NEW YORK’S SULLIVAN ACT OFFENDS THE SECOND AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION AND MUST BE STRUCK DOWN

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 TWENTY-THREE

SUBPART A

NEW YORK HAS ENACTED MANY GUN MEASURES FOR WELL OVER A CENTURY, BUT THERE IS ONLY ONE GUN LAW: THE SULLIVAN ACT OF 1911

For well over a century, ever since the enactment of the notorious Sullivan Act of 1911, the New York Government has successfully weathered all challenges to it.Since then, New York has enacted many laws directed at guns and gun possession, but these laws, properly understood, are not standalone gun laws. They are all revisions or amendments to the archaic Sullivan Act.This means that, while New York has MANY “gun laws” (lower case), the State truly has only ever had ONE “GUN LAW” (upper case).It is important to understand this. As long as the Sullivan Act exists, Americans residing or working in New York who desire to exercise their fundamental natural law right to armed self-defense will face constant obstacles and hurdles, and even Government harassment that negatively impacts their enjoyment of the Second Amendment guarantee.The 2022 U.S. Supreme Court case NYSRPA vs. Bruen did nothing to diminish the impact of the Sullivan Act in practice. New York’s GUN LAW is as dictatorial and as oppressive now, as it was prior to Bruen.This became apparent once the New York State Legislature passed, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law, a new package of amendments to the Sullivan Act, titled, “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” of 2022, more often referred to by the acronym “CCIA.”The CCIA pays lip service to the Bruen rulings insofar as, and only to the extent that, the GUN LAW sheds the verbiage “PROPER CAUSE” from the Sullivan Act. That is the only concession made. Other than that, the GUN LAW is no less burdensome than before the passage of the CCIA, and in one major respect, worse.For, even with “PROPER CAUSE” struck from the GUN LAW, the “MAY ISSUE/GOOD CAUSE” requirement remains unscathed.The Government simply subsumed “PROPER CAUSE” into “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER.” The new standard is as subjective as the old one.Present holders of valid New York concealed handgun carry licenses must comply with a new set of requirements to carry a handgun in New York. They are placed in the same boat as new applicants.New York gun owners were not fooled by the CCIA. Challenges to the Constitutionality of the amendments came within days of the Government's passage of it. Those cases are ongoing.The Arbalest Quarrel has written extensively on this and will stay on this. Readers are invited to peruse our comprehensive blog posts. And Ammoland Shooting Sports News has kindly reposted our articles. See, e.g., articles posted on January 20, 2023, January 9, 2023, January 6, 2023, January 5, 2023, and December 28, 2022—just to name a few.Unconscionable constraints on the exercise of the right to armed self-defense under the Kathy Hochul Government are no more relaxed than under the Government of her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, and remain a top priority for her administration. The Sullivan Act of 1911 makes this possible.Suppression of the right of the people to keep and bear arms in New York continues unabated, with the infusion of more and more restrictive, repressive gun measures, inexorably whittling away at the natural law right to armed self-defense.Nothing will stop this juggernaut unless or until either one of two things occurs: The State Legislature repeals the Sullivan Act, or the New York  Federal or State Courts strike the Sullivan Act down.Neither one of these two actions will occur as long as the New York Government and the New York State and Federal Courts retain a mindset abhorrent of firearms and antithetical to civilian citizen ownership and possession of firearms. Neither the New York Government nor the U.S. Supreme Court has any illusion about this.The problem rests with the concept of “LICENSING OF HANDGUNS,” spawned by the Sullivan Act well over a century ago. The Sullivan Act introduced the formal handgun licensing scheme to New York.The New York Government knows that, as long as handgun licensing remains ostensibly “lawful,” the Government can and will continue to make incursions on the Second Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court knows this, too.“The current handgun laws of New York State and New York City trace their origin to the state Sullivan Dangerous Weapons Act of 1911. Proposed by Democratic State Senator and Tammany Hall leader Timothy D. ‘Big Tim’ Sullivan, who represented the slums of lower Manhattan, the Act made it a misdemeanor to possess a handgun without a permit and a felony to carry a concealed weapon in public. Whereas the Act designated judges as the licensing officers in much of the state, it gave the New York City police commissioner sole authority to grant or deny licenses in New York City, an arrangement that persists to this day. At least part of the motivation behind the Sullivan Act was a desire to keep firearms out of the hands of recent immigrants from Italy and Southern Europe—perceived to be prone to violence—by giving the New York Police Department (NYPD) the power to grant or deny permits. The NYPD's Licensing Division still handles all handgun license applications in the city. Today, it remains illegal to possess a handgun anywhere in New York State without a license. Section 265.01(1) of the New York Penal Law makes possession of a handgun an automatic class A misdemeanor, unless a person can qualify for one of the exceptions listed in section 265.20. For ordinary citizens, the only exemption that applies is possession with a license issued under section 400.00. . . . Today, it remains illegal to possess a handgun anywhere in New York State without a license. . . . As has been the case since the passage of the Sullivan Act, obtaining a license under Penal Law section 400.00 is the only lawful way for civilians in New York State to possess a handgun. . . .” “Pursued by a ‘Bear’? New York City's Handgun Laws in the Wake of Heller and McDonald,” 46 Colum. J.L. & Soc. Probs. 145, Winter 2012, by Matthew Bridge, J.D. Candidate 2013, Columbia Law.”New York holders of valid handgun licensees may not be immediately aware of an important fact. The handgun license acquired does not belong to the holder of it. The license is and remains the property of the licensing authority. Moreover, the conditions set by the licensing authority are terse, categorical, and blunt. For example, the holder of a handgun license issued by the New York City Police Department must surrender the license upon demand of the Police Department. That means his firearms must be vouchered as well. The reverse side of the license issued by the NYPD sets forth the following:“This license is revocable at any time. Upon demand of a police officer, a licensee must immediately surrender his/her license and handguns. Lost, stolen, confiscated, or surrendered handguns must be reported to the License Division immediately at 646-610-5560 or 646-610-5154.” [see discussion of NYPD handgun licensing procedures in AQ article, posted on October 19, 2015]The CCIA doesn't address this. But one should assume that such language will be incorporated in such new handgun licenses that a New York license authority happens to issue.When the High Court handed down the Bruen decision on June 23, 2022, the Court knew it was tinkering around the edges of a beast. It should have struck down the Sullivan Act, at that time, but it didn’t.Possibly, Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would have done just that. The Court certainly had an opportunity to attack the Sullivan Act head-on when the Court took up for review the New York Second Amendment case, NYSRPA vs. City of New York, 140 S. Ct. 1525 (2020). Little came of that.__________________________________

SUBPART B

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT HAD TWO OPPORTUNITIES TO CONFRONT NEW YORK’S NOTORIOUS SULLIVAN ACT HEAD-ON BUT IN BOTH INSTANCES THE COURT PUNTED

Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the liberal wing of the Court would have none of that. They allowed the City of New York and past Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, to sidestep the unconstitutionality of the Sullivan Act, by amending both the New York City gun regulations and the New York State Gun Law to ostensibly cohere with the dictates of the Second Amendment.Justice Brett Kavanaugh, adding an odd Concurring Opinion, attempted to split hairs, writing,“I agree with the per curiam opinion’s resolution of the procedural issues before us—namely, that petitioners’ claim for injunctive relief against New York City’s old rule is moot and that petitioners’ new claims should be addressed as appropriate in the first instance by the Court of Appeals and the District Court on remand.I also agree with Justice Alito’s general analysis of Heller and McDonald. Post, at 1540-1541; see Heller v. District of Columbia, 670 F. 3d 1244, 399 U.S. App. D.C. 314 (CADC 2011) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting). And I share Justice Alito’s concern that some federal and state courts may not be properly applying Heller and McDonald. The Court should address that issue soon, perhaps in one of the several Second Amendment cases with petitions for certiorari now pending before the Court.”Justice Alito joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch saw the game the New York Government had played on New York’s gun licensees.The Chief Justice and other Justices permitted this. Perhaps they were pleased with it. But Associate Justices Alito and Thomas and Gorsuch would not stand for it. He set forth in detail his awareness of it, and his justified anger over it:“By incorrectly dismissing this case as moot, the Court permits our docket to be manipulated in a way that should not be countenanced. Twelve years ago in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 128 S. Ct. 2783,   171 L. Ed. 2d 637 (2008), we held that the Second Amendment protects the right of ordinary Americans to keep and bear arms. Two years later, our decision in McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894 (2010), established that this right is fully applicable to the States. Since then, the lower courts have decided numerous cases involving Second Amendment challenges to a variety of federal, state, and local laws. Most have failed. We have been asked to review many of these decisions, but until this case, we denied all such requests.On January 22, 2019, we granted review to consider the constitutionality of a New York City ordinance that burdened the right recognized in Heller. Among other things, the ordinance prohibited law-abiding New Yorkers with a license to keep a handgun in the home (a ‘premises license’) from taking that weapon to a firing range outside the City. Instead, premises licensees wishing to gain or maintain the ability to use their weapons safely were limited to the seven firing ranges in the City, all but one of which were largely restricted to members and their guests.In the District Court and the Court of Appeals, the City vigorously and successfully defended the constitutionality of its ordinance, and the law was upheld based on what we are told is the framework for reviewing Second Amendment claims that has been uniformly adopted by the Courts of Appeals. One might have thought that the City, having convinced the lower courts that its law was consistent with Heller, would have been willing to defend its victory in this Court. But once we granted certiorari, both the City and the State of New York sprang into action to prevent us from deciding this case. Although the City had previously insisted that its ordinance served important public safety purposes, our grant of review apparently led to an epiphany of sorts, and the City quickly changed its ordinance. And for good measure the State enacted a law making the old New York City ordinance illegal.Thereafter, the City and amici supporting its position strove to have this case thrown out without briefing or argument. The City moved for dismissal ‘as soon as is reasonably practicable’ on the ground that it had ‘no legal reason to file a brief.’ Suggestion of Mootness 1. When we refused to jettison the case at that early stage, the City submitted a brief but ‘stress[ed] that [its] true position [was] that it ha[d] no view at all regarding the constitutional questions presented’ and that it was “offer[ing] a defense of the . . . former rul[e] in the spirit of something a Court-appointed amicus curiae might do.” Brief for Respondents 2. A prominent brief supporting the City went further. Five United States Senators, four of whom are members of the bar of this Court, filed a brief insisting that the case be dismissed. If the Court did not do so, they intimated, the public would realize that the Court is ‘motivated mainly by politics, rather than by adherence to the law,’ and the Court would face the possibility of legislative reprisal. Brief for Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse et al. as Amici Curiae 2-3, 18 (internal quotation marks omitted).Regrettably, the Court now dismisses the case as moot. If the Court were right on the law, I would of course approve that disposition. Under the Constitution, our authority is limited to deciding actual cases or controversies, and if this were no longer a live controversy—that is, if it were now moot—we would be compelled to dismiss. But if a case is on our docket and we have jurisdiction, we have an obligation to decide it. As Chief Justice Marshall wrote for the Court in Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 264, 6 Wheat. 264, 404, 5 L. Ed. 257 (1821), “[w]e have no more right to decline the exercise of jurisdiction which is given, than to usurp that which is not given.”Thus, in this case, we must apply the well-established standards for determining whether a case is moot, and under those standards, we still have a live case before us. It is certainly true that the new City ordinance and the new State law give petitioners most of what they sought, but that is not the test for mootness. Instead, “a case ‘becomes moot only when it is impossible for a court to grant any effectual relief whatever to the prevailing party.’” Chafin v. Chafin, 568 U. S. 165, 172, 133 S. Ct. 1017, 185 L. Ed. 2d 1 (2013) (emphasis added). “‘As long as the parties have a concrete interest, however small, in the outcome of the litigation, the case is not moot.’” Ibid. (emphasis added).Respondents have failed to meet this ‘heavy burden.’ Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Slater, 528 U. S. 216, 222, 120 S. Ct. 722, 145 L. Ed. 2d 650 (2000) (per curiam) (internal quotation marks omitted). This is so for two reasons. First, the changes in City and State law do not provide petitioners with all the injunctive relief they sought. Second, if we reversed on the merits, the District Court on remand could award damages to remedy the constitutional violation that petitioners suffered.”See also AQ two articles analyzing the “Gun Transport Case” posted on our website on April 27, 2020, and on May 8, 2020. Our April 27, 2020 article was reposted on Ammoland Shooting Sports News, on that same April 27 date. See also the AQ article posted on Ammoland Shooting Sports news on April 26, 2021. In that article, we remarked with satisfaction that the U.S. Supreme Court had agreed to take up a second New York gun case. In that case, captioned, NYSRPA vs. Corlett, 141 S. Ct. 2566 (2021), the High Court granted certiorari:“Petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit granted limited to the following question: Whether the State's denial of petitioners’ applications for concealed-carry licenses for self-defense violated the Second Amendment.”The public would come to know this case as NYSRPA vs. Bruen, once Kevin P Bruen, the new Superintendent of the New York State Police replaced his predecessor, Keith M. Corlett.The matter discussed in NYSRPA vs. Bruen was of an order of magnitude greater than the earlier case, NYSRPA vs. City of New York, insofar as the Bruen case dealt more directly with the Sullivan Act—the Act that required Americans to obtain a license to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.Yet, as impactful as the Bruen case WAS and IS, the High Court didn’t strike down the core of the Sullivan Act.Chief Justice Roberts, and the liberal wing of the Court evidently realizing the possibility of this, consciously limited the issue on review.The Bruen rulings, handed down on June 23, 2022, although potent and compelling, nonetheless provided the Hochul Government a modicum of wiggle room. That wiggle room allowed the Government to slither around the rulings through the enactment of a plethora of amendments to the Sullivan Act.As implausible and unconvincing a response to the Bruen rulings, as these amendments are, they served a purpose: to waylay the full impact of Bruen. And that is exactly what Hochul and the State Government in Albany did._____________________________________

