THE RADICAL LEFT’S PLAN: PROTECT CRIMINALS; CONSTRAIN THE POLICE; AND LEAVE THE PUBLIC DISARMED AND DEFENSELESS

PART ONE

THE RADICAL LEFT CALL FOR MASSIVE BAIL REFORM MAY BE A BOON TO CRIMINALS, BUT IT IS A THREAT TO THE PUBLIC

In the summer of 2015, The Left-wing New York Times, ever the friend and close confidante of seditious Deep State Government Bureaucrats and of smug, fabulously wealthy, extraordinarily powerful, and abjectly ruthless Radical Left establishment “elites,” ran a feature in its Magazine, titled “The Bail Trap.” The Times ran the story as a purported exposé of an unfair criminal justice system. The Times’ reporter, Nick Pinto, laying out the theme of the feature story, wrote: “thousands of innocent people are sent to jail only because they can’t afford to post bail, putting them at risk of losing their jobs, custody of their children — even their lives.”Typical of “feature” stories at the NY Times’ newspaper, the writer of this feature, “The Bail Trap,” attempted to garner public sympathy for the plight of seemingly innocent people by drawing the reader’s attention to one cherry-picked anecdote.The NY Times writer, Pinto, mentioned a New Yorker, Tyrone Tomlin, who, having been arrested for carrying a controlled substance, was faced with one of two unpleasant choices resulting from that arrest: one, Tomlin could either plead guilty to a misdemeanor, serve thirty days on Rikers Island, and then walk free; or, two, he could plead not guilty and then await trial. The Court set Tomlin’s bond at $1,500.00 if Tomlin refused the plea deal and wished to remain free while awaiting trial. Tomlin did refuse the plea deal, pleaded not guilty, but, unable to post bond, had to remain in jail until his trial date. The NY Times thought this patently unfair: namely the bail, not the circumstances leading to Tomlin’s arrest the latter of which Tomlin bears sole responsibility for as there was no doubt about Tomlin carrying a controlled substance.The Times’ reporter, alluding, as he apparently thought, to the immorality of arresting a person for simply carrying, and not selling a controlled substance, did acknowledge that Tomlin had a lengthy criminal history, and that history included multiple felony convictions. Still, unperturbed by and dismissive of the fact of multiple felony convictions, the reporter argued that requiring bail of individuals like Tomlin, who, apparently, can ill afford bail, is patently unfair. The gist of Pinto’s argument became the germ for radical bail reform measures Leftist governments would institute several years later. The article demonstrates how closely tied a seditious activist Press is to Radical Leftists in Congress and to Leftist State Governments—constantly feeding ideas to each other for the purpose of dismantling our Constitution, undermining our fundamental, immutable, natural rights, and destroying a free Republic.The New York Times feature writer, Pinto, sanctimoniously and deceitfully remarks:“Of the 2.2 million people currently locked up in this country, fewer than one in ten is being held in a federal prison. Far more are serving time in state prisons, and nearly three-quarters of a million aren’t in prison at all but in local city and county jails. Of those in jails, 60 percent haven’t been convicted of anything. They’re innocent in the eyes of the law, awaiting resolution in their cases. Some of these inmates are being held because they’re considered dangerous or unlikely to return to court for their hearings. But many of them simply cannot afford to pay the bail that has been set.”“. . . innocent in the eyes of the law, awaiting resolution in their cases”? The Times’ feature writer is evidently referring to the oft-used mainstream media phrase, ‘presumption of innocence,’ a well-known platitude.The idea conveyed is that the accused is presumed innocent until or unless guilt is proved in a Court of law. Often bandied about as self-evident true, this notion, as with so many others—some concocted out of whole cloth, like the idea that semiautomatic weapons that may happen to look like military weapons are to be classified as ‘assault weapons’ and are therefore to be banned from the civilian citizenry as ‘weapons of war’—is facially false. Yet the false idea, taken as true and absolute, becomes the basis for instituting a plethora of unconstitutional and bizarre governmental policy measures.That is the case with the presumption of innocence platitude. The false idea behind the platitude becomes the rallying cry of Leftists calling for extreme criminal reform measures—measures that are both unnecessary and that, once implemented, are dangerous to the safety and well-being of the polity.

THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE PLATITUDE DOES NOT APPLY TO AN ARREST, ARRAIGNMENT, OR PRE-TRIAL DETENTION

Radical Leftist activists of all stripes—Marxists, Socialists, Communists, and Leftist anarchist groups—misapprehend, misconstrue the legal significance of the concept of ‘presumption of innocence’ that they flippantly and frivolously toss around in their baseless attack against the criminal justice system.The phrase, ‘presumption of innocence,’ is nothing more than an informal and inaccurate banality. It is not an affirmation of innocence. Yet, Leftist activists, such as our NY Times Reporter, ever evincing concern, real or imagined, over the seeming plight of criminals awaiting trial, lose sight of this fact. They attach more import and purport to the platitude than the platitude merits, and fail to appreciate, or otherwise ignore, what it does apply to. We explain, below._____________________________________________

LEFTISTS CRY OUT: “GET RID OF BAIL AND REMOVE GUNS FROM CITIZENS!” AFTER ALL, “INNOCENT” CRIMINALS HAVE RIGHTS TOO!”

PART TWO

WHAT DOES THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE PLATITUDE REALLY MEAN AND WHEN AND TO WHOM DOES IT TRULY APPLY?

The presumption of innocence platitude applies to criminal trials. It has no application to pretrial events: arrest, arraignment, or detention awaiting trial. The platitude alludes to a legal procedural safeguard afforded the accused at trial, nothing more. The phrase appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution and does not invoke a substantive right. It is merely a colloquial expression, not a legal term of art, and, like many colloquial expressions, it conveys erroneous and exaggerated ideas that the seditious Press and Leftist activists latch onto in their ceaseless attack against our Constitution and our system of laws.

UTILIZATION OF THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE PLATITUDE IN A CRIMINAL TRIAL

The prosecution must, in the first instance, present evidence to prove the accused’s guilt of a crime. The accused does not bear the initial burden of having to prove his innocence. And the prosecutor’s burden—guilt beyond a reasonable doubt—is a difficult one to meet; deliberately so, decidedly so.Further, the burden of proving guilt in a criminal prosecution falls solely on the Government. The accused need not present evidence in his or her defense. What does that mean? It means the accused need not make a showing of—namely demonstrate—his or her innocence at all. If the prosecution fails to make a case for the accused’s guilt, beyond a reasonable doubt—the highest bar set in our system of law and justice—the Court must acquit the accused of the crime. The Court has no other choice.If, however, it appears the prosecution has met the difficult burden of proof, it behooves the accused to present evidence to rebut the State’s evidence. But the accused need not do so. The accused need not do anything to prove his or her innocence of the crime charged, and the prosecution must do everything to convince the trier of fact that the accused is guilty of the crime charged.The presumption of innocence platitude does not, then, really attach to anyone or to anything.The platitude simply alludes to the burden of proof and the party upon whom the burden of proof rests. In a criminal proceeding the burden of proof rests initially, and, in fact, solely, on the prosecutor, not on the accused.The prosecutor must prove, one, that a crime has been committed, two, that each statutory element of the crime has been met in the proof; and, three, that the person accused of committing the crime probably did commit the crime, beyond a reasonable doubt. The platitude, contrary to common belief, does not impute innocence onto the accused.Once trial concludes, the trier of fact, often a jury but sometimes the Court itself, if the accused agrees to a “Bench Trial” in lieu of a jury trial, considers whether the prosecution has met its burden of proving the accused committed the crime he was charged with, weighing the prosecutorial evidence of guilt against such contrary evidence the accused presents if the accused wishes to present any evidence in his defense. The trier of fact then renders its verdict: to convict or to acquit.The prosecution has a heavy burden to lift and won’t generally prosecute a crime unless there is substantial and compelling evidence of the accused’s criminal conduct.Critically, such evidence a prosecutor wishes to introduce at trial must be admissible, which means that, on occasion, evidence of guilt of the accused may be incontrovertible and, yet, inadmissible in Court because, under the rules of evidence, the evidence that the prosecutor would like to use but cannot, is legally tainted.Thus, if a prosecutor does bring a case to trial, the prosecutor does so because the accused likely did commit the crime he or she was charged with, and the prosecutor has substantial, compelling, and admissible evidence to support a conviction.*Leftist activists, though, ever quick to condemn our system of laws, justice, and jurisprudence, in their zeal to promote the welfare of criminals over that of the safety and security of the law-abiding citizen, demonstrate their obliviousness to the heavy burden our legal system imposes on the State to prove the accused committed the crime he or she is charged with.Leftists routinely attack and constrain the police and concoct schemes to undermine our legal system. One such scheme involves bail reform. By ‘bail reform’ they mean doing away with the requirement of bail altogether, because they assume, erroneously, that the requirement for bail is inconsistent with the presumption of innocence platitude, which, as we explained, supra, doesn’t apply to pre-trial events at all. If the requirement of bail were incompatible with due process in all criminal proceedings, the Bill of Rights would have condemned the requirement of bail as inconsistent with a person’s necessary, fundamental, immutable, natural rights and liberties. Yet, that is not the case at all, as the Eighth Amendment makes abundantly clear. The setting of bail is permissible, but it cannot be excessive.

IS BAIL REFORM AND CIVILIAN OVERSIGHT OF THE POLICE REALLY A GOOD IDEA AS THE RADICAL LEFT AND NEW PROGRESSIVE LEFT MAINTAIN?

A seditious Press, like the NY Times, operating in flagrant disregard to news accuracy and truth, obsessively desirous of and complicit in achieving the Radical Left agenda, in service to millions of criminals and illegal aliens who daily dare to flaunt our laws—undermining our institutions, preying on our citizenry—argues for application of the prosecutorial burden at trial to pretrial events. Thus, a misunderstanding of the phrase “presumption of innocence” becomes the impetus for enactment of ludicrous laws and dangerous practices such as doing away with bail altogether and harboring a dismissive attitude toward prosecuting crime at all.Flash forward in time: NYC’s lackluster Mayor, Bill de Blasio, whose bid for the DNC nomination for U.S. President quickly fizzled out, devised a plan to protect the criminal class: simply do away with the requirement for posting bail, while awaiting trial, and hamstring the police while you’re at it. The New York Post writes,“New York City voters passed a ballot measure Tuesday that will boost a government watchdog’s oversight of the police department — coming just a day after the resignation of Police Commissioner James O’Neill and after years of tense cop-community relations.The amendment to the city constitution gives the Civilian Complaint Review Board more power to investigate cops it suspects lied to the panel regarding alleged brutality or other misconduct.“This slate of reforms will make the CCRB more efficient, make discipline more transparent, and bolster public confidence in the integrity of the agency’s process,” he said.But police unions fired back that the public’s decision undermined cops.“Today the NYPD was stabbed in the back by the very same people we swore to protect. With bail reform taking effect in January of 2020 and the passing of CCRBs political power grab, New Yorkers can only expect the NYPD to provide paralyzed policing on city streets,” said Sergeants Benevolent Association President Ed Mullins.O’Neill — who is leaving to take a private-sector gig in California — had been heard repeatedly warning others in law-enforcement that “It’s only going to get worse” under the changes, police sources have told The Post.”­­­­­­­­­­­It’s wondrous strange that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio claims the public doesn’t need firearms for self-defense because, as he contends, the police provide the public with all the safety they need. At least this is what he told the political commentator Sean Hannity on Hannity’s nightly Fox News program.But now we learn that Bill de Blasio doesn’t even want the police to do a modicum of police work, as he hampers their work, second guesses their actions, and releases hundreds of individuals charged with serious crimes from jail without requiring bail, presenting a threat to the safety and well-being of the citizenry.And, lest we forget, New York City is making it next to impossible for average American citizens residing in New York to obtain a handgun license for self-defense. And Leftists contend they care about the value of human life? Really? It is as if the Leftists in their condemnation of civilian ownership and possession of firearms and in their hasty desire for criminal reform, do intend to leave the citizenry defenseless. But, then, this is all part of the Radical Left and New Progressive Left game plan: to conduct a scarcely soft revolution, to tear down our free Republic.We are even now seeing the results of the Leftist game plan tragically playing out in major cities across our Nation.______________________________*Corrupt prosecutors may, as we unfortunately learn, manufacture false evidence of a crime or fail to provide exculpatory evidence of innocence. That’s always a problem, and, on an “industrial” scale, a serious problem, dangerous to the integrity of our entire judicial system. The sham Mueller investigation is a casebook study of a massive prosecutorial corruption scheme instituted for the sole purpose of unseating a duly elected President and harming many law-abiding citizens on the way. Ruthless forces both here and abroad, that seek to destroy the Trump Presidency, planned and carried out this charade. And the charade continues today, now in the guise of a Congressional impeachment against Trump. The forces that seek to unseat Trump perceive his policy goals summed up in the campaign slogan, “Make American Great Again,”—which, for Radical Leftists, amounts to a four-word phrase obscenity—as incompatible with their own goal of a one-world system of governance. But these forces that would crush this Nation and its people into submission don’t stop there. Through the despicable secretive actions of George Soros, a henchman of the Globalist “elite,” prosecutors of a different sort, who Soros has inserted into several City Governments: Radical Left activists or willing toadies of Soros and of the Radical Left, who won’t prosecute crimes, even serious crimes, at all. As reported by the Washington Times, these puppets of neoliberal, Globalist, Transnationalist forces—who include Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, Kim Foxx in Chicago, Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, and Rachael Rollins in Suffolk County, Massachusetts—regularly refuse to prosecute crimes, thereby endangering the safety and well-being of the public and making a mockery of our entire system of law and justice. That, of course, is all in accord with the Radical Left’s plan intentionally to disrupt the judicial process to destroy our Country from within.______________________________________________

