somewhat differently in subsequent iterations, denotes two starkly different visions for the Country.

Some commentators and news reporters take this to mean different views on specific issues that include, for example, immigration, abortion, firearms, and the meaning of “American Democracy.” But these visions reflect something more basic and profound: the preservation of OR the unwinding of our Free Republic.

The idea of “Democracy” that Progressives and Marxists go on about ad nauseum hits at the crux of the difference between Trump’s vision for America and that of the varied interests, both powerful and secretive, that back Harris. See Harris and Trump Bet on Their Own Sharply Contrasting Views of America - The New York Times (nytimes.com) 

Trump extolls the principles of Republicanism as exemplified in the socio-political-economic doctrine of INDIVIDUALISM, upon which our Constitution rests, and through which the United States has, in the span of less than 200 years, become the most successful, prosperous, powerful, and flourishing Nation the world has ever seen.

The forces that represent and that fund the Democrat Party machine want to institute something much different from the America the Framers of our Constitution crafted. Because the aim of the Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxist Internationalists is so distinct from our Free Constitutional Republic, the construct they envision cannot be easily insinuated into our Nation without the public taking notice of the change. So, they don’t try to suggest that the change they seek to produce is nuanced, merely a matter of degree, rather than kind, of what the Founders of our Republic gave us. What is proposed is a paradigm shift away from what has existed since the American Revolution in 1776. To make the public amenable to that shift which amounts to nothing less than the dissolution of an Independent Sovereign Nation and Free Constitutional Republic, the public must change its perception of our Nation-State—must come to dislike it, even loathe it, and accept as something positive, a societal construct that is the polar opposite to that which the Founders gave us.

The powerful secretive interests that intend to destroy the fabric of a Nation constituted as a Free Republic adhere to a socio-political doctrine that the Founders of our Republic gave no consideration for as they found it repellant, and inconsistent with the pronouncements of the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that sprang from it, are grounded on principles that reflect the singular importance of the Individual. Freedom and Liberty are conceived from a personal context, not a collective context. As one would expect, the principles of Freedom and Liberty as embodied in the Declaration of Independence and in the U.S. Constitution—especially the Bill of Rights of the Constitution are framed through the socio-political and economic philosophy of INDIVIDUALISM.

The Antithesis of INDIVIDUALISM is a socio-political and economic philosophy called Collectivism.

The two doctrines are incompatible and cannot be reconciled.

Why this is and what “COLLECTIVISM” in America means is best understood and exemplified by the policies the Biden Administration has embraced—the effects of which have devastated this Country in many ways: Societally, in the broadest sense, and Politically; Economically and Financially; and militarily.

And this process is the result of a conscious, cold, calculated DESIGN. It cannot be explained away as the result of mere crass and caustic INCOMPETENCE and INEPTITUDE. Americans have seen:

• A POWERFUL FEDERAL GOVERNMENT THAT EXERTS CONTROL OVER THE LIVES OF AMERICANS AND INSTITUTES POLICIES SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO CAUSE AMERICANS TO DEPEND ON GOVERNMENT FOR SATISFACTION OF ALL WANTS AND NEEDS, THEREBY DESTROYING THE NOTION OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY,

• THE CONSTRUCTION AND USE OF PSEUDO DOGMAS TO CONFOUND AND DIVIDE THE POPULACE, SUCH AS “DEI,” “CRT,” TRANSGENDERISM, AND THE LIKE AND TO MOVE THE PUBLIC TOWARD RECOGNITION, ACCEPTANCE, OF AND A PREFERENCE FOR AN AMERICA GOVERNED BY THE PRINCIPLES AND PRECEPTS OF COLLECTIVISM.

• THE UTILZATION OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TO ENGINEER SOCIETAL REFORM, AND THE APPLICATION OF NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TECHNIQUES TO REDIRECT AND READJUST THE PUBLIC’S CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHE TOWARD CONFORMITY WITH, COMPLIANCE TO AND RELIANCE ON STATE DICTATES WITHOUT QUESTIONING THE REASONABLENESS OF THOSE DICTATES

• ATTACKS AND DENIGRATION OF SACRED SOCIETAL INSTITUTIONS, SUCH AS CHRISTIANITY, THE NUCLEAR FAMILY, MORALITY AS AN ABSOLUTE, AND THE CONCEPT OF AND IMPORTANCE OF NATURAL LAW AS CODIFIED IN THE NATION’S BILL OF RIGHTS—ALL OF WHICH ARE CONSONANT AND IMPLICIT IN THE DOCTRINE OF INDIVIDUALISM AND WHICH MUST THEREFORE BE ERASED

• THE FLAGRANT DISMANTLING OF OUR NATION’S GEOGRAPHICAL BORDERS, ENABLING AND ENCOURAGING MASS MIGRATION OF ILLEGAL ALIENS FROM ONE HUNDRED FIFTY COUNTRIES TO FLOOD INTO AND THROUGHOUT OUR COUNTRY, CAUSING SUBSTANTIAL DAMAGE TO OUR NATION’S INTERNAL SOCIAL FABRIC AND FINANCIAL SECURITY

• ERADICATION OF THE CONCEPT OF ‘INDEPENDENT, SOVEREIGN NATION-STATE’ AND THE WEAKENING AND EVENTUAL SHATTERING OF THE CONCEPT OF ‘CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES (AS THE IDEA OF ‘NATION’ IS TIED TO THE IDEA OF ‘CITIZEN’ AND BOTH ARE ANATHEMA TO COLLECTIVISM)

• THE EMERGENCE OF AND EMBRACE OF NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISM AND NEO-MARXISM ON THE WORLD STAGE AS A SOCIO-POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, AND CULTURAL PHENOMENON AND REALITY, REPLACING ALL PREVIOUS CONCEPTS, PHILOSOPHIES, AND PRINCIPLES TIED TO AMERICENTRIC CULTURE AND INSTITUTIONS

• THE DELIBERATE FAILURE OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT TO COMPLY WITH THE PRESCRIPTIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION, THE LAWS OF CONGRESS, AND THE RULINGS OF THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT (AND, INSTEAD, TO IRREVERENTLY PROCEED WITH AN AGENDA DAMAGING TO THE NATION—A TREACHERY OF THE HIGHEST ORDER AND A POMPOUS, CAVALIER ATTITUDE TOWARD THAT TREACHERY)

Democrats know most Americans do not naturally ascribe to COLLECTIVISM and to COLLECTIVIST impulses. Therefore, their thought processes have to be modified and readjusted to cohere to the principles and features of COLLECTIVISM.

Academicians who promote Social/Political Progressivism or outright Marxism know most Americans are ardently opposed to policy aims that are antithetical to the principles and tenets of INDIVIDUALISM upon which the U.S. CONSTITUTION is grounded, and upon which Americans’ ethical system is tied. and upon which our institutions are structured.

Democrats and their benefactors do little to discuss their errant policy aims directly and openly to the public even as they thrust alien concepts and policies on that public. They lie constantly and blatantly the public—presenting reprehensible policy aims that are antithetical to the prescriptions of the Articles of the Constitution, abhorrent to the exercise of Americans’ Natural Law Rights, and detrimental to the safety and well-being of the Country and its people—seemingly in a benign or positive light.

Their predisposition to lie often and flagrantly to the public about the negative impact of their AGENDA and POLICY AIMS is ITSELF indicative of COLLECTIVISM.

COLLECTIVISTS consider DECEPTION morally acceptable if it serves their agenda and helps them to achieve their goals.

THEY HOLD TO THE IDEA THE ENDS TRULY DO JUSTIFY ANY AND ALL MEANS TO ACCOMPLISH THEIR OBJECTIVES. LYING, CHEATING, STEALING, SILENCING/THREATENING ARE ALL PART OF THEIR ARSENAL TO ACHIEVE THEIR OBJECTIVES.

Given the propensity of COLLECTIVISTS to lie openly or to evade responding directly and honestly to a question about policy, one should not find it remarkable to hear an old Communist, Senator Bernie Sanders (who prefers to be referred to euphemistically as a “Social Democrat”) and the arrogant, irritating, frankly frightening and cold-hearted politician, Hillary Clinton, openly acknowledging that Kamala Harris must avoid mention of her Marxist-Progressive policy aims to secure electoral victory, lest the public be repulsed.

After she emerges victorious, she can proceed with the Globalist-Marxist Agenda to complete what the Biden-Harris Administration and the Obama Administration started: the destruction of the United States as a sovereign, independent Nation and Free Constitutional Republic. For, at that point it will be much too late for the public to cry “FOUL!” and demand redress.

But some Left-wing news sources, such as the USA Today Newspaper do acknowledge or, at least, make a pretense of acknowledging the Democrats political con game: What does Harris believe, really? Polls slip as voters demand answers (usatoday.com) See also SCNR Hillary Clinton Claims Harris Faces 'Double Standard' Over Policies | SCNR Are these newspapers so confident that Harris will win the election? If so, what do they know that the public doesn’t? Much of the Electorate isn’t fooled, but nonetheless would prefer to see a Harris/Walz victory even as that portion of the Electorate agrees with Trump/Vance over the important police issues: Economy, Inflation, Immigration, and Crime. Latest polls as of October 1, 2024, demonstrate a bizarre discrepancy between beliefs and actions—— Americans prefer the Trump/Vance policy aims and believe they are truthful about those aims and objectives when they discuss them, but many of those same Americans seem inclined to vote for the Harris/Walz ticket. Harris and Walz generally remain more popular than Trump and Vance. See the recent article in the “Independent.” This demonstrates the power of psychological conditioning. The Press—utilized as propaganda—can coax the public into acting in a manner at once inconsistent with their own beliefs, and contrary to their best interests and that of the Nation.

Now, as then, WE LIVE AS A NATION OF TRULY FREE AND SOVEREIGN PEOPLE IN ACCORD WITH THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM AS THE FRAMERS OF OUR NATION INTENDED, AS REFLECTED IN OUR CONSTITUTION, OR WE, AS SOVEREIGN MASTER OF GOVERNMENT, BECOME ITS SERVANT AND OUR FREE REPUBLIC DEVOLVES INTO BASE TOTALITARIANISM.

UNDERSTAND: WE ARE IN AN IDEOLOGICAL WAR!

This present ideological war is one fought without firearms and cannons, but it is a war just the same. It is one fought with words and oratory, and computers and algorithms. It is cyber-warfare and psychological warfare.

The final battle of this war is fought and, we hope, WON at the Ballot Box, where Americans have, in many states, have begun to vote.

As the orator, writer, and statesman, Frederick Douglas said, “A man’s right rests in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box.” ~Speech, 15 November 1867 as quoted in Robin Van Auken, Louis E. Hunsinger, “Williamsport: Boomtown on the Susquehanna” (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2003), 57 Frederick Douglass On The Three Boxes Of Civil Rights | The Heidelblog  

For the past four years, beginning with a stolen election in 2020, followed by a miscarriage of justice in the “Lawfare” directed against Donald Trump in 2024, and two horrific, unforgettable assassination attempts on Trump in the space of two months, in the lead-up to this year’s U.S. Presidential election, no one should take lightly the stakes of this election.

Two assassination attempts on Trump should, of themselves, be a wakeup call for all Americans.

If we do not win at the BALLOT BOX, that will leave us only the CARTRIDGE BOX. And no rational person would opt for the CARTRIDGE BOX over the BALLOT BOX, when our Country can be won handily AT THAT BALLOT BOX.

Using the rational mind the Divine Creator gave us, each of us should be able to perceive plainly the danger facing us as a Nation and turn away from anything that points to Tyranny.

Yes, the Tyrant’s forces constantly proclaim Donald Trump to be the Tyrant even though his words and actions proclaim something entirely different: THE DESIRE TO PROTECT AND PRESERVE OUR FREE REPUBLIC FROM ALL THREATS BOTH FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC.

It is they, THE FORCES THAT CRUSH, who screech loudest that “TRUMP IS THE TYRANT,” and that “TRUMP IS _______ [FILL IN THE BLANK OF YOUR FAVORITE FOREIGN DICTATOR PRESENT OR PAST: STALIN? HITLER? POL POT? KIM JONG UN? GAIUS CALIGULA? . . .]

Kamala Harris may hardly fit the bill as Tyrant, compared to those names cited. But Donald Trump certainly doesn’t fit the bill. Today, certainly, in the West, the concept of Tyrant—A TRUE TYRANT—is more expansive and complex, at least as applied to western countries, than was the case in the past.

Sheldon Wolin, who coined the phrase “INVERTED TOTALITARIANISM,” points out in a book he wrote titled, “Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism,” published on January 1, 2010, that the concepts of Despots and Despotism are seemingly more elusive, but no less real today than in the past. The modern Despot/Tyrant seen today isn’t one man or woman. It is generally many people operating secretly but in concert, DEFYING LAW and CONSTITUTION.

They are found in both the PUBLIC SECTOR/GOVERNMENT and in the PRIVATE SECTOR/BUSINESS and FINANCE. They manipulate the systems in which they operate illegally and unethically to affect change to their advantage, oblivious to the grave harm they do the countries and people in which they operate.

MOST RECENTLY—

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris represent the public faces of the INVERTED TOTALITARIAN influences that are destroying our Country from within.

Neither one has real power, not really. They simply, blithely do the bidding of those people and groups THAT DO wield REAL POWER.

Biden and Harris are terrible people—corruptible, corrupt, and corrupting, to be sure. They happily sold their Souls to the Devil a long time ago. They did it all for the illusion and trappings of power and for monetary wealth that they lust for.

Other American politicians who relish the trappings of power and who lust over acquisition of oak leaf crowns, in service to the TYRANT in return for monetary wealth, and self-aggrandizement, include Hillary Clinton (who is aiming for a position in a Harris Administration as she loves to be close to power or its trappings), Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Dick and Liz Cheney.

And there are many, many others in recent American History alone, for example, Henry Kissinger (Secretary of State and National Security Advisor), and Alan Greenspan (Chairman of the Federal Reserve). 

A landslide victory for Kamala Harris will seal our Nation’s fate forever. And it will not be a happy or glorious end for any American.

A landslide victory for Donald Trump, on the other hand, will inform treacherous politicians—Democrats and some Republicans, too—and those malevolent, malignant forces that support politicians who are intent on dooming our Country and our citizenry, that our Country and people are “OFF LIMITS” to them.

Both our Nation and its Citizenry are sacrosanct and inviolate. Neither one is to be auctioned off or cast aside.

Rarely does anyone have a second chance to make things right. Americans have that chance now.