SUBPART C

NEW YORK GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL KNEW THE BRUEN RULINGS WOULD BE DAMAGING TO THE STATE’S GUN LAW, THE SULLIVAN ACT, BUT SHE WOULD NOT ALLOW BRUEN TO GET IN THE WAY OF HER AGENDA

Challenges to the amendments to the Sullivan Act, i.e., the CCIA, came at once. This wasn’t unexpected.The Hochul Government knew this would occur since the Government’s amendments didn’t alleviate New York gun owners’ justified concerns over the exercise of the right to armed self-defense. The measures Hochul signed into law weren’t meant to do that. Hochul’s attack on the Second Amendment continued unabated and, in fact, intensified.The Government had planned to proceed with its agenda to restrain and constrain the exercise of a Divine Natural Law Right ever since New York enacted its “GUN LAW.”Heller and McDonald didn’t stop New York and other similar jurisdictions from continuing to constrain the exercise of the right of the people to keep and bear arms. And Bruen wasn’t going to constrain New York and these other jurisdictions, either.The Hochul Government hoped the Courts would dismiss the challenges to the CCIA.After all, the New York State and Federal Courts had more often than not acquiesced to the Government in the many years and decades since the passage of the Sullivan Act, and the Hochul Government had no reason to expect the Courts wouldn’t do so now.Striking the expression, “PROPER CAUSE” from the GUN LAW served as mere window dressing.The Government knew exactly what it was doing when Albany passed the CCIA and Kathy Hochul signed the CCIA into law, as did the Plaintiffs, who brought suit against the Government, intent on preventing the Hochul Government from defying Bruen.Placing the requirement of “PROPER CAUSE” into another fixture of the Sullivan Act, “GOOD MORAL CHARACTER,” that the High Court didn’t address, apparently seemed to both Kathy Hochul and the Democrat Party-controlled Legislature in Albany, a convenient way to avoid the strictures of Bruen.Hochul and Albany simply had to convince the New York Courts to go along with the charade.But the lower U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York—the first Court called upon to deal with the CCIA—didn’t play along. This obviously surprised and puzzled and concerned the Hochul Government. The Federal trial Court imposed a stay on enforcement of the CCIA by granting the Plaintiffs’ Motion for a Preliminary Injunction, during the pendency of the Plaintiffs’ suit on the merits.The Hochul Government immediately appealed the decision of the New York District Court to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and the higher Court provided Hochul with some breathing room.The Plaintiff New York concealed handgun carry licensees weren't going to take this lying down. They appealed the adverse Second Circuit Court ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.The High Court deemed the case important enough to review a non-final interlocutory order, a rare occurrence.The High Court didn’t lift the stay imposed by the Second Circuit on the Plaintiff New York Concealed Carry Handgun licensees, but the result wasn't a complete win the Hochul Government might have wished for, either. The Hochul Government is able to breathe a sigh of relief, for a time at least. But the High Court made clear it will be watching closely to determine whether either the Second Circuit or the Government is dragging its feet on this. A day of reckoning is coming for the New York Government. And the Sullivan Act’s head is in the guillotine.Having grown visibly tired of seeing Heller, McDonald, and now Bruen waylaid by stubborn State Governments and their Courts, and by their brethren on the High Court as well, Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito will insist on attacking unconstitutional Government laws directly, and strenuously. With a no-nonsense legal mind like Amy Coney Barrett on the High Court, New York gun owners and Americans around the Country may finally see their efforts through the years and decades finally bearing fruit.Hochul and Albany know the Sullivan Act’s days are numbered. A gun licensing regime clearly designed to subvert the fundamental natural law right to armed self-defense is a thing that, long ago, should have been repealed by the State Legislature or struck down by the New York Courts, buried, and never again resurrected.Instead, this thing has not only lingered but has through time grown appreciably stronger. It is an affront to the Nation’s history and heritage, and inconsistent with our Nation's core beliefs, grounded as they are on the sanctity and inviolability of the individual Self over Government. New York's Sullivan Act is inconsistent with the import and purport of the Bill of Rights and contrary to the natural sovereignty of the American citizenry over the Government.The New York Safe Act of 2013, signed into law by Andrew Cuomo, and the Concealed Carry Improvement Act of 2022, signed into law by Cuomo’s successor, Kathy Hochul, are not to be perceived as models of a new era in America, but, rather as relics of an earlier time—a much earlier age—one harkening back to medieval feudalism.The U.S. Supreme Court must strike down the Sullivan Act. That will serve to send a strong message to the States that have similar Anti-Second Amendment regimes, and that will also serve to send a strong message to the Biden Administration, too.These so-called “elites” who machinate for a world empire in their meetings held in Davos and in the Government offices of Brussels and in the clandestine meetings of the Bilderberg Group and in other such secretive enclaves dispersed throughout the world are all throwbacks to and should be perceived as nothing more or other than throwbacks to medieval Europe.These “elites” seek a return to the world of the Middle Ages, a world of empire, consisting of legions of abjectly penurious serfs, the “preterite,” and a minute number of extravagantly wealthy and powerful royalty and nobility, the “elect.”The empire this new royalty and nobility envisions, and which is taking shape, is designed to embrace all of Europe, the British Commonwealth Nations, and the United States as well.Craven toadies like Hochul and Newsome and the brain-addled, corrupt Biden, have made clear that their interests are not our Nation’s interests nor those of our people. And their allegiances are not to our Nation, nor to our Constitution, nor to our people.Their aim is to incite ill will among the American people and to destabilize our cities, counties, states, and the entire Union, so that the whole may weaken and fall. These destructive forces then intend to merge the remains of our Country and its people into a grandiose neo-feudalistic world order that serves the interests and goals of their foreign, alien masters, not their Countrymen.Americans should resist all efforts, seductive or forceful, aimed to compel compliance.We can begin by making clear that we will not relinquish our Bill of Rights.We will not relinquish our duty and our ability to resist tyranny.We will not relinquish our natural law God-Given right to keep and bear arms.____________________________________Copyright © 2023 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved. 

THE GREAT DIVIDE: THE POLITICAL LEFT AND POLITICAL RIGHT WAGE A MODERN-DAY CIVIL WAR FOR THE AMERICAN SOUL.