PART THREE

NO POLICY IS TOO EXTREME FOR THE RADICAL LEFTIST AND PROGRESSIVES IF IT SERVES THEIR AGENDA

Just how far is the radical Left willing to go to carry out their vision for a new America? Well, let’s consider how far one Leftist, namely, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, is willing to go. The Wall Street Journal provides us with an inkling, reporting on May 28, 2019:“More teens accused of serious felonies will be released from jail without bail under New York City’s latest push to limit incarceration, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday.The new policy, which begins June 1, would affect hundreds of teens accused of serious crimes like assault, robbery and burglary, allowing them to be eligible for release without bail, while they await adjudication of their case.”Releasing dangerous people, charged with serious crimes, on the street, and, at once, hamstringing the police will hardly make the City safer.And doing away with bail altogether serves only to worsen the situation. Doing so is foolhardy and takes the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which cautions that bail cannot be excessive, too far. The Eighth Amendment mandates only that the bail amount set must be commensurate with the crime. But there is nothing in the Eighth Amendment to suggest that the imposition of bail is inconsistent with due process in criminal proceedings.The Eighth Amendment sets forth:“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”Obviously, bail has a basis in criminal law and procedure. It isn’t a mere legal nicety. It has a place in our criminal justice system to ensure the accused will appear for trial. A dollar amount set by the Court reflects the seriousness of the crime charged against the accused. If the accused does not have funds on hand to meet bail, the accused has recourse to bail bondsmen.But Leftist activists like de Blasio have an agenda and that agenda has nothing whatsoever to do with safeguarding our citizenry and preserving both a free Republic and the Constitution. The Leftist agenda has everything to do with tearing down our free Republic and rewriting the Constitution to cohere to the Collectivist tenets of Marxism, Socialism, and Communism—tenets at odds with those of Individualism upon which our Constitution, the blueprint of our Republic, rests.Recently, the New York Post reported:Nearly 900 city jailbirds could be celebrating Christmas early courtesy of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a plan to quietly free them before the state’s bail-reform law goes into effect next year, The Post has learned.And if that weren’t enough of a gift, Mayor Bill de Blasio is promising to follow up with even more presents for the lucky accused criminals — by giving them free baseball tickets, movie passes and gift cards to encourage them to return to court, sources familiar with the program said.'You’re literally rewarding them for committing a crime,' said a disgusted senior staffer in Manhattan Criminal Court.The proposed early jail release is tied to a law that Cuomo signed in the spring to eliminate bail for defendants charged with an array of misdemeanor and felony crimes.The more than 400 offenses include such heinous acts as criminally negligent homicide, aggravated assault on a child under 11 and selling drugs on or near school grounds, according to a memo being circulated by prosecutors across the state and obtained by The Post.The law goes into effect Jan. 1 but it will be retroactive — meaning inmates who are already locked up on such cases can apply to have their bail lifted and to be freed.In the Big Apple, court officials estimate that 880 prisoners — about 16 percent of all pretrial detainees housed by the Department of Correction — will be eligible for the get-out-of-jail-free cards.”

A PERSON ACCUSED OF CRIME ALREADY HAS A FULL PANOPLY OF PROTECTIONS BUT DE BLASIO AND CUOMO DO NOT SEE THIS AS ENOUGH

Substantive and substantial legal Constitutional and Procedural safeguards and protections exist to protect the rights of the criminal accused at trial. We don’t need more. This would only serve to endanger the public.First, common law crime no longer exists in our Country. No conduct is illegal unless such conduct is set forth statutorily, in our State and Federal Criminal Codes. The elements of each crime are set forth clearly and unambiguously. To support a conviction, the prosecution must prove each element of a crime.Second, the accused enjoys substantial procedural safeguards under extensive State and Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.Third, and most critically, the U.S. Constitution accords the accused a full panoply of substantive, fundamental, natural rights. Under the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments of the Bill of Rights, along with rights laid out in the Fourteenth Amendment, the accused has substantially more legal protections than those accorded the accused in any other Nation.Regardless, Radical left activists continue to malign our Constitution and our system of laws, contending that those charged with crimes don’t have enough legal protection. That notion is patently false; even ridiculous. But, why does the Radical Left constantly go on about the presumed inequities and iniquities of our criminal justice system? Is it that they truly care about what befalls serial criminals or do the motivations of Leftist activists lie elsewhere?

WHY DOES THE RADICAL LEFT CONTINUE TO PROMOTE THE WELFARE OF CRIMINALS OVER THE SAFETY AND SECURITY OF THE POLITY?

Radical Left groups and politicians, along with a seditious Press, foment societal confusion, dissension, and unrest. They encourage disrespect for our Constitution, our laws, our social and political institutions, our culture, our history, our core ethical Judeo-Christian values, and our National identity.Through a caustic, diabolically planned and orchestrated agenda, they seek to induce mass hysteria and rend the very soul and psyche of the Nation, thereby disrupting societal cohesion and creating societal instability. Thus, the polity becomes soft, malleable; and open to a completely new vision of reality: The Collectivists’ vision; a vision that entails the end of our Nation-State; the end of our fundamental, natural rights and liberties; and the insertion of the tatters that remain of our Nation into a new transnational political, social, economic, and cultural system of governance where the polity sees itself subject to abject penury and misery, subjugation and harassment, and under constant surveillance.Leftists, swift to promote social justice for the criminal class, in their zeal to tear down the social order and to rebuild it in accordance with the tenets of Collectivism, the criminal class becomes a useful tool to accomplish their goals, and, so, dismiss the safety and welfare of the law-abiding citizenry.Thus, do Leftists show their disdain for the welfare of human beings, as they, one, release upon the citizenry, a plague of criminals, free to disrupt and harm; two, constrain the police, making it difficult for them to promote the public welfare; and, three, dispossess average, law-abiding, responsible, rational Americans of their firearms, leaving them defenseless in the face of the criminal element now given carté blanche to run amok in society. This, then, is a major component of the Leftist plan for the re-ordering of society.Would these Leftist policies establish a Socialist or Communist Utopia? If so, what might that Utopia look like? Do you really want to know? Peer down at Cities like Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. Do you like what you see? If so, you will be most happy to know this is what the Radical Left has in store for the entire Nation.__________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

UNITED STATES SAFE ACT IN THE MAKING: PENNED AND PENCILED BY ANDREW CUOMO

GUN RIGHTS STAY CENTER STAGE

With the midterm Congressional and Gubernatorial elections just around the corner, those Americans who support a strong Second Amendment must not sit idle, but must vote for Congressional candidates and State Governors who will not only support the right of the people to keep and bear arms but who will actively defend that right against those who dare to destroy it. The gun rights issue is of paramount importance and will take center stage if Cuomo Democrats win control of the House and Senate and if they take control of the States.

DESTRUCTION OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT REMAINS AT THE TOP OF THE LIST FOR CUOMO DEMOCRATS.

The Arbalest Quarrel has pointed out in our article, posted on August 1, 2018, that, although the immigration issue has been hyped by the mainstream media and by leftist politicians, in recent weeks and months, it is the Second Amendment that remains first and foremost, firmly in the crosshairs of those who seek to undermine our sacred Bill of Rights. And, sure enough, the exercise of gun rights is once again in the antigun zealots’ crosshairs.In recent days, as the Governor of New York, Andrew M. Cuomo, gears up for a third term bid, he has taken direct aim at the oldest Civil Rights Organization in the Country, the NRA. NRA exists to defend the single, most important right of the American people, the right of the people to keep and bear arms—a right critical to the safeguarding of a free Republic, and critical to guaranteeing the autonomy and sanctity of the individual citizen, as the true sovereign authority in and of the United States.The New York Times has taken the lead in shepherding New York residents to elect Cuomo to a third term in Office, making the point of telling the public, in an August 5, 2018 article, titled, “A New Brawl With the N.R.A.? Cuomo Seizes an Opportunity as a Primary Looms”— that “Mr. Cuomo has had a longstanding ideological commitment to gun control. . . [and that] in 2013, Mr. Cuomo successfully fought for passage of the Safe Act, making New York the first state to enact more stringent gun regulations after the Sandy Hook massacre. He has proudly touted his ‘F’ rating from the N.R.A.” Lest there be any doubt where Cuomo’s ultimate ambition lies, the New York Times adds, in that same article, that “he [Cuomo] has also made no secret of his belief that his actions on gun control have made his state a model for the nation—a handy argument for a politician who has garnered some mention as a possible 2020 candidate. ‘Use New York as a test case,’ Mr. Cuomo said in an interview of his gun control measures, including the Safe Act. ‘The state is a laboratory of democracy where I can say: We passed the law five years ago. Come look at our state.’”Come look at New York, indeed! Imagine, if you will, a Nation, where the model for gun control, the New York Safe Act, becomes federal law—thrust on every State in the Union.De Facto, if not outright de jure, repeal of the Second Amendment has been the goal of the Democratic Party for decades. And, Andrew Cuomo will lead the charge on eviscerating the Second Amendment. Long before Democrats changed their position on illegal immigration—calling at an earlier time for curbs on such immigration, but now extolling an open borders policy that would essentially open the floodgates, letting flow, like an angry river into this Country, tens, perhaps even hundreds, of millions of low-skilled migrants, along with a large contingent of criminal gangs and refugees from failed states of the Middle East—Democrats have never wavered but have consistently attacked the sacred, natural right codified in the Second Amendment. They have done so incessantly, unceasingly, vehemently. That single issue is what defines them. That single issue is what motivates them, like no other. For, they know that: once the right of the people to keep and bear arms is destroyed, they--these Cuomo Democrats and other leftists--will do away with other fundamental rights and liberties. In so doing, they contrive and machinate to contort our Nation into a thing unrecognizable, an entity completely alien to the aims and desires of the founders of a Free Republic. These Cuomo Democrats seek to create a quagmire, a geographical "Place," no longer an Independent, Sovereign Nation--but merely a place--overrun by unassimilable alien people. These Cuomo Democrats and other leftists who seek to destroy our Nation--a Nation founded on natural rights and liberties--intend to destroy the very fabric of our Nation: its memory; its history, its values, its culture, its ethos. They intend to wipe the slate clean. And, to assist them in their detestable endeavor, they conspire to bring into our Country, such denizens of other Countries who have no understanding of, no appreciation for and, in fact, no concept, of a Nation that exists under and by the will of the people alone--a Nation whose people are endowed by their Creator with fundamental, natural rights and liberties--rights and liberties intrinsic to their very being: incorruptible, immutable, beyond the power of Government to deny, to ignore, to erase.

CUOMO DEMOCRATS DO NOT PERCEIVE THE BILL OF RIGHTS AS CODIFYING NATURAL RIGHTS BUT AS A CREATION OF MAN THAT CAN, THEREFORE, BE AMENDED OR DELETED AT WILL.

Not surprisingly, Cuomo Democrats and other leftists' disdain for the Second Amendment is reflected in their rebuke of the very notion that the Bill of Rights embodies and codifies a set of basic, natural rights endowed to man by the Creator, intrinsic to man's very being. As Cuomo Democrats and other leftists savagely, mindlessly, mercilessly attack the right of the people to keep and bear arms of the Second Amendment, they have also attacked the right of free speech, codified in the First Amendment, and they have attacked the very notion of private property rights codified in the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. They consider these rights trivial, anachronistic to, and an anathema to the "new" Socialist Order they wish to create. In their scheme, these Cuomo Democrats, and these other leftists residing in our Nation, consider the Nation's sacred rights to be merely man-made conventions, capable of excision or rescission, at the stroke of the pen.Thus, these Cuomo Democrats and these other leftists belittle the Nation's Bill of Rights, and belittle, too, and especially, the right of the people to keep and bear arms. At every turn these Cuomo Democrats and these other leftists contrive to undermine the sanctity of our sacred rights. In their insidious design first to trivialize the Nation's fundamental rights--natural rights, codified in the Nation's Bill of Rights by the framers of our Constitution--they seek, second, eventually, to strike these fundamental, natural rights from the Constitution, substituting for them, such man-made rights, they happen to construct for the moment; rights that happen, for the moment, to comprise their wish list, consistent with and commensurate with their plans for a new Socialist Order they intend to impose on Americans.And what are some of these new rights? Investor Business Daily wrote, presciently, in 2016, that: “They [Democrats] talk about the ‘right to affordable health care,’ the ‘right to a college education,’ the ‘right to a livable wage.’ But at the same time, many of these same Democrats have been agitating to restrict or outright repeal existing rights enshrined in the Constitution's Bill of Rights.” 

CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATORS MUST SPEAK OUT!

Conservative commentators must speak out against the perils of a Congress controlled by the Democratic Party, and they must do so continuously. They must emphasize the threat that Cuomo Democrats and other leftists pose to the continued sanctity of and continuity of the Bill of Rights and, especially, the threat they pose to the Second Amendment.Yet, conservative commentators remain, for the most part, reticent. Oddly, even the conservative commentator Sean Hannity fails to mention that Cuomo Democrats would strive to weaken the Second Amendment if they gained control of the House and the Senate. On his nightly Fox news broadcasts, Hannity rightly warns the American public about specific dangers posed by a Democratic Party takeover of Congress, including Democrats’ intention to impeach President Trump and their commitment to an open borders immigration policy, but he says nothing about Cuomo led Democrats’ devious, scurrilous plans to enact restrictive firearms measures, on the National stage, in the event they take over the House, and, possibly, the Senate as well.