This is our last chance to do so. And we have that chance now. And we must reiterate:

THE “BALLOT BOX” IS A MUCH BETTER WAY TO WIN BACK OUR COUNTRY FROM THE WRECK CREATED THESE PAST FOUR YEARS BY THE BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION, THAN IS THE PROSPECT OF POSSIBLY RELYING ON THE “CARTRIDGE BOX” TO ATTEMPT A REPAIR OF A LOST ELECTION AFTER THE FACT, WHEN THIS ELECTION NEED NOT BE LOST.

You Gun Owners who have not registered to vote and who, at this moment, have no intention to do so must not acquiesce to the false idea that Democrats will cheat and that there is nothing to be gained by casting a vote for Trump. That is foolish and false thinking.

Yes, powerful forces defeated us at the Ballot Box in 2020. They used a multitude of unethical and illegal means to do so.

They were, unfortunately, aided by many complacent, lackadaisical, or simply frightened Congressional Republicans. But that has changed. The forces that desire to achieve a knockout blow against us in November will have a tougher time cheating this time. They know it. That is why they are taking no chances now.

They are pulling out all the stops to maximize voter turnout on behalf of a tongue-tied, lackluster, mentally feeble Mannequin, Kamala Harris, that will do their bidding just as the senile, corrupt Joe Biden had done.

Biden no longer serves their purpose. They threw him away like a torn T-Shirt. He is disgruntled surely. But he made a fool of himself. He has no one to blame for that but himself. No one need be sorry for his sorry fate. The Democrats certainly are not. He willingly served as their instrument— severely damaging our Country—which was the intent all along.

Let him shuffle off to his fate. No one, other than his close family perhaps, will shed a tear for him when he is gone. He will not see his likeness carved on Mt. Rushmore. His name will be a footnote in history. Any research paper on him and his Administration will serve as a treatise of how a U.S. President must not behave.

Now these same Tyrants turn to another imposter. One, who, like her predecessor, cares nothing for the Country. This is readily apparent in her robotic mouthing of platitudes, clichés, bald-faced lies, and outright gibberish that a complicit Press makes a pretense of referring to as flowery oratory. She will in the end, suffer the same fate as Biden. But for us, Americans, her sad fate will matter little, for the damage to our Nation that she, as President would help to inflict on our Country and on us, the American people, will have been tragic and irreparable.

If we are to defeat these forces that intend to destroy us, we must beat them at their own game.

What more do you need to know about the importance of casting a vote for Donald Trump in this election?

Four years of life under the RINO George Bush and his VP Dick Cheney, and eight years under the thumb of the Apologist, Marxist Barack Obama and his VP Joe Biden, and four awful years of Joe Biden and his VP Kamala Harris should tell you exactly what you can expect during the tenure of Harris/Walz.

Some Americans say they know little to nothing of what Harris represents. That isn’t true. They should know, as most of us do, exactly what she and Walz represent and what will be wrought under their tenure.

You may think your life will be bearable under Harris/Walz. It will not. The forces that seek to destroy our Constitution, excise our Bill of Rights, and overthrow a Free Republic will waste no time in completing the process that began with Bush, that gathered steam under Biden, and that now plan to proceed in earnest, to complete that objective, and to do so rapidly. But that can only happen once those forces safely and securely ensconce Harris in office. These forces intend to shred the U.S. Constitution, not just amend it. They believe the Constitution has no redeeming features. See, e.g., the article in the Harvard Gazette, penned by two Government scholars that push the Socio-Political Progressive Agenda. They begin their essay with this:

The U.S. Constitution desperately needs updating, say Harvard government professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.

“We have a very, very old constitution; in fact, the oldest written constitution in the world,” notes Ziblatt, the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government. “It was written in a pre-democratic era. It hasn’t been amended much compared to other democracies. As a result, we have these institutions in place that most other democracies got rid of over the course of the 20th century.”

In their new book “Tyranny of the Minority,” the comparative political scientists argue that these antiquated institutions, including the Electoral College, have protected and enabled an increasingly extremist GOP, which keeps moving farther to the right despite losing the popular vote in all but one of the last eight presidential elections. The scholars also survey governments worldwide for examples of democratizing reforms. And they draw from history in underscoring the dangers of our constitutional stasis.

The Framers of our Constitution crafted the Electoral College to prevent a “TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY” on the individual. One might well wonder whether this PURPORTED WILL OF THE “MAJORITY” TRULY REFLECTS A COMMONALITY OF THOUGHT THAT DERIVES FROM DEEP SOUL-SEARCHING, OR IS NOT, INSTEAD, REALLY MANUFACTURED——THE PRODUCT OF A DEVIOUS GOVERNMENT THAT HAS THRUST IDEAS INTO THE PSYCHE OF AMERICANS TO LEAD THEM TO ACCEPT POLICY AIMS THAT ARE ANTITHETICAL TO THEIR OWN BEST INTERESTS. If the latter proposition is true, then one must conclude that these Americans ARE OBLIVIOUS TO the reality that THE PROPAGANDISTS, on behalf of the Tyrant, have SHORT-CIRCUITED AMERICANS’ RATIONAL THOUGHT PROCESSES. If that’s the case, then this seemingly “WILL OF THE MAJORITY” (the “WILL OF THE MOB”), IS AN ABJECT ILLUSION. THE WILL OF THE MAJORITY (THE MOBOCRACY), THEN, REFLECTS NOTHING MORE THAN THE WILL OF THE TYRANT PROJECTED ONTO THE PSYCHE OF THE MAJORITY THAT HAPPENS TO BELIEVE, ERRONEOUSLY, THAT THE WILL EXPRESSED EMANATES, IN THE FIRST INSTANCE, FROM EACH OF THEM, WHEN IT DOES NOT, AND NEVER DID.

THE TYRANT HAS SIMPLY IMPOSED ITS OWN WILL ON THE COLLECTIVE MIND.

The authors infer the U.S. Constitution is no longer relevant.

An Opinion Contributor to “The Hill” reaches the same conclusion. And there are many other scholars who agree with this assessment. But is the inference sound? We argue that it isn’t. These scholars who argue that our Constitution is no longer relevant fail to factor in a crucial premise. It is this: The U.S. Constitution is grounded on fundamental values—— values settled, unmodifiable, and eternal: FREEDOM, LIBERTY, THE INDOMITABILITY OF SPIRIT, AND THE SANCTITY AND INVIOLABILITY OF A PERSON’S SELFHOOD, among others. THE U.S. CONSTITUTION IS GROUNDED IN THESE VALUES—REFLECTING PERMANENT, ETERNAL, UNCONDITIONAL, AND INFLEXIBLE TRUTHS.

The ARTICLES of the U.S. CONSTITUTION, and the BILL OF RIGHTS, that followed, both ratified by the STATES, embody these values.

THE CONSTITUTION ESTABLISHES A FRAMEWORK FOR A SOCIETY—UNSEEN IN ANY OTHER SOCIETY EITHER BEFORE OR SINCE—THAT REFLECTS THESE TRUTHS, ORDAINED BY THE DIVINE CREATOR.

GOVERNMENT IS NOT A MORAL TRUTH. IT IS AT BEST A TEMPORARY, EMPIRICAL NECESSITY, GIVEN THE FLAWS INHERENT IN MAN. THE FRAMERS OF THE CONSTITUTION, SAW GOVERNMENT AS, AT BEST A NECESSARY EVIL——ITS POWERS, EXTRAORDINARY AS THEY ARE—MUST NEED BE VERY CAREFULLY CRAFTED, DEFINED, DEMARCATED, AND APPORTIONED AMONG THREE CO-EQUAL BRANCHES. BUT, IN ALL INSTANCES, IT IS TO BE UNDERSTOOD THAT THIS STRONG, CENTRALIZED GOVERNMENT IS NOT SOVEREIGN OVER THE PEOPLE. THE PEOPLE ARE SOVEREIGN OVER IT. THE GOVERNMENT EXISTS ONLY BY THE GRACE OF AND BY CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE.

SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY, THIS IDEA OF GOVERNMENT AS DE MINIMIS IN IMPORTANCE TO THE SOVEREIGN PEOPLE BECAME LOST.

Those scholars who write of a TYRANNY OF THE MINORITY— DEMONSTRATE THAT THEIR VIEW OF A U.S. CONSTITUTION NO LONGER RELEVANT TO THE TIMES—IS A HARBINGER OF A SOCIETY AND GOVERNMENT THAT ARE THE OBVERSE OF THAT FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC CREATED BY THE FRAMERS AND THAT HAS PROPELLED THE COUNTRY TO THE STATUS OF THE MOST PROSPEROUS AND PROMINENT, POWERFUL AND SUCCESSFUL COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, AND ALL IN THE SPAN OF LESS THAN TWO HUNDRED YEARS.

If some scholars view our Constitution as irrelevant, in need of mass revision or erasure and replacement, they give us a hint of their reason (or rationale) for that position.

GOVERNMENT HAS GROWN NOTICEABLY MORE POWERFUL OVER TIME AND IT MUST REMAIN SO. But the claim that this best serves the will of the majority is a myth. What is this WILL OF THE MAJORITY PRESUMENT TO BE? Is it that the majority of the American people happen to agree on what rights THE PEOPLE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO EXERCISE AND THOSE THAT THE PEOPLE SHOULD NO LONGER BE PERMITTED TO EXERCISE—WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AS THE DECISIVE ENFORCER?

How can an American know that THIS PURPORTED “WILL” OF THE PEOPLE IS TRULY THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE?

Are Americans to believe that each member of the MAJORITY happened to come to a decision of what action is RIGHT AND PROPER and what action is not? Is a Woman’s Right to ABORT HER BABY to be UNCONDITIONAL because the PRESS TELLS us this constitutes the WILL OF THE MAJORITY. Is it the WILL OF THE MAJORITY THAT AMERICANS SHOULD BE SILENCED AND CENSORED FOR EXPRESSING THEIR THOUGHTS IF THE MAJORITY IS REPULSED BY THOSE THOUGHTS AND THAT A PERSON SHOULD EVEN BE CRIMINALLY INDICTED FOR EXPRESSING “UNPOPULAR THOUGHTS?”

IF IT IS THE WILL OF THE MAJORITY TO CONSTRAIN ONE’S RIGHT TO BEAR FIREARMS THAT THE MAJORITY SAYS NO CIVILIAN SHOULD POSSESS OR IF IT IS THE WILL OF THE MAJORITY TO BAN CIVILIAN POSSESSION FO WEAPONRY ALL TOGETHER, IS THAT CONSISTENT WITH THE CONCEPT OF “NATURAL LAW RIGHTS?”

IF THE MAJORITY DENIES THE EXISTENCE OF NATURAL LAW RIGHTS, SHOULD THEY BE ABLE TO MODEL A NEW AMERICA MODELED ON THAT BELIEF? WHAT WOULD SUCH AN AMERICA LOOK LIKE? WOULD IT STILL BE ONE THAT CHERISHES THE IDEA OF FREEDOM AND LIBERTY?

ARE THOSE CONCEPTS TO GO BY THE BOARD AS EITHER RELATIVE IN MEANING OR ALTOGETHER MEANINGLESS? And there is a basic question here that must first be asked and answered: DOES SUCH WILL OF THE MAJORITY EVEN EXIST? IS THAT NOT SIMPLY A SOCIETAL CONSTRUCT BY GOVERNMENT THAT HAS USURPED THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE OVER GOVERNMENT, MAKING A PRETENSE OF SUBORDINATING ITSELF TO AND COMPLYING WITH THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE WHEN GOVERNMENT IS DOING NO SUCH THING? RATHER GOVERNMENT PRETENDS TO ACT IN ACCORD WITH THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE WHEN IT IS THE PEOPLE WHO ARE ACTING IN ACCORD WITH THE WILL OF GOVERNMENT. THE PRESS MANIPULATES THE PSYCHE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, “MANUFACTURING CONSENT” BY FEEDING SELECTIVE IDEAS TO THE PUBLIC THROUGH THE PRESS AND “THE MOB” (A MOBOCRACY OF ZOMBIES) HAS SIMPLY ACTED IN ACCORD WITH THE WILL OF THE POLICY MAKERS IN GOVERNMENT. THE PUBLIC IS THUS SEDUCED. ITS EXERCISE OF “WILL” IS MERE ILLUSION. IT IS THE WILL OF GOVERNMENT THAT IS ACTUALIZED. GOVERNMENT HAS MERELY INSERTED ITS OWN WILL IN THE PSYCHE OF THE PUBLIC.

SO, THEN, WHAT HAS OCCURRED IS PUBLIC COHERENCE WITH POLICY ORDAINED BY GOVERNMENT, UNDER THE GUISE THAT IT IS GOVERNMENT SIMPLY RESPONDING TO A PUBLIC “WILL OF THE MAJORITY” OUTCRY OVER “SPEECH” OR “GUNS” OR “WHAT PREGNANT WOMEN CAN DO OR NOT DO WITH THE BABIES CARRY WITHIN THEIR WOMB” OR THIS OR THAT. . . WHATEVER THE GOVERNMENT SEEKS AT THE MOMENT TO “TRIGGER” THE MOB ABOUT IN FURTHERANCE OF ITS OWN POLICY OBJECTIVES, IRRESPECTIVE OF ITS DUTIES UNDER THE CONSTITUTION OR UNDER THE LAWS OF CONGRESS OR UNDER U.S. SUPREME COURT RULINGS.

This raw, virulent attack on the U.S. Constitution, and coming as it does continuously and from a multitude of institutions—academia, the Press, and the Government too—is disquieting and should give all Americans who cherish their Natural Law Rights and the preservation of a Free Constitutional Republic, pause.

This concerted, disturbing attack on the U.S. Constitution has definitely concerned some Legal Scholars, to the point they felt compelled to respond in kind to the attack.

One legal scholar, Adam J. MacLeod, Adam J. MacLeod is Professor of Law at Faulkner University, Thomas Goode Jones School of Law and Research Fellow of the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy.

Adam MacLeod wrote an article titled, “The Thousands-Year Old Constitution,” published in “Public Discourse,” on October 2, 2018. In Part One of a two Part series, he made his concern about the attack on our Constitution, up front. He writes,

Many legal and political scholars think that the terms of the U.S. Constitution are now antiquated and obsolete. They think that our constitutional terms need to be updated and reinvented from time to time. They task federal judges, especially the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, with inventing new constitutional innovations to meet the ever-changing demands of a progressive society.

The Constitution is, in this view, what the judges say it is, and the judges must declare the terms of the Constitution anew according to the evolving moral awareness of America’s most sophisticated elites. An influential proponent of this view was the late Justice William Brennan. Its most famous proponents today are Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and, on certain issues, now-retired Justice Anthony Kennedy.