During the American Civil War, there were no fence sitters. Every American chose a side. In the border States, especially, brother fought against brother and father fought against son. Foreign nations stayed out of the fray, perceiving the war as an internal matter between two sides—each with its own needs, its own perspective, its own interpretation of the relation between the Federal Government to the States.“It was therefore much to the chagrin of United States President Abraham Lincoln when, in 1861, near the outset of the American Civil War, the British government recognized the belligerency of the Confederate States that had unilaterally seceded from the Union. This recognition caused the British to be neutral in the domestic American conflict and to aid neither the rebels nor the government.” “The Concept of Belligerency in International Law,” 166 Mil. L. Rev. 109, 114, December 2000, by  Lieutenant Colonel Yair M. Lootsteen, Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Arguably, Americans are headed toward outright civil war today. Granted, this present state of civil unrest has not devolved into actual armed conflict—at least not yet. But, in an important respect the situation existent in our Nation today bespeaks civil unrest as pronounced as that which led to the American Civil War. The outcome of this present day civil unrest will shape the future contours of our Nation as assuredly as the outcome of the American Civil War had shaped the contours of our Nation once Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant, in 1865.As use of the words ‘Yankee’ and ‘Rebel’ served, effectively, as colloquial expressions and shorthand descriptors for the opposing sides of the American Civil War, we see, today, as well, use of expressions, such as ‘Liberal Left’ and ‘Conservative Right’ bandied about in the media as shorthand descriptors for the two opposing sides in the modern American conflict. The terminology in use today, simplistic as it is, does underscore a clear, explicit, categorical, demarcation between two sides, in clear and perpetual opposition. As with the American Civil War, there are no fence sitters in this modern day civil war, even as many Americans proclaim themselves, ostensibly, to be independent, taking no side in this period of civil unrest.Through time, each side’s political, social, and economic philosophies have solidified. There is no debate. There can be none. Any attempt at compromise is impossible. Each side holds resolutely to one of two irreconcilable, mutually incompatible positions, representing two polar opposite ideological strains within the American polity. And, every American has a stake in the outcome of this present day state of nascent civil war.Transpiring today is more than mere “Culture War.” Americans are locked in mortal, internecine combat. The differences are stark and are readily perceived on multiple fronts. The outcome will change the very structure of the United States, as an independent sovereign Nation, forever.Each side views the Nation’s institutions from a different ideological perspective. Each side views the relationship of individual to Government and the relationship of one individual to another in a different light, even attaching a different meaning to the notion of ‘citizen.’ One major point of contention—an incipient and inevitable flashpoint that defines and clarifies the two sides—concerns how each side perceives the U.S. Constitution and, especially, how each side perceives the rights and liberties codified in the Nation’s Bill of Rights.Liberals view the Bill of Rights as a set of man-made rules—constructs, contrivances, subject to modification and de facto repeal, as time and circumstance dictate, not unlike any Congressional Statute. Conservatives, though, view the Bill of Rights as natural law, intrinsic to each American citizen, fundamental and inalienable, therefore immutable; not man-made, and, so, superior to Congressional Statute, never subject to modification, much less perfunctory rejection.Liberals view the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as subject to constraint and modification on the basis of emotional impact to particular groups. Censorship is condoned if the purpose is to spare the feelings of groups. Conservatives view the freedom of speech clause as demanding full expression, consistent with high Court rulings. Censorship is to be avoided. Liberals play the game of “Identity Politics.” Conservatives do not.Liberals view the right of the people to keep and bear arms, as codified in the Second Amendment, as  archaic—to be ignored or to be statutorily constrained. Conservatives view the right of the people to keep and bear arms as pertinent today as at the founding of the Republic. The right of the people to keep and bear arms is absolutely fundamental to the autonomy of the American citizen and essential to the preservation of a free Republic, as the framers of the U.S. Constitution envisioned.There are other marked differences between The Liberal Left and the Conservative Right. The Liberal Left views moral acts from the standpoint of the impact of behavior on society as a whole. Personal intent and motivation behind one’s actions is considered irrelevant. The Liberal Left defines the moral good as maximizing utility for the greatest number of people. That ethical perspective detrimentally affects the rights and liberties of the individual. The Conservative Right, on the other hand, views morally good acts and morally wrong acts from the standpoint of a person’s intent. Maximizing utility for the multitude never outweighs the needs and interests of the individual.Liberals espouse a policy of open and porous borders, reflecting the idea that the notion of ‘citizen of the United States’ is essentially redundant in an increasingly globalized world. And they see the expression, ‘citizen of the United States,’ in the near future, as becoming essentially meaningless. For liberals, the people of any Country are deemed merely “citizens of the world,” and therefore free to emigrate to any nation at will. Liberals wish to see naturalization laws changed to recognize, exemplify, and reflect the idea that anyone who wishes to reside in the United States ought to be permitted to do so. Conservatives argue that a Sovereign Nation State—to be worthy of the name—must maintain the integrity of its borders. For Conservatives, no citizen or subject of a foreign power can legitimately stake claim to residing in the United States as a matter of legal or moral right. Conservatives maintain that Congress has sole authority, as the Constitution mandates, to determine who may emigrate to the U.S. and who may not, and to place restrictions on the number of those emigrating to this Country.The Political Left accepts--consistent with its view of the ‘Nation State’ as an archaic concept--the eventual dismantling of the United States as an independent Sovereign Nation. The Political Left sees this process as inevitable, inexorable, and irreversible. The Political Right views the dismantling of the United States as an anathema—a process, neither inevitable nor irreversible, and one to be prevented at all costs.Liberals believe in the utility and propriety of propaganda and psychological conditioning to effectuate their goals. Those who espouse Democratic liberalism, as that concept is understood and glorified, and placed into practice by the governing "elites" of the EU, do not believe in the autonomy and inviolability of the individual, and therefore do not profess concern over using the tools of propaganda to manipulate the American psyche to promote the Left’s policy goals. Americans are witnessing, in recent years, the explosive use of mind-control techniques, permitted and propagated through the Bureaucratic Deep State within the federal Government, and through the mainstream Press, and by billionaire CEOs of left-wing technological Companies, intent on promoting a socialist agenda, notwithstanding that such an agenda is inconsistent with the core values of our Nation and of our Nation’s history; inconsistent with our Constitution and system of laws; and inconsistent with the preservation of our Nation as a free Republic.Conservatives do not countenance use of propaganda or psychological conditioning to alter the mindset of the American citizenry under any circumstance. For the use of such techniques damage the individual psyche and spirit. Conservatives hold the use of such techniques to be intolerable. They view the use of such techniques as incompatible with the exercise of one’s free will. Moreover, for Conservatives, the idea that the United States can and ought to be relegated eventually to the status of a subordinate cog in a world-wide socialist federation of Western States is horrific in the very contemplation.The election of Donald Trump to the Office of President of the United States is illustrative of the battle for the soul of this Nation. Conservatives voted for Donald Trump as an act of defiance against a deviant Liberal tidal wave--a tidal wave that seeks to obliterate our Nation's core values, to shred our Nation's sacred traditions, to erase our Nation's unique and lasting history, and to reduce the population of our Country to abject servitude in docile service to an international ruling "elite." Curiously, the Political Left talks incessantly about a Constitutional crisis impacting this Nation and about the failure of Trump and the Political Right to adhere to “the rule of law.” Yet, it is abundantly clear that, although a Constitutional crisis does exist, it is one of the Political Left’s own making, starkly evidenced by, and through, the illegal appointment of a Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, whose sole purpose is to manufacture a reason to indict a duly elected, sitting President of the United States.Whether for good cause or no—and no cause whatsoever exists here for removing the U.S. President, Donald Trump, in any event—criminal indictment of a sitting President has never before occurred in our Nation, and no provision for indictment of a sitting President exists in the U.S. Constitution, and that is so for good reason: to preclude the subversion of the will of the American People by a hidden, powerful, inordinately wealthy upper class that seeks to create a Country amenable to their special, and exclusive interests. Robert Mueller’s audacious attempt to even consider compelling the U.S. President to appear before a Grand Jury is indicative of a dangerous coup d’état playing out before the American electorate by a secretive "elite."Liberals constantly maintain that the American people are a Nation governed by the rule of law. That means our Nation is to be governed by law, not by men. What the very existence of the Bureaucratic Deep State, entrenched with hundreds if not thousands of holdovers from the Obama Administration, demonstrates, though, is that We, the People, are a Nation that is consistently ruled not by law, but by men, contrary to the platitudes voiced by politicians of the Liberal Left.Americans are indeed in the midst of major civil unrest, headed toward outright civil war. How this plays out will be seen through President Trump’s ability to weather all underhanded attempts to destroy his Presidency and by the strength of those Americans who have not been deluded and are fully capable of perceiving the presence of and understanding the inherent danger presented by a ruthless, cunning and intractable foe lurking ominously in their midst.If the Political Left prevails--and as its failure to seat the devious, duplicitous, anti-American Globalist Hillary Clinton in the White House has not prevented the Political Left's efforts to dismantle a Country situated as a sovereign Nation State, but, rather, has caused the Political Left merely to redouble its  treacherous efforts to defeat the Will of a Conservative populist surge desirous of preserving a Nation founded on the sacred principles of the founding fathers, as those principles have been set in stone in the U.S. Constitution and in the Constitution's sacred Bill of Rights--socialism will rear its ugly head, and a sovereign Nation State, a free Republic, and a free people, will be well-nigh forever lost._________________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

RELEASE THE MEMO: SENIOR DOJ AND FBI OFFICIALS LIKELY COMMITTED SERIOUS FEDERAL CRIMES IN THEIR UNLAWFUL ATTEMPT TO TAKE DOWN PRESIDENT TRUMP.

PART THREE

THE SWAMP MUST BE DRAINED; CONSPIRATORS’ HEADS MUST ROLL; THE GUILTY MUST BE HELD FULLY ACCOUNTABLE.

As intimated in the account of the contents of the House Intelligence Committee Memo that Representatives Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) have alluded to on Fox News, it is not enough that Senior DOJ and FBI Officials, whose names appear in the House Intelligence Memo, simply lose their jobs (which would allow them to collect retirement benefits). The fact that DOJ and FBI senior officials like Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, Bruce Ohr, and undoubtedly many others, continue to hold onto jobs in the DOJ and FBI, is reason for consternation.Clearly, other senior Officials of the Deep State are protecting them. How high up the Government ladder does this insidious subterfuge extend? The President’s call to drain the swamp now takes on immediate and critical urgency.The “swamp” of the Federal Government is, it is now evident, more than mere metaphor—much more. The expression takes on literal meaning. Why are these senior DOJ and FBI officials still holding positions in the Federal Government? Why are they still receiving paychecks, courtesy of the American taxpayer? Why do they still hold top secret security clearances? These people and others should be fired immediately, and they should be investigated for serious crimes against this Nation and the American people. Why hasn’t Attorney General Jeff Sessions acted against these individuals? After all, Jeff Sessions holds the highest position in the Department of Justice? Why hasn’t Sessions cleaned house? Is he unable to do so, notwithstanding that he holds the top position in the DOJ? If that is the case, then, do high-ranking officials in the DOJ, and in the FBI, and in other Cabinet-level Departments, and in the Military, and in the Intelligence Community, and in Congress too, hold sway over the entirety of the Federal Government. If these high-ranking senior Officials, these Conspirators who have betrayed their oath of Office, who have betrayed the U.S. Constitution, who have betrayed this Nation, and who have betrayed the American people, do hold sway over the Federal Government, then, we must conclude that this Shadow Government—this Deep State within the Federal Government—these Conspirators hold sway over the American people as well. Has a coup d’état of the Government already taken place notwithstanding their failure to seat the shrew and puppet of the trans-nationalist, internationalist, globalist “elite,”—Hillary Clinton?If Attorney General Jeff Sessions does muster the strength to exercise the authority vested in him and hold to account those officials of the DOJ and FBI, who have betrayed this Nation, who have betrayed our Constitution, and who have betrayed the American people, then we should see investigations commencing at once. If the Attorney General does not have the courage to assert his authority, then he should resign; and, if Sessions does not voluntarily step down, then President Trump should demand his resignation, or otherwise, simply fire him, and appoint a person who has the stomach to clean house!In the interim, these Betrayers of our Nation, of our Nation’s Constitution, and of our Nation’s citizenry must be prevented from doing further harm to our Nation, to our Nation’s President, and to our Nation’s people. Accordingly:

• THEIR EMPLOYMENT WITH THE DOJ OR FBI SHOULD BE TERMINATED AT ONCE!
• THEIR SALARIES SHOULD BE SUSPENDED!
• THEIR SECURITY CLEARANCES SHOULD BE REVOKED!
• THEIR MISCONDUCT SHOULD BE THOROUGHLY INVESTIGATED!

Once evidence of the serious federal crimes--that these senior Officials of the DOJ and FBI committed and are even now still committing--has been systematically collected, collated, and analyzed by prosecutors—and it is certainly clear that a plethora of such evidence exists—then legal action must commence forthwith:

• THESE BETRAYERS OF THE NATION SHOULD BE INDICTED!
• THESE BETRAYERS OF THE NATION SHOULD THEN BE TRIED IN A COURT OF LAW FOR THEIR CRIMES!
• IF CONVICTED, THESE BETRAYERS OF THE NATION SHOULD RECEIVE NO LENIENCY IN THE METING OUT OF THEIR SENTENCES.
• AND, THESE BETRAYERS OF THE NATION SHOULD BE DENIED RECEIPT OF PENSIONS AND BENEFITS!

IF SENIOR OFFICIALS OF THE DOJ AND FBI HAVE COMMITTED SERIOUS FEDERAL CRIMES AGAINST THIS NATION, AGAINST THIS NATION’S CONSTITUTION, AND AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, AS IS NOW MANIFEST AND CLEARLY CERTAIN, WHAT WOULD THE NATURE OF THOSE CRIMES BE? WE PERCEIVE AND ANTICIPATE THE FOLLOWING: CONSPIRACY; PERJURY; SUBORNATION OF PERJURY; DEPRIVATION OF RIGHTS UNDER COLOR OF LAW; AND OBSTRUCTION OF PROCEEDINGS BEFORE DEPARTMENTS, AGENCIES, AND COMMITTEES.

