THE IRONY OF THE HANDGUN TRAINING MANDATE IN NEW YORK’S AMENDED GUN LAW

Anyone who possesses a handgun, or any functional firearm, should be familiar with its operation and, ideally, proficient in its use. Few gun owners would object to that, and few would argue the responsibility to obtain understanding and proficiency of use rests with the individual, not the “nanny state” to require it.Yet, a burning question, asked rarely, if ever, but one that needs to be asked and answered is this: Should the State mandate handgun training when the individual undertakes that responsibility upon himself, where that responsibility properly belongs anyway, and where State handgun training is, then, time-consuming, unduly expensive, and clearly redundant?In that normative question rests a pressing legal one:“Does the State have the legal right to require handgun training and, if so, from where does that purported legal right to mandate handgun training derive?”There is nothing in the natural law right of armed self-defense as codified in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution that expressly says or alludes to a training requirement as a condition precedent to one exercising the right to bear arms, as a natural law right accruing to the individual. But is this assertion, true? Granted, it requires explication and qualification:The phrase “well-regulated” in the Second Amendment does mean “well-trained,” but only in the context of the prefatory “militia” clause, where it appears, not in the salient, independent clause: “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” where no mention is made of it.The late Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in Heller pointed this out. And Justice Alito, writing for the majority, in McDonald, reiterated and expanded upon it.An important distinction rests between the right of the people to keep and bear arms in matters of a life-threatening personal confrontation and the right of the people to keep and bear arms as “a failsafe” to thwart tyranny.And as for the matter of tyranny, the Heller majority discusses it, but in passing.Justice Scalia, who penned the Heller opinion, was undoubtedly acutely aware of making too much of the fundamental right of the common people to take up arms against a tyrannical government, in the seminal U.S. Supreme Court Second Amendment case of the 21st Century that, he knew, would draw incredulity and ire from many quarters, not least of all among some of his brethren, given the magnitude of the rulings.That Scalia mentioned tyranny, at all, especially given its trajectory in our Nation in the 21st Century, he may have felt it enough to allude to tyranny as an imminent threat to the continuation of our free Constitutional Republic, and prudently left the matter of discussion at that, going no further.But, one legal scholar, discussing Heller, who, as an academician, not a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, who need not be mindful of the potential backlash, elaborated on the singular import of tyranny as separate from the natural law right of self-defense. He writes:“The natural right of self-defense applies not only to defense of the individual, but also to the defense of society against tyranny. There was little disagreement on this understanding at the time of the founding. As Hamilton put it, ‘if the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government.’ It was universally agreed that the well-regulated militia consisted of the entire general populace, which was to be armed and trained in the use of arms. Indeed, that the people be well trained in the use of arms was central to the founders’ understanding of the Second Amendment and was considered the basic source of their liberty. As Madison put it, ‘if the people [of Europe] were armed and organized into militia, ‘the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.’” “The Responsible Gun Ownership Ordinance And Novel Textual Questions About The Second Amendment, 102 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 471 (Spring 2012) by Owen McGovern.One can extrapolate from Heller and McDonald, that, when the Tyrant mandates arms training as a precursor to bearing arms, it isn’t done with the aim to create, in the commonalty, a force capable of deposing the Tyrant. That would be nonsensical.The Tyrant seeks to disarm the populace, not embolden it. Otherwise, the common man might displace the Tyrant.Mandating handgun training in jurisdictions such as New York is to inhibit the exercise of the natural law right of armed self-defense. Training, along with other mandates, takes time and money. The Government's goal here is to dissuade the would-be gun owner, not ease his burden of acquiring a concealed handgun carry license.Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court majority in Heller, McDonald, and  Bruen, allows the despots and despoilers in Government to betray the intent of its rulings.But the Court, knowledgeable of the irascibility and intransigence of forces hostile to the American citizenry’s fundamental, immutable, and unalienable rights, still provides these forces with loopholes, albeit reluctantly, to get around its rulings.Consider: immediately after the Heller rulings, the City of Chicago sought to ignore those rulings, claiming Heller applies to the Federal Government only, not to the States.Justice Alito, writing for the majority, refuted that idea, and then gave the City of Chicago the means to defy the Court, notwithstanding. How and why is that?Alito recognized the inherent dilemma the Court was in, and, perhaps, anticipating that Chicago would try to negate the impact of McDonald, was, nonetheless, compelled to acknowledge that,“This history of intrusive regulation is not surprising given that the very text of the Second Amendment calls out for regulation, and the ability to respond to the social ills associated with dangerous weapons goes to the very core of the States’ police powers. Our precedent is crystal-clear on this latter point.”This was all the City of Chicago needed to hear.The City mandated handgun training, arguing that doing so is within its power to regulate firearms, as Alito acknowledged. And the City thereupon promptly banned the means to obtain that training in Chicago. This impossible situation, not surprisingly, led to a Court challenge.In Ezel “II,” the Seventh Circuit, opined,“In Ezell I, we held that Chicago’s ban on firing ranges could not be reconciled with the Second Amendment and ordered the district court to preliminarily enjoin its enforcement. 651 F.3d at 710-11. . . . Chicago responded to our decision by promulgating a host of new regulations governing firing ranges, including zoning restrictions, licensing and operating rules, construction standards, and environmental requirements. (Firing ranges operated by law enforcement and private-security firms are exempt from the regulatory scheme; there are currently 11 of these located throughout the city.) The plaintiffs returned to court arguing that many of the new regulations violate the Second Amendment.In the face of this second round of litigation, the City amended the regulatory scheme four times. . . repealing or revising some of the new rules.”Since the Seventh Circuit precluded the City of Chicago from banning gun ranges outright, the City came up with another ploy. It cunningly established zoning restrictions, i.e., “sensitive places,” where gun ranges cannot lawfully operate.Does this sound familiar? Does this bring to mind New York’s new “Sensitive Location” restriction? It should.Likely taking its cue from Chicago, New York created a new Penal law section, NY CLS Penal § 265.01-e, that prohibits the carrying of a firearm, rifle, or shotgun in any “sensitive location”—applicable to a multitude of areas where a person holding a valid concealed handgun carry license could, once upon a time, not so long ago, lawfully carry a handgun, but now can no longer do so.And, like Chicago, New York now institutes mandatory handgun training as a condition precedent to obtaining a license to carry a handgun in public even though it never had mandated such training for holders of concealed handgun carry licensees before. And that raises a question as to the State’s rationale for it.Curiously, the Bruen majority opinion never dealt with the training issue. Reference to training appears only once: in Justice Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion. But that is dicta. It isn’t a Court ruling. And Kavanaugh simply notes this.So, then, is State mandated handgun training lawful? Probably so, as evidenced in Heller and more specifically in McDonald.Be that as it may, the application of a State’s police powers to over-regulate civilian citizen use of firearms ostensibly to promote public safety is a hard sell when the public faces the ravages of violent crime.The New York public now finds itself betwixt the proverbial rock and a hard place: at once bereft of a tenable means to protect itself, given a new spate of ponderous gun laws it must contend with, and a government ever apathetic to its needs for “public safety,” even as it incessantly, deceitfully proclaims its desire to promote it.Thus, Americans who cherish their Second Amendment right are compelled to file yet again, ever again, another round of lawsuits: a tedious, expensive, eternal process. And this will continue if unthinking sorts among the polity continue to vote the same unprincipled rogues and prevaricators into public office.____________________________________Copyright © 2022 Roger J. Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

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

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

MULTI SERIES

PART FOURTEEN

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

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

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

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

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT DESERVES ACCOLADES FOR THE BRUEN DECISION, BUT NEW YORK’S CHANGES TO ITS CONCEALED HANDGUN LAW MAKE CLEAR THERE IS NO CAUSE YET FOR JUBILATION

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

MULTISERIES

PART SEVEN

NEW YORK’S HANDGUN LAW WAS ALWAYS A MESS—AND IT CONTINUES TO BE A MESS!

The Amendments to the New York State handgun regime are a “mess.” That one word is the best descriptor of them and for them, and for the entire State handgun licensing regime. These Amendments do nothing to alleviate the past difficulties an individual has had attempting to secure an unrestricted handgun carry license. These Post-Bruen Amendments merely substitute one ludicrous arbitrary and subjective, and vague handgun licensing standard, “Proper Cause”/ “Demonstration of Extraordinary Need,” for another nonsensical subjective and vague handgun licensing standard, “Demonstration of Good Moral Character.”The present New York Government, referring here to Governor Kathy Hochul and the Democrat Party-controlled Legislature in Albany, have manufactured a response to the Bruen rulings that is a sham, a dissembling, a pretense at satisfying the dictates of the Court—one that isn’t at all subtle.Implementation of the new handgun licensing standard makes it decidedly and decisively more difficult, not less so, for the average, responsible, rational, law-abiding civilian citizen, to obtain an unrestricted concealed handgun license. In fact, implementation of the new standard makes it more difficult for the average New Yorker to obtain even a restrictive home and/or business premise handgun license.The New York Government has brazenly defied, not obediently complied with, the Court’s Bruen rulings, thereby vitiating the import of Bruen, and violating the Court’s Article 3 Constitutional authority.In her words and actions, Hochul has made her feelings known, and the New York State Senate Majority Leader has echoed those sentiments.Contemptuous of the High Court’s rulings and reasoning, the New York State Senate Majority Leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, hurled a stream of invective, at the High Court. She regurgitated the same tiresome, disingenuous, and caustic rhetoric of Anti-Second Amendment fanatics and Neo-Marxist Cultists, proclaiming that the New York Nanny State knows what’s best for the people, not the U.S. Supreme Court. And so, the New York Government informs the Court that New York has no intention of complying with the Court’s rulings. In her Senate Majority Press Release, Andrea Stewart-Cousins retorts——“In response to the Supreme Court’s decision, implying that guns are more important than lives in this country, we are passing legislation to ensure that New York State has safe and responsible gun laws. States are the last line of defense, which is why we are stepping up to protect New York from being easily flooded with concealed weapons and keeping firearms out of the wrong hands. These measures, in addition to the previous anti-gun violence legislation we passed, are vital in a time when there are more guns than people in America. New York will continue to prioritize people’s safety and lives, and I thank my conference, Speaker Heastie, and Governor Hochul for their partnership.” ~New York State Senate Majority leader’s remarks after the NY Senate in Albany passed amendments to the State’s handgun licensing statute in response to the U.S. Supreme Court striking down the State’s concealed handgun carry law.The implication of Stewart-Cousins’ remarks is that the Government's changes to the handgun statute are designed to make it more difficult, not less difficult, for the average civilian citizen to exercise his or her right to armed self-defense in New York, thus necessitating the filing of further time-consuming and expensive lawsuits on the part of the citizen to obtain redress for Government's unconscionable, unconstitutional behavior.It is evident that the goal of the New York Government is to make the process of obtaining a New York handgun carry license—that one requires to lawfully possess a handgun in New York—so difficult, so onerous, so expensive, so time-consuming, so oppressive that one’s desire to exercise his or her natural law right to keep and bear arms is snuffed out, and the individual concedes defeat, and gives up further attempt to secure the right. Of course, some individuals will remain undeterred, and that is to be expected as long as the Second Amendment remains, de jure law, in the Bill of Rights—a thing that angers and frustrates the Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxist internationalists to no end. For, as long as the Second Amendment remains explicit in the Constitution, the sovereignty of the American people cannot be disturbed, and United States, as a free Constitutional Republic, and independent Nation-State cannot be dismantled and its remains inserted into the “international rules-based neo-feudalistic, neoliberal empire,” a.k.a. “new world order,” a.k.a. “Open Society,” that the Destroyers of independent nation-states have long yearned and aimed and planned for.   New York's handgun regime is where the Globalists/Marxists are focusing their energies. If they can defeat the Second Amendment there, they also defeat the power and authority of the U.S. Supreme Court. So, the puppet-masters have given their puppets, Kathy Hochul and the Democrat Party-controlled Legislature in Albany, their marching orders. The Amendments to New York's handgun law are no less draconian than what stood before. The New York Government assumes that many people who had hoped to obtain an unrestricted handgun carry license easily, Post-Bruen, now realizing the hopelessness of the task, will simply capitulate, surrender the effort to obtain one.And, as the Government has included, in the Amendments, many more restrictions pertaining to places where, henceforth, it will be unlawful for the holder of a valid unrestricted license to carry a handgun in public, that, too—the Government hopes—will dampen whatever residual desire a civilian citizen may have to carry a handgun for self-defense. Obtaining a coveted handgun license will be, at best, at long-last, nothing more than a Pyrrhic Victory—hardly worth the effort.And, so, a recalcitrant, intransigent New York Government pushes hard against those citizens who intend to exercise their Second Amendment right regardless of the obstacles the New York Government places in their path. This means citizens must continue to expend earnest effort filing more expensive, more lengthy, more time-consuming lawsuits against Hochul and her Government. And the Government knows that, given the nature of the legal process, and of the effort, and time, and money involved, all those factors work to the Government’s advantage—not that of the citizen.Hochul's message is clear: “the New York handgun regime is here to stay, and any person who doesn’t like New York’s handgun regime, better have a deep pocket to file another lawsuit like Bruen, and they better have the time and energy and will power to follow through on it. They will need it.”Or, in the alternative, Americans can simply leave New York. Kathy Hochul’s predecessor, Andrew Cuomo—creator of and champion of the notorious New York Safe Act of 2013—has made abundantly clear that members of the GOP who hold “extreme views,” in Cuomo’s mind, are persona non grata. As he says, “you don’t belong in New York.’” See article in New York Post.So, then what? “Just leave?” And to be sure, many American Patriots have left New York. They have also left Illinois and California. But many other Americans, true Patriots, too, have stayed and they intend to fight for their fundamental rights and liberties in their State, their home.After all, many good Americans were born and raised in New York, in Illinois, and in California. These Americans consider those States to be their home. And those States are their home. So, why, then, should they leave? Let the corrupters of those States, like Cuomo and Hochul, and DeBlasio and Eric Adams leave New York. Let corruptors like Pritzker and Lightfoot leave Illinois. Let corruptors like Newsome, and Garcetti, and Breed, and Schaaf leave California, as well they all should. But where do Americans go if the Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxist cultists take over the entire Country—which is occurring apace? The Biden Administration allows CCP China and the Billionaire, Bill Gates, to buy up vast tracts of land—and to what end? The Administration uses tens of billions of American tax-dollars against the interests of Americans and politicizes Government departments, agencies, and bureaus for its own nefarious ends. The military and police are demoralized and weakened. Our founders are denigrated. Our monuments and statues are defaced, removed, and desecrated.    The Biden Administration has done much to destroy this Country’s economy, infrastructure, and its resources, and its military preparedness and prowess. That is its sole reason for being. It is the sole reason, money, and time, and effort, and massive corruption of the electoral process was expended in getting Donald Trump out and getting Joe Biden and legions of lackeys into positions of power that they may damage the Republic irreparably.It has all paid off for the Corruptors of the Country. The Nation’s vitality is on the wane. This is not due to accident or mere happenstance; nor can it be explained as a product of gross incompetence. It is intentional. It is all part of an elaborate, sophisticated plan; carefully conceived and orchestrated; and methodically carried out.Yet, there are limits to the harm a feeble-minded and physical wreck of a man can inflict on this Country even though Joe Biden is but a titular Chief Executive. But, if California’s Governor, Gavin Newsom, should run for President, and secure the Democrat Party’s nomination for President in 2024, and, horror of horrors, if he became the 47^th U.S. President, what then becomes of the Country.? Newsom’s California will be replicated across the 50 States. Where might Americans run to, then? What State shall be able to operate—may operate—consistent with the Nation’s Constitution and Bill of Rights, once tyranny cements itself firmly in the Nation, and reigns unchallenged, supreme over Constitution, Nation, and People?For what Americans have experienced, especially, in the last 19 months, one must conclude the American Revolution of 1776 was less a hard-fought war, won, than it remains a war yet ongoing, with battles Americans must continue to fight against its own Federal and State Governments. For these Governments adamantly refuse to acknowledge and accept the sovereignty of the American people, as first conceptualized by the Framers of the U.S. Constitution and then as actualized through the fact of our Nation's well-armed citizenry. But can America's Patriots prevail against such powerful, malevolent, and tenacious forces that dare to suppress our Nation’s fundamental rights and liberties and to oppress our people until they capitulate—every one of us—to a world-wide feudalistic empire whose central offices one shall find in Brussels, Belgium?As we have seen, even simple recognition of the sacred natural law right of armed self-defense is not to be found everywhere in our Nation, but only in scattered spots here and there. A tyrannical Federal Government and several more tyrannical State Governments, blotting the National landscape, refuse to countenance such basic right—the cornerstone of our free Republic and of the sovereignty of the American people over Government. Our Constitution demands that Government pay homage to the will of the American people through recognition of the right of the people to keep and bear arms. No other Government on Earth allows such. Most other Governments mock the very idea of it. But not here. Yet, today, our Government, this Federal Government, and many State Governments and regional and municipal governments have become like so many others; corrupt, and jealous, and guarded of their powers: a blight on a Free Republic. These Governments demand the American people pay homage to them; not they to the American people!The forces that crush have made substantial inroads into achievement of their goal: the demoralizing, destabilizing, and dismantling of our free Republic. They have corrupted every institution of our Country. They have denigrated our history, heritage, culture, ethos, and Christian ethic. And, they are stripping our Nation of its strength, and will, and fortitude. Only the sovereignty of the Nation’s people remains, albeit attenuated, as our fundamental, unalienable, immutable, illimitable, and eternal rights and liberties are being inexorably, and swiftly, eroded before our very eyes. _____________________________________Copyright © 2022 Roger J. Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

