WHY DO SOME STATE GOVERNMENTS AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BLATANTLY DEFY SECOND AMENDMENT RULINGS OF THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT?

POST-BRUEN—WHAT IT ALL MEANS AND WHAT ITS IMPACT IS BOTH FOR THOSE WHO SUPPORT AND CHERISH THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS AND THOSE WHO DO NOT; THOSE WHO SEEK TO UNDERMINE AND EVENTUALLY DESTROY THE EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT AND THOSE WHO SEEK TO PRESERVE AND STRENGTHEN THE RIGHT BOTH FOR THEMSELVES AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

MULTI SERIES

PART FOURTEEN

WHY DO SOME STATE GOVERNMENTS AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BLATANTLY DEFY SECOND AMENDMENT RULINGS OF THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT?

Scarcely eight years had passed since ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788 when the question of the power and authority of the U.S. Supreme Court came to a head in the famous case of Marbury versus Madison. The High Court made its authority felt in a clear, cogent, categorical, and indisputable language in this seminal 1803 case.The facts surrounding the case are abstruse, generating substantial scholarly debate. But what some legal scholars discern as having little importance to the logical and legal gymnastics the Court at the time had to wrestle with, and upon which legal scholars, historians, and logicians have directed their attention today, has become a cause célèbre today:“It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity, expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each. . . . This is of the very essence of judicial duty.” Marbury vs. Madison, 5 U.S. 137; 2 L. Ed. 60; Cranch 137 (1803)Article 3, Section Two of the U.S. Constitution establishes the powers of the Court:“The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution. . . .” The Constitution’s Framers sought to make the import of the articles and amendments to it as plain and succinct. And they did a good job of it.Even so, ruthless, powerful individuals in the Federal Government and in the States ever strive to thwart the plain meaning and purport of the U.S. Constitution in pursuit of their own selfish interests, imputing vagaries to language even where the language is plain and unambiguous to serve their own selfish ends to the detriment of both Country and people. And that ruthlessness extends to those who, with vast sums of money at their disposal, influence these “servants of the people,” in pursuit of and to achieve their own nefarious interests and goals.Back then, over two centuries ago, when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of Marbury vs. Madison, the Court deftly side-stepped the delicate political and legislative issues of the day that gave rise to the case and carved out the Court’s own territory.The High Court made two points abundantly clear:One, the U.S. Supreme Court does not answer to either the Executive or Legislative Branch. It is not to be perceived as a poor stepchild of either of those two Branches. It is a Co-Equal Branch of the Federal Government.Two, on matters impacting the meaning and purpose of the U.S. Constitution, neither the U.S. President nor Congress can lawfully ignore the Court’s rulings. This means that, where the Court has spoken on challenges to unconstitutional laws, finding particular laws of Congress to be unconstitutional, Congress has no lawful authority to ignore and countermand those rulings, or circumvent those rulings by enacting new laws that purport to do the same thing as the laws that the Court has struck down. Nor can the U.S. President cannot override the Constitutional constraints imposed on his actions.The States, too, are forbidden to ignore Supreme Court rulings, striking down unconstitutional State enactments. Nor are the States permitted to repurpose old laws or create new laws that do the same thing—operate in violate of the U.S. Constitution.  Jump forward in time to the present day.The Federal Government and all too many State and municipal Governments routinely defy the High Court’s rulings, engaging in unconstitutional conduct.But this defiance and even contempt of the High Court rulings leaves an American to ponder, “why?”Even cursory reflection elucidates the answer to that question. The answer is as plain as the text of Article Three, Section 2 of the Constitution, itself.The High Court has neither power over “the purse” that Congress wields, nor power over the Nation’s “standing army” the Chief Executive controls.Yet, the fact remains the U.S. Supreme Court is the only Branch of Government with ultimate say over the meaning of the U.S. Constitution, as Marbury made clear, well over two hundred years ago. To say what the Constitution means, when conflict or challenge to that meaning arises is within the sole province of the High Court.Unfortunately, without the capacity to withhold funds over the operation of Government, nor power to enforce its judgments by force of arms, the Court’s rulings are all too often, blatantly ignored or cavalierly dismissed.As if this weren’t bad enough, the mere fact of the Court’s authority is now actively contested.Audaciously, some individuals in Government, in the Press, and in academia, have recently argued the U.S. Supreme Court’s authority to say what the law is, should not be vested in the High Court, regardless of the strictures of Article Three, Section Two of the U.S. Constitution.Consider, an Op-Ed, titled, “Should the Supreme Court Matter So Much?” The essay appeared in The New York Times, and not that long ago, in 2018, written by Barry P. McDonald, an attorney and Law Professor no less who exclaims:“When the founders established our system of self-government, they didn’t expend much effort on the judicial branch. Of the roughly three and a half long pieces of inscribed parchment that make up the Constitution, the first two pages are devoted to designing Congress. Most of the next full page focuses on the president. The final three-quarters of a page contains various provisions, including just five sentences establishing a ‘supreme court,’ any optional lower courts Congress might create and the types of cases those courts could hear.Why was the judicial branch given such short shrift? Because in a democracy, the political branches of government — those accountable to the people through elections — were expected to run things. The courts could get involved only as was necessary to resolve disputes, and even then under congressional supervision of their dockets.It was widely recognized that the Supreme Court was the least important of the three branches: It was the only branch to lack its own building (it was housed in a chamber of Congress), and the best lawyers were seldom enthusiastic about serving on it (John Jay, the Court’s first chief justice, resigned within six years and described the institution as lacking ‘energy, weight and dignity’).When disputes came before the Supreme Court, the justices were expected to ensure that Americans received ‘due process’ — that they would be ruled by the ‘law of the land’ rather than the whims of ruling individuals. In short, the Court was to play a limited role in American democracy, and when it did get involved, its job was to ensure that its judgments were based on legal rules that were applied fairly and impartially.What about the task of interpreting the Constitution? This question is the subject of some debate, but the founders most likely believed that each branch of government had the right and duty to determine for itself what the Constitution demanded, unless the Constitution was clearly transgressed. If the Constitution was clearly transgressed, the Supreme Court had a duty to hold Congress or the president accountable — but only in the case before it. The founders almost certainly did not envision a roving mandate for the Supreme Court to dictate to Congress, the president or state governments what actions comported with the Constitution (unless they were a party to a case before it).” The question of interpreting the Constitution is the subject of some debate? Really? Apparently, this Law Professor, Barry McDonald, has wholly forgotten the import of Marbury versus Madison, a case burnt into the mind of every first-year law student. His remarks are eccentric, disturbing, and disheartening.If the Framers of the U.S. Constitution really had such a low opinion of the High Court, they would not have constructed a Government with a Third Branch but would have subsumed it into one of the first two? Obviously, the Framers thought enough about the singular importance of the U.S. Supreme Court, to include it in the framework of the Federal Government, and as a co-equal Branch of that Government.It is one thing to ignore the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings because of an antipathy toward those rulings and claim the Court can’t do anything about it anyway because the Court hasn’t power to enforce its rulings. That is bad enough. But it is quite another thing to argue the Court has no reason to exist, ought not to exist, and thereupon rationalize doing away with the Third Branch of Government or otherwise reducing its authority to render rulings to a nullity by Executive Branch or Legislative Branch edict.Application of alien predilections, predispositions, and ideology to the Nation’s governance is a path to abject tyranny; to dissolution of the Republic; defilement of the Nation’s culture and history and heritage; destruction of societal order and cohesion; and abasement and subjugation of a sovereign people. The Nation is on a runaway train, running full throttle, about to make an impact with a massive brick wall.The New York Times just loves to publish articles by credentialed individuals who hold views well beyond the pale of those held by their brethren if those views happen to conform to, and strengthen, and push the socio-political narrative of the newspaper’s publishers and editorial staff.Use of such dubious, fringe views to support a viewpoint is a classic example of “confirmation bias,” an informal fallacy.There are dozens of informal fallacies. And the American public is force-fed ideas that routinely exemplify one or more of them.This defiance of State and Federal Government actors to adhere to the Court’s rulings and even to contest the authority of the Court is most pronounced, most acute, and, unfortunately, most prevalent, in matters pertaining to the import of fundamental, unalienable rights and liberties of the American people—and none more so than the citizen’s right of armed self-defense.Consider——In the first decade of the 21st Century, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled clearly and unequivocally in Heller versus District of Columbia that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is an individual right, unconnected with one’s service in a militia. Associate Justice Antonin Scalia penned the majority opinion.Among its other rulings in Heller, the High Court held the District of Columbia’s blanket ban on handguns impermissibly infringes the core of the Second Amendment. It thereupon struck down the D.C. ban on handguns as unconstitutional.And the Court also held a person has a right to immediate access to a handgun in one’s self-defense. Not surprisingly, Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions disliked these rulings and were intent on disobeying them, and arrogantly defied the Court.Looking for an excuse to defy Heller, these jurisdictions argued that Heller applies only to the Federal Government, not to them. That led to an immediate challenge, and the High Court took up the case in McDonald vs. City of Chicago.Here, Justice Alito writing for the majority, opined the Heller rulings apply with equal force to the States, through operation of the Fourteenth Amendment.Did the Anti-Second Amendment States abide by the Court’s rulings, after McDonald? No, they did not!They again defied the Court, conjuring up all sorts of reasons to deny to the American citizen his unalienable right to keep and bear arms in his self-defense.The States in these Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions claimed that, even if a person has a right to armed self-defense inside his home, the right to do so does not extend to the carrying of a handgun outside the home.The State and Federal Courts in these jurisdictions conveniently misconstrued the Supreme Court’s test for ascertaining the constitutionality of Government action infringing exercise of the right codified in the Second Amendment. These Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions also placed bans on semiautomatic weapons, fabricating a legal fiction for them; referring to them as “assault weapons.”  American citizens challenged the constitutionality of all these issues. And many of these cases wended their way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, only to be thwarted because the Court could not muster sufficient support among the Justices to deal with the flagrant violation of Second Amendment Heller and McDonald rulings and reasoning.One of these cases was the 2015 Seventh Circuit case, Friedman versus City of Highland Park, Illinois.The liberal wing of the Court didn’t want the case to be heard. That was no surprise.But, apparently, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy didn’t want to hear the case either.Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia were furious and said so in a comprehensive dissenting opinion.Had the Court taken up the Friedman case, Americans would have been spared this nonsense of “assault weapon” bans. The Court would have ruled these bans unconstitutional on their face, in which event the Federal Government and Anti-Second Amendment State governments would be hard-pressed to make a case for wasting valuable time and taxpayer monies dealing with an issue the High Court had ruled on. Unfortunately, the Friedman case and many others were not taken up by the Court.Americans are compelled to continue to spend considerable time and money in challenging a continuous stream of unconstitutional Second Amendment Government action. And often, this is a futile expenditure of time, money, and effort, albeit a noble and necessary one all the same._________________________________________