On this view, the Constitution is often referred to as a living constitution. Now thriving independently of the dead-hand control of the white men who wrote it, the Constitution produces new norms and transforms old institutions into new sources of liberty and self-actualization. But this is a false conception. The Constitution itself isn’t doing any of those things. Judges are doing those things in the name of the Constitution as they invent new constitutional terms and premises. A better name for this view is the Novelty Constitution.

The Novelty Constitution has obvious weaknesses. First, it is both undemocratic and unrepublican. The Novelty Constitution cuts down and pushes out the customary and statutory laws that the people have chosen to govern themselves and the institutions that mediate between people and governments. Less obviously, but just as significantly, the Novelty Constitution undermines the legitimacy of the very judges who are charged with inventing it. When judges invent the same law from which they derive their judgments, their judgments rest not in law but in the innovative minds of the judges themselves. The Novelty Constitution is thus legally arbitrary. The judges who invent new meanings for the Constitution can identify no reason why we should respect their judgments as lawful judgments. They give us only judicial fiat, sometimes covered in shadow by abstractions that emanate from penumbras of the Constitution and, sometimes, just Because I Said So.

In an op-ed by Jonathan Turley, Law Professor at George Washington University, titled, “The Counter-Constitutional Movement: The Assault on America’s Defining Principles,” published in the Wall Street Journal on September 24, 2024, and reposted on the author’s own website, “Res ipsa loquitur – The thing itself speaks,” the following day, Professor Turley expressed his deep concern over the assault on a major facet of and essential cornerstone of Freedom and Liberty—Free Speech. He pointed to politicians’ attack on the Constitution, but also that of legal scholars.

These law professors don’t simply express reservation over the Constitution, but disdain for it. They openly deride and malign both the Constitution and the High Court. Their attack slips into an emotional vituperative tirade.

Turley doesn’t mince words when describing this. He plainly sees such vehement, unbridled attacks on the U.S. Supreme Court and the Nation’s Constitution on the part of some in the legal community appalling.

Turley writes,

The attacks on the court are part of a growing counterconstitutional movement that began in higher education and seems recently to have reached a critical mass in the media and politics. The past few months have seen an explosion of books and articles laying out a new vision of “democracy” unconstrained by constitutional limits on majority power.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley law school, is author of “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States,” published last month. In a 2021 Los Angeles Times op-ed, he described conservative justices as “partisan hacks.”

In the New York Times, book critic Jennifer Szalai scoffs at what she calls “Constitution worship.” She writes: “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us; a growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.” She frets that by limiting the power of the majority, the Constitution “can end up fostering the widespread cynicism that helps authoritarianism grow.”

In a 2022 New York Times op-ed, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for liberals to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”

Others have railed against individual rights. In my new book on free speech, I discuss this movement against what many professors deride as “rights talk.” Barbara McQuade of the University of Michigan Law School has called free speech America’s “Achilles’ heel.”

In another Times op-ed, “The First Amendment Is Out of Control,” Columbia law professor Tim Wu, a former Biden White House aide, asserts that free speech “now mostly protects corporate interests” and threatens “essential jobs of the state, such as protecting national security and the safety and privacy of its citizens.”

George Washington University Law’s Mary Ann Franks complains that the First Amendment (and also the Second) is too “aggressively individualistic” and endangers “domestic tranquility” and “general welfare.”

Mainstream Democrats are listening to radical voices. “How much does the current structure benefit us?” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) said in 2021, explaining her support for a court-packing bill. “I don’t think it does.” Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said at the Democratic National Committee’s “LGBTQ+ Kickoff” that “we’ve got to reimagine” democracy “in a way that is more revolutionary than . . . that little piece of paper.” Both AOC and Ms. Robinson later spoke to the convention itself.

The Nation’s Elie Mystal calls the Constitution “trash” and urges the abolition of the U.S. Senate. Rosa Brooks of Georgetown Law School complains that Americans are “slaves” to the Constitution.

Without countermajoritarian protections and institutions, politics would be reduced to raw power. That’s what some have in mind. In an October 2020 interview, Harvard law professor Michael Klarman laid out a plan for Democrats should they win the White House and both congressional chambers. They would enact “democracy-entrenching legislation,” which would ensure that “the Republican Party will never win another election” unless it moved to the left. The problem: “The Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described, and that’s something the Democrats need to fix.”

Trashing the Constitution gives professors and pundits a license to violate norms.

Such unreserved attack on the Constitution—especially our BILL OF RIGHTS and on the U.S. SUPREME COURT, our THIRD BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT, operates, to our mind, as a barely disguised CALL TO ARMS— A NEO-MARXIST, NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST COUNTERREVOLUTION. The only thing needed to launch this COUNTERREVOLUTION is a formal renunciation of our FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, commencing with release of an “ANTI-DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.”

We first see this ANTI-DECLARATION In a series of executive orders—obviously previously prepared—that Biden signed during his first few days and weeks in Office.

The Biden-Harris Administration began to overturn President the majority of Trump’s policy achievements—achievements that centered around returning our Country to its roots—of strengthening the principles reflected in our DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE from TYRANNY.

The Trump Administration ran toward the Constitution. The Biden-Harris Administration ran away from it.

The raison d’êtra of the present Administration is directed to returning the agenda of the Bush and Obama Administrations: CONSOLIDATING POWER IN A SINGULAR, MAMMOTH ALL-POWERFUL FEDERAL GOVERNMENT—the Antithesis of what the U.S. CONSTITUTION has ordained.

THE HARRIS ADMINISTRATION INTENDS TO CONTINUE THAT AGENDA, RESULTING IN DE FACTO OR DE JURE ERASURE OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION—MARKING THE END OF OUR FREE REPUBLIC AND AN ABRUPT END TO THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE OVER GOVERNMENT.

If anyone should doubt this, consider Trump’s nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court. Those nominations reflected a return to the primacy of our Constitution, the Blueprint of a truly Free Constitutional Republic, and the sovereignty of our citizenry.

The Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxists would have none of that. And, having failed to oust Trump during his first term in Office, they machinated to turn the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election against him through using unethical and also patently illegal means. They achieved precisely what they wanted with the installation of a corrupt, weak, easily malleable, dementia-riddled puppet in the White House.

In four short years all of Trump’s achievements direct to redressing the many transgressions and violations of law and Constitution of Bush and Obama, of the previous eight years, were quickly undone by the Biden-Harris Administration.

The Neo-Marxists and Neoliberal Globalist empire builders will waste no time completing the process started in the previous Administration if Harris becomes U.S. President. The damage done to our Free Republic will be irreparable. There can be no return to our Free Republic. Her Administration will see to that.

THE BILL OF RIGHTS WILL OBLITERATED, COMMENCING WITH THE DISARMING OF THE U.S. CITIZENRY. DON’T THINK FOR A MOMENT THIS WON’T HAPPEN.

You, just as we, cherish our Natural Law Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Do you honestly believe Harris when she stated during the pretense of the debate with Trump, “Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We're not taking anybody’s guns away.” Oh, really?

They mean to do just that. She has made that abundantly clear back in 2019 and has recited her intentions many times since. They are GROUNDED IN HER “VALUES,” that she slyly said, “HAVE NOT CHANGED.”

Banning semiautomatic weapons will be her first order of business.

The Right of armed self-defense is essential to a person’s life and safety, especially during this era of violent, incessant crime enveloping our Country. The violent crime wave has intensified these past four years through the deliberate infusion of well over 20 million illegal aliens into our Country, many of whom are murderous, psychopathic gang members or psychotic rapists.

Trump has made clear that we must make this Election “Too big to rig.” Bing Videos 'Too big to rig': Trump aims for landslide victory in 2024 US Elections amid illegal migrants crisis (youtube.com)

This election is not in the bag for Harris (nor for that matter, for Trump) but if you believe the lie, that will make the lie true. Don’t listen to naysayers.

This election will be won or lost dependent on what you do or don’t do, not what the politicians and the pundits and the pollsters say.

Most Americans wish to preserve their Country as the framers of the Constitution intended, grounded in morality, belief in the Divine Creator, the importance of family, love of Country, and belief in themselves.

It is these things that have made us the envy of the world. No one likes what the Biden-Harris Administration has wrought.

And it is no wonder that Harris is told by her handlers to keep her mouth shut about her policy objectives—a continuation of the agenda of the past four years—to destabilize and destroy the Country and turn the reins to the Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxists—DECISIVELY.

A seditious Press conveys the idea to Trump supporters that the election is just a formality, that Harris has already won the election and that your vote for Trump is a fruitless, vacuous act. It isn’t. We beseech you to reject the lies perpetrated on you and perpetuated to urge you to doubt yourself and to doubt that Trump can win. He won once in 2016—proving that most Americans do in fact detest the repugnant belief system and aims of the Globalists and Marxists—and HE CAN DO SO AGAIN, DECISIVELY, in 2024.

He won in 2020, and it was stolen from him and, by extension, from you and from us too, but it will be much more difficult for the Democrat Party machine to cheat in 2024.

This Presidential Election can be a blowout for Trump but only if Americans—especially America’s gun owners—ALL OF US—make a concerted effort to vote AS ONE.

This election can go either way. And the forces that wish to crush our Republic, to create fear in our people, and to erase our Bill of Rights are both enraged and frightened that Trump can in fact pull off a win.

Powerful interests, operating both here at home and from afar, want Donald Trump gone. The word ‘gone’ is a euphemism. Let us be blunt.

The forces at work TO DESTROY Trump WANT Trump “DEAD”! All other attempts TO RID themselves of Trump HAVE FAILED, including:

• THE MUELLER INVESTIGATION AND RUSSIA HOAX,

• SABOTAGE OF TRUMP’S POLICIES AND INITIATIVES DURING HIS FIRST TERM IN OFFICE, DUE TO BETRAYAL, AND TREACHERY OF SOME STAFF WORKING IN TRUMP’S ADMINISTRATION,

• TWO RIDICULOUS IMPEACHMENTS

• CONSTANT VICIOUS, VIRULENT, AND VILE INVECTIVE, SLANDER AND LIBEL HURLED AGAINST TRUMP BY THE PRESS, SOCIAL MEDIA, ACADEMIA, HOLLYWOOD CELEBRITIES, AND SPORTS ICONS,

• THE DELIBERATE MISUSE OF THE LEGAL SYSTEM AGAINST TRUMP.

Everything thrown at Trump has failed to knock him out of contention. His resilience in the face of constant threats is incredible, his fortitude remarkable. And his “MAGA” support is massive and intense.

Only one tactic—the most horrific of all—remains to be utilized against Trump: ASSASSINATION. Once avoided by A SLEW OF MALIGNANT FORCES, given the horror of its effect on the citizenry—POSSIBLY RESULTING IN A CHAIN OF EVENTS THEY WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO CONTROL—have now turned to it because nothing else is left but the “ballot box” and this Election is not a surefire guarantee for success for the forces that desire to crush this Country and its people.

Sure, they are still using vote harvesting, and there is an effort afoot by the Biden-Harris Administration, commenced just a couple of months ago, to fast-track the naturalization process for upward of 500,000 illegals just before the election so that they can cast a ballot for Harris, and there is the outright use of illegal aliens casting votes for Harris. See remarks, infra. See, e.g., article in AP Half a million immigrants could eventually get US citizenship under a sweeping new plan from Biden | The Associated Press (ap.org)

Meanwhile, the DOJ, is attempting, to introduce “new evidence” against Donald Trump with only a few weeks to go before the Election. Trump Jan. 6 Case: Jack Smith Has Filed New Evidence—Here's Why It's Still Not Public (forbes.com)

This action is inconsistent with DOJ’s own rules that prohibit the DOJ from bringing action during an election cycle for the purpose of influencing an election. This so-called 60-Day Rule is found in Justice Manual § 9-85.500. Trump superseding indictment: What is the DOJ's 60-day rule? (lawandcrime.com). The DOJ is acting in defiance of its own Rule, anyway.

Meanwhile the Secret Service (USSS) and the FBI have told the public nothing substantive about the tactic to remove Trump from contention—TWICE!

They have even kept information from the U.S. Senate that is in the process of ascertaining just what the Secret Service knows about these two attempts. The unusual reticence of both the FBI and Secret Service in a matter involving the attempt to assassinate a U.S. Presidential candidate (and past U.S. President), and a man who may well become our next President, is thought-provoking.

Two assassination attempts inside of two months and a complacent and an incompetent or conspiratorial U.S. Secret Service leadership strongly suggest that powerful, shadowy elements indeed want Trump dead since all other tactics and strategies utilized for the last eight years to silence or remove Trump from contention have failed.

These powerful, ruthless forces know their agenda is lost if Trump becomes the next U.S. President serving a second term in office in 2025.

Trump’s death is the only way they can be certain that Trump will not secure the White House.

If Trump dies, our Free Constitutional Republic dies with him, and the agenda—the destruction of the United States—is then assured.

AND DON’T THINK THAT THE PRESENT ADMINISTRATION IS TONING DOWN THE RHETORIC. THE ADMINISTRATION DID NOT DO THAT AFTER THE FIRST ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT ON TRUMP, AND THEY HAVEN’T DONE SO AFTER THE SECOND ATTEMPT.

It is an odd—BUT CLEARLY INTENDED—choice of words when Biden’s Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, says “LET’S EXTINGUISH” TRUMP FOR GOOD.”

With the Biden-Harris Administration clearly wanting Trump GONE, and the Secret Service and FBI, adamantly refusing to say anything substantive about these assassination attempts, we can only conclude that another attempt on Trump’s life will likely occur in the weeks remaining before the election.

It is extremely disturbing that the USSS and FBI don’t even bother to proffer a reason for their reticence in discussing the attempted assassination of a man who has already served as U.S. President and is primed to serve as U.S. President a second time. Yet, they surely owe Congress and the Public an explanation.

Are the FBI and USSS leadership less than forthcoming because they are hiding something ominous? It is not difficult to surmise what that horrible truth might be.

If the leadership of the FBI and USSS are not themselves complicit in the attempts on Trump’s life, their insouciance demonstrates plain reckless disregard for Trump’s life and personal safety. That is bad enough.

You and I do not have control over this. All we can do is hope and pray that Trump escapes any further attempt on his life if such comes to pass.

BUT THERE IS SOMETHING THAT YOU GUN OWNERS ARE ABLE TO DO AND MUST DO: YOU CAN AND MUST REGISTER TO VOTE NOW AND YOU MUST THEN ACT. YOU MUST CAST YOUR VOTE FOR TRUMP! IF YOU HAVE NOT YET REGISTERED TO VOTE, DO SO AT ONCE! TIME IS SHORT!

