IF THE SECOND AMENDMENT FALLS, THE NATION FALLS, AND NEW YORK IS DOING ITS PART TO MAKE SURE THAT HAPPENS

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

MULTI SERIES

PART NINETEEN

SUBPART ONE OF PART NINETEEN

A NATION ON THE PRECIPICE OF RUINATION

As one more year draws rapidly to a close in these first three decades of the 21^st Century, the United States stands precariously at the edge of an abyss.One Branch of the Federal Government, the U.S Supreme Court, at least, recognizes the danger, and has prevented the Country from falling over the precipice.After a century of sidestepping the issue, the U.S. Supreme Court established, in three precedential case law decisions, what had been visibly plain in the language of the Second Amendment itself all along, if one would only look.All three cases were handed down in the first three decades of the 21^st Century. They include:District of Columbia vs. Heller in 2008, McDonald vs. City of Chicago in 2010 and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association vs. Bruen in 2022.These three cases, together, stand for the following propositions, now black letter law:

• The right of armed self-defense is an individual right unconnected with one’s service in a militia
• The right of armed self-defense is a universal right, applicable to both the States and the Federal Government.
• The right of armed self-defense applies wherever a person is, inside the home or outside it.

These three legal axioms are, together, the singular Law of the Land. But for this Law, the Republic would have fallen into ruin, this Century.There would be nothing to rein in a rogue Congress, a rogue Biden Administration, or rogue jurisdictions like those around the Country: New York, Illinois, California, Washington State, Washington D.C., Oregon, Hawaii, and several others.The rot from those State jurisdictions and from the Federal Government would eventually infect many other States.Forces inside the Government and outside it, both here and abroad—wealthy and powerful, malevolent and malignant—machinate constantly to destroy the right to armed self-defense.These forces will not tolerate an armed citizenry.The existence of an armed citizenry contradicts their end goal of a neo-feudalistic world government. The armed citizenry precept deviates from their plan of world conquest.Their goal for the 21st Century is a return to the political, social, and economic feudalistic construct operating in the world of the 5th through 15th Centuries—the Middle Ages.These ruthless elements have declared——

• The United States can no longer continue as a free Constitutional Republic;
• The American people must be subjugated; and
• Any thought of an armed citizenry must be erased from the collective memory of the American people.

The ashes of a once powerful, respected, sovereign, independent United States are to be commingled with the ashes of other western nations.The EU and the British Commonwealth Nations are a step in the direction of that world empire.The neoliberal democratic world order is conceived as——

• One devoid of defined geographical borders,
• One absent national governments; and
• One bereft of any defining history, heritage, culture, ethos, or Judeo-Christian ethic by which the people of one nation may easily distinguish themselves from any other.

Will the U.S. fall victim to totalitarianism as have the nations of the EU and British Commonwealth; as have India and China; and as have most all countries in the Middle East? Let us hope not.The U.S. need not fall victim.The U.S. has something all other nations lack: a true Bill of Rights.Our Bill of Rights consists of a set of natural laws: fundamental, unalienable, unmodifiable, immutable, illimitable, and eternal.Within this Country’s Bill of Rights rests a Cardinal Truth. And, of this Truth——

• The Founders were aware of it.
• The Republic they founded is grounded on it.
• The strength and power of our Country and the staying power of our Constitution is a testament to it.

All Americans should imprint this Truth on their collective memory:“What isn’t created by man cannot lawfully be taken from man by other men, nor by any temporal artifice of man: Government, for the sanctity, inviolability of man’s Selfhood, his Soul, and his Spirit do not belong to the Government; they cannot be bestowed on man by Government; and they cannot be severed from man by Government.Government is a dangerous enterprise.Our Federal Government is no longer reliable. It has gone rogue. It has forgotten the people whose interests it was created to serve. It serves special interests that fill campaign coffers and it serves wealthy, powerful foreign agencies of whom the public has no inkling.

• With this Federal Government, the American people have got “a tiger by the tail.” It is difficult to hold onto, but one daren’t let it go, lest it bite the people. Best to destroy it if we can no longer hold onto it.
• That “Tiger,” our Federal Government, is a creation of the American people and exists only to serve the people—the true and sole sovereign over the Federal Government.
• The presence of an armed citizenry serves as both evidence of its sovereignty over the Government, and the mechanism by which it may lawfully constrain it contain it, or curtail it if the Government loses its way and turns against the people.
• The Right to Armed Self-Defense is Natural Law, a God-given right, bestowed on man by the Divine Creator.
• Government cannot lawfully modify Natural Law, Ignore it, Rescind it, or formally Repeal it.
• Since armed self-defense is a Natural Law Right, the U.S. Supreme Court—in Heller, McDonald, and Bruen—didn’t make new law. The rulings of the three seminal High Court cases simply make explicit what is tacit in the language of the Second Amendment.

Unfortunately, many jurisdictions have failed to recognize, or otherwise have failed to acknowledge and accept, the strictures of the Second Amendment.That necessitated the intervention of the High Court. In one Second Amendment case after another—from Heller to McDonald, and then to Bruen—the Court has ordered States to uphold the strictures of the Second Amendment. Yet, many refuse to do so.Indeed, many jurisdictions reject Heller, McDonald, and Bruen outright. But no jurisdiction does so more emphatically, and contemptuously, and openly, than New York. We turn to a look at the status of recent litigation in New York.__________________________________

SUBPART TWO OF PART NINETEEN

SUB-SUBPART A

NEW YORK’S GUN LAW: STATUS OF THE ANTONYUK CASE GOING FORWARD*

The New York Government, under Governor Kathy Hochul and the Democrat Party-led Legislature in Albany, have declared outright war on the precepts of Individuality upon which the U.S. Constitution rests.Hochul’s Government crafted a comprehensive set of amendments to New York’s Gun Law, the Sullivan Act.These amendments specifically and negatively affect N.Y. Penal Law § 400.00(2)(f). That’s the concealed handgun carry license section of the State’s Sullivan Act.The amendments are referred to collectively as the “CCIA.” Hochul signed the amendments into law on July 1, 2022. This was scarcely a week after the High Court published the Bruen decision, on June 23, 2022.A flurry of lawsuits followed. Plaintiff gun owners filed the first one, Antonyuk vs. Bruen (Antonyuk I), on July 11.The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York dismissed that case without prejudice on August 23.The Court ruled one of the Plaintiffs, Gun Owners of America and its affiliates, lacked standing to sue.Ivan Antonyuk, the captioned Plaintiff individual of Antonyuk I, refiled his lawsuit against Defendant Kevin Bruen, Superintendent of State Police, on September 20. Five additional Party Plaintiffs, all individuals, joined him in the lawsuit. The Plaintiffs added eight additional Defendants. Governor Kathy Hochul was one of those Defendants. The Defendants were all State, County, or City Government Officials. All of them were sued in their official capacities. The New York Courts refer to this second case as Antonyuk II. The case was formally recaptioned, Antonyuk vs. Hochul. On September 22, the Plaintiffs filed their Emergency Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order, and on September 28, they added a Motion for Preliminary Injunction (“PI”).The Oral Hearing was held on September 29.On October 6, the U.S. District Court issued its order, granting the TRO in part, and denying it in part.One month later, on November 7, the District Court ruled on the Plaintiffs’ Preliminary Injunction, granting it in part, and denying it in part.The Court also dismissed out Governor Hochul as a Party Defendant, ruling that, “Plaintiffs have not alleged or shown how Defendant Hochul could be properly found to have the specific legal duty to enforce the CCIA.”In addition, Steven Nigrelli was named the new Superintendent of the State Police, replacing Kevin Bruen, as Party Defendant.With both Hochul and Bruen out of the picture, the case, Antonyuk II, was recaptioned, Antonyuk vs. Nigrelli. With the granting of the Preliminary Injunction, the TRO was mooted, and the Parties jointly agreed to dismiss the TRO.On November 8, 2022, the New York Gubernatorial race was held. On that same date, the Government appealed, to the Second Circuit, the District Court’s granting of the PI in Antonyuk II.On November 15, 2022, the Second Circuit issued a terse stay of the PI, pending its ruling on the Government’s Motion requesting relief from the District Court’s granting of the PI.The Second Circuit November 15 Order reads:“Defendants-Appellants, seek a stay pending appeal, and an emergency interim stay, of the Preliminary Injunction issued by the District Court on November 7, 2022.It is hereby ordered that a temporary stay is granted, pending the panel’s consideration of the motion.”The Second Circuit obliged the Government, overturning the U.S. District Court’s grant of the PI stay.This means Hochul’s Government can enforce the CCIA during the Second Circuit’s review of the PI.Time is therefore on the side of the Government.Hochul Government now has what it wants—the ability to enforce the CCIA against New York’s Gun Law during the Second Circuit’s review of the PI.Plaintiffs and all other holders of valid concealed handgun carry licenses as well as those who wish to obtain a New York concealed handgun carry license must now contend with the CCIA.Present holders of a valid New York concealed handgun carry license like the Plaintiffs in Antonyuk II, are particularly negatively affected by this Order.Plaintiffs understandably were not happy about the Second Circuit’s November 15 Order, lifting the stay of the CCIA imposed by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.So, four days after the issuance of the Second Circuit’s November 15 Order, the Plaintiffs, on November 19,  filed their response to the Government’s stay of the PI pending the Circuit Court’s review of it.The Plaintiffs took the Government to task, stating,“In their Motion, Appellants generally malign the district court’s preliminary injunction, but fail to note that the CCIA is no ordinary law–breathtaking in both its scope and its blatant unconstitutionality. The district court was correct to enjoin enforcement of many of the CCIA’s patently unconstitutional provisions, and this Court should (i) decline Appellants’ invitation to be the first circuit court to bless a statute specifically enacted to defy Bruen, (ii) vacate its improvidently granted administrative stay, and (iii) deny Appellants’ Motion.”Whether to enforce the operation of the CCIA during litigation or stay its enforcement turns on a four-factor test created by the Second Circuit. The Plaintiffs addressed the four-factor test in their Opposition to the Government’s Motion, stating— “The relevant factors to be considered are ‘[i] the applicant’s strong showing that [they are] likely to succeed on the merits, [ii] irreparable injury to the applicant in the absence of a stay, [iii] substantial injury to the nonmoving party if a stay is issued, and [iv] the public interest.’ A stay ‘is not a matter of right, even if irreparable injury might otherwise result;’ rather ‘it is an exercise of judicial discretion, and [t]he party requesting a stay bears the burden of showing that the circumstances justify an exercise of that discretion.” Finally, where (as here) an applicant is ‘totally lacking’ a strong showing of likelihood of success, ‘the aggregate assessment of the factors bearing on issuance of a stay pending appeal cannot possibly support a stay.’ Appellants fail all four factors. . . . The district court’s order will cause no harm to Appellants, as many of the CCIA’s provisions – which have been in effect barely over two months – are entirely novel in New York law, as well as lacking any historical analogue. . . . The sky did not fall prior to the CCIA’s enactment, and the sky is not falling now. Rather, the PI merely returns the state of the law to what it was just over two months ago.”Responding to the Plaintiffs’ Opposition to the stay of enforcement of the CCIA, the Second Circuit issued an amended Order on December 7, 2022.The new Order reads:“Appellants request a stay pending appeal of the district court's order dated November 7, 2022 (N.D.N.Y. 22-cv-986, doc. 78), enjoining Appellants from enforcing certain aspects of New York's Concealed Carry Improvement Act (‘CCIA’). Having weighed the applicable factors, see In re World Trade Ctr. Disaster Site Litig., 503 F.3d 167, 170 (2d Cir. 2007), we conclude that a stay pending appeal is warranted.  Accordingly, upon due consideration, it is hereby Ordered that the motion for a stay pending appeal is Granted and the district court's Nove1nber 7 order is Stayed pending the resolution of this appeal. To the extent that the district court's order bars enforcement of the CCIA's provisions related to persons who have been tasked with the duty to keep the peace at places of worship, airports, and private buses, such categories are excepted from this order. Appellees' motion to expedite the resolution of the matter is Granted.”What this new Order means is this:The Second Circuit allows the Government to enforce the amendments to the State’s Gun Law during its review of the Preliminary Injunction, subject to a minor exception.The Second Circuit said the stay does not affect the “Sensitive Location” prohibitions to airports, places of worship, and private buses.This is hardly a concession to the Plaintiffs.Airports fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government, not the State.No civilian may carry a firearm in airports, anyway.And houses of worship and private buses are the only private entities, that the Second Circuit says can devise their own rules for the carrying of firearms.All other CCIA “Sensitive Location” provisions remain operative during the Second Circuit’s review of the PI.But the Second Circuit’s treatment of the “four-factor test,” in the recent Order is both curious and disturbing. Recall the lower District Court had meticulously applied the Four-Factor test as it is required to do when first granting the Plaintiffs’ TRO, and subsequently granting the Plaintiffs’ PI. But why did the Second Circuit reject the findings of the District Court?In lifting the PI stay, the Second Circuit never explained its reasoning for doing so.The Court cites a case that is inapposite. And it is one that neither the Plaintiffs nor Defendants cite in any of their filings. The Court merely says it has weighed the factors and tacitly finds for the Government.This is all contrary to the findings and cogent reasoning of the lower District Court.It suggests the Court will overturn the PI, thus jeopardizing the attack on the constitutionality of the CCIA and further reducing the chance of eventually securing a Permanent Injunction against enforcement of the CCIA.This all suggests what New Yorkers have lost in failing to seat Zeldin in the Governor’s mansion.Had Lee Zeldin prevailed in the Gubernatorial race against Kathy Hochul, Plaintiffs and all other New York gun owners holding valid New York restricted or unrestricted handgun carry licenses would likely be in a different and better place.As Governor, Lee Zeldin could request the dismissal of Antonyuk. All other pending challenges to the CCIA would be mooted. The CCIA would have no effect.This would entail reverting to the originalN.Y. Penal Law § 400.00(2)(F). That would benefit those present holders of New York concealed handgun carry licenses who had complied with the “proper cause” requirement of the older Gun Law.Eventually, Zeldin, as New York Governor, could work with the State Legislature in Albany to rescind the entire licensing structure. Alas, that will never be. Four years of Hochul in Office will mean further restrictions on the Second Amendment, as the CCIA and other New York Gun laws clamp down ever tighter on a citizen’s exercise of his or her Second Amendment right to armed self-defense.________________________________

SUBPART TWO OF PART NINETEEN

SUB-SUBPART B

AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT THE APPLICATION OF THE FOUR-FACTOR TEST IN ANTONYUK VS. NIGRELLI

A perusal of the Four-Factor test demonstrates why the lower U.S. District Court for the Northern District Court of New York was correct in granting the Plaintiffs’ PI, and why the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit was wrong in staying the PI, during the Court’s resolution of it.

• The likelihood that Plaintiffs would prevail on the merits.

The District Court, in its opinions, both in Antonyuk I and Antonyuk II laid out a comprehensive argument supporting a finding that the CCIA is unconstitutional and that Plaintiffs would likely prevail in their suit on the merits against the Government.This first factor, therefore, works to the benefit of the Plaintiffs, supporting the granting of the PI.

• Irreparable injury to the Plaintiffs in absence of a stay of enforcement of the CCIA.

The District Court pointed out that, by carrying their handgun in public, the Plaintiffs would engage in behavior lawful under the original NY Gun Law but, under the “Sensitive Location” clause of the CCIA, now unlawful in many locations in New York.Thus, the CCIA operates perversely to restrict an already restrictive Gun Law the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled unconstitutional on the “proper cause” issue in Bruen. If current holders of a valid NY handgun carry license continue to carry under the CCIA, they will have committed a crime if they carry that handgun in a “Sensitive Location.”If arrested while carrying a handgun in public, in a “Sensitive Location,” they will lose their license to carry because the valid New York concealed handgun license they presently have is invalid if carrying a firearm in a “Sensitive Location.” The CCIA overrides the concealed handgun carry license in those locations.If arrested, the licensee will also be forced to surrender their handgun to the appropriate police authority, along with any other firearms they may have possession of in New York.Further, they will now have a criminal record on file, jeopardizing their acquisition of a license anew in New York. This will also jeopardize their ability to exercise their Second Amendment right in many other jurisdictions they may happen to work in or relocate to, thereafter.To avoid the possibility of arrest, these licensees must voluntarily relinquish carrying a handgun in public for self-defense. But doing so endangers their life, which was the reason these licensees applied for a concealed handgun carry license, in the first place.Remember, licensing officers had determined these license holders do face extraordinary risk, thus warranting issuance of a license under the original “proper cause” standard that the respective New York licensing authorities established, consistent with the original New York Gun Law.Plaintiffs are therefore in a bind. If they carry a handgun in a “Sensitive Location”, they risk arrest, loss of their license, loss of their handgun, and a criminal record to boot. If they do not carry a handgun for self-defense, they endanger their life.That is a  Hobson's choice; the idea that present holders of valid New York concealed handgun carry licenses have here; no acceptable choice, and evidence of irreparable harm to the Plaintiffs.To give Hochul’s blatant refusal to abide by the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court in NYSRPA vs. Bruen a leg to stand on, she attempts to give the public a sense that she cares deeply about the safety concerns of New Yorkers; that her amendments to the State’s Gun Law are designed to effectuate that end. What she delivers to the public is nothing more than an elaborate promo, an infomercial proffered to sell a product. The product she is selling is simply a more tortuous, and torturous version of the Sullivan Act enacted over one hundred years ago. And, like all promos and infomercials, it is meant to make a profit off a person’s gullibility. In the instant case, the Sullivan Act, a noose around the necks of free citizens, squeezed ever tighter. The Sullivan Act endangers the life of New Yorkers under the guise of securing life. It is all charade and theater.This second factor, therefore, works to the Plaintiffs' advantage, supporting the PI.