NEW YORK GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL UNFAZED BY CHALLENGES TO NEW YORK GUN LAW: “GO FOR IT,” SHE RETORTS!

One of the most persistent and virulently Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions, that has spurred numerous challenges to unconstitutional and unconscionable constraints on the Second Amendment through the decades, is New York.In 2020, four years after Associate Justice Antonin Scalia died, under disturbingly suspicious circumstances, and shortly after Justice Anthony Kennedy retired from the Bench, and the U.S. Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s first nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, to a seat on the High Court, the Court took up the case, NYSRPA vs. City of New York—often referred to colloquially as the “NY Gun Transport” case. An extensive explication of that case is found in a series of AQ articles posted on our website. See, e.g., our article posted on April 27, 2020, and reposted in Ammoland Shooting Sports News on the same date. A second U.S. Supreme Court case, coming out of New York, NYSRPA versus Bruen, officially released on June 23, 2022, ruled New York’s “proper cause” requirement unconstitutional.New York Governor Kathy Hochul and the Democrat Party-controlled Legislature in Albany thereupon struck the words “proper cause” from the State’s Gun Law, the Sullivan Act, codified in Section 400.00 of the State’s Penal Code. But, doing so served merely as a blind.Had the Hochul Government refrained from tinkering with the rest of the text of the Statute and other Code sections, it might well have avoided further constitutional challenges from justifiably irate New Yorkers. It did not.Hochul and Albany did not stop with the striking of “proper cause” from the Gun Law. It went well beyond that. Her Government and Albany wrote a detailed set of amendments to the Gun Law. The package of amendments, titled the “Concealed Carry Law Improvement Act,” “CCIA,” do not conform to the Bruen rulings but, rather, slither all around them. On a superficial level, deletion of the words “proper cause” might be seen by some, as Hochul and Albany had perhaps hoped, to forestall legal challenge. But, if challenge came, time would be, after all, on the Government’s side. And Hochul knew this.The Government has money enough to fight a protracted Court battle. The challenger, more likely, does not. Even finding a suitable challenger takes considerable time, exorbitant sums of money to file a lawsuit, and substantial time to take a Second Amendment case to the U.S. Supreme Court. And it is far from certain the Court will review a case even if a petition for hearing is filed, for the Court grants very few petitions.For well over a century the New York Government has inexorably whittled away at the right of armed self-defense in New York. And it has successfully weathered all attacks all the while. The New York Government wasn’t going to let the U.S. Supreme Court now, in the Bruen case, to throw a wrench into attaining its end goal: the elimination of armed self-defense in New York. Much energy went into the creation of the CCIA. It is a decisive and defiant response to the U.S. Supreme Court and furthers its goal to constrain armed self-defense in the public sphere.Likely, given the length, breadth, and depth of the CCIA, the Government saw Bruen coming, long before the case was filed, and had ample time to draft the contours of the CCIA a couple of years ago. A clue that another U.S. Supreme Court case, challenging New York’s Gun Law, would loom, presented itself in Associate Justice Samuel Alito’s dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.  Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch had made known their strong disapproval of the way the “Gun Transport” case was handled, after the Chief Justice and Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh cast their lot with the Anti-Second Amendment liberal wing of the Court, allowing the case to be unceremoniously and erroneously shunted aside, sans review of the merits of the case. A day of reckoning with New York’s insufferable Gun Law was coming. The Government of New York could not reasonably doubt that. The core of the Gun Law would be challenged, and the U.S. Supreme Court would hear that challenge. The Government likely worked up a draft response to an antagonistic U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the core of the Gun Law in 2020, shortly after the New York “Gun Transport” case ruling came down. That draft response would become the CCIA.The Government likely completed its draft of the CCIA well before Bruen was taken up by the High Court. The Government had only to fine-tune the CCIA immediately after oral argument in early November 2021. And the Government did so. Hochul almost certainly received advance notice of the text of the majority opinion within days or weeks after the hearing before the New Year had rung in. Nothing else can explain the speed at which Albany had passed the CCIA and Hochul had signed it into law: July 1, 2022, just eight days after the Court had released the Bruen decision, June 23, 2022.The CCIA amendments to the Gun Law integrate very nicely with and into other recent New York antigun legislation, passed by Albany and signed into law by Hochul. Thus, contrary to what the Governor’s website proclaims, the amendments were not “devised to align with the Supreme Court’s recent decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen.” Rather these amendments were devised to align with other New York antigun legislation. What does this portend for New Yorkers? Those New Yorkers who had hoped to be able to obtain a New York concealed handgun carry license with relative ease will now find procuring such a license no less difficult than before the enactment of the CCIA.Most hard-hit are those present holders of New York City and New York County unrestricted concealed handgun carry licenses. The “proper cause” hoop that present holders of such concealed handgun carry licenses were able to successfully jump through is of no use to them now. These renewal applicants must now satisfy a slew of new requirements—more draconian than the original ones they had previously successfully navigated. All New York concealed handgun carry applicants are now in the same boat. And meeting the new requirements are exceedingly difficult. Despite the clear intent of the Bruen rulings, to make it easier for more Americans to obtain a New York concealed handgun carry license, it is now harder. Likely, very few individuals will be able to successfully pass through the hurdles necessary to obtain a New York license the CCIA requires. Thus, getting a license will remain a coveted prize, difficult to gain as previously, and likely even more so.And the few individuals who do happen to secure a valid New York concealed handgun carry license will find themselves in a precarious situation for all the troubles they had in getting it.These new license holders will find exercise of the right of armed self-defense outside one’s home or place of business, in the public realm, full of traps and snares that did not previously exist. And there is something more alarming.The mere act of applying for a concealed carry license—whether the license is issued or not—now requires the applicant to divulge a wealth of highly personal information that, hitherto, an applicant never had to divulge, and the licensing authority had never asked an applicant to divulge. And, if a person fails to secure a license, his personal data will remain in his State police file, indefinitely, and will likely be turned over to the DOJ, DHS, ATF, IRS, and/or to a slew of State or Federal mental health agencies. All manner of harm may be visited upon the person that otherwise would not have occurred had the individual not bothered to apply for a New York concealed handgun carry license in the first place. To apply for a New York concealed handgun carry license, an applicant may unwittingly be alerting both the New York Government and the Federal Government that he is a “MAGA” supporter, and therefore a potential “Domestic Terrorist.” And, if so, he is then targeted for special treatment: surveillance, harassment, exploitation, or extortion. And he cannot claim a violation of his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures because he voluntarily relinquished that right when he applied for a concealed handgun carry license.If one thinks this is farfetched, consider the excesses committed by the Biden Administration directed to average Americans in the last several months.We explore these troubling matters, in connection with the application requirements for a New York concealed handgun carry license, in the next few articles.____________________________________Copyright © 2022 Roger J. Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

WHY IS IT THAT THE HARRIS-BIDEN ADMINISTRATION AND CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS REALLY WANT TO TAKE AWAY YOUR GUNS?

PART ONE

GUN OWNERS; TRUMP SUPPORTERS; ANTI-MARXISTS; ANTI-GLOBALISTS—ARE THESE THE HARRIS-BIDEN “DOMESTIC TERRORISTS?”