You gun owners—all ten million of you (AND THERE ARE AT LEAST TEN MILLION OF YOU)—who have not yet registered to vote and who do not intend to vote in November can kiss your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms goodbye if you fail to vote.

THE BEST WAY TO STOP THE RAPE OF OUR COUNTRY IS ALSO THE SIMPLEST. IT IS BOTH YOUR RIGHT AS AN AMERICAN CITIZEN AND YOUR DUTY AS A PATRIOT.

VOTING IS THE SIMPLEST OF TASKS TO UNDERTAKE, A CHERISHED RIGHT, AND THE DUTY OF EVERY FREE MAN.

Trump has implored gun owners to cast their vote in the 2024 election to protect their right to keep and bear arms, and therefore to help him defeat Tyranny that is a hairbreadth away.

On August 5, 2024, Ammoland Shooting Sports News posted an Arbalest Quarrel article where we pointed out a curious fact about those TEN MILLION unregistered gun owners who, with the most consequential election facing our Republic since its founding, HAVE NOT troubled themselves to register to vote.

Apparently, these are among the same people who did not vote in the U.S. Presidential election of 2020.

Despite the insurmountable evidence of rampant cheating and unethical electoral machinations of Democrats in that 2020 U.S. Presidential election, the outcome was very close.

The results came down to a handful of States and a few thousand votes in each of those States.

“In a contest with historic turnout, President-elect Joe Biden topped President Trump by nearly 7 million votes, and 74 votes in the Electoral College, but his victory really was stitched together with narrow margins in a handful of states.” Biden Won By Narrow Margins In Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin : NPR

The popular vote counts for little. It is our Nation’s electoral college that determines who wins a U.S. Presidential election. This explains why the Democrats want to get rid of the Electoral College in favor of use of raw numbers only. Doing so would undermine the importance of the majority of States, most of them found the middle of the Country. By extension, Elimination of the Electoral College undermines the votes of Americans residing in those States. Use of raw numbers in lieu of the Electoral College works to the Democrats’ benefit.

Dismantling the Electoral College in favor of using the popular vote alone to decide the election tends to favor Democrats since, traditionally, there are more of them in the Electorate than Republicans.

And Democrats want more, many more. That explains why the Party wishes to do away with the Electoral College. See, e.g. the March 11, 2024, article by the political scholar, Victor Davis Hanson, published in the Chicago Tribune.

This desire for a bigger favorable headcount explains the Biden-Harris policy of actively, avidly encouraging, and even assisting millions of illegal aliens to enter our Country illegally. It also explains the Congressional effort to create Statehood status for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. They want to solidify a new voter base that will benefit them for all time.

Fortunately, the Framers of our Constitution realized the flaw in the idea of implementing a voting structure resting on a direct popular vote.

Recognizing the problem, they crafted the Electoral College to even out the disparity of large urban areas always deciding elections, creating a perpetual Mobocracy controlled by powerful Oligarchs. The smaller States with small rural populations could never fairly contend with that.

The Electoral College enhances fairness in our Federal Elections because States with small populations are not shut out of contention, notwithstanding that these States do have fewer electoral votes than States like New York and California which have large populations.

Consider:

In Pennsylvania 515,277-gun owners presently are not registered to vote. In the 2020 election Biden won Pennsylvania by 81,660 votes.

How many Pennsylvania gun owners withheld their vote from Trump in the 2020 election? Was it the same 515,277 voters who were not registered to vote in that previous Presidential election and who did not take part in the election. The Number of Electoral Votes: 20.

In Michigan 370,619 gun owners presently are not registered to vote. In the 2020 election Biden won Michigan by 154,880 votes.

How many Michigan gun owners withheld their vote from Trump in the 2020 election? Was it the same 370,619 voters who were not registered to vote in that previous Presidential election? The Number of Electoral Votes: 16

In Nevada 59,173 gun owners presently are not registered to vote. In the 2020 election Biden won Nevada by 33,596 votes.

How many Nevada gun owners withheld their vote from Trump in the 2020 election? Was it the same 33,596 voters who were not registered to vote in that 2020 Presidential election? The Number of Electoral Votes: 6

In Georgia 350,897 gun owners presently are not registered to vote. In the 2020 election Biden won Georgia by a mere 12,670 votes.

How many Georgia gun owners withheld their vote from Trump in the 2020 election? Was it the same 350,897 voters who were not registered to vote in that 2020 Presidential election? The Number of Electoral Votes: 16

In Arizona 133,094 gun owners presently are not registered to vote. In the 2020 election Biden won Arizona by a mere 10,457 votes.

How many Arizona gun owners withheld their vote from Trump in the 2020 election? Was it the same 133,094 voters who were not registered to vote in that 2020 Presidential election? The Number of Electoral Votes: 11

In Wisconsin 338,884 gun owners presently are not registered to vote. In the 2020 election Biden won Wisconsin by 20,682 votes.

How many Wisconsin gun owners withheld their vote from Trump in the 2020 election? Was it the same 338,884 voters who were not registered to vote in that 2020 Presidential election? Number of Electoral Votes: 10

In the 2020 Matchup, the Press says that Biden beat Trump by 7 million votes (assuming that all votes were legitimately cast). That was the raw tally.  2020 Presidential General Election Results (uselectionatlas.org).

This would suggest that, on raw total of votes cast, Biden beat Trump handily. Yet, that raw total count loses significance when Americans consider that the number of voters isn’t spread out uniformly across the Country.

The majority of those votes for Biden came from large urban areas in two States: California and New York. No surprise, there.

But ITS the Electoral College that determines who wins an election. On that score, Biden beat Trump narrowly—306 to Trump’s 232. It was 74 Electoral votes that decided the election in favor of Biden—NOT SEVEN MILLION MORE VOTES CAST FOR BIDEN, RATHER THAN TRUMP (AGAIN ASSUMING THOSE SEVEN MILLION VOTES CAST WERE VOTES TRULY CAST FOR BIDEN AND NOT TRUMP AS THE MACHINES TALLIED THE RESULTS AND ASSUMING THAT THOSE PEOPLE WHO CAST BALLOTS WERE CITIZENS AND WERE NOT UNDER DISABILITY DUE, FOR EXAMPLE TO AGE (LESS THAN 18 YEARS OLD) AND WERE NOT CONVICTED OF A FELONY (WHERE THE FELON HAD NOT RECEIVED A RELIEF FROM DISABILITY ORDER THAT WAS ISSUED BY A COURT OF COMPETENT JURISDICTION)).

See Biden’s 306 Electoral College Votes Make His Victory Official - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Why is this discussion important? For this reason——

HAD GUN OWNERS TROUBLED THEMSELVES TO VOTE IN THE AFORESAID SIX SWING TATES, DONALD TRUMP WOULD HAVE GARNERED 311 ELECTORAL VOTES TO BIDEN’S 227. HE WOULD HAVE WON. HE, TRUMP, NOT BIDEN, WOULD BE IN OFFICE WITH TRUMP HIS SECOND TERM AS U.S. PRESIDENT IN JANUARY 2021, AND THE NATION AND THE WORLD, TOO, WOULD HAVE BEEN SPARED THE HORROR THAT TRANSPIRED UNDER BIDEN AND HARRIS REGIME: THE U.S. BORDERS WOULD BE SECURED; EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE EAST WOULD HAVE BEEN SPARED THE DEVASTATION OF WARS; AMERICAN WOMEN AND YOUNG CHILDREN WHO ARE NOW DEAD OR SERIOUSLY INJURED, PSYCHOLOGICALLY AND PHYSICALLY, AS A RESULT OF VICIOUS ATTACKS COMMITTED BY ILLEGAL ALIEN MANIACS, WOULD BE ALIVE AND WHOLE; THE ECONOMY WOULD BE THRIVING RATHER THAN COLLAPSING; INFLATION WOULD BE KEPT IN CHECK; LUDICROUS FABRICATED DOGMAS POSTULATULATING THAT GENDER, MALE AND FEMALE, ARE MERELY STATES OF MIND, NOT BIOLOGICAL ABSOLUTES, AND THAT THE NATION IS STRUCTURALLY FLAWED, CONSISTING OF TWO MAJOR CLASSES, GROUNDED ON RACE, THE WHITE OPPRESOR CLASS AND BLACK OPPRESSED CLASS, AND THAT OPPORTUNITY AND ADVANCEMENT IN WORK SHOULD BE PREDICATED ON PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES OF PEOPLE, AND NOT ON MERIT, EXPERIENCE, AND ABILITY; THE NATION WOULD BE ENERGY INDEPENDENT RATHER THAN DEPENDENT ON FOREIGN RESOURCES; AND THE COUNTRY WOULD EXTOLL ITS HISTORY, HERITAGE, CULTURE, ETHOS, AND JUDEO-CHRISTIAN ETHIC, RATHER THAN DENIGRATING AND APOLOGIZING FOR IT.

ALL THE PROBLEMS THAT AROSE AND MUSHROOMED AND BROUGHT AMERICANS, THE NATION, AND THE WORLD, TO THIS SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS UNDER THE BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION AND THOSE POWERFUL RUTHLESS FORCES DICTATING RUINOUS POLICY FOR THE NATION, WOULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED—IF AMERICANS, ESPECIALLY TEN MILLION AMERICAN GUN OWNERS HAD BOTHERED TO CAST A BALLOT FOR DONALD TRUMP ON ELECTION DAY IN THE PREVIOUS U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CYCLE. BUT THAT DID NOT HAPPENED. AND THE NATION AND THE WORLD SUFFERED CALAMITY THAT IS ONLY WORSENING EACH DAY.

Even with Democrat Party machinations in 2020, a massive turnout of Gun owner votes for Trump in those 2020 Swing States, would have amounted, on a popular count, with a result, as Trump accurately said, “TO BIG TO RIG.” That turnout for Trump would have been sufficient to negate the votes Biden had garnered from the major urban areas and through whatever unlawful votes cast by illegal aliens.

Gun owners should take their cue from this and not presume their vote doesn’t count. IT DOES! AND IT LIKELY WOULD HAVE SEEN NOT BIDEN, BUT TRUMP IN THE WHITE HOUSE IN JANUARY 2021 if those unregistered gun owners had only registered and voted for Trump in the U.S. Presidential Election of 2020.

Note: Trump DID win the swing State of North Carolina in 2020, as he had done in 2016 (no question about that) and, until recently, he was the favorite to win North Carolina in 2024. Now, North Carolina is very much in play.

The Democrats WANT North Carolina.

THE PROBLEM PRESENTED BY MILLIONS OF ILLEGAL ALIENS IN OUR COUNTRY FROM THE STANDPOINT OF MAINTAINING THE INTEGRITY OF OUR FEDERAL ELECTIONS

The problem posed by ILLEGAL ALIENS CASTING VOTES IN THE U.S. GENERAL ELECTION and such seemingly LEGAL VOTES cast by newly naturalized ILLEGAL ALIENS DO POSE A PROBLEM FOR THE FAIRNESS OF A 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION BUT WOULD SUCH CHEATING SUFFICE TO ENSURE A VICTORY FOR THE DEMOCRATS?

LET’S LOOK AT THIS.

DO ILLEGAL ALIENS CONSTITUTE A RISK TO THE INTEGRITY OF THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM IN 2024?

According to a study published by the website, “Just Facts” Study: 10% to 27% of Non-Citizens Are Illegally Registered to Vote – Just Facts, between 2 million and 5 million illegal aliens are illegally registered to vote. “These figures are potentially high enough to overturn the will of the American people in major elections, including congressional seats and the presidency.”

IS THAT INFERENCE TRUE?

Well, even if 5 million illegal aliens registered to vote and do vote in 2024 and if we add to that, the half million illegal aliens who were or are soon to be made citizens by Joe Biden, that amounts roughly only to half the number of 10 million (or more) currently unregistered American gun owners who, as citizens, ARE LEGALLY ENTITLED TO VOTE if they just troubled themselves to register to vote and followed that up by casting their vote for Trump.

It is therefore imperative that the 10 million unregistered American gun owners immediately register to vote and make it a point to cast their ballot for Donald Trump in the upcoming election. Even if a handful of those 10 million plus gun owners would cast a vote for Harris rather than for Trump, that paltry number would pale in significance to the millions who would vote for Trump.

Moreover, if there are a substantial number of gun owners who do intend to vote for Harris, it is likely they are presently registered to vote and have already taken part in early voting for Harris or they intend to vote for her on or before Election Day and do not, therefore, count among the 10 million unregistered Gun Owners who are not at present registered to vote and who would cast a vote for Trump.

The Democrat Party Machine is proactive in ensuring high voter turnout in Federal Elections, unlike the Republican Party although that has changed after the disastrous Chairman of the RNC, Ronna McDaniel, gaveled in the Party for the last time in March 2024. The reins have since been turned over to North Carolina GOP Chair Michael Whatley and Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as Republican National Committee Co-Chair.

BUT WHY DO SO MANY GUN OWNERS DISDAIN THEIR RIGHT AND DUTY, AS CITIZENS, TO VOTE?

Is the casualness of many gun owners to vote grounded on the belief the polls are notoriously wrong, so they can rest easy? That was true enough in 2016, when Trump pulled out a victory that likely surprised even him.

It certainly surprised, even shocked, most pollsters and pundits and millions of Hillary Clinton supporters.

The Democrat Party machine took steps, legal buy unethical, illegal, and quasi-legal, to prevent that seeming anomaly from occurring again. The Democrat Party machine manipulated, the 2020 U.S. Presidential election to ensure a victory for their puppet, Biden, not a particularly popular candidate who, even at that time, was riddled with dementia, which explains why his campaign kept him under wraps before the election, using the pretext of COVID as an excuse to explain why Biden would only make a few appearances—and those few were primarily at his home and all were all very carefully scripted.

Democrats also used the COVID Pandemic as a pretext to change State laws throughout the Country—through illegal means (i.e., through the state courts or state administrative offices). But under Article I, Section 4, Clause 1, only a state legislature has the legal authority to prescribe the times, places, and manner of holding Federal elections in the state. See explanation in the Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute.

Thus, the Democratic Party set the stage, months before the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, for tens of millions of people to vote-by-mail, inviting Electoral Fraud on a massive scale, as there were few of any checks in place to prevent tampering of ballots. Democrats also crafted and implemented the tactic of vote-harvesting.

Unverified, unchecked, absentee ballot voting, together with the mechanism of ballot-harvesting, and the use of private party (proprietary) voting machines for tallying votes (without any backup check to ensure the accuracy of the tallying) set the stage for significant voter fraud to occur—ensuring a Democrat Party victory.