• Substantial injury to the nonmoving party. 

This is the mirror image of the previous factor. This is where the Government, the “non-moving” party, must demonstrate that the New York public faces irreparable injury if the Government is enjoined from enforcing the CCIA and that the harm to the public outweighs the harm to the Plaintiffs.That is what the Government says. The assertion is patently ridiculous.If the public was under no grave threat before the enactment of the CCIA, with stringent restrictive gun measures already in place, then it follows logically the public cannot be under a graver threat of injury now if the Second Circuit affirms the stay of enforcement of the CCIA,  pending resolution of the PI. But that’s what the Government wants. It wants the Second Circuit to lift the stay of the PI. This means the Government wants the Second Circuit to deny giving effect to the PI during the Second Circuit's resolution of the merits of it, thereby authorizing the Hochul Government to enforce the CCIA.The New York Attorney General Letitia James, arguing the case for the Government, asserted, in the Government's Opposition to the PI, that “Exposing eighteen million New Yorkers to a heightened risk of gunfire severely outweighs any prejudice to plaintiffs here from a stay.”This is ludicrous. It is nothing more than a snapshot of the imbecilic remarks of Hochul delivered to “CBS This Morning” on Friday, June 24, 2022, one day after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in NYSRPA vs. Bruen, setting up what would come shortly after; the awful amendments to New York's Gun Law. The Daily Caller recites Hochul's tirade against the High Court, in its article, titled, “NY Gov. Hochul Says Law-Abiding Gun Owners Make People Feel Very Unsafe”:“Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Friday morning law abiding gun owners make people feel ‘unsafe’ just one day after the Supreme Court overturned a more than century old gun law.Speaking on CBS This Morning, Hochul said the right to carry outside the home makes individuals feel ‘unsafe’ and seemed to insinuate it should not be allowed.‘Everybody in America recognizes that there is a problem with gun violence and the people who cheer this, what they say, what they see is, ‘Look there is a problem with gun violence and I, as a law-abiding citizen, want to be able to hold a gun on my person so that I feel safer.’ What do you say to that individual?” the host asked Hochul.‘I say that makes everyone else feel very unsafe. We don’t know if you’re provoked, you know, you’re in a bar and someone looks at your girlfriend or your boyfriend the wrong way. There are so many triggers. If someone wants to have a legal gun, licensed protection in their home, that is their domain, they can do that, we’ve always allowed that, or for hunting and other purposes,’ Hochul said.’‘But to think someone would be able to do this on a subway, in a crowded, tense situation during rush hour? No, we have a right to protect our citizens, not take away your right to own, that’s fine, but where you take it and the ability to conceal it, that’s just going to make things so much more complicated for law enforcement and others.’”

CIVILIANS DO NOT CARRY HANDGUNS OPENLY IN NEW YORK. THERE IS NO “OPEN CARRY”

First, it bears mentioning, but, apparently, only to morons like Hochul, that a holder of concealed handgun carry license does not ever carry his or her handgun openly, in New York, for all the world to see. The Gun Law itself recites the lawful carrying of a handgun, “concealed,” i.e., not openly by those issued concealed handgun carry licenses.In fact, no one in New York is permitted to carry a handgun openly apart from uniformed New York police officers, or other uniformed personnel who fall under specific provisions of the State's Gun Law.How, then, can any law-abiding member of the public honestly feel a sense of foreboding that another law-abiding member of the public who happens to possess a concealed handgun carry license is someone to be feared? The only creature that could realistically understandably “feel unsafe” is a psychopathic criminal who would dare to threaten an innocent member of the public. More than a few criminals and lunatics have met their untimely demise by threatening harm to an undercover police officer or off-duty officer, or to a holder of a valid concealed handgun license. In fact, for a career criminal—who isn't otherwise a psychotic maniac who wouldn't care whether a target of his lunacy is armed or not, as his reasoning organ is shot—he would never know for certain who is lawfully carrying a handgun concealed and who is not, if many more members of the New York public were to begin carrying, concealed, a handgun, as is their natural law right. And, he would think twice before targeting, at random, an innocent victim who is merely going about his business. Hence, it is reasonable to infer that the garden variety criminal, who has some sense of self-preservation would be less inclined to take the chance to attack a member of the public who may very well be armed. This fact would result in a precipitous drop in violent crimes of opportunity.

“TRIGGERS” ANYONE?

Second, The notion that a person would go off half-cocked is a “Fever Dream” of the Anti-Second Amendment crowd. They would like to believe this myth. The Government thrusts all sorts of horrors on the public to rationalize ending the fundamental, unalienable right to armed self-defense. But their wax museum of horrors coming to life is just entertainment, nothing more. It isn't grounded in truth. It's merely a fabrication, it's propagandist; a fictional horror film designed like many such films, i.e., to create a jump scare. Only the gullible and ignorant Americans would fall for it. If New York holders of handgun carry licenses were such a threat to public safety and order, how is it that we never hear Governor Hochul talking about instances of criminal acts of violence committed by these licensees? She can’t talk about this because there is no instance of this that she can drum up.  All such talk of an armed New York citizenry posing a threat to the Government's notion of public safety and public order in their well-ordered society is sheer unadulterated speculation, bordering on delirium.

“IF SOMEONE WANTS TO HAVE A LEGAL GUN, LICENSED PROTECTION IN THEIR HOME, THAT IS THEIR DOMAIN, THEY CAN DO THAT, WE'VE ALWAYS ALLOWED THAT.” ISN'T HOCHUL NICE?

Third, Hochul says, the Government has always allowed someone “a legal gun in their home.” But wait a minute? Is keeping and bearing arms a Government bestowed privilege or a God-Given Right? And didn’t the U.S. Supreme Court rule that the right to armed self-defense extends beyond the domain of one’s house, consistent with the meaning of the fundamental, unalienable right to armed self-defense? Does New York law take precedence over the Second Amendment and the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court? Hochul demonstrates incredible arrogance. How did she get elected to Office anyway?If New York holders of handgun carry licenses were such a threat to public safety and order, how is it that we never hear Governor Hochul talking about instances of criminal acts of violence committed by these licensees? She can’t talk about this because there is no instance of this that she can drum up.  All such talk of an armed New York citizenry posing a threat to their notion of public safety and public order in their well-ordered society is sheer unadulterated speculation, bordering on delirium. The “why” of the attack on the armed citizenry is as pressing as the “how”—the strategies devised and employed to undermine the right of the people to keep and bear arms. And it all goes back to Government's lust for “power” and “control” over the common people. And, the fear of the Tyrant is always that the common people will revolt against the Tyrant's Tyranny. The Neoliberal Globalists and their puppets in Government treat people like random bits of energy that require a firm hand lest common people get “out of hand.” The fear of the Tyrant is always the common people. Government exists primarily to control the populace. Our Federal Government, though, was constructed to serve the people. Everything in our Constitution points to that fact. The people are sovereign, not Government. But, like all Governments, our Federal Government has succumbed to tyranny. That tyranny is mirrored and multiplied in the Governments of many States. New York is one of those States. The “sticky wicket” for the Globalists is the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It serves, one, as evidence of the sovereignty of the American people over their Government, Federal, State, or local, and serves, two, as a mechanism to thwart the rise of tyranny. The Second Amendment, unlike the First, or any other Amendment in the Bill of Rights has a tenacity that, when unleashed, a ferocity, that scares the dickens of the proponents of a world empire and world domination. In this second half of the Biden Administration regime, we are seeing more and more emphasis placed on reining in the armed citizenry. And State Governments under Democrat Party leadership, such as that of New York, are fully on board with this. Expect to see more of this, much more, in the weeks and months ahead.

“A HEIGHTENED RISK OF GUNFIRE”?

“Exposing eighteen million New Yorkers to a heightened risk of gunfire severely outweighs any prejudice to plaintiffs here from a stay.” ~ Letitia JamesFourth, apropos of Letitia James' argument, on behalf of Defendant-Appellant New York Government officials, appealing the U.S. District Court's granting of Plaintiff-Appellees' Preliminary Injunction, where is this “heightened risk of gunfire” supposed to come from?The argument presented by Attorney General Letitia James and by Governor Kathy Hochul in support of the CCIA boils down to these two propositions:

• People are afraid of guns and of average law-abiding, rational, responsible gun owners who keep and bear them.
• Average law-abiding, rational, responsible gun owners pose an imminent threat to public safety and order.

The reader will note that nothing is said about career criminals, murderous gangbangers, and drug-addled lunatics who may happen to get hold of a firearm. The reason is that the Hochul Government, and other Governments like hers—reflecting the beliefs and aims of the present Federal Government, aren't concerned about the behavior of the dregs of society. Government is concerned only over the rational responsible American who will not suffer tyranny. And it is tyranny that these Governments, local, regional, State, and Federal are selling. Criminals and lunatics serve their end. The breakdown of law and order is what these Governments want so that they can institute their own brand of crime on a national/industrial scale. The aim is the destruction of the mind, the Soul, and the Spirit. The sanctity and inviolability of the individual were once important to our Nation, worth preserving, things to be cherished. And the idea was threaded through our Nation's Constitution, and, especially, through our Nation's Bill of rights. That once was so, but no longer. The Federal Government makes a mockery of our Country now and of our sacred precepts and principles. We see it in the weakening of our economy, and our military. We see it in incredible profligate spending at a time when we must hold onto the monetary reserves and ascertain that our Nation's monies are spent carefully and wisely for purposes that benefit our Nation and its people, and not squandered on foreign escapades or lavishly squandered on special interests that benefit the few, including foreign entities and individuals that hate us. We see the weakening of our Country in the Government's obsequious behavior toward China and Brussels. And, we see it in the debauched, and degenerate, and mentally unbalanced individuals placed in high Government Office. Most Americans are appalled at these spectacles. And Government knows this and worries about it. Government is afraid of Americans who keep and bear arms, who clutch them ever tighter, for many of us there are who see well enough the mindless absurdity of a rogue, and dangerous, and patently deranged Government that threatens to engulf the Nation and its citizenry in horrific destruction. And, so, Government turns on Americans; sets one American against the other so as to short-circuit organization against a Government that no longer serves the Nation's best interests and, in fact, no longer goes through the pretense of doing so.The Biden Administration and the Hochul Government don't talk of their own fear of the armed citizenry. Instead, they project that fear on the populace at large both as a defense mechanism and as a strategy to divert attention away from themselves rather than upon themselves, where attention should be directed. The idea is that eviscerating the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms is done, not as a contemptuous assault on natural law that they have no lawful right to attack, but ostensibly as an act of mercy on behalf of the people who, as they argue, would benefit from a purgation only possible through the confiscation of guns in the hands of tens of millions of Americans. The Tyrant says——People are afraid of guns and of average law-abiding, rational, responsible gun owners who keep and bear them.Concerning this proposition, propounded by Kathy Hochul, if many Americans should happen to fear guns and fear those who exercise their fundamental, unalienable right to armed self-defense—indeed, if any American should happen to register such fears—those fears aren't the product of something innate in a person, but, rather, are the result of an elaborate, concerted well-coordinated, and executed plan, at once deceitful and horrendous, to instill in the American citizen a phobic reaction to firearms and a phobic reaction to those Americans who choose to keep and bear them. The question of why such psychologically damaging programs would be initiated by and ceaselessly and vigorously propagated by the Government against the entire civilian population has nothing to do with a desire on the part of the Government to secure the life, health, safety, and well-being of Americans. Rather, it has everything to do with the carrying out of a secret plot focused on the demise of a free Constitutional Republic, the only one like it in existence; the dissolution of our Constitution; and the subjugation of our people to the dictates of a new order of reality: the rise of a neo-feudalistic global empire. AQ has written extensively on this. In fact, it is a theme that runs through the depth and breadth of our articles. Nothing else, to our knowledge, comes close to explaining well the dogged, and consistent, and insistent effort on the part of so many heterogenous agents and agencies both inside and outside this Country to destroy our Nation's Bill of Rights; to destroy our history, heritage, culture, our Nation's ethos, our Judeo-Christian ethic; and to launch a psychopathological reaction upon the citizenry the manner of which and the extent of which has no precedent in our Nation's history or, for that matter, in all of recorded history.The Hochul Government’s attack on the U.S. Supreme Court Bruen case is really a component part of a much larger mosaic, as evidenced by a concerted effort to undermine the Second Amendment.And so confident is Hochul in her own power, that she does this brazenly and contemptuously, attacking not just the Second Amendment but also the Justices of the Highest Court in the Land, whose sin, in her mind, is that they give a fundamental natural law right the respect it is due. Hochul intends to shred it and she is doing just that.Thus, it isn't that New Yorkers or any American has an innate fear of firearms or those who keep and bear them. It is that the Government in New York and the Governments of several other States, and the Federal Government under the Biden Administration, have induced fear where none before existed, all in support of aims that are antithetical to our most sacred precepts and values and antithetical to the common good.Thus, Americans aren't afraid of firearms or those who possess them, but Hochul and others, beholden to the same ruthless, Globalist, and Marxist interests, create the illusion that this IS something inherent in people. IT ISN'T. It is only something inserted into the unwary mind: a meme, a mental virus, damaging to the psyche no less than a physical viral pathogen is damaging to the body.The Tyrant also says——Average law-abiding, rational, responsible gun owners pose an imminent threat to public safety and order.Concerning this second proposition, propounded by Kathy Hochul, as manifest in her statements to the Press and in the Government's legal documents—that average law-abiding, rational, responsible gun owners pose an imminent threat to public safety and order—this is a naked assumption cast as a self-evident truth, presented in lieu of any supporting evidence, for the purpose, one, to buttress amendments to the State's Gun Law that are inherently unconstitutional as the District Court had made poignantly clear through cogent argument, both in Antonyuk I and in Antonyuk II, and, two, to urge the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to stay the lower Court's granting of Plaintiff-Appellees Motion for Preliminary Injunction against the enforcement of Hochul's CCIA.Meanwhile, the law-abiding New York taxpayer daily faces rampant violent crime because of the abject failure of the New York Justice system to deal effectively with criminals and raving lunatics that constantly prey on the public.And the police are contemporaneously prevented from engaging in effective policing activities that protect the community. In addition, the police are leaving New York in droves. Who will replace them?And, even if the Hochul Government provided the public with a modicum of community policing and a justice system that didn’t kowtow to lunatics and criminals, the fact remains that the New York police departments have no obligation to guarantee the life and safety of individual members of the public.The police never had that obligation. And the New York public is under a misconception to think otherwise. Yet, the Government continues to keep the public in the dark about this, never troubling itself to inform the public that self-defense against threats of violence rests on each member of the public, not on the State. See, e.g., the AQ article posted here, on this site, on November 21, 2019. See also AQ article posted on Ammoland Shooting Sports News on August 6, 2020.A well-trained, responsible, rational, law-abiding adult need not rely on the police, and cannot legally place that burden on the police. The responsibility for preserving one’s life and well-being rests solely on the individual.This was the salient point of Heller, McDonald, and Bruen. Armed self-defense is ultimately the responsibility and prerogative of the individual.The Hochul Government knows or should know that armed self-defense is the best defense against aggressive armed assault. The failure to acknowledge this or even attempt to proffer evidence to refute this is a fatal weakness in the Government’s argument against Plaintiff-Appellees PI.The Government simply erroneously assumes the well-armed citizen threatens the community.This is a central theme pervasive in the New York Government, and it is a thread woven into the very fabric of New York’s draconian gun measures that go back over one hundred years when the licensing of handguns was first enacted.Yet the Government takes this bald assumption as a self-evident truth. It isn’t. But it serves the narrative, and their end goal is to disarm the public.The Government’s remark begs the very question at issue:Does the rational, responsible, law-abiding citizen who wishes to exercise his natural law right of armed self-defense pose a risk to the public? There is something off in the sheer idea incessantly and vociferously proselytized to the public that the armed citizen poses a threat to public safety.This notion is contrary to fact. It is also contrary to the import of the Second Amendment:It is the natural law right of the American citizen to arm him or herself against assault by predatory man, predatory creature, and predatory Government.Heller, McDonald, and Bruen reiterate this point constantly:The individual has the right to armed self-defense. The corollary to that proposition is this: The armed citizen enhances public safety. This is the antithesis of the Hochul Government’s position that the armed citizen endangers public safety.In their response to the Government’s Motion for a stay of the Preliminary Injunction, pending appeal, the Plaintiffs said this apropos of public safety:“Even if Appellants had demonstrated some actual public safety benefit, it would come at the cost of disarmament of law-abiding gun owners, an unacceptably high cost, as “[t]he right to keep and bear arms . . . is not the only constitutional right that has controversial public safety implications.” McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 783 (2010). Such enumerated rights cannot be balanced away by legislators, or judges, because “the Second Amendment is . . . the very product of an interest balancing by the people . . . it [] elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense. . . .” D.C. v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 635 (2008).Nor can Appellants plausibly claim irreparable harm from temporarily halting enforcement of an unconstitutional law: ‘the public consequences in employing the extraordinary remedy of [injunctive relief]’ are not just the vindication of constitutional rights but also the prevention of their egregious curtailment. Indeed, it is always in the public interest to enjoin an unconstitutional law. The government has no ‘interest in the enforcement of an unconstitutional law.’”This third factor, harm to the non-moving party, does not outweigh the harm to the Plaintiffs. Thus, this third factor in support of the PI works to the Plaintiffs’ advantage.