“THE PRIVILEGE” TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED?

“THE PRIVILEGE” TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED?

QUOTATION LEAD-IN TO ARTICLE

“It is time for us to think outside the box and form two countries. Instead of civil war I propose civil separation. We are two countries, so ideologically opposed that each feels victimized and dominated by the other. Political leaders need to step up and brainstorm next steps. Clearly lay out the two ideologies and give each state a vote as to where they belong.” ~“Opinion Letter” from reader of The New York Times posted on June 5, 2022, responding to May 27, 2022 “America May Be Broken Beyond Repair,” by the Political Progressive Columnist for the Times, Michelle Goldberg. The letter writer, Dawn Menken, a Psychologist, from Portland, Oregon, is the author of “Facilitating a More Perfect Union: A Guide for Politicians and Leaders,” published in 2021*

THE CONCEPT OF ‘PRIVILEGE’ ISN'T AT ALL THE SAME THING AS AN ‘UNMODIFIABLE, FUNDAMENTAL, IMMUTABLE, ILLIMITABLE, AND ETERNAL GOD-BESTOWED RIGHT’, BUT THE TWO CONCEPTS ARE OFTEN, AND ERRONEOUSLY, CONFLATED

If the American public didn’t know the truth before, it knows it now: the battle for the very Soul of the Country is on the line, and Ground Zero of that battle isn’t Uvalde, Texas. It’s New York City, New York.The Nation is indeed “two Countries,”—no less so now than at the time of the American Civil War: friend against friend, brother against brother, uncle against cousin, father against son. But, what is different today is that ideologies cut across and into the very notion of what it means to be an American. There are those who hold to the meaning and purport of our Nation as set forth in our Constitution and especially in the Nation's Bill of Rights. And there are those who wish to jettison all of it in the erroneous belief that our Nation is at its core,  immoral, even evil. They wish to destroy the very fabric of a free Constitutional Republic. These adherents of the ideology of Collectivism have, with the aid of nefarious and shadowy and powerful forces, residing both here and abroad, gained control over much of the Federal Government. And having gained control over much of the Press and of media, as well, they propagate their message to the American people incessantly and vehemently. But one thing these Collectivist overseers have not gained control over: America's armed citizenry. And that disturbs and perplexes them and places them in a quandary as to what to do about it. For doing something about that, these Collectivists must. One cannot destroy a Nation if one cannot gain control over those who have the will and means to effectively resist the insinuation of tyranny over them.But, how does one go about separating an estimated 400 million firearms (according to American Gun Facts) in the hands of one-third of the target population. According to a November 2020 Gallop Poll, thirty-two percent of Americans possess firearms. See also report of the Rand Corporation, a 2017 report of the Pew Research Center, titled, “the Demographics of gun ownership,” and an SSRN 2021 “National Firearms Survey.” Seditious newspapers, like the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today, and seditious Cable and Broadcast news organizations, including ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, and NPR disparage guns and gun ownership so frequently and so vehemently that a person is led to infer that their business models are designed around that one narrative. The amount of air time and Press coverage these news organizations devote to defensive use of arms is so scarce as to be essentially nonexistent. Such mention that is made of effective defensive use of arms to thwart criminal because of too much internet chatter regarding it, is given curt treatment with the hope that it will eventually dissipate on its own. Instead the American psyche is bombarded with viral memes. Injected with and subjected to verbal and visual memes on a daily basis, the American develops a phobic reaction toward guns and toward those who possess them: word phrases such as Gun Violence, Gun Culture, Mass Shootings, Assault Weapons, AR-15 Rifles, Weapons of War, Large Capacity Magazines, when coupled with images of violence operate as visual and auditory cues, that induce a neurotic reaction in the target population. This is to be expected; in fact this is intended. The goal is to create in the mind of the target a feeling of physical revulsion and repulsion toward guns.But, is it really a concern over the safety of innocent people that motivates a vigorous response against firearms and firearms' ownership, misguided though that be, or is there something more sinister at play? If it were the former, one would expect a harsh response toward the massive wave of everyday criminal violence infecting our Country, especially in the major urban areas. But, we see no such response. Those State and municipal Government officials and legislators who rabidly attack guns in the hands of average, rational, responsible, individuals handle rampant violent and vicious crime infecting their locales with an air of casual indifference and diffidence. So, it cannot be violent crime generally or violent gun crime committed by drug-crazed lunatics, psychopathic and psychotic gangbangers, and by garden-variety criminals that motivate these officials. What might it be, then? Why would Neo-Marxist/Neoliberal Globalist Government officials, along with their compatriots in the Press, go off half-cocked whenever a rare occurrence, invariably avoidable, of "mass violence" arises, occasioned by the actions of a solitary lunatic? Why would Government officials and legislators shriek for more nonsensical gun laws, targeting tens of millions of average Americans, predicating the need for it on the lowest common denominator among us: the lone wolf psychotic. The answer is plain. The actions of the lone wolf psychotic merely provide a convenient pretext. It isn't the criminal actions of the lone wolf malcontent psychotic that Government is concerned about. For that lone wolf doesn't pose a viable threat to a Government. Rather, it is the armed citizenry that poses a threat to Government and by the very fact that the citizenry is armed. But, why should Government fear its own citizenry? It shouldn't and wouldn't unless Government seeks to usurp the sovereignty of the citizenry, as it clearly aims to do.A perspicacious Tyrant would know it is a Tyrant. But this Federal Government doesn't know it. So entrenched in Tyranny is this Federal Government through years and decades of usurpation of the authority rightfully belonging to the American people, that it has grown oblivious to its unlawful usurpation of power and authority. The Federal Government has amassed power and authority that doesn't belong to it, and never did belong to it, believing, wrongly, that the power it has usurped from the people is rightfully its own. And the Government has become jealous in guarding this power, hoarding it all for itself.It then stands to reason that the Federal Government would come to perceive the armed citizenry as a potential rival to crush, rather than as a master to serve. But, even in that the Federal Government, as Tyrant, is really but a caretaker to those bankers and financiers who are plotting the demise of this western Nation-State and all western Nation-States.Americans celebrate July 4 every year, since July 4, 1776, the Day America's first  Patriots declared their independence from tyranny. The Declaration of Independence was a righteous but defiant act. It led to war. It was a war hard fought. And the seeming underdog vanquished the mighty British empire. July 4, 2022, is just around the corner. But every year, since the turn of the 21st Century, Americans have had cause for concern, whether this July 4th Celebration would be our Nation's last.The founders created a Republican form of Government, having considered and dismissed many others. the American people would themselves be sovereign rulers where their representatives would serve and represent their interests. A Republican form of Government as envisioned and as created is antithetical to a Dictatorship, where Government is sovereign over the people.The British monarchy would eventually come to terms with loss of the American colonies. The Rothschild clan, on the other hand, would not forgive nor forget the loss of those colonies, and the loss of financial riches across the Atlantic Ocean. With the help of other financiers they realized it best to use subterfuge rather than arms to defeat the colonialists descendants. With the creation of the Federal Reserve System and with the seeding of money to the representatives of the people, to do their bidding and not that of the American people, and with their control over vast levers of power of Government, and with their control of the Press—the mechanism of dissemination of information—the Rothschild clan and its captain have gained back in two hundred and fifty years all that they had lost in eight years of the American Revolutionary War—but for one thing:

UNLIKE THE PEOPLE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION AND OF THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH NATIONS, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE AN ARMED PEOPLE

A Tyrannical Caretaker Government for the Rothschild and Soros Financiers and Globalist Billionaire elites cannot gain control over a citizenry that has the requisite will and the means to effectively resist oppression and subjugation.Americans are well aware that the loss of their Republic, their Sovereignty, of their God-Given Rights and Liberties is at hand—but for the fact that Americans are armed.The senile, corrupt, weak-willed, and weak-kneed puppet of the Globalist elites, signed a flurry of executive orders on a wide variety of matters, rescinding and countermanding the gains made by Donald Trump in returning our Nation to prosperity and prominence on the world stage. But, the policy-makers wisely refrained from taking any action, curtailing the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The puppet masters knew that they would need time to consolidate their power even with the feeble, frail Biden puppet and legions of other lackeys at their disposal. And time they now had with Trump removed from Office. And they knew that it would be just a matter of time before some lunatic with a gun would create a furor that the Press could pounce upon. Perhaps, they even had a hand in prepping their psychotic robots to instigate the events that would serve as the quasi-plausible pretexts upon which to launch a flurry of new anti-gun legislation.All of this would be necessary. A new soci0-political-economic paradigm embracing the entire world is an ambitious project. And the remains of the United States is a vital component for bringing that project to fruition. Pragmatic concerns mandate this. But emotions probably also play a part. The Rothschild clan could see, not only in the demise of the United States, but in the manner of that demise—Americans denigrating their own history and heritage, destroying their own monuments, disparaging their own Founders—a malicious joy in that undertaking would be something the Rothschild clan and George Soros et. al. would chuckle over.The nascent American people effectively resisted tyranny once before, long ago, against immense odds, and overthrew a tyrannical Government, the British Empire. That empire was nominally ruled by a Monarch, George III. But it was  effectively ruled by the Rothschild Banking Cartel.George III was long laid to rest. The present British Dynasty, the House of Windsor, is decadent, effete, corrupt, and a major expense to the English people. Once Queen Elizabeth dies, the monarchy will quickly wither under King Charles if he becomes King at all. The English Parliament, like the monarchy operates more by empty ritual. The real power resides in the Bank of England, just as the Federal Reserve presides over the Government of the United States.The United States Supreme Court will soon release its decision in Bruen, and the puppet masters and their minions in the Press and in Government are worried; frantic, really. What claim can they make on the Nation if sovereignty over it continues to rest, not in them, but in the American people?Much more concerning to the Nation’s Destructors than a High Court decision in the Dobbs abortion case—a leaked version of which created a furor as it was designed to do—is retention by the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms. Unrestrained exercise of this Fundamental God-Given Right by the people goes to the heart of our Nation’s history, heritage, traditions, ethos, culture, and ethical and legal foundation.The Nation’s enemies, both inside it and outside it, detest America’s armed citizenry. They hate the Nation’s freedoms and liberties. They disdain the Nation’s belief and faith in Divine Natural Law.That abhorrence isn’t grounded on mere aesthetics or even on ethical concerns. It is based on frustration, rage, and fear. The Bill of Rights prevents America’s domestic and foreign enemies from taking control over the Nation and its people.In colorful language, The NYTimes explains this frustration, rage, and fear—one borne of Americans’ insistent adoration for its Bill of Rights. The Times says:“Most Republicans in the Senate represent deeply conservative states where gun ownership is treated as a sacred privilege enshrined in the Constitution, a privilege not to be infringed upon no matter how much blood is spilled in classrooms and school hallways around the country.” ~ from an article in The New York Times, May 26, 2022, by Carl Hulse, Chief D.C. correspondent for the NYTimes.That aforementioned article came out in late May. Two weeks later, ten U.S. Republican Senators, “Ten Little Indians”,** broke ranks. They betrayed their Oath to their Constituents. That was bad enough. But, they also betrayed their Oath to Country and to Constitution. That was worst of all. For, in doing so, they betrayed their Faith and Allegiance in the Divine Creator in daring to circumvent Divine Will. They have joined the ranks of the Democrat Party Neo-Marxist/Neoliberal Globalist Satanists. These “Ten Little Indians”—these ignominious United States Republican Party Senators, ten in number—should, properly, justifiably, suffer the fate of those “Ten Little Indians” of poem.The Hill reports, “A bipartisan group of senators announced a deal Sunday on framework legislation to address a recent surge in gun violence in the U.S.The proposed legislation includes funding for school safety resources, strengthened background checks for buyers under the age of 21, incentives for states to implement their own red flag laws, penalties for straw purchases of firearms and increased protections for domestic violence victims.The bipartisan group was made up of 20 senators, including 10 GOP lawmakers, many of whom are strong supporters of gun rights and political allies of the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA).”With support from those 10 Republicans, the legislation likely has the votes to overcome the 60-vote threshold to avoid a filibuster in the Senate. And what caused these 10 Republicans to take affirmative action against preservation of an absolute and essential fundamental Right—the Natural Law Right of Armed Self-Defense? What caused these Republicans to capitulate to the Neo-Marxist Democrats: Bribes of Money? Desire to appease an angry mob of Neo-Marxist Cultist lunatics? Fear of physical assault from this angry mob of Neo-Marxist Cultist fanatics and lunatics if these Republicans failed to bow down to the mob and to a renegade Neo-Marxist/Neoliberal Globalist-controlled Congress and to the powerful and ruthless forces that control them both? Or, were they of that mindset all along:The Destroyers of our Nation don’t even deign to refer to gun possession as a Basic Right—the most basic Right: one grounded on personal survival, be it from predatory creature, predatory man, or predatory Government. Rather they utilize the word, ‘privilege,’ in lieu of ‘right,’ to describe those who seek to exercise it. Tacit in the word, ‘privilege,’ is the idea of something wonderful that some people attain by dint of birth advantage or connection made or acquired—but that most do not.This substitution of words is no small thing. To be sure, the words, ‘right’ and ‘privilege,’ are often conflated. For example, in the Merriam-Webster dictionary——“A privilege is a right or advantage gained by birth, social position, effort, or concession.” Yet, a “Right’, i.e., a “Fundamental God-Bestowed Right” is something beyond mere “Privilege.” It is a thing intrinsic to a person—derived from natural law. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy elaborates on this:

• “To have a right is to have a ‘valid claim.’”
• “‘In the strictest sense’ all rights are claims.”  
• “A right, in the most important sense, is the conjunction of a [privilege] and a claim-right.”
• “All rights are essentially property rights.”
• “Rights are themselves property, things we own.”

This distinction between ‘fundamental right’ and ‘privilege’ rests at the root of  Bruen, whether one knows this or not, and therein rests its singular importance for Americans.And the Bruen case is more important to the preservation of a free Republic than many Americans can truly appreciate or the legacy Press and Government will let on.In its Brief for review, on December 17, 2020, the Petitioner presented the issue thus:“Whether the Second Amendment allows the government to prohibit ordinary law-abiding citizens from carrying handguns outside the home for self-defense.”The issue as stated goes to the heart of the import of the Second Amendment. Do Americans have a fundamental, unalienable right to keep and bear arms, or not? Petitioners meant to bring that salient issue front and center. Heller made clear that a person has the unalienable right to keep and bear arms in defense of hearth and home. But, the underlying basis for that ruling and the substructure of it is this: the right of the people to keep and bear arms is an individual right. The tacit implication is this: exercise of that right is grounded on natural law, and beyond the power of the State to meddle in it, i.e., the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms is God-bestowed, and, therefore, Absolute.In an attempt to lessen the impact of a ruling expected to favor the Petitioner, the Robert’s Court limited the scope of the issue on review to consideration of the Constitutionality of the City’s procedures for issuing concealed handgun carry licenses. The High Court redrafted the issue on review to this:“Whether the state of New York's denial of petitioners' applications for concealed-carry licenses for self-defense violated the Second Amendment.”John Roberts and the liberal wing of the Court attempted to chop off the legs of the issue at the knee: reducing the reviewable issue merely to the constitutionality of  NYPD procedures.In light of the recent Uvalde, Texas incident, an incident that the Harris-Biden Administration, along with a Democrat-Marxist-controlled Congress and seditious Press, has irresponsibly, reprehensibly, unconscionably, shamelessly and incessantly focused the public's attention on and magnified to further its goal—the eradication of the Nation's Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights and the toppling of a free Constitutional Republic—the Bruen case takes on heightened importance. This Neo-Marxist/Neoliberal Globalist abhorrence of the armed citizenry is borne of outright fear. The Tyrant always hates and fears an armed citizenry. But, what might Americans expect from the High Court apropos of Bruen.In a worst-case scenario for the puppet masters and their minions who seek the dismantling of our free Republic, the Court will strike down the entire handgun licensing regime. If that were to happen, the impact would be felt across the Nation.Americans would immediately commence filing lawsuits challenging restrictive concealed handgun licensing regimes across the Nation, as well they should.The Bruen case was/is primed to do just that. And, after more than a decade— and with Marxist/Globalist Government's continuing consolidation of power, methodically and inexorably stripping the citizenry of its Fundamental Rights and of its sovereignty over Government—it is high time for another seminal Second Amendment case. Only through the preservation of the armed citizenry can America's Patriots ever hope to preserve the Founders hard-fought victory over oppression and Tyranny. Only through steadfast defense of the meaning, and purpose, and  the American Revolution of 1776, can Americans effectively repulse the Neo-Marxist/Neoliberal Globalist Open Society/EU/UN/New World Order Collectivist Counterrevolution of the 21st Century.___________________________________

DON’T RELY ON THE U.S. SUPREME COURT TO PROTECT THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

THE FORTHCOMING BRUEN DECISION IS LIKELY TO BE MORE DISAPPOINTMENT THAN JOY—JUST LIKE THE NEW YORK CITY GUN TRANSPORT CASE DECISION THAT CAME BEFORE IT.

Even the most politically naïve of Americans and even the most devout of the Democrat Party faithful must now have serious misgivings about the future well-being of our Nation. They must now recognize that the Federal Government—after Trump—is not what they counted. It is not what they bargained for. They must now recognize that the Federal Government—this Federal Government—does not serve their interests and that it does not have their life, safety, and well-being at heart: quite the opposite in fact. The Executive Branch and the Democrat-Party-controlled Congress are two institutions serving the interests of the lunatic fringe Neo-Marxist Cultists and Neoliberal Globalist Billionaire Bilderberg Group Clubbists, only.The shared aspiration of both is to witness the demise of the United States as an independent sovereign nation-state; the destruction of a free Constitutional Republic; the annihilation of a once proud and sovereign American people and their concomitant debasement and devolution to subjugation, and servitude. And all that is occurring swiftly.Nor should Americans pin their hopes on the High Court—the Third Branch of the Federal Government—to save them from the mess deliberately propagated by the first two. If Americans believe that the U.S. Supreme Court will surely preserve and protect the Constitution and staunchly defend their Bill of Rights, they will surely be sorely disappointed.If the New York City gun transport case is a harbinger of things to come from the rulings in Bruen, then Bruen is likely to be a hollow victory at best. Less a third seminal Second Amendment case building on Heller and McDonald, Bruen is likely to read more like the Roe v Wade abortion case—a sorry attempt to satisfy everyone, it will likely do little to satisfy anyone. And, why do we say this:First and Foremost, Consider——The Roberts Court's reconfiguration of the issue in Bruen was meant to forestall  a cataclysmic ruling that would put a stop to the very notion of open-ended “gun regulations”—the bane of the Second Amendment—that would serve to buttress and strengthen the Heller and McDonald rulings. Chief Justice Roberts and the liberal wing of the High Court wanted none of that. And the restructuring of the  issue in Bruen was meant to guarantee that noxious, heavy-handed and clearly unconstitutional handgun licensing schemes, would be here to stay, at least in some jurisdictions. Thus, it behooves the American Patriot, to be wary of High Court meddling, no less so than Executive and Legislative Branch meddling in the matter of fundamental, immutable, absolute—yes, absolute—Rights. The Third Branch of the Federal Government—this Roberts Court, sans Scalia— no less than the first two Branches, will not zealously defend the Bill of Rights, and especially the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms, notwithstanding the integrity and fortitude and intellectual  acumen of Justices Thomas and Alito. For they are only two stalwart American Patriots remaining now that Justice Scalia is no longer with us. But, then, the Framers of our Constitution, with Divine guidance, did intend and did provide, through inclusion of God-Given Absolute Rights, existent inherently in man, that the American citizenry would be wanting if bereft of support from any one or more or all three of the three Branches of the Federal Government. The American people require not assistance in defense of the Nation's elemental Rights and Liberties, for the Federal Government cannot excise them away. The Executive Branch cannot issue Presidential edicts or Bureaucratic Rules to blunt the exercise of them. The Legislative Branch cannot enact laws to nullify them. And the Judicial Branch cannot issue opinions to deny their import. All attempts to modify, repeal, abrogate, dismiss, ignore, or reinterpret God-Given Rights by Governmental artifice is unlawful from the get-go. The plain, succinct, categorical language of the sacred Rights of the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution makes transparent, the immutable, illimitable, eternal, non-modifiable, absolute nature of them and demonstrates the irrationality and incongruity of any attempt by the Government or by its proxies to diminish them.But, then, should Americans ever have placed faith in this Federal Government, above their faith in Divine Natural Law. Of course not! Does not this Federal Government, not unlike any other Government in history, have, within it, the seeds of repression, oppression—in a word, 'tyranny'? Assuredly so!Truly, to defend Liberty, Freedom, and Sovereignty, the onus will always rest, as it has in the beginning, and as it must in the end—on the people themselves— to defend their Liberty, Freedom, and sovereignty against all threats whether emanating outside the Country or writhing within its very bowels.Thus, Americans should not place, their hopes and dreams in the High Court as their main, much less their sole, source of and mechanism for their salvation. That Branch of Government, as with the other two, is ultimately a "political organization," as unreliable and as conniving as the other two. Sure, Justices Thomas and Alito are known quantities: men of unparalleled principle and ethics. But, only the late Justice Scalia had sufficient, formidable strength— capable of standing up to Chief Justice Roberts; keeping both Roberts and the liberal wing of the Court in check.But the eminent Justice Antonin Scalia is, unfortunately, no longer with us. He died under mysterious circumstances: circumstances never resolved, events not adequately explained; circumstances unlikely ever to be resolved or adequately explained to the public's satisfaction.So then, what will Americans likely see from the upcoming Bruen decision? The U.S. Supreme Court will strike down New York City’s procedures for issuing concealed handgun carry licenses, and it may do so on grounds of vagueness or arbitrariness; but that will still leave the heart of “may-issue”/“proper cause” in force. Stephen Breyer and the other liberal wing Associate Justices will file their lengthy and vehement dissents. And Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito—with Amy Coney-Barrett, perhaps—will probably file concurring opinions. And, if so, they will likely point to, explicate, and expound upon the illegal and illogical “may-issue”/“proper cause” construct. But the concurrences as with the dissents will be dicta only. They will not have the force of law, i.e., they will not operate as binding holdings/rulings.The case holdings/rulings will, then, likely come up short. Given a reworking by the Roberts Court of the issue, as presented in Petitioners' Brief, it is unlikely  the Conservative Court majority will be able to strike down the entirety of concealed handgun licensing structure of New York even if Justices Thomas and Alito would be willing and prepared to do just that. For, if that were to happen, it would implicate and therefore jeopardize similar handgun licensing regimes in other Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions. Justice Roberts and the liberal wing would never allow that to happen. And Justice Scalia isn't here to see that it would happen.See, e.g., article in Syracuse News, where one New York  District County attorney predicts that the Court's ruling in Bruen will be very narrow.

“Locally, law enforcement officials don’t expect the decision will affect the policing of guns or safety.

'I think (the court is) going to take the narrowest route possible' said Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick.”