The Democrat Party machinery cannot continue, this cavalier gamesmanship in 2024. The Party can’t use the pretext of COVID to allow alternative forms of voting, allowing for voter fraud to occur on a massive scale, as likely occurred in 2020. So, Democrats have devised other schemes to maximize their chances of ensconcing Harris in the Executive Suite.

Democrats are relying on massive advertising campaign that their massive war chest made possible——to mislead the Electorate, encouraging gullible Americans to cast their ballot for Harris. And it doesn’t stop there.

Apart from trying to encourage a large voter turnout through a comprehensive “Get Out the Vote Drive” for Harris, the Democratic Party machine is attempting to encourage Trump supporters to refrain from voting in the upcoming Election. That won’t be hard to accomplish if many supporters of Trump, those 10 million plus gun owners, are predisposed to refrain from voting anyway, presuming, falsely, that casting a vote for Trump isn’t worth their trouble because he won’t win the election even with their vote. We already explained, supra, the myth underlying that notion.

Democrats have attempted to convey to the Electorate that the 2024 U.S. Presidential election is a foregone conclusion. To support that inference, they rely on whatever polls seem to work to their advantage to suggest that the coming election amounts to a mere formality.

IT ISN’T.

At best any given poll (even if scientifically valid) is but an isolated snapshot—a projection at a particular moment in time of a sliver of the Electorate polled. It means little. Yet Democrats use the Press to launch a media blitz to suggest that Harris is favored to win the election. That is false. But if the lie does keep a person from casting a vote for Trump who otherwise would have voted, then the lie serves its purpose.

But, how accurate, really, are even the most well-established polls? A Politico report suggests that, because Donald Trump tends, traditionally, to poll less strongly than the actual election bears out, a statistical tie or even a small deficit for Trump tends to suggest, from the 2016 Election and even from the resulting 2020 Swing State counts in the Trump-Biden contest, that Trump may be doing better, nationally and in the swing states, than Harris is doing, than recent polls may present, especially when juxtaposed with polls in the previous two contests.

“Trump is a president whose support has been notoriously difficult for pollsters to survey.” This quote comes from an article in Politico published on September 8, 2020, two months before the November 2020 U.S. Presidential election. The 8 states where 2020 will be won or lost: A POLITICO deep dive - POLITICO.

Politico was mindful of how wrong the pollsters were in predicting a Trump victory in 2016. Most pollsters predicted a blowout win for Hillary Clinton.

Even in 2020, and with all the cheating, the ultimate results were much closer than predicted by the polls. How much manipulation of the votes did the Democrat Party machine have to wring out to ensure that Biden would emerge the victor?

A tight election, then, which this Election is shaping up to be by the established pollsters (and this finding has remained constant for several weeks) favors Trump.

Recent polls conducted after the Democratic Party leaders and the puppet-masters unceremoniously dropped Biden in the trash bin after concluding he had become more liability than asset to them, now proclaim the matchup between Trump and Harris to be as tight as a drum. And that point is probably closer to the truth. What they fail to mention is that, had the Democrats stuck with Biden, he might, at this point, be doing better than Harris, as Harris has an abysmal track record with men and, more particularly, with the rank-and-file members of unions, unlike Biden.

And the bumps Harris had derived from the Democrat Party Convention and, subsequently, after the inane ABC Trump-Harris debate have done nothing for her. The Debate itself was a setup from the get-go, a carefully orchestrated ploy to make Harris look like a worthy competitor in a face-to-face matchup with Trump. The two candidates are in statistical tie if one gives credence to the polls at all.

Concerning that ludicrous Harris-Trump debate, it was a setup from the get-go. The debate was a carefully orchestrated ploy to make Harris look like a worthy competitor in a face-to-face matchup with Trump.

Trump fell headlong for the ruse. This so-called debate was one more tactic to chip away at Trump’s prospect for victory, but the public has a short memory, and the debate, such as it was, had no staying power in the mind of the Electorate.

The puppet-masters are certainly aware of this, and they are mindful of the struggle in trying to make Kamala Harris look “Presidential” when she lacks the bearing, and character, and the native intelligence and the strength of will, to serve as President of the United States—especially in the President’s role as Commander-in-Chief.

Harris’ image-makers are certainly aware of Harris’ personal flaws, and they are mindful of the faultiness of the polls when factoring how Trump is doing at any moment in time. They are working to offset what may be a Trump lead over Harris that the polls do not and cannot accurately factor in.

As pointed out above, the major tactic of Democrats is to keep Trump supporters at home during this election cycle even as Democrats frenetically urge Harris supporters, and those independents on the fence, who would rather refrain from voting, to register to vote and to vote early if their states permit early voting, and to cast their ballot for Harris.

Leftist websites and publications are exhorting unregistered gun owners to remain unregistered as is their natural bent, anyway.

How do we know this? Consider, for example, the dubious pronouncement of FactCheck.org that proclaims Trump is wrong in asserting that Gun Owners tend not to vote.

It may well be most Gun Owners DO vote, as FactCheck.org recites, but it DOESN’T follow logically that ALL gun owners vote, since 10 million plus gun owners are not registered to vote in 2024 (a fact that “FactCheck.org” doesn’t deny or even address). It is therefore reasonable to infer that a failure to register to vote by a significant number of Gun owners will likely cost Trump the election.

This is what the propagandists are relying on—the hope that these 10 million plus gun owners refrain from voting—reciting the tiresome line that their vote won’t mean much, and relying on the idea (with some validity), that Democrats will cheat anyway, so they might as well just stay home, clutch their guns and hope that Harris and the Tyrant puppet-masters won’t come after their firearms. Well, they will!

It is patently ridiculous for a Gun Owner to refrain from voting based on the false claim that his or her vote is futile.

A gun owner’s failure to vote DOES MEAN that his or her vote WON’T count, BUT PRECISELY BECAUSE THAT PERSON NEVER CASTS HIS VOTE.

THE OBVIOUS RESPONSE IS, THEN: CAST YOUR VOTE. IF YOU CAST IT, THE VOTE COUNTS! IF YOU DON’T CAST YOUR VOTE, IT WON’T. SIMPLE LOGIC.

The second excuse given for failing to register is that since Democrats had used the pretext of COVID to enable mass mail-in voting along with vote harvesting which enabled massive fraud to occur in 2020, there is nothing to suggest they won’t work the same angle in 2024 and that casting a vote for Trump is ultimately a fruitless endeavor. This excuse, too, is lame.

True, there was likely massive voter fraud in 2020 that served to place an incompetent, corrupt, and senile puppet in the White House.

This evident fraud helps explain why Democrats and a complicit Press incessantly, even frantically, argue that there was no fraud—that all such claims have been debunked.

This concerted, frantic effort to cajole the American public to believe the narrative of an absence of rampant cheating and the incessant attempt to silence or ridicule anyone who provides reasonable arguments to suggest otherwise only serves to draw more attention to the idea that there was rampant fraud in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, after all.

Moreover, if Press claims of massive voter fraud in 2020 were debunked, then who debunked the claims, how were those claims debunked, and when were the claims debunked?

How were claims of massive fraud debunked in the face of substantial, concrete, verifiable allegations of such fraud that Courts around the Country refused even to entertain? And, why did so many courts around the Country routinely dismiss sound allegations of fraud? To this day, all these questions go unanswered. The Press considers the questions themselves taboo.

Further, why were these persistent, pertinent questions regarding claims of fraud never investigated by the Press? And it is noteworthy, that a comprehensive investigation by the DOJ never occurred. Nothing was said by William Barr, AG, at the time, beyond his terse, unsupported comment that the DOJ had found no evidence of massive fraud. Barr refrained from providing the public with any particulars.

Given all this, many supporters of Trump are justifiably concerned about a resurgence of Democrat Party fraud in the 2024 Election.

The RNC is well aware of this and has instituted measures that will make electoral fraud efforts much less likely to succeed in 2024.

Democrats, themselves, are, accordingly less inclined to engage in overt, audacious attempts to commit electoral fraud that they undertook in 2020, and as the RNC is sensitive to the possibility of massive fraud occurrences through inclusion of millions of illegal votes in the mix, the DNC is on notice that the RNC will be watching this election very closely. For example, spotters will be on the lookout for illegal aliens casting ballots. Democrats will be less emboldened to engage in cheating with the RNC closely observing the election process unfold, especially in the swing states.

In any event, Democrats, in control of the Press and social media, feel confident they can influence the small percentage of undecided voters to cast a ballot for Harris, rather than for Trump. But that, too, can be a false hope.

Harris doesn’t come across well. The public is aware of this. Anyone who hasn’t already made up their mind will be more sensitive to what Harris actually says, if she says anything meaningful at all in the weeks ahead leading up to the Election.

Is there any other reason that many Gun Owners are disinclined to register to vote. Part of that disinclination may be due to a misconception concerning the notion of responsibility.

The act of voting is not something the Government forces on a person. Voting may reasonably be perceived as an aspect of the right of free speech. A person is engaging in speech when deciding whom to vote for and casting his or her ballot.

An American is of course, free to vote as he wishes or to refrain from voting at all, just as a person may choose to possess a firearm or not.

Yet, for some gun owners, they see the act of registering to vote and casting a ballot as a kind of infringement on their right to act or to refrain to act as they wish. They see the act of voting as a peculiarly Government activity imposed on the public. It isn’t but that may be the perception that many gun owners—ten million—may have inculcated.

Thus, notwithstanding the risk of a Trump loss in a close election occurring because ten million gun owners chose to withhold their vote, they nonetheless see vindication in their act of being true to themselves as engaging in quiet rebellion against the Government. But this act of eschewing voting for Trump operates as a rebellion against oneself.

Trump acknowledged the propensity of many gun owners to view voting as a Government-sanctioned activity, and that, for them, is reason enough to refrain from voting. See this expressly during his address to attendees of the NRA Convention in Dallas, in May 2024.

Gun Owners are strong proponents of the PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM that is the bedrock of American culture and the foundational structure of our Constitution upon which a Free Constitutional Republic exists and persists through time.

The PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM is the exact opposite of that of COLLECTIVISM—the dominant mechanism that underpins Marxist countries. In those countries the needs, desires, and wishes of the INDIVIDUAL take a backseat to society, “THE COLLECTIVE,” as dictated by government. In such a society the worth of an individual is de minimis and must give way to the will of the masses.

In such a society, everyone loses. The individual is reduced in status to that of an inconsequential cog in a massive wheel. The average person becomes no more significant than the life of an ant in a massive ant colony or a worker bee slaving away in a hive. Life becomes essentially meaningless, and that meaninglessness is reflected in the dire state of one’s sense of self-worth and of the sad state of one’s life and living conditions in the Collective.

Clearly, where government treats a person like a pawn, that government also is suspicious of THAT PAWN exercising independent thought and conduct. Deviation of thought and behavior from the norm is not tolerated in a Despotic State. The Government controls the masses by inducing conformity in thought and behavior and, in so doing, constrains rebellion.

A society grounded on Collectivism would not permit the populace to keep and bear arms, for such an idea is anathema to the notion of a person as potentially dangerous to a highly structured society, conceived and operated like an ant colony or beehive.

Owning a gun entails one’s adherence to the principles of INDIVIDUALISM which is tied to the exercise of freedom of thought and conduct and to the maxim that one makes of his life as he will, subject to no constraint other than that he recognize the right of others to do the same and that he take no action that would do harm to another person as long as the other person does no harm to him.

With great freedom comes also great responsibility. Countries founded on and governed by Collectivism (Despotism) don’t expect and don’t desire and don’t encourage responsibility in their populace. What they demand from the populace is blind obedience to government edict. Personal Responsibility isn’t required where there is an absence of Freedom. And, in a Country operating under the principles, precepts, and tenets of Collectivism, there is neither freedom nor responsibility. Such concepts are anathema to Collectivism.

Unfortunately, too many American Gun Owners fail to see the complementariness of Freedom and Responsibility. They see voting as akin to a government dictate, which they eschew. BUT VOTING IN FEDERAL ELECTION ISN’T A GOVERNMENT DICTATE.

To vote in an election is to exercise one’s right to dissent. The act of voting is a corollary of the right to speak one’s mind. In fact, the right to keep and bear arms is, as well, an act of speaking one’s mind. AND THIS IS HOW THE GUN OWNER SHOULD SEE THE ACT OF CASTING A BALLOT.

The Gun Owner tells the Federal Government that he is to be left alone—and that the Government is forbidden to meddle in his personal affairs.

Donald Trump, as a successful businessman, understands that desire full well. His life and personal success in business is a testament to his commitment to the principles, precepts and tenets of INDIVIDUALISM.

But the powerful, ruthless forces orchestrating the Harris-Walz campaign reject the philosophy of INDIVIDUALISM. They intend to obliterate that philosophy, which means they intend to obliterate our Constitution, and they intend to eradicate any notion of the sanctity of natural law rights upon which a Free Constitutional Republic depends for its very existence.

To reiterate: Voting, as a species of the right of Free Speech, IS NOT A DICTATE THRUST ON A PERSON BY GOVERNMENT, BUT A SACRED RIGHT, ILLUSTRATIVE OF INDEPENDENCE OF THOUGHT. Voting one’s mind is a species of Free Speech, an act of FREE WILL, and as such, it is a NATURAL LAW RIGHT.

It is a sacred right bestowed on man by the Divine Creator, but it is also a sacred duty and responsibility to be undertaken by all Americans as citizens, sovereign master over Government.

To forego one’s duty to vote in a Free Republic is to disparage all other natural law rights, including the right to armed self-defense to prevent the introduction of the very thing—tyranny —that would make civilian possession of firearms impossible.

You, gun owners, can make up whatever excuse you wish for not voting in 2024. But, if you fail to do so, and Kamala Harris becomes the new President-Stooge of the Democrats know this: You have forfeited the Country both for yourself and for every Patriot in this Country who has done his or her part to vote Trump into office to serve his second term that was wrongly denied him in the Presidential Election of 2020. We have a chance now—A SECOND CHANCE—to right a wrong previously committed against Trump and the Electorate.

We can now set things aright but only if you make it a point to cast a ballot for Donald Trump. And that means you must first register to vote if you have not already done so. There is still time to register, but you must do so quickly.