One serious crime falls under Title 19 of the United States Code: Crimes and Criminal Procedure, Part I, Crimes, Chapter 19, Conspiracy.19 USCS § 371 (Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States) sets forth in principal part:  If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. A second serious federal crime falls under Chapter 79 of the United States Code. Chapter 79 of Title 18 of the United States Code. 18 USCS § 1621 (Perjury generally) sets forth in principal part: Whoever—(1)  having taken an oath before a competent tribunal, officer, or person, in any case in which a law of the United States authorizes an oath to be administered, that he will testify, declare, depose, or certify truly, or that any written testimony, declaration, deposition, or certificate by him subscribed, is true, willfully and contrary to such oath states or subscribes any material matter which he does not believe to be true; or(2)  in any declaration, certificate, verification, or statement under penalty of perjury as permitted under section 1746 of title 28, United States Code, willfully subscribes as true any material matter which he does not believe to be true;is guilty of perjury and shall, except as otherwise expressly provided by law, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.Since the Fusion GPS Dossier is a lie, those DOJ Officials who presented it to the FISA Court, swearing to the authenticity of the contents have committed perjury before the Court; and, since they did this to secure a warrant from the FISA Court that would allow Special Counsel Mueller to undertake an investigation of Trump Campaign Officials, predicated on presumptive collusion between Russian officials and Trump, those DOJ Officials who lied before the FISA Court to affect or influence the FISA Court to issue a warrant have committed a third serious federal crime, that these senior Officials of the DOJ and FBI have likely committed is subornation of perjury.A third serious federal crimes falls under Chapter 79 of  Title 18 of the United States Code, 18 USCS § 1622 (Subornation of perjury). 18 USCS § 1622  (Subornation of perjury) sets forth in principal part:Whoever procures another to commit any perjury is guilty of subornation of perjury, and shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.A fourth serious federal crime falls under Chapter 13 of Title 18 of the United States Code. 18 USCS § 242 (Deprivation of rights under color of law). 18 USCS § 242 (Deprivation of rights under color of law) sets forth in principal part:Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both. . . .By betraying their oath to uphold the laws of this Nation, they have deprived the citizens of this Nation of their rights as they have attempted to subvert election laws by allowing an ignominious individual, Hillary Clinton, to campaign for the highest Office in the Land, when Clinton should, instead, have been indicted on several criminal charges. The Arbalest Quarrel has detailed these crimes at length, in several articles. See for example, “Pay to Play: The Clinton Foundation’s Open Secret and Silent Purpose.” These senior Officials of the DOJ and FBI have compounded their crimes by unlawfully utilizing tools, such as appointment of a Special Counsel—Robert Mueller—to undertake a lengthy, expensive investigation of the U.S. President, Donald Trump, when appointment of Special Counsel and investigation of Donald Trump is altogether unfounded, as the basis for such investigation is grounded on nothing but bald-faced lies, unsubstantiated hearsay, unfounded assumptions, and mere innuendo.Having failed to seat a likely criminal, Hillary Clinton, in Office, these Conspirators—senior Officials of the DOJ and FBI—have now turned their attention to removing the U.S. President, Donald Trump, from Office. They are doing this out of spite and they are doing this because, in their mind, they won’t accept this President’s policy initiatives; and they won’t accept the will of the American people who elected Donald Trump in a fair and lawful election. They arrogantly assert that they know what is best for the American people and thereby subvert the very Constitution and laws of this Country that they have taken an oath to serve.And, a fifth serious federal crime falls under title 18 of the United States Code, 18 USCS § 1505 (Obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies, and committees) 18 USCS § 1505 (Obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies, and committees) sets forth in critical part:Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had before any department or agency of the United States, or the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress—Shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years. . . .News Commentator, Sean Hannity, reported on Fox News, Monday, January 22, 2018, that hundreds of anti-Trump text messages have inexplicably vanished from FBI databases. The website, Sean Hannity "Release the Memo," further elucidates the point raised and expounded upon on Hannity's evening program. If, as almost certainly appears to be the case, senior officials of the DOJ and/or FBI deliberately destroyed messages—amounting to pre-emptive document deletion or shredding—in anticipation of civil or criminal investigation of wrongdoing, this amounts to anticipatory obstruction of justice and they may be subject to criminal liability under the obstruction of proceedings Statute mentioned, supra.

THE ARBALEST QUARREL WON’T REST UNTIL THE HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE MEMO, COMPLETE, UNABRIDGED, AND UNREDACTED IS DECLASSIFIED FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC.

In Part Five of our ongoing “Release the Memo” multi-series set of articles, we will look at whether the most serious charge of all, “treason,” can be leveled against these Senior DOJ and FBI Officials who have betrayed their Oath of Office. In Part Six, we will look at the actions of Congressional Democrats who--as with the mainstream news media, that has tacitly assisted the agents of the Deep State by censoring reporting of news pertaining to the House Intelligence Committee Memorandum--are impeding the release of the House Intelligence Committee Memo, and, through their actions are demonstrating, as well, their contempt for the American people. We are speaking here, namely and particularly, of Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) Ranking Democratic Party Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.We are doing our part. Please do your part. Tell Congress to release to the American public the House Intelligence Committee Memo that describes DOJ and FBI FISA Court abuses. The phone number to call is (202) 224-3121. That number will connect you to the U.S. Capitol switchboard. Follow the prompts to connect to U.S. Representatives and to U.S. Senators in your State._________________________________________________Copyright © 2017 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

RELEASE THE MEMO: MAINSTREAM MEDIA NEWSPAPERS FAIL TO KEEP PUBLIC INFORMED OF THREAT POSED TO THIS COUNTRY FROM WITHIN

PART TWO

WHY AREN'T MAINSTREAM NEWS ORGANIZATIONS COVERING THIS HOTBED MATTER?

MAINSTREAM MEDIA BLACKOUT OF DAMNING HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE MEMO ABETS DOJ/FBI CONSPIRACY TO TAKE DOWN U.S. PRESIDENT

With all the media buzz about the Government shutdown, the more pressing matter, by far, is this: Conspiratorial DOJ and FBI Officials and, perhaps, other high-ranking Obama Administration hold-overs of the Deep State have surreptitiously planned to overthrow Donald Trump. The odd thing is that this silent coup is still unfolding. It is unfolding, like a seemingly radiant—at least as presented to the public by Congressional Democrats—but clearly poisonous and deadly flower—and all of it with the passive, placid consent and connivance of mainstream media news organizations and outlets.The House Intelligence Committee Memo, would, as House Intelligence Committee Republicans make plain, explain clearly the reprehensible, insidious conspiracy afoot, within this Country, to oust Donald Trump from Office.We begin with this: the Fusion GPS Dossier, a work of fiction, concocted by ex-British spy, Christopher Steele, comprising uncorroborated, garbage meant to compromise Donald Trump—commissioned and paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, which she controls, and which she had hoped would assure her victory in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, and which now serves as the primary force behind Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of collusion between Trump Campaign Officials and the Russian Government.The Fusion GPS Dossier serves as the predicate basis for Special Counsel, Robert Mueller’s investigation of Donald Trump and his Campaign Officials. This Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, along with other Deep State Conspirators—whose names undoubtedly appear in the House Intelligence Committee Memo—seek, together, to take down Donald Trump. The Fusion GPS Dossier also serves a complementary purpose for these Conspirators. It serves, at one and the same time to draw attention away from Hillary Clinton and other likely criminals who worked for and who would have had jobs in Clinton’s Administration had she prevailed in the 2016 election. Now that she has lost the election, she remains vulnerable to a new investigation of her many criminal actions when she served as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration.Obviously, Hillary Clinton, and the toadies and hangers-on who served her, along with mainstream news media organizations and Congressional Democrats—all of them—are furious that Hillary Clinton lost the election. What does this mean for the Country? Well, apart from the shattering of Clinton’s personal delusions of grandeur, we see, thankfully, an abrupt end to President Barack Obama’s domestic and foreign policy agenda. Hillary Clinton, as with Barack Obama before her, would have taken her cues from the secretive, ruthless, powerful, trans-nationalist, internationalist, globalist “elite” who seek to dismantle this Nation’s Constitution, and who intend to make the U.S. a vassal of a new world order, which the EU gives the American public some intimation of.

WHY DOES CONGRESS ALLOW THE SCAM OF THE MUELLER INVESTIGATION TO CONTINUE?

To date, after several months of “investigation” of collusion between Trump Campaign Officials and the Russian Government, Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, has come up with nothing, because there is nothing. Congressional Democrats, though, want the investigation to continue. In an obvious and blatant attempt to give the Mueller investigation an aura of respectability and to suggest that the Mueller probe constitutes something more than a rip-off to the American taxpayer, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California), “released,” ostensibly on her own, according to the liberal news media website, Politico, “the transcript of congressional investigators’ interview in August 2017 with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, whose firm was behind the controversial dossier alleging ties between President Donald Trump and Russians.” Politico provides a link to the transcript. On perusal the transcript is nothing more than a compilation of bald, hearsay assertions that would not be admissible in a Court of law.It is time to end the illegal farce of the Mueller investigation. Further, the American public should demand a renewed—and this time, true and proper—investigation of Hillary Clinton and of those toadies who have aided and abetted her, along with an investigation of the conspirators who orchestrated and who are even now systematically machinating behind the scenes, blatantly, smugly, continuing to carry out their detailed, despicable, diabolical operation to destroy the Trump Presidency and to undermine the will of the people of this Country.In a renewed investigation of Hillary Clinton and her many henchmen, along with an investigation of those responsible for attempting to undermine the Trump Presidency, the Arbalest Quarrel demands that Attorney General Jeff Sessions appoint a new cadre of FBI agents and officials, and a new cadre of DOJ attorneys and officials—uncorrupted Americans, beyond reproach, unconnected with and untainted with the conspiracy to protect Hillary Clinton and unconnected with the conspiracy to destroy the U.S. President Donald Trump—to conduct these investigations.

SO, THEN, WHY AREN’T THE MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS REPORTING ON THIS FARCE AND DEMANDING, ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN CITIZENRY, A RELEASE OF THE CLASSIFIED HOUSE INTELLIGENCE MEMO THAT LAYS BARE THE INDIVIDUALS IN GOVERNMENT WHO, UNDER COLOR OF LAW, ARE USING THE POWER OF THEIR OFFICE IN THE DOJ AND FBI, AND, POSSIBLY, IN THE CIA AND NSA AS WELL, TO MACHINATE AND CONSPIRE TO DESTROY THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY AND, THEREIN, TO UNDERMINE THE WILL OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WHO ELECTED DONALD TRUMP TO SET THIS COUNTRY ARIGHT: STRENGTHENING THIS COUNTRY’S BILL OF RIGHTS; ENSURING THIS NATION'S SYSTEM OF LAWS, THIS NATION'S CONSTITUTION, AND THAT THIS NATION'S JURISPRUDENCE ARE NEVER SUBORDINATED TO THOSE OF ANY OTHER NATION, PERSONS, OR LEGAL ENTITY; ENSURING THAT OUR CORE VALUES REMAIN IN PLACE AND THAT OUR NATION’S HISTORY IS NOT FORGOTTEN; SECURING OUR NATION’S BORDERS; PROTECTING OUR COUNTRY’S SMALL BUSINESSES AND WORKERS FROM THE EFFECTS OF RAMPANT GLOBALIZATION; PROTECTING THE  SANCTITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL; AND KEEPING MEANINGFUL THE CONCEPT OF ‘CITIZEN’ THAT IS IN DANGER OF BEING ERODED AND DEGRADED THROUGH THE VERY EXISTENCE OF MILLIONS OF ILLEGAL ALIENS PRESENT WITHIN OUR BORDERS, ABSURDLY CLAIMING THEY HAVE A "RIGHT" TO REMAIN HERE?

One would think that The mainstream Press would be all over this. It isn’t. The left-wing mainstream New York Times, whose motto is “all the news that’s fit to print,” reports nothing. Of course, The New York Times, debasing the sacred protection afforded the Press, under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution allows itself to be used as a tool of—or, more likely, is itself complicit in—the coup attempt to oust a popularly elected U.S. President. So, the NY Times reports nothing.Non-information—a veritable news blackout of critical events—is even more damaging to the maintenance of a free Republic than news distortion—i.e., reporting “fake” news, consisting of disinformation or misinformation, meant to deceive the public and to turn public attention toward trivial or irrelevant matters. Campaigns of deliberate deception, carried out by the Press through non-information, misinformation, and disinformation destroy a news organization’s credibility. To be sure, an astute reader may glean nuggets of truth even from misinformation or disinformation. But a total news blackout--a complete censoring of news--is a different sort of beast, as there is nothing to glean from a void in the news.We would expect news blackouts in Countries ruled by totalitarian regimes, not in Democratic Republics. News blackouts occurring in a Free Republic, such as the U.S., are heinous. The mainstream news media hides behind the First Amendment, claiming to work on behalf of the American people. Not so! They abet conspirators who seek to overthrow a popularly elected leader of our Nation.This is not the first time that a mainstream news organization, namely and specifically, The New York Times, hides news that is definitely fit to print. Indeed, it is the Times' new policy, now etched in stone, to keep their news reporters on a tight leash. The Arbalest Quarrel has recently written about the Times’ new gag order on its own reporters. See our article, titled, The Mainstream Media New York Times Newspaper’s New “Gag Order” Policy Prevents Its Employees From Exercising Their Right Of Free Speech Under The First Amendment To The U.S. Constitution.We guess that no other mainstream newspaper has reported on this apparent diabolical coup attempt—an attempted coup d’état of the Executive Branch of Government that is still unfolding, a matter more dangerous than the Watergate exposé that the Washington Post had written extensively on. Where is the Washington Post now? We see just a smattering of this frightening and provocative news in that news publication. Apparently, neither the Washington Post nor The New York Times, and likely no other mainstream media newspaper considers the overthrow of a legitimate U.S. President—who wishes only to do his job to faithfully execute the laws of this Country in accordance with his Oath of Office and who seeks to strengthen the Bill of Rights—to amount to news that most mainstream media news organizations like The New York Times considers the kind of news that’s fit to bring to the attention of the American citizen.Even conservative leaning Wall Street Journal, too, has nothing to say about the House Intelligence Committee Memo that Republican Congressmen, Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan first brought to the attention of the American public in the last week’s Hannity broadcast. Gatekeepers of information obviously exist on both the “right” and “left” of the political spectrum. The American public is caught in the middle, deceived from this bastion of Democracy—this Fourth Estate—that claims to be the guardian of American Democracy. Instead, the Press, too, betrays the American people.Why is that? Instead of discussing and investigating a despicable coup attempt of the Executive Branch of Government, these mainstream news media organizations dwell on the illicit Obama created programs, DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans)—illegal schemes hatched by the Obama Administration to place this Nation in the very situation it faces today: what to do with 180,000 illegal aliens, along with their parents; and, for that matter, what to do with millions of other illegal aliens who do not belong here; never should have been here; should have been prevented from entering here; should have been removed from our Country years ago; and, that removal having been suspended, should certainly be removed from our Nation now as their very existence in this Country amounts to a slap-in-the-face of our naturalization laws and threatens the stability of the social, political, economic, legal and cultural fabric of this Nation.