Strong concurrences by Justices and Alito and Thomas would only operate as dicta, not actionable case rulings/holdings. Thus, a minimalist Bruen decision would hearken back to the limp and lame New York City handgun transport case. That would be a blow to the sanctity and inviolability of the right of the people to keep and bear arms.  The validity of New York's concealed handgun licensing regime, along with the underlying methodology/paradigm model of “may-issue”/“proper cause” will remain intact. But that is what we will see. The Arbalest Quarrel hopes we are wrong in our estimates. We would be surprised but pleased if that were to happen, but we don't expect that it will.A minimalist High Court ruling in Bruen would also disparage the import of the Court’s rulings in Heller and McDonald. The Nation’s enemies would be pleased. America's Patriots, rightfully, would not.Such a paltry ruling would not bode well for the continued security of a free State, especially in the present unhealthy political, social, and economic climate.But, even a minimalist ruling favoring the Bruen Petitioners will not be good enough for Anti-Second Amendment news organizations such as CBS News, whose doom and gloom prognostications only see the upending of the entire New York State concealed handgun licensing regime:“The Supreme Court is on the verge of ruling on a case that could overturn New York state's gun carry law. Records obtained by CBS2 show as many as 20,000 more guns could inundate the streets of the Big Apple, following such a decision.”That isn't likely to happen even on a best case ruling scenario. For, contrary to this reporting, the constitutionality of the entire New York State concealed handgun carry regime isn't at issue. The issue on review goes to the procedures created by the NYPD Licensing Division. Chief Justice Roberts saw to that. So, we know where his sentiments rest, even if, as a matter of logic alone, and not law, the Constitutionality of the entire New York handgun licensing regime is impacted. As we expect, the underlying handgun licensing structure will remain unscathed, consistent with the restrictions made by the Roberts Court on the issue to be decided in Bruen.Suppose, then, that consistent with the constrained issue, the Court's majority does strike down the City's concealed handgun carry license procedures, only, leaving intact the salient structure of the State's handgun licensing regime. That won't do much for Petitioners' rights; at least not immediately, and, perhaps, not ever.New York State and New York City will take their good time in developing and  instituting new concealed handgun carry license procedures for issuance of unrestricted and restricted handgun carry licenses both in the City and across the State.CBS News, of course, sees a slow-walk as a good thing, as they assert in the afore-referenced article:“. . . a high-ranking source tells CBS2's Marcia Kramer it could take the city years to comply.”See also articles in other Anti-Second Amendment sources such as Gothamist and in the seditious CNN and NY Times.And the New York Government would take its own good time in concocting a new set of arbitrary procedures to replace the ones struck down. New Yorkers would then be back to square one. America’s enemies would breathe a collective sigh of relief. There is no doubt about that! The NY Times reported on June 6, 2022, the following:“In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul has said that she would consider calling a special session of the State Legislature if the law were overturned. And after a shooting in Buffalo last month in which a teenager motivated by racism killed 10 Black people at a grocery store, she brought up the law unprompted, saying that her administration was ‘preparing our state for what could be a Supreme Court decision that allows people to carry concealed weapons. We’re ready.’A spokeswoman for the governor declined to elaborate further on the preparations.”One need not wonder of the impact the Uvalde, Texas Elementary School shooting incident will have on Hochul. She will only become more entrenched in slow-walking or sabotaging, outright, a Bruen High Court decision that strikes down the New York City' Police Department License Division's procedures for issuing concealed handgun licenses.More importantly is the question what impact the recent shooting incident will have on the U.S. Supreme Court itself. Has the Court made changes to the majority, and concurring, and dissenting opinions, as a result of that incident in light of immense news coverage of it and Congressional action on it?Americans will no doubt see the liberal-wing in rare form, writing political and public policy tracts disguised as legal opinions. And, don't be surprised to see Chief Justice Roberts doing the same. The danger here is that Roberts and Kavanaugh may, at the Eleventh Hour, do a one-eighty switcheroo and join the liberal wing of the Court. That would give the liberal wing of the Court the majority it needs to rule for the Respondent New York, against the Petitioners. New York’s unelected Governor, Kathy Hochul, true to form—hateful of the Second Amendment—is going ahead full throttle to destroy the Right of the people to keep and bear arms as if Bruen never existed, even though a decision in the case is imminent. She has made this patently clear in a flurry of Anti-Second Amendment legislation she has very recently signed, as well as in her executive orders.And the New York City Mayor, Eric Adams, is 100% onboard with Hochul, as he backs her continuing control of the State. An affiliate of NBC News, 4NewYork News, reports:“New York City Mayor Eric Adams endorsed New York Gov. Kathy Hochul for a full term on Wednesday, praising her as 'an amazing governor' who deserves a full term.Adams, a centrist Democrat like Hochul, told supporters at a Manhattan union hall that voters need someone who can 'get stuff done in the state of New York.' Hochul, the former lieutenant governor, is running to keep the job she has held since August 2021 when Andrew Cuomo resigned amid allegations of sexual harassment, which he has denied.”The Neo-Marxist/Neoliberal Globalist-controlled Federal Government and the Soros backed and funded Neo-Marxist/Neoliberal Globalist State and Municipal Governments across the Country do nothing to hide their visceral contempt for the American people or their outright loathing of the Bill of Rights. One sees all of this through their failure to comply with the strictures of this Nation's body of laws and its Constitution. Worse, one sees increasing intimations of brazen seditious meddling with and offending of Bill of Rights imperatives. Nothing  constrains the actions of the Collectivists' insinuation of tyranny throughout the Republic, much as they, together with CCP China, consolidate their control over the nation-states of the EU and over the British Commonwealth Nations.Still, the United States has one thing no other Nation or group of Nations or other political construct has: a true Bill of Rights that incorporates the preeminent Right: that of Armed Self-Defense. But, how many firearms are in private hands is not known, only guessed at, and that is a good thing.Government is not in the business of and should never be in the business of knowing or attempting to know who among the citizenry is armed and the manner of their armament. That fact goes hand-in-hand with the unalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms.The armed citizenry is the singular source of this Nation's strength, vitality, and well-being; the basis for the sanctity and inviolability of Selfhood; the foundation of a free Constitutional Republic; the necessary condition through which that free Republic may be maintained; and, the ground upon which the sovereignty of the American people over Government is secured and upon which tyranny is resisted, restrained, and repulsed.The High Court should keep all of this in mind when deciding Bruen. But, even a ruling in favor of Petitioners against New York, will not of itself secure the Republic against encroaching Tyranny. For the forces that seek to impose it are powerful, well-organized, and deeply entrenched in our private and public institutions.Governor Kathy Hochul has powerful, ruthless, and inordinately wealthy allies, who will support her if she does not comply with the High Court's rulings, striking down New York City's concealed handgun carry procedures. Indeed, they will certainly dictate policy for her as they have done all along, just as they are doing for New York City Mayor, Eric Adams. The public simply sees in Hochul's policy aims and actions an inkling of the face that hides in the shadows, dictating her policy aims and actions. Hochul's stubbornness, in failing to heed U.S. Supreme Court rulings in Bruen, will certainly tell all Americans, but especially those residing in New York, everything they need to know of the unbridled contempt both she and those that pull her strings have for our people; for our Republic; and for our Nation’s Constitution.Disdain toward High Court rulings does not bode well for the continued security of a free State in the present unhealthy political, social, and economic climate. We have seen this abject disdain played out by State Governments and lower Courts toward Heller and McDonald. Much the same disdain will be played out again in Bruen. That is why Americans must stay true to the plain meaning of the Bill of Rights, especially when it comes to matters of armed self-defense against Tyranny. At the end of the day, the Bill of Rights is all that they have to assert their will on a renegade Government. For the Nation's first Patriots, a firm conviction in the righteousness of their cause, a blanket refusal to surrender their firearms to tyrants, and a valiant will to use those firearms against tyranny, sufficed to vanquish a mighty but ignoble foe. At the time, the Bill of Rights was inchoate. But, the germinating idea of the immutability and illimitability of the natural law right of armed self-defense against tyranny sufficed to win the day.  The germinating idea of the immutability and illimitability of the natural law right of armed self-defense against tyranny sufficed to win the day against seeming insurmountable odds. Today, the Bill of Rights is manifest, and we, the armed citizenry, are legion. We descendants of the first Patriots should be able to repulse tyranny that once again threatens a free and sovereign people. Can we do so, if the need arises? If we have the will and wherewithal to resist tyranny, then we, Americans, will have all that is necessary to vanquish tyranny once again._____________________________________________*Menken’s book purports to be a guide for political leaders on how to bring the Country together to resolve the Nation’s differences. Yet, one year after publication of her book, it is clear from her NYTimes letter Times, that Menken has had a change of heart; surrendered to the truth that reconciliation is impossible. That should have been obvious to her. It wasn’t. How can there be a meeting of minds?There are two antithetical ideologies at play. One ideology is grounded on the principles, precepts, and tenets laid down in our Nation’s sacred documents. The other intends to set it all aside. One ideology was forged in the Nation’s struggle for independence from tyranny. The proponents of that ideology seek to preserve the Natural Law Rights and Liberties of the people. They intend to maintain and preserve the success of the American Revolution.The other ideology, grounded on the principles, tenets, and precepts of Collectivism, much in evidence today, seeks to upend the hard-fought battle for Independence from tyranny. For Collectivism is predicated on Tyranny. It is inextricably tied to it. In our website, we discussed all of this in several articles some time ago. See, e.g., our article posted four years ago, in 2018, titled: “The Modern American Civil War: A Clash of Ideologies.”At the very birth of the Nation, the enemies of a free State, went immediately to work to waylay and destroy it. These enemies, the Globalist Banking Cartel, commenced a quiet Counterrevolution to dismantle a free State and to usurp the authority of a sovereign people, bending them to their will.The descendants of the Nation’s enemies, the international financiers and their minions, alongside rabid Neo-Marxist radicals, residing inside and outside the United States, are dead-set on destroying this free Republic, as assuredly and as thoroughly as would occur by overt military conquest.Theirs is a Collectivist Counterrevolution. Utilizing modern tools of information and computer technology, psychological conditioning, organizational acumen, inexhaustible reserves of money, and control over Government and over the levers of commerce, media, and finance. They intend to destroy the political, social, economic, and juridical foundations of the Country, merging its remains into the nascent EU/UN super-state that is taking shape throughout the world._______________________________**The poem: “Ten little Indian boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were Nine. Nine little Indian boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were Eight. Eight little Indian boys travelling in Devon; One said he'd stay there and then there were Seven. Seven little Indian boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in halves and then there were Six. Six little Indian boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were Five. Five little Indian boys going in for law; One got into Chancery and then there were Four. Four little Indian boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were Three. Three little Indian boys walking in the Zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were Two. Two little Indian boys were out in the sun; One got all frizzled up and then there was one*. One little Indian boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none. (*In some versions Two Little Indian boys playing with a gun; One shot the other and then there was one.) ~From IMDB, referencing the afore-recited poem, Ten Little Indians, from the 1965 mystery film thriller by the same name.”___________________________________Copyright © 2022 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved  

SUPREME COURT TO TAKE UP NEW YORK SECOND AMENDMENT CASE, AT LAST!

After an eternally long hiatus, the U.S. Supreme Court will take up a Second Amendment case. And it is only right this case should come out of New York after the Court majority’s disastrous handling of the “gun transport” case, N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. City of New York, 140 S. Ct. 1525 (2020).  As you may recall, The Petitioners in the “gun transport” case challenged a New York City rule pertaining to the transport of firearms outside the home. The Federal District Court and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that routinely find for the Government on Second Amendment matters, rejected the claim. Petitioners appealed. The U.S. Supreme Court granted review.Stunned by the High Court granting review, and evidently knowing the New York City law violates the Second Amendment guarantee and aware, too, that a finding on the merits against the government would have negative repercussions extending far beyond the confines of the City and State of New York, the anti-Second Amendment forces attempted to waylay a what would have otherwise resulted in a certain reversal the Circuit Court of Appeal’s decision. The State of New York amended its firearm licensing Statutes and the City amended its rules so petitioners could henceforth transport their firearms to a second home or shooting range.The gambit paid off. It gave Chief Justice Roberts just such the excuse he needed to side with the radical left-wing of the Court. But his vote wasn’t enough. Roberts must have cajoled the newest member of the Court, who at the time was Brett Kavanaugh, to play along. It worked. Kavanaugh sided with the majority but, likely having felt put upon, wrote a singularly bizarre concurring opinion, ostensibly to shore up the idea, as conveyed during a tumultuous and rancorous confirmation hearing, that he does, after all, support the Bill of the Rights. But does he? Kavanaugh’s concession, reluctant though it may well have been, gave Roberts and the radical left-wing of the Court the fifth vote, necessary to nullify a hearing on the merits which undoubtedly would have gone to the petitioners.Now, one year after the “gun transport” case was shunted aside and the Court did not take up another 2A case before the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, the High Court will take up, N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Corlett, 140 S. Ct. 1525. The Corlett case is no trivial Second Amendment case if any Second Amendment case can ever be considered trivial. The implications of Corlett extend far beyond the “gun transport” case, if the Justices agreed to hear the merits of it because the issue in the “gun transport” case was directed to the import of the City’s highly restrictive “Premise Residence” and “Premise Business” handgun licenses. But, in Corlett, the High Court must zero in on the notion of “good cause.” New York requires applicants who seek to acquire a concealed handgun carry license to proffer a reason sufficient—in the mind of the licensing officer—to justify the issuance of one.Because the issue in Corlett attacks a central pillar of the New York State firearms’ licensing scheme, the New York State and City Governments cannot weasel their way out of a hearing on the substantive merits as they did in the “gun transport” case, by amending New York firearms’ laws and regulations. To do so here would require New York officials to gut New York’s dubious and nefarious firearms licensing scheme—something Anti-Second Amendment zealots would never do, as the salient issue in Corlett strikes at the very heart of government licensing of firearms: that government officials have legal, binding authority to place arbitrary restrictions on the exercise of a natural, fundamental, unalienable, immutable right.To obtain a concealed handgun license in New York, an applicant must overcome two hurdles. First, the Applicant must demonstrate he or she does not fall into a disability that precludes the Applicant from lawfully owning and possessing firearms. That hurdle is essentially an objective one. Once over that hurdle, the applicant faces another, much more difficult hurdle. The applicant must demonstrate “good cause” for the issuance of a concealed carry license. This is a subjective test.The police licensing official has substantial discretion to grant or deny the issuance of a concealed handgun carry license. And, since New York traditionally frowns on civilian citizen ownership and possession of firearms, the vast majority of applications for concealed carry handgun licenses, are routinely denied. Most individuals fail to demonstrate “good cause” for obtaining a license under New York law.The applicant can, of course, appeal an adverse administrative decision to the Court. But, if the applicant expects to successfully challenge a denial in Court, that applicant must prove, to the satisfaction of the Court, abuse of discretion by the licensing official; and this hurdle, too, is difficult to overcome. Moreover, a Court review of denial is time-consuming and inordinately expensive.In Corlett, the petitioner unsuccessfully applied for a concealed handgun carry license in Steuben County, New York. The denial letter of the County judge and handgun licensing officer was general in content and condescending in tone. It read, “‘the decision [was] based upon concerns expressed in the Sheriff's investigation,’ specifically ‘concerns about your being sufficiently responsible to possess and care for a pistol’ and concerns ‘that your history demonstrates that you place your own interest above the interests of society.’”Note the barely tacit implication in the denial letter: the interests of the Hive outweigh the interests and needs of the individual. This, in a nutshell, describes the nature of the internal, taxing war now upon us: the tenets of Collectivism, upon which totalitarianism is grounded versus the tenets of Individualism, upon which our free Constitutional Republic is grounded.No less than the Nation’s Bill of Rights itself is on trial. It will be interesting to see how the so-called “Conservative” Chief Justice Roberts will rule on this case and whether Associate Justice Kavanaugh will follow Roberts’ lead.

HOW ARE MAJOR NEWSPAPERS HANDLING THE ANNOUNCEMENT?