• The Public Interest. The last factor a Court must consider in determining whether to issue a PI is whether the public is best served by its issuance.

The Plaintiff-Appellees assert: “The public interest is best served by ensuring the constitutional rights of persons within the United States are upheld.” We are dealing here after all with a natural law right.That the public is better served by curtailing a right the founders felt imperative to the Security of a free State and to ensure the sanctity and inviolability of one’s Selfhood, goes against the Judeo-Christian ethic upon which our free Constitutional Republic was founded, and without which a sovereign people and a free Constitutional Republic cannot continue to survive.The New York State Government’s philosophy of the relationship of Government to the people is a distortion of all this Country holds dear and holy.This fourth factor also works to the Plaintiff-Appellees' advantage, supporting maintaining the PI during the Second Circuit's resolution of the merits of it.

IN SUMMARY

The New York Government places itself above the sovereign authority of the American people.This notion unfortunately is reflected in several other jurisdictions across the Country, and it is also present in the thinking of the Biden Administration and in the thinking of Democrats in Congress and by more than a few Republicans.Let us hope and pray the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, ultimately, doesn’t betray the U.S. Constitution too.Unfortunately, the recent December 7, 2022, Second Circuit order doesn’t give New York gun owners much reason for hope, much less jubilation—nothing more, really, than a wing and a prayer of success.If such is the case, Antonyuk vs. Nigrelli is destined for resolution by the High Court.Justices Thomas and Alito would see that the case is heard, as the CCIA is a direct affront to the Second Amendment and to the rulings of Heller, McDonald, and Bruen.In the immortal words of that late, great comic, Arte Johnson (a.k.a. the “German Soldier” routine), the Antonyuk case, and a slew of other post-Bruen cases wending their way through the Courts in New York and elsewhere in the Country are becoming “Very Interesting.” _______________________________*For those readers interested, a comprehensive (complete) discussion of the history of the date of filings of Court documents in the second Antonyuk case, (Antonyuk II), as recited by Plaintiff-Appellees (holders of valid New York concealed handgun carry licenses) against Defendant-Appellants (New York Government officials) in Plaintiff-Appellees “Response In Opposition To Defendants-Appellants’ Motion For A Stay Pending Appeal And An Administrative Stay Pending Resolution Of The Motion,” filed on November 19, 2022, appears below:This case involves a challenge to New York’s most recent attempt to infringe the Second Amendment rights of its residents. In response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent vindication of the right to keep and bear arms in N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022), the state hastily enacted a poorly named and ineptly drafted statute called the “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (“CCIA”). Rather than following Bruen and respecting the Second Amendment’s mandate, the CCIA defied the Supreme Court, making concealed carry of firearms far more restrictive, and the licensing process far more onerous, than before the Supreme Court’s decision. Plaintiffs-Appellees (“Appellees”) filed suit seeking to enjoin many of the CCIA’s patently unconstitutional provisions, seeking both a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction. Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief (“Complaint”), ECF #1 (Sept. 20, 2022); Plaintiffs’ Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order (“Motion for TRO”), ECF #6 (Sept. 22, 2022). After providing Defendants-Appellants (“Appellants”) the opportunity to submit briefing and to participate in oral argument, the district court issued a temporary restraining order enjoining certain parts of the CCIA, while allowing others to remain in effect, and granting Appellants’ request for a three-business-day stay to seek review by this Court. Response in Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Emergency Motion for Temporary Restraining Order, ECF #18 (Sept. 28, 2022); Transcript of Proceedings, ECF #23 (Sept. 29, 2022); Decision and Temporary Restraining Order (“TRO”), ECF #27 (Oct. 6, 2022). Appellants sought from this Court (1) a stay pending appeal of the district court’s decision, along with (2) what they styled an “emergency . . . interim . . . administrative stay” while the Court considered their motion. Docket No. 22-2379, Motion for a Stay, Doc. #16 at 1. On October 11, 2022, Appellees filed a Response explaining, inter alia, that appeal of a TRO is improper, and the district court’s forthcoming decision on Plaintiffs’ preliminary injunction would render the appeal moot. Opposition to Motion, Doc. #22. On October 12, 2022, Judge Lee granted Appellants’ request for “an interim stay of the Temporary Restraining Order pending decision by the motions panel.” Order, Doc. #39. The case continued in district court, with Appellants filing their Opposition to Plaintiffs’ Motion for a Preliminary Injunction on October 13, 2022. Response in Opposition, ECF #48. On October 22, 2022, Appellees filed their Reply. Reply to Response, ECF #69. On October 25, 2022, the district court heard oral argument on Appellees’ Motion. Transcript of Proceedings, ECF #72. On November 7, 2022, the district court issued a limited preliminary injunction (“PI”), supported by a 184-page opinion. Decision and Preliminary Injunction, ECF #78 (“Op.”). The district court’s opinion denied Appellants’ request for a three-day stay, and the PI took effect immediately. Their TRO appeal mooted, Appellants, with Appellees’ consent, withdrew that appeal on November 9, 2022. Stipulation of Voluntary Dismissal, Doc. #74 (Docket No. 22-2379). On November 8, 2022, Appellants appealed the district court’s grant of the PI, and on November 12, 2022, filed a similar motion in this Court, seeking a stay pending appeal and an “administrative stay” pending resolution of their Motion. Docket No. 22-2908, Motion to Stay (“Motion”), Doc. #18. Although having requested three days in which to seek a stay from this Court, Appellants waited five days to file this Motion. While the cover sheet (Form T-1080) describes Appellants’ filing as a “motion for emergency interim stay,” their motion is not captioned as an “Emergency Motion,” nor does it use the word “emergency” at all. Nor does it comply with this Court’s rule requiring that it “state the date by which the movant believes the court must act.” See L.R. 27.1(d)(2) and (4). Cf. Appellants’ filing in Docket No. 22-2379, Motion for a Stay, ECF #16, cover sheet (“request that an interim administrative stay be granted by the end of the day on Tuesday (10/11).”). Nor does Appellants’ motion provide any explanation of “the nature of the emergency and the harm that the movant will suffer if the motion is not granted” (L.R. 27.1(d)(3)), alleging only that the district court’s order “risks substantial harm.” Motion at 15. Cf. Docket 22-2379, Motion for a Stay at 2, 3, 20 (alleging “serious risk of irreparable harm,” “substantial risks to public safety,” and “imminent risk to public safety.”). Despite those deficiencies, a three-judge panel of this Court – without response from or notice to Appellees – granted a “temporary stay” on November 15, 2022. Doc. #32. Problematically, that Order provides Appellants broader relief than they sought, granting a “temporary stay … of the preliminary injunction issued by the district court.” Id. In contrast, Appellants’ Motion made clear that they are not seeking to stay every part of the district court’s injunction. See Motion at 13 n.5 (seeking a stay for churches “except as to persons who have been tasked with the duty to keep the peace,” “Appellants do not seek a stay as to airports” and “private buses.”) (emphasis added). This Court’s administrative stay was issued notwithstanding that undersigned counsel inquired on November 14, 2022 as to whether the Court would be treating Appellants’ Motion as an “emergency” motion, and notwithstanding the fact that there was no mention of any emergency in the body of Appellant’s actual Motion. Contrast treatment of this motion with the prior “emergency” request from Appellees (22-2379) where, within hours of filing, the Clerk’s office contacted undersigned counsel on a federal holiday (October 10, 2022) and requested that Appellees file a response by noon that next day (October 11, 2022), so the Court would have Appellees’ response prior to deciding the administrative stay. No such instruction was given to Appellees in this appeal, and undersigned’s voicemail was not returned. Rather than waiting to hear from Appellees, the Court sua sponte stayed injunctive relief even as to matters where no stay was requested. Moreover, in issuing this broad administrative stay, this Court altered the status quo in New York (see Motion at 14), allowing non-appealed provisions of the CCIA back into effect thereby causing the very harm of which Appellants complain. See id. at 2 (alleging “confusion . . . resulting from the frequent changes in the applicable provisions of law. . . .”). Appellees oppose both stays sought by Appellants (including the administrative stay already issued), and ask this Court to deny Appellants’ Motion in its entirety. In their Motion, Appellants generally malign the district court’s preliminary injunction, but fail to note that the CCIA is no ordinary law – breathtaking in both its scope and its blatant unconstitutionality. The district court was correct to enjoin enforcement of many of the CCIA’s patently unconstitutional provisions, and this Court should (i) decline Appellants’ invitation to be the first circuit court to bless a statute specifically enacted to defy Bruen, (ii) vacate its improvidently granted administrative stay, and (iii) deny Appellants’ Motion. ____________________________________Copyright © 2022 Roger J. Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

AT WHAT POINT DO NEW YORK VOTERS SAY “NO” TO CRIME AND CORRUPT GOVERNMENT?

NEW YORK GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL IS A GHOUL!