THE ENDGAME OF OUR NATION IS UPON US

If DOJ and FBI conspirators succeed in this horrific coup attempt to upend the Trump Presidency, we will see further erosion of First Amendment free speech rights and the undermining of the Second Amendment. The Mueller investigation is, itself, in its very existence, an illegal and reprehensible attack on the unreasonable searches and seizures clause of the Fourth Amendment that should shock the conscience of all American citizens.In Part three of this multi-series article, we look at plausible federal crimes these DOJ and FBI conspirators can feasibly be charged with—once their names—all of them—are known to the American people. For, these individuals constitute a far greater and graver threat to the well-being of this Country, and to its citizenry, and to its Constitution, than any threat emanating outside this Country. And, in further articles, we will continue discussing this critical matter until justice is meted out to those who have corrupted their Office, who exhibit disdain for our citizenry, who have stained our Constitution, and who threaten the very existence of our Republic.The Arbalest Quarrel calls on Congress to expose to the light of day, the rot that festers within the bowels of the Federal Government bureaucracy. Release the Memo now!Please do your part. Tell Congress to release to the American public the House Intelligence Committee Memo that describes DOJ and FBI FISA Court abuses. The phone number to call is (202) 224-3121. That number will connect you to the U.S. Capitol switchboard. Follow the prompts to connect to U.S. Representatives and to U.S. Senators in your State._________________________________________________Copyright © 2017 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA NEW YORK TIMES NEWSPAPER’S NEW “GAG ORDER” POLICY PREVENTS ITS EMPLOYEES FROM EXERCISING THEIR RIGHT OF FREE SPEECH UNDER THE FIRST AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION.

FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT OF FREE SPEECH? SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS? GOING, GOING GONE IF THE NEW YORK TIMES WERE TO REWRITE THE CONSTITUTION!

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOMBARDS THE AMERICAN PUBLIC WITH ‘GROUPTHINK’ AND ‘DOUBLESPEAK: WELCOME TO “1984” IN THE 21^ST CENTURY.

“We are poor little lambs Who have lost our way. Baa! Baa! Baa! We are little black sheep Who have gone astray. Baa! Baa! Baa!” ~ from the Wiffinpoof song, circa 1910; traditional closing number of the Wiffinpoofs, an a cappella group of Yale UniversityAs is our wont, the creators of the Arbalest Quarrel often peruse on Amazon.com—books, on philosophy, politics, science, and law, among various other categories of knowledge to assist us in the work we do for our readers in defense of our most sacred right: the right of the people to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As we write this, we came across a book, serendipitously, and one which we may purchase, titled, “Reasons Why,” by Bradford Skow. The illustration on the book’s cover is whimsical: a platypus seemingly contemplating a strawberry. And, lest one believe the book was written for a child, the answer is decidedly, “no.”Notwithstanding the straightforward, seemingly, superficially simplistic title, the material is decidedly tantalizingly complex. We perused a few pages of the book, on-line, as Amazon sometimes permits. We bring this matter up here because the subject matter of the book, “why questions,” drew us to consider something about the mainstream media that is somewhat mystifying to apprehend and, at once, frightening to contemplate. Mainstream media organizations—comprising major newspapers, radio, television, and internet—are drawn more and more to proselytize to the American public rather than to simply report the news, and this is contrary to the basic import and purport of news organizations. But, what is the purpose of a news organization? We ask:

WHAT IS THE IMPLIED GOAL—THE TRADITIONAL, PRIMARY PURPOSE OF NEWS ORGANIZATIONS? THE PRIMARY PURPOSE OF A NEWSPAPER IS TO CONVEY TO THE PUBLIC A RECORD OF THE DAY’S EVENTS: TO REPORT THE NEWS, THEN, AND TO REPORT THE NEWS CLEARLY, ACCURATELY, OBJECTIVELY, WITHOUT EMBELLISHMENT.  IN PROVIDING AN ACCOUNT OF EVENTS IN THE WORLD, A NEWSPAPER MUST REFRAIN FROM WEIGHING IN ON THE EVENTS IT REPORTS ABOUT THE WORLD. FOR, ONCE A NEWSPAPER WEIGHS IN ON EVENTS THAT IT REPORTS, THAT IT DESCRIBES, THE NEWSPAPER, THEN, IS NO LONGER, AND CAN NO LONGER BE CONSIDERED AN OBJECTIVE, NEUTRAL OBSERVER, NAMELY, ONE OPERATING APART FROM THE EVENTS, BUT, RATHER, BECOMES, INSTEAD, AN ACTIVE PARTICIPANT IN THE EVENTS—IN THE VERY SHAPING OF EVENTS A NEWSPAPER REPORTS ON. AND, ONCE A NEWSPAPER BECOMES PART OF THE EVENTS, THE OBSERVED, RATHER THAN THE NEUTRAL OBSERVER, THE NEWSPAPER, THEREUPON LOSES ITS OBJECTIVITY—LOSES ALL OBJECTIVITY. BUT, THIS DOES NOT SEEM TO BOTHER MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS IF THEY BOTHER TO CONSIDER THE LOSS OF OBJECTIVITY IN THEIR REPORTING THE NEWS AT ALL. TODAY, MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS, LIKE THE NEW YORK TIMES, ARE NOT CONTENT MERELY TO REPORT THE NEWS, BUT ARE TELLING THE AMERICAN PUBLIC HOW THEY ARE EXPECTED TO THINK ABOUT THE NEWS. OBJECTIVITY IS THEREBY COMPLETELY LOST. REPORTERS BECOME MINISTERS OF PRIVATE BENEFACTORS, UNKNOWN TO THE PUBLIC. THEY BECOME PROPAGANDISTS. EVERYTHING REPORTED IS SUSPECT.

MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS ARE NOT OBJECTIVELY, NEUTRALLY, AND DRYLY TELLING THE PUBLIC ABOUT CRITICAL EVENTS IN THE WORLD—AND THEY ARE NOT REPORTING ON ALL THE CRITICAL EVENTS. RATHER, MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS SELECTIVELY REPORT EVENTS AND THEY DO NOT ALLOWTHE AMERICAN PUBLIC TO MAKE UP ITS OWN MIND ABOUT THE EVENTS REPORTED. THESE MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS AND OTHER MAINSTREAM MEDIA NEWS ORGANIZATIONS ARE, AT ONCE, TELLING THE PUBLIC HOW THEY SHOULD REACT TO EVENTS, HOW THEY ARE TO THINK ABOUT THE EVENTS, REPORTED.

Journalists, also referred to as—and, traditionally, more inclined to prefer the term, ‘reporters,’ as the latter expression is narrower, suggesting specifically what these professionals do, namely reporting news events rather than journalizing whatever may come to mind—learn, in college, before commencing work for mainstream news organizations, what reporting of news encompasses and, just as importantly, what it does not. Whether through the written or spoken word, reporters are expected to—well—report the news, nothing more and nothing less. To do their job correctly, appropriately, reporters are expected to report news accounts clearly and dryly, without embellishment, utilizing nouns and verbs, eschewing the use of adjectives and adverbs, to avoid “coloring” their reporting. They are expected to propound propositions that mirror truth, under the epistemic correspondence theory of truth they ascribe to, with the goal of providing the American public with reports on facts--'states of affairs' as philosophers prefer to refer to these “things,” “facts”--about and in the world, rather than propounding subjective  evaluations, about the facts, that is to say, providing extraneous comments about the states of affairs reported on.Reporters answer fundamental ‘who,’ ‘what,’ ‘where,’ ‘when,’ and, occasionally, ‘how’ questions. It is not the purpose of reporters to ask and to discuss ‘why’ questions, which brings us back to Skow’s book, directed principally to the philosophy of science, as “why” questions set the stage for causal explanations for events. Yet, today, we see mainstream media encroaching more and more on ‘why’ questions. They do so—as they may say—to engage the public in open and lively discussion, and to give context to their news reporting. They attempt to explain the reasons for events and, they proceed, then, to a consideration of changes that they believe should occur for the benefit of society. But that is shifty, deceptive, and not the basic motivation of mainstream news reporters for dealing with “why” questions at all. They provide answers to “why” questions to manipulate thought. They sermonize. Sometimes they do this calmly and collectedly. More often they do this callously and caustically; bombastically and sanctimoniously; stridently and angrily. They do this to cajole the public into accepting the nonsense they spout, attempting to convince the public that their prescriptions for dealing with the many events they report on, that they write about, is right, and proper, and just, and should be acted upon by policy makers. Many Americans—all too many members of the American public, to date, but, increasingly, fortunately, fewer members of the American public, through time—do still accept, unconditionally and uncritically, the presumptuous and vapid claptrap the mainstream media offers up for the American public’s consumption. Indeed, these reporters—now propagandists —working for mainstream newspapers and other mainstream news organizations, attempt to disguise the subjective evaluations they propound about events as true, simple, to-the-point, objective, accurate accounts of the events reported on, when subjective evaluations and objective reports about states of affairs in and of and about the world merge into each other, or where one becomes the other, and the public is left with the impression that it has received bare factual accounts about news events when they are really obtaining subjective appraisals of the events reported on.

MAINSTREAM MEDIA’S DANGEROUS PREOCCUPATION WITH FIREARMS AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT:

One of the favorite topics of the mainstream media involves news about ‘gun crimes,’ which are particularly susceptible to this subterfuge that mainstream news reporters engage in which is to mix objective news accounts into subjective evaluations.  If newspaper and cable networks and radio simply reported instances of ‘gun crimes,’ dryly and matter-of-factly, and left the matter at that, that would be fine. But, then, mainstream newspapers and cable news networks, were they true to their creed, would also report on defensive uses of firearms. Yet, the mainstream newspapers and their affiliates on cable news invariably remain silent on defensive use of guns by law-abiding citizens who forestall gun violence, through use of their own firearm or who use a firearm, as necessary, to defend themselves or to defend other innocent lives. One would think that accurate reporting would require newspaper accounts to strive to report all news events: to report, then, on the use of firearms by ordinary Americans to thwart violent criminal acts, as well as to report gun crimes committed by lunatics, terrorists, criminal gang members, and by your garden-variety common criminal.