Well, one leading newspaper, The Wall Street Journal recognizes the importance of this case: a landmark case that will serve either to strengthen Heller and McDonald or will whittle them down.Another newspaper, The New York Times, is notably and noticeably silent. Apparently, the newspaper that boasts of reporting “All the News That’s Fit to Print” doesn’t feel that the most important Second Amendment case to be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court since the seminal Heller and McDonald cases isn’t worth a mention in today’s newspaper, and notwithstanding this is a 2A case coming out of New York. Still, the paper’s publisher, and editors, and reporters know of it, and can’t be happy about it. And, even as they would like to ignore it, at some point, they must acknowledge it.____________________________________Copyright © 2021 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT: OUR BEST HOPE OR OUR WORST NIGHTMARE?

IMPACT OF U.S. SUPREME COURT NEW YORK CITY GUN TRANSPORT CASE DECISION ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT

PART SIX

CAN AMERICANS TRUST THEIR U.S. SUPREME COURT TO DEFEND OUR SACRED BILL OF RIGHTS?

Of the three Branches of the Federal Government in our federal system, the U.S. Supreme Court is either our best hope for preserving the U.S. Constitution and strengthening the Bill of Rights, or it’s our worst fear realized, if the High Court endangers the Constitution and weakens the Bill of Rights, abandoning the American citizenry to an awful fate.In his concurring opinion in the New York City gun transport case (New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. vs. City of New York, New York, 590 U.S ____ (2020)) Justice Kavanaugh asserts, inter alia, “I share Justice Alito’s concern that some federal and state courts may not be properly applying Heller and McDonald. The Court should address that issue soon, perhaps in one of the several Second Amendment cases with petitions for certiorari now pending before the Court.”If Justice Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion is meant to give Americans a modicum of hope, he failed miserably. He has merely raised suspicion as to his true motivations and jurisprudential leanings apropos of the Bill of Rights generally, and of the Second Amendment, particularly.The word, ‘should,’ that Kavanaugh uses, in his concurring, doesn’t mean ‘shall,’ nor does it even mean ‘may.’ U.S. Supreme Court Justices are extremely careful in their choice of words, as every word has legal import and significance as Supreme Court cases carry a substantial impact on the lives of all Americans, even as it comes to pass how many lower Court jurists blithely, and more, unconscionably ignore U.S. Supreme Court precedent, as we see over and over again, in the way that all too many lower courts, especially federal courts, namely the United States District Courts and United States Circuit Courts of Appeal, routinely render opinions that contradict the rulings and reasoning of the seminal U.S. Supreme Court Second Amendment Heller and McDonald cases, and these lower federal courts do so with crass impunity. It is little wonder, then, that Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and a recent member of the High Court, Neil Gorsuch, are furious over these actions of the lower Courts that constitute no less than mutiny, as serious an offense in the judicial sphere as it is in the military sphere. If one peruses the dissenting comments of these Justices, in those cases infringing the core of the Second Amendment the High Court fails to garner four votes necessary to secure review on, one can detect, also, the conservative wing's frustration with the liberal wing of the Court that routinely votes against hearing Second Amendment cases because the liberal wing does not recognize the right of the people to keep and bear arms as a fundamental right that accrues to the individual, but only to the militia, i.e., the Collective, and doesn't wish to be placed in the position, a predicament for them, to overturn a lower Court Second Amendment case that fails to adhere to U.S. Supreme Court precedent.So, then, what does the word, 'should,' mean? A short English lesson is in order. As one grammar website explains: “After English students learn the four types of conditionals with if-clauses and figure out when to use each one, they are told that there are other words and patterns to indicate the conditional mood, such as unless, even if, and should.” “Students often struggle with the conditional should (also called should-inversion) for a few reasons. First, the pattern differs from other conditional patterns, and second, the meaning is unrelated to should as a modal of advice. It is also quite formal, so students don’t come across it all that often.But much like any grammar target in English, the conditional should can be explained and learned fairly painlessly using patterns and examples.Conditional should and modal should have very different meanings.Students first learn that should is a modal of advice. The meaning of modal should is a suggestion.

• You should pay attention in class.(I suggest that you pay attention in class.)

Conditional should means if and is used for hypothetical situations.

• Should you need anything else, please call this number.(If you need anything else, please call this number.)” 

Justice Kavanaugh's use of the word, 'should,' in his concurring opinion, in the New York City gun transport case, rather than his use of the word, 'shall' or 'will,' or 'must,' or 'may,' is no accident. The use of the word, 'should,' operates, then, as a mere gesture of hope, nothing more. But, by that token, the U.S. Supreme Court should have taken up any of the two dozen cases that came up for review, in the ten years since the McDonald case decision came down. The Court didn't. Kavanaugh seems to be saying that "I would really like for another Second Amendment case to be heard by the Supreme Court." But, Kavanaugh's personal feelings are irrelevant to case analysis. What is relevant is a jurist's decision in a case, and the reasoning the jurist uses to reach a decision--even if such reasoning amounts to simple rationalization--but Kavanaugh doesn't provide any analysis in his concurring in the New York City case. If he were to provide analysis, we would like to see that analysis for deciding to vote with Chief Justice Roberts and the liberal wing of the Court in finding the gun transport matter moot.  Justice Alito, in his dissenting opinion (joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch), explained in depth why, specifically, the New York City gun transport case is NOT moot. One would expect that a Justice who troubles himself to write a concurring opinion at all would have realized the necessity of responding to Justice Alito's highly detailed, precise, unequivocal, unambiguous objections to the Court majority's decision on the mootness issue.  Justice Alito's criticisms of the majority's position of the mootness issue in the New York City gun transport case cry out for a response. There is nothing in the Majority opinion to suggest Justice Alito's objections are incorrect and there is everything in Justice Alito's dissenting opinion that establishes why the majority decision is incorrect. Having specifically responded to the majority's argument, the majority, in turn, should have responded to the Justice Alito's criticism of their decision. There is everything in Justice Alito's meticulous dissent that begs for a reply. But, the majority is silent. And, Associate Justice Kavanaugh who writes a concurring opinion is silent as well. Why bother to write a concurring opinion merely to assert that he agrees with the majority. Having drafted a concurring, why didn't Justice Alito tackle the issue of mootness head-on, if for no other reason than to clarify why he decided to cast his lot with the majority rather than with the dissent? That he failed to address Alito's objections at all is itself revealing. Justice Kavanaugh's concurring opinion bespeaks a man who appears desperately desirous of having Americans believe he unabashedly, resolutely supports the exercise of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, even as he defers to Respondent City. But that does not justify the writing of a concurring opinion. Having done so, Justice Kavanaugh clearly demonstrates a willingness to toy with the Second Amendment, to play with it--going along with a liberal wing that detests the Second Amendment and signing up with the Chief Justice whose own jurisprudential leanings, apropos of the Second Amendment, is muddled or neutral at best, and, at worst, manifestly diverges from the jurisprudential leanings of Associate Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch who strongly adhere to the Founders' adoration of our God-given natural, elemental, immutable, unalienable rights--rights that these Founders lovingly, and with clear conscience and conviction codified in our Bill of Rights, lest Government ever dare attempt to deny or ignore such sacred rights of the American people.Justice Kavanaugh's concurring opinion is not to be taken lightly. No opinion of a United States Supreme Court Justice is to be taken lightly. Nothing a United States Supreme Court Justice asserts in opinion is to be taken lightly. All High Court opinions, be they majority opinions, or concurring opinions, or dissenting opinions are to be taken lightly. All high Court opinions carry weight and they exist in our body of law forever. Sometimes silence is the better avenue to pursue. Chief Justice Roberts realized that. Justice Kavanaugh did not. And, his absurd and vacuous concurring will now remain, forever, as a testament to one Justice's sheepish attempt to shore up support from, and the trust of, the American people. The American people will now remain justifiably in doubt over Associate Justice Kavanaugh's jurisprudential leanings toward the Second Amendment of our Bill of Rights, and, in doubt, indeed, toward the entirety of our Bill of Rights and toward the very sanctity of such things as natural, fundamental, unalienable, immutable rights, bestowed in the very soul of man by the loving, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Divine Creator.Given the reluctance of the High Court to hear any Second Amendment case, even, and especially, those infringing the very core of it, the prospect of the Court actually taking up another Second Amendment case in the near future is more improbable than likely. Why is that, really?

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT REVIEWS VERY FEW CASES

First, the Court has limited time, given the number of cases that come before it during any term. As set forth in the SCOTUS Blog: “In most circumstances, the Supreme Court has discretion whether or not to grant review of a particular case. Of the 7,000 to 8,000 cert petitions filed each term, the court grants certiorari and hears oral argument in only about 80. Granting a cert petition requires the votes of four justices.” Since the High Court reviews only a fraction of the cases brought to it in any given term, and, since the High Court is averse to hearing Second Amendment cases, it will only be on a wing and a prayer that the Supreme Court is likely to take up any Second Amendment case, given the Court’s present composition. And, if it does so at all, it will likely deny review on the heels of the New York City gun transport case, any further Second Amendment case this Term because the Supreme Court Term is effectively over in late June, hardly more than one month from now as of the posting of this article.Note, “A Term of the Supreme Court begins, by statute, on the first Monday in October. . . . The Term is divided between ‘sittings,’ when the Justices hear cases and deliver opinions, and intervening ‘recesses,’ when they consider the business before the Court and write opinions. Sittings and recesses alternate at approximately two-week intervals.” Moreover, as the site, U.S. Courts.gov points out: “The Court is, typically, in recess from late June/early July until the first Monday in October. . . . The Court hears oral arguments in cases from October through April [and] All opinions of the Court are, typically, handed down by the last day of the Court’s term (the day in late June/early July when the Court recesses for the summer). With the exception of this deadline, there are no rules concerning when decisions must be released. Typically, decisions that are unanimous are released sooner than those that have concurring and dissenting opinions. While some unanimous decisions are handed down as early as December, some controversial opinions, even if heard in October, may not be handed down until the last day of the term.  

SUPPOSE THE HIGH COURT DOES SECURE FOUR VOTES NECESSARY TO REVIEW A SECOND AMENDMENT CASE, WHAT THEN?

Second, even if, by some strange happenstance the Supreme Court does grant review in one of the pending Second Amendment cases, in the next few weeks, especially given the impact of the Communist Chinese Coronavirus, one may justifiably ask when will that case be briefed; when will it be argued in oral hearing before the Court; and when might the case be decided? And, most significantly: how will that case be decided?Given that Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Kavanaugh both sided with the liberal wing of the High Court on the New York City gun transport case, that fact alone is a matter for deep concern.In any event, all of this—from voting to hear a case, to the releasing of a decision in that case—takes an inordinate amount of time and, with a General U.S. Presidential election coming up in November 2020, an election just around the corner, both the liberal wing and conservative wing of the High Court may have their own good reasons for not taking up another Second Amendment case this Term. Consider the ramifications of the results of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, both on the eventual composition of the Supreme Court and on the manner in which a Second Amendment case would be decided.Supreme Court Justices, no less than average citizens, do surely manifest deep concern over the outcome of the upcoming U.S. Presidential election. And whom it is that wins the election will be able to actuate one or the other of two alternate, incompatible, radically distinct visions for the Nation.One vision is grounded on the political and social philosophy of Individualism, championed by the Founders of our Free Republic, and actualized in the Constitution that the States, in existence at the time, had ratified. That Constitution is the blueprint of the structure of our Nation, where the people themselves are sovereign: a notion manifest in no other nation in the world despite talk, for example, by the rulers of the EU, holed up in Brussels, who govern the nations comprising the EU. These so-called “elites” talk endlessly, and disingenuously, and deceptively of the EU’s liberal democratic values. But that is nothing more than flimflam and flummery. The second vision is grounded on the political and social philosophy of Collectivism—a term that is wending its way more frequently into political discourse, as the Radical Left talks carefully, non-critically, and often glowingly, about the benefits of life in both the EU and in the Autocratic, Communist Collectivist regime of Xi Jinping of China. See Arbalest Quarrel Article, titled, “The Modern Civil War: A Clash of Ideologies, posted October 6, 2018.” Note: In that article, we point to Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, which, at the time of the posting of the article, had just occurred. Would that we knew then what we know now, having seen Justice Kavanaugh’s insipid, seemingly groveling, duplicitous Concurring Opinion in the New York City Gun Transport case. We said, at the time:“With Brett Kavanaugh now on the High Court, the Individualists’ vision for this Country is now more likely to prevail in the decades ahead than is the vision of the Collectivists. Had Hillary Clinton prevailed in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, and thereupon nominated individuals to the High Court who view the Constitution of the United States as a “Living Document,” susceptible to massive judicial and legislative revision, the direction of this Country would have continued along the path created for it by the Bush and Clinton clans, and by Barack Obama. Americans would have seen the eventual loss of this Country’s independence and sovereignty, and, concomitantly, Americans would have seen the loss of the fundamental, unalienable rights guaranteed to them, as codified in the Nation’s Bill of Rights. The losses would have been drastic, and those losses would have been assured. Thankfully, a dire future for this nation and its people is less likely to happen now, as the election of Trump has enabled the Nation to pivot back to the path laid out for us by the founders of the Nation. But there is still much work ahead for the American people. We must remain ever vigilant.”

THE MOST IMPORTANT U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF THE LAST TWO CENTURIES IS UPON US

The principles of Collectivism were anathema to the founders of our Nation; and those principles are wholly incompatible with the Constitution the framers designed, predicated on the tenets of Individualism, the foundation of our Nation. The two political and social philosophies, Individualism and Collectivism, cannot be reconciled. And those who wish to implement the principles of Collectivism in our Nation know this. That is why they talk openly of major amendments to the Constitution.Indeed, some Collectivists talk of doing away with the U.S. Constitution altogether, as it would be far easier to draft a new constitution grounded on the principles of Collectivism than to try to reconfigure the original Constitution, grounded as it is on a completely different set of precepts: those of Individualism. And we will be headed in a very disturbing direction if the Collectivists do succeed in taking firm control over the reins of Government._____________________________________________

WITHOUT AN ARMED CITIZENRY EVERY CITIZEN REMAINS AT THE MERCY OF THE STATE

Since an armed citizenry operates as the one true signifier and test of the sovereignty of the people over Government, and the only effective vehicle through which the sovereignty of the people over illegal Government usurpation and accumulation of power is contained, the armed citizenry is truly the sine qua non of a Nation founded on the tenets of Individualism. And in only one such Nation are the people truly sovereign: the United States. Consider: For all the lofty talk of human rights and with all the “rights” delineated in the EU’s “Charter of Fundamental Rights,” as one prime example—and there are over six dozen of them at last count—you would be hard-pressed to find any assertion of the right of the people of the EU to keep and bear arms. There isn’t one. Do you think the omission was an accident? 