[UPDATED WITH CORRECTIONS REPORTED BY AQ READERS WHO NOTED INCORRECT DATES PERTAINING TO NEW YORK GOVERNOR ANDREW CUOMO'S RESIGNATION, AND THE DATE UPON WHICH HIS REPLACEMENT, LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL, BECAME GOVERNOR, SERVING NOW FOR 14 MONTHS. SHE IS NOW UP FOR ELECTION, FOR THE FIRST TIME, ON NOVEMBER 8, 2022, RUNNING AGAINST LEE ZELDIN, WHOSE ELECTION AS GOVERNOR WOULD MARK THE FIRST TIME NEW YORK WOULD SEE A REPUBLICAN ELECTED GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK IN 20 YEARS. [SEE CHANGES TO THIS ARTICLE IN "GRAY" INK INFRA]The adage “People get the leaders and government they deserve” has increasing relevance today, in America.Cities, States, and the Nation are imploding. This is no accident. It is by design.Consider New York and its largest city.The five Boroughs of New York City are a cesspool of violence. Crime is rampant. It is out of control. And it is affecting the entire State. No one is safe.This is no illusion. It is very real. Politicians and newspapers that deny this are not merely lying to the public, they are insulting the public’s intelligence.This situation is unacceptable, and it need not be. But it happens to be because most of the electorate votes the worst people into Office.Take Kathy Hochul, the present Governor of New York. Hochul, the Lieutenant Governor took over the Governorship after Andrew Cuomo resigned from Office in disgrace. But Hochul is no better than Cuomo. Both embody two of the worst traits of a human being: Arrogance and Piousness.It is bad enough to see these character traits in any person. But society itself is endangered when such people hold public office. For then, these character flaws have free reign. The result is corruption on a vast scale.The impact of corruption is felt on many levels.Corruption in Government is felt on a societal level, as institutions fall apart and, concomitantly, society falls into decay.Corruption in Government is felt on an economic level as businesses, unable to operate in a lawless environment, are forced to leave. Tax revenues then dry up. With Government services attenuated, cities and states fall into a death spiral.And corruption in Government is felt on a basic and raw, physical level, as criminals and lunatics prey at will on millions of innocent men, women, and children. No place is safe: public areas, stores, and shops, schools, houses of worship, even one’s home is susceptible to violence from roving predators.People grow anxious, fearful, and afraid to venture out, day or night. The consequences for victims of violent crime are life-altering.And what do we get from our government leaders: much talk, but no effective action.Kathy Hochul, Lieutenant Governor under Andrew Cuomo was sworn in as New York's Governor on August 24, 2021. Did anyone ever hear of her? Cuomo kept his understudy in mothballs for years. He intended to remain Governor in perpetuity, as New York law allowed, running for re-election every four years for another term. There are no term limits. But the Democrat Neoliberal Globalist powerbrokers had other plans. For whatever reason, likely not the ones that were fed to the public, they wanted him out. The news organs went to work, making much of the sex scandals, that the powerbrokers and the Press had certainly known about for years, but had ignored. In a flood of stories, the Press reported on the sex scandals, and, to a lesser extent, the Press reported on the COVID-19 nursing home deaths that were clearly more important and altogether reprehensible. But as for that latter story, the Press had hitherto, and peculiarly, underreported it, had even been dismissive of it, even though the New York public had always known about it and was justifiably angered by it, as were Americans around the Nation.But now the floodgates were opened. The Press went to work. The powers that be, whom the Democrat Party and the Press serve had tired of Cuomo. Having realized the game was up, and that it would be futile to fight the powers that be, Cuomo reluctantly announced his resignation, on August 10, 2021, to be effective 14 days later, on August 24, 2021. On that same date, August 24, 2021, Kathy Hochul, who Cuomo had kept in mothballs since 2015 when she sat as Lieutenant Governor, took the Oath of Office, See, e.g., articles in Spectrum News NY1 and the article in the AP. Now, Kathy Hochul faces the New York electorate for the first time. The midterm elections take place on November 8, 2022. She is running against Republican, Lee Zeldin, who gave up his U.S. Congressional seat to run for Governor of New York. The race is tight and the liberal media is nervous, frantic, really. See the article in the periodical, Time. Magazine. Democrats have become incautious and arrogant. They thought it would be impossible for a Republican to be elected Governor. The last Republican elected New York Governor was George Pataki, and that was 20 years ago. Pataki had narrowly defeated Andrew Cuomo's father, Mario. That surprised, shocked Democrats. See a 1994 article in the Washington Post. See also the article in The Hill. Will there be another upset in November 2022? One can pray it to be so. If enough voters in New York City have had enough of crime, corruption, and misspent taxpayer monies, they will give Hochul the boot.Fourteen months in Office has given the New York electorate more than an inkling of what to expect from Hochul if she gains the Governorship.Does the public want this person? Since a New York Governor’s term in Office is four years, the scale of the damage she would do to New York, economically and societally, would be enormous, irreparable. Scarcely over one year in Office, Hochul’s Administration is already embroiled in scandal.Last month, September 23, 2022, the New York Post cast light on Hochul’s corruption in a story titled,“‘They did what they did’: Hochul sees $637M ‘pay-to-play’ as no big deal.”  the Post points out:“Gov. Kathy Hochul tried to avoid blame Friday for a spiraling ‘pay-to-play’ scandal in which one of her top political donors scored no-bid contracts that overcharged taxpayers for $637 million in COVID-19 test kits.And she also brushed off the notion anyone in her administration should pay the price for it, telling The Post dismissively, ‘They did what they did.’Asked about the recently revealed deal with Digital Gadgets of New Jersey, whose owner, Charlie Tebeble, and his relatives have contributed about $330,000 to her campaign, Hochul at first repeated her team’s talking points on the simmering scandal.‘My directive to my team was: ‘The only way we’re going to get kids back in schools is to amass as many test kits from wherever you need to get them – just go do it,’ the governor said, when asked to answer for it by The Post at an unrelated event in Lake George.‘That was my only involvement.’New York might have saved as much as $286 million on the tests had the Hochul administration gotten a better price from the company, which the Times Union recently reported charged the state twice as much as other vendors selling the same test.”Hochul is corrupt to the core of her being. And she has made her corruption known both to the public and to those of like kind who are well-heeled. She is duplicitous, unapologetic, and slippery as an eel.The New York Post revelation isn’t a one-off. Hochul is power-hungry and without scruples and the big donors know this. They want her in Office, and they have filled her coffers before she even took the Oath of Office. They lavish favors on Hochul and they expect lavish favors in return. As reported by City and State, New York,“New York has never seen a campaign finance filing quite like Gov. Kathy Hochul’s. She started fundraising in August, days after former Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced he would resign, and she never stopped, bringing in more than $21.6 million in a five month period. Hochul’s campaign touted the haul as ‘the largest contribution total for any single filing period in New York history’ in a press release Tuesday that noted she nearly doubled the $12.8 million raised in 2002 by then-Gov. George Pataki. The windfall further solidifies her position as the front-runner in the 2022 Democratic primary for governor, with her biggest competitors, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Long Island Rep. Tom Suozzi, raising $221,996 and $3.4 million respectively according to the public filings.”And Crain's New York writes,​“Governor Kathy Hochul relied almost exclusively on wealthy donors in the latest campaign fundraising period, which ended in mid-July. The governor received a little more than $2 million, with 46% of her individual contributions exceeding $25,000, according to state campaign finance records.” Does anyone think these big donors give a damn about rampant crime in New York if it doesn’t affect them? Does anyone think they give a damn about anything but their own selfish wants and desires?But more to the point, does Hochul care about the well-being of the State and its cities and of the needs and well-being of the people? The answer is a resounding, “no.”  The New York Post explains:“When it comes to safer mass transit, we’ll take what we can get (as will Mayor Eric Adams). But it’s impossible to see Gov. Kathy Hochul’s offer of some taxpayer cash to support more subway-cop patrols as anything but a panicked gesture.And panic in the face not of the rising violence underground, but of Lee Zeldin’s surging poll numbers.”Many New Yorkers understand that Hochul is deceitful and doesn’t care about New York or its residents. Her tenure in office is all about graft.“When it comes to safer mass transit, we’ll take what we can get (as will Mayor Eric Adams). But it’s impossible to see Gov. Kathy Hochul’s offer of some taxpayer cash to support more subway-cop patrols as anything but a panicked gesture.And panic in the face not of the rising violence underground, but of Lee Zeldin’s surging poll numbers.As Nicole Gelinas notes, the new patrols depend on added overtime, which is nothing like a lasting solution. Cops, like anyone else, can only do so much OT before they’re exhausted — and the city was already expecting to do 61% more street-cop OT than initially budgeted.Plus, NYPD retirements/resignations are on pace to exceed 4,000 this year, the highest since post-9/11. Thanks to no-bail and other ‘criminal-justice reforms’ that Hochul continues to defend and even extend, plus won’t-do-their-jobs DAs like Alvin Bragg (whom she refuses to fire), police morale is through the floor. That means fewer cops, especially fewer experienced ones — yielding a force that’s less effective and more prone to make mistakes that the anti-cop fanatics will seize on to further undermine public safety.Meanwhile, finally getting off her ‘abortion abortion abortion” obsession, the panicked gov just dropped a new ad on crime, with her vowing, ‘You deserve to feel safe, and as your governor, I won’t stop working until you do.’” “You deserve to feel safe”? This can be a useful campaign slogan, but, from the mouth of Kathy Hochul, it is vacuous as hell.This is what Hochul thinks of public safety: It is all “Smoke and mirrors:” Pretend to care about the life of average, honest, hard-working people, but give them nothing but empty promises.Hochul refuses to accept if she ever bothered to consider that——The right to self-defense is axiomatic, self-evident, true. It is a natural law right: an immediate need, at once indisputable, eternal, pre-existent in each human being, immutable, and illimitable, but this natural law right isn’t in Kathy Hochul’s lexicon. And don't expect that Kathy Hochul will proffer New Yorkers police protection.The police don’t operate as personal bodyguards to anyone except political bigshots like the Governor or a mayor of a major city, and, under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, the police do not legally have a duty to protect anyone. The public isn't aware of this, and Government has done nothing to explain this to anyone. The Arbalest Quarrel has written extensively about this.The police force of a community is only under a duty to provide protection for the community as a whole. Unfortunately, in New York, the police do little of that as well, and the fault rests with the Governor, Kathy Hochul and with NYC Mayor Eric Adams.Moreover, with massive cuts in police funding, cashless bail, and the presence of “non-prosecutors” like the George Soros flunky, Alvin Bragg, the need for, and right to armed self-defense in New York—especially in New York City—is acute.But Kathy Hochul perfunctorily dismisses any notion of a natural law right to armed self-defense, even when the U.S. Supreme Court makes abundantly clear to her the right to armed self-defense extends outside the home as well as inside it. Her response to the Bruen rulings makes her antipathy toward the right to armed self-defense crystal clear.Hochul refuses to comply with the High Court’s rulings in the third seminal case, NYSRPA versus Bruen.She conspired with the Democrat-Party majority in the State Legislature to thwart compliance with the rulings of the High Court.Hochul signed into law a set of amendments to the Court’s unconstitutional Gun Law that compound the unconstitutionality and unconscionability of the State’s Gun Law.Unsurprisingly, the package of amendments to the State’s Gun Law, referred to as the “Concealed Handgun Carry Improvement Act” (“CCIA”) were immediately challenged.Instead of relenting to the challenge, Kathy Hochul squandered taxpayer funds to defend the CCIA.Ultimately, the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York found for the Plaintiff New York gun owners. It issued a TRO, restraining Hochul from enforcing the amendments until trial on the merits of the CCIA.Still, Hochul refused to relent. She appealed the TRO to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where the case remains pending as of the date of this post.Conflating criminal misuse of handguns with the lawful use of handguns for self-defense, Hochul haughtily, contemptuously hides behind propaganda: a false, toxic narrative brew that the proliferation of handguns equates with gun violence.On a superficial level, this may make sense to some people as her proclamation is designed to do. But the true purpose of it is to hide a nefarious agenda: to deny to the law-abiding citizen his or her natural law right to armed self-defense.Hochul’s position is insupportable on legal, logical, and moral grounds. She obviously doesn’t care.If New Yorkers expect a safe and secure New York, they won’t obtain it from a Hochul Administration. Presumptively, any rational person would wish to live in an environment that is safe and would expect its government leaders to value the sanctity and inviolability of the individual.But people like Kathy Hochul care not for the well-being of the individual, but only for her well-being. That is the thinking of a sociopath. That is not the sort of person fit to be a leader.New Yorkers do have an alternative.Congressman Lee Zeldin is running against Kathy Hochul for New York Governor. Congressman Zeldin is the opposite of Hochul. He believes in the sanctity of each living Soul. Hochul does not. Her actions belie her words. Congressman Zeldin is a firm believer in the tenets of Individualism, consistent with the principles of the U.S. Constitution as written, as the framers of our Constitution intended. He is not a Collectivist. Hochul treats New York like a Beehive. She is the Queen Bee, and the average New Yorker, like the average Bee, is expendable! That is the gist of Collectivism.’ The tenets of Collectivism see their true expression and realization in Countries like CCP China. And Trudeau’s Canada is veering in that direction, as is our own Nation, under both the Biden Administration and the Pelosi/Schumer-controlled Congress. And people like Kathy Hochul wish the same for New Yorkers.Congressman Zeldin has stated he will fire Alvin Bragg once elected. Criminals and lunatics will no longer have a “field day.”But Hochul protects this Soros stooge: “Give him some time”; “Cut him some slack,” she retorts! Really? How much slack should New Yorkers give this creep? How much time does he need to prove his ineptitude as a DA? Bragg has since demonstrated his lack of concern for the life and well-being of innocent people. He does not believe in the need for pretrial detention for dangerous low life but immediately throws into the slammer individuals who, to his mind, have the audacity to defend their own life against maniacs.Such is the mindset of people who fail to accept, or even to recognize the natural law right to self-defense.  And rational Americans are expected to live in an insane, nightmarish dreamscape manufactured by these Dr. Frankenstein cousins: Kathy Hochul and Alvin Bragg?Most Americans, though, do not agree and will not accept an America ruled by irrational principles and dogma thrust upon them. Lee Zeldin won't and will not govern under irrational principles and dogma. Zeldin is a proponent of the natural law right of self-defense.He will institute policies that reflect the right of the people to keep and bear arms for self-defense and he will not kowtow to nor tolerate the antics of lunatics and criminals.Under Zeldin's Governorship New Yorkers need no longer fear the antics of malignant criminals and lunatics; nor the sordid policies of irreverent, irreligious malevolent leaders who give free license to such behavior and herald and rationalize such policies as good and just and right and proper.Congressman Zeldin will be tough on crime and on criminals, unlike Kathy Hochul who literally gives criminals and dangerous lunatics a “get-out-of-jail-free” card. Most importantly, Congressman Zeldin is a man of convictions, and those convictions are consistent with that of the fathers of our Nation. He isn’t a crass opportunist. Kathy Hochul, on the other hand, given the chance, will sell out the State and the people of New York to the highest bidder and, from her present set of actions, she has shown a proclivity to do just that—ransoming the State and the lives of the good people of New York to serve her own selfish ends.New Yorkers should keep uppermost in mind, as should all Americans: voting has its consequences.The future of New York does look bright and will be bright with the team of Lee Zeldin/Alison Esposito. Darkness is and will remain and worsen under the Kathy Hochul Administration—but only if elected.If New Yorkers like to live and work in a perpetual condition of abject fear, unable to defend their own lives with adequate means of protection that only a firearm can provide and unable to rely on the police even to provide a modicum of protection for the community, and if they wish to accept corruption as a normal condition, then by all means, vote for Kathy Hochul for Governor. Hochul has demonstrated she doesn’t give a damn for the physical safety and well-being and welfare of law-abiding American citizens who reside and work in New York; nor for the financial and economic well-being of the State; nor for preserving the tenets and principles of a Free Constitutional Republic, upon which our Country was created and upon which it thrived. For all other New Yorkers—those who do wish to live and work in a State that promotes the safety, well-being, and welfare of American citizens and who do wish to reside in a thriving, vibrant New York—you have an opportunity to do so.Remember: in making your decision, as to whom to vote for, keep in mind the adage invoked at the beginning of this article:Voters get the leaders and government they deserve. Those people become their representatives—the ones THEY elect to office. Ask yourself when you go to the polls to vote: “Do the representatives you vote for truly serve and truly desire to serve your interests or are their words mere artifice as they go about serving their own interests and aims—interests and aims that are altogether at loggerheads with those of you and I, the American people?”___________________________________Copyright © 2022 Roger J. Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

ONCE AMERICANS LOSE THEIR RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS, THEY WILL NEVER AGAIN REGAIN IT

“Another enduring principle is that we need countries to cooperate, now more than ever.  Not a single global challenge that affects your lives can be met by any one nation acting alone – not even one as powerful as the United States. And there is no wall high enough or strong enough to hold back the changes transforming our world.” ~ A slice of Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement to the American people and to the world, delivered in Washington, D.C., on March 3, 2021, less than five weeks after the Senate confirmed his nomination as a Cabinet Secretary.

CHANGES TRANSFORMING THE WORLD MUST NEVER BECOME THE PRETEXT FOR TRANSFORMING A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC INTO A PAWN OF TYRANTS

SOME TRUTHS ARE ETERNAL, NOT SUBJECT TO CHANGE

The U.S. is the only truly free Constitutional Republic in existence. That is how the framers of the U.S. Constitution designed our Government.Our Federal Government is the only one on Earth that exists solely to serve the interests of the American people. It has no other purpose.The Federal Government is answerable to and subordinate to the people. The American people are supreme sovereign over the Government.Once the servants of the people fail to recognize and acknowledge these aforesaid facts, and then forsake the interests of the people, the Government has descended into Tyranny.The American people have no lawful duty to suffer Tyranny. The Nation was founded on one singular precept, set forth in the Declaration of Independence. It is that our people are a free people and are to ever remain so, and as sole sovereign over their Government and each to him or herself, masters of their own fate, and the final arbiters and deciders of the Nation’s destiny.The Arbalest Quarrel has written extensively on Tyranny and will continue to do more. See, e.g., our article posted, a little over one year ago, on October 1, 2021. 

HOW DO AMERICANS EXERT THEIR SOVEREIGNTY OVER A GOVERNMENT THAT HAS RAISED THE SPECTER OF TYRANNY?

That the American people are lord and master over the Government, this is to be understood as resting not only in the limited and demarcated powers of Government but, more fundamentally, in the unalienable, illimitable, eternal, and unalterable natural law rights bestowed on man, not by Government or by other men, but by the Divine Creator, and thereupon codified in the Nation’s Bill of Rights.The Bill of Rights is an integral and essential part of the U.S. Constitution.By voicing dissent against the encroachment of Tyranny, and through the firearms they bear to thwart its inception and to prevent its entrenchment, the American people have the means not only to stave off Tyranny but both the right and the duty to do so, else they merit the Tyranny they allow to exist by their active or passive failure to resist it.None of this can be reasonably doubted. Yet, somehow, somewhere through the passing years, decades, and centuries, these paramount truisms became eroded, and, for many citizens, they became lost to memory.The forces that crush entire populations and nations, utilizing, in recent years, advances in both psychological conditioning and communication technology, have induced veritable amnesia in the masses of all countries, dulling their mental acuity and deadening their will and spirit. This has done much to dampen the resolve of populations of much of the European Union as well as of the populations of the British Commonwealth of Nations.And the same insidious weakness has now infected the American psyche, brought about by similar, incessant brainwashing programs, introduced into our Country by the same forces that have crushed western Europe and the British Commonwealth Nations. And they have thence directed their toxins against Americans, lessening their resolve, fostering self-doubt, confusion, and outright fear of the very Government that was created to serve them.This Federal Government has betrayed the American people; misused the powers entrusted to it—has turned those powers upon the American people. It has unlawfully brought those powers to bear on its own masters. In so doing the Government has usurped authority that rests not in Government and never did—authority that rests solely in the American people, and always has.Through their many agents, the forces that crush people and nations have gained ascendancy in Government here and have bent much of the private sector to their will. In the process, they have gained substantial control over the thoughts and conduct of a broad swath of Americans.Many Americans have become compliant, empty vessels, unable to escape from the incessant drone of hypnotic messaging, emanating throughout the Country. The messaging has infected all communication resources: smartphones, airwaves, and reading material—insinuating itself firmly into the minds of Americans, seeping poison into one’s reasoning faculties and into the darkest recesses of one’s emotions, where rests one’s fears and feelings of hopelessness.Wherever they may be, the American public has become an oft unwilling, captive audience to the constant dissemination of noxious propaganda.Yet many Americans have resisted indoctrination. Through inner strength of will, they are either immune to or have become inured to this indoctrination. They have effectively walled off the horrific effects of mass psychological indoctrination that have plagued so many others.

SOMETHING FOR AMERICANS TO PONDER WHEN THEY GO TO THE POLLS IN NOVEMBER

As the Midterm elections loom, the Obstructors and Destructors of our Nation have shown no disinclination of easing up on their agenda to corral and control the thoughts and conduct of the American people. On the contrary, they are “doubling down” their efforts.They intend to bring to fruition a global neo-feudalist State. To accomplish that feat requires them to maintain, as a necessary condition, firm control of Congress as well as the Executive Branch of Government.

HOW DID WE AMERICANS GET TO THIS PLACE WHERE OUR FOES HAVE TAKEN OVER CONTROL OF OUR GOVERNMENT, OF OUR PRESS, OF SOCIAL MEDIA, AND OF WEALTHY, POWERFUL CORPORATE AND FINANCIAL CONGLOMERATES?

The slow ossification of the thinking processes of Americans and the slow erosion of Americans’ natural law rights and liberties took time—commencing one hundred years ago—perhaps earlier. But it has rapidly moved ahead only since the turn of the 21^st Century, made possible through major advances in communication and through the consolidation and control over much of the Federal Government and over our Nation’s myriad institutions.In their discourse the Destroyers of our Nation and their toadies endlessly go on about “Democracy,” but rarely do they mention the words, ‘freedom,’ ‘constitution’ and ‘republic.’ And they never mention the phrase ‘Free Constitutional Republic,” in one breath.That phrase—‘Free Constitutional Republic’—is an apt descriptor of our form of Government, and our Free Constitutional Republic has served us well since its founding. Because of it, we have become, in the space of fewer than two hundred years, the most powerful, successful, and wealthiest Nation on Earth—the envy of all other nations, where previous generations came legally to live the “American dream.”But the forces that crush people and nations are many and they are powerful, wealthy, and ruthless, and they are jealous of both the power of our Country, the resilience of its people, and the strength of our natural law rights, and our belief in the Divine Creator—ultimate sovereign over people and government. These forces intend to rend us from these beliefs and crush us.These wreckers of our Nation intend to plunder our Nation’s mineral resources and in the interim make those resources unavailable to the American people. And as they have taken control over the Federal Government’s military, police, intelligence, and judicial apparatuses, they have turned those engines of Government against the American people, as Americans are now beginning to learn.And what these wreckers of our Nation find either unsuitable to or antithetical to their needs, wants, and objectives, they have marked them as Detritus, and have consigned those items—both tangible and intangible—to the Trash Heap.And we all know what those items are:

• The Nation’s Constitution;
• The Idea and Fact of the Sovereignty of the American People over Government
• The Nation’s Natural Law Rights, Codified in the Nation’s Bill of Rights;
• The Dismantling of the Nation’s Institutions, History, Heritage, and Culture;
• The Destruction of the Nation’s Emblems and Symbols, and Arts and Artifacts;
• The Erasing of the Nation’s Ethos, Ethics, and Christian Morality;
• The Erosion of the Importance of the Family in American Society;
• Transitioning Americans away from Reliance on Self to Dependency on Government;
• Promoting the Precepts of Collectivism; Denigrating the Precepts of Individualism;
• Infusing Americans with a Conformist Mindset;
• Acclimating Americans to Conditions of Poverty and Minimal Expectations; and
• Dissolution of Concepts such as ‘Nation-State,’ ‘Citizen,’ and ‘Patriotism.’