As we said, supra, and reiterate, some states require that a citizen who can vote must register to do so within 30 days of a coming election. That means there is scarcely more than a week to do so. See Vote.org to determine the time limit for registering to vote in your State: Voter Registration Deadlines - Vote.org 

If you, the American gun owner, fail to register to vote and to cast your vote for Trump, don’t blame fate and evil forces for what befalls you, your Country, and your fellow Countrymen for your failure to act, whether due to your own laziness, or a lackadaisical attitude, or to thoughts of what Democrats will do or not do to enhance their chances of victory in November, or to your misguided attitude toward the nature of the act of voting in this U.S. Presidential election that will determine whether or not we are still a Free Republic after November 5, 2024.

Voting is a surprisingly simple thing to do, and of the utmost importance in safeguarding the Republic, and avoiding a costly civil war in terms of blood and societal upheaval.

Better to win at the ballot box than on the battlefield. And don’t have any illusion. The Bill of Rights is on the chopping block if Harris is installed in the Oval Office. A new chassis to replace an old jalopy does not change anything in terms of what to expect. If Democrats prevail in November, they will immediately undertake steps to ensure that they never lose an election again, as their control over the machinery of the Federal Government and of the States and over the lives of Americans will be so complete, that casting a ballot truly will be reduced to a meaningless act.

In some ways Harris is worse than Biden.

Biden was swayed by Progressives due to his emotional weakness and ever worsening senility during these past three (almost four) years he sat in the Oval Office. But he wasn’t a Progressive or Marxist by nature or conviction. His political life began as a “Dixiecrat,” and it is to those Dixiecrats that he owes his comfortable life in Government.

Kamala Harris, on the other hand, is an obdurate Marxist, through and through. From her upbringing by Marxists to her earliest days in politics, up to the present, she is as Radical a Leftist as the most extreme Leftists in the Country. There is nothing about our Country’s Constitution, or history, or heritage that she cherishes, and the Biden-Harris policies to date are but a foretaste of what to expect if she becomes U.S. President.

Harris is the specially selected replacement for Biden that the Neoliberal Globalist and Neo-Marxist Cultist elites have appointed and Annointed—their “Manchurian Candidate”— whom they are banking on to assist them in achieving their ultimate aim—the vanquishing of a Free Republic and the subjugation of the American people. With her at the helm, Americans will see the collapse of every vestige of our Free Constitutional Republic and the construction of a Neo-Marxist and Neoliberal Globalist Order in America, grounded solely on the principles, precepts, and tenets of COLLECTIVISM.

THE CHOICE BETWEEN HARRIS FOR U.S. PRESIDENT OR TRUMP FOR U.S. PRSIDENT COULD NOT BE STARKER.

Often, in the past decades, the election of a Democrat or Republican to the Office of President did not translate into drastic disruption in the lives of the citizenry. Sure, there were philosophical differences between the two Parties, but on policy, “America First,” tended to be the mantra of both.

President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, firmly believed in a strong, robust America as a bulwark against the Communist menace posed by Russia, in its incarnation as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). In that regard, he was as fervent a defender of a powerful independent, sovereign United States, and Free Constitutional Republic as President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, who preceded him.

But as President, both became acutely aware of the danger posed by a Shadow Government taking shape around them over which they, as the principal representative of the Electorate, had little control. Eisenhower called this imposing monolithic structure, “The Military, Industrial, Congressional Complex.”

Congress did not much care for the negative connotation of the association when Eisenhower first used the phrase, and strongly urged him to delete the term ‘Congressional’ and he did so as inclusion of the word ‘Congressional’ is missing in the phrase as apparent in his farewell address to the Nation.

He wasn’t the first to allude to the threat posed by what is today referred to as the “Bureaucratic Deep State” or the “Administrative State,” but Americans can aptly ascribe that moment when Eisenhower first referred to a sinister, powerful Shadow Government operating in the midst of THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT to a point in time when the thought that the U.S. was threatened by an enemy much closer to them than the USSR and potentially more dangerous.

Eisenhower’s address marked a tipping point for America and Americans marking our Nation’s clear, inexorable slide toward all-encompassing Tyranny. He delivered his farewell address to the Nation on January 17, 1961.

Kennedy saw this too and his attempt to warn the public of the ominous threat posed by this secretive Governmental structure resting beneath the façade of an open Government sealed his fate. The true power residing in Government did not answer to the American people and did not abide by the dictates of the U.S. Constitution.

Years later, when Ronald Reagan served our Country as U.S. President, he too saw clearly the danger posed by the false god of secularism taking root in our Country and across the world. SECULARISM is a feature of COLLECTIVISM. This is the overt manifestation of THE SHADOW GOVERNMENT taking over the Country.

On March 8, 1983, President Reagan delivered his famous “Evil Empire” speech to the National Association of Evangelicals. See Reagan, "Evil Empire," Speech Text - Voices of Democracy (umd.edu).

At the time, “Congress was debating a resolution in support of a ‘nuclear freeze,’ a doctrine supported by the Soviet Union that would have prevented the deployment of U.S. cruise and Pershing II Missiles in Europe. On March 7, President Reagan had met in the White House with a group of conservative leaders and pro-defense elected officials on the subject of the nuclear freeze. The President advised that his Administration was stalwart in opposition to the nuclear freeze [adding that] a freeze now would be a very dangerous fraud, for that is merely the illusion of peace.”

President Reagan said in part,

I believe we shall rise to the challenge. I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written. I believe this because the source of our strength in the quest for human freedom is not material, but spiritual. And because it knows no limitation, it must terrify and ultimately triumph over those who would enslave their fellow man. For in the words of Isaiah: ‘He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increased strength But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary.’

Yes, change your world. One of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, said, ‘We have it within our power to begin the world over again.’ We can do it, doing together what no one church could do by itself.”

A person may be led to believe the point of the speech was directed primarily if not solely to the threat posed by “the Soviets’ Global desires.” That is untrue.

Americans could contain the Soviets. Reagan referenced the threat posed by the Soviet Union as a springboard to a much graver threat to our Nation and one much closer to home: a failure of faith that would augur our Nation’s demise and as the leader of the Free World, that failure of faith here would augur the end of Western Civilization. Forty years later, Reagan’s deep concerns have come home to roost.

Reagan said this,

While America’s military strength is important, let me add here that I’ve always maintained that the struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith.

Whittaker Chambers, the man whose own religious conversion made him a witness to one of the terrible traumas of our time, the Hiss-Chambers case, wrote that the crisis of the Western World exists to the degree in which the West is indifferent to God, the degree to which it collaborates in communism’s attempt to make man stand alone without God. And then he said, for Marxism-Leninism is actually the second oldest faith, first proclaimed in the Garden of Eden with the words of temptation, ‘Ye shall be as gods.’

The Western world can answer this challenge, he wrote, ‘but only provided that its faith in God and the freedom He enjoins is as great as communism’s faith in Man.’

What Reagan was getting at is that secularism is a bankrupt notion.

Man becomes a mere vacuous, soulless shell if he places his faith in a temporal, transient, manmade contrivance. Reagan emphasized the point by relating an experience he had years before.

Reagan said,

A number of years ago, I heard a young father, a very prominent young man in the entertainment world, addressing a tremendous gathering in California. It was during the time of the Cold War, and communism and our own way of life were very much on people’s minds. And he was speaking to that subject. And suddenly, though, I heard him saying, ‘I love my little girls more than anything — —’ “And I said to myself, “Oh, no, don’t. You can’t — don’t say that.”

“But I had underestimated him. He went on: ‘I would rather see my little girls die now, still believing in God, than have them grow up under communism and one day die no longer believing in God.’”

Jump forward to the present day.

The deeply troubling concern that Reagan expressed in his 1983 address to the National Association of Evangelicals transcended the danger posed by the Soviet Union, the nature of which was only partially, and minimally, the basis for the speech.

Reagan knew that America could effectively handle foreign threats, even one emanating from a major nuclear power such as the Soviet Union.

The United States could contain that threat—one plain and widely known. But it was the threat borne at home—a crisis of faith—that Reagan knew to be the most dangerous and debilitating threat facing America.

This crisis of faith had slowly, inexorably infiltrated and infected the Country at a primal level, calling into question, for many Americans at the time, something potentially more devastating to the survival of the United States as a Free Republic than a powerful foreign adversary.

Reagan would be shocked to see what has befallen our Country, but he probably wouldn’t be surprised because he had warned that, if Americans lose their faith in a higher power, we are doomed. Forty years after Reagan’s address, we find our Nation on the cusp of dissolution because the Executive Branch of Government under the Biden-Harris Administration, along with Democrats in Congress and more than a few Republicans, and a seditious Press, and many Academicians who have capitulated to the false god of secularism—and a SHADOW GOVERNMENT PERCOLATING QUIETLY THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE OF OUR COUNTRY—WORKING WITH THEIR LIKE KIND IN BRUSSELS AND IN THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH COUNTRIES TO ERECT A VAST NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIST-NEO-MARXIST WORLD EMPIRE, ENSLAVING THE AMERICAN CITIZENRY NO LESS THAN THE POPULATIONS OF ALL OTHER WESTERN NATIONS.

The virulent, vile Marxists’ attack on Christianity, on the Judeo-Christian Ethic, on our Nation’s history, heritage, culture and ethos, on our institutions, on our Natural Law Rights, on the very fabric of our society is not something that simply happened ostensibly through no fault of anyone.

TO THE CONTRARY, WHAT AMERICANS ARE WITNESSING TODAY IS THE PRODUCT OF COLD, CALCULATED, CALLOUS DESIGN.

The forces of NEOLIBERAL GLOBALISM and NEO-MARXISM espouse a new orthodoxy of faith based on SECULARISM—FAITH IN GOVERNMENT—THE STATE, THE SOLE PROVIDER OF ALL WANTS AND NEEDS. AND WHAT THE STATE GIVETH TO A PERSON, IT CAN JUST AS EASILY TAKETH AWAY. THE UNDERLYING SOCIO-POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY TOUCHES ALL ASPECTS OF LIFE, ALL INSTITUTIONS. IT DISAVOWS THE SANCTITY AND INVIOLABILITY OF THE HUMAN SOUL AND SPIRIT. IT DEMAND OBEDIENCE TO ITS DICTATES.

Our Nation has survived and thrived and has become the most powerful and successful Country on Earth through the application of the philosophy of INDIVIDUALISM—the foundation of our Constitution blueprint of our Nation—finds manifestation in the political, social, economic, cultural and ethical fabric of our society. INDIVIDUALISM IS A POWERFUL PHILOSOPHY—THE CONCRETE FOUNDATION OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION—UPON WHICH A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, THE ONLY KIND LIKE IT IN THE WORLD, EXISTS.

The Cult of Marxism and of the various shades of Marxism (Socialism and Communism) is an aspect of a different, and totally alien philosophy—COLLECTIVISM—one the Founders of our Nation would have rejected out-of-hand, if they gave it any thought at all.

COLLECTIVISM eschews and scoffs at the very notion of a SINGULAR, TRANSCENDANT, OMNIPOTENT, OMNISCIENT, OMNIPRESENT, MORALLY PERFECT, IMMORTAL—WITHOUT BEGINNING OR END—SUPREMELY BENEVOLENT, LOVING GOD.

COLLECTIVISTS SCOFF AT THE IDEA BECAUSE FAITH IN A TRANSCENDENT BEING OVER WHOM THEY HAVE NO POWER CONFLICTS WITH THE FALSE-GOD THEY THRUST ON THE PUBLIC—THE SECULAR GOD OF GOVERNMENT.

The devastation occurring to our Nation and our people these past four years is a product of the BURGEONING of THIS false, imperfect, self-destructive principle in our Nation—THE GOD OF SECULARISM that MARXISM AND GLOBALISM and all the other offshoots of SECULARISM embraces.

The desire of these Marxist-Secularist Collectivists is to tear down our Nation and introduce the STATE as GOD as the SOLE, INDIVISIBLE, SUPREME BEING. Since this State has no firm core, and is evil incarnate, it cannot create. It can only destroy.

The author, Pastor and Republican Congressman from the State of Georgia (2015-2023), Jody Hice, wrote a book about the fact that Americans and America stand at a precipice. The Book “Sacred Trust,” published in 2024, discusses the danger Americans face by adhering to the Cult of Marxism, placing faith in the TEMPORAL, TRANSIENT GOD OF SECULARISM.

Co-Founder of the Arbalest Quarrel, Stephen L. D’Andrilli, prepared a book review of Jody Hice’s book. On June 24, 2024, AQ posted the review on our site. Interested readers can view it there.

On July 1, 2024, Ammoland Shooting Sports News reposted Stephen’s review of “Sacred Trust”. Interested readers are also invited to read the book review there as well.

A photograph of the Book jacket cover appears in the article as posted in Ammoland.

Hice writes of what Americans presently face—its imminent demise—resulting from MAN forsaking faith in the ONE, TRUE GOD.

It is the same thing that Reagan prophesied would happen if Americans disavow their faith in the DIVINE CREATOR— constructing a false, paltry simulacrum to worship in the DIVINE CREATOR’S stead.

Americans had one chance to prevent the horror that now engulfs us when, with the help of illegal and unethical machinations of the Democrats and their benefactors, ensconced a frail, weak, corrupt, dementia-riddled man in the Oval Office—Joe Biden.

This sad sack of a man who, was promised the trappings of power and meager status, and a few silver coins, willingly sold out his Country, his Countrymen, and the Constitution he had sworn an Oath to serve. But he made a poor bargain with the Devil. And ultimately that Devil—the Democrats and their benefactors—tired of him and decided perfunctorily to rid themselves of him. Those to whom he really swore allegiance and whom he served, unceremoniously threw him in the trash bin.

In attempting to save face—telling the public he relinquished a run for a second term in Office, for the good of the Country—he belied his prior assertion, when he made clear that he intended to run for a second term unless God Almighty told him to stand down. He may have meant the assertion true at the time he made it. Even so, the fact that he passed on a run for a second term, only further undermined the veracity of anything he said either before or what he may happen to say after. As a weak man he folded. And he subsequently looked even more foolish: appearing like a petulant child, besotted, flustered, imbecilic, stammering even more.

Those to whom he swore allegiance turned against him when they found him to be of no further value to them.

Joe Biden will go down in American history as a thoroughly contemptible creature. Having sorely injured the Country and its people, he gravely injured his most precious possession—his own Soul. Best that no one hears anything more from him.

Americans can see well that, at some level, Biden realizes he has gained nothing of substance and lost everything of value. This contemptuous wretch is already living in Hell, months or a few years before the physical shell itself gives out.

That brings us to Biden’s understudy, Kamala Harris. She has made her own pact with the Devil. Learning nothing from what has befallen Biden, she is blind to what lays in front of her once the puppet-masters tire of her, which will happen. And that will happen sooner or later—sooner and at once—if she loses out to Trump.