IS THE WRITING ON THE WALL?

If Democrats do in fact take over Congress, after the November 2018 midterm elections, and if Andrew Cuomo is elected to a third term as Governor of New York, Cuomo will be taking his plans for a National New York Safe Act to a receptive Congress, where he will lead the pack to destroy the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Of that, there can be no doubt._________________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

WESTCHESTER COUNTY EXECUTIVE GEORGE LATIMER’S ORDER, BANNING PUBLIC GUN SHOWS, LIKELY VIOLATES FIRST AND SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS.

CAN A STATE OR ANY JURISDICTION WITHIN A STATE BAN PUBLIC GUN SHOWS OUTRIGHT, WITHOUT ILLEGALY TRAMPLING THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS?

“And, now, come to this spot Where the spotlight is hot And you’ll see in the spotlight A Juggling Jott Who can juggle some stuff You might think he could not. . . Such as twenty-two question marks, Which is a lot. Also forty-four commas And, also, one dot! That’s the kind of Circus McGurkus I’ve got!” ~ From the Children’s Book, “If I Ran the Circus," by Dr. Seuss (published by Random House 1956) 

We see with disturbing regularity, Governments, be they the federal Government, a State Government, or Government of a County, township, or municipality, blindly, indiscriminately, with stunning alacrity, and feverish abandon, enacting laws, codes, regulations, ordinances, or, as in the case, recently, in the County of Westchester, in the State of New York, an Executive Order that negatively impacts substantive, fundamental Constitutional Rights. Those in power, like the Westchester County Executive, George Latimer, seek, in the fiefdom, they "rule," a fanciful, but nightmarish world, a personal circus, that mirrors a conception of reality acceptable to them--a conception of reality consistent with their personal philosophy and ethical system but one at once inconsistent with the blueprint for a free Republic that the founders of our Nation designed and established for the American people, and one inconsistent with the rights and liberties that the framers of our Bill of Rights insisted on as a critical component of the Nation's Constitution, as a safeguard against the very actions that people such as George Latimer take. People, like the present Westchester County Executive, filled with their own smug certainty of what is right and proper, would dare to force the ordinary citizens, who reside in their domain of power, to live in the "circus" they create, compelled to obey and abide by the law they lay down, irrespective of natural law, codified as sacred rights and liberties comprising our Bill of Rights--rights existent intrinsically in each American citizen, as placed in each American soul, by the hand of the Divine Creator, that no man, acting as a demigod, may rationally and lawfully counteract or nullify.

WESTCHESTER COUNTY EXECUTIVE GEORGE LATIMER OVERTURNS THE ORDER OF HIS PREDECESSOR, ROB ASTORINO.

On January 2, 2018, George Latimer, a Democrat, took the oath of Office in his White Plains, New York Office, as the new County Executive of Westchester County, and wasted no time to attack the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. “On his second day as Westchester County Executive, George Latimer delivered on a promise from in [sic] his campaign, and signed an Executive Order prohibiting the sale of guns on Westchester County property.” What precipitated this Executive Order? Apparently, George Latimer sought to reimpose on the American public that resides in Westchester County an earlier ban on public gun shows ordered by a prior Westchester County Executive, Andrew J. Spano, that had been lifted by George Latimer's immediate predecessor, Rob Astorino. As explained, further, on the Westchester Government website,“In 1999, gun shows were banned at the Westchester County Center by former County Executive Andrew J. Spano [a Democrat] in the wake of the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado. That prohibition was later revoked by Latimer’s immediate predecessor [Rob Astorino, a Republican].‘Westchester County government should not be in the business of advancing the sale of weapons and other items often sold at gun shows – plain and simple,’ said Latimer. ‘This is not a restriction on gun shows in the entire county, but rather just on public land.’Text from the Executive Order states that 'WHEREAS, recreational County facilities always serve our residents best when used for sporting events, concerts, trade shows, and educational opportunities for our youth. Gun shows are not what taxpayer financed property should be used for.'"Several websites dryly report this event; several with approval, some not.The seesawing of actions, up and down, back and forth—where one Westchester County Executive bans public guns shows, another County Executive lifts the ban, and a third County Executive reimposes the public gun show ban—reflects a clash of philosophies pertaining to import and purport of the Second Amendment, and to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as well, played out on a small scale. How this clash of philosophies ultimately pans out, when fought out on the broad national scale, in Congress and in the U.S. Supreme Court, though, will have, for the American citizenry, vast implications and ramifications, for good or ill, for generations of Americans to come.

THE INDEFATIGABLE OBSTINANCE OF THOSE FORCES THAT DENIGRATE AND REFUSE TO TOLERATE THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS KNOWS NO BOUNDS.

George Latimer's Executive Order, banning public gun shows in Westchester County, represents the latest effort of antigun forces to place obstacles in the path of those American citizens who, as Latimer and his fellow travelers see it, have the audacity to exercise the natural and fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms that the framers codified in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution. The framers, for their part, with clarity of foresight, provided to them with guidance from Divine Providence, saw abundant need for this sacred right to be codified in the Bill of Rights. The framers of the Bill of Rights, the founders of our free Republic, knew full well that nothing but force of arms serves to check tyranny and nothing but force of arms best protects the life, well-being, and sanctity of the individual. Thus, as Latimer and his cohorts in the antigun conspiracy take exception with those American citizens who wish merely to exercise, unimpeded, the right to own and possess firearms for their protection and to safeguard the continued existence of a free Republic, George Latimer and his antigun cohorts must also take exception with the framers of the Bill of Rights, for it is they, who made clear enough, beyond the power of anyone to ignore, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms does exist, that the right is sacred and indelible, and that this right, more than any other, defines our Nation and defines what it means to be an American citizen.

GEORGE LATIMER LAYS OUT FOR THE MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA PRESS THE PREDICATE BASIS FOR HIS EXECUTIVE ORDER BANNING PUBLIC GUN SHOWS IN WESTCHESTER COUNTY, SIGNALING HIS VEHEMENT DISAPPROVAL OF FIREARMS AND HIS STRONG DISAPPROVAL OF THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, CODIFIED IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION.

Where George Latimer’s sympathies lie on matters pertaining to the right of the people to keep and bear arms, one can readily ascertain. Talking to the Press, Latimer resorts to use of simplistic, superficial, banal political oratory, eschewing erudite, logical discourse—treating the public with condescension and contempt, as politicians customarily and most sadly do—punctuating his well-rehearsed talking points with the confident self-assurance and moral certitude of a televangelist delivering a weekly sermon to his TV audience. “Latimer said Tuesday that gun shows do not represent the family values reflected in the other events held at the county facilities. The ban is not a restriction on gun shows in the entire county, but just on public land, he said. ‘The County Center hosts basketball, Westchester Knicks play there in the developmental league, we have had the Harlem Globetrotters come in for performances, we have a bridal show coming up, we have a model train show that normally comes into the arena, we have job fairs and high school graduations and concerts, all very friendly family fare,’ he said.”The County Executive, George Latimer, also proclaims: “I believe the majority of the Board of Legislators, and myself as executive, believe very strongly that this is the wrong venue for a gun show. . . .” Well, who would dare oppose George Latimer; for, after all, as stated in County Code: “The County Executive shall be the chief executive and administrative officer of the county and the official head of the county government.” Westchester County Code of Ordinances, Part I, Charter, Article 110, County Executive.

COUNTY EXECUTIVE GEORGE LATIMER’S BAN ON PUBLIC GUN SHOWS IN WESTCHESTER COUNTY SIGNALS HIS SUPPORT OF GOVERNOR ANDREW CUOMO’S ANTAGONISTIC ATTITUDE TOWARD GUNS AND THE GOVERNOR'S ANTAGONISTIC ATTITUDE TOWARD THE EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, CODIFIED IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION.

As George Latimer, County Executive, sets his imprimatur on the County level, one would do well to recall Governor Andrew Cuomo’s own actions, negatively infringing the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms, on the State level. After all, it was Governor Cuomo who signed into law, on January 15, 2013, and who exclaims with visible pride, enactment of the New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act of 2013 (NY Safe Act), one of the most restrictive and draconian set of firearms laws ever to be enacted in the United States—and a direct and clear repudiation of and affront to the fundamental right, codified in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Other anti-Second Amendment Governors have used the NY Safe Act as a model for enactment of their own restrictive firearms laws. And, on the national stage, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein had envisioned and had hopes of engineering similar NY Safe Act legislation for the entire Nation—a direct and cold and calculated and audacious challenge to any American citizen who might wish to exercise his or her fundamental right to keep and bear arms. Fortunately, she did not succeed in that endeavor. But, like a true fanatic, she employs indefatigable resolve, constantly introducing anti-Second Amendment bills in the U.S. Senate, and forever scheming behind closed doors.Antigun Politicians like Governor Andrew Cuomo and Westchester County Executive, George Latimer, and Senator Dianne Feinstein know they can always rely on the mainstream news media to trumpet, with great fanfare, their antigun message.

THE MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA “PRESS” SERVES IS OWN ENDS, AND THOSE OF ITS BENEFACTORS—THE WEALTHY, POWERFUL, RUTHLESS INTERNATIONALIST, TRANS-NATIONALIST GLOBAL “ELITE” THAT IT OBSEQUIOUSLY SERVES—TO DENIGRATE, INCESSANTLY, UNCEASINGLY, THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, CODIFIED IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS.

Arguably, one of the most unforgiveable actions of the ‘mainstream news media’—where the expression, ‘mainstream news media,’ is generally equated with the term, 'Press,' as the word, ‘Press,’ appears prominently in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution —is that the Press, id est, “this mainstream news media Press,” fails to defend the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms, as codified in the Second Amendment. That is bad enough. Worse, the mainstream news media Press caustically, audaciously, and emphatically attacks those who defend the right codified in the Second Amendment. This mainstream news media Press, scurrilously abets the actions of those governmental leaders, who, with the power they wield through the Legislative Office they hold, do their utmost to undermine, rather than defend the right.Mainstream news media organization newspaper publishers like The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, The Guardian, and USA Today, and mainstream news media broadcast outlets like ABC, MSNBC, CBS, CNN, PBS, and BBC all provide a quick and ready and willing forum for those Congressional and State legislators and for those antigun proponents and antigun provocateurs and for those obstreperous left-wing agitators that allows them to malign those American citizens who hold to traditional American values and who seek to exercise their fundamental right to keep and bear arms. With customary malicious and malevolent bravado, and self-assured smugness, these mainstream news media newspapers and other mainstream media news organizations and their affiliates denigrate the Second Amendment and denigrate those who support it and denigrate those who support the framers' conception of the other Nine Amendments as well. Through their commentary and  Op-Eds, and through their news reporting, too--where mainstream media news coverage is seen less as hard, so-called "straight" news and more as editorial slants posing as news stories--these mainstream media news organizations deliberately and disingenuously concoct a central theme, a story-line, a story narrative, that, day-by-day, builds upon the story of the day before, not unlike what one sees when reading a work of fiction,that, chapter by chapter, builds sequentially on what came before, to a pre-ordained conclusion that the author mandates in the template for the work of fiction that the author creates.This same mainstream news media Press malevolently assails, with sanctimonious conviction and obvious glee, anyone who might dare challenge its pronouncements; for, the Press quickly reminds the American public that freedom of the Press is, after all, a fundamental right, even as that same Press insists that the right of the people to keep and bear arms isn’t. The irony in the claim—selectively and vehemently defending one fundamental right while viciously attacking another—is, apparently, lost on those who work for the mainstream news media Press, even if that irony isn’t lost on any other American.So, it should not be surprising that some Governmental leaders operate with characteristic aplomb and abandon to enact laws and take actions that undercut the right of the people to keep and bear arms as they have a powerful ally in the mainstream news media Press on their side. George Latimer evidently knows he has the backing of this mainstream news media Press, and with this Press on his side, he acts with impunity. Together, with a compliant County Government he leads, he obviously feels confident that his bold, legally dubious Executive Order, banning public gun shows, will go essentially unchallenged. For, who would dare confront him?Well, the Arbalest Quarrel does challenge Westchester County Executive George Latimer’s Order, banning public gun shows in Westchester County. And, we do proclaim loudly, assertively and confidently: Meaningful, compelling, deserving and discerning bases exist, in law, to challenge County Executive George Latimer’s Executive Order, on that portion of the Executive Order we have seen, as posted on the County Government website.Why do we say this? We have the weight of legal authority on our side.

COUNTY EXECUTIVE GEORGE LATIMER’S ACTION, BANNING PUBLIC SHOWS IN WESTCHESTER COUNTY IS LIKELY UNLAWFUL, AND A COGENT LEGAL BASIS EXISTS FOR CHALLENGING THE EXECUTIVE ORDER IN COURT.