Many if not most Americans know, if they had heretofore any doubt, that the Nation has undergone a not-so-quiet coup d’état, centered on the Executive Branch of Government, with the investiture of the Grand Harlequin, Joe Biden, inhabiting the Executive Suite of Government. This dementia-ridden, brain-addled, corrupt, and compliant fool serves as a placeholder for the real rulers of the Country: shadowy, sinister, powerful,  ruthless elements bent on the Nation’s ruination. This fool, Joe Biden, who pretends to be the decider of American policy is the disturbing, disgusting public face of America—no more than a messenger boy through whom the dictates of the real rulers of our Country flow. The sinister forces that dictate their destructive policies to this toady in Government must derive a bit of smug satisfaction in that. As they destroy the Nation, they are at one and the same time able to shame it and mock it, as well. This explains why much of the Press and social media on behalf of the Government are more than insistent on getting the American citizenry to accept as legitimate, the results of the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. They are frantic that Americans accept the simplistic narrative they have spun—fervently silencing, denouncing, and discrediting anyone who happens to offer an alternate view, brooking no voice to the contrary but offering no response to a reasonable query.Our Republic is hanging on by a thread.Strength of Will and Dint of Arms is what we have left. Let they be enough, and may we hold fast to both in these trying, dangerous times!___________________________________Copyright © 2022 Roger J. Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT CAN ONLY DO SO MUCH TO PRESERVE THE SECOND AMENDMENT; THE GREATER EFFORT RESTS, AS IT ALWAYS HAS, WITH THE PEOPLE

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

MULTISERIES

PART EIGHT (REWORKED)

IT HAS BEEN A LONG HARD BATTLE TO SECURE THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS. AND YET MORE BATTLES REMAIN TO BE FOUGHT

Bruen has been an arduous, time-consuming, expensive, uphill battle for New Yorkers who simply wish to exercise their natural law right of armed self-defense. It will continue to be so. Bruen hasn’t changed a damn thing—at least in New York—and matters will remain the same until or unless New Yorkers say they have had enough of the specious nonsense spouted from the New York Governor, Kathy Hochul and others like her. She is cut from the same cloth as her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo. They claim they care about the life and well-being of New Yorkers, even as innocent residents fear for their safety and well-being, as they have good reason to do. But they simply don’t care, And New York City Mayor, Eric Adams, is no different. They are on the same page, each a carbon copy of the other, especially in matters involving their singular abhorrence of guns and antipathy toward the civilian citizen owning and possessing them. That fact is engrained in their brains. They won’t change. Those New Yorkers who continue to elect to office the same politicians who continue to harp on the evils of guns, and who continue to defy the plain meaning of the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights, are doing themselves, and all other residents in New York, a disservice. These politicians, Kathy Hochul and Eric Adams, aren't wise and New York isn't safe. And, unfortunately, New York isn't alone. Politicians and Courts in other jurisdictions will pay lip service to the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court in Bruen, just as they have paid lip service to the rulings in Heller and McDonald, for over a decade.New York politicians, and politicians in several other jurisdictions, with the same mindset, have handcuffed the police. Yet, at one and the same time, they continue to prevent members of the public from obtaining access to the best means available for protecting themselves, a handgun. Yet, all the while, they exclaim, disingenuously, a concern for “gun violence,” that plagues their cities.But “gun violence” is simply a species of general “criminal violence.” New York’s Hochul and Adams deliberately mislead the public into believing that “gun violence” is the only source of violence committed against innocent people, or, otherwise, that “gun violence” is the only kind of violence in the community that matters. They stubbornly refuse to accept the obvious.  Criminals will always find a way to obtain guns illegally or will use other means if guns are not readily available to them, and that guns in the hands of average, innocent, rational, and responsible Americans do a better job of preventing the commission of violent crimes than do fewer guns in the hands of those Americans. And to those Anti-Second Amendment zealots who contend that guns have no place in a civilized society, one need only point out that no society, today, is truly civilized. Predatory animal, and predatory man, and predatory government are ever with us. In a million years man may truly become “civilized.” And, at that point, the presence or absence of firearms will be irrelevant. But, until that time, the innocent man will require effective means to protect his life and well-being. And, to date, only a firearm provides that. Denying the omnipresent need for a firearm in the hands of the innocent man does not make that fact go away. It only welcomes violence against that innocent man by predator animal on four legs, predator animal on two legs, or, worst of all, predatory Government, a monster with multiple heads—the Hydra beast, a thing most tenacious, wildly destructive, and difficult to control, let alone kill.

ABSURD BELIEFS HAVE ODD STAYING POWER WHEN CONSTANTLY REPEATED

Anti-Second Amendment proponents continually go on about how guns are the source of violence and those that possess them are prone to violence, be whoever they are and wherever situated. That is patently ridiculous. Yet that message is stated insistently and emphatically by Anti-Second Amendment politicians. It is echoed loudly and incessantly by a compliant, sympathetic legacy Press. And it is further exploited by many in the medical community. The message is taken as self-evidently true, without need for proof, even though the claim is patently ridiculous.And New Yorkers know it is hopeless to ask for assistance from Governor Hochul or from the police, especially in a situation where the need is both dire and immediate. See, e.g., Arbalest Quarrel article, titled, "Can We, as Individuals, Rely on the Police to Protect Us" and reposted on Ammoland Shooting Sports News. And, police response to emergencies has only gotten worse in this Post-George Floyd era. Even where refunding of community police departments has displaced the defunding the Police the BLM hysteria, the Neo-Marxist "racism" hysteria remains a potent and debilitating force yet to be reckoned with. Police response times along with the general ineffectiveness of community policing, due in great part to demoralization in the police ranks, understandable and justified, remains. Thus the effectiveness of community policing is worse than in the Pre-George Floyd era. It is especially bad in large Democrat Party run municipalities, like NYC, Chicago, Baltimore, Minneapolis, LA, San Francisco, just to name a few. These City Governments are hopelessly tied to the Neo-Marxist Racism craze or are held hostage to Marxist cultists and/or  derive funding/guidance/control/advice from one or more of a plethora of NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) that have direct or indirect connection to the George Soros "Open Society Initiative. See, e.g., a delineation of these organizations on the website "Jellyfish." The tentacles of this "Open Society" takeover of western civilization are in fact worldwide, as readily acknowledged.With all this in mind, it is important for one to keep fervently in mind that the matter of self-defense remains—especially today—a personal responsibility. Police Departments have no legal duty—contrary to what many erroneously believe—to come to the assistance of anyone anyway. And they never did. The impact of this fact has grown acute and is now transparent to any American who will stop to look. The Arbalest Quarrel has published much content about the doctrine of sovereign immunity apropos of the police.See, especially, as noted, supra, AQ article, titled, “Can We, as Individuals, Rely on the Police to Protect Us?”, published on November 21, 2019; AQ article, titled, “The Government Cannot Protect You! You Must Protect Yourself”, published on July 31, 2020; and AQ article, titled “NYC Mayor Eric Adams Has His Own Armed Protection; What About The Rest Of Us?, published on March 30, 2022.New Yorkers are simply asking—in fact, demanding, as they have every right to do—that the Government not deny to the people exercise of the natural law right of personal armed self-defense. But, in New York it is too much to ask of the Government that the people be allowed to arm themselves in their own defense against predators—as if they should be required to ask Government for such permission, when they should not; when Bruen, in fact, says they need not, as the right of armed self-defense is implicit in the Second Amendment guarantee, as a natural law, Divine Right.For, even with the Divine Creator’s own imprimatur on this—the plain words “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”—codified in the Second Amendment of our Nation’s Bill of Rights, and even with the U.S. Supreme Court’s strictures, commanding the New York Government, to comply with the fundamental, unalienable natural law right of the people, the NY Government does not acquiesce. It will not relent. It won’t adhere to or even deign to make an iota of concession to the people of New York. This New York Government doubles down on invoking the Sullivan Act. And, with 112 years of existence and further refinement, the Sullivan Act has been cemented in the psyche of the New York Government and in the psyche of the public as well.And so, this emblem of New York Government defiance to God, to the Constitution, and to the people of New York—one Kathy Hochul—declares openly and pompously that the Government of New York, and not the U.S. Supreme Court, will continue to decide what is in the best interests of the people; that the Government not the High Court has the best interests of the people of New York at heart; and that allowing law-abiding, responsible, rational civilian citizens to carry a concealed weapon in New York endangers everyone. This is the height of arrogance and conceit. Thus, the Governor of New York gives carte blanche to psychopaths and lunatics that they may continue to prey on the innocent, with abandon. See recent AQ article on this as posted on our site, and as reposted on Ammoland Shooting Sports News. But, even in that—allowing law-abiding, responsible, rational civilian citizens to carry a concealed weapon in New York endangers everyone—the Hochul Government is wrong. The Daily Wire blows that myth out of the water. See also article in “Bearing Arms,” and in NSSF. No less than the progressive cable station, CNN, dares mention of a crime wave in Mayor Eric Adams’ New York City. The criminal is, always was, and ever remains the problem. It isn’t “the gun,” and never was “the gun.”  See also article in the NY Post. Bloomberg News tries to spin this massive increase in crime, explaining the crime rates were much worse in the Eighties and early Nineties. But who were the Mayors of NYC at the time? It was the Democrat, Ed Koch, from 1978 through 1989, and it was Democrat David Dinkins, from 1990 until 1993. Crime rates in NYC only began to drop, and to drop dramatically, under Republican Rudy Giuliani, the NYC Mayor from 1994 through December 2001. Giuliani instituted a tough on crime policy, referred to as “Broken Windows.” Crime rates in the Big Apple continued to plummet under the Democrat, Michael Bloomberg, who continued Giuliani’s “Broken Windows” policy. But, once that tough on crime policy was revoked by the Democrat, Bill de Blasio, crime rates began to spike once again and to spiral completely out of control. And, de Blasio, true to form like most politicians, blamed the massive spike in crime in NYC, not on himself and his soft on crime policies, but on the Courts. See NY Post article.The present NYC Mayor, Eric Adams is playing the same “Blame Game” as de Blasio—casting blame on the Courts for crime in the City that continues unchecked.  See CBS News Report here and here, CBS News report. New Yorkers—never a group to exhibit patience—are becoming impatient with Eric Adams. Remember, Eric Adams told the public he wouldn’t continue de Blasio’s lenient on crime policy measures. But, as reported by the Washington Examiner, Adams’ has done just that, notwithstanding the unveiling of his “Blueprint To End Gun Violence,” delivered with great fanfare to the City back in January 2022. But no one hears anything about that anymore. Does anyone really wonder why? Adams “Blueprint to End Gun Violence” was never anything other than a publicity stunt and a poor one at that. And its failure is alluded to in the very title of the Adams’ plan for the City.This thing ‘Gun Violence’ is, like the phrase, ‘assault weapon,’ nothing more than a stratagem, a neologism manufactured for a specific purpose. Leftist propagandists developed it, and the ever obedient and indulgent legacy Press, ran with it. The fabricators of the phrase, ‘Gun Violence,’ have used the phrase to deflect justifiable public criticism, for the massive waves of criminal violence afflicting our Nation, onto “the gun” and away from the Democrats and other Obstructors and Destructors of our free Republic. People like Hochul and Adams attribute the surge of violent crime on “guns” and thereby shift discussion onto an inanimate object and away from themselves. A firearm is a convenient scapegoat. It is incapable of proffering a defense. It cannot point to the fact that it, as an object, not a sentient subject, can neither cause violent crime, nor be the effect of violent crime. But Hochul and Adams attempt, nonetheless, to shunt aside justifiable criticism of them and their administrations. But it is their own incompetence and their own lack of will and foresight to deal with crime head-on, unlike their predecessors Giuliani and Bloomberg had done, that explains the rapidly rising crime rates. But even those Mayors of New York could have gone further to truly bring violent crime to a standstill. They could have taken action to overturn the Sullivan Act. But they would never go so far as that. Disarming the law-abiding New Yorker would never be part of a bold plan to tackle crime at its source: the psychopathic criminal, the violent criminally insane, and the opportunistic hoodlum. See article in “City and State New York.” How these Anti-Second Amendment zealots love to use statistics to deceive the public and to lull it into complacency! Contending with crime, substantively and seriously, won’t happen with the present Administration and Democrat Party-Controlled Legislature in Albany. The main problem with New York is that too many members of the public willingly accept their politicians' manipulation of statistical data, urging the public to deny what they readily observe in day-to-day life in New York. And too many of them have become so enamored with and mesmerized by the new religious dogma of "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion," along with its ludicrous claim of having a lock hold on morality, i.e., of what is right, and proper, and just, that their rational mind is trapped in a hopeless miasma of confusion, subject to its own nightmarish discordant logic.And so, the State Government is, at present, under the thumb of Governor Kathy Hochul and of a Democrat Party-Controlled Legislature that operates with abandon, against the needs and interests of the people of the State.The New York Governor, along with the Democrat Party-Controlled Legislature and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, “who vowed to crack down on crime if elected mayor,” but didn’t, are ever bound to their own dogma and to their own psychological and ideological biases. Add to that the fact that they are held hostage to a Radical Left Marxist internationalist base of voters that despises our Country, and to a shadowy network of Neoliberal Globalist/Neo-Marxist "ruling elite" enforcers that intend to destroy our Country, and you have a situation ripe for corruption of Government, and stagnation in society, and ultimate decay and dissolution of the Republic.So wrapped up are these politicians in their dogma and personal lust for power, that they fail to understand, or choose to ignore, that their cardinal duty is to provide for the general safety, security, and well-being of the public.  Saying they care are about the well-being of New York and its denizens, doesn't make it so. It is all just a vacuous exercise—the same verbiage delivered drone-like, hypnotically, unconvincingly. These politicians have done nothing beneficial for New York, and everything that disadvantages New York. Their multiple failures bring discredit and shame to all of them. Time for a change in outlook don't you think? The Governor, the Legislature, the City Mayor adamantly refuse to allow New Yorkers to provide for their own defense. And that is worse than shameful. The conscious refusal to even acknowledge the unalienable, immutable right of armed self-defense is reprehensible, indefensible, and unforgivable. And, with the Soros-funded Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, who operates more like a zealous Public Defender of the criminal element in the City and much less like a zealous Prosecutor of them, on behalf of the populace, as he is supposed to do, New York is on the road to societal disaster at a rapid pace.If change is to come, then, it will have to come from Republicans and Independents. And the best bet for New York is U.S. Congressman, Lee Zeldin, for Governor, in 2022. If Americans are to secure their unalienable right of armed self-defense, it is best they have Government, Federal and State, that work for them, not against them; that honor their natural law rights, rather than attempt to shred those rights. Might Lee Zeldin take steps to dismantle the apparatus of the Sullivan Act? It would be interesting to see. But will the New York voter give him that chance? Better legislation with the right people in Office than spending exorbitant sums of money, time, and aggravation on endless litigation!How much more threat of violence must progressive/liberal-minded New Yorkers suffer before they come to their senses. How many more innocent lives lost for lack of will to try someone new; to try something new?One would think the public would finally come to its senses after the horror of de Blasio as Mayor of NYC and Cuomo as Governor of the State. Too many New Yorkers have not. How much more danger must New Yorkers contend with before they throw people like Hochul and Adams under the bus, instead of positing themselves there, instead? Too many New Yorkers seem willing to accept deception from politicians, even when that deception and the horrific result of that deception is plainly visible and risible.City residents are stuck with Adams for a long while, three more years. But Governor Hochul, who was never elected Mayor, but became Mayor after Cuomo was hounded out of Office by the Democrat Party machinery that had once supported him, will now face her first Gubernatorial race in November 2022.New Yorkers will have a chance as well, to remake the New York State Assembly and Senate. Hopefully, Republicans and Independents and enough intelligent Democrats will turn the tide. They can in November. They can have a safe and secure State if they have the will and do not allow themselves to be hoodwinked by propaganda, flooding the airwaves. It is all up to the people of New York. Give Lee Zeldin and Alison Esposito a chance to turn things around for New York. New York can become a safe, secure, and thriving State once again._____________________________________Copyright © 2022 Roger J. Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

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

PART ONE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PART TWO

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

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

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

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

THE 11TH HOUR APPROACHES: THE FATE OF OUR COUNTRY RESTS IN THE BALANCE

In a few weeks, the U.S. may expect someone to be inaugurated President of the United States. Who will that “someone” be? Most Americans expect the empty-headed, corrupt Joseph Biden will be that person. And many Americans look forward to that event even as they fail to realize they have been hoodwinked, believing that a Biden/Harris Administration to be a godsend for the Nation, rather than the calamity it really portends for the Nation and its people.Even now, the mainstream seditious media continues its incessant, endless, badgering of Trump. His reasonable demands for a serious investigation into the most flagrant, deceitful, reprehensible acts of elections fraud and electoral process manipulation ever to occur in our Nation go unchecked, unanswered.The President can’t even make a telephone call without the Press and the Democrat Party leadership screaming yet again, ever again for his impeachment—doing so with automatic, repetitive, rote, vacuous sameness, no less so than the mad Red Queen in Louis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” as she constantly rages: “off with his head; off with his head; off with his head. . . .”The President’s legitimate concerns are continually, consistently met with haughty disdain as the seditious mainstream media reiterates with noxious regularity an empty denunciation of Trump’s reasonable demands for a detailed accounting of and audit of the 2020 election.The Press perfunctorily dismisses rather than troubles itself to admit or, at least, to investigate, incontrovertible proof of massive elections fraud; and, through it all, has the audacity to expect the public to accept the simplistic unsupported assertion that the 2020 election was aboveboard and honest despite a wealth of damning evidence to the contrary.Is not the Press, THIS PRESS, an enemy of the people rather than its guardian? The Press insists on playing the public for fools. The pity of it is that so many Americans are willing to play along with this; indeed, all too many even believe the idiocy. That helps explain why our Country is in the dire state it finds itself now, at this 11^th Hour.