The propagandists for the Democrat Party-controlled Government are nothing if not expert in the art of subterfuge, deflection, artifice, and duplicity. Turning the Bill of Rights on its head, they claim the Country will be better off once the American people just accept constraints on the exercise of their fundamental rights and liberties.But for whom would the Country be better off: for the American people or for the Neoliberal Globalists, along with their cousin Marxists, who intend to dismantle a free Constitutional Republic and merge the skeletal remains of the United States into something truly obscene: a transnational new governmental world order akin to the European Union?Already Biden has made overtures to Brussels, resurrecting the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or “T-TIP,” an arrangement that had stalled under the Trump Administration as did the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP.The true, if unstated, purpose of the G-7 Summit was to reassure Brussels that the U.S. was back on track to complete the agenda commenced in earnest thirty years ago—an agenda that had been making substantial headway under Obama, and that would continue under Hillary Clinton. But that agenda came to a screeching halt when Trump was elected U.S. President, to the surprise and shock and consternation of Neoliberal Globalists and Marxists both inside the Country and outside it, and no less to the chagrin of China, as well.But with the mentally debilitated, and easily manipulated Joe Biden firmly ensconced in the Oval Office, the Globalist and Marxist agenda could get back on track. The EU would get what it wants from the U.S.; China would get what it wants from the U.S.; even Russia got what it wanted. And who was left out of the mix? The American people, of course.But then, the Harris-Biden Administration and their cohorts in the Democrat Party controlled Congress, together with the seditious Press and social media and information technology titans haven’t bothered to ask the American people for their perspective on any of this. They really don’t care. They have effectively shunted Trump aside and they are treating tens of millions of American dissenters as potential “Domestic Terrorists” who refuse to go along with the game plan. The Globalists and Marxists will suffer no dissident thought or action. They are intent on stamping out all dissent. And this portends something serious on the horizon for the well-being of the Country and for the well-being of the American people.

WITH A RADICAL DEMOCRAT PARTY-CONTROLLED GOVERNMENT AND A BELEAGUERED, BESIEGED, WEAK REPUBLICAN CONTINGENT IN CONGRESS, AMERICAN PEOPLE HAVE BEEN BOXED INTO A CORNER AND MUST TAKE MATTERS INTO THEIR OWN HANDS TO REGAIN CONTROL OF THEIR COUNTRY?

The secretive powers operating in the Harris-Biden Administration, along with the Democrat Party have forced Americans into a tight corner. The forces that have boxed in Americans know this to be true. They did this intentionally. They have thrown down their gauntlet. They fully expect a backlash. And they fully intend to counter it.The forces that crush have instituted a comprehensive and insidious program designed to contain and constrain dissenting Americans.Their program must have taken shape during the early days of the transition of Government in 2021. And it is now available for all to see. The PROGRAM—really a POGROM—targeting Americans who refuse to get on board with the game plan is contained in a lengthy document, titled: “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.”This Document, recently made available to the public,  serves a dual purpose for the Harris-Biden Administration. It operates, one, as a Declaration setting forth the raison d’être for a Marxist Counterrevolution in this Country to overturn the American Revolution of 1776, and, operates,  two, as an express and brazen threat to the autonomy of the American citizen. Never before in American History has the Federal Government professed to declare war on its own citizens. In that regard, the “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism” goes much further than even the infamousU.S. Patriot Act, in presenting a direct threat to an American citizen's fundamental Rights and Liberties. See also the article on the U.S. Patriot Act by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.But who are these “Domestic Terrorists” that the Harris-Biden Administration has declared war against? In the broadest sense, a “Domestic Terrorist” is any American who professes disagreement with the Globalist/Marxist agenda.

ATTEMPTS AT OBFUSCATION DO NOT DISGUISE THE FACT THAT “DOMESTIC TERRORIST” REFERS TO ALL AMERICANS WHO ACTIVELY DISAGREE WITH AND WHO DISSENT FROM THE HARRIS-BIDEN AGENDA.

The expression “Domestic Terrorist” drags in a sizable portion of the American citizenry, at least a third of the Country, that cherishes the Nation's founding, formative Documents—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution’s Articles, and the Bill of Rights—and takes them at face value, in accordance with the plain meaning of the language therein.And, what do these Documents proclaim and prescribe? They proclaim and prescribe the preeminence of liberty and personal autonomy and of the existence of natural, God-given rights that exist intrinsically in each person; rights that precede the formation of nations and of governments and make clear that the American people, themselves, and not the Government they happen to form, are the Sole Sovereign of their Nation, and that they alone have the God-given right to control their own destiny.This presents a conundrum for the Harris-Biden Administration, which is to say, a profound dilemma for those secretive, powerful insiders who are orchestrating and choreographing the Administration’s every move.One thing is clear: Those elements presently in control of the reins of the Federal Government do not perceive themselves as servants of the people but, rather, as master over them.The Harris-Biden Administration, the Democrat Party controlled Congress, the Bureaucratic Deep State, the Legacy Press, and the major social media and technology monopolies have dismissed the founding, formative documents of our Country, out-of-hand, and, in so doing, have effectively declared war on the American people.But, a sizable chunk of the American people, though, cherish and extol the tenets, principles, and precepts contained in the Nation’s sacred Documents. That means the American people pose a threat to Government. They must therefore be brought to heel lest they exert their sovereignty over the Government. Imagine that!The Nation’s founding Fathers—yes, dare we use the expression, “THE FATHERS” of the Nation—understood well that a massively large, powerful centralized Government would, if left to its own devices, eventually, inexorably, inevitably usurp from the people,  that sovereign power belonging only to the people.The Founding Fathers knew that, while a Federal Government with limited powers, assiduously demarcated among three salient Branches—Legislative, Executive, and Judicial—may serve to forestall usurpation of power unto itself, the rise of tyranny would be inevitable. It would only be a matter of time. Only the presence of an armed citizenry could prevent this from happening, as the Founding Fathers well knew; hence the reason for the codification of the right of the people to keep and bear arms in an Amendment to the Constitution.It should come as no surprise to any American that the Destroyers of a Free Constitutional Republic would therefore mount a furious assault on the sacred right of the people to keep and bear arms.Not since the Nation’s inception in 1776, have the Obstructors of the Country come so close transforming it from a free Republic into an Authoritarian State—made all the easier through the use of information technology: technology that is capable of exerting vast control over content creation and dissemination of information, and the censure of it; technology that makes possible, the surreptitious, collection of private information and omnipresent surveillance of the Nation’s citizenry.The pillar of free speech, codified in the First Amendment and the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, codified in the Fourth, are both suffering slow strangulation as a result of the application of technology on a massive scale.The public has little to say about the application of, and has even less control over, technological advances that allow Government to nullify the unreasonable searches and seizures clause of the Fourth Amendment.And powerful Liberal Progressive and Marxist interests in the Federal Government flagrantly violate the First Amendment’s freedom of speech clause, operating through major social media monopolies, that share Progressive Left and Marxist sympathies and goals. The result is a blatant, shameless, unethical, illegal censure of speech.These elements in Government and business, operating in concert, have been successful at constraining public discourse, in recent years, to an extent never before countenanced. And they intend to upend this Nation’s Constitutional Republic now and for all time.Concomitant with censure of speech, and contrary to the dictates of the First Amendment, destructive forces in Government and in the technology monopolies have unleashed a campaign of propaganda to turn American against American and to indoctrinate children and adult alike. No institution is free from the onslaught; not even the military.

WITH FREEDOM FROM UNREASONABLE SEARCHES AND SEIZURES ESSENTIALLY ERADICATED, AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH UNDER CONTINUOUS, RUINOUS, HARASSING ASSAULT, ONLY FREEDOM TO OWN AND POSSESS GUNS REMAINS, OBSTINATELY RESISTANT TO GOVERNMENT ATTEMPTS TO CONSTRAIN EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT.

Only the right of the people to keep and bear arms effectively resists systematic and debilitating attempts by Progressive and Marxist influences to annihilate the exercise of this fundamental Right. But why is that? The reasons are plain. First, Americans recognize that no other Right defines them or the Country they are sovereign masters of, as the Right to own and possess firearms. So, Americans furiously defend that Right—more so than any other. Second, firearms are after all tangible implements, not intangible, digital objects, like words. It is not so easy for Government to purloin away one’s firearms as they have purloined away Americans’ private conversations and private documents and as they have systematically whittled away at the right of free discourse and free association among Americans of like kind.It’s impossible to take physical control over a citizen’s firearms surreptitiously. A person either has possession of them or he does not. And he will not so easily part with them. This angers the would-be Destroyers of a free Constitutional Republic to no end.How does one effectively separate a person from his firearms without causing a bloodbath in the Nation? This isn’t simply a matter of academic exercise for the Destroyers of our Country. They are well aware that the presence of—the continued existence of—armed citizens poses a direct, imminent threat to the installment of a Marxist totalitarian State and submergence of the remains of a free Republic in a Globalist Marxist new world order. But they also know that any attempt at a wholesale round-up of firearms would result in revolt—that is to say, armed revolt!It follows that no compromise on the right of the people to keep and bear arms is logically sensical despite the remonstrations of “antigun” groups carping endlessly over the need for more “commonsense gun laws”—as if they mean only that and nothing more. The idea is absurd on its face. It is all mere rhetoric designed to deceive. Americans have had more than enough of this nonsense.The question is: Now that Americans know the extent to which a free Constitutional Republic is in the crosshairs for destruction, and that the Federal Government has essentially declared war on its own citizens' sacred Rights and Liberties, what are Americans going to do to safeguard their Bill of Rights and their sovereignty over Government?___________________________________

PART TWO

A TYRANNICAL GOVERNMENT CANNOT LONG CONTAIN OR CONSTRAIN AN ARMED CITIZENRY.