Granted, the Arbalest Quarrel hasn’t had an opportunity to review the full text of George Latimer’s Executive Order. The reason is that the full text of the Executive Order has not been published on the Westchester County website. In time, perhaps, the full text of the Executive Order will be posted on the County Government website. There is, apparently, more to it.But, what we do see, from that portion of the Executive Order that has been published, namely that “recreational County facilities always serve our residents best when used for sporting events, concerts, trade shows, and educational opportunities for our youth [because] Gun shows are not what taxpayer financed property should be used for,” says enough for purpose of challenging the lawfulness of the Order. For, consistent with and supportive of George Latimer’s sentiments about firearms and about gun shows, as expressed to the mainstream news media Press, along with the language of the Executive Order itself, we conclude the language of the Order, as buttressed by the Westchester County Executive’s statements to the mainstream news media Press, demonstrate not only the County Executive’s open and visceral abhorrence of firearms, and not only his distaste for the right of the people to keep and bear arms as codified in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and not only his contempt for American citizens who wish to exercise that right, but constitute, too, unconscionable violations of the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment to the U.S Constitution.That portion of the Westchester County Executive Order we have read, be it coupled with the Westchester County Executive’s statements to mainstream media newspapers and broadcast outlets, or not, amounts to an open admission of violation of the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment.The Arbalest Quarrel will provide an in-depth analysis in a future article. Suffice it to say, here, that George Latimer’s Executive Order, through its very language, contravenes United States Supreme Court law.In critical part, the U.S. Supreme Court stated, in the 1994 case, Turner Broadcasting System vs. FCC, 512 U.S. 622; 114 S. Ct. 2445; 129 L. Ed. 2d 497; 1994 U.S. LEXIS 4831; 62 U.S.L.W. 4647: “At the heart of the First Amendment lies the principle that each person should decide for him or herself the ideas and beliefs deserving of expression, consideration, and adherence. Our political system and cultural life rest upon this ideal. See Leathers v. Medlock, 499 U.S. at 449 (citing Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 24, 29 L. Ed. 2d 284, 91 S. Ct. 1780 (1971));West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 638, 640-642, 87 L. Ed. 1628, 63 S. Ct. 1178 (1943). Government action that stifles speech on account of its message, or that requires the utterance of a particular message favored by the Government, contravenes this essential right. Laws of this sort pose the inherent risk that the Government seeks not to advance a legitimate regulatory goal, but to suppress unpopular ideas or information or manipulate the public debate through coercion rather than persuasion. These restrictions ‘raise the specter that the Government may effectively drive certain ideas or viewpoints from the marketplace.’ Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of the New York State Crime Victims Bd., 502 U.S. 105, 116, 116 L. Ed. 2d 476, 112 S. Ct. 501 (1991). For these reasons, the First Amendment, subject only to narrow and well-understood exceptions, does not countenance governmental control over the content of messages expressed by private individuals. R. A. V. v. St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377, 393, 120 L. Ed. 2d 305, 112 S. Ct. 2538 (1992); Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397,  414, 105 L. Ed. 2d 342, 109 S. Ct. 2533 (1989). Our precedents thus apply the most exacting scrutiny to regulations that suppress, disadvantage, or impose differential burdens upon speech because of its content. See Simon & Schuster, 502 U.S. at; id., at (KENNEDY, J., concurring in judgment); Perry Education Assn. v. Perry Local Educators' Assn., 460 U.S. 37, 45, 74 L. Ed. 2d 794, 103 S. Ct. 948 (1983). Laws that compel speakers to utter or distribute speech bearing a particular message are subject to the same rigorous scrutiny. See Riley v. National Federation for Blind of N.C., Inc., 487 U.S. at 798; West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, supra. In contrast, regulations that are unrelated to the content of speech are subject to an intermediate level of scrutiny, see Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288, 293, 82 L. Ed. 2d 221, 104 S. Ct. 3065 (1984), because in most cases they pose a less substantial risk of excising certain ideas or viewpoints from the public dialogue.” Let’s deconstruct a portion of this high Court opinion: “At the heart of the First Amendment lies the principle that each person should decide for him or herself the ideas and beliefs deserving of expression, consideration, and adherence. Our political system and cultural life rest upon this ideal.” There is a marked tension between the words of the U.S. Supreme Court and the words expressed in Westchester County Executive’s Order; for the language of the Executive Order stands in clear, categorical defiance to the well-reasoned opinion of the high Court in Turner. Again, the specific language of the Westchester County Executive Order of George Latimer reads: “WHEREAS, recreational County facilities always serve our residents best when used for sporting events, concerts, trade shows, and educational opportunities for our youth [because] Gun shows are not what taxpayer financed property should be used for [emphasis our own].” This is a presumptuous, arrogant assertion. Latimer predicates this Executive Order on, and attempts to support an unlawful and despicable Governmental act on, false moral piety. It is a ruse; no less so, if George Latimer truly believes that his Executive Order is justified because, in his mind, he has generated it from a sense of superior moral conviction, and sees it as an act of beneficence toward the residents of Westchester rather than, for what it really is, an act of defiance toward the supreme authority, establishing, in no uncertain words, the fundamental rights and liberties etched in stone in the Bill of Rights. Yet, Latimer's Executive Order, banning public gun shows in Westchester County, is nothing less than illegal gag order on free expression, posing as a righteous moral edict. For George Latimer is doing no less than thrusting his personal beliefs into the public sphere concerning what he sees, or what he would like to see, as the appropriate use of public County land and what he perceives as not constituting appropriate use of public land. Latimer obviously detests  guns, and he obviously abhors a citizen's exercise of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. By banning public gun shows, George Latimer uses his Office to make manifest in law, to actualize in Westchester County, his personal opinions and pompous high-minded moral judgments of what he deems to constitute appropriate behavior and what he signals as inappropriate behavior, informing residents of Westchester County, in no uncertain terms, as to what constitutes appropriate behavior in the County and what does not. Obviously, for George Latimer, those who wish to promote and hold public gun shows and those who wish to attend public gun shows are both engaging in inappropriate, immoral or amoral behavior, and he has signaled his clear disapproval of that behavior through the Executive Order he has issued on the matter. Undoubtedly, we will see more such Executive Orders emanating from his Office in White Plains, New York.George Latimer takes upon himself the role of guardian of public morality, and he has, through issuance of his Executive Order, given himself, albeit tacitly, the title of High Priest of Moral Order and Rectitude. It is George Latimer who determines what behavior is worthy of free speech protection under the First Amendment and what speech is not worthy of such protection, in Westchester County. Through his actions George Latimer demonstrates the height of arrogance and presumption. He uses a heavy hand to constrain the right of free speech that Westchester County residents might, one would think, reasonably expect is theirs to enjoy, as such right is codified in the First Amendment; and he uses a heavy hand to constrain, as well, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, as codified in the Second Amendment--another fundamental right that Westchester County  residents might, one would think, also reasonably expect is theirs to enjoy. Not so, according to George Latimer. But, the Courts may think differently. Latimer's Executive Order is not likely to stand up to rigorous legal scrutiny. For, contrary to George Latimer’s assertions as manifested in his actions, the Bill of Rights doesn’t stop at the border of Westchester County. Moreover, that the County Executive would deign, at least for a time, to allow gun shows to proceed unimpeded on “private” land within the County, for those Westchester residents who would wish to attend them, the fact that private gun shows may be permitted in Westchester County, when public gun shows cannot, under Latimer's Executive Order, does not suffice to circumvent a charge of Constitutional violations impacting public gun shows, whether private gun shows are a feasible, practical alternative or not.Under our system of laws, as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court, consistent with the U.S. Constitution, George Latimer, in his official capacity as the Westchester County Executive, but also as an American citizen, thrusts a personal view toward firearms on others which sees expression as a ban on public gun shows. But, it is one thing for an American citizen to dislike guns, to dislike gun shows, and to dislike the Second Amendment and to hold personal views on what should, in that person's mind constitute limits on free expression under the First Amendment, and, thereupon, to express views consistent with those preferences. That is permitted. That itself reflects a sacred right that an American citizen shall, as he or she wishes, exercise, freely, without constraint. That entails, as well, the sanctity and inviolability of each individual American citizen to be individual--a basic precept that underlies the entirety of the Nation's Bill of Rights. But where, as here, an American citizen—who wields power as a Government official—would dare impose, indeed, inflict, his belief systems on others, by erecting barriers to another American citizen’s fundamental and substantive Constitutional rights, that cannot and must not be borne. Governmental officers are, after all, in this Nation, under our Constitution and under our system of laws, public servants. Their duty is to serve the people, not to command subservience of the people, to bend the will of the American citizenry to that official's will. The Bill of Rights operates as an absolute constraint on the authority of any Governmental official, whether serving at the Federal, State, County, or local level. The Bill of Rights cannot lawfully be overridden, either by Statute or by Executive fiat. The Bill of Rights sets the parameters beyond which no Governmental official is permitted lawfully to enter.The U.S. Supreme Court further stated, in Turner,“As a general rule, laws that by their terms distinguish favored speech from disfavored speech on the basis of the ideas or views expressed are content-based. See, e.g., Burson v. Freeman, 504 U.S. 191, 197, 119 L. Ed. 2d 5, 112 S. Ct. 1846 (1992) (‘Whether individuals may exercise their free-speech rights near polling places  depends entirely on whether their speech is related to a political campaign’); Boos v. Barry, 485 U.S. 312, 318-319, 99 L. Ed. 2d 333, 108 S. Ct. 1157 (1988) (plurality opinion) (whether municipal ordinance permits individuals to ‘picket in front of a foreign embassy depends entirely upon whether their picket signs are critical of the foreign government or not’). By contrast, laws that confer benefits or impose burdens on speech without reference to the ideas or views expressed are in most instances content-neutral. See, e.g.  City Council of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. 789, 804, 80 L. Ed. 2d 772, 104 S. Ct. 2118 (1984) (ordinance prohibiting the posting of signs on public property ‘is neutral—indeed it is silent—concerning any speaker's point of view’); Heffron v. International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Inc., 452 U.S. 640, 649, 69 L. Ed. 2d 298, 101 S. Ct. 2559 (1981) (State Fair regulation requiring that sales and solicitations take place at designated locations ‘applies evenhandedly to all who wish to distribute and sell written materials or to solicit funds’).”The language of Latimer’s Executive Order is, on its face, content-based, not merely neutral-based. The Executive Order, banning public gun shows in Westchester County, would, therefore, in our estimate, not withstand legal scrutiny if challenged.

CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES DO NOT EXIST IN AN ACADEMIC VACUUM. THEY AFFECT THE LIVES OF ALL AMERICANS IN A TANGIBLE WAY; AND TWO OR MORE RIGHTS, SUCH AS THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT AND THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS OF THE SECOND, OFTEN COHERE. THEY OFTEN, AS HERE, IN THE CASE OF AN EXECUTIVE ORDER BANNING PUBLIC GUN SHOWS, GO HAND-IN-HAND.

Much of restrictive gun law legislation, apart from expressly conflicting with the Second Amendment, casts a bright light on the views of those who support such draconian legislation. It is demonstrative evidence for inferring that the proponents of such legislation seek not only to curb exercise of the fundamental, substantive right codified in the Second Amendment, but to curb the American citizen's First Amendment expression of that Second Amendment right. These two Rights go hand-in-hand. When antigun proponents talk disparagingly of a so-called "gun culture" or "culture of guns," that they seek to curb, they really mean to contravene, to place unconstitutional constraints on the free speech clause of the First Amendment too. George Latimer’s Executive Order, unlike many restrictive gun measures, overtly—not merely impliedly—infringes the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech, afforded all American citizens and would, if challenged, likely be struck down as an unlawful overt and absolute attempt to control content of speech, well beyond the regulation of time, place, and manner of speech. George Latimer seeks to control expression of what to some constitutes an unpopular view as much as he seeks to contain gun shows in Westchester County. He sees public gun shows as unwanted displays of "gun culture" and of the "culture of guns" that he, along with other like-minded antigun proponents and antigun provocateurs denigrate, They thereupon attempt to contain, constrain and constrict and, eventually, to eradicate gun ownership and gun possession in this Nation, in the tangible, physical sense, But, they go beyond that. They seek much, much more. They seek no less than to eradicate, to excise from the memory of man, from the mind of the American citizenry, the very desire for, the very wish to exercise the right of the people to keep and bear arms--to erase, then, from the mind of each American citizen that anything sacred exists in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. They seek for a day to arrive when people here perceive the Second Amendment as not merely archaic, anachronistic, and obsolete, but incongruent, bizarre, meaningless. To that end the mainstream news media Press and our Nation's Educational system is hard at work--hard at work to disrupt and destroy the Second Amendment and hard at work to destroy the unreasonable searches and seizures clause of the Fourth Amendment and hard at work to change the American public's perceptions toward and to severely constrain the notion of freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment

GEORGE LATIMER'S EXECUTIVE ORDER BANNING PUBLIC GUN SHOWS IN WESTCHESTER COUNTY RAISES OTHER LEGAL, AS WELL AS PERTINENT SOCIAL AND POLITICAL QUESTIONS, APART FROM THE EXECUTIVE ORDER'S NEGATIVE IMPACT ON THE FIRST AND SECOND AMENDMENTS TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION.