But all she sees now is her own time in the sun, believing, like Biden, that this MEAGER “JOY” will last indefinitely. It won’t. She is as empty a vessel as Biden and has learned nothing from what has befallen him.

Smug yet stupid, easily dazzled by the bauble of false power she will never wield, most Americans see through the veneer she projects. Kamala Harris is a sinkhole of corruption. A poor con-job that the image makers fashion to act in a C-rated film that won’t be shown in any theater for it is destined for cable.

Those Americans who intend to vote for this thin cardboard cutout deserve what they get. They are as vacuous as she is, believing the lies the camera projects on the screen, wishing there is more to this flimsy paper figurine than there is.

Most Americans see through this slapstick comedy presented to them. But, unless they actively vote for one man who has demonstrated through four years in Office that he can deliver positive results and has delivered positive results for the Country and will do so again. Trump deserves this second term, one in which he strengthens the Country, the Constitution, and the prosperity of the American people.

In his First Term, Trump presented the Country with a solid economy, a world without major wars, he made clear to our foes that America is a force to be reckoned with.

Trump secured our borders, defended our Constitution, upheld our Nation’s Natural Law Rights, returned our Country to energy independence, and demonstrated courage and fortitude in the face of incessant vile personal attacks against him by the Press, Academia, Democrats, a few Republicans, and other sordid elements.

Trump is a man who not only projects strength but exhibits strength in spades. He is a person whom a soldier on the battlefield would know has his back. Can that be said of Joe Biden or Kamala Harris? Just ask yourself that question. And answer the question for yourself, honestly.

THIS IS OUR LAST CHANCE TO RESTORE AND PRESERVE OUR REPUBLIC PEACEABLY AND AVOID THE HORROR OF TYRANNY THAT COMMENCED WITH BIDEN AND WILL BE CEMENTED IN A HARRIS ADMINISTRATION. “

With a stroke of the pen, Harris, at the bidding of her masters, will outlaw civilian citizen ownership and possession of semiautomatic weapons during her first several days in Office. That event will mark the commencement of TYRANNY WRIT LARGE IN THE UNITED STATES.

The banning of all other weapons will follow in short order.

All other natural law rights codified in the Bill of Rights will eventually cease to exist.

Harris will institute martial law without a second thought to destroy the sovereignty of the American people over Government and the NATURAL LAW RIGHTS that enable the American people to exercise their authority over Government.

Without an armed citizenry, there will be nothing to prevent the wholesale excision of all other fundamental rights. And, at that point our Free Constitutional Republic will cease to be. There will be no resurrection. What is dead will be dead forever.

DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO OUR COUNTRY OR TO YOU. THIS IS OUR SECOND BUT LAST OPPORTUNITY TO SECURE A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC FOR OURSELVES, OUR COUNTRYMEN, OUR CHILDREN, GRAND-CHILDREN, AND CHILDREN YET TO BE.

REGISTER TO VOTE IF YOU HAVE NOT ALREADY DONE SO. AND DO SO AT ONCE AND MAKE IT A POINT TO VOTE FOR DONALD TRUMP!

REGISTERING TO VOTE AND CASTING A BALLOT IS EASY!

THESE ARE SIMPLE TASKS BUT ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE! 

VOTE AND GET YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS TO VOTE. DON’T DELAY!

THE DEMOCRATS AND THOSE BEHIND THE SCENES SUPPORTING THEM INTEND TO MAKE THIS ELECTION A LANDSLIDE FOR HARRIS.

LET’S MAKE IT A LANDSLIDE—BUT ONE FOR TRUMP AND FOR FREEDOM, NOT FOR HARRIS AND TYRANNY!

THE FATE OF OUR COUNTRY—OF YOUR COUNTRY—IS IN ALL OUR HANDS!

_____________________________________

*(NOTE TO THE READER: THIS IS THE FINAL UPDATED (OCTOBER 4, 2024) VERSION OF THE ESSAY/BULLETIN TO GUN OWNERS, POSTED ORIGINALLY ON SEPTEMBER 28, 2024.

AQ HAS CORRECTED TYPOS AND GRAMMATICAL ERRORS AND HAS MADE SEVERAL REVISIONS, EXPANDING ON AND CLARIFYING MANY POINTS.

THE NYC MAYOR AND NYC POLICE COMMISSIONER SUGGEST THAT “NON-STATE RESIDENTS” CAN ACQUIRE A CONCEALED CARRY HANDGUN LICENSE. BUT IS THAT TRUE?

In early August 2024, the New York City Police Department notified the public of the adoption of new rules regarding “non-state-resident” applications for NYC concealed carry licenses.

What prompted “THE NOTICE OF ADOPTION OF  EMERGENCY RULES RELATING TO NON-RESIDENT APPLICANTS FOR CARRY LICENSES AND TO PURCHASE AND REGISTRATION AUTHORIZATIONS”?

NOTE: This “EMERGENCY” “NOTICE” was promulgated two-plus years after the publication of the Bruen decision. So, then, what was the nature of the present emergency?

“THE NOTICE” was signed and approved by New York City Mayor Eric Adams and by Police Commissioner Edward A. Caban.

The third paragraph of the first page of the lengthy seven-page document, sets forth, that,

Current NYPD rules do not contain formal procedures for applicants who do not reside in New York State, are not principally employed with New York City, and do not have their principal place of business in New York City. A process by which non-State residents can apply for a carry license will ensure that the City is able to properly regulate handgun ownership within NYC while also complying with the Bruen decision. This emergency rule sets forth standards to submit and evaluate applications for carry licenses made by these individuals, hereinafter called ‘non-resident’ applicants.

This response assumes something that few people have contemplated. But the assumption begs the question of whether the New York State Handgun Law, codified in the Penal Code under Section 400.00 et seq., allows for or bars out-of-state residents from procuring a valid NYC concealed handgun carry license.

Few people had bothered to give this matter any thought. Why should they? After all, City and State handgun licensing authorities throughout New York have routinely, even perfunctorily, for decades, denied the issuance of concealed handgun carry licenses to most New York residents who sought to secure one.

Very few people could acquire them because New York State law gave City and State handgun licensing officials near absolute discretion in issuing these licenses under the “PROPER CAUSE” standard.

And, if residents of New York have had such a difficult time securing a New York City concealed handgun carry license because they could not establish, to the satisfaction of the licensing official, an “extraordinary need” for issuance of a license to carry a handgun in public for self-defense, under the extremely stringent “PROPER CAUSE” standard, how on earth could an “out-of-state resident” ever hope to carry that burden of proof? Quite simply, that person could not.

But, in Bruen, in late June 2022, the High Court struck down New York’s “PROPER CAUSE” standard.

Henceforth, an applicant for a New York concealed handgun carry license would not have to establish an extraordinary need or any need for the issuance of such a license.

The Court made plain that the right of armed self-defense doesn’t stop at the doorstep of one’s home. So, a showing of one’s need to carry a handgun for self-defense is redundant, even nonsensical, because the right of armed self-defense is self-evident, true—a fundamental, unalienable, eternal right that does not and ought not require a person to formulate a reason for desiring to preserve his life and well-being.

It would be just a matter of time before out-of-state residents en masse clamor for a coveted NYC concealed handgun carry license.

But can they? Understand that there is nothing in the Bruen decision that suggests an out-of-state resident is on the same footing as a New York resident. So, if an out-of-state resident can at least theoretically acquire a New York State-issued or New York City-issued concealed handgun carry license, New York law must provide for that.

Historically, New York’s unabashed antipathy and animosity toward civilian ownership and possession of handguns is well-known and reflected not only in the Handgun Law of the Consolidated Laws of New York but throughout those Consolidated Laws.

However, a peculiar quirk in the State Handgun Law may suggest that an out-of-state resident can feasibly acquire a concealed handgun carry license.

The New York City Government must be assuming this, which explains why the Mayor and Police Commissioner are now scrambling to effectively deal with what they expect to be a large and steady influx of such applications from out-of-state residents.

But, what does the New York State Handgun Law say about non-state residents? It says nothing. The expression ‘non-state resident’ is neither expressly mentioned nor alluded to. The applicable section only refers to residents of New York.

Section 400.00 (3)(a) of the State’s handgun law says this:

Applications shall be made and renewed, in the case of a license to carry or possess a pistol or revolver, or to purchase or take possession of a semiautomatic rifle to the licensing officer in the city or county, as the case may be, where the applicant resides, is principally employed or has his or her principal place of business as merchant or storekeeper. . . .”

This statutory section, as explained in New York case law, was created to prevent a New York Resident, businessman, or employee from engaging in “forum shopping” ostensibly to enhance his chances of securing a handgun carry license in the State's most lenient locales.

Presumably, the State Legislature had not considered that an out-of-state resident might perceive Section 400.00 (3)(a) as a loophole, allowing him to obtain a coveted New York City handgun carry license. But that possibility raises another and perplexing question——

WHAT DOES THE EXPRESSION ‘OUT-OF-STATE RESIDENT’ MEAN?

The language of Section 400.00 (3)(a) does not expressly prohibit an out-of-state resident from attempting to procure a valid New York City handgun carry license, true. However, it is also true the statute’s silence does not logically imply that the New York State Legislature intended for Section 400.00 (3)(a) to include “out-of-state” residents, either.

More to the point, the language of Section 400.00 (3)(a) does not suggest a concern for non-state residents who do not have a connection with New York. Section 400.00 (3)(a) presumes a connection with the State.

This important distinction is blatantly ignored in the City’s August 2024 “NOTICE.” The City Government seems to be incurious of or altogether oblivious to the necessity for understanding the meaning of Section 400.00 (3)(a) apropos of ‘non-state resident.’

Since Section 400.00 (3)(a) is silent on this matter, is this to mean an out-of-state resident (WITH NO visible, genuine, if only minimal, legal contact with New York can), under a liberal interpretation of Section 400.00 (3)(a), still apply for a State or New York City concealed handgun carry license with a reasonable expectation of securing one, assuming that person isn’t under disability?

If so, this is an unintended consequence of poorly drafted handgun legislation that the Albany legislators never remedied through amendment. And it now comes back to haunt City and State Government officials.

Only a handful of New York cases allude to a potential problem for anti-Second Amendment New York Legislators and Government officials—a problem that would grow acute for them after Bruen.

Plainly, the New York State Legislature and New York City and State officials never anticipated a case like Bruen coming down the pike, even as Heller and McDonald should have alerted them to that eventuality.

To understand the Government’s blasé attitude, it helps to look at New York case law.

However, the few cases we have encountered all involve applicants who have some connection with New York, and that fact is a crucial factor in determining the disposition of all these cases.

The seminal case on the subject is Osterweil vs. Bartlett, 21 N.Y.3d 580; 999 N.E.2d 516; 977 N.Y.S.2d 153 (N.Y. Ct. App. 2013). The question on review was this:

“Is an applicant who owns a part-time residence in New York but makes his permanent domicile elsewhere eligible for a New York handgun license in the city or county where his part-time residence is located?”

The Court’s opinion is insightful in resolving the matter here, and we quote pertinent portions of it at length.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, by certified question, asks us to decide whether an applicant who owns a part-time residence in New York but makes his permanent domicile elsewhere is eligible for a New York handgun license in the city or county where his part-time residence is located. We answer the certified question in the affirmative, on the basis of the relevant statute. As we explain below, it is therefore unnecessary for us to decide the constitutional issues raised by appellant.

Appellant Alfred G. Osterweil, a resident of Summit, New York, a town in Schoharie County, applied on May 21, 2008 for a New York State pistol/revolver license pursuant to Penal Law § 400.00. The Schoharie County Sheriff initiated the required background investigations (see Penal Law § 400.00 [4]). On June 25, in the course of correspondence on an unrelated matter, Osterweil informed the Sheriff that he had bought a home in Louisiana and that he intended to ‘make that state my primary residence,’ while keeping ‘a vacation property here in Schoharie County.’ Osterweil asked whether he would still be eligible for a handgun license.

Osterweil's letter raised an important question. Penal Law § 400.00 (3) (a) provides that

‘[a]pplications shall be made and renewed, in the case of a license to carry or possess a pistol or revolver, to the licensing officer in the city or county, as the case may be, where the applicant resides, is principally employed or has his principal place of business as merchant or storekeeper’ (emphasis added).

At the heart of Osterweil's query is the distinction between residence and domicile. Generally, establishing residence ‘turns on whether [one] has a significant connection with some locality in the State as the result of living there for some length of time during the course of a year’ (Antone v General Motors Corp., Buick Motor Div., 64 NY2d 20, 30, 473 NE2d 742, 484 NYS2d 514 [1984]), whereas ‘[e]stablishment of a domicile in a [place] generally requires a physical presence in the [place] and an intention to make the [place] a permanent home’ (id. at 28), i.e., intent to remain there for the foreseeable future. It follows that an individual can have more than one residence, but only one domicile (see id.). Osterweil maintained a residence in Schoharie County, but could no longer claim it as his domicile. Therefore, if a New York domicile is required for a handgun license, the statute makes him ineligible.

The Sheriff forwarded Osterweil's application and query to respondent George R. Bartlett, III, Schoharie County Court Judge and also the county's licensing officer. Osterweil submitted an affidavit to Judge Bartlett, stating that he and his wife continued to play a role in ‘social, political and community affairs’ in Summit, even though they no longer made their primary residence there. He also cited the United States Supreme Court's recent decision in District of Columbia v Heller (554 US 570, 128 S Ct 2783, 171 L Ed 2d 637 [2008]), in which the Supreme Court struck down a District of Columbia law banning the possession of handguns in the home, holding that ‘the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home’ is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment (id. at 636; see also McDonald v Chicago, 561 US 742, 130 S Ct 3020, 177 L Ed 2d 894 [2010]). 

In May 2009, Judge Bartlett denied Osterweil's application for a handgun license, relying on Penal Law § 400.00 (3) (a) and an Appellate Division decision, Matter of Mahoney v Lewis (199 AD2d 734, 605 NYS2d 168 [3d Dept 1993]), which held that ‘as used in this statute the term residence is equivalent to domicile’ (id. at 735). Judge Bartlett further ruled that such a domicile requirement was constitutional, under Heller, as a lawful regulatory measure.”

‘We take a straightforward approach to this dispute. If Penal Law § 400.00 (3) (a) does not require domicile, then there is no need to decide the constitutionality of a hypothetical statute that requires domicile. The question concerning the meaning of the statute at issue—the question certified to us—must be answered prior to any question concerning its constitutional validity. This is not a case in which we are faced with an ambiguous statute requiring us to favor an interpretation that renders it constitutional over constructions that would invalidate it.’