If the American people are well-armed, then they can effectively, successfully resist Governmental attempts to control thought and action; they can effectively resist concerted efforts by tyrants to subjugate them; and they will always resist such efforts. But, if the American people are disarmed, they are defenseless before both two-legged predators and a predatory, tyrannical Government. So, the American people must continue to be well-armed. It is that simple.Thus, among those Destructive forces—neoliberal Globalist and international Marxist elements—who strive for firm Government control over the citizenry, the Right of the people to keep and bear arms must not be merely constrained, exercise of the Right must be curtailed. But, because it is immensely difficult to curtail citizen ownership and possession of firearms outright, absent wholesale bloodshed, which is to be avoided, the liberal Progressive Left and Marxists have been forced to undercut the Right of the people to keep and bear arms through a gradual escalating legislative process.The Federal Government’s assault on the Second Amendment started in earnest almost ninety years ago, with the enactment of the National Firearms Act of 1934. As with all antigun legislation, the pretext for the enactment of the NFA was an attempt to prevent criminal gangs from engaging in shooting rampages with certain classes of weapons, primarily fully automatic weapons and so-called short-barreled shotguns and rifles. The impact this law had on crime reduction was and is negligible. Its greatest and gravest impact was on infringing law-abiding American citizens' right to possess those firearms.Apart from actions by several State Americans to continue to enact laws to restrict and constrain the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms, the public was provided with a respite from the enactment of wholesale restrictive Federal firearms legislation for a period of sixty years, when Congress enacted the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. That Act contained a subsection titled innocuously, the “Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act” a.k.a. “Assault Weapons Ban,” the latter descriptor of which is more accurate and to the point.Once again, the public was told that the purpose of an assault weapons Ban was directed to curbing violent crimes committed with a certain category of guns. It did no such thing. It was all a lie, having nothing to do with constraining criminal use of firearms.All the Act succeeded in doing and was designed to do was to target average, law-abiding Americans, not to reduce violent gun crime. The salient if tacit purpose of the Act was to ban lawful ownership and possession of a wide range of popular semiautomatic weapons in the hands of tens of millions of law-abiding Americans. The Act wasn’t designed to prevent gun crimes. And the banned firearms were not even utilized in the vast majority of gun crimes anyway.The law was set to expire ten years later, in 2004. It did expire and not surprisingly, it wasn’t renewed. The public wasn’t deceived and demanded access to semiautomatic firearms.Notwithstanding the expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban, that didn’t stop Anti-Second Amendment forces in Congress to try to enact new laws restricting Americans’ access to semiautomatic firearms. They were relentless in their pursuit to curtail the exercise of the right codified in the Second Amendment. And they continued their effort up to the present time. To date, all such attempts have failed, and that has frustrated the forces that seek to destroy this free Constitutional Republic and its sovereign people. It was therefore left to Anti-Second Amendment State Governments to fill the gap and States like New York and California did so, with relish.With the neoliberal Globalist Obama in the Oval Office, to be followed by Hillary Clinton, the Destroyers of an independent sovereign United States felt confident that they could gradually tighten the noose around the neck of the American people so that, by the time the citizenry realized they had lost their Nation, along with their Bill of Rights, it would be much too late for them to do anything about it.But Hillary Clinton didn’t make it into Office. Donald Trump did. And once the sobering reality of that had sunk in for the neoliberal Globalists and the Marxists, they no longer took for granted that they could work leisurely and quietly to reconfigure the institutions of the Nation; disregard the dictates of or redefine the meaning of the Constitution to suit their goals; and implement their plans for a takeover of the Country incrementally.The forces that crush entire nations went to work on our own; frenetically, ceaselessly, assiduously, to sabotage Trump’s policy initiatives; engaging in a virulent media campaign of vicious personal attacks on him, on his family, on campaign officials, and on Americans who voted for and who avidly supported him, who had realized the singular importance of the Trump initiatives and policy goals and promises in getting the Nation back on track to regain its historical roots and sensibilities. Yet, all the efforts to dislodge Trump from Office met with abject failure and Trump was successful in realizing many of his goals.The forces that crush entire nations couldn’t understand Trump’s emotional strength; his resourcefulness, his fortitude; his resilience. The more vociferous and vicious the attacks became, the more implacable did Trump become.The public saw that Trump’s “America First” domestic and foreign policies actually benefitted the American people, Americans of all races. Trump was primed to win a second term in Office.The neoliberal Globalists and international Marxists would have not of that. And they pulled out all the stops to prevent that from happening.So, as a last resort, the enemies of the American people, both within the Republic and outside it, including likely the CCP and the EU Government in Brussels, machinated and conspired to prevent Trump from serving a Second Term. And they succeeded. Now, with Trump out of the way, and with Bush-era Republicans or otherwise meek Republicans offering no meaningful, substantial resistance to the agenda of Marxist Democrats, those Congressional Democrats are wasting no time consolidating their power over the Country and over the American people, before the 2022 midterm elections.

DEMOCRATS' TEN-PART PROGRAM TO CONSOLIDATE POWER AND GAIN CONTROL OVER THE NATION AND ITS CITIZENS

The Democrats' program involves, one, systematically corralling the voices of tens of millions of Americans; two indoctrinating the public in the tenets of Collectivism; three, consolidating control over the military and police; four, continuing to create mass upheaval and volatility in society with the assistance of criminal gangs, and Marxist and Anarchist agitators; five, maintaining dossiers on every person residing in the United States; six, inducing fear in the minds of all Americans that Government may designate them as “Domestic Terrorists” and commence to hound and harass them; seven, asserting Government control over the operation of the entire electoral process in order to control the outcome of elections; eight, continuing, indefinitely, an open borders policy, allowing a continuous deluge of illegal alien migrants and murderous drug cartel gangs to invade our Country, thereby further disrupting society; nine, creating the conditions for hyper-inflation to proceed, to reduce the mass of America to abject penury; and, ten, curtailing exercise of the right of the people to keep and bear arms so as to preclude the ability of the American people to revolt successfully against the inception of tyranny.Concerning the last item of business, expect to see concerted efforts by the Harris-Biden Administration, to implement executive actions, albeit as a “temporary fix” to restrict the possession of semiautomatic weapons. This is being coordinated with efforts by the Democrat-controlled Congress to shoehorn semiautomatic weapons into the NFA, or, perhaps, to enact new stand-alone legislation, or to enact a ban on possession of semiautomatic firearms through obscure means, by placing a gun ban in some larger omnibus bill.Whatever transpires, the American people should be prepared for a very rocky ride in the months ahead as the economy continues to deteriorate, as social volatility and unrest in society crank up, and as the Second Amendment undergoes an assault in a manner heretofore not seen.____________________________________Copyright © 2021 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

THE BIDEN PLAN FOR THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL REMAKING OF THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE: PARTS ONE THROUGH FOUR OF ESSAY

COMPREHENSIVE ESSAY ON THE PRESENT STATE OF AFFAIRS IN AMERICA UPON THE  ASSUMPTION OF THE GREAT IMPOSTER TO THE OFFICE OF THE U.S. PRESIDENCY IN 2021

A RADICAL PLAN FOR THE POLITICAL, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA

PART ONE

AN UNPRECEDENTED BLAST OF UNILATERAL ACTIONS WARN OF TYRANNY AHEAD FOR THE NATION

During his first two weeks in Office, Joe Biden signed over 40 executive orders or similar executive edicts. And he isn’t done. A few days into February and we can expect to see 50 or more Presidential executive orders and other edicts.Even 40 edicts far exceed the number signed by any previous U.S. President during his first days in Office. In fact, during his first five days in Office, Biden’s total is far greater than the signed orders of three recent Presidents, combined: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, as reported by the website, Great American Politics:“As of January 25, 2021, Biden has ‘issued 33 executive orders, actions, proclamations, memoranda and agency directives,’ according to CNN. Twenty-one of these, according to the White House website, are executive orders.President Donald Trump signed four in his first week in 2017; President Barack Obama signed five in 2009; President George W. Bush signed none in his first week in 2001; and President Bill Clinton signed one in 1993.”If Biden is remembered for little else, he likely will be remembered for the sheer number of executive orders he signed during his first few days as President.Of course, Biden didn’t draft these orders and edicts, himself. Biden’s staff did, and, likely, these documents were drafted well before Biden took the Oath of Office. All they needed was Biden’s signature, his imprimatur as President. And with great pomp and flourish before the cameras, he gave the public that.A propaganda machine of Joe Biden’s Party, the cable “news” station, CNN, lays out the gist of these official orders and edicts. Many involve the reversal of Trump’s policies and initiatives, and they all lay the groundwork for an expansive Radical Left agenda.Biden has, to date, signed several orders pertaining to immigration, the environment, the Chinese Communist coronavirus, and health; one order each for the census, ethics in government, and government regulation; and a couple pertaining to the Radical Left’s newest invention, something called ‘equity,’ apparently not to be confused with ‘equality.’  Democrats in Congress and in Biden’s Administration have mentioned the term ‘equity’ incessantly of late, albeit without bothering to explain what they mean by it, which begs a person to ask:

WHAT DOES THE WORD ‘EQUITY’ MEAN AND WHAT IS ITS IMPORT?