THE LIBERAL WING OF THE HIGH COURT EXTOLS THE POLITICAL AND LEGAL FRAMEWORK OF THE EU, NOT THE U.S.

Several U.S. Supreme Court Justices such as, and particularly, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have little regard for the U.S. Constitution, as they consider it to be as she says, “rather old” and, therefore, archaic, reminiscent of an earlier time and earlier values that they also perceive as archaic, mutable, irrelevant, and even counter to the Collectivist political and social orientation they support or sympathize with. Their vision of this Country does not include the presence of an armed citizenry. Thus, they, understandably, would express reservation, hesitation in voting to grant review of another Second Amendment case at this time: one that truly impacts the very core of it. These liberal wing U.S. Supreme Court Justices are awaiting the installation of a Collectivist as U.S. President, as are all those who espouse the principles and tenets of Collectivism.If the Radical Left Democrats defeat Trump in the upcoming November 2020 general election, might not that embolden Roberts to join the liberal wing of the Court, to take up another Second Amendment case for the express purpose to weaken the central holdings of Heller and McDonald, if not to overturn the central holdings of those cases outright?After all, it only takes one Justice, say, John Roberts, to join the liberal wing, to defeat a Second Amendment case. And, what  Justice Kavanaugh would do with it is anyone’s guess, given his awkward, almost servile, and definitely odd concurring opinion in the recent New York City gun transport case.The liberal wing of the U.S. Supreme Court Court has made their deep animosity toward the Second Amendment known. The Liberal wing of the High Court therefore fervently relishes the opportunity to overturn Heller and McDonald. Make no mistake about that. The liberal wing of the High Court has made clear its deep hostility toward and its visceral loathing of the right of the people to keep and bear arms. That isn’t a secret.This is predicated on the temperament of Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan—a psychological temperament that informs their methodological approach to High Court case analysis; a methodological approach and jurisprudential philosophy that predisposes them to undercut the Second Amendment, always maintaining that the right of the people to keep and bear arms amounts to a collective right if such a right exists at all; conferring no individual right to own and possess firearms.The liberal wing of the High Court long ago opined that both Heller and McDonald were wrongly decided. At the time Heller was decided in 2008, the dissenting Justices included: Breyer, Stevens, Souter and Ginsburg. And, at the time McDonald was decided, the dissenting Justices included: Breyer, Stevens, and Sotomayor.Ostensibly a jurisprudential conservative who retired in 2009, Associate Justice David Souter, nominated by then-President George H.W. Bush, turned out to be a major disappointment. His replacement, Elena Kagan, nominated by Donald Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, would come as no surprise. One needn’t guess her jurisprudential philosophy toward the Second Amendment, all of which is predicated on the temperament of the liberal wing of the High Court that now comprises Associate Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan—a psychological temperament that informs their jurisprudential philosophy and a methodological approach toward case analysis that is wholly unlike that of the late eminent Justice Scalia and that Justices Thomas and Alito.The liberal wing of the Court abhors the very idea that Americans have a fundamental and immutable and unalienable, natural right to own and possess firearms. If they vote to hear a Second Amendment case, it will only be with a view toward undercutting the Second Amendment and they will only vote to hear a Second Amendment case once they feel they have sufficient support to compose the majority opinion on the matter.The New York City gun transport case was the most innocuous of Second Amendment cases for the High Court to take up when compared to other cases that had come before it. Perhaps that was one reason they granted review of the New York City case.Moreover, the New York City case invited the New York City Government to amend the law to encourage the liberal wing of the High Court to avoid deciding the case on the merits.And so, the liberal wing did find the case mooted by a change in the law. No surprise there. And Chief Justice Roberts readily jumped on board. No surprise there either. But the decision of Justice Kavanaugh, joining the liberal wing and Roberts majority rather than the dissenters, Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch—that was a surprise and far, far from a pleasant one.Who is it that Justice Kavanaugh thinks he is fooling? He knows damn well how difficult it is for a Second Amendment case—any Second Amendment case—to be heard. Americans can rest assured that Justice Thomas clued Kavanaugh in on that if Kavanaugh harbored any doubt about that. And Americans are supposed to sit on their hands, and hold their breath waiting for the next Second Amendment case to be taken up by the Court, gaining sustenance from a conjecture tucked away in an absurd Concurring Opinion?Unfortunately, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh isn’t the only person on the High Court infected with St. Vitus Dance, ever meandering, weaseling, tap dancing around the Second Amendment rather than giving it the attention and respect it deserves, dealing squarely with it, to protect the core of it.And the Third Branch of Government isn’t our only concern.Recall how the Republican-controlled House and Senate failed to enact national concealed handgun carry into law. Republicans could easily have enacted 115 H.R. 38 into law if they really wanted to. But they didn’t. Back on November 30, 2018, the Arbalest Quarrel wrote, in our article titled, “As Deadline Draws Near, Supporters Of Second Amendment Demand U.S. Senate Vote On National Concealed Handgun Carry Reciprocity,”“The Senate Judiciary Committee has been sitting on the bill that was sent to Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, last December 2017, when it passed the Republican-controlled House. The version of national concealed handgun carry reciprocity that passed the House is designated, 115 H.R. 38, “Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017.” Once Senator McConnell received it, he sent it immediately to the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Charles Grassley, for action. Clearly, no work was done on it; and a year has gone by since the Judiciary Committee had received it.” Nothing was done by the Republican Controlled Congress in 2017, at that time, to strengthen Americans’ right to keep and bear arms. And, now, at this juncture—with the decision of Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Kavanaugh, having joined the liberal wing of the High Court, in the New York City gun transport case—nothing yet has been done to preserve and strengthen our sacred Second Amendment right.Do you think, perhaps, that all too many legislators and jurists, adherents of Collectivism, who claim to support the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, really don’t? Is talk of support for the right of the people to keep and bear arms just that: merely talk? Is preservation of our Bill of Rights merely a will-o’-the-wisp, an elaborate play, the purpose of which is to placate a rightfully embittered American electorate, facilitating the slow, inexorable, erasure of the very notion of fundamental, immutable, God-given rights that fall beyond the lawful power of Government to denigrate and eradicate?As we have pointed out in our previous article, some Collectivists in the U.S. suggest that no constitution is necessary. Taking their cue from Great Britain which is said to have an “unwritten constitution” (which really means NO constitution), the Collectivists surmise that changes to Government and changes to the relationship of the people to Government should always be flexible, malleable—subject to change in accordance with the whims of those who wield power. For these rulers, adherents of Collectivism, any constitution is too restrictive and any rights afforded the populace must always be subject to modification or abrogation as the rulers dictate. And, they have made that plain. The Collectivists seek to rewrite portions of the Articles, and they seek to rewrite, or to torturously and tortuously reinterpret, or to abrogate altogether, or simply to ignore portions of our fundamental, unalienable, immutable, natural rights—our Bill of Rights—giving special attention to the Second Amendment that they perceive as the greatest single threat to their illegal, unconscionable usurpation of power.The American people must not let these Radical Left Collectivist insurrectionists succeed.____________________________________________Copyright © 2020 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

ASSAULT ON SECOND AMENDMENT CAN ONLY BRING DESTRUCTION TO OUR NATION AS A FREE REPUBLIC.

PART SIXTEEN

AMERICANS MAY FORESTALL ALL ATTACKS ON THEIR FREEDOM BUT FOR ONE: LOSS OF THEIR RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS.

There is ample evidence of sinister work afoot to tear down the fabric of this Nation that the founders of our Republic fought so hard to create and preserve. The creation of both the Federal Reserve System and the IRS that have sucked the lifeblood of Americans’ toil are two clear instances of attempts by rapacious forces from both within the U.S. and outside the U.S. to undermine the integrity of the U.S. as an independent and sovereign Nation State; to weaken our Nation’s institutions; and to enfeeble our Nation’s citizenry so that it might be more easily disciplined and controlled.Understand there is nothing in the Constitution that either requires or mandates the creation of an independent privately owned Federal Reserve System or that requires or mandates the creation of a governmental structure, the IRS, within the U.S. They are both artificial constructs. The framers of our Constitution did not place them in that sacred Document. Yet, they exist, and both have done much to harm both this Nation and this Nation’s citizenry, up to the present moment in time. Just as insidiously, we have seen, for decades, attempts to destroy the independence and sovereignty of our Nation by thrusting the U.S. into economic unions with other Nations. These economic pacts and treaties serve as a diabolical backdoor through which the internationalist Rothschild clan and its minions dare insinuate themselves into the political, social, cultural, and legal fabric of our Nation, quite apart from the economic fabric, benefiting multinational cartels to the detriment of our Nation’s workers and small business owners.Recall the creation of NAFTA and CAFTA. Have these economic pacts served well our Nation and its workers and our small business entrepreneurs? Hardly! Just ask them! And, through further, subterfuge, past Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former U.S. President Barack Obama, along with the transnationalist cartels, sought to undermine the sovereignty and independence of our Nation; subordinating our Constitution, system of laws and jurisprudence, to the will of multinational corporations, one-world Government transnationalists, neoliberal economic Globalists, and transnationalist multiculturalists.Consider the infamous, rapacious, diabolical Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreements that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama helped to formulate, through secret machinations and connivance with other Governments and with multinational corporations, and through which they sought to bind our Nation. The TPP and TTIP, as envisioned, would have been horrific mechanisms of control through which this Nation’s economic, political, and legal independence and sovereignty would have been jeopardized, vanquished, had they been implemented, as Barack Obama intended, and as Hillary Clinton would certainly have followed through with, had she become U.S. President, notwithstanding her statements to the contrary, during the 2016 Democratic Party debates.President Trump made clear his opposition to these monstrous plans to undermine our Nation, and, true to his word, he successfully derailed them through Executive Order, one of his first acts as U.S. President.

BUT THE MOST DIABOLICAL ASSAULT ON OUR NATION AND ON A FREE PEOPLE IS THIS: DESTRUCTION OF THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS.

More recently, within the last few years especially—and never far from the Collectivists’ desire to eradicate our free Republic—we see the destroyers of our Nation attempting, now and again, to undermine, indeed erase, the right of the people to keep and bear arms. With the U.S. Presidential election drawing ever nearer, we are seeing renewed attacks on the Second Amendment. In fits and starts, the Democratic Party—now a refuge for Radical Leftists of all stripes: Marxists, Socialists, Communists, and Anarchists—inevitably and invariably returns to its signature platform and policy goal: the weakening and eventual eradication of the Second Amendment. But why is that? Why would the Democratic Party Leadership and its Radical Left contingent want this? For this reason: An armed citizenry is absolutely anathema to their plans for a massive increase in the size of Government, and, concomitantly, for a powerful centralized Government exercising control over the Nation’s citizenry’s every thought and action. And so, understandably, albeit, unconscionably, we see the American citizenry’s exercise of its Second Amendment fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms under insistent, incessant, omni-present, strenuous attack.The Progressive and Radical Left toadies and hangers-on in our State and Federal Governments will never be content with simply weakening the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. They must attack firearms and firearms’ ownership and possession at the root level, doing so fervently, unashamedly, unabashedly. They seek to make the very idea of gun ownership and possession passé, a notion that has outlived its usefulness, if, in their mind, ever had any. They intend to make the American citizen's the very idea of exercising one's right to keep and bear arms an aberration of nature. There is even a name for it now: hoplophobia. Will this new phobia eventually be included in a new “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (DSM), even as such clear deviancy as Gender Dysphoria is removed, due to the operation of the imbecilic notion of “Political Correctness,” hawked by supercilious “Thought Police” of the Radical Left?And Progressive and Radical Left Legislators and Government Bureaucrats have friends to assist them in their endeavor to wreak havoc on the Second Amendment: friends and cohorts found in finance and in the technology sectors; in academia; entertainment, the Press; and even in our Courts. All have a strong, irrepressible, obsessive desire to weaken the Second Amendment irreversibly; many calling for outright repeal of it. Along the way they orchestrate schemes to neutralize the efficacy of the right of the people to keep and bear arms.But, what is the rationale for the incessant, virulent attack on the Second Amendment? Is it really predicated on a desire, ever expressed, to curb “gun violence” as the Public is told? No! That is mere pretext. Were it otherwise, then those who truly claim a desire to curb violence with guns, would direct their attention to those elements in society—namely gang members, common criminals, and terrorists—who misuse firearms. But, they don’t direct their attention to these elements of society. Instead, these Radical Left elements direct their attention to the firearm itself, and they direct their attention on the tens of millions of average Americans: rational, law-abiding citizens who wish only to exercise their fundamental right to keep and bear arms, uninhibited, unrestrained, and unconstrained by Government.Consider the media’s incendiary attacks on guns and gun ownership whenever a lunatic goes off half-cocked: most recently, as we see in newspaper accounts of two recent mass shooting incidents. The New York Times proclaims on a banner headline, on August 5, 2019, in its digital format paper that: “Shootings Renew Debate Over How to Combat Domestic Terrorism.” And in the Newspaper’s home edition, the banner headline reads: “One Shooting Massacre Follows Another, Shaking a Bewildered Nation to its Core.” In the fourth paragraph of the article, the Times reports, “Democrats urged Congress to take action and pass stricter gun laws.”In other words, the Democratic Party Leadership and the Radical Left deem it perfectly acceptable to utilize the lowest common denominator in society to destroy the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms. But, even on that score the antigun zealots in the Press cannot claim even a modicum of consistency. Where was The New York Times’ outrage when the lunatic and Antifa fanatic, Willem Van Spronsen, attacked an immigration detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, on July 13, 2019, with an aim toward murdering federal police officers? That outrage was nowhere to be seen. The Times reported dryly, matter-of-factly, indeed deceptively, that:"the man [Willem Van Spronsen], who was armed with a rifle, was throwing unspecified 'incendiary devices' at the Northwest Detention Center, according to a police statement. . . . Police have not established a motive for the attack, but The Seattle Times reported that a longtime friend of Mr. Van Spronsen’s, Deb Bartley, believed he had intended to provoke a fatal conflict.”No motive for the attack on ICE Officials and on the Northwest Detention Center that can be deduced? Really? New York Times reporters couldn't undertake an investigation? Conducting independent investigations--isn't that what Newspaper Reporters do; what it is they are supposed to do, expected to do, to get to the bottom of a story? And, couldn't the story's news reporters hazard an educated guess, at the very least, as to a possible motive, given that Spronsen did, after all, leave a "manifesto" which he obviously intended for the public to read?The conservative Washington Times, having investigated the would-be killer, Spronsen, unlike the Left-wing New York Times--that, it seems, decided to forego investigating the motives of Spronsen--found no difficulty at all in ascribing a motive to Willem Spronsen's actions, and the Washington Times found reason aplenty for so informing the public of its findings, writing:Willem Van Spronsen, 69, declares early on in his manifesto that ‘evil says concentration camps for folks deemed lesser are necessary. the handmaid of evil says the concentration camps should be more humane,’ using a term usually reserved for Nazi Germany’s death camps, but introduced in the border-security debate last month by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.He also mocked people criticizing Ms. Ocasio-Cortez for intellectual sloppiness, referring to ‘these days of highly profitable detention/concentration camps and a battle over the semantics.’Van Spronsen, armed with an AR-15 assault weapon that his manifesto encouraged others to acquire to bring about a revolution, attacked the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma around 4 a.m. Saturday. He threw ‘incendiary devices’ and set vehicles before officers shot him to death as he was trying to ignite a propane tank. In his manifesto, he called the detention facility ‘an abomination’ and that he was ‘not standing by’ as it operated.‘i really shouldn’t have to say any more than this. i set aside my broken heart and i heal the only way i know how- by being useful. i efficiently compartmentalize my pain. . . and i joyfully go about this work,’ he wrote.He indicated that he intended the attack as a suicide mission, writing that ‘i regret that i will miss the rest of the revolution. thank you for the honor of having me in your midst. giving me space to be useful.’Antifa activists declared him useful, too.Seattle Antifascist Action called him ‘our good friend and comrade Willem Van Spronsen’ and said he ‘became a martyr who gave his life to the struggle against fascism.’The group went on to call for more such attacks in memory of Van Spronsen.‘We cannot let his death go unanswered . . . May his death serve as a call to protest and direct action,’ the group wrote on its Facebook page.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was asked Monday by the Daily Wire whether she would denounce antifa and whether she was to any degree responsible for the attack, since Van Spronsen repeatedly used her “concentration camp” language.She ignored the reporter.BREAKING: Ocasio-Cortez refuses to condemn the far-left terrorist attack on the ICE facility in Tacoma, WashingtonThe terrorist used Ocasio-Cortez’s rhetoric in his manifesto pic.twitter.com/t1priIPAiW.Apparently The New York Times missed these little details about Spronsen that the Washington Times felt pertinent enough to inform the public about. Or, perhaps New York Times Editors, unlike the Washington Times Editors, felt that Spronsen’s motives, clearly amounting to domestic terrorism were either inscrutable or irrelevant; therefore falling outside the parameters of what the Times concludes is "All the News That’s Fit to Print." One is left to suspect that there is, in fact, contrary to adherence to its motto, much "News That IS Fit to print," but that The New York Times would rather not print even though such news is really and truly fit to print; preferring to leave the public in the dark in those instances where the news doesn't happen to fit the paper's personal ends: one directed to indoctrinating the public to accept a certain line of thought, rather than merely and essentially informing the public, so that the public might draw its own conclusion. And, there you have it!