INTER ARMA ENIM SILENT LEGES (“IN TIMES OF WAR, THERE ARE NO LAWS”)

This Country, our Nation, is in a state of war—a war as immediate and emphatic as the war fought by our founding fathers to secure independence from tyranny. An illegal takeover of our Government is about to take place and it is occurring in plain sight.With the U.S. Supreme Court and the Department of Justice having capitulated to secretive, powerful, ruthless forces that have made clear their refusal to permit Trump a second term in Office—and with the ability of these extraordinarily powerful and inordinately wealthy forces to control the mass apparatus of the Press, the courts, the vast military, police, and intelligence apparatuses, they have made abundantly clear, that they intend to destroy our free Constitutional Republic. It is now up to a few courageous members of Congress and for average Americans to prevent this.If ruthless elements both here at home and abroad do secure essentially complete control of our Government, sitting their senile puppet, Joseph Biden, in the White House, then the only thing that will remain of a once great Nation-State and a sovereign people will be but the trappings. The mere skeletal outline of a free Constitutional Republic will remain—for a time—kept merely to fool some and to appease others who remain restless, restive and suspicious.And even the trappings of a free Constitutional Republic will eventually be dispensed with as no longer necessary as the American people will have been completely subdued.We will see the Country quietly, inexorably, and quickly merged into a one world system of governance—a new world order that the neoliberal globalist statists Henry Kissinger and the late U.S. President, George H.W. Bush, and the late U.S. Senator, John McCain, talked glowingly, lovingly about and predicted would occur.The empty-headed Joseph Biden is a mere, and temporary, placeholder for powerful ruthless interests who will use him to consolidate final and complete control over the machinery of Government. And then they will dispense with him, perhaps even in before his first term ends, and he will be happy to go, having dutifully played his part.In his stead they will place Kamala Harris, as a new puppet, ostensibly to placate the Radical Left Marxists and Anarchists.These Marxists and Anarchists share at least one thing with the globalist statist elites: the intention to destroy the Country in its present form as an independent sovereign Nation-state, and a desire to eradicate a Constitution that includes a Bill of Rights perceived as a codification of natural rights bestowed on man by the Divine Creator: rights that exist intrinsically in man; rights that therefore exist wholly beyond the power of Government to lawfully modify, abrogate or ignore.Evidence of the intent of the neoliberal globalist elites and of the Radical Left Marxists and Anarchists is all around us.In the last several months, we have seen:

• The desecration and destruction of our Nation’s monuments
• Insolent, insensitive, disrespectful denigration of our founding fathers
• Presumptuous and Contemptuous attacks on Christianity and on our Judeo-Christian ethic
• Artificial attempts to reconstruct the English Language and to control English usage
• Naked attempts to sow dissension, divisiveness, and discord among ethnic groups and races
• Censoring evidence of Beijing’s massive espionage operations in our Country and cloaking Beijing’s responsibility in the handling of the COVID plague
• Undertaking an extensive campaign of historical revisionism
• Inculcating a false sense of guilt in the psyche of the target (White) population
• Demeaning the Black population by treating Blacks as victims and then raising victimhood to the status of a virtue
• Deliberately inducing fear in the public consciousness and volatility in the public domain by emptying prisons and jails of hardened, dangerous criminals and emptying mental institutions of severely disturbed individual

If the Great Imposter Joseph Biden does ascend to the U.S. Presidency, then further degradation of and subjugation of the American citizenry will proceed apace, and the Country will suffer further dissipation and ruination.With the billionaire neoliberal globalists firmly entrenched in power, we will see, the floodgates opened to tens of millions more of illegal aliens. Included in their ranks will be members of dangerous drug cartels and sex traffickers.The powerful elites of society will amass further wealth and monopolistic power at the expense of hundreds of millions of average Americans, the latter of whom will be reduced to abject poverty, becoming completely dependent on Government to provide for basic physical needs. This will all be by design.Education will be dummied down for the mass of Americans. They will be taught to blindly accept authority. The critical faculties of Americans will atrophy. And this, too, will be by design.The Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution will wither and die. Freedom of Speech and thought, and freedom of association and assembly will be strictly controlled.Civilian ownership and possession of firearms will be severely constrained.Freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures will cease to exist as dossiers will be kept on every American from the moment of birth until the moment of death. Surveillance of every American will be the norm; privacy will become essentially nonexistent.Even the concept of private property, except for the ruling class, will be imperiled as the concept of ‘private property’ is inconsistent with the tenets of Collectivism.The notion of personhood, of selfhood will also wither and die as the sanctity of the individual will give way to the imperative of the Collective.If anyone believes these outcomes are too fantastical to be realized, one should understand they are already coming to pass. And the defilers of our Nation have the gall to tell us that it is we, Americans and President Trump whom we elected, who are the threats to democracy.The question is, what are we prepared to do to prevent these trends from becoming so pronounced, so entrenched that it is impossible to reverse them?It will be easier, far easier, to preempt these trends if Trump retains control of the Presidency for a second term. After all, it is he who won the 2020 election and who has sought to enshrine the words, “Make America Great Again,”—words that are an obscenity to the globalist elites and to the Radical Left Marxists and Anarchists.To think that it was the insincere, corrupt, and feeble Joe Biden who hardly can speak sensibly who pulled this thing off without a dollop of fraud and criminal machinations here and there to assist him, defies common sense. And the evidence shouts out the lie of a legitimate win for this Great Imposter, Joseph Biden.Our Country will lose its soul if Joseph Biden is installed as U.S. President in Trump’s stead. And with the Democrat lackeys in control of the House and a hairbreadth away of control of the U.S. Senate (as this article goes to print), the Republic may very well be breathing its last.One must wonder and ponder if the present situation is not the very sort of situation for which the framers of the U.S. Constitution codified the natural rights of free speech and the right of the people to keep and bear arms.____________________________________Copyright © 2021 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved. 

THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT PROTECT YOU! YOU MUST PROTECT YOURSELF!

REMARKS OF ARBALEST QUARREL FOUNDER, STEPHEN L'DANRILLI, ON STEPHEN HALBROOK ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN AUGUST 2020 NRA PUBLICATION, AMERICA'S 1ST FREEDOM

As a NYPD veteran police officer, and Adjunct Professor/Lecturer of Police Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, National Rifle Association Certified Firearms Instructor (pistol, rifle, and shotgun), and Training Counselor, and active member of the International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors, and lifetime resident of New York City, I have dedicated my life to the preservation and strengthening of our cherished Second Amendment. This is no easy task, especially today, as we see constant, concerted, vigorous attacks on the fundamental right of personal defense with firearms.So, it was with more than a little interest I read Stephen Halbrook’s article, “How Does New York City Get Away With This,” published in the August 2020 edition of NRA’s publication, “America’s 1^st Freedom.”Stephen Halbrook is a Second Amendment Constitutional law expert and a prolific writer and author who has argued and won several important Second Amendment cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.In his article he provides a brief history of restrictive handgun licensing in New York City. He correctly observes that “[i]t all started with the Sullivan Act of 1911, the first law in any state (other than the slave codes) to require a license for mere possession of a pistol even in the home.”  Toward the end of the article, he makes the point that:“Nothing has changed since 1911 when [an Italian-American] Mario Rossi carried a pistol for protection against the Black Hand, for which he was sentenced to a year in prison.” It is of course disturbingly, depressingly, frustratingly true that, indeed, nothing has changed in New York City since 1911, insofar as the City continues to require a valid license to lawfully possess a handgun.Still, in a few important respects, much has changed, and for the worse, since enactment of the unconscionable and unconstitutional Sullivan Act.In the 109 years since handgun licensing began, New York City’s laws have become more extensive, more oppressive and repressive, and confoundingly difficult to understand. These laws are a labyrinthine maze of ambiguity and vagueness, and they are singularly bizarre.Unlike many other States that wisely preempt the field of gun regulation, as failure to do so invariably promotes and leads to confusion and inconsistencies across a State, the York State Government, in Albany, has not preempted the field. The New York Legislature gives local governments wide discretion in establishing their own firearms rules as long as local government enactments don’t conflict with basic State law mandates.Albany traditionally allows, and even encourages, local governments to devise their own, often numerous and extremely stringent, firearms rules. New York City has done so, and with glee, devising an extraordinarily complex and confusing array of rules directed to the ownership and possession of all firearms: rifles, shotguns, and handguns.New York State law, NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (1) sets forth the basic handgun licensing scheme, applicable to all New York jurisdictions, making clear that possession of handguns falls within the province of the police and that,“No license shall be issued or renewed pursuant to this section except by the licensing officer, and then only after investigation and finding that all statements in a proper application for a license are true.” NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (3)(a) provides that,“Applications shall be made and renewed, in the case of a license to carry or possess a pistol or revolver, to the licensing officer in the city or county, as the case may be, where the applicant resides, is principally employed or has his or her principal place of business as merchant or storekeeper.”New York City builds upon State Statute, establishing a mind-numbing set of tiers of handgun licensing, mandating the extent to which New York residents may exercise the privilege, not the right, to possess a handgun for self-defense.The Rules of the City of New York, specifically 38 RCNY 5-01, has established, at the moment, at least, no less than 6 different categories of handgun licenses:

• Premises License—Residence or Business
• Carry Business License
• Limited Carry Business License
• Carry Guard License/Gun Custodian License
• Special Carry Business License
• Special Carry Guard License/Gun Custodian License

New York City’s tiered handgun licensing scheme is not only inconsistent with the Second Amendment, but it also promotes unlawful discrimination under the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment and invites both abuse by and corruption in the City’s Licensing Division. In fact, the City’s insufferable and puzzling handgun licensing scheme is, from a purely logical standpoint, apart from a legal standpoint, internally inconsistent and incoherent.Premise residence and business handgun licenses place considerable restraints on a licensee’s right of self-defense. Unrestricted handgun carry licenses, on the other hand, are issued only to a select few people who satisfy arbitrary “proper cause,” requirements. Of course, powerful, wealthy, politically-connected “elites” are exceptions, routinely obtaining rare and coveted unrestricted handgun carry licenses, unavailable to the average citizen, residing in the City.And criminals don’t obey handgun licensing rules or any other State law or City code, rule, or regulation pertaining to firearms. So they don’t care what the laws say. And this hasn’t changed.But it is deeply troubling, indeed mind-boggling, to believe New York City’s harsh, brutal, even despotic handgun licensing scheme continues to escape Constitutional scrutiny, a point Stephen Halbrook makes at the outset of his August 2020 NRA article, when he says,“‘Under New York law, it is a crime to possess a firearm’, held the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in U.S. vs. Sanchez-Villar (2004). This ruling was based on the state’s ban on the possession of an unlicensed handgun. This prohibition did not offend the Second Amendment, said this ruling, because ‘the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right.’ Later rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court—D.C v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010—begged to differ. . . . But the Second Circuit must not have gotten the memo. . . .”Stephen Halbrook makes clear that the New York licensing scheme is unlawful on its face because the very concept of licensing is grounded on the erroneous idea that gun possession is a privilege and not a fundamental right, a notion that is completely at odds with the Second Amendment and with High Court rulings. And I agree with Stephen Halbrook’s assessment.The Arbalest Quarrel has pointed out the Constitutional flaws inherent in gun licensing schemes over and over again, through the years, commencing with our first series of articles on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s draconian and inane New York Safe Act of 2013.We called the Governor out on New York’s unconstitutional licensing scheme. See, e.g., our April 30, 2014 article where we concluded with this: “To suffer bad law is unfortunate. But, forced submission to State law that infringes a fundamental right is sinful.” New York City residents have been forced to submit to unconstitutional firearms laws since 1911. New York’s gun control laws were and continue to be enacted to disarm the honest citizen and to discourage personal self-defense.If a person insists on possessing a handgun for self-defense, New York insists on one’s first obtaining permission from the police department to do so, through the acquisition of a license, issued by the police.Yet, the imposition of stringent handgun license requirements is inconsistent with the import of the fundamental right to keep and bear arms as codified in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.Redress is necessary. It’s about time.Still, Anti-Second Amendment proponents and zealots interject that every State requires that a motorist obtain an operator’s license to lawfully operate a motor vehicle on public streets, and they ask, “why should gun possession be any different?” But in posing the question, these Anti-Second Amendment activists demonstrate an intention to reduce the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms to the status of mere privilege, which, in fact, is what a motorist’s license is; merely a privilege to drive an automobile on public roadways. It is logically and legally wrong to view and to treat a fundamental right as a mere privilege.New York attempts to skirt addressing the inherent unconstitutionality of the entire firearms’ licensing scheme through pompous, imbecilic assurances that a person doesn’t need a handgun to defend him or herself because Government, protects a person. That is patently false and, in any event, it is wholly beside the point, as the Arbalest Quarrel made clear in an article posted on our site on November 21, 2019. That article was reprinted in Ammoland Shooting Sports News on November 26, 2019, although in a different format with some editing.As we said, under the ‘doctrine of sovereign immunity’ the police are not, as a general rule, legally obligated to protect and guarantee the life and safety of any individual, and they cannot be held legally liable for failing to do so. Courts have routinely so held, including New York Courts. But many Americans fail to realize this because the seditious Press and politicians routinely lie to them.The purpose of a community police department is to protect the society-at-large, nothing more. I had pointed this out 30 years ago, in an article I co-authored with Second Amendment scholar, David Kopel. And that basic doctrine has not changed since.But, very recently, something has changed and drastically.Radical Left State and local governments are no longer even allowing their police departments to provide a modicum of protection for their community. This follows from the unrestrained actions and antics of volatile Marxist and Anarchist groups whom they kowtow to. They have called for the defunding of and disbanding of community police departments across the Country and some jurisdictions have done so. In New York City the Radical Left Mayor, Bill de Blasio, has slashed $1 Billion from the NYPD budget. This comes at a critical time when soaring crime and daily riots demand more funding for police, not less.This is a major change because the average American can, now, no longer depend on the police to provide even general protection to the community.It must be noted, too, that there are attempts by Marxists and Anarchists to rewrite the laws on sovereign immunity, to hold police accountable for harming citizens. But this is not for the purpose of securing more police protection and for making the police more accountable to the law-abiding public at large.To the contrary, the purpose of overturning police sovereign immunity rulings is  to provide the public with less protection and, at once, to allow lawless rioters, looters, arsonists, and assailants to engage in attacks on the police and on innocent people without having to fear justifiable retribution for their lawless acts.So, in some ways, matters have changed. Radical Left Governments are leaving communities less safe by preventing the police from promoting law and order, and they are even prevented from protecting themselves as lawlessness occurs all around them, rendering them powerless to engage lawbreakers.The public sees the disturbing results: demoralized officers and less safe communities as police are not permitted to provide communities with even a modicum of safety. This obviously is not for the better.Moreover, even as Radical Left Government leaders restrain and constrain the police, they continue to resist recognition of the fundamental, unalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms for their own defense. These Marxist leaders demonstrate their contempt for the very sanctity of human life, even as they claim disingenuously to care about human life. They don’t care and they never did. Theirs is a recipe for disaster: for a complete breakdown of law and order in society.But a breakdown of society is precisely what these Radical Left Governments want. They wish to tear down the Nation, so they can reconfigure it in a manner completely at odds with the preservation of the free Constitutional Republic our founders gave us.Yet, despite the intentions of the Radical Left Collectivists, they can’t subvert the dictates of natural law. Natural law dictates that the right and responsibility of self-defense rests today, as it always did, on the individual.Americans must not listen to the seditious Press and duplicitous politicians who claim that defunding or eliminating the police is necessary and, who claim, at one and the same time, the necessity for curbing the personal right of armed self-defense as well; that taking these actions will improve society. That is not only false, it is absurd. The seditious Press and Radical Left politicians don’t have, and never did have, the best interests of the Nation or its people at heart. This is now transparent and, given the present state of affairs afflicting our Country, this fact is irrefutable.Although I have always been a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment, I never advocated that everyone should get a gun. I did support and continue to support freedom of choice in owning and possessing firearms. But now, it is time for every law-abiding American citizen to be armed. Learn how to properly use a gun and how to safeguard it.Our Country is at a crossroads. We stand to lose everything near and dear to us if we don’t pay to heed to the threats directed against us, bearing down relentlessly on all of us.It is the responsibility of all citizens to safeguard their own life and safety and that of their families, and to preserve our Republic as the founders intended; to protect it from the insinuation of tyranny that the Radical Left would dare impose on Americans.Stephen L. D'Andrilli________________________________________Copyright © 2020 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.  