In a recent Press conference, Susan Rice emphasized the importance of “equity” in Biden Administration policy. Susan Rice, who served as Obama’s National Security Advisor, is now Biden’s Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. Biden’s Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, has also used the word ‘equity’ in her Press briefings; so has Kristen Clarke, Biden’s new head of the powerful Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.Clearly, the Biden Administration wants to sensitize the public to the mere mention of the word and wants the public to become familiar with it. But that raises a question—and one the Press seems loath to ask anyone in the Biden Administration.The word ‘equity’ seems to mean nothing more than ‘equality,’ a synonym. Okay. But if the two words are synonyms, then why not use the term, ‘equality.’ After all, the word ‘equality’ has historical weight behind it. The word ‘equity,’ by contrast, does not.Apart from extensive use of the word in politics and in the Press, ‘equality’ is a legal term of art, as is the adjectival form of the word, ‘equal,’ appearing prominently in both the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and in federal legislation and the import and purport of ‘equality,’ are discussed at length in legal treatises.So, then, what devious intention or nuance lurks behind the use of the word, ‘equity,’ in lieu of the word, ‘equality,’ by Biden’s people?  The Biden Administration can’t be alluding to the expression ‘private equity,’ which applies to and sees prominent use in business and economics.With no apparent allusion to business finance or to the law of contracts, the reference to ‘equity’ by Biden's officers and staff at the Administration's Press conferences is singularly odd and markedly discordant.Is the Biden Administration using the word ‘equity’ in a novel way? If so, then offer an explanation for it.If no novel use for the term ‘equity’ is intended, then why use it at all? The word, ‘equality,’ works just fine. But, having thrown the word out in the public domain, and with Biden’s people excruciatingly mindful of employing and emphasizing the word in their public discourse and when directing that talk especially to the Press, there must be some reason for doing so, and that is itself telling.

DEMOCRATS' USE OF NEOLOGISMS AND COMMON WORDS AND PHRASES WITH NEW TWISTS ALLUDE TO A MASSIVE PROPAGANDA EFFORT TO FORM, SHAPE, AND SWAY PUBLIC OPINION

A RADICAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE NATION IS ON THE HORIZON

The American public has seen that Democrats, generally, and the Radical Left-wing of the Party, especially, have a penchant for using common words and phrases in cryptic ways and for inventing new words and phrases, the meaning of which remains confoundingly mysterious. This must all be by design.How often in the last several months have Democrat Party politicians and their friends and compatriots in social media and in the Press thrown the expression ‘systemic racism’ around? No one bothers to define it or provide evidence for its existence; why is that? Even so, in asserting the words ‘systemic racism’ over again, the expression operates as a viral meme, a painful splinter in the public's psyche, as it was meant to do. The public blithely accepts the existence of this thing, ‘systemic racism’, as it is expected to do, and many Americans obediently comply, accepting the existence of ‘systemic racism’, unskeptically, unconditionally, and uncritically. The expression is thrown out to the masses as a self-evident truth, an assumption that no one can seriously question, or even be permitted to question, as with the issue of the integrity of America's federal elections and whether Trump actually did win the 2020 U.S. Presidential—mainstream media exposition and proclamation to the contrary. Evidently, America's seemingly Free Press takes its cue from the postulates of Reich MinisterJoseph Goebbels, from whom the Press and social media today have inserted Goebbels' profound, elucidating thoughts on the theory and practice of propaganda, into their own playbook: an educational treatise on the practice of manipulating and swaying public opinion over to your side. See Inspiringquotes; AZQuotes; and Quotes from The Goebbels' Diaries, as posted by Goodreads:“A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.”“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”“This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it.”“Not every item of news should be published. Rather must those who control news policies endeavor to make every item of news serve a certain purpose.”“It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.”“The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it.”“Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will.”“Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics and any dictatorship-run state has its roots in the street.“It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.”“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”“. . . the rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious.”“The war we are fighting until victory or the bitter end is in its deepest sense a war between Christ and Marx. Christ: the principle of love. Marx: the principle of hate.”“Peoples do never govern themselves. That lunacy was concocted by liberalism. Behind its people's ‘sovereignty’ the slyest cheaters are hiding, who don't want to be recognized.”“You can’t change the masses. They will always be the same: dumb, gluttonous and forgetful.”“That propaganda is good which leads to success, and that is bad which fails to achieve the desired result. It is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success.”“One should not as a rule reveal one's secrets, since one does not know if and when one may need them again. The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should like big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.”“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”Is it any wonder that the Biden/Harris Administration intends to dummy down the entire public educational system. This Brave New World that they have in mind can't function where people are free thinkers! But, the success of the Press in manipulating and controlling the thought processes of adults who have progressed through traditional public school education, before it had been dummied down and had become an indoctrination mill to create a population of unthinking drones, still demonstrates the emphatic power of propaganda over even highly educated Americans who consider themselves critical thinkers.Give some thought to the ability of the Press and social media to instill into the mind of many Americans the idea the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was completely fair and aboveboard. Was it really so? Did the DOJ and FBI truly undertake a serious investigation into numerous concrete allegations of election tampering? If so, when did that investigation take place? How extensive and intensive was it? What did the DOJ and FBI investigate? Isn't there a report of the findings of the DOJ and FBI? If so, where is it? Why can't the public see it? Why should the public simply take on faith William Barr's perfunctory, dismissive assertion, as reported by PBS, for one, that the Department found no evidence of widespread fraud? And, apart from the issue of massive vote tampering, isn't it odd that the U.S. Supreme Court would dismiss out-of-hand a serious State versus State elections' case when only the U.S. Supreme Court can provide relief as the Constitution only provides the U.S. Supreme Court with jurisdiction to hear and decide cases between States, as sovereign entities, when a federal question arises. As reported by Market Watch,“Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision to not hear the case, arguing that ‘we do not have discretion’ to turn down suits filed between two or more states, which fall within the Supreme Courts ‘original jurisdiction.’ ” ’The Press and social media not only scoff at the idea of a stolen election, exclaiming, with cavalier and constant bravado that such an idea is false and baseless, but that it is a crime for one to simply utter the possibility of it, and so any discussion is forbidden, as the argument for a stolen election is deemed too outlandish for discussion, dismissed out-of-hand as fantasy, as disinformation or misinformation. But, is it so? Also strange is the fact that the Democrat Party and social media are adamant that no evidence for a stolen U.S. Presidential election can even be entertained. That in itself is food for thought. The Democrat Party, the Press, and social media don't merely dismiss the issue out-of-hand, they become apoplectic if one simply harbors suspicions about the integrity of the election. Given the seriousness of the election of a U.S. President, one would think that, at the very least, the Democrat Party, Press, and social media would at least allow those who would challenge the prevailing opinion a forum to express their belief and to present their case. But, challengers are peremptorily and unceremoniously shut out and down from expressing their doubts about the integrity of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, and, more, challengers are contemptuously and vigorously denounced. Why does their exist such raw anger directed against those Americans who would dare express a contrary opinion, and one that has substantial and significant data to support a contrary finding pertaining to the integrity and fairness of the 2020 Presidential election?Can it be that Trump actually did win the election as he and his supporters claim? But no one dare be permitted to say it, lest the charade of the Great Pretender in Chief be recognized for whom and what he really is? Can it be that the forces that seek to transform our Nation into a Collectivist State cannot, must not, allow for dissension in the public marketplace? Can it be that this free Constitutional Republic is not so free, after all? Can it be that that the Republic no longer exists or else is surely on its deathbed, where only the trappings of liberty remain? Soon, will even the trappings of liberty be dispensed with as things no longer necessary to keep dissident thought at bay because all dissension in public and social thought will at some point be stamped out?If the Country cannot return to its roots, irreparable harm and catastrophe will befall the Nation. That is an ice-cold fact.Division, divisiveness, and suspicion of ‘the other’ have become widespread, and are deliberately being fostered by an Administration that falsely and ironically accuses Trump and his supporters for division and divisiveness in our Country. The fact of the matter is that Biden and his handlers have no desire to unify the Country because the unity they seek isn't really unity at all or otherwise  has taken on a most unusual form, or surely so in a free Constitutional Republic if that is what our Nation still is? Biden's unity is no more than a function of uniformity in thought and conformity of behavior, the antithesis, then, of free, critical thought. The unity the Biden/Harris Administration has in mind is compliance: unity imposed on the polity by Government edict or, where deemed necessary, unity imposed on the polity through the use of brutal, physical force, where the military and police target political dissent. How ironic that our Nation that has hitherto chastized other Nations for not permitting open dissent would not openly embrace its own cardinal sin.This demand for unity through conformity leads inevitably, inexorably into violent conflict and confrontation in society; assaults on innocent people, and the wanton destruction of public and private property. But, this, too, must be by design.  And this, too, is all by design. The malicious, malevolent forces that crush have unleashed their fury against our Nation. A violent clash is apparently welcomed. It is certainly ordained. That is the cost of success for a counterrevolution to overturn the American Revolution. And that is a price the forces that crush are willing to pay, must pay, to overturn 200 plus years of freedom that itself was the price many Americans were willing to pay and did pay to create and then preserve a free Constitutional Republic.Thus the forces that crush deliberately, calculatedly foment chaos throughout the Country. They foster ill-will among America's myriad ethnic groups. They create the very conflict and dissension they disingenuously say they wish to avoid, as they know that only through both psychological persuasion, i.e., propaganda, and through the threat of and through the use of physical force can they contain the righteous indignation of those Americans who are averse to relinquishing their sacred, fundamental, natural, unalienable, immutable, illimitable rights. The forces that crush must destroy all opposition.These forces that crush must undermine social cohesion to make their wishes for a one-world political, social, economic, cultural, and juridical system a reality. Thus, they denigrate America's f0unding founders. They defile our cherished history, heritage, traditions, mores, and core values with their lies. They disdain national pride and patriotism, perceiving these as feelings as archaic, atavistic, parochial; such feelings have no place in the new world order they intend to erect.Anything deemed archaic, atavistic, and parochial, these forces that crush intend to eradicate. Even the sacred institution of the family isn't beyond ridicule condemnation.Privacy is also considered quaint and anachronistic. Our Nation has become a surveillance society. Each individual is encouraged to become a shoofly; a spy against one's neighbor and even against a family member.very American is encouraged to report dissenting conduct and speech to the police or whomever the new authority, as established by an oppressive and repressive Government, happens to be.The forces that crush intend to replace our unique national identity with a multicultural perspective that transcends individual nation-states; that transcends OUR Nation-State. The forces that crush intend to replace our Nation's Judeo-Christian ethic with a new ethical standard grounded in the will of the State, where the State itself purports to be a god, and the sole god.Messaging is delivered through old vehicles and new, radio, television, and social media: through the airwaves, digital media, hard copy news media, and even word-of-mouth. The public is systematically subjected to highly efficacious, effective, and efficient modern propagandistic techniques. Yet, the full range, potential, and destructive power of propaganda are visible to those people perceptive enough to peer directly at it, and in so doing be immune from the effects of it. Unfortunately, many people aren't cognizant of the onslaught of propaganda on their psyche, and the impact it has had and continues to have on shaping their belief structures.And, now with the word ‘equity’ bandied about regularly in the Biden/Harris Administration's Press conferences, the propagandists have injected a new viral meme into the public psyche. The full impact and purpose of it have yet to play out, but something is definitely afoot: intimations of something far-reaching that will impact each American. And none of it is good.Consider Democrats’ policy positions on guns and on civilian gun ownership and possession, particularly. None of that is good either. Words DO have meaning. And those words that Democrats and the Press use when talking about guns are meant to amplify their abhorrence of them and to enact laws and to inject social policy directives that serve to undermine the very framework of a stable, cohesive society. The American public had learned the disturbing truth pertaining to Federal and State antigun policy and rhetoric. And that painful truth will shortly be revisited upon them and with a vengeance. This is a major concern for the forces that dare to crush a free Constitutional Republic and a free people, and it is all part of their plan for complete domination over the individual American citizen.________________________________