SELECTIVE NEWS REPORTING IS DEMONSTRATIVE OF “FAKE NEWS” NO LESS SO THAN FALSE REPORTING OF NEWS

The non-reporting of critical news events constitutes deception no less than the false reporting of news events and no less than the habit of mainstream news reporters of adroitly stirring subjective evaluations into news accounts. The mainstream media, including, prominently, The New York Times—whose motto is, “All the News That’s Fit to Print”—infers, or, more correctly, assumes that defensive use of firearms isn’t news that’s fit to print at all; so, the American public doesn’t see it. But, it is news just the same and, to our mind, this news does fall squarely into the domain of “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” The New York Times refuses to report on instances of defensive uses of guns as that tends to denigrate and weaken the running narrative that guns cause only bad things to happen. Still, if The New York Times stuck to reporting gun violence and refrained from proselytizing about the “evil” of guns, we might accept reporting of those events involving gun violence alone even if the Times’ accounting of “use of guns” is incomplete—as in the case of utilization of firearms for self-defense. Unfortunately, The New York Times and other mainstream news organizations do not and will not stop with reporting the ‘who,’ ‘what,’ ‘when,’ ‘where,’ and ‘how’ of gun violence. These mainstream news organizations tread dangerously into the realm of the ‘why’.’ They dare to ask, rhetorically, ‘why did the individual commit a violent act with a gun.’ The ‘who,’ ‘what,’ ‘when,’ ‘where,’ and ‘how’ of gun violence, then, is merely a side-note. It is merely incidental to and serves to buttress their argument for strengthening draconian gun laws and adding ever more to the serried ranks of restrictive federal and State gun laws and local gun ordinances. And, it is these arguments for ever more restrictions on the exercise of the right of the people to keep and bear arms that the mainstream media makes, constantly, ad nauseum: sermonizing, proselytizing to the American public.The reporting of news merely operates, then, as an introduction to what it is that mainstream news organizations really wish to do which to address “the need to get rid of guns in this Country.” So, reporters and editors of mainstream news organizations, like The New York Times, mention instances of gun violence in order that they might proceed with their long-running, never-ending polemic on why gun violence occurs and wherefore gun violence happens and ‘why civilian access to guns is wrong and why, therefore, guns ought to be abolished. And, that is where mainstream news organizations have gone astray. They should protect this Nation, this Free Republic; but they have, instead, hijacked this Nation as they work strenuously, and actively, and insidiously against it, undermining the Nation’s Bill of Rights, all the while masquerading that they are the guardians of it, oblivious to the inherent invidiousness of their pronouncements.Mainstream news Reporters and Editors wrongly assume the role of psychologists, and psychiatrists, and sociologists, and politicians, and ethicists, and attorneys among others. They do not merely report the news, they attempt to explain the news. In so doing, the mainstream media no longer remains the outside, neutral observer of news events, coolly describing events, but insinuates itself into the events themselves, observing itself and thereupon reflecting its own image onto the American public’s psyche, and, in a most contemptuous fashion, proclaiming to the American public how the public ought to see the world and how the world ought to be molded and shaped.And, with that—with attempts to answer “why” questions—these mainstream news organizations carefully construct and carefully calibrate their explanations and use these explanations as springboards to “ought imperatives” such as: ‘no American civilian ought to have access to firearms;’ and ‘this Nation ought to have more stringent, common-sense gun control laws’; and ‘this Country ought to perceive gun ownership and gun possession as unnecessary and dangerous to the well-being of a modern society;’ and ‘Americans should abhor guns like most citizens do who reside in other Western Countries, like those citizens of Nations that comprise the EU do;’ and ‘ everyone has the right of free speech as long as one’s comments do not offend another person’s sensibilities; and ‘employers ought to be able to control their employees thoughts and ideas, whether on the job or off,’ and that ‘censoring of ideas and opinions and beliefs is wrong, except that, sometimes, it could be right.’Not content to declare what it is that happens to be the case—the “thus and so” of a given news event—mainstream news reporters and editorial boards tell us what “ought to be the case.” Now, generally, newspapers have used opinion editorials—“Op-Eds”—as a place where they feel they are at liberty to answer the ‘why,’ the cause of such event, and, therein, to express and expound upon the ‘ought,’ as they see it, from the occurrence of a given event. But this seeming bright-line separation between “news” and “opinion” is no longer perceptible or tenable in the age of mind control and psychological conditioning through various media mechanisms. The one flows seamlessly into the other. But normative ‘ought’ statements—normative prescriptions of the way the world should be, according to mainstream media—do not logically follow from ‘is’ statements—descriptions of the way the world happens to be, notwithstanding that mainstream news Reporters and Editors assume that ought prescriptions can be derived from and deduced from “is” descriptions, and we see, now, that Reporters and Editors of mainstream news organizations commence to operate as if the one can be derived from and deduced from the other. But, they cannot.It is hardly a secret that mainstream newspapers, like The New York Times, vehemently, indeed virulently, oppose possession of firearms by anyone in society, other than law enforcement, and other than the military and--although they won’t admit it--other than by the powerful, ruthless billionaire class that increasingly rules us and that seeks to destroy our free Republic, and that seeks to destroy the sovereignty and independence of our Nation State, and that seeks to destroy our unique and sacred Bill of Rights.Now, even as the owners of mainstream media vehicles will quickly deny—at least in their reporting of events—any specific position toward firearms and the right of the people to keep and bear arms, the fact of the matter is that the owners of these mainstream media news vehicles have, as with any other subject discussed in their media vehicles’ “bag of tricks,” specific opinions that infiltrate, insinuate themselves into, and seep and filter in and through, descriptions of news events. So, the public is not obtaining merely descriptions of news events, but prescriptions about how the public should think about those events and the sorts of actions that should be taken by policy makers from those events. Bad enough that mainstream media is reduced to propagandizing and proselytizing to the public through control of virtually every major form of media apart from a few outlier websites such as the Arbalest Quarrel, but mainstream media seeks, of late, to control the thoughts and actions of their own employees, too.Consider, one mainstream media news organization, The New York Times, goes so far as to control its reporters’ exercise of their personal First Amendment right of Free Speech even when they are not writing specifically for the newspaper. This is reprehensible and, likely would not survive Constitutional muster if challenged and is odd, too, when one considers that The New York Times, and other mainstream media news organizations, vociferously, presumptuously, and hypocritically argue that the President wrongly attacks their First Amendment right of freedom of the Press. Yet, the U.S. President is also a citizen and, as a citizen, he certainly has the right, guaranteed under the free speech clause of the First Amendment to call out “fake news” narratives when he sees it. And, he rightly does so, on behalf of himself and on behalf of those Americans who support him.

GROUPTHINK VERSUS THE FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT OF FREE SPEECH

Lest the reader of this article think that the Arbalest Quarrel has made a false claim about The New York Times controlling its employees’ expression of personal opinion, outside of employment, we point out that the Times, itself, expressly admits as much. On October 16, 2017, a reporter for the New York Times, Jim Rutenberg, writing in the Business Section of the Times newspaper, in an article titled, “Seeing Right Through Tech Chiefs’ Talk of Better ‘Transparency’”, said: “My newspaper [The New York Times] is [when reporting on Tech Companies control of their employees’ opinions], also dealing with the question of how transparent a person should be on social media. On Friday, it announced a new policy for its journalists requiring them to avoid say anything on the platform [that is to say, reporters must avoid saying anything on any and all vehicles, aside from The New York Times, when, on their own time] that they could not say under the banner of The New York Times. At a TimesTalks event in Washington on Thursday night, the Times’ executive editor, Dean Baquet, said that overly opinionated or partisan tweets could undermine the paper’s mission of reporting ‘objectively and clearly.’” Who is Baquet kidding? The assertion is nonsensical and disingenuous to boot. For, it isn’t “objective and clear reporting” that the NY Times newspaper is interested in protecting. It is, rather, a specific “subjective viewpoint” that the owners and Editorial Board of The New York Times seeks to foster and buttress, and it is a subjective viewpoint that the drafters’ of the newspaper’s new policy obviously presume that every employee of the newspaper knows or should know. In fostering and buttressing that viewpoint, the newspaper’s owners and Editorial Board would squelch a reporter’s right of free speech in that reporter’s capacity as an American citizen, even when, on that reporter’s own time, the reporter wishes freely to express his or her own viewpoint on a subject, absent constraints imposed on the reporter in the course of his or her work for the newspaper. Obviously, it isn’t objective facts that the owners and Editorial Board of The New York Times is concerned about protecting—despite what Baquet says; for, after all, the facts can take care of themselves. Rather, it is the running narrative—the “why” and of a story—that The New York Times’ owners and Editorial Board wish to maintain an overarching monopoly on. It is the running narrative, as it were, that they wish to control and that they intend to control, through the Times’ new policy.The newspaper, thereupon, muzzles and censors its own reporters First Amendment free speech rights, through a policy that operates essentially as a “gag order” lest its reporters, and any other employee, working for the newspaper, weaken the running narrative the newspaper’s publisher owners and Editorial Board wish to convey and to maintain clear, categorical, and unequivocal. Consider, too, that, this new policy directive of the New York Times, as issued by the executive editor, Dean Baquet is logically absurd, as well as legally insupportable. For, if a newspaper is simply describing events, objectively and clearly—the ‘who,’ ‘what,’ ‘when, ‘where,’ and, occasionally, ‘how,’ of the news—an account that “mirrors” a state of affairs in the world, how can such objective description feasibly be subject to subjective analysis? The answer is that it cannot; for such descriptive account of a news event, of a particular state of affairs in the world, can only admit of one accurate descriptive account, not multiple accounts. Only subjective analyses—one’s opinions—of descriptive accounts can admit of and allow for multiple and incompatible propositions about an event. Thus, there can only be one accurate descriptive account about any given actual state of affairs but many subjective opinions about that one descriptive account. If so, then how can one’s opinion about an objective news account, the ‘why’ statements and ‘ought’ statements, “undermine the paper’s mission of reporting ‘objectively and clearly?’” The answer is that opinions cannot undermine a newspaper’s objective reporting of an event.Recall what we said, supra. Normative, prescriptive ‘ought’ statements about the way the world should be do not logically follow from or entail descriptive ‘is’ statements, namely declarative propositions about the way the world happens to be. So, then, take the example of a lunatic, or psychopathic terrorist who kills innocent people with a gun. The newspaper reporter recounts the event in a news story. Likely, the news account will be, as well, laced with inaccurate, suggestive wording regarding the gun incident. Then, suppose that the reporter that wrote the story for the newspaper, writes, on his own time, on a social media site, that he supports the arming of all American citizens, as a method for reducing criminal gun violence. Would that supposition undermine a newspaper’s mission of reporting accurately and objectively? How can it? It cannot. It cannot because logically accurate, objective, clear reporting of an event—that is to say, logically accurate, objective, clear reporting of a state of affairs in and of the world—does not implicate and cannot implicate, anything, intelligible about the way the world—from one perspective or another—ought to be. Yet, you and I both know where this goes. For, assume, then, the newspaper’s editorial board, follows up the descriptive account of a terrorist murdering innocent people with a firearm, with an Op-Ed calling for new restrictive gun laws, impacting law-abiding, rational, responsible American citizens' exercise of the right to keep and bear arms. Clearly, if a reporter working for the newspaper were to argue, contrary to the position of the editorial board, that all law-abiding, sane, responsible Americans ought to be armed and that Congress should enact a national handgun carry reciprocity law, such normative viewpoint on gun ownership and possession would be at loggerheads with the editorial board’s own normative viewpoint on gun ownership and possession--one calling for confiscation of all firearms in the hands of civilians.It is not the descriptive account of a violent gun incident that the newspaper owners and editorial board are concerned about protecting. Rather, it is the normative, prescriptive remarks concerning the buttressing of restrictive gun laws that The New York Times owners and Editorial Board is desirous of protecting. For, the two normative, prescriptive viewpoints—one viewpoint expressing the desire for more restrictive gun laws and the other viewpoint calling for a relaxing of restrictive gun laws—are semantically incompatible and logically inconsistent. The reporter who writes something, on his own time, in another medium, arguing for the arming of civilian population in America could end up receiving a “pink slip” from his employer, a mainstream news organization, for that employee's troubles—and he may receive a very public rebuke as well.Extrapolating from this, to the new policy of the NY Times, it should be evident that the mission of the newspaper is not, contrary to Dean Baquet’s assertions, undermined if the newspaper were only concerned about protecting clear and objective and accurate reporting of news events. It is, rather, something other or, at least, in addition to the protection of objective and accurate reporting of news events. For, the more emphatic, persistent, and ominous mission of The New York Times is one not of reporting news events, it is, rather, one of persuasion—persuading the American citizenry, for example, that civilian gun possession should be radically restrained and constrained, and that the Second Amendment is archaic and should be repealed. And, these normative prescriptions of the way the Nation ought to look, of the way things ought to be are conveyed to the American public constantly, vociferously, incessantly, through the medium of The New York Times. Obviously, a reporter that does not share the normative worldview of the newspaper’s publisher and owners and of the Newspaper’s Editorial Board and who wishes to make his or her contrary thoughts known in another medium, on his or her own time, will be skating on thin ice, for it is this person’s personal opinion that the newspaper’s owners and editors really see as undermining one specific mission of the paper—a mission that is directed to restricting and thereby weakening gun rights, not expanding or strengthening gun rights. The objective reporting of a particular instance of gun violence is not affected by differing opinions concerning the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The matter of restricting or strengthening gun rights has, then, absolutely nothing to do with the mere reporting of a particular incidence of gun violence. Normative, ethical pronouncements have nothing to do with and do not follow from a descriptive accounting of a particular event in the world. But, the newspaper’s owners and editors don’t wish to acknowledge this. They do not wish to be seen as preventing their employees from exercising their fundamental right of free speech. So, they concoct a subterfuge. They come up with a ludicrous rationale for their news policy—a rationale that is tantamount to doing just what they do not wish to be seen as doing: preventing their reporters from exercising their First Amendment right to speak freely, and on their own time, whatever it is that their reporters may wish to say, pertaining to personal opinions about this or that subject, through a medium other than through The New York Times newspaper.The NY Times’ owners thus deny to their employees the free exercise of a fundamental right guaranteed under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a right they, as members of an “aristocratic elite,” as they fashion themselves, garner for themselves. And, of course, these aristocratic “elite” see no inconsistency in reserving for themselves those fundamental rights that they would deny to their employees, as American citizens, and which they would deny to most every other American citizen if they could, whether it be the right of free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that they would like to restrict or the right of the people to keep and bear arms, under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.Imagine, for a moment, that the writers of the Arbalest Quarrel happened to work as reporters for the NY Times. Would the Times’ publishers and editors suffer us to write in support of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution? Not under this new policy as heralded by Dean Baquet, which he, as a spokesperson for The New York Times, sees as a good thing, as a positive thing. But that can only mean The New York Times does not draw a tenable distinction between its opinion articles and its news articles. Objective facts and subjective opinion are conflated. Opinion and Fact are all one and the same for the owners and Editorial Board of The New York Times. Thus, The New York Times owners and Editorial Board, through this incongruous sleight-of-hand, argue that its reporters cannot offer an opinion, even on their own time and through a medium other than the newspaper they work for if that opinion happens to be inconsistent with and therefore is perceived as operating to the detriment of the newspaper owners’ and Editorial Board’s running of an Op-Ed/News narrative. This, though, has nothing to do with protecting objective facts which can very well take care of themselves. It has everything to do with controlling the thought processes of the public. The public is coerced into accepting one line of thought regarding any subject that The New York Times happens to write on and the Newspaper will suffer no viewpoint to the contrary.