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.

CAN WE, AS INDIVIDUALS, RELY ON THE POLICE TO PROTECT US? A REPRISE OF OUR EARLIER ARTICLE

MULTI SERIES ARTICLE: CAN AMERICANS TRULY RELY ON THE POLICE TO PROTECT THEM?

A FURTHER LOOK AT THE QUESTION OF POLICE DUTY IN THIS PRESENT ERA OF SENSELESS, INCESSANT, REPREHENSIBLE ATTACKS ON THE POLICE AND UPON THOSE AMERICANS WHO, UNHINDERED, WISH TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR OWN PHYSICAL SAFETY AND WELL-BEING THROUGH EXERCISE OF THEIR NATURAL, FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE, GOD-GIVEN RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS.

PART ONE

WHAT IS THE DUTY OF A COMMUNITY’S POLICE FORCE TOWARD A CITIZEN WHOSE LIFE IS IN IMMINENT THREAT OF ATTACK?

Do the police have a legal duty to come to the immediate assistance of an innocent American whose life is in imminent danger if the police are notified of that imminent danger? We had asked this question in a previous article, and ask it once again in light of present Leftist attacks on both the police and upon those American civilian citizens who wish to exercise their natural and fundamental right to keep and bear arms. Although the responses to the aforesaid question will be varied, as we noted, we expect that many people—perhaps most—would respond with the following: “that’s a silly question; of course, the police have a duty, and that is their job, to come to the immediate assistance of an innocent American whose life is in imminent danger.” For many people, the answer to the question may seem so obvious as to make the question itself rhetorical. But is it? For those people who are unarmed, and who choose not to possess firearms, the police, who are armed, are in the best position to secure the physical safety of unarmed civilian citizens, and such people fully expect the police to come to their assistance if they notify the police of an imminent threat to their life and safety.But take a closer look at the question. Focus on the word, ‘legal duty.’ The question posed is distinct from another question we might have asked: Would you expect the police to come to the immediate assistance of an innocent American whose life is in imminent danger if the police are notified of that imminent danger? Many Americans, certainly those who abhor firearms and who would never think of possessing a firearm, conflate the two questions. And, that is understandable, if presumptuous, as many Americans, even those who do exercise the natural right of self-defense through possession of a firearm would invariably expect the police to respond immediately to a “911” emergency.But, even if that expectation seems reasonable, is that expectation misplaced? Suppose the police don’t timely respond to an emergency, or, for one reason or another, the police do not respond at all. And, suppose the failure to protect results in injury or death to that person.Does the injured party have a cause of action in negligence against the police? And if death results, does the deceased’s estate have a cause of action for wrongful death, against the police? To answer these questions, we must pose another, but a more basic question that we had begun to deal with in our previous article. So——

WE AGAIN ASK: HAS SOCIETY PLACED THE BURDEN OF PROTECTING THE LIFE AND WELL-BEING OF EACH AMERICAN, ON THE POLICE?

The answer is “unequivocally, and demonstrably no.” The police do not have a legal duty to come to the assistance of any American even if notified of an imminent threat to the life and well-being of that individual. And that legal position is true today, as it was true decades—even centuries—ago, at the birth of our Nation. Yet the mainstream media and Leftist politicians routinely keep the public in the dark about this. That is bad. But worse, they lie to the public about this. That is despicable. Here and there, however, the truth does come out but only if the American people pay close attention. Unfortunately, most Americans do not pay attention to the import and purport of our laws, and the public must dig deep to learn the truth. So——Thirty years ago, Stephen L. D’Andrilli, co-founder of the Arbalest Quarrel, and David B. Kopel, writer, attorney, and Constitutional law expert provided an answer to this question. They laid out the unblemished truth. They co-authored an article, titled, “Personal Safety: Individual Responsibility.” The article appeared in the May 1989 issue of “Women and Guns.” In the article the authors made clear both the state of the law and the dire consequences of the law, notably where the lives of women are endangered and the police do nothing to protect them. What Messrs. Kopel and D'Andrilli said in 1989 is as true today, as it was then. The law pertaining to the matter of police duty remains the same. Nothing at all has changed.Two seminal Court cases on the matter of police duty stand out as mentioned in the Kopel and D’Andrilli article. Both cases, curiously enough, come out of jurisdictions that frown on civilian possession of firearms for self-defense and both cases establish the essence of the issue of “duty” as it relates to the police in communities around the Country. One is a New York case; the other comes out of California. The state of the law, today, as set forth in those two cases, remains unchanged; and the law in jurisdictions around the Country mirrors the law of California and New York.The 1989 Kopel and D’Andrilli magazine article discusses both cases, and the Arbalest Quarrel provides additional commentary in our follow-up article.From the two Court cases that the Kopel and D'Andrilli magazine article mention, we learn that the onus of protection of one's life and well-being rests upon one's self. That duty does not and cannot reasonably, rationally be relegated to the Government, even as Radical Left Marxists, Socialists, and Communists, and those so-called New Progressive Leftists proclaim vociferously, hypocritically, disingenuously, and erroneously that the health, safety, and continued well-being of Americans do rest safely, securely, and firmly in the hands of Government. They don't and never did.   ______________________________

PART TWO

TWO DECADES OLD COURT CASES LAY BARE THE SAD TRUTH: POLICE HAVE NO DUTY TO SECURE THE LIFE OF AMERICANS FROM THREAT OF PHYSICAL HARM EVEN UPON NOTICE OF IMMINENT HARM

In the New York case, the police responded to the imminent threat posed to a young woman, but did so too late. In the California case, the police did not respond to the call for immediate protection at all; blatantly shrugging it off.Consider, first, the facts of the 1968 case, as laid out in detail by the dissenting judge, in Riss vs. New York: “Linda Riss, an attractive young woman, was for more than six months terrorized by a rejected suitor well known to the courts of this State, one Burton Pugach. This miscreant, masquerading as a respectable attorney, repeatedly threatened to have Linda killed or maimed if she did not yield to him: ‘If I can't have you, no one else will have you, and when I get through with you, no one else will want you’. In fear for her life, she went to those charged by law with the duty of preserving and safeguarding the lives of the citizens and residents of this State. Linda's repeated and almost pathetic pleas for aid were received with little more than indifference. Whatever help she was given was not commensurate with the identifiable danger. On June 14, 1959 Linda became engaged to another man. At a party held to celebrate the event, she received a phone call warning her that it was her ‘last chance’. Completely distraught, she called the police, begging for help, but was refused. The next day Pugach carried out his dire threats in the very manner he had foretold by having a hired thug throw lye in Linda's face. Linda was blinded in one eye, lost a good portion of her vision in the other, and her face was permanently scarred. After the assault the authorities concluded that there was some basis for Linda's fears, and for the next three and one-half years, she was given around-the-clock protection.”A little late in the day for police protection, no? Linda’s life was forever ruined.Two members of the Court of Appeals, the Majority, sided with the police, affirming the decision of the trial court, against Riss even though the Court acknowledged that New York had removed application of the doctrine of sovereign immunity through which the government is immune from liability to individual members of a community. No matter. The Court inferred the State was still immune from liability under straightforward tort principles because, as the Court majority opined, the duty to protect the New York public does not extend to protection of individual members of the public, in the absence of an exception, carved out by the Legislature. And the Court’s Majority found none.The Dissenting Judge took strong exception to the Court Majority’s ruling, saying the ruling was nothing more than a “question-begging conclusion,” grounded on mere policy matters. “It is not a distortion to summarize the essence of the city's case here in the following language: ‘Because we owe a duty to everybody, we owe it to nobody’ [emphasis my own]. Were it not for the fact that this position has been hallowed by much ancient and revered precedent, we would surely dismiss it as preposterous. To say that there is no duty is, of course, to start with the conclusion. The question is whether or not there should be liability for the negligent failure to provide adequate police protection.”The Dissenting Judge said the case should have been remanded to the trial Court. He opined that, since the police had “actual notice of danger and ample opportunity to confirm and take reasonable remedial steps, a jury could find that the persons involved acted unreasonably and negligently. . . . Linda Riss is entitled to have a jury determine the issue of the city's liability.” But Riss never received that opportunity.The second seminal case, a 1975 California case, Hartzler vs. City of San Jose, involved a wrongful death action. These are the facts of the case, as set forth verbatim by the Court:“In a wrongful death action against a city, it was alleged that decedent telephoned the main office of the city police department and reported that her estranged husband had called her, saying that he was coming to her residence to kill her. Decedent requested immediate police aid, but the department refused to come to her aid at that time, and asked that she call the department again when her husband had arrived. Approximately 45 minutes later, the husband arrived at decedent's home and stabbed her to death. Some time later, the police arrived in response to the call of a neighbor. The trial court entered a judgment of dismissal, following the sustaining of the city's demurrer without leave to amend. The police told the decedent to call the police when her husband arrived? What good would that have done? The blasé attitude of the San Jose police borders on reckless disregard for the life and well-being of an innocent American  the police could have secured, but didn't. Nonetheless, the Court ruled in favor of the City against the decedent’s estate. Why did the Court of Appeals find against the decedent’s estate?In the California Official Reports Summary, we learn that “the claim was barred by the provisions of the California Tort Claims Act, particularly Gov. Code, § 845, providing that neither a public entity nor public employee is liable for failure to provide police protection service or for failure to provide sufficient police protection service, and concluded that the police department enjoyed absolute, not merely discretionary, immunity.”The California Court of Appeals held that, in the absence of a “special relationship” owing between the police, as a governmental entity, and an individual, the State enjoys “absolute immunity” from liability. The Court, having found no special relationship existing between the deceased woman and the police, affirmed the dismissal of the suit for wrongful death. So, where does that leave us, average, law-abiding, responsible, rational Americans?

IF THE POLICE DON’T HAVE THE LEGAL DUTY TO PROTECT INNOCENT, LAW-ABIDING AMERICANS, IT IS IRRATIONAL TO ARGUE AMERICANS OUGHT NOT HAVE FIREARMS FOR THEIR OWN DEFENSE.

It is mind-boggling that jurisdictions like New York and California would frown on civilian ownership of firearms for self-defense and yet find, as a matter of law, that the police have essentially no duty to provide that protection to innocent members of a community even when the police are on notice of a real and imminent threat to human life and well-being and fail to provide that protection.Leftist Antigun governments and antigun proponents hide from the public that police have essentially no legal duty to protect individual members of a community even when placed on notice of imminent threat to human life.Instead Leftists perpetrate a myth that police do provide a community with all the safety the members of a community need and, so, the individual members of a community don’t need guns for self-defense.When Leftists argue they wish to rid the Nation of civilian ownership and possession of firearms, they claim they only wish to do so for the sake of public safety and public order. And the compliant, seditious Press consistently, incessantly, repetitively, and nauseatingly drums this nonsense into the ears of the public.That, then, is what Leftists and their friendly travelers in the Press say, but what do they really mean? Simply this: they are referring to the public as a Collective, a Hive. Leftists don’t give a damn about the life, safety, and well-being of individuals who comprise the public.If Leftists did give a damn, they would either encourage civilian ownership of firearms for self-defense, as the police have no duty to safeguard the life of individual Americans, or these Leftists would amend the laws of their jurisdiction, concerning police duty, making clear that police do owe a duty of care to the individual members of a community, to protect the life, safety, and well-being of those members of a community. Leftists, if they truly gave a damn about the life and welfare of the American citizenry, would make clear that police and other Government officials are wholly accountable to the individuals of a community—that is to say, they will be held legally liable—for such injury or death resulting from the breach of that duty. But we see no such thing happening on either account.* So, who are these Leftist scoundrels kidding?________________________________________*Recent Bail reform measures in Leftist jurisdictions, like New York and California, together with the election or appointment of Soros financed activist Leftist prosecutors who refuse to prosecute crime, further complicate efforts by police to provide even a modicum of protection for the welfare of the public, the Collective. And, since the police do not have, and never did have, a legal duty to protect any individual member of a community, even when on notice of imminent threat to the life and well-being of that individual, means that the onus of personal protection, now more than in the previous century, rests upon each American. Yet, Leftists still bizarrely argue for constraining average, law-abiding, responsible, rational Americans from possessing firearms for their own defense and for the defense of their families.So where does this leave Americans since police have absolutely no duty, except in extraordinarily few, extremely rare instances, to provide personal protection to individual Americans—apart from the personal protection they routinely provide to certain Government officials, like Mayors and Governors—and where average, law-abiding, innocent American citizens who cannot afford the services of a licensed and armed personal bodyguard are discouraged by Radical Left Marxists, Socialists, and Communists, and by the New Progressive Left, from providing for their own armed defense?________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

CAN WE, AS INDIVIDUALS, RELY ON THE POLICE TO PROTECT US?

WHAT IS THE PRINCIPAL DUTY OF A COMMUNITY'S POLICE FORCE?

PART ONE

Do the police have a duty to protect American citizens if their life is in danger? If you were to ask the average American this question, you would likely obtain one of four basic responses: one, “of course they do;” or, two, “no they don’t;” or, three, “it depends on the circumstance;” or, four, “I don’t know.”The disparity in responses is disconcerting as one would think the answer to this question would be straightforward and beyond dispute, given the enormity of it.After all, when it comes to one’s life and safety from threats posed by a psychopathic criminal, or from a psychotic killer, or, when the threat to one’s life and safety arises from a domestic spat or from some other dispute among two or more people, that escalates to the level of a life and death situation, one should know whether a community’s police department does have a duty to protect the life, safety, and well-being of each American citizen whose life is threatened. The idea implicit in the statement is that an armed police officer, or, in the alternative, an armed and licensed personal bodyguard, serves as the most effective deterrent to a dangerous threat posed to an innocent person’s life, safety, and well-being, precisely because the defender of life is armed. No one can seriously doubt that.And if, assuming a community’s police department does have a duty to come to the assistance of an innocent member of a community whose life is threatened by a would-be assailant, the question then becomes whether the police can and do provide a prompt response to that threat. Obviously, response time is a critical factor when an imminent threat to loss of life exists.Now, public officials, such as mayors of cities and governors of States, do not have to concern themselves with police response time because they have armed police officers assigned to them. And, for the very wealthy, who can afford private armed security, police response time to a dangerous threat posed by a would-be assailant is not an issue either.But, what about the average, law-abiding citizen—in other words, everyone else—who does not have access to a police security detail and who cannot afford the protection of an armed bodyguard? For common folk the issue of police response time is not an insignificant matter.Of course, a police department’s response time is, understandably, subject to many factors. Still, where a few minutes or seconds may mean the difference between life and death, police response time should be immediate and not subject to doubt. Police response time, where an innocent person’s life is in the balance, must be quick and immediate. Americans should not have misgivings or any false belief about this. Reliance on prompt police response time is critical if the average American is to place his or her faith, alone, in the presence of armed police, to deter the threat to one’s life or to one’s family.For those average, innocent, law-abiding persons who do place an abundance of faith in the ability and wherewithal of police to respond immediately to a 911 life and death emergency, there is the presumption—referring to the salient question posed at the beginning of this article—that “of course” a community’s police department has a legal duty, not merely an ethical or moral duty, to protect the life and safety of each innocent American whose life is threatened by a dangerous aggressor. But, is that true? If it isn’t, then those Americans who choose to place their faith alone in armed police to secure their life and safety and that of their family when faced with a life and death situation posed by an aggressor are sorely mistaken in their belief.Placing misguided faith in a community’s police department to protect one’s life and that of one’s family when faced with a direct threat posed by an assailant can have catastrophic results when the need arises to rely on the police, and the police do not timely respond to that threat. In whom does blame, then, truly reside? And, apart from a moral or ethical imperative, if no legal duty exists, on the part of the police to come to the aid of any American when that American is confronted by an imminent threat to life, then where did a presumption of legal duty arise in the first place? Likely, the presumption derives from a common shibboleth, true enough, that the primary purpose of a police department is to preserve and protect the well-being of a community. But, does that purpose to preserve and protect the well-being of a community extend, legally and logically, to protection of the life, safety, and well-being of each individual resident of a community? The shibboleth undoubtedly was reinforced through a slogan that once appeared—but apparently no longer—on the side of many community police cruisers around the Country: “to preserve and protect.” But, preserve and protect who? The meaning of the slogan is vague and ambiguous. Yet, many Americans still accept as self-evident true, even if the notion is only wishful thinking, the idea that a community’s police force does have a legal duty to come to the aid of each individual American resident whose life is endangered by a common criminal or crazed assailant. Well, let’s suppose, for purpose of argument, this to be true. What does that really mean? It means that an innocent, law-abiding resident of a community has good reason to expect that the police will do their level best to come to the immediate assistance of an innocent law-abiding resident of a community whose life, safety, and well-being is imminently threatened, say, by an aggressive intruder; and, further, that a community’s police must come to the immediate assistance of an innocent law-abiding resident of a community whose life, safety, and well-being is in imminent threat.Now, suppose the police do not respond in time to a threat to one’s life. Suppose that, through reckless indifference to a threat posed to a resident’s life and safety, or through simple or gross negligence, or even through an intentional, willful failure to respond to an immediate threat to a resident’s life and safety, a resident suffers serious injury or even death as a result of that imminent threat to a person’s life.Does that resident have a legal cause of action against the police department for injury suffered, or, in the event of death, does the deceased person’s estate have a cause of action against the police department for wrongful death? Well, if the police in fact owe a duty to protect the life and safety of the individual residents of a community and fail for one reason or another to do so, then the issue before a Court of competent jurisdiction goes not to the issue of a legal duty of care which is presumed to exist, but goes at once to the issue of damages to be assessed to the Governmental entity through a police department’s negligence toward or willful disregard for the life, safety, and well-being of the affected resident. It is certainly problematic if the police do owe a duty to individual members of a community but fail to do so. But that doesn’t seem to be problematic to people who abhor guns and who do not countenance law-abiding civilians owning and possessing them.It is disconcerting to those of us who choose to exercise our God-given, natural, fundamental, unalienable, and immutable right of the people to keep and bear arms for self-defense, and as a check against tyranny, to truly comprehend the position of those Americans who are vehemently, even virulently, opposed to an armed citizenry. For, while we can agree that antigun fanatics, who, being true to their convictions would choose, for themselves, not to possess a firearm, it is wholly unacceptable, legally and ethically, for those people to thrust their belief system onto everyone else who does wish to exercise the sacred right to possess firearms. Yet, time and time again, we see antigun zealots audaciously attempting to compel those of us who do not agree with them to forsake our firearms as well. Americans should keep this fact in mind when they go to the polls in November 2020.____________________________