ANTIGUN LAWS AND ANTIGUN POLICIES ARE INCONSISTENT WITH THE FOUNDATIONS OF A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC

PART TWO

Antigun laws and policies aren’t meant—were never meant—to create a cohesive, stable society, to protect public safety and order. They were meant—are meant and were always meant—to hobble the American people, to subordinate the citizenry to Government. This is contrary to the import and purport of the U.S. Constitution. The framers of the Constitution intended for the American people to be sovereign, not for Government to assume that role, else tyranny looms.Through the incorporation of the Nation's Bill of Rights into the Constitution, and especially through the exercise of the natural, fundamental right of free speech and the right of the people to keep and bear arms, the citizenry would have and was meant to have the ability to keep a powerful, deceitful, jealous Government and a riotous majoritarian mob, operating at the behest of a tyrannical Government, both in check, and thereby maintain its sovereignty over those forces that would dare to usurp the natural sovereignty of the people.Obviously, the enactment of unlawful, restrictive gun laws and unlawful policies, together with—as we are seeing today—unprecedented restrictions on free speech are designed not to benefit the American citizenry but to harm it, and to do so irreparably, by removing from Americans the only effective means by which and through which Americans can maintain their sovereignty over Government: through exercise of the natural, fundamental right of each individual to speak his or her own mind and through the right of each to own and to possess firearms in defense of self and family and to prevent the unlawful encroaching usurpation of power by and the onset of tyranny by the State.Restrictions on sacred rights are meant to tear down society. And the subordination of the Self to the group Collective is antithetical to the tenets of Individualism upon which our Nation was constructed and upon which it grew and flourished. The forces that crush intend to create something wholly alien to our Nation’s history and traditions and culture.The public meets with waves upon waves of new laws, policies, and initiatives, all meant to defeat this thing ‘systemic racism’ that doesn’t even exist except in the feverish minds of politicians and fanatics, who create a dangerous reality out of nightmarish fantasy harking back to a long ago, dead past. The forces that crush conjured up this fiction of systemic racism as a ploy to tear down the sanctity and inviolability of the individual. The inculcation of the bizarre and ludicrous doctrine of critical race theory now hawked as legitimate science, to be added to the curriculum of public school and higher education, has at its apparent objective the goal of raising up one ethnic group at the expense of the other, which, in itself is dubious and disheartening. In truth indoctrinating young Americans and old in this new doctrine of critical race theory is psychologically debilitating to everyone. It isn't meant to mend feelings among ethnic groups. The opposite is true. It is meant to sow divisiveness and division, discord and discontent, suspicion and hatred among the masses, thereby creating a means by which a small, ruthless elite ruling class can easily subjugate and control the rest of us.The actions of the obstructers and destructors of our Nation do long-lasting if not irreparable harm to the health, safety, and well-being of the populace. It is not something they worry about. It is not something they care about. They see this as necessary to their agenda for absolute control over the population. It is their intention to fracture, destabilize, and tear down society. Once that is accomplished they will then engineer a different social, political, economic, and cultural order from the rubble of the old.A substantial segment of the population sees the intentions of the destroyers of our Country clearly. But, another substantial segment of the population does not. Those that do not have been conditioned to believe that President Trump was an autocrat, a danger to Democracy. it is all false. It is all a ruse.The Democrats had no one to offer as a palatable replacement, other than a feeble, shell of a man, Joe Biden.The Press erroneously and deceptively convinced the public that Joe Biden is a political moderate. They did this to allay the public’s suspicion of Radical Left intentions. Many Americans felt that voting for Biden would be a safe bet for the welfare of the Nation. Sadly, they were wrong. But, what is Joe Biden really?To pin Biden down is a fruitless and pointless venture. He isn’t running the Executive Branch of Government. He isn't running anything, not really. Biden isn’t a leader. He's a follower. and he is being led, and those who voted for him and those who voted against him in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election both know it. Biden is being dictated to by his advisors and he is obediently doing what he is told. Everything he says and does is deliberately and carefully scripted for effect.The goal to be achieved is a radical transformation of society, consistent with the tenets of Collectivism. The EU and Communist China under Xi Jinping, as Collectivist political, social, economic, and cultural constructs, provide, each in its own way, a blueprint for a radical transformation of America that the obstructers and destructors of the Nation envision.And the Biden/Harris Administration is just getting started with the massive transformation of our Nation into a Dystopian Collectivist nightmare.The public is beginning to see the Collectivist vision for America taking shape with increasing top-down Federal Government control of all aspects of American life. And this mammoth undertaking to rupture and destroy a free Constitutional Republic is moving ahead rapidly. Severe restrictions on fundamental rights and liberties are taking shape rapidly.Dissent as protected speech is not only strongly discouraged; it is systematically attacked, debased, degraded. A coordinated attack against the First Amendment is well underway, and a reciprocal attack on the Second is about to be launched.The radical transformation of America has begun and will soon be in full swing. Americans must be proactive to prevent this, using all lawful means to do so.If we fail, we will all soon see our Nation taking a 180-degree turn from a free Constitutional Republic, securely grounded on the tenets and principles of Individualism, to a Marxist, Paternalistic State, grounded on the tenets of Collectivism. This is a thing alien to our Nation's rich and glorious history, heritage, culture, and ethical values; and a thing absolutely antithetical to our founders' beliefs; abhorrent to their sensibilities; and disparaging to their memory.__________________________________

PROPAGANDA IN AMERICA IN FULL-SWING TO UNDERMINE A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC

RENEWED USE OF THE EXPRESSION ‘ASSAULT WEAPON’ TO UNDERMINE THE SECOND AMENDMENT IS ON THE WAY; EXPECT IT!