THE OWNERS AND EDITORS OF THE NEW YORK TIMES ARE HYPOCRITES

The hypocrisy of the NY Times’ owners and Editorial Board toward the First Amendment free speech protection—a right it would retain for itself, as coupled with freedom of the Press, and which it has the audacity to refuse exercise of by the Newspaper’s employees—was not lost on another mainstream newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, no less a mainstream newspaper—a “gatekeeper” ostensibly on “the right” of the political spectrum, but still a mainstream media newspaper just the same, representing the wealthy “nobility” in this Country. William McGurn, writing an Opinion, titled, “The NFL vs. the New York Times,” on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, quoting the NY Times editor, Baquet, at length, which the NY Times itself dared only to touch upon ever so slightly for its readers, noted the hypocrisy and doublespeak and smug self-assurance coming from the Times. “Mr. Baquet says ‘. . . In social media posts, our journalists must not express partisan opinions, promote political views, endorse candidates, make offensive comments or do anything else that undercuts The Times’s journalistic reputation. Our journalists should be especially mindful of appearing to take sides on issues that The Times is seeking to cover objectively. These guidelines apply to everyone in every department of the newsroom, including those not involved in coverage of government and politics. . . . We consider all social media activity by our journalists to come under this policy. . . . While you may think that your Facebook page, Twitter feed, Instagram, Snapchat or other social media accounts are private zones. Separate from your role at The Times, in fact everything we post or ‘like’ online is to some degree public. And everything we do in public is likely to be associated with The Times.” If this is the rationale for gagging a citizen’s right of free speech, it is a poor argument, as it denigrates the very idea inherent in a newspaper—the notion of factual reporting of events. It also denigrates the very notion of free expression, one of the essential legs upon which a free Republic—our free Republic—stands. Indeed, it is the very notion of critical comment and commentary that the American public has a right to demand. The New York Times’ owners and Editorial Board admit their fear of critical comment, commentary, and review. The New York Times’ owners and Editorial Board admit their fear of public consumption of opinions different from and contrary to their own. The New York Times’ owners and Editorial Board fear open and public and lively debate. All this the American public now hears from a newspaper that loudly proclaims the right of a Free Press, codified in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—but, apparently, only so long as there exists one voice—that of the NY Times’ owners and Editorial Board which they would deign the American public to hear. Through this policy The New York Times’ owners and Editorial Board are telling their employees that the purpose of The New York Times goes far beyond the mere reporting of “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” far beyond the recitation of objective facts. The newspaper’s owners and Editorial Board has informed the American public, “clearly and objectively and accurately, that the newspaper engages in influence peddling and, more, that it will suffer no viewpoint on any subject other than its own, as dictated to it by its benefactors: the enclave of  incorrigible, intractable, ruthless, secretive, inordinately wealthy and powerful internationalist, trans-nationalist, globalist “elite,” both here and abroad, who seek to undercut the sovereignty of this Nation, who seek to undermine the supremacy of this Nation’s laws, and who seek to pervert and debase the sanctity of the natural and fundamental rights of this Nation’s citizenry.The New York Times’ new policy goes well beyond the import and purport of the Hatch Act that applies to Federal Government Bureaucrats. The Hatch Act of 1939 prohibits the vast Federal Government Bureaucracy from taking part in political campaign activities, but the Act does not prevent a Government Bureaucrat from expressing his own political or social or philosophical view on social media, on his or her own time, as that would be at loggerheads with the free speech clause of the First Amendment. Yet, the new policy of The New York Times' Editorial Board goes must further. For, here we have a mainstream newspaper, the fervent promoter of and benefactor of the Freedom of Press clause of the First Amendment, that dares to deny of its own employees the right of free speech—which also resides within the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—when those employees wish to exercise, outside of their employment in their capacity as American citizens, the right embodied in the First Amendment. Thus, The New York Times disparages and decries of others what it would monopolize for itself—the right to express an opinion. Clearly the Times Newspaper is not interested in protecting objectivity in reporting. It is only interested in controlling opinion and, when it comes to the Second Amendment, the NY Times intends to control opinion--to control the narrative--completely, even if the exercise of that control amounts to denying--denying of its own employees, in their capacity as citizens of the United States, and denying to those employees, hypocritically, as well as denying to those employees, unlawfully-- the very right of free speech, which it would jealously guard for itself.Apparently, The New York Times is taking its cue from Germany. In an article posted on June 30, 2017, titled, “Delete Hate Speech or Pay Up, Germany Tells Social Media Companies,”  NY Times Reporters, Melissa Eddy and Mark Scott, write:“Social media companies operating in Germany face fines of as much as $57 million if they do not delete illegal, racist or slanderous comments and posts within 24 hours under a law passed on Friday.The law reinforces Germany’s position as one of the most aggressive countries in the Western world at forcing companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter to crack down on hate speech and other extremist messaging on their digital platforms.But the new rules have also raised questions about freedom of expression. Digital and human rights groups, as well as the companies themselves, opposed the law on the grounds that it placed limits on individuals’ right to free expression. Critics also said the legislation shifted the burden of responsibility to the providers from the courts, leading to last-minute changes in its wording.Technology companies and free speech advocates argue that there is a fine line between policy makers’ views on hate speech and what is considered legitimate freedom of expression, and social networks say they do not want to be forced to censor those who use their services. Silicon Valley companies also deny that they are failing to meet countries’ demands to remove suspected hate speech online.Still, German authorities pressed ahead with the legislation. Germany witnessed an increase in racist comments and anti-immigrant language after the arrival of more than a million migrants, predominantly from Muslim countries, since 2015, and Heiko Maas, the justice minister who drew up the draft legislation, said on Friday, that it ensured that rules that currently apply offline would be equally enforceable in the digital sphere.”As a prime example of hypocritical, contradictory “doublespeak,” the Times Reporters, add this remark of Maas:“‘With this law, we put an end to the verbal law of the jungle on the internet and protect the freedom of expression for all,” Mr. Maas said. “We are ensuring that everyone can express their opinion freely, without being insulted or threatened.’“That is not a limitation, but a prerequisite for freedom of expression,” he continued.” What? Taking away a person’s right of free speech is to be equated with giving that person the right of free speech? Unless something was lost in translating the German into English, here, this remark by Heiko Maas is a contradiction in terms and the quintessence of bombastic absurdity. Maas should be ashamed of himself. Apparently, though, The New York Times felt there was something noteworthy in the remarks of Maas to the extent that The New York Times felt that Germany’s new National policy is worthy of adoption by the Times newspaper itself. Incredible! But, the absurdity fostered transcends well beyond the Times itself. As the newspaper reports, major publishing houses are hiring so-called “sensitivity readers”—at the moment directed to the writers of children’s books. In an article, published on December 24, 2017, titled, “In an Era of Online Outrage, Do Sensitivity Readers Result in Better Books, or Censorship?,” by Times reporter, Alexandra Alter, we are told that,“In today’s hair-trigger, hyperreactive social media landscape, where a tweet can set off a cascade of outrage and prompt calls for a book’s cancellation, children’s book authors and publishers are taking precautions to identify potential pitfalls in a novel’s premise or execution. Many are turning to sensitivity readers, who provide feedback on issues like race, religion, gender, sexuality, chronic illness and physical disabilities. The role that readers play in shaping children’s books has become a flash point in a fractious debate about diversity, cultural appropriation and representation, with some arguing that the reliance on sensitivity readers amounts to censorship. . . . Behind the scenes, these readers are having a profound impact on children’s literature, reshaping stories in big and small ways before they reach impressionable young audiences. Like fact checkers or copy editors, sensitivity readers can provide a quality-control backstop to avoid embarrassing mistakes, but they specialize in the more fraught and subjective realm of guarding against potentially offensive portrayals of minority groups, in everything from picture books to science fiction and fantasy novels. . . . Some see a downside to publishers’ growing reliance on sensitivity readers, and warn that it could lead to sanitized books that tiptoe around difficult topics. Skeptics say the heightened scrutiny discourages authors from writing about cultures other than their own, resulting in more homogenized literature. “Can we no longer read ‘Othello’ because Shakespeare wasn’t black?” the novelist Francine Prose wrote recently in an essay about sensitivity readers and censorship in The New York Review of Books."The NY Times' reporters, continue:

"Others have echoed that view, arguing that sensitivity readers might have derailed works like William Styron’s “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” or Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” After the subject was covered in Slate, a writer for National Review fretted that “if ‘sensitivity readers’ are given the freedom to hijack authors’ visions, we’re going to lose some beloved works of art that we could have otherwise enjoyed.”