ANTIGUN PROPONENTS PROMOTE “SOCIETAL” WELL-BEING AT THE COST OF THE WELL-BEING OF AMERICAN CITIZENS WHO COMPRISE THAT SOCIETY

PART TWO

These antigun zealots exhibit a cavalier attitude when asked how they propose to deal with predators who, at any given point in time, might pose a direct and very serious threat to their own life and safety. They may claim, as many in fact do, that the police will protect them. And, in making the claim, these antigun zealots attempt to avoid the issue of whether the police have a legal duty to do so at all, or these antigun zealots may simply perfunctorily and presumptively assume the police do in fact have such legal duty to come to the aid of Americans who face imminent threat to life and well-being, when the police really do not have such a duty to act.Even so, what might one gain from the presumption of a legal duty on the part of police to deter a threat to the life of innocent Americans, if the police are unable to thwart an imminent threat to one’s life and well-being, in time, anyway? For one to dismiss concern on the ground, before the fact, that such attacks on an innocent person are rare would, in retrospect, provide a person little solace, indeed, when, in that rare instance, after the fact, one does come face-to-face with just such a threat to his or her life.Curiously, these same people who oppose civilian possession of firearms argue for mass confiscation of semiautomatic weapons from law-abiding citizens—tens of millions of us who possess them—on the ground that a few lunatics might go off on a killing spree, when such instances of “mass killings” are few and far between, even as mainstream media accounts create the illusion that such events happen with great frequency, when, in fact, they do not.Yet, for adherents of the tenets of Individualism, upon which the U.S. Constitution is grounded, the question of police responsibility for failure to respond to an imminent threat to one’s life, safety, and well-being may well be irrelevant, whether a legal duty exists or does not.Americans who ascribe to the tenets of Individualism do not rely on the police, in the first instance, to protect them and their families against imminent threats posed by dangerous individuals. Proponents of the tenets of Individualism recognize their sacred, fundamental, natural, immutable, and unalienable right of self-defense—a primordial right codified in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and as reiterated in the U.S. Supreme Court 2008 Heller decision. Yet, the idea that a firearm offers the best means to protect one’s life and safety, should not come as a surprise to any rational person, even among those who adamantly oppose civilian ownership and possession of firearms.For, among those people who are antithetical to civilian ownership and possession of firearms and do not and would not think of possessing a firearm for self-defense for themselves—who choose to place their life, safety, and well-being in the hands of the police exclusively—have chosen to place their life, safety, and well-being in the hands of the police precisely because the police carry firearms; suggesting, then, that because the police have firearms, no one else needs them. So, even those people who abhor guns and fervently, even virulently, oppose civilian ownership and possession of firearms, and would never think of wielding a firearm themselves—leaving that responsibility to the police—know full well that armed protection against aggressive, dangerous assailants provides extremely effective protection against such threats. But, is it sensical or is it foolhardy to believe that the police will be at one’s disposal when one is in serious need of the police? The answer should be obvious. Such belief is foolhardy, and in the extreme whether the police have a legal duty to protect the life of an innocent American from a direct threat posed by an assailant, or not. That being so, the attempt of antigun zealots to constrain all of us who wish to exercise our right to keep and bear arms is indefensible, and that should and does rightly anger us.If antigun zealots eschew possession of a firearm for self-defense themselves, that is certainly their prerogative. But, what is deeply disturbing and mystifying is that many of these same people presumptuously and audaciously dare to thrust their personal feelings about guns and gun ownership on everyone else—namely those Americans—tens of millions—who do wish to exercise their fundamental, natural, unalienable, immutable, and sacred right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.It is strange, indeed, that in a free Republic, grounded on a Constitution that incorporates certain sacred, fundamental, natural, unalienable, and immutable rights codified in the Nation’s Bill of Rights, there would be many Americans who, abhorring guns and the exercise of the right to possess them, would seek to thrust their own value judgments and morality on the rest of us; those—the vast majority of us—who have chosen to exercise the right of the people to keep and bear arms.For those members of society who abhor the very notion of firearms in the hands of the average, law-abiding civilian citizen, they take as self-evident true the idea that a community’s police department will in fact secure the life and safety of the average citizen. Such is the belief of Marxists, Socialists, Communists, and others who ascribe to the tenets of Collectivism: the idea that one need only place, and should be content to place, one’s faith in Government, rather than in one’s self, to provide for one’s basic needs, including defense of life; eschewing the very notion of an indisputable, fundamental, immutable, unalienable, absolute right of self-defense at all; and eschewing, especially, a sacred right to wield a firearm for self-defense.________________________________

NEW YORK’S GOVERNOR CUOMO AND MAYOR DE BLASIO FORCE AVERAGE CITIZENS TO RELY ON THE POLICE FOR ARMED PROTECTION, RATHER THAN UPON THEMSELVES

PART THREE

Among antigun proponents and zealots, apart from the hoi polloi of antigun zealots, there are the wealthy and powerful “elite” of American society. These people can ably afford to retain, and many of them do retain, private, licensed, armed bodyguards to provide for their protection and for that of their families.The “elite” in American society don’t have any illusion about the inability of a community’s police department to provide adequate protection to an imminent threat to life, whether the police have a duty to provide such protection to individual members of a community, or not. Among those "elite" are Government officials, mayors and Governors who do have police security details assigned to them. Yet, these same “elite” of society disdain the idea that average Americans who do not have access to a personal police security detail and who can ill afford a private armed and licensed bodyguard should nonetheless be denied the right to purchase a firearm for their own protection.Worse yet are those upper social strata antigun proponents, who, with their powerful political connections, carry a handgun for their personal protection and may have personal bodyguard protection as well, but are dismissive of average, law-abiding, responsible individuals possessing a firearm for their own protection.Consider the position of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose infamous New York Safe Act does nothing to protect the safety of innocent New York residents but, instead, places innocent life in jeopardy by making it extremely difficult for the average law-abiding New York resident to exercise his or her Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. And, consider the remarks of the Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio—the failed candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for U.S. President—who, with a smirk, refused, when repeatedly asked, to answer the critical question of Fox News host, Sean Hannity, not long ago, whether residents of New York City have the right to possess firearms for self-defense. Instead Bill de Blasio proffered that the police provide safety to New York residents, implying, then, that the average, law-abiding New York resident does not need a firearm.Well, the police certainly do provide protection for de Blasio and for Governor Cuomo. No doubt about that! But, do New York’s police provide—can they in fact provide—protection for millions of law-abiding New York residents—who, at any given moment in time can, and often do, face serious threat to life and safety. De Blasio perfunctorily, matter-of-factly claims police do provide all the safety that New York residents need. The remark isn’t even remotely plausible in a City comprising millions of souls, and small finite number of police officers.And, as the proponent of one of the Nation’s most restrictive gun laws, it’s clear that Governor Cuomo, for his part, isn’t at all concerned for the safety of innocent New York residents from very real and very dire threats posed by hardened criminals and by more than a few lunatics roaming the streets.As with all proponents of the tenets of Collectivism, the concern isn’t for the health, safety, and well-being of individuals who comprise society, but for the Collective, for the Hive. Collectivists, such as Marxists, Socialists, and Communists, individuals are dispensable, like ants in an ant colony or bees in a beehive. So, it is all in vein that these people would eschew an armed citizenry and promote a well-armed Government.We see this view on constant display in the spurious, simplistic, disingenuous, and condescending remarks of antigun politicians, like Governor Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, and in the remarks of the sordid group of Democratic Party Candidates for U.S. President. They know full well that armed police cannot possibly come to the aid of every individual, in every instance, who happens to face imminent threat to life and well-being from dangerous predators.Yet, it is a common and tiresome refrain of antigun politicians, and of their friends in the mainstream media, and of the pretentious, sanctimonious, and ill-informed, members and hangers-on of antigun groups, that would dare deny to average, law-abiding, responsible American citizens the natural, fundamental, unalienable, and immutable right to defend themselves with a firearm, claiming that the police are, after all, around to protect the life, safety, and well-being of all Americans. Such is the naïve belief, engendered in equal parts self-delusion and deception.But, is such faith that antigun proponents place in the notion that a community’s police department does in fact owe a duty of care not merely to the community as a whole, but to each member of it, legally sound, whether or not one might at least expect the police to have a moral duty to secure the life, safety and well-being of each member of a community? For, if, legal liability of a police department does not accrue for failure to secure the life, safety, and well-being of each member of a community, then the idea that the average, law-abiding American citizen should nonetheless be denied the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense loses any rational efficacy and is reduced to a bankrupt, empty policy position of the antigun movement on that ground alone. But we need not guess. There is an answer.To answer the question of whether the police have a duty to protect each member of a community, we must consider the ramifications of the Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the application of the legal concepts of ‘sovereign immunity,’ ‘qualified immunity,’ and of the ‘public and special duty doctrines.’ If a community’s police department does have a duty to secure the life, safety, and well-being of each member of a community, then it is necessary to explore the legal aspects of such duty if such duty exists at all. This issue cannot be reduced to simplistic and dismissive political, rhetorical soundbites and antigun messaging, asserted by arrogant, deceitful, condescending blowhards like Governor Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio, and many other politicians who adamantly oppose guns in the hands of the average law-abiding, responsible American citizen. But no American should fall for those ploys. Andrew Cuomo, Bill de Blasio and other politicians like him, weave wild fables. They oversimplify, obfuscate and deceive.Unfortunately, it is a common and tiresome refrain of antigun politicians, and of the mainstream media, and of pretentious, sanctimonious antigun groups, that would deny to average, law-abiding, responsible, rational American citizens the absolute right to defend themselves with a firearm, as these politicians claim that the police are, after all, there to protect the life, safety, and well-being of each American; so, then, a person doesn’t need a firearm for self-defense. Really? Are we to take that bald assertion on faith?What, really, is the truth behind the presumption espoused by many politicians and the media and which many Americans have come to believe, namely that the police have a duty to protect and preserve a community? What does that even mean?Does the duty of the police to protect a community from imminent threat to life, safety, and well-being actually extend to all of the individuals in it, or is that a deliberately deceptive conflation of police function that antigun proponents of all stripes have have sought to convey to the American public to obscure the fact that the police really don’t have such a duty of care at all; and that they have created a myth and have promoted it to make confiscation of firearms among civilians more palatable, suggesting, then, that civilian ownership and possession of firearms for self-defense is unnecessary and therefore, seemingly, unreasonable.Is this, then, the reason behind the idea of a police duty that is owed, not only to the community, but to the individuals in it? Is this grounded in fact or is this mere myth: myth that has been deliberately promulgated, propagated, and perpetuated? And, if this idea is myth, what is the real reason for it? Can it be that powerful, ruthless forces both inside this Nation and outside it consciously wish to deceive Americans? Do these powerful, ruthless forces seek to hide the fact that the police have no duty to ensure the life and safety of each member of a community so that Americans will be amenable to forsaking firearms’ ownership and possession, notwithstanding our heritage?Do these powerful, ruthless forces know that the average, rational, law-abiding, responsible, American can truly protect his or her life, and that of one’s family from dangerous assailants only by wielding a firearm but that, because these ruthless forces fear an armed citizenry and because they seek to undermine the sovereignty of the American people, and because they seek to dismantle our Constitution and to disassemble our free Republic, that they would prefer to leave the average law-abiding American citizen defenseless, open to predators? Is it, then, for these reasons that extraordinarily powerful, inordinately wealthy, highly resourceful, abjectly ruthless, and innately secretive forces both in this Country and outside it, have concocted and disseminated a fairy tale of police protection for the American citizenry?We will explore the truth and do our best to answer all these questions in forthcoming articles.________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ALERT: CONTACT YOUR REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES NOW.

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

THE ARSENAL OF DESTRUCTION: CONTROL OF THE CITIZENRY

PART 3: FATHERLAND, MOTHERLAND, HOMELAND: THE ORIGINS OF A POLICE STATE WITHIN THE UNITED STATES

SUBPART 1: CONTROL OF THE CITIZENRY

When historians consider the date the United States, a Free Republic, became a Police State, there will be disagreement aplenty. Many, if not all historians, will acknowledge, though, that transformation of the United States from a Free Republic, as envisioned by the Founders, to a Police State did not occur instantaneously. The change, historians likely will agree, occurred incrementally although with rapidity – indeed – with ferocity during the first decades of the 21^st century. Historians will likely emphasize the curtailment of Rights and Liberties expressly enshrined in the Bill of Rights. This is one indicium of the transformative process. The other indicium is the unprecedented usurpation of and accumulation of powers in one branch of the Federal Government, the Executive, and the simultaneous reduction of power – indeed – abdication of authority of another branch of the Federal Government, the Legislative. Historians will remark upon an important reversal: the institutions of Government that were created to serve the Public had turned on that Public, and the Public had become subservient to the institutions of Government.Control of the Public is key. The Public is perceived as a potential threat to the institutions of Government. To reduce that threat the Public must be controlled. The Bill of Rights must be dismembered: privacy – gone; freedom to speak one’s mind and to freely associate with one’s fellows – gone; and the right to keep and bear arms – gone.It is curious that, as the American citizen’s rights and liberties are slowly restricted and eventually erased, the powers of the Police State grow exponentially and those powers become paramount.The greatest concern to an authoritarian government is an armed citizenry. That must be dealt with first and foremost, and relentlessly by adherents of the Police State. An autocracy cannot function where the citizenry of the State is armed. Thus, an armed citizenry must be suppressed.The Government’s mechanism of repression is twofold: restrict the citizenry’s access to firearms and, contemporaneously, monitor and control the citizenry through the tripartite agencies of intelligence, police, and the military.In the past, in the Free Republic that once existed in the polity called the United States, the agencies of intelligence, police, and the military were clearly defined and demarcated. That is no longer the case. Police forces are now militarized. The military is taking on policing functions. And intelligence is ubiquitous – the distinction between internal security and foreign intelligence increasingly muddied. Every American citizen is now perceived as a potential threat to the “homeland” – no more or less so than a foreign national or stateless person. The Government doesn’t say that. But, it is so.The abdication of Congressional responsibility, together with the usurpation of power in the hands of the President, is painfully obvious. What powers the President doesn’t usurp overtly and wrongfully from Congress, Congress dutifully hands over to the President in a flood of Statutes – Statutes that clearly impinge and infringe upon the Bill of Rights. One of the most pernicious Statutes to date is “The Homeland Security Act of 2002,” 107 P.L. 209; 116 Stat. 2135. We will take a close look at that Statute and the manner in which the very existence of the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) operates to destroy the individual integrity of police agencies, the integrity of the military, and the integrity of intelligence agencies. And we will take a close look at the manner in which the muddying of the integrity of those three discrete functions, as they operate today in America, jeopardizes the very sanctity of and continued existence of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[separator type="medium" style="normal" align="left"margin-bottom="25" margin_top="5"] Copyright © 2014 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour) and Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.