PART SEVENTEEN

ENDING GUN VIOLENCE ISN’T AN AIM OF ANTIGUN RADICAL LEFTISTS; IT IS A MERE TALKING POINT TO DESTROY EXERCISE OF THE CITIZEN'S FUNDAMENTAL, NATURAL, AND UNALIENABLE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMSDUPLICITY AND HYPOCRISY ABOUNDS AMONG THE RADICAL LEFTIf it were the case that those who claim a desire to curb gun violence truly meant what they say, they would be compelled, at one and the same time, to draw a clear and categorical distinction between proper, appropriate use of firearms and improper, inappropriate, criminal use of firearms, acknowledging the fact that millions of law-abiding, sane American citizens, do exercise their right to keep and bear arms for legitimate purposes, millions of time every year, namely, and most notably, for self-defense; thereby proclaiming the legitimacy of firearms’ use for self-defense. But, antigun zealots don’t wish to recognize self-defense as a legitimate reason for owning and possessing firearms, and, so, won't acknowledge self-defense as a legitimate basis for owning and possessing firearms, even if they were to do so only grudgingly.Further, a rational person would expect these same antigun zealots to condemn vociferously any and all acts of criminal violence even if they are reluctant to admit lawful purposes and uses for firearms. But, while it has always been the case that antigun zealots seek, first and foremost, to disarm the citizenry, albeit under the guise of protecting the public from gun violence, even that platitude has lost efficacy, for, as we have seen, Radical Left antigun zealots do, indeed, support use of firearms and bombs for use in some acts of domestic terrorism, namely those acts—such as attacking and murdering police and Federal ICE officials and destroying Government facilities—that happen to cohere with the Collectivist, Anarchist Marxist/Socialist/Communist agenda, as evidenced by the Spronsen incident, pointed out in this article, supra, citing the Washington Times news story, titled, “Antifa lauds ‘martyr’ who attacked ICE detention center as manifesto circulates.”We see mainstream Left-wing newspapers, such as The New York Times, deliberately refraining from calling out some acts of domestic terrorism, illustrating clearly enough, then, that many media organizations are clearly in lockstep with the sympathies of the Radical Left who operate both in this Country and abroad.

WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON HERE?

Of course exercise of the right of the people to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense, is a perfectly legitimate purpose, as made plain in the 2008 Heller decision. But, for antigun zealots who, at once, invariably sympathize with the goals and agenda of the Radical Left, such an admission weakens their argument, false as it is, that guns are the salient cause of violence in society.Moreover, as some acts of domestic terrorism are tolerated or condoned, and even applauded and encouraged, as we see with the Willem Van Spronsen incident, it is now becoming impossible to deny—as the fact of the matter is becoming ever clearer, day-by-day—that the Radical Left intends to destroy the very fabric of American society as conceived by the founders of our free Republic. The Radical Left seeks to jettison our culture, our system of laws, our Constitution, our Judeo-Christian ethos—all of it—in the name of multicultural pluralism, utilizing the newly concocted political devices of identity politics, intersectionalism, and virtue signaling; and promoting as a morally superior idea, a culture of victimhood--all in an attempt to prepare the citizens of this Nation for a life of subjugation, as the Nation is subsumed into a new one-world Government, where the very concept of the ‘Nation State’ and ‘Citizen of the United States’ both cease to exist; where a once proud Nation is reduced to obscurity, insignificance--a mere cog in the machinery of a new one-world system of governance--where a once free, proud, and unique People is reduced to abject servitude and penury.Can the U.S. Supreme Court, as the guardian of the U.S. Constitution, prevent this, even if Congress and the Executive Branch of the Federal Government cannot? Clearly, the U.S. Supreme Court can, which is why the Radical Left seeks to pack the Court with individuals who have no love for our Constitution--who have little to no compunction about subordinating our Constitution to that of the laws of other Nations and to so-called international norms, thereby paving the way for insinuation of the U.S. into the EU, as precursor to a one-world system of governance, which necessitates loss of our National sovereignty and independence, and subordination of our laws, Constitution, and jurisprudence to an artificial transnational world construct. Not surprisingly, then, antigun zealots ignore the reasoning of U.S. Supreme Court rulings that contradict their goals and agenda. Hence, they ignore or condemn outright, the reasoning of the Heller Majority along with the high Court’s rulings in that case—viewing Heller as an aberration, if they are asked about Heller at all.

IN WHAT DOES THE THREAT TO THE COLLECTIVIST GOAL FOR EFFECTIVE REPEAL OF THE SACRED, FUNDAMENTAL, INVIOLATE, UNALIENABLE, NATURAL RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS REALLY AND TRULY REST?

It cannot be overstated that, while the Second Amendment entails the natural right of self-defense—as dealt with at length in Heller—the import of the Second Amendment is directed, first and foremost, to prevent tyranny from arising in this Country—a point also made in Heller. That being so, it is therefore a curious thing that antigun politicians, along with the usual media types, continually scoff at the notion that the American people need to be armed to ward off tyranny—even though it is self-evident, true, that no better check against tyranny exists than the presence of a well-armed citizenry. The founders of our Nation certainly knew this to be so, but few Legislators today bother to acknowledge that fact. Not surprisingly, the Radical Left in this Country, now attack the founders of our Nation even as these same Leftist elements dare claim, disingenuously, inconsistently, and oddly, that they respect our Nation’s laws and Constitution. Perhaps they should take a close look at Heller. And, they would do well to take a close look, as well, at Constitutional Law expert, David Kopel’s article, “Why the anti-tyranny case for the 2nd Amendment shouldn’t be dismissed so quickly,” that appeared, three years ago—and curiously enough—in the progressive weblog, Vox. Disemboweling the Bill of Rights—particularly the Second Amendment—is the principal aim of Progressive and Radical Leftists. Those that hew to the tenets of Collectivism—disreputable elements, both inside this Country as well as outside it—seek to destroy a proud and free people, and a free Republic.To accomplish their loathsome end, it is indicative of the unsavory proponents of Collectivism—those who seek to create a new system of governance, eschewing the continued existence of the concept of the Nation State—to work toward denying to the citizens of our Nation their natural, unalienable, immutable, and inviolate right to keep and bear arms. For, a one-world Government that subjugates entire populations is impossible to accomplish in any Nation where that Nation’s citizenry has, readily available to it, access to firearms.At ground, the salient and critical purpose of the Second Amendment, as the founders of our Constitutional Republic in their wisdom, did foresee and ever maintained, is to secure the authority and sovereignty of the American people from those who would dare usurp the ultimate, premier authority from wherein it alone belongs: in the American people themselves. Prevention of tyranny is the true, undeniable, and salient, essential purpose of the Second Amendment. And that core purpose is inconsistent with and anathema to the tenets of Collectivism.Collectivist tenets of Marxism, Socialism, Communism, upon which the Leftist agenda absolutely depends, requires, for its success, the subjugation of the American citizenry. This is a matter impossible for the Internationalist Collectivists to accomplish as long as the Second Amendment of our Nation's Bill of Rights remains, in all its glory: preserved, robust, strong, absolute, as the founders of our Nation, the creators of our free Republic, a Constitutional Republic—one comprising an autonomous, powerful, armed citizenry—had unequivocally intended.__________________________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

RADICAL LEFT ATTACKS AND TRIES TO SILENCE AMERICANS WHO DEFEND BILL OF RIGHTS AGAINST SOCIALIST AGENDA

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. ~From the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

CUOMO, SWALWELL, AND OTHERS LEAD LEFTIST CHARGE AGAINST OUR MOST SACRED RIGHT AS THE RADICAL LEFT, THROUGH A COMPLIANT PRESS, CONTINUES TO CONTROL THE NARRATIVE.

Convinced their goals are right and proper, Leftist extremists in Congress and in the Government Bureaucracy, in the Press, in the academia, in entertainment, and in our business sectors, relentlessly attack anyone who disagrees with them. They do not promote and encourage discourse and debate on policy issues. Quite the opposite. They intend to preempt and preclude discourse and debate on all issues. They are Dead Souls, heralds of death and destruction. They seek to tear down, demolish, and upend every aspect of our history, traditions, core values, and salient rights and liberties. They are intent on wiping the slate clean, not to secure the rights of the people but, rather, to strip the people of their God-Given rights: the antithesis of and a perversion of the Declaration of Independence.Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York, and Eric Swalwell, Congressional Representative from California, typify these Dead Souls. Unfortunately, sufficient numbers of the populace, both ignorant and well-learned alike—most residing in predominately in urban areas of the Country, and many residing in liberal bastions like New York, California, Illinois, and others—acquiesce to the policy goals of these Dead Souls and willingly allow themselves to be led by the nose, to the ruination and destruction of our Country. With population movements and shifts of radical Leftists into hitherto predominately conservative States, such as Texas, Colorado, Arizona, and even in Montana (as reported in the New York Times in 2013), we find our Nation’s fundamental rights and liberties growing more tenuous, situated on more precarious ground.

PRESUMPTUOUS OF HUMAN LIFE, GOVERNOR ANDREW CUOMO HYPOCRITICALLY AND SANCTIMONIOUSLY CONTENDS HE VALUES HUMAN LIFE.