PART THREE

As with the odd use of the word, ‘equity,’  in lieu of equality,’ which has been voiced by Biden Administration officials of late, and which is apparently one more vehicle through which the Biden/Harris Administration intends to introduce a mammoth new wave of repressive policy initiatives—yet to be formally announced but surely soon to be activated—the sinister forces that are working feverishly to undermine a free Constitutional Republic have, in the not so distant past, utilized another expression which operated as the springboard for launching a devastating concerted attack on the Nation’s cherished institutions and fundamental rights. And Americans will soon see it utilized actively once again.Recall that Democrat political strategists decades ago coined the phrase ‘assault weapon.’ Politicians and lawmakers utilized the expression as a propaganda tool to constrain, not preserve and strengthen, the exercise of the fundamental, natural right codified in the Second Amendment.The expression ‘assault weapon,’ a fictional phrase that is not used or referenced by the military or by the gun industry, is a vague expression— deliberately vague in meaning—and for good reason. If the expression were well defined, the public would know exactly what firearms fall within the meaning of ‘assault weapon,’ namely the many they own, and they would be perturbed to see those firearms targeted for confiscation.By keeping the expression vague, State and federal governments can place into the category of banned firearms, i.e., ‘assault weapons,’ any firearm they wish to prohibit the public from owning and possessing. And the result is that the domain of ‘assault weapon’ constantly expands under Federal and State law and with alacrity.Each State has its own legal definition for ‘assault weapon.’ In some States those definitions are more expansive than in the gun statutes of other States. And, so the expression, ‘assault weapon,’ remains deliberately amorphous.Had the propagandists began their attack on the Second Amendment by using the expression, ‘semiautomatic firearm,’—an expression that has unambiguous meaning in the gun industry and in the military—that would immediately raise alarm bells among American gun owners and justifiably so.Most firearms owned by the American public today are semiautomatic weapons. By deliberately refraining from the use of the expression, ‘semiautomatic weapon,’ or ‘semiautomatic firearm,’ the political strategists and the propagandists had hoped to disguise the full depth and breadth of their aims, and they have met with a measure of success by opting to target civilian ownership and possession of ‘assault weapons’, rather than by specifically targeting ‘semiautomatic weapon.’ Not that the average gun owner didn't know what was going on—even if many Americans truly did not—but, through the use of a neologism, a coined word, a legal fiction, even more astute members of the public could be under placed under a hypnotic trance, not quite getting the full measure of what was taking place. Such is the power of propaganda. And many Americans did go along, unaware of the deception, oblivious to the ruse. They would see and did see “ASSAULT WEAPONS” as a danger to public safety and public order when they didn't see “SEMIAUTOMATIC WEAPONS” as a danger to public safety and order. In other words they weren't led to believe that THEIR firearms were a danger to public safety and order and, so, they didn't see THEIR firearms as being targeted. Thus, they didn't have necessarily have a problem with laws that restrict access to such things, “ASSAULT WEAPONS” where they definitely would have had a problem if “SEMIAUTOMATIC WEAPONS” were targeted.Reference to the amorphous “assault weapons” rather than to well-defined  “semiautomatic weapons” offered another boon to antigun zealots and antigun proponents, for it left Federal and State legislators free to fashion gun bans in whatever manner they wish. They were free to give specific legal meaning to the expression, ‘assault weapon,’ in whatever way they want, targeting the very firearms and the component parts of those weapons that Americans own and possess and would wish to keep. Those Americans, who might have deemed the assault weapon as a type of firearm that no civilian needs and that no civilian should be permitted to own and possess, would learn too late that they had been hoodwinked and that what they had taken to be a fundamental right to keep and bear arms had, indeed, been unlawfully, unconstitutionally infringed, after all, with an end-run around the problem of semiautomatic weapons in the hands of tens of millions of Americans, through a ruse concocted by the propagandists.When State governments ban “assault weapons,” they must obviously name the weapons they intend to ban; and now the public knows that the firearms they own and possess that were once legal, now aren’t. And that justifiably angers them, but it is much too late in the day to do anything about it. And, as restrictive gun laws are amended and refined, the public sees that more and more semiautomatic weapons are included under the rubric of highly regulated or outright illegal “assault weapons.”The federal assault weapons ban of 1994 (AWB) listed a substantial number of semiautomatic firearms, handguns, rifles, and shotguns. Democrats demonstrate a remarkable proclivity for making illegal a substantial number of semiautomatic weapons, and they relish the chance to do so.The AWB expired in 2004 and Congress didn’t renew it. Democrats attempted repeatedly through the years to reinstitute a federal “assault weapons” ban, but without success. Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein figured prominently in that effort, but, to date, had not met with success. This will soon change now that Democrats have control of the Executive Branch of Government and now that they also control both Houses of Congress.Yet, through the intervening years, between 2004 and 2021, when Democrats in Congress ran into problems convincing Republicans and the public at large to fashion a 1994 national assault weapons ban, did not affect the States. The seeming intransigence of Congress that galled the antigun zealots never impacted States that antigun zealots controlled. These Radical Left States created their own oppressive gun laws, severely restricting possession or banning altogether many semiautomatic firearms under the category “assault weapons.” Broadly construing ‘assault weapon,’ to mean whatever they chose it to mean, these States were free to ban many different firearms with a broad stroke, and they did so with abandon.If the expression ‘assault weapon’ were an industry term of art, as, for example, the expression ‘assault rifle’ is, legislatures would have struggled to lawfully ban large categories of firearms under the rubric of ‘assault weapon.’ But the phrase ‘assault weapon’ is not an industry or military term of art. So the drafters of legislation can include single-action or double-action revolvers, or any other kind of firearm under the rubric of ‘assault weapon’  if they wish. And, at some point, they may very well do so. There is nothing to constrain them.Look at the New York Safe Act of 2013. Under the list of banned “assault weapons” is included revolving shotguns. Revolving shotguns aren't semiautomatic weapons. The expression, ‘assault weapon,’ need not be confined to semiautomatic weapons or to any particular category of firearm.Now that Democrats control both Houses of Congress along with the Executive Branch of Government, we will soon see Presidential executive orders and legislative bills flying willy-nilly off the desks of antigun proponents and zealots. There is nothing to stop them._____________________________________

THE WAR ON AMERICA'S BASIC FREEDOMS, THE RIGHT OF FREE SPEECH AND THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, IS UNDER GREATER ASSAULT TODAY THAN AT ANY OTHER TIME IN OUR NATION'S PAST

PART FOUR

Democrats have complained long and hard that, as they see it, too many people have access to “military weapons of war,” a.k.a. ‘assault weapons.’ A flurry of State and local laws and, for a time, federal law, too, strictly regulated the ownership and possession of them. Congressional Democrats now have carte blanc to do what they want. And on the matter of guns, Joe Biden has never equivocated.Back in August 2019, when Biden was just another Democrat Party hopeful to be U.S. President, CNN reported him exclaiming that “he will push to ban assault weapons if elected President in 2020.” And, in March 2020, MSN news, citing a Columbus Dispatch story, reported Biden asserting, “‘Assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are designed for no purpose other than to kill quickly and as brutally as possible. No one needs them.’” Unlike with the issues of “court-packing,” coal mining, and fracking, where, during the campaign, Biden made vague pronouncements or outright inconsistent statements he has been unequivocal when it comes to guns.Biden has a deep-seated loathing of guns, especially those he refers to as ‘assault weapons,’—a fiction and pejorative.Yet, noticeably absent from the first few dozens of executive orders Biden signed, there is, momentarily, as of the posting of this article, no Biden order pertaining to guns and gun ownership. Has he forgotten about that? Not likely!Rest assured, those orders are coming, and coming soon. And we will soon see a gale of antigun bills flying of the desks of Congressional Democrats.The twin issues of “guns” and “gun violence” will be much discussed in the weeks and months ahead. That much is certain.Will Biden sign an executive order banning “assault weapons” and will he sign a flurry of other antigun laws as well, not bothering to wait for Congressional enactments?Don’t think this is improbable. In fact, with all the banter of gun-toting “white supremacists” and right-wing “domestic terrorists” and with thousands of National Guard troops camped out in the U.S. Capital, and with the constant denigration of and growing suppression of conservative dissent, something is definitely afoot. In fact, the Democrat Party propaganda machine is in overdrive. The propagandist newspaper, NY Times, for one, has laid the groundwork for an assault on “guns.”Proclaiming with majestic fanfare a massive threat to “democracy” posed by purported well-armed right-wing extremist groups, or so the public is told—and never mind the threat posed by truly dangerous Radical Left Anarchist and Marxist extremist groups that routinely get a pass despite having engaged in an unmistakable reign of terror against the public over the summer, and continue to do so even now—the vast propaganda machine of the “free” Press is setting the stage for a nation-wide gun confiscation program targeting average citizens, similar to the one instituted in Australia some time back, that Hillary Clinton championed.The propagandists have conjured up a new pretext for further undermining the Second Amendment: the threat of “domestic terrorism.”  Old expressions bandied about such as ‘white supremacist,’ and ‘white extremist,’ and new expressions such as ‘domestic terrorist’ and ‘equity’ aren’t defined—are deliberately kept vague—but the public is getting a ferocious blast of “news” reports meant to keep these words and phrases constantly in the public psyche. This isn’t an accident. The reason for this is plain.The Radical Left propaganda machine is softening up the public, turning the mind to mush, conditioning the public, most of them reluctantly, but some of them gleefully, to accept the need for curtailing the citizenry's fundamental rights. the Radical Left is constantly contorting and distorting the import of the U.S. Constitution out of all semblance to its original meaning and intent.The forces that dare crush the Nation and its people into submission—and they are legion—including mega-billionaire neoliberal globalists both here at home and abroad, Communist China, and avowed Marxists, Socialists, Communists, and Anarchists, found in all sectors of Government and in the economy, are succeeding. They have weakened much of the public’s resolve. The dangerous forces that crush entire nations into submission cavalierly usurp authority, denying the American people their rightful sovereignty, slowly suffocating and strangling the public’s will and spirit to oppose them, leaving Americans feeling remorseful, fearful, dejected, without hope, and thereby dependent on the Nanny State. Such is the power of propaganda to bend, shape, and warp the public psyche. The use of words and phrases can have and do have a tangible, debilitating effect.By deliberately keeping expressions vague and ambiguous, propagandists can define words and phrases in whatever way they want, changing the meaning of words and phrases at random, or dispensing with them and replacing them with others, or coining new words and phrases; lumping whatever they want into them. The propagandists have laid the groundwork for a new bogeyman, and they are using that bogeyman to undermine the U.S. Constitution, the foundation of our Government and they are blithely attacking our Nation’s fundamental rights.The forces that dare crush our Nation into submission have taken over the reins of Government. With the ouster of Trump and with control over two of three Branches of Government, and with that of the Judiciary, the third, on the radar, the forces that intend to destroy a free Constitutional Republic have attained much of their first goal. The second goal is now to rein in the sovereign American people themselves.How do you destroy the sovereignty of the American people? Get them to accept the false and dangerous notion that their fundamental, natural, unalienable, immutable, illimitable rights are no longer necessary; that the Democrat Party agenda, when effectuated, can better “serve” the American people and that all will be well with the world once the Nation's old, archaic, atavistic, anachronistic Bill of Rights is erased, and once the plain meaning of the Articles of the U.S. Constitution is modified, upended, reinterpreted, formally dispensed with, or, simply, ignored.____________________________________Copyright © 2021 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

THE PARKLAND, FLORIDA HIGH SCHOOL TRAGEDY MAKES THE CASE FOR ARMED SELF-DEFENSE.