George Latimer's Westchester ban on public gun shows in Westchester County--a ban that does not simply regulate time, place and manner of public gun shows but amounts to a total prohibition on gun shows--must be seen for what it really is: pernicious, discriminatory State regulation, operating to deny to a substantial class of American citizens use of a public forum for a legitimate Constitutional purpose. The question posed for review is this: Does not George Latimer's Executive order operate overtly, and unconscionably, and contemptuously to unconstitutionally discriminate against an entire class of citizenry, namely those American citizens who desire to own and possess firearms, by denying to these American citizens a vehicle, in the form of a public forum, through which an American citizen, not under disability, may seek to view and purchase firearms and such other items, such as memorabilia, that an American citizen has the right to own and possess? If an American citizen seeks merely and only to exercise a fundamental, substantive Constitutional right and if a public accommodation allows that citizen to exercise a fundamental Constitutional right, on what basis can a Governmental agent--in this particular case, the County Executive, George Latimer--lawfully deny, in totality, to an American citizen, the use of a public accommodation in which that substantive, Constitutional right may be exercised? If a legal basis does not exist for a total ban on gun shows, then George Latimer's unilateral action constitutes no less than an overt, unconstitutional discrimination against gun owners who desire to own and possess firearms. If true, then, does not George Latimer's Executive order impinge on and infringe the due process and equal protection clauses of both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, as well as operating as an infringement of the free speech clause of the First Amendment and as an infringement of the Second?That George Latimer deigns to allow private gun shows to continue to be held in Westchester County, apart from public gun shows--at least for the time being--does permissible use of private accommodations for gun shows obviate Constitutional issues associated with a total ban on public gun shows in Westchester County? Then, too, does not George Latimer's ban on public gun shows operate as a shifty and deceitful attempt to slide around what antigun proponents and antigun provocateurs and antigun conspirators see as the public gun show "loophole" to the instant criminal background check system under federal law? For, if public gun shows do not exist, then, the perceived "loophole" issue disappears into mist. But, is not the "loophole" issue and is not the very expression 'gun show loophole' itself a myth perpetrated by and perpetuated by antigun proponents, antigun provocateurs and antigun conspirators to strain and constrain exercise of the right of the people to keep and bear arms?We will continue with our analysis of the Westchester County Executive George Latimer’s Executive Order in a forthcoming article.

A CLOSING NOTE: WHAT WE ARE SEEING; WHAT IS AT STAKE.

We see, of late, and with more insistent and incessant fury, a bold attack on the very cultural traditions and core values and belief systems of this Country underway. Do American citizens not see that, despite the electoral triumph of Donald Trump to the U.S. Presidency, there is a conscious, sinister, insidious, diabolical effort underway to undercut our most cherished rights and liberties, and that this process is being carried out by the sinister forces that crush Nation States? Do American citizens not see that these forces intend to crush our Nation State through a systematic, orchestrated scheme of disinformation, misinformation, pseudo-information, and non-information designed to demoralize the American citizenry; to impose a false sense of guilt onto the American citizenry; to confuse and confound the American citizenry; to devalue the Bill of Rights, to devalue the notion of 'American citizen,' to soften and mold and reshape the contours of this Nation's citizenry as if the American people were but a lump of clay; to transform the American citizenry into weak, guilt-ridden, anxious souls.We see that Americans have lost the right to privacy. They have lost the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. They have lost the right of free speech, the right to speak their mind, as threat of public reprimand, and threat of loss of employment are omnipresent. They are slowly losing their God-given right of the people to keep and bear arms.We see monopolistic corporate mega-structures emerging in all business sectors: technology, finance, media, entertainment. We see these colossal mega-structures imposing bizarre, alien rules and bizarre principles of behavior on society, across society. They are doing this with impertinence, impudence, false piety, and with a disgusting sense of self-righteousness, and with impunity. And they are using their horde of wealth and outsize power to influence Government. They are operating as if they were Government, but as a Government free of constraints imposed on Government by the Bill of Rights--a Document that is systematically being dismissed as irrelevant. We see our Nation awash in waves of illegal aliens, falsely and loudly clamoring for and oddly claiming rights they do not have and should never be given. And, we see waves of unassimilable, poverty-stricken, ill-informed, mentally lazy refugees flooding into our Country from failed States. These individuals make an unwieldy welfare State, that we are becoming, even more untenable. They strain our resources and require support from our citizenry. And, many in Congress support this, would allow this; would encourage this. They would enact new immigration laws that would further disrupt our economy, and negatively impact our mores, our values, our sacred roots. We see, even now, our history revised; our children taught alien ideas. Our sense of National identity is being turned on its head. More than questioned, national identity, as perceived by the founders of our free Republic, is now scorned, and reviled, and slowly revised.How far can this awful state of affairs go? When will the American people fight back to recover their sacred birthright? _________________________________________________Copyright © 2017 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

HEARING OF THE U.S. SENATE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY ON NICS REPORTING AND FIREARM ACCCESSORY REGULATION

WHAT IS THE GOAL OF CONGRESS: TO REPAIR AND IMPROVE NICS REPORTING REQUIREMENTS OR TO TURN NICS INTO A MASSIVE FIREARMS REGISTRATION SCHEME?