Is The New York Times’ “gag order” policy anything less than an attempt to censor opinion? Does not The New York Times impose its own sensitivity readers—its Editorial Board—on all ideas expressed. We are seeing, in this Country, an attempt to second-guess every written and spoken word. The American public is not the better but all the worse for it.This attempt by the Deep State and by the mainstream media to control guns, to control thoughts, to control actions is leading to societal upheaval, mass hysteria, pandemonium. Perhaps this is by design—an attempt to create volatility and confusion in order to weaken this Nation, to weaken its resolve, to weaken the Bill of Rights so that we, American citizens, will be ripe for takeover by the powers that seek to crush us into submission.

HOW FAR WILL THE NEW YORK TIMES AND OTHER MAINSTREAM NEWS ORGANIZATIONS GO TO TRAMPLE THE SECOND AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION, AS WE ENTER A NEW YEAR?

As this year draws to an end, The New York Times has commenced a series of articles, “The Home Front,” where the newspaper’s Editorial Board is calling for a major transformation of the Lautenberg Amendment, 18 USCS § 921(a)(33)(A)(i). What is the Lautenberg Amendment? Essentially the Lautenberg Amendment of 1996, following in the footsteps of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, makes it unlawful for any person convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence to possess a gun. Here we have the NY Times Editorial Board writing an extensive series of articles on a law—subsumed under the Gun Control Act of 1968—that the Editorial Board knows little, if anything about, and seems to care even less of what it may know about, the law, but writes with presumed and presumptuous authority and certitude about a law as if it knows full well whereof it speaks. Yet, it knows nothing. Nonetheless, the NY Times Editorial Board skirts broad discussion of the actual law itself and yet writes extensively and boldly about why the law needs to be strengthened.The NY Times' Editorial Board should not be proselytizing to the American public on matters beyond its professional ability to explain and decipher. Actually, the Editorial Board should not be proselytizing to the American public at all, but certainly not on matters of law, especially those impacting fundamental Constitutional Rights. The Editorial Board, likely, does not include lawyers. Unfortunately, that doesn’t prevent, the Editorial Board from expounding upon the law. That it chooses to do so is illustrative of an overbearing pompous attitude exhibited in discussing legal matters. This pompous attitude adds to, rather than distracts from, this Newspaper’s condescending attitude toward its readers. The Editorial Board apparently believes it can successfully cloak its ineptitude concerning law and legal matters by cultivating an air of moral superiority when pontificating on matters involving firearms and on the exercise of the right to keep and bear them.The Editorial Board of the NY Times suggests—nay, demands—as seen in this series, which has yet to conclude, that the law—the Lautenberg Amendment—ought to be transformed. The Editorial Board would create a monstrosity, denying to millions of Americans their right to own and possess firearms.We will take to task in forthcoming articles on the Lautenberg Amendment in the New Year. We will provide you with the language of the Statute as it exists—something The New York Times will not provide for its readers. We will explain the meaning of the law as drafted and enacted, and will discuss problems with it, in the context of the Second Amendment and in the context of the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution as well. The law is poorly drafted. The New York Times would make a poorly drafted law even worse, as it calls on the public to blindly go where the newspaper leads it—to the edge of a cliff.Returning, for a moment, to the Yale a cappella group’s Wiffinpoof Song, consider, in light of the foregoing remarks set down in this essay:

WHO REALLY ARE THESE “BLACK LITTLE SHEEP IN THE WIFFINPOOF SONG WHO HAVE LOST THEIR WAY? ARE THE BLACK LITTLE SHEEP THOSE MEMBERS OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC WHO HOLD TO TRADITIONAL VALUES, MORES, CODES OF CONDUCT, HISTORICAL PURITY—WHO VIEW THIS NATION AS THE FOUNDERS OF THE REPUBLIC, THE FRAMERS OF THE CONSTITUTION, ESTABLISHED—OR DO THEY INCLUDE THOSE PEOPLE WHO STAFF THE INSTITUTIONS OF THIS NATION: NAMELY AND PARTICULARLY, THOSE PEOPLE WHO STAFF THE  MAINSTREAM MEDIA; VARIOUS MEMBERS OF CONGRESS; THOSE PEOPLE WHO STAFF THE VAST BUREAUCRACY OF GOVERNMENT; AND NOT LEAST, THOSE CONFUSED AMERICANS WHO HAVE BOUGHT INTO THE CAREFULLY PLANNED AND ORCHESTRATED RUSE THAT NATIONALISM IS BAD, THAT OPEN BORDERS ARE GOOD; THAT ANYONE WHO BELIEVES HIM OR HERSELF TO BE AN ‘AMERICAN’ IS AN ‘AMERICAN’ EVEN IF THAT PERSON IS RESIDING HERE ILLEGALLY; THAT GUNS ARE EVIL AND THAT GUN BUYBACKS ARE GOOD; THAT GENDER IS NOT BIOLOGICAL AND ABSOLUTE BUT INFINITELY MALLEABLE, SO THAT A MAN IS A WOMAN AND A WOMAN IS A MAN AS ONE WISHES TO BE; OR, PERHAPS, NEITHER, OR PERHAPS, BOTH AT ONCE; AND THAT WE, AMERICAN CITIZENS, ARE NO LONGER TRULY CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES, BUT, RATHER, CITIZENS OF THE WORLD—ONE BIG, GLORIOUS HAPPY FAMILY, FIXATED ON MATTERS OF IMPORTANCE: SPORTS, ENTERTAINMENT, CLOTHES AND JEWELRY AND COSMETICS—THE DAILY DOSE OF SOMA TO KEEP A PERSON, HAPPY, CONTENTED, AND ASLEEP? PERHAPS, TO SOME EXTENT, BOTH ARE “BLACK LITTLE SHEEP”: AMERICANS WHO SEEK TO HOLD ON TO THEIR BIRTHRIGHT, WHO CHOOSE NOT TO “GET WITH” THE NEW PROGRAM, THE BRAVE NEW WORLD ORDER, ON THE ONE HAND, AND THOSE, ON THE OTHER HAND, WHO SEEK TO DEMOLISH THE RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES THAT THE FOUNDERS OF THIS NATION, OF THIS REPUBLIC, HAD SO LOVINGLY BEQUEATHED TO US, THE AMERICAN CITIZENRY? PERHAPS THIS NATION AND ITS CITIZENS AND THE IGNORANT, ILL-INFORMED AMONG US AND THE DEMON KIND WHO WISH TO RULE OVER EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING ARE ALL WELL LOST AND HAVE ALL GONE ASTRAY. PERHAPS IT IS MUCH TOO LATE FOR THIS NATION AND MUCH TOO LATE FOR ALL THE DENIZENS IN IT. IF SO, THEN, LET US ALL CHIME IN: “BAA, BAA, BAA!” BUT, WE HOPE ALL IS NOT LOST FOR US, TRUE AMERICANS, WHO SEEK TO PRESERVE OUR NATION AND OUR CONSTITUTION AND OUR CONSTITUTION'S MOST SACRED AND CRITICAL COMPONENT--THE BILL OF RIGHTS--WHO SEEK TO PRESERVE OUR NATION AND OUR CONSTITUTION AS ORIGINALISTS, TO UPHOLD OUR TRADITIONS, OUR VALUES, IN THE MODE OF THE FOUNDERS OF THIS GREAT NATION, IN THE MODE OF THE FRAMERS OF OUR CONSTITUTION. WE MUST CARRY ON; WE MUST PERSEVERE, AND WE MUST BE EVER WARY AND CAUTIOUS OF THOSE WHO TALK ABOUT CHANGING OUR NATION, CHANGING OUR CORE VALUES AND CORE TRADITIONS, CHANGING OUR HISTORY, "TO KEEP UP WITH THE TIMES;" FOR THESE ARE PSEUDO AMERICANS; THEY ARE THE BETRAYERS OF OUR NATION, THEY ARE BETRAYERS OF THE FOUNDERS OF THIS FREE REPUBLIC; THEY ARE BETRAYERS OF OUR CONSTITUTION AND OF OUR SACRED BILL OF RIGHTS. THEY USE AN ODD NOTION OF MORALITY TO CLOAK THEIR DESIRE TO TEAR DOWN THIS NATION STATE; TO DESTROY OUR SOVEREIGNTY; TO DESTROY OUR CONSTITUTION; TO DESTROY OUR NATURAL, FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES--RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES THAT EXIST IN US INTRINSCIALLY AS THEY COME TO US FROM THE CREATOR AND CANNOT THEREFORE BE LAWFULLY TAKEN FROM US BY GOVERNMENT. WE MUST PRESERVE AND STRENGTHEN OUR RIGHT TO SPEAK FREELY, TO PRESERVE AND STRENGTHEN OUR RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, TO PRESERVE AND STRENGTHEN OUR RIGHT TO BE FREE FROM UNREASONABLE SEARCHES AND SEIZURES, TO PRESERVE AND STRENGTHEN OUR PERSONAL PROPERTY RIGHTS, TO PRESERVE AND STRENGTHEN OUR RIGHT TO BE LEFT ALONE. ALL THESE NATURAL, FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS ARE UNDER CONCERTED ATTACK BY THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA AND BY THEIR FELLOW TRAVEVLERS IN CONGRESS AND BY THOSE BUREAUCRATS THAT LURK IN THE SHADOWY CORNERS OF GOVERNMENT, UNSEEN AND UNHEARD, AND BY THE SECRETIVE AND RUTHLESS INTERNATIONALIST, TRANS-NATIONALIST ROTHSCHILD CLAN AND BY THEIR TOADIES IN THE UN AND IN THE WTO, IMF, WORLD BANK AND IN OTHER "INTERNATIONAL" ORGANIZATIONS--EVER SCHEMING BEHIND CLOSED DOORS TO INCORPORATE THIS NATION INTO THE EU AND EVENTUALLY TO DISMEMBER ALL WESTERN NATION STATES, MERGING AND SUBMERGING THEM INTO A NEW WORLD ORDER, PRESIDED OVER BY A COLD-HEARTED WEALTHY AND POWERFUL RULING "ELITE," DICTATING POLICY TO WE, THE NEW SERFS OF THAT NEW WORLD ORDER, WHO HAVE NO RIGHTS, NO LIBERTIES, SAVE THOSE THAT THE RULING "ELITE" DEIGN TO GRANT TO US AND WHO MAY, ON A WHIM, TAKE FROM US.

The Arbalest Quarrel seeks to awaken the American public from its slumber. As always, and most importantly, the Arbalest Quarrel will set the record straight on matters involving this Nation’s most sacred right—the right of the people to keep and bear arms, as codified in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In 2018 we will press for enactment of national handgun carry reciprocity and propose our own language to avoid attempts by some States to ignore the national handgun carry reciprocity if, or, hopefully, when, enacted. We will explore the qualifications of certain individuals we would like to see on the U.S. Supreme Court, and we will continue with our detailed expositions of Federal and State firearms legislation and of Federal and State case law impacting on the Second Amendment. We will return to completing series we had commenced writing on in 2017 and in previous years. We have a lot of work to do, and much to accomplish.Antigun groups and antigun legislators are not sitting idly by. They intend to destroy the Second Amendment. But, like brave Horatio at the Bridge, the Arbalest Quarrel intends to stop these anti-American groups and anti-American people. But, we intend to do much more. We intend to take the fight to them, strengthening the Second Amendment, along with and in conjunction with the critical work NRA does on behalf of Americans.We will never give up our values, our history, our traditions, our Bill of Rights!Our articles and our essays stand as a testament to our commitment in support of our Bill of Rights and, especially, in support of our sacred Second Amendment. Please feel free to explore our site at www.arbalestquarrel.com. We encourage you to join our list of readers. It is easy to add your name to our list. You will receive immediate notification of the posting of our articles. There is no cost to you.We all have our work cut out for us. But, together, taking nothing for granted, and working hard to preserve and strengthen our Bill of Rights, and supporting our President in this effort, we can succeed in holding our Nation together, in the vein the Founders of our Republic intended. Won’t you join us?_________________________________________________Copyright © 2017 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.