In finding for the Plaintiff applicant for a handgun license, the Court opined further that,

Penal Law § 400.00 (3) (a) states that applications for a license to carry a pistol or revolver ‘shall be made and renewed . . . to the licensing officer in the city or county, as the case may be, where the applicant resides, is principally employed or has his principal place of business as merchant or storekeeper.’ The applicant's residence is referred to in the context of delineating the procedure whereby an individual files an application for a license. The applicant is instructed to apply to the licensing officer in the city or county where he resides (or is principally employed, etc.). The plain language of the statute is not consistent with the theory that the law requires an applicant to establish domicile as an eligibility requirement. Were it so, we would expect to see the manner of proof of domicile set out in the statute.

Moreover, the legislative history of the statutes that underlay Penal Law § 400.00 evinces an intent to ensure that an applicant for a handgun license applies in his place of residence, rather than an intent to limit licenses to applicants who make their domicile in New York. The residency language was added to the Penal Law by chapter 792 of the Laws of 1931. Former Penal Law § 1897 was amended by adding a subdivision, (9-a), which read as follows:

‘No license shall be issued by the police commissioner of the city of New York except to a resident of that city. Outside of the city of New York, no license shall be issued by a judge or justice of a court of record except to a resident of the county in which the office of such judge or justice is located. A license’ may be issued, however, to a qualified person principally employed in such city or county and to a merchant or storekeeper having his principal place of business in such city or county’ (L 1931, ch 792, § 4).

. . . [T]he residence language was introduced to prevent New York City residents from obtaining handgun permits in counties where, at the time, investigations of applicants were much less thorough than in the city. It  is therefore evident that the law was originally designed to ensure that licenses were obtained where applicants resided, and to discourage ‘forum-shopping,’ rather than to exclude certain applicants from qualifying at all.

The corresponding residence language in today's Penal Law § 400.00 (3) (a) is derived from former Penal Law § 1903, which was added in 1963 (L 1963, ch 136, § 8; see 1963 McKinney's Session Laws of NY at 155), and then adopted in the revised Penal Law provisions of 1965 (L 1965, ch 1030; see 1965 McKinney's Session Laws of NY at 1691). Appellant points to no legislative history from the 1960s suggesting that the relevant intent of the legislature was different then from what it had been in 1931. We conclude that there was no intent by the legislature to exclude applicants on the basis of domicile.

Finally, and most conclusively, Penal Law § 400.00 itself contemplates that licenses may be issued to individuals who do not make their domicile in New York. When a license to carry or possess a pistol or revolver ‘is issued to an alien, or to a person not a citizen of and usually a resident in the state, the licensing officer shall state in the license the particular reason  for the issuance and the names of the persons certifying to the good character of the applicant’ (Penal Law § 400.00 [7]). Since a handgun license may be issued, under the statute, to a person who is ‘not . . . usually a resident’ in New York State, it is clear that there is no requirement of domicile.

Because we hold that Penal Law § 400.00 (3) (a) does not preclude an individual who owns a part-time residence in New York but makes his permanent domicile in another state from applying for a New York handgun license, we have no occasion to decide whether a contrary law would be unconstitutional. 

Accordingly, the certified question should be answered in the affirmative.”

It is imperative to recognize the New York State Court of Appeals draws a distinction between the terms ‘residence’ and ‘domicile.’

A few lower courts wrongly did not draw that distinction, suggesting that if a person was not a permanent resident of New York, i.e., domiciled in New York, then that person would not qualify for a New York handgun license.

That led inevitably to an erroneous ruling.

The New York State Court of Appeals opined that it is wrong to conflate the term ‘residence’ with ‘domicile.’ But that does not mean the Court of Appeals suggests that a person with no connection with New York can secure a State handgun license, whether a restricted license or an unrestricted concealed carry license. The Court doesn’t deal directly with that issue because the issue wasn’t presented to it and the facts didn’t mandate consideration of it.

Still, through the reasoning of the Court, coupled with the language of the Statutory Section, Penal Law § 400.00 (3) (a), it is likely the Court would find, were it to consider the issue, rule that a non-state resident with no connection with New York cannot, under New York Law, lawfully acquire a New York handgun license.

But, without a case law ruling on this, we must construe, the matter, at best, as an open question.

At worst, extrapolating from Osterweil, we are inclined to infer that an out-of-state resident with no connection to New York is dead in the water. Such a person has, then, no hope of acquiring a valid New York handgun license of any kind, restricted or unrestricted, in the absence of bona fide, if only minimal, connection or contact with New York.

This inference is contrary to the conclusion to be drawn from the NYC “NOTICE.”

The New York City Mayor, Eric Adams, and the City’s Police Commissioner seem to assume that an out-of-state resident who has no connection with New York can feasibly obtain a New York City concealed handgun carry license. We do not see how the City Government can reasonably assume this.

However, the explanation is likely due to the Government’s erroneous conflating of the notion of non-state residents who have no connection with New York with non-state residents who have at least one tenable connection with New York.

Penal Law § 400.00 (3) (a) does not, to our mind, support this assumption of the New York City Mayor and the New York City Police Commissioner.

There is no mention of “non-state residents” in this Section or anywhere else in the New York statute (whether or not such non-state residents have any contact or connection with New York).

The New York Court of Appeals in Osterweil, though, did rule that non-state residents (those domiciled in another jurisdiction) but who DO HAVE A TENABLE CONNECTION WITH NEW YORK are able lawfully to acquire a New York handgun license.

Unfortunately, the City’s new “Emergency Rules” do not cite either Penal Law § 400.00 (3) (a) or New York State case law to support the tacit inference that non-State residents can lawfully acquire a New York City handgun license, even in the absence of any connection with New York.

This leads us to suspect that the Mayor and the Police Commissioner are being disingenuous.

It is true, of course, as pointed out by the New York State Court of Appeals in Osterweil, that a person does not have to be domiciled in New York to be able to qualify for a New York City handgun license. But, it is quite another thing to suggest, as the New York City Mayor and the Police Commissioner, do, that a non-state resident, who has no legal connection with New York, can still feasibly acquire a New York City ( and, by extension) State handgun) license.

It is a stretch to read Penal Law § 400.00 (3) (a) and the Osterweil case as assuming this. But, that is the implication to be drawn from the City’s “NOTICE.”

Perhaps the City is motivated by the money to be generated from such out-of-state resident applications even as it intends to deny all of those applications. If so, such deceit amounts to actionable fraud on the public.

The public should demand that the Mayor and the Police Commissioner explain cogently and comprehensively what they mean by the expression ‘non-state resident,’ given the expression’s inherent legal ambiguity.

__________________________________

WHAT IS AN AMERICAN?

___________________

Introductory Quote as Lead-in to this Article

“Cameo of a man who has just lost his most valuable possession. He doesn't know about the loss yet. In fact, he doesn't even know about the possession. Because, like most people, David Gurney has never really thought about the matter of his identity. But he's going to be thinking a great deal about it from now on, because that is what he's lost. And his search for it is going to take him into the darkest corners of the Twilight Zone.” ~ Opening narration from Rod Serling’s imaginative series, “The Twilight Zone,” Episode 92, titled, “Person or Persons Unknown,” first aired on March 27, 1962.

____________________

There are many things a person takes for granted but shouldn’t. Among those and undoubtedly the most important is one’s sense of personal identity.

And many things go into one’s sense of personal identity: one’s name, upbringing, a personal belief system and manner in which he observes the world; his sense of self-worth, his livelihood and interests—to name a few.

These things are so intrinsic to his sense of self, he gives little conscious thought to them. There is little reason to. There is a sameness to such things that is reassuring. There is a sense of continuity. Such is how person’s reality is built.

But suppose a person wakes up one day, like David Gurney, our protagonist in the TZ episode, and finds the ground has shifted out from under him.

Everyone he meets—his wife, his co-workers, his friends, claim not to know him.

He becomes understandably angry, confused, lashes out. But that only confirms to others that the man has gone insane.

With his reality shattered, he spirals into a state of despair. He begins to think that perhaps everyone is right, after all.

Such occurred to our protagonist in the Twilight Zone episode, “Person or Persons Unknown.”

But it is one thing to watch a television program, knowing it to be nothing more than contrivance, compelling though it may be. It is quite another thing to suffer the fracturing of one’s soul in the real world.

With all the talk today of Government “Gaslighting” of the populace, one must wonder whether there isn’t something afoot to drive the nation’s people to a full psychotic break.

An important part of one’s sense of self is tied to his community. That community, writ large, is a person’s Nation.

When I and my wife venture overseas on vacation, we enjoy conversing with the people of the countries we visit. They will remark, “Oh, you’re Americans.” Of course we are.

And the conversation invariably turns to where in America we live, how we live, and what we make of the turmoil that has infested the Country since the Biden Administration took over the reins of Government in January 2021.

But, while our conversations involved how I and my wife, as “Americans,” feel about America, no one, had ever asked us what it means to us “to be Americans.”

In other words, no one asks us, in these foreign lands we visit, to define the word, ‘American.’

And I never gave the matter serious thought about that, until, that was, when I happened to read an article in a newsletter I received from the United Federation of Teachers (“UFT”).

The UFT is the New York Chapter of the National American Federation of Teachers (“AFT”). Both are powerful Radical Left-wing teachers’ unions that have, through the years, transformed into shamelessly partisan channels of political activism, whose primary goal is the indoctrination of our Nation’s youth in the cult and ideology of Marxist Collectivism.

In the May 2017 issue of the publication, I came across an article by the UFT Vice President, Richard Mantell, titled “What is an American?”

The article left me absolutely furious. My anger compelled me to respond.

The UFT published my comment on June 1, 2017. I took Vice President Mantell to task.

Mantell laid out a fanciful definition of ‘American,’ grounded essentially on the idea of togetherness and good-will toward all people, everywhere. The last paragraph of his article sums up this notion well.

Mantell says,

“I believe we have a responsibility as public school educators and as citizens of the United States to treat others as we want to be treated, to look past differences, and to recognize the reason why so many people came to this country and still do: to make a better life for themselves and their families. That is the true definition of American.”

Really? That’s it? That’s the “true definition of American”?

I took Richard Mantell to task for his saccharine view of ‘American.’

I wondered what others in our Nation would think apart from those members of the UFT who generally would agree with Mantell.

I submitted a portion of my response to Ammoland Shooting Sports News, for publication, on June 27, 2017.

Ammoland readers can find the earlier article at this link: Response to United Federation of Teachers Open Borders Take on Who Is American (ammoland.com).

It is not necessary for me to reiterate here what Ammoland published.

But, five plus years after publication of Richard Mantell’s “VPerspective” on what it means to be an ‘American,’ the absurdity inherent in his definition becomes even more glaring and menacing and that requires me to develop further the ideas I had earlier written about.

We now have millions of illegal aliens residing in our Country, whom the Biden Administration has deliberately enticed in. And they obliged. And we are inundated with them, and no one knows where, in the Country they are. They have disbursed everywhere.

Many of them are lunatics, or dangerous psychotics, or common criminals whom their home nations are all too happy to rid themselves of. All of them constitute a heavy burden on our limited resources, and are unassimilable. None of them have been properly vetted, and more than a few are murderous terrorists or psychopathic members of international criminal cartels.

Are these people here to make a better life for themselves? Or is it to partake in all those goodies: free housing, free medical care, food allowances, and allocations of federal reserve notes too, and to create violence and induce terror in the native populace?

UFT Vice President Mantell’s mentioning of the word ‘citizen’ in his exposition is not done to impute definitional import to the word ‘citizen’ apropos of ‘American.’

Rather, his point is that being a citizen of the United States requires that citizen to manifest what Mantell considers to be the correct attitude toward people. And that attitude is grounded on a presumption about people that might be true of some, but not all, and certainly not most people—especially those that come here illegally.

The Biden Administration, along with the many Political Progressives and outright Neo-Marxist Cultists in Congress, in State and local governments, in the Press and in social media, in the public schools and in academia, and the rank-and-file Leftists in our Country all demonstrate the danger in misunderstanding or misrepresenting the meaning of “Being an American.” And, it is clear from their actions, they don’t give a damn whether these aliens are decent sorts or not.

They just want them here: one, to bolster the number of Representatives in Congress for the Liberal States; two, eventually, to bolster the voting rolls; and, three, to tear down traditional institutional structures, destabilize society, and terrorize the populace in preparation for construction of a new Socio-Political Governmental structure grounded in the principles of Marxist Collectivism.

In a few months, through the election that will determine who will lead our Country, the Electorate will know whether the U.S. will regain its preeminence in the world as a truly free Constitutional Republic—the only one of its kind in the world—or whether we will continue down the road to Tyranny and subjugation.

This election truly is our Final Battle.

We will return to a state of grace as envisioned by our wise Founders or we will cast it aside, seduced by propaganda, cloaked in sickening sweet priggish sanctimony, lauded by Leftist politicians and a seditious Press and social media.

In the next few articles, we will discuss in depth what the word ‘American’ really means, from a legal and philosophical standpoint, devoid of ‘goody-goody phraseology of the sort espoused by people like Richard Mantell.

To highlight what I and my business partners at Arbalest Quarrel will be discussing, we offer this overview:

The word ‘American’ includes three salient components. Those components may also be construed as conditions that must be met.

The first is that a person is a citizen of the United States. The term ‘citizen’ is a legal term of art. It has a well-defined meaning.

No one who is not a citizen is an ‘American’ regardless of his or her feelings about the Country.

‘Citizenship’ is therefore a necessary condition for one’s status as an ‘American’ but it is not a sufficient condition.

The second component of the definition of ‘American’ or a condition that must be met for calling one an “American” requires that a person be willing to take up arms to protect the Nation from all enemies both foreign and domestic.

An American will not long suffer a foreign adversary forcing its will on the people, nor will an American long suffer Tyranny of Government at home. This bearing of arms, too, is a necessary condition, but not sufficient for a person to be considered an American.

The Third Component requires a person to adhere to the doctrine of Individualism that grounds the U.S. Constitution and the crucial “Bill of Rights.” While a person can espouse the ideology of Collectivism, as that is a person’s right under the First Amendment’s Freedom of Speech, such ideology is inconsistent with the tenets of Individualism and the concept of Natural Law Rights, codified in our Nation’s Bill of Rights. A person who does not honor our Nation’s Constitution nor cherishes our Bill of Rights and who knowingly, willingly violates Divine Law is not an American.

These three components, conditions, or attributes go together to define what it means to be an ‘American.’ In the next few articles, we will make our case.

__________________________________