"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." ~ Thomas Jefferson’s Literary Commonplace Book (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria), 1774—1776On Wednesday, December 6, 2017, the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, presided over by Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-IA, held a three-hour Hearing on firearms, titled, “Firearm Accessory Regulation and Enforcing Federal and State Reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).” The full Committee attended. That included the Ranking Democratic Member of the Committee, and virulent opponent of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.  CSPAN televised the Hearing.Two panels convened. The first one included senior officials of the ATF, FBI, the Secretary of the U.S. Air Force, and the Inspector General of Department of Defense. The second panel convened included, inter alia, a survivor of the Las Vegas mass shooting tragedy, Heather Gooze, who was the first to speak; two Second Amendment legal experts, David Kopel and Stephen Halbrook; and the Montgomery County Chief of Police and Major Cities Chiefs Association President, J. Thomas Manger.The two mass shooting incidents—one occurring during the Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, on October 1, 2017 and the second occurring at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, roughly one month later, on November 5, 2017—served, evidently, as the impetus for and the backdrop for this Hearing. The Senate Judiciary Committee focused its questioning of the first panel on: one, the mechanics of criminal and mental health reporting requirements, two, the sharing of data or lack of sharing of data between State and federal police agencies, and, three, the failure of Governmental agencies, both federal and State, to maintain accurate, reliable, and complete databases on those individuals who are not permitted to possess firearms. The Senate Judiciary Committee focused questioning of the second panel on firearms—semiautomatic rifles—that the killers, Stephen Paddock and Devin Patrick Kelley allegedly utilized to murder innocent people.The purpose of this article is not to delve into the interstices and intricacies of the Senate Hearing but to inform the American public of the fact of it and the specific concerns addressed during it that cast in high relief the dangers posed to preserving the sacred right embodied in the Second Amendment.Antigun proponents, through their Congressional representatives—Senate Democratic Party members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including ranking Democratic Party member, Dianne Feinstein, and her principal cohorts, Patrick Leahy, Richard Blumenthal, Dick Durbin, and Sheldon Whitehouse, among others—wish to move the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) and other criminal and mental health databases into an efficient and massive and broad digital firearms registration scheme, embracing more and more individuals and incentivizing the military and the States to add comprehensive criminal and mental health data into NICS and other databases. Through this Hearing, and through recent comments of antigun proponents in news broadcasts, we see renewed efforts by antigun proponents, stoked by the recent mass shooting incidents—to weaken the Second Amendment beyond past efforts. Emboldened, we see efforts afoot by antigun proponents to transform NICS and other federal and State databases into a comprehensive digital firearms’ registration scheme, wrapping it into a more restrictive, draconian criminal and mental health background check scheme.If successful, these efforts by the antigun movement would infringe not only the basic, natural and fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms, embodied in the Second Amendment, but would also infringe the fundamental right embodied in the unreasonable searches and seizures clause of the Fourth Amendment, and infringe, too, the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. And, the antigun movement does not stop there. Not content to ban some semiautomatic firearms—that Federal Statute (the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB)) at one time, defined certain semiautomatic firearms as ‘assault weapons,’ until the AWB expired in 2004, and which several States, with their own assault weapon ban statutes, in full force, presently prohibit—the antigun movement now seeks to ban all semiautomatic firearms.There are efforts afoot to enact federal law not unlike the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA). Under the NFA, the ATF heavily regulates civilian ownership and possession of from possessing fully automatic machine guns and submachine guns and selective fire assault rifles. And, the civilian population is prohibited altogether from owning newly manufactured fully automatic weapons.So, even as the House in recent days passed the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 (H.R. 38), a bill that strengthens the Second Amendment, which now goes to the U.S. Senate for consideration, we see--in stark contrast and contradistinction to pro-Second Amendment efforts to strengthen the right of the people to keep and bear arms--efforts by antigun Legislators mobilizing and gearing up to dispossess American citizens of semiautomatic firearms—all semiautomatic firearms, not merely those bizarrely categorized as ‘assault weapons.’ Antigun proponents evidently feel that they can hoodwink the American public, given the recent mass shooting incidents—which they use to their advantage—as they work unceasingly toward their ultimate goal to dispossess all Americans, eventually, of their firearms.During the questioning of the first panel, senior Officials of the Federal Government admitted that the NICS system was incomplete and faulty. The reason for this is that the military, especially, but also the States, have been remiss in entering data pertaining to individuals convicted of crimes that preclude these individuals from possessing firearms. Senator Ted Cruz, in his opening remarks, also made the pertinent point that individuals who falsify information to obtain a firearm have violated federal law, but that these crimes are rarely prosecuted and, so, all too often go unpunished.Falsifying information to obtain a firearm when an individual is not permitted to possess a firearm is a serious crime. 18 USCS § 922(a)(6), titled, “Unlawful acts” sets forth clearly, categorically, and unequivocally that: “it shall be unlawful for any person in connection with the acquisition or attempted acquisition of any firearm or ammunition from a licensed importer, licensed manufacturer, licensed dealer, or licensed collector, knowingly to make any false or fictitious oral or written statement or to furnish or exhibit any false, fictitious, or misrepresented identification, intended or likely to deceive such importer, manufacturer, dealer, or collector with respect to any fact material to the lawfulness of the sale or other disposition of such firearm or ammunition under the provisions of this chapter.” Senator Cruz was making the point, albeit tacitly, that laws that have no legal consequences do not amount to laws at all. Enforcement of federal firearms laws is lackadaisical at best, a point often made by NRA and a point perfunctorily ignored by antigun proponents whose real goal, after all, is to go after the millions of law-abiding gun owners, even as they profess to express concern over those individuals, alone, who are absolutely prohibited by law “to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign  commerce.” See United States Code, 18 USCS § 922(g) and 18 USCS § 922(n), titled, “Unlawful Acts,” as set forth in Title 18, “Crimes and Criminal Procedure,” of Part I, “Crimes,” of Chapter 44, “Firearms.”During the hearing, Legislators on the Judiciary Committee uniformly expressed concern over faulty federal NICS record-keeping and they requested, from the panel of senior Government officials, an explanation for the failure of these Government Offcials to keep the criminal databases up-to-date. But, it is one thing to repair the NICS record-keeping system; it is quite another to contemplate dumping ever more people into it, essentially, eventually, encapsulating minutia of mental health details of every American, along with details of every infraction committed by every American during every period of his or her life—every spat between husband wife or boyfriend and girlfriend, and an accounting of every instance, every bout of depression or anxiety an American citizen at one time or another may have had. Democratic Party members of the Judiciary Committee—alluded to expanding NICS and other criminal and mental health databases into a comprehensive and permanent digital—as opposed to merely manual—database of every firearm’s transaction and tying that to and in tandem with a universal background check schema.Clearly, the aim of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee is, then, more ambitious and grandiose than merely repairing a faulty NICS system. We are headed toward a universal registration system if antigun proponents have their way. Every firearm owner becomes suspect. Hence, every American, who owns a firearm must be carefully screened, and those licensed and therefore “privileged” to own and possess a firearm, will be carefully and continuously observed for signs of anti-social behavior, predicated on subjective standards of assessment. The implication of a universal criminal and mental health background check system tied into a permanent NICS databases are dire from the standpoint of Constitutional privacy concerns.Then, there are the firearms themselves. During the questioning of the second panel, it became clear that it wasn’t Stephen Paddock or Devin Patrick Kelley who were being castigated for the horror they caused. Rather, it was the semiautomatic weapons that were the target of and the focus of the Senators' ire--those Democratic Party members who sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee.One speaker on the second panel, who was the first to speak, was a young woman named Heather Gooze. She detailed her personal experiences during the Las Vegas shooting episode and resulting carnage. This survivor’s anguished account of holding and attempting to aid and comfort a dying stranger, who had been shot by Paddock, was poignant, graphic, heart-rending, heartfelt, and deepfelt, as it was meant to be—but, for all that, it was also irrelevant. The fault for the tragedy in Las Vegas was not laid at the feet of the maniac, Stephen Paddock, the sole cause of the carnage—assuming there were no others that abetted Paddock. No! The fault for the crime is laid on inanimate objects—the weapons Paddock used in the commission of his heinous acts. But, if civilian access to an entire category of weapons, semiautomatic rifles, in common use by millions of law-abiding, sane, responsible Americans, is to be curtailed, then, those who would ban civilian possession of semiautomatic weapons  must propound sound legal and logical arguments in support of their case. Arguments amounting to emotional rhetoric, however endearing and heartfelt and honest they may be, are not rational substitutes for sound reasoning.What was on display during the Hearing, was unabashed grief and anger. That is what we heard from the young woman, Heather Gooze: a plaintive and soulful, if tacit, cry for a universal ban on semiautomatic weapons, and that is what the Senators on the Judiciary Committee got from her. This appeal to sympathy for one's cause, derived from heartfelt pain, is representative of a common fallacy. It's one an undergraduate college student learns about in a course on informal and formal symbolic logic. The Latin expression for this informal fallacy is argumentum ad misericordiam (argument from pity or sympathy or misery, or compassion). The fallacy of argumentum ad misericordiam is committed when pity, or sympathy, or compassion, or misery is appealed to for the sake of getting someone to accept a conclusion predicated on emotion, alone, sidestepping the salient issue.Appealing to pity, compassion, or sympathy, or misery avoids dealing with the pertinent legal questions. The pertinent legal question here is this: do semiautomatic weapons fall within the core of the Second Amendment’s protection? Antigun proponents use the argument from pity incessantly to sidestep this legal issue—the real issue—because they do not wish to hit the issue head-on. Appealing to sympathy or pity, or misery, or anger operates as a convenient substitute for cogent and sound legal and logical reasoning. It is unfortunate that the U.S. Supreme Court has, at least twice, decided not to take up the issue whether semiautomatic weapons do fall within the core of the Second Amendment’s protection, as appellants in the cases failed to garner four votes necessary to secure high Court review. See, Friedman vs. City of Highland Park, Illinois, 784 F.3d 406 (7th Cir. 2015), cert. denied, 136 S. Ct. 447, 193 L. Ed.2d 483 (2015); and, recently, Kolbe vs. Hogan, 813 F.3d 160 (4th Cir. Md., 2016), cert. denied, 2017 LEXIS 7002. The Arbalest Quarrel has written extensively on both these cases.The legal and logical weaknesses of the antigun proponent’s position, apropos of semiautomatic weapons, would be all too apparent were they to try to evince an argument. The public is hit with emotional rhetoric and pious sentiments, instead. Such emotional outrage has clout, even as it is devoid of substance. Heather Gooze used it to good effect during the Hearing. Her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee was as much a plea for action from the public as it was a plea for action from the Senate. No doubt, that was the reason she was invited to speak before the Committee at this public Hearing.Antigun proponents invariably take the argumentum ad misericordiam out of their sack of tricks whenever a tragedy involving the misuse of firearms occurs. They know that tragic events tug at the heartstrings of anyone who has a modicum of compassion in his or her heart, which are the majority of us—and which do not include psychopaths, who have no inkling of and therefore have absolutely no understanding of the concept of compassion. And, these individuals, who lack a modicum of compassion include, as well, common criminals who might understand the concept but simply don’t care since a consideration of compassion during the commission of a crime interferes with their personal selfish ends.Appealing to sympathy as an argument to dispossess millions of law-abiding firearms owners of their firearms operates as a useful makeweight, a convenient scapegoat, for antigun proponents, allowing antigun proponents to avoid factoring in the complex legal, logical, historical, cultural, and ethical ramifications of taking firearms away from millions of sane, rational, honest Americans. Essentially the antigun proponent’s argument, in various forms and permutations, boils down to this:“semiautomatic ‘assault weapons’ are weapons of war and have no legitimate use in civilian hands other than to commit murder and to do so on a large scale. And, manufacturers market these weapons to the entire civilian population which includes, then, mentally ill individuals and criminals who should not have them. These weapons have incredible firepower and no legitimate civilian use. Just look at what happens when a poor, deluded person gets hold of this ‘weapon of war.’ Just look at the harm he calls. Anyone who has a heart at all should see that semiautomatic assault weapons will only cause bad things to happen and will cause good people to do bad things. If you don’t want to see an innocent child, a vulnerable woman, a weak old man harmed—and what caring, compassionate human being does—then you will agree with us that there is no place for these ‘weapons of war’ in a civilized society, and you will write or call your Congressman or Senator, asking your Legislator to enact legislation that permanently bans these awful weapons of war, to ban them for the good of society so that no other person will ever suffer the needless tragedy that these weapons of war cause.” Well, if there is a sound reason for banning semiautomatic weapons from civilians, this isn’t it. Apart from appealing solely to one’s emotions, the argument embraces false assumptions, hyperbole, and irrelevant considerations. And, if you think our illustration of the fallacy of argumentum misericordiam amounts itself to a fallacy—the straw man fallacy, as some, who challenge our position, may claim—it does not. The remarks, concerning semiautomatic weapons as ‘assault weapons’ and ‘weapons of war,’ “weapons that have no legitimate civilian use,” and the notion that firearms manufacturers market these “weapons of war” to criminals and to the mentally ill are not suppositions the Arbalest Quarrel has invented to illustrate an argumentum misericordiam, for the purpose simply to knock down a straw man. No! These remarks are not our invention at all. These remarks, purporting to be arguments against civilian possession of firearms, are utilized constantly, incessantly by antigun proponents. And, more to the point, these remarks, as set forth in our example, comprise, in part, allegations taken from an actual formal legal pleading—namely and specifically the First Amended Complaint of the Soto Plaintiffs, in Soto vs. Bushmaster Firearms International, LLC., 2016 Conn. Super. LEXIS 2626; CCH Prod. Liab. Rep. P19,932. The Arbalest Quarrel has written extensively on this case and continues to write articles about it. See, for example, our in-depth article, titled, “Soto vs. Bushmaster: Antigunners Take Aim at Gun Manufacturers.” We also wish to point out that a detailed account of one’s personal experiences, as related to the reader or listener—those of Heather Gooze, during the Senate Hearing—amount to a series of declarations that have no appreciable epistemic value. In other words, her account of the tragedy in Las Vegas, that occurred during the Harvest Music Festival, is not the sort of thing that one can reasonably challenge, or that need be challenged, or is expected by anyone to be challenged, as false.The Arbalest Quarrel accepts the account of Heather Gooze, as related at the Senate Hearing, as true, and does not quarrel with it. There is no reason to. There is no reason to consider her personal account as false. We say this because the remarks of Heather Gooze have no concrete epistemic value on the salient issue whether semiautomatic weapons fall within the core of the Second Amendment. Her remarks or declarations of events as she experienced them at the Harvest Music Festival do not serve as a sound reason for banning semiautomatic weapons from the millions of average, law-abiding, rational, responsible American citizens who own and possess them, notwithstanding that the Democratic Party Senators on the Judiciary Committee happen to believe the account of Heather Gooze to be relevant to the issue whether semiautomatic weapons are the sorts of firearms that properly belong in the hands of the average, rational and responsible American citizen. The remarks of Heather Gooze simply attest, at best, to a matter that everyone can agree with: that criminals, psychopaths, Islamic terrorists, and other assorted lunatics—the flotsam and jetsam of society—should not have access to any firearm. One might by the same token argue that the worst elements of society should not have access to anything that can feasibly be used to cause great harm to others and to many individuals at one time. Consider for example: a knife, an automobile or truck, or chainsaw. What we are getting at here is that common criminals, and members of drug cartels and criminal gangs, and psychopaths, and Islamic terrorists, and other assorted lunatics and maniacs and riffraff who pose a danger to others, as these individual do, should be removed from our society. It is not the firearm that should be removed from American society.That common criminals, terrorists, psychotics, or psychopaths may happen to get their hands on a semiautomatic rifle or on any other firearm to harm others does not serve as a sound legal or logical reason for banning semiautomatic weapons en masse from millions of average, law-abiding, responsible, rational American citizens. And, make no mistake, Senator Dianne Feinstein and the other Democratic Party members of the Senate Judiciary Committee do seek to ban and do work feverishly to ban all semiautomatic weapons, just as fully automatic weapons and selective fire weapons have been essentially banned from civilian possession, since 1934, with passage of the National Firearms Act (NFA). In fact, Senator Dianne Feinstein would accomplish this feat through enactment of a very devious bit of legislation, which was referred to during the Senate Hearing.Roughly two months ago, on October 4, 2017, Senator Feinstein introduced the following bill in the U.S. Senate:Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, This Act may be cited as the "Automatic Gunfire Prevention Act".POSSESSION OF CERTAIN FIREARM ACCESSORIES. Chapter 44 of title 18, United States Code, is amended-   in section 922, by inserting after subsection (u) the following:   "(v)(1) Except as provided in paragraph (2), on and after the date that is 180 days after the date of enactment of this subsection, it shall be unlawful for any person to import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, a trigger crank, a bump-fire device, or any part, combination of parts, component, device, attachment, or accessory that is designed or functions to accelerate the rate of fire of a semiautomatic rifle but not convert the semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun.   This subsection does not apply with respect to the importation for, manufacture for, sale to, transfer to, or possession by or under the authority of, the United States or any department or agency thereof or a State, or a department, agency, or political subdivision thereof."; and   in section 924(a)(2), by striking ", or (o)" and inserting "(o), or (v)". Attorneys David Kopel and Stephen Halbrook, sitting on the second panel, and testifying at the Senate Hearing—were acutely aware of this Senate bill. David Kopel pointed out that the language of Feinstein’s bill, the "Automatic Gunfire Prevention Act," makes very clear that any change at all to any semiautomatic weapon—lightening the trigger pull, for example, or even cleaning a firearm—can effectively serve to increase the rate of fire of the weapon. Thus, any semiautomatic rifle can, were Feinstein’s bill enacted, serve as the basis to ban outright all semiautomatic rifles. When faced with David Kopel’s critical, astute remarks, Senator Feinstein demurred, seemed agitated and, evidently, perplexed, asserting, disingenuously, that the bill was drafted by capable attorneys, suggesting, perhaps, or, then again, perhaps not, that her bill only targets certain types of accessories or components for semiautomatic weapons, such as the “bump-fire device” (“bump stock”) that are specifically mentioned, and not, ipso facto, all semiautomatic weapons. But, that doesn't seem to be the case; and, if that is not the case, then this would suggest that the drafters of Feinstein’s bill either know very little about the operation of semiautomatic rifles or know the operation of semiautomatic weapons all too well. If the former supposition is true, then the bill has unintended consequences: positive consequences for antigun proponents; negative consequences for everyone else. This means that all semiautomatic rifles can and eventually would be banned. This is consistent with the plain meaning of the bill. If the latter supposition is true, then, given the plain meaning of the bill, the bill is a subterfuge. This would mean that those who drafted Feinstein's bill intended, all along, not merely to suggest that only some accessories for semiautomatic rifles would be banned, but that, in fact, all semiautomatic weapons would be banned, as this is what antigun proponents want and have wanted all along and this is what the bill says: no semiautomatic weapons in the hands of American citizens qua civilians. Either way, Senator Feinstein would derive from her bill, if enacted, exactly what she had long sought—a universal ban on semiautomatic weapons defined as ‘assault weapons’—meaning, of course, that all semiautomatic weapons would be banned because all semiautomatic weapons are, ipso facto, ‘assault weapons,’ as Senator Feinstein sees it.Never underestimate the deviousness of antigun proponents and never trust them when they assert that they do not seek to defeat the right of the people to keep and bear arms as codified in the Second Amendment. These antigun groups, and antigun legislators, and their billionaire benefactors, and their fellow travelers in the mainstream media and in Hollywood, will not rest easy until each and every average American citizen qua civilian—apart from the so-called “elites” in society, like Senator Feinstein, herself—is prohibited, by law, from owning and possessing any kind of firearm._________________________________________________Copyright © 2017 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

THE “TERROR WATCH LIST”—A GOOD IDEA? A GOOD IDEA GONE BAD? OR A BAD IDEA ALL ALONG?

THE “TERROR WATCH LIST”—A GOOD IDEA? A GOOD IDEA GONE BAD? OR A BAD IDEA ALL ALONG?

“Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested. . . . But even that is all beside the point, the main question is: Who is issuing the indictment?” “The Trial,” a novel by Franz Kafka, published in 1925Who is issuing the indictment, indeed? Unlike Josef K., the protagonist, in Franz Kafka’s insightful allegory, we, Americans, don’t live in a dictatorship. But, is that true? Was that statement once true, but true no longer?How is it that, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union. . .” has devolved into “We the Government of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union. . . . ?”  The phrases—“insure domestic Tranquility,” “provide for the common defense,” “promote the general Welfare”—are lost in time. The federal Government and the media circus subsume these phrases, appearing in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, under the ubiquitous, deceptive expression, “national security”—an expression that appears nowhere in it. What hath this Government in the name of “We the People” wrought for the People.Understand: Nothing—absolutely nothing—Congress, or the United States President, or the President’s legions of bureaucrats do is more invidious and insidious than disemboweling and dismembering the Bill of Rights in the name of national security. We should not excuse or laud emotional trumpet calls for action before pondering the legality and ethical merits of such Government action. We should not excuse or laud emotional trumpet calls for action before considering their impact on our free Republic. We should not excuse or laud emotional trumpet calls for action before recognizing their cost—the possible loss of our precious rights and liberties. For, once lost, they’re lost forever.When emotions run high, restraint is required. The denial of gun sales to anyone whose name appears on the Government’s “terror watch list” is a recent proposal bubbling to the surface as a result of the recent carnage wrought by a home-grown self-radicalized Islamic terrorist. On Monday, June 20, 2016, the U.S. Senate voted on a measure that would do just that: preclude a person from purchasing a firearm if his or her name appears on the Government’s “terror watch list.” Fortunately, sane heads prevailed. The measure was voted down. But, we may expect further attempts by antigun Legislators in both the House and the Senate to push a measure like this one, through. [Breaking News: At the moment, June 22, 2016, the foes of the Second Amendment are staging a sit-in on the Floor of the House. They won't "sit contented" until the Second Amendment is stricken from the U.S. Constitution].Secret Government lists, such as the “terror watch list” and the “no fly list,”—and perhaps others, of which we are unaware—are problematic in a free, democratic Republic. For, once an American’s name appears on a secret government watch list, his or her rights and liberties, guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution, are in jeopardy. More to the point, such lists enable the federal Government to deny an American citizen his or her rights and liberties absent any charge of criminal wrong-doing. The Government, at the stroke of a pen, denies a person his or her rights and liberties without notice, without hearing, without reasonable means to challenge the inclusion of their name, in open court. Understand, we aren’t saying or suggesting those who seek to harm innocent Americans should have access to firearms. And, those Senators who voted down the “terror watch list” measure, on June 20, 2016, aren’t tacitly suggesting that American citizens who seek to harm innocent Americans should have access to firearms. These U.S. Senators have obviously asked themselves—and we need ask ourselves too—this profound question: Are we, Americans, ready to forsake, as a Nation, our sacred rights and liberties for the illusion of, or a mere modicum of, collective security? Is this something a free Republic, founded on a Bill of Rights and on a Constitution establishing a federal Government with carefully defined, demarcated, and limited power and authority, should accept or tolerate?The proposal came before the Senate—cavalierly bandied about by those who, despite assertions to the contrary, care not one whit about our Bill of Rights. That measure would deny Americans due process of law, a right guaranteed to all Americans under the Fifth Amendment. That measure would also deny Americans their natural right to keep and bear arms, a right codified and guaranteed to Americans under the Second Amendment.Millions of law-abiding citizens exercise their sacred right to keep and bear arms. They take responsibility for their own self-defense. They pose no threat to self or others. Are they expected to sacrifice that right, codified in the Second Amendment? Is that not asking too much of Americans? Would not that sacrifice operate as a capitulation to Islamic terrorism? Would not that sacrifice eviscerate our Bill of Rights and destroy one Amendment, in particular, that proclaims our uniqueness: that Government exists—truly exists—at the pleasure of the People and does not exist as a right unto itself?Lost in discussion—because of the frenzy of the moment—is any mention, any hint, how or whether Government intends to protect Americans from Islamist terrorists without infringing the sacred right of millions of law-abiding Americans who wish “to keep and bear arms.” Some Americans, we know, have no regard for that right. They seek to undermine it—are even counting on undermining it—in part, through application of the “terror watch list” to gun sales. They relish using a disastrous event to further a wicked agenda.What do we really know about this secret “list?”Consider: “The number of names on the terror watch list has grown steeply in the past decade, compounding the problem of inaccuracies. Whereas 288,000 names were on the list in 2005, the number had grown to 1.1  million by 2009. A Justice Department audit of the watch list in 2009 revealed a thirty-five percent rate of error, and disclosed that in seventy-two percent of the cases, the FBI failed to respond to these errors by removing the person from the watch list in a timely manner.” “Symposium: Inside America’s Criminal Justice System: The Supreme Court On The Rights Of The Accused And The Incarcerated: Bright Lines, Black Bodies: The Florence Strip Search Case And Its Dire Repercussions,” 46 Akron L. Review, 433, 461-462, Teresa A. Miller, Professor of Law, State University of New York, at Buffalo (SUNY—Buffalo)(2013).The critical problem presented by the Government’s “terror watch list” and other such “watch lists” is four-fold. One, an American loses his or her rights and liberties before commission of any crime or before probable cause exists an American has even considered committing a crime. This is a “Minority Report” scenario. Two, the Government’s “terror watch list” is secret. American citizens don’t know their name appears on the list until they seek to exercise a fundamental right and find they cannot. That alone should give all Americans pause. Three, fighting to remove one’s name from a secret list is extraordinarily difficult. The Government condemns an American citizen in secret, without notice, without hearing, without satisfactory legal recourse. Four, since the “terror watch list” is secret, the Government can add names to it at will—indiscriminately. This action results in millions of American citizens divested of their Second Amendment “right to keep and bear arms.” The existence of secret Government “watch lists” in a free society—in a free republic—makes mincemeat of one’s rights and liberties. True Congressional oversight doesn’t and cannot exist, regardless of assertions to the contrary. Such feigned oversight is window dressing, nothing more. In the name of “national security” the Government clamps down on one’s beliefs, thoughts, actions, even absent criminal wrong-doing.One academic writer says, “the insulation of national security conduct from external review obscures hard questions surrounding liberty and security, undermining the rule of law.” See, “Essay: Rule Of Law Tropes In National Security,” 129 Harvard Law Review 1566, 1566 (2016), Shirin Sinnar, Assistant Professor of Law, Stanford law School.”The problem boils down to this: whether the Government ought to deny an American citizen’s rights and liberties merely for displaying odd character traits. The existence of a “terror watch list” creates tension with the Bill of Rights.The existence and use of a “terror watch list” raises a host of questions. Do you know the factors Government uses when placing a person on a “terror watch list?” Do you know any factor?” Can you know how those factors, change, grow, evolve through time? If your name appears on a “terror watch list,” how do you contest that? What is the monetary cost for fighting Government action? How does the Government remove a name when it uncovers a mistake? When would Government act to remove a name—your name— appearing on the “list,” mistakenly? Would Government remove a name appearing on the list mistakenly? Why has the list grown from a few thousand names to tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands, to over one million in the last several years?Suppose a person seeks to join or associate with a political group the Government targets. Would that not conflict with the free association clause of the First Amendment? Suppose a person seeks to affiliate with the Ku Klux Klan, the American Nazi Party, the American Communist Party? Should that person’s name appear on a “terror watch list?” If so, how far do we go? Suppose a person seeks to affiliate with the Green Party, the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party, or with various groups comprising the “Tea Party.” Which affiliation warrants placing an American citizen’s name on the “terror watch list?” Should any affiliation warrant placing a person’s name on the “terror watch list.” The First Amendment sets forth in principal part, as proposed by and as elucidated by one founder of our Nation, James Madison: “The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable. The people shall not be restrained from peaceably assembling and consulting for their common good.” We have seen the insidious effects of fear-mongering before: the infamous McCarthy hearings of the 1950s, during the “Cold War.”We are now witnessing a new twist on an old ploy: an attempt to use a secret Government “terror watch list” to deny to hundreds of thousands, and conceivably eventually, to millions of Americans their natural right to keep and bear arms.Ought the Government suspend the civil liberties of potentially millions of law-abiding Americans if Government believes, rightly or wrongly, such harsh measures will reduce the carnage created by a few? Are we, as Americans, prepared to sacrifice, conceivably, all rights and liberties for the benefit of national security?Cannot an American citizen hold “extreme” views without fearing Government reprisal? Is it not the right of an American to hold and display views another American might find extreme, even distasteful? Are not American citizens slowly squeezed into a tight container as Government dictates to the public what is fit and proper thought, belief, and action?Are you willing to sacrifice free speech? Are you prepared to surrender your firearms? Are you willing to sacrifice freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures? Are you willing to abandon the writ of Habeas Corpus? Are you agreeable to forgoing the right to a fair and public trial? Are you prepared to give up friends and associates because the Government doesn’t approve of their idiosyncrasies? How would the founders of our Nation respond to these questions if posed to them? Do you have answers to these questions? If so, sound off.[separator type="medium" style="normal" align="left"margin-bottom="25" margin_top="5"] Copyright © 2016 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved. 

THE SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS EMBRACES A PROPERTY INTEREST IN FIREARMS

The Second Amendment is the cornerstone of America’s rights and liberties. This, we know. But, tucked away in the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is another right. It is the right to own property. Its place in and impact on the Second Amendment are rarely, if ever, mentioned.State laws that deny your right to keep and bear arms also deny your ownership right and interest in your firearms. Let’s look at a couple of examples.Many States utilize licensing schemes to control and restrict civilian access to firearms. Government licensing of firearms is incompatible with the right to keep and bear arms because licensing of firearms is a condition precedent to possession. That means a license to keep and bear arms is nothing more than a privilege to keep and bear arms since possession of firearms is contingent on the government’s willingness to grant a license at all. The right is forsaken through licensing. But more is lost.Once a government revokes the license to possess firearms, as it can since it granted the license in the first place, the owner loses his property. You may have spent thousands of dollars on your firearms. No matter. Your dollar investment is forfeited, along with your firearms. So, a government’s abrogation of the Second Amendment guarantee entails the denigration of your private property right and interest in your firearms. If you lose your license, you lose your firearms. Two basic rights are lost, then, not one. The two go hand-in-hand.States that utilize firearms licensing schemes employ firearms’ transfer schemes too. Suppose you, as a law-abiding citizen, lawfully acquired your firearms: through bequest, gift, or commercial transaction. The firearms belong to you. You have full and complete title to and control over them, and exclusive and absolute right in them. That’s what it means to have a private property interest in your firearms.Now, suppose you wish to bequeath your firearms to your son, or daughter. Laws that interfere with your ability to transfer your firearms as you wish inhibit your enjoyment of them because you are unable to exercise complete dominion over them. This amounts to an unconstitutional taking of them without due process.So, the right to keep and bear arms and the right to acquire, own, and hold them perpetually, or transfer them, operate in tandem. Moreover, they are both natural rights.The Second Amendment merely codifies a preexisting right. Since government cannot rationally bestow a right that already exists within you, government cannot lawfully take that right from you.The preexisting right to acquire, own, and hold property isn’t codified in the Second Amendment, but it is codified in the Due Process Clause and in the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.The Fifth Amendment says in critical part: “No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” The private property interest is, arguably, also one of the unenumerated rights of the catchall Ninth Amendment. It is intrinsic to the Fourth Amendment and it even implicates the Third Amendment, as well as the Second Amendment.The Due Process Clause and Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment operate as constraints on the federal government. The Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment is mirrored in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and applies to the States. The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment has no correlate in the Fourteenth Amendment but it applies to the States through operation of law as does the Second Amendment.Your right to keep and bear arms means precisely that you have the inalienable right to acquire and own and hold indefinitely, or transfer without government interference, those arms you bear and keep. The private property right and interest in your firearms must, then, be regarded as a tacit part of the Second Amendment’s guarantee. This surely is as the Founders of the Republic intended. The firearms you have a right to bear and keep are your private property, not the State’s. You have full and complete title to them, absolute control over them, and exclusive rights in them. To denigrate a person’s ownership interest in his firearms is to abrogate the Second Amendment right to bear and keep them.So, in defending our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms we must never lose sight of the equally important private property interest inherent in and coextensive with that Second Amendment right.[separator type="medium" style="normal" align="left"margin-bottom="25" margin_top="5"] Copyright © 2015 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour) and Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved. 

GUNS, PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS, AND THE CONSTITUTION

PART 1: GUNS, PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS, AND THE CONSTITUTION

Question For New York Gun Owners: Do You Think Your Firearms Are Your Private Property? If So, You Are In For A Rude Awakening!The NY Safe Act And Other Provisions Of New York Antigun Laws Wrongly Destroy Gun Owners Private Property Rights And Interest In Their Own Guns.No one can rationally deny that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is the cornerstone of the right of the American People to possess firearms. Still, scant attention is paid to the private property interest embedded in the Second Amendment right of the People to Keep and Bear arms. And too little attention is paid to the independent nature of private property interests in this Country.The “Takings Clause” of the Fifth Amendment prevents the Federal Government from taking one’s private property without just compensation. The “Takings Clause” of the Fifth Amendment, as directed originally and alone to the Federal Government, applies to the States, as well, through the Fourteenth Amendment.  This means that a State Government, too, is not permitted to take one’s private property without just compensation.The “Takings Clause,” as applied to both State Governments and to the Federal Government operates as a check and safeguard against a Government’s unlawful attempt to secure unto itself the private property of a citizen. Such taking of a citizen’s private property without just compensation deprives and denies a citizen the use and enjoyment of it and destroys the economic value associated with it.In our previous article we discussed generally how New York law undercuts one’s possessory and legal interest in one’s firearms – firearms that are a person’s private property. We discussed how New York law operates to dispossess the owner of his or her personal interest in and enjoyment of those firearms as private property. We pointed to New York law that effectively denies a gun owner the inalienable right to effectuate the bequest of firearms to his or her heirs.We now take a closer look at those New York Statutes that make it extremely difficult for person to transfer his or her private property – one’s firearms – to one’s heirs. By denying a New York resident and citizen of the United States the right to quickly and easily transfer legal ownership and possession of one’s firearms to one’s heirs – assuming the law permits one to do so at all – New York law essentially and effectively deprives the owner of his or her property without just compensation and without due process of law.Because of the length of this article, we have broken it down into several parts. One new part or installment will be posted every day.

NEW YORK STATUTES CONTRAVENE BOTH THE U.S. CONSTITUTION AND NEW YORK’S STATE CONSTITUTION

New York State Statutes operate in derogation to the U.S. Constitution and in derogation of New York’s State Constitution, undermining New York firearms’ owners’ property interest in their own firearms.New York Statutes deprive gun owners of their rights under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And New York Statutes amount to an unconscionable taking of gun owners’ private property without just compensation in derogation of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. New York Statutes are also inconsistent with New York’s State Constitution. New York Statutes deprive gun owners of their private property rights in firearms in contravention to NY CLS Const Art I, § 7(a). That Article prohibits the taking of private property for public use without just compensation. And New York Statutes deprive gun owners of their private property rights in contravention to NY CLS Const Art I, § 11, which states categorically that New York residents and citizens shall not be denied the equal protection of the laws to which they are entitled.

WHAT IS “PROPERTY?”