In the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School tragedy, the mainstream Press, echoing the sentiments of antigun activists and antigun legislators, focused the public’s attention on two subjects: guns and mental illness. Antigun activists argue that guns and mental illness are both intractable. Mix the two like a cocktail and you have a recipe for disaster. That, as maintained by antigun activists, accurately explains the cause of the mass shooting incident at the Parkland, Florida High School. But does it?In an editorial, appearing in The New York Times on February 24, 2018, titled, “I Can’t Stop Mass Shooters,” by Amy Barnhorst, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, Davis, admitted the conundrum. The author writes, “Each mass shooting reignites a debate about what causes this type of violence and how it can be prevented. Those who oppose further restrictions on gun ownership often set their sights on the mental health care system. Shouldn’t psychiatrists be able to identify as dangerous someone like Nikolas Cruz. . . ? And can’t we just stop unstable young men like him from buying firearms? It’s much harder than it sounds.”The author has no answer other than the perfunctory, putting “some distance between these young men and their guns.” But, would that prevent mass violence? Clearly, it would not even if this seems plausible to some. Signs of mental illness in a person do not automatically mean a person has violent tendencies. Conversely, those individuals who not fall within one or more listed categories in the latest version of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (“DSM-5”)—the Psychiatrist’s Bible—may have violent tendencies.

FROM AN EMPIRICAL STANDPOINT, DISPOSSESSING CIVILIANS OF THEIR GUNS WILL DO NOTHING TO CIRCUMVENT VIOLENT CRIME.

“The reality is that mass shootings are very rare and that neither mental illness nor mass shootings are a significant cause of gun violence. Individuals with a serious mental illness only account for approximately 4 percent of all violent crime in the United States, the majority of which is not committed with a firearm. Furthermore, individuals having no history of mental illness committed a number of these mass shootings. With mental illness representing such a small fraction of gun violence, gun-control efforts focused solely on the mentally ill are ‘unlikely to significantly reduce overall rates of gun violence in the United States.’” “The New York Safe Act: A Thoughtful Approach To Gun Control, Or A Politically Expedient Response To The Public's Fear Of The Mentally Ill?”, 88 S. Cal. L. Rev. 16, 43-44 (2015), by Matthew Gamsin, J.D. Candidate, 2015, University of Southern California Gould School of Law.Despite this evidence, antigun activists nonetheless vehemently call for general bans on the sale of semiautomatic “assault weapons” and are specifically targeting those individuals deemed to have mental illness, which may very well raise due process and equal protection issues for millions of Americans. Were these steps taken, violence would still ensue. Consider:“On April 15, 2013, two homemade bombs detonated 12 seconds and 210 yards (190 m) apart at 2:49 p.m., near the finish line of the annual Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring several hundred others, including 16 who lost limbs.  On April 18, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released images of two suspects, who were later identified as Kyrgyz-American brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev.” “The Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic terrorist truck bombing on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States on April 19, 1995. Perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the bombing killed 168 people, injured more than 680 others, and destroyed one-third of the building.” “Eight people were killed and almost a dozen injured when a 29-year-old man in a rented pickup truck drove down a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center Tuesday in Manhattan, New York City. The suspect was identified by two law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation as Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov. He's from Uzbekistan in Central Asia but had been living in the US since 2010, sources said.” Whether these killers were mentally ill in a clinical sense or “normal,” they did not need a firearm to create havoc.Of course, antigun activists and their cheerleaders in the mainstream Press and in Congress argue that civilized Countries place restrictions on civilian access to guns and that doing so would constrain a killer’s access to one lethal instrumentality. Still, antigun activists must contend with the legal ramifications of attempting to curtail civilian access to firearms in a Country where the citizenry's rights and liberties, codified in a Bill of Rights, cannot be so easily dismissed.

INDISCRIMINATELY DISPOSSESSING THE CIVILIAN POPULATION OF THEIR GUNS WOULD NOT HOLD UP TO LEGAL SCRUTINY.

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT, IN THE LANDMARK SECOND AMENDMENT HELLER CASE, HELD THAT THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, CODIFIED IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT, IS AN INDIVIDUAL RIGHT, NOT CONNECTED TO SERVICE IN A MILITIA. FURTHER, THE SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHT EMBODIES  ARMED SELF-DEFENSE. AND FROM A PRAGMATIC PERSPECTIVE, CIVILIAN DEFENSE OF ARMS IS PRESSING BECAUSE, CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, THE POLICE ARE NOT LEGALLY REQUIRED TO SAFEGUARD THE LIVES OF INDIVIDUALS. THAT RESPONSIBILITY RESTS ON EACH PERSON.

Antigun activists retort that nothing in the Second Amendment guarantees the right of an American citizen to own and possess an “assault weapon.” But, is that true?First, the concept of ‘assault weapon’ is a legal fiction that encompasses a wide range of weaponry. On examination it becomes clear that antigun proponents and activists are not merely targeting some semiautomatic weapons; they are targeting all semiautomatic weapons. The legal issue is whether semiautomatic weapons in common use—which include firearms defined as 'assault weapons'—fall within the core of Second Amendment protection. The U.S. Supreme Court has not weighed in on this. But, that does not mean Government, State or Federal, may presume semiautomatic weapons, especially those firearms referred to as “assault weapons,” do not fall within the core of the Second Amendment.Second, a corollary to the basic, unfettered, natural right codified in the Second Amendment is that American citizens have a right to possess a firearm for self-defense. Antigun activists argue that armed self-defense is unnecessary because it is the duty of the police to safeguard the lives and well-being of the citizenry. But do police departments, as government entities, really have that duty? They do not!“No inquiry is more central to constitutional jurisprudence than the effort to delineate the duties of government. The courts' approach to this complex subject has been dominated by reliance on a simple distinction between affirmative and negative responsibilities. Government is held solely to what courts characterize as a negative obligation: to refrain from acts that deprive citizens of protected rights. Obligations that courts conceive to be affirmative—duties to act, to provide, or to protect—are not enforceable constitutional rights. “The Negative Constitution, A Critique,” 88 Mich. L. Rev. 2271 (August 1990) by Susan Bandes, Professor of Law, DePaul University College of law.The safeguarding of one's life is then a personal responsibility, not a police responsibility. Broward County residents, especially those high school students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, should have learned that lesson well. Many, obviously, have not as they--at the behest of their silent benefactors and choreographers of their political strategies, the antigun groups--act against their own best interests. They lash out at NRA, the very organization that serves them by protecting their sacred right of armed self-defense; and they call for civilian disarmament leaving them worse off. The duty of the Police is merely to safeguard, in some nebulous sense, the well-being of a community as a whole, not the lives of the individuals who live in it. But, then, since Government has no affirmative duty to provide armed protection for each citizen, Government cannot, in good faith, deny the citizen the natural right of armed defense owed to one's self. If the public is to take away anything from the recent Parkland, Florida tragedy, it is this:The Broward County Sheriff’s Department and the first responders from the Coral Springs Police Department did an abysmal job. By the time the Coral Springs Police SWAT team arrived, it was too late. Lives had been lost. An investigation unfolds, but it means nothing; for, whatever the outcome, police departments do not have and never did have an affirmative duty to protect individuals within a community. They are immune from suit. This is not supposition. It is law.“Thus . . . a claim that police officers failed to protect a particular individual from injury by nongovernmental actors is generally not cognizable; a successful claim would require sufficient prior contacts between police and the individual to indicate a specific undertaking or promise by the police to provide protection and detrimental reliance by the individual. Absent such facts, there is generally no liability for failure to enforce laws and regulations intended to benefit the community as a whole, failure to provide police or fire protection, or failure to inspect." Affirmative Duties, Systemic Harms, and the Due Process Clause, 94 Mich. L. Rev. 982, 999-1000 (February, 1996), by Barbara E. Armacost, Professor of Law, University of Virginia.The first and last line of adequate defense both inside the home and outside it is, as it always was, as the framers of our Constitution knew full well and as they provided for: armed self-defense.

ALERT: CONTACT YOUR REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES NOW.

Call your U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives.  Tell them this: “if you want my support, then vote for national handgun carry reciprocity now.”PHONE U.S. SENATE: (202) 224-3121;PHONE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: (202) 225-3121______________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.