The words ‘property’ and ‘private property’ are often bandied about. And the meanings of these expressions may seem obvious. But, colloquial meanings aside, you should know what the legal definitions of the words are.Legal definitions of words are important – in fact, critical – because the legal meanings given to words as embodied in law impact your rights and liberties. By the same token, when government officials ignore the plain legal meanings of words, they denigrate the U.S. Constitution, and the American People suffer the consequences.The primary source for the legal definitions of words is Black’s Law Dictionary. The definitions we give you here are those listed in the Ninth Edition of that Dictionary.Property takes one of two forms: personal property and real property. The expression ‘real property’ means ‘land and everything attached to, or erected on it, excluding anything that can be severed without injury to the land.’ We are not concerned with the notion of ‘real property’ here. We are concerned with the notion of ‘personal property.’ The expression, ‘personal property’ means ‘any movable or intangible property that is subject to ownership and not classified as real property.’Intangible personal property refers to intellectual property such as patents and trademarks and copyrights. And we are not talking about intangible personal property here either. We are talking about tangible personal property – that is to say, physical property. Firearms fall within the definition ‘tangible personal property’ because firearms are physical, movable objects, not attached to or erected on land. Now, both real property and personal property can be one of two types: public or private. The expression, ‘public property’ means ‘State or community-owned property not restricted to any one individual’s use or possession.’ The other kind of ‘real property’ and ‘personal property’ is ‘private property.’When talking about firearms, we are referring to ‘private property’ – property that is owned by the individual. We are not talking about property that is owned by the State or property that is owned collectively by the public – that is to say – the community.Your firearms are private property, not public property. Your firearms are not the property of the State and they are not owned collectively by the public. You paid for your firearms out-of-pocket with hard-earned dollars. They belong to you and to you alone. So your firearms are private property – your private property.In law, ‘private property’ means something more than simply property that isn’t State owned or community owned. The expression ‘private property’ means, in law, ‘property protected from public appropriation – over which the owner has exclusive and absolute rights.’ Think about that definition for a moment. The notion of private property exemplifies ideas of exclusive ownership and absolute control by the individual.Your firearms, like the clothes on your back and the automobile in your garage and the gas range and refrigerator in your home, all of which you paid out-of-pocket for, are your private property – property that you have exclusive ownership rights in and to and absolute power over. That is what it means for a citizen in a capitalist society to own property.To the extent that you control your property and to the extent that you have exclusive right to the use and enjoyment of it – to keep it or to sell it or to gift it to another, as you wish – the notion of ‘private property’ is preserved. And, to the extent that your private property rights are infringed or impinged upon, the notion of ‘private property’ is defeated.In the next installment of this article we will provide you with terminology that you need to know to fully appreciate the extent to which the NY Safe Act upends your property interest in your own firearms.[separator type="medium" style="normal" align="left"margin-bottom="25" margin_top="5"] Copyright © 2015 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) and Vincent L. Pacifico (Orca) All Rights Reserved.

PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT

THE ARBALEST QUARREL'S RATIONALE FOR WRITING TO THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATURE, TO THE GOVERNOR AND LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, AND TO THE NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL

The New York Safe Act, signed into law by New York Governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, on January 15, 2013, is poorly drafted legislation. It was authorized without due process and in defiance of New York’s own State Constitution.The Safe Act is the Government’s model for undercutting the Second Amendment. The public knows this. But, what is not understood by most is that the Safe Act is destructive of private property rights too. The antigun establishment argues that the right to keep and bear arms is a collective right, not an individual right. But, in the seminal case, District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the U.S. Supreme Court made clear that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, not merely a collective right. A person need not be a member of a State militia or other governmental military force to exercise the right to keep and bear arms.Moreover, an implication can be drawn from the Heller decision. Since an American citizen has the right, as an individual, to keep and bear arms, irrespective of membership in a State militia, this individual right to keep and bear arms presumes the citizen’s right to own the firearms he bears and keeps. Private property ownership is basic to a free America.The right of an American citizen to own property – to have exclusive and absolute ownership of property – is as fundamental a right to an American as the right to speak openly and freely under the First Amendment or to keep and bear arms under the Second.But, under the Safe Act a resident’s right of ownership in his own firearms is strained and constrained. New York law severely restricts a New York resident’s right to transfer ownership in his or her firearms to others upon the person’s death.New York residents may have one firearm worth a few hundred dollars or they may have collections of rare and expensive firearms worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars – perhaps millions of dollars. In either case, New York law restrains one’s ability to transfer firearms during one’s lifetime and restricts one’s ability to transfer firearms to one’s heirs upon the firearms’ owner’s death.The dollar value of a rare and expensive firearms’ collection may be severely compromised upon the death of a New York resident gun owner because New York law restricts transfers of firearms to heirs who happen to live in New York.In particular the New York Safe Act absolutely forbids the transfer of any firearm to an heir that is a Safe Act registered weapon unless that heir happens also to be a licensed New York gun dealer or an authorized police official.What does this mean for an individual who may happen to own a very rare and expensive firearm that happens to be a New York Safe Act registered weapon. Let’s consider an example.Suppose you have a gold-plated commemorative firearm that has a fair market value of $50,000.00, and suppose you wish to bequeath that firearm to your adult son or daughter upon your death. Suppose, further, that this gold-plated commemorative firearm is classified as a New York Safe Act registered weapon. Can you transfer that firearm – your personal property – to your adult son or daughter?Well, certainly nothing in New York law prevents you from bequeathing that firearm to your next of kin. But, the important question is whether your son or daughter can keep and enjoy that personal property, just as you had. And, there’s the rub.Your adult son or daughter can keep the firearm for up to 15 days. After that, the firearm must be turned over to the appropriate police official. At that point your son or daughter has up to one year to transfer or sell the firearm either to a licensed New York gun dealer or to a person or entity outside the State. If your adult heir fails to tell the police official how the Safe Act registered weapon is to be disposed of, the police official will destroy that firearm – a valuable collectible – one year from the date he or she obtains custody of it. There is no recourse. There is no remedy. There is no redress.Transference of firearms to a decedent’s rightful heirs creates an undue burden on the estate as the heirs may be ineligible to receive the firearms under the Safe Act. Thus, the Safe Act operates as an unconstitutional “taking” of one’s firearm in violation of the “Takings Clause” of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This cannot be tolerated. This contempt for our Bill of Rights cannot be condoned.The Arbalest Quarrel has recently written to every member of the New York State Senate and Assembly, in Albany, New York, and to the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of the New York and to the Attorney General for New York, requesting each of them to use his or her authority to amend New York law so that a New York resident and citizen of the United States may exercise the fundamental right of enjoyment in his or her private property – that such right may be preserved, consistent with the intent of the United States Constitution, the New York State Constitution, and the precepts of a capitalist society. The Arbalest Quarrel has also notified the New York Delegation in Washington D.C. of its action as well.If the notion of private property is to mean anything concrete in this Country, then no governmental body, State or Federal, should be allowed to undermine an American’s exclusive power over his or her private property. That means American citizens and law-abiding gun owners, including those citizens and gun owners who are residents of New York, should be able to transfer their firearms to their heirs, free of governmental interference and constraint. That is why New York law must be changed. It must comply with the U.S. Constitution and the New York State Constitution, and with principles of a free market economy.The fundamental right of ownership and power over one’s private property must not be diminished by political machination. The fundamental right of enjoyment in one’s private property, as protected in the “Takings Clause” of the Fifth Amendment, is as basic and as important and as fundamental a right to an American as any other right set forth in the Bill of Rights.We are posting our letter on the Arbalest Quarrel website. It appears as a separate blog post. We shall keep our readers apprised of the results: who responds, and who fails to respond to our letter; and what each respondent has said in reply to our letter.[separator type="medium" style="normal" align="left"margin-bottom="25" margin_top="5"] Copyright © 2015 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) and Vincent L. Pacifico (Orca) All Rights Reserved.

GUN RIGHTS ARE NOT SIMPLY EMBODIED IN THE SACRED SECOND AMENDMENT. AMERICANS HAVE A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO THE PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF GUNS TOO.

GUN RIGHTS ACTUALLY TRANSCEND THE SECOND AMENDMENT; AN AMERICAN’S FIREARMS ARE HIS SACRED PRIVATE PROPERTY. AND ONE’S RIGHT IN ONE’S SACRED PRIVATE PROPERTY SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED EITHER.

Gun collections are private property. This may seem obvious to you. After all the concept of a private property right is deeply embedded in American culture. It is deeply embedded in America’s economic traditions. And it is deeply embedded in the hearts and minds of Americans. The right to own and possess private property is as fundamental a right in this Country as is the freedom of speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and as the freedom to keep and bear arms is under the Second Amendment.Unfortunately, New York law doesn't really treat guns as private property. But, then, New York law views gun possession as a privilege rather than as an inalienable right. So, it should come as no surprise that guns are treated less as private property and more like rental property. We say this because strict limitations are placed on New York residents' ability to transfer their firearms, especially apropos of transfers  of guns or gun collections to heirs. If one's right of enjoyment in and to one's private property were truly honored as a right, then no express or tacit limitation would be placed on one's full enjoyment of that private property. That enjoyment includes the right to dispose of the private property as one wishes, to those whom one wishes to give that property, assuming one wishes to dispose of his or her firearms at all. A person should not be required to dispose of his firearms or firearms' collection if those firearms or collection of firearms are truly private property. Nonetheless, New York Statute tells a person not only when or that he or she must dispose of a gun or collection of guns, but also how a disposal of guns or of an entire gun collection must take place. And the language of gun transfers is laid out not at all succinctly, clearly, and plainly, as one might reasonably expect, but in lengthy, agonizing, and often incoherent detail.

THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS ENTAILS THE RIGHT TO OWN FIREARMS AS ONE'S SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE PRIVATE PROPERTY.

The concept of private property rights underlies and precedes the imperative of the Second Amendment: “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Further, the fundamental right of Americans to own, possess, and enjoy their private property is embraced in the language of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as specifically applied to the States under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Further, the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution secure for American gun owners the right to enjoy the liberties the Founders of our Republic intended for them as for all Americans. Present New York law denigrates the rights and protections and liberties of New York gun owners.Many New York residents have firearms’ collections worth many tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars – perhaps millions of dollars. The fair market value of these firearms’ collections is placed in jeopardy by specific language of the NY Safe Act, and in the language of the Penal Code of New York, and, by implication, in other Rules and Regulations of New York. In that regard it is not sound to argue that New York law provides firearms owners with mechanisms through which they can freely transfer, or sell, or otherwise dispose of their firearms to appropriate parties within the State or outside it. For the language of New York law is coercive. New York law often requires a gun owner to sell, transfer, or dispose of a particular gun or an entire gun collection when he doesn’t want to and prohibits him from bequeathing his gun collection to those whom he does want to bequeath his gun collection to. And he obtains little or no monetary compensation for that gun collection. Such coercion is antithetical to free market practices and turns the very notion of a free market on its head.Oddly, Governor Cuomo doesn’t address how a property interest in a firearms’ collection might be secured. We know this to be true as we have checked out the Governor’s website. You can check it out for yourself. This is the link: http://programs.governor.ny.gov/nysafeact/gun-owners.The Governor’s website provides absolutely no information or guidance for New York gun owners who seek to bequeath a gun collection to their next of kin. Doesn’t Governor Cuomo believe this matter to be important? If that is the case, clearly, tens of thousands of law-abiding New York gun owners would disagree with the Governor. They believe this to be a matter of utmost importance. Many of our readers have expressed considerable bewilderment over the matter of transferring gun collections to their heirs, and they have expressed substantial confusion as to the specific manner of transferring gun collections to their heirs.The testator owner of an expensive gun collection who wishes to bequeath a gun collection to his heirs should not be subject to impediments. But he is. New York law takes his expensive gun collection away from him. It takes his private property away from him without justly compensating him for it. And it deprives the New York gun owner of his expensive firearms collection, his private property, in complete derogation of the precepts laid out in the United States Constitution.In fact the taking of a New York resident’s gun collection without just compensation is not only in contradistinction to the United States Constitution; such taking is in derogation of the New York State Constitution, too.NY CLS Const Art I, § 7(a) says, “Private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation.” A person’s gun collection is his private property and the State essentially takes it from the owner and prospective heirs without just compensation. And, what public use is attendant to this “taking” of the firearms’ collection? Is the public use merely that a police department may, unbeknownst to the gun owner’s heirs, and, in fact, contrary even to the laws of New York, make use of the gun collection sans compensation to the owner’s heirs? Is the public use merely and incoherently that some of the firearms or the entirety of it will be destroyed by the police official and, so, the decedent’s heirs wind up with zero compensation for the firearms? The taking of private property without just compensation is also inconsistent with NY CLS Const Art I, § 11 which sets forth in pertinent part, “No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws of this state or any subdivision thereof. By failing to safeguard the monetary value of a New York resident’s gun collection, through the taking of it without just compensation, New York clearly and categorically denies to gun owners the equal protection of the laws to which they are entitled.The Bottom line:New York Statute altogether ignores the precepts implicit in the United States Constitution and in New York’s own State Constitution. New York’s governments operate in complete derogation of and, in fact, in unconscionable defiance to the dictates of both. Whether New York residents own firearms or not, they must wake up to the monstrous destruction of sacred rights and liberties, lest they lose all rights and liberties. [separator type="medium" style="normal" align="left"margin-bottom="25" margin_top="5"] Copyright © 2015 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour) and Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.