Andrew Cuomo pompously declared, in 2014, as reported in The Washington Times: “Their problem is not me and the Democrats; their problem is themselves. Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”Oh really? So, Mr. Cuomo, who are these “extreme conservatives” whom you detest? We will tell you who they are. These people are Americans who cherish the Bill of Rights as written, conceived, and understood by the framers who drafted it. They are Americans who demonstrate an aversion to treating an unborn, or an about-to-be born innocent human life like so much garbage, to be unceremoniously discarded as biological waste simply because the mother would rather not be bothered with that unborn child. These “extreme conservatives,” as you call them, are Americans who believe that illegal aliens who defy our laws, do not, contrary to your opinion, have any right—moral, legal, or logical—to reside in our Country even if they insist that they do and even if they presume, further, although erroneously, that the American tax-payer must bear the burden to provide for them when that taxpayer finds it difficult enough to provide for him or herself. Cuomo doesn’t care whether the public agrees with him or not, and, apparently, he doesn't care what the public thinks of him. As he sees it, all power resides in him to do whatever he damn well pleases; all the worse, Governor Cuomo, thinks, for those naysayers in the New York State Government in Albany and among the public who happen to disagree with him. Cuomo is a driven man, on his own unholy crusade. The way Cuomo sees it: a person must either get onboard with the game plan; or get out of the way. That, apparently, is how Cuomo perceives the Democratic process.Recall, this is a man who pursued with single-minded obsession and passion further gun restrictions in his State, New York, that, before enactment of the New York Safe Act, had among the most restrictive gun laws in the Nation. Cuomo knew that further draconian antigun policies would be highly unpopular. He therefore conspired to pass the New York Safe Act, quickly, in the dark of night, as an emergency measure, absent debate among New York Assemblymen and Senators; and out of earshot of the New York public. Once enacted in Albany, the radical Leftist, Andrew Cuomo, signed the Safe Act into law, in 2013, and he did so amid great fanfare. And, in doing so, he disingenuously proclaimed his desire to protect human life, albeit in some inarticulable general sense, as Cuomo’s true motive in thrusting the Safe Act on New York gun owners has little if anything to do with protecting human life and has everything to do with oppressing the average, law-abiding, rational American citizen, and resident of New York. Cuomo dares not express his true motive.Law-abiding gun owners are not, after all, asking the Government to provide them protection from predators that abound in New York. They never did ask Government for such protection. In any event, Government is ill-equipped to do that; and, under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, Government has no obligation to ensure the life, safety, and well-being of any American, anyway, except in very narrow, and carefully circumscribed instances. Cuomo knows this, but cares not to admit it, as there is no upside in doing so.It stands to reason, then, that law-abiding gun owners simply do not wish to be deprived of the right to protect their own life with the best means available for doing so—a firearm. But Cuomo will have none of that. And, now, having been elected to a third term as Governor, he works tirelessly, obsessively, to further restrict exercise of the fundamental right embodied in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The underlying goal of the New York Safe Act of 2013 is to is to strip Americans of their God-given right to keep and bear arms, even though the Constitution is clear about this, and notwithstanding that the U.S. Supreme Court, in the seminal Heller and McDonald cases placed its imprimatur. It should be obvious to anyone, be that person a legal scholar or the average man-on-the-street, that the the natural and fundamental right, as etched in the Second Amendment is clear, succinct, categorical and unambiguous. Yet some Courts, on both the State and Federal levels, regularly take issue with this. That fact isn’t lost on Justice Clarence Thomas who, in Friedman vs. City of Highland Park, stated, in no uncertain terms, “[the United States Supreme] Court’s refusal to review a decision [of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit] that flouts two of our Second Amendment precedents stands in marked contrast to the Court’s willingness to summarily reverse courts that disregard our other constitutional decisions. . . . There is no basis for a different result when our Second Amendment precedents are at stake. I would grant certiorari to prevent the Seventh Circuit from relegating the Second Amendment to a second-class right."Cuomo and other radical Leftists--most disturbingly, those rendering judgment on us, in their capacity as jurists--are seemingly oblivious to the categorical imperative of the Second Amendment, and are openly defiant of U.S. Supreme Court precedent. Now, in his third term, Cuomo, has continually pushed for ever more draconian gun laws. In so doing, he has made clear that the the NY Safe Act isn’t a finished product and was never intended to be a finished product. It is, rather, simply, a work in progress. Governor Cuomo won’t be satisfied until the Second Amendment ceases to exist in New York and in the rest of the Nation, as well.Cuomo, along with other Left-wing radicals, in business, in Government, in academia, in the Press, and even in the Courts, is working ceaselessly, obsessively to chisel away at the notion--at the very idea--that Americans have a fundamental, natural, and unalienable right to keep and bear arms.Americans must take seriously the very real threat these powerful and ruthless elements pose to THIS, our most sacred and inviolate right.______________________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

BRETT KAVANAUGH SENATE SUPREME COURT CONFIRMATION HEARING: DEMOCRATS GRILL TRUMP NOMINEE ON “ASSAULT WEAPONS.”

DO NOT FOR ONE INSTANCE BE TAKEN IN BY FALSE CLAIMS OF DEMOCRATS THAT "OF COURSE" THEY DEFEND THE SECOND AMENDMENT AND THAT THEY ONLY SEEK TO ENACT SO-CALLED SENSIBLE, COMMON-SENSE GUN LAWS. THAT IS PURE, NAKED DECEPTION. THE KEY GOAL OF CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS IS AND, FOR DECADES, HAS BEEN THE REINING IN OF THE RIGHT OF THE AMERICAN CITIZENRY TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS. AND THEY WILL NOT STOP THERE. CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS ALONG WITH OTHER LEFT-WING ELEMENTS IN SOCIETY, INCLUDING THEIR ECHO CHAMBER, THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA, SEEK NOTHING LESS THAN THE UTTER, TOTAL DISSOLUTION OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

THE DUBIOUS LEGAL ARGUMENT EMPLOYED BY THOSE WHO SEEK DESTRUCTION OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT IS PREDICATED ON THE NOTION THAT THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS REFERS TO A COLLECTIVE RIGHT, ASCRIBED ONLY TO ONE'S CONNECTION WITH OR ASSOCIATION WITH A MILITIA. WERE THIS TRUE, THE SACRED, FUNDAMENTAL, UNALIENABLE, NATURAL RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS WOULD BE TRIVIALIZED AS WOULD THE CITIZENS THEMSELVES BE TRIVIALIZED. IF SUCH WERE IN FACT THE CASE, AMERICANS WOULD WITNESS THE FALL OF A ONCE GREAT NATION AND FREE REPUBLIC.

BUT THOSE WHO WOULD DESTROY THE SECOND AMENDMENT HOLD TO A FALSE  NOTION OF THE IMPORT OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT. FOR, THEIR NOTION THAT THE WORD, 'PEOPLE,' THAT APPEARS IN THE OPERATIVE CLAUSE OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT, REFERS TO THE CITIZENRY IN A "COLLECTIVE" CAPACITY OR SENSE HAS BEEN REPUDIATED. IT IS NOW SETTLED LAW THAT THE WORD, 'PEOPLE,' AS IT APPEARS IN THE OPERATIVE CLAUSE OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT, REFERS TO THE CITIZENRY OF THIS NATION IN THEIR INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY OR SENSE. AND THE RIGHT THEREFORE RESIDES, INTRINSICALLY IN THE INDIVIDUAL, AND NOT IN AN AMORPHOUS COLLECTIVE MILITIA.  AS SUCH, THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IS FUNDAMENTAL, AND MUST BE RESPECTED. THE RIGHT REFERRED TO IS NOT INCIDENTAL, AND, THEREFORE, THE RIGHT IS NOT TO BE PERFUNCTORILY DENIED, AS THOSE WHO DETEST THE SECOND AMENDMENT WOULD HAVE YOU, FALSELY, TO BELIEVE.

“The first salient feature of the operative clause [in the Second Amendment] is that it codifies a ‘right of the people.’ The unamended Constitution and the Bill of Rights use the phrase ‘right of the people’ two other times, in the First Amendment's Assembly-and-Petition Clause and in the Fourth Amendment's Search-and-Seizure Clause. The Ninth Amendment uses very similar terminology (‘The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people’). All three of these instances unambiguously refer to individual rights, not ‘collective’ rights, or rights that may be exercised only through participation in some corporate body.Three provisions of the Constitution refer to ‘the people’ in a context other than ‘rights’—the famous preamble (‘We the people’), § 2 of Article I (providing that ‘the people’ will choose members of the House), and the Tenth Amendment (providing that those powers not given the Federal Government remain with ‘the States’ or ‘the people’). Those provisions arguably refer to ‘the people’ acting collectively—but  they deal with the exercise or reservation of powers, not rights.  Nowhere else in the Constitution does a ‘right’ attributed to ‘the people’ refer to anything other than an individual right. . . .This contrasts markedly with the phrase ‘the militia’ in the prefatory clause.  As we will describe below, the ‘militia’ in colonial America consisted of a subset of ‘the people’—those who were male, able bodied, and within a certain age range.  Reading the Second Amendment as protecting only the right to ‘keep and bear Arms’ in an organized militia therefore fits poorly with the operative clause's description of the holder of that right as ‘the people.’We start therefore  with a strong presumption that the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans. We move now from the holder of the right—‘the people’—to the substance of the right: ‘to keep and bear Arms.’”~ (A portion of the Opinion of the Majority, penned by the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia), in District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 578-581 passim (2008) Well before the Brett Kavanaugh Senate Confirmation Hearings, the Arbalest Quarrel pointed out that Congressional Democrats’ assault on and goal of elimination of the right of the natural, sacred, and unalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms, as succinctly codified in the Second Amendment, was and always has been a central plank of the antigun Democratic Party agenda. See "the United States Safe Act in the Making: Penned and Penciled by Andrew Cuomo."This was so even though in the weeks and months leading up to the Hearing. Democrats and their liberal media echo chamber talked incessantly about Democrats’ Party’s other goals. These goals included: one, open borders; two, expansion of personal federal income taxes; three, the complete elimination of ICE, and the hamstringing of other law enforcement agencies across the Country; four, the clamping down of all investigations into subversive activities of high ranking Governmental Bureaucrats of the Deep State; and five, the removal of Donald Trump from Office.

DEMOCRATS CONSISTENTLY REMONSTRATE AGAINST THE PLAIN MEANING OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION. THEY DO THIS BECAUSE THEY SEE THE U.S. CONSTITUTION AS OUTMODED, DRAFTED AND RATIFIED TO REFLECT THE NEEDS OF AN ANCIENT TIME AND, SO, IN NEED OF DRASTIC REVISION. THUS, THEY SEEK TO REWRITE THE DOCUMENT TO REFLECT A MODERN WORLD. THIS, UNFORTUNATELY, A NOTION  NOTION HELD NOT JUST BY POLITICIANS AND LAY PERSONS, BUT  BY JURISTS AS WELL. IN FACT, RETIRED LIBERAL-WING JUSTICE, JOHN PAUL STEVENS WISHES TO REWRITE THE BILL OF RIGHTS. HE SAYS SO IN A BOOK HE HAS PUBLISHED. AND, IN THE WORDS OF THE LIBERAL-WING U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG, OUR CONSTITUTION IS, AFTER ALL, “A RATHER OLD CONSTITUTION” MEANING THAT GINSBURG, TOO, APPARENTLY THINKS OUR CONSTITUTION IS IN NEED OF RADICAL REVISION.

The Senate Supreme Court Confirmation Hearing on the President’s nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, that took place for several days, laid bare the Democrats contempt for our Constitution and, especially, their misconception of the Bill of Rights as framed by the founders of our Republic. Spending a good part of three days of the Senate Confirmation Hearing process, by turns pontificating, chastising, and even excoriating Judge Kavanaugh, it became clear to all Americans that those Democrats, who sit on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, have succumbed to the will and wishes of Americans on the far left of the political spectrum, or otherwise always held to extreme left-wing views concerning the Constitution. Americans who believe that the Constitution, and especially that part of it--the Bill of Rights--that sets forth the fundamental rights and liberties of the American citizen, proclaim that the Bill of Rights can mean essentially whatever it is they choose it, or wish for it, to mean. They do not look at the plain meaning of the text, but read into the sacred Document what they wish for the words of the Document to mean; not what the framers of it meant, as clearly articulated in it.But, application of such an erroneous belief concerning the Constitution, destroys the very efficacy of it. Revisionists take the U.S. Constitution to be infinitely malleable, flexible, bendable. This is what they mean by the Constitution as a "living document"--that it can be changed to reflect changes in society, changes they seek to impose on the Nation. Thus, they would twist the Constitution and contort it to a degree that essentially destroys its import and purport, as conceived by the framers of it. These leftist revisionists don’t care, and they do not care for a jurist, such as Judge Kavanaugh, who does not share their view of a Constitution they perceive to be easily malleable, like a lump of clay that one might knead into any convenient shape.Judge Kavanaugh’s jurisprudential approach to Constitutional case analysis is in line with that of Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, Justice Gorsuch, and of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. These eminent jurists do not read into the Constitution what they may happen to wish to see. They take the Constitution for its literal word. That doesn’t sit well with Americans who hold to a Socialist philosophy; who have drafted a new plan, a new design for our Nation; who have a Socialist Agenda and who seek to implement radical Socialist policies for our Country--policies destructive to a free Republic and destructive of a free market Capitalist economic society; policies inconsistent with the Constitution of this Nation as ratified by the founders of our Nation. Hence, progressive forces in our Nation do not want Judge Kavanaugh—brilliant and thoughtful a jurist though he be—to sit as an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

SENATE JUDICIARY DEMOCRATS HAVE MADE THEIR IDEAS AND GOALS PATENTLY CLEAR TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

The Democrats sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee made no attempt to hide their distaste of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, known. Even as the right of the people to keep and bear arms is explicitly set down in stone in the Bill of Rights, these Congressional Democrats would like to see the Second Amendment weakened, disassembled, abandoned, and eventually, even obliterated from historical records and memory.Yet, curiously, wrongly, and even weirdly, Congressional Democrats believe it to be perfectly permissible to expand the domain of what they presume to be fundamental rights, worthy of protection, such as a right to abortion on demand, and equal protection rights expanded to include individuals exhibiting gender dysphoria—an expansion of purported rights, nowhere explicitly mentioned or even alluded to in the Bill of Rights. All the while, Congressional Democrats seem to be under no similar compunction to retain those fundamental rights that are expressly codified in the Bill of Rights.For example, Democrats see no legal or moral compunction against constraining Americans’ free exercise of religion, freedom of association, and freedom of speech—to proscribe what they, alone, perceive as permitting ideas anathema to their own—and they see no legal or moral issue with doing away with the Second Amendment altogether. That is their goal, clearly inferred through three days of Senate Hearing on Trump’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, and as further evidenced in antigun legislation Congressional Democrats have proposed in the last twenty plus years.Democrats argue, as they made pointedly clear during the Confirmation Hearing that, in matters pertaining to the citizen ownership and possession of firearms, State orchestrated cries for “public safety,” as the ground for curtailing the exercise of a fundamental and natural right should, and, indeed, must, invariably outweigh the personal right of self-defense. Moreover, Congressional Democrats consistently and continuously convey at best a blasé attitude toward the right of the people to keep and bear arms—a natural and fundamental right that the framers of the Constitution saw need enough to codify in the Bill of Rights, and did so to preserve a free Republic and to protect the sanctity and autonomy of the American citizen.From the questions posed by Senate Democrats to Judge Kavanaugh, and by the comments they made, these Democrats do not perceive the Second Amendment to be worth protecting and strengthening, or, otherwise they simply don’t care that, as the framers of the U.S. Constitution well knew, it is only through an armed citizenry that tyranny in Government can be ultimately, successfully, forestalled. The need for the free exercise of that right has not diminished with the passing years, decades, and centuries. Rather, contrary to the pronouncements of those who seek to constrain the exercise of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, the need to preserve and to strengthen this sacred right has actually, increased, many-fold, as the power of the Nation's Federal Government with the assistance of technology has itself increased exponentially in the centuries since both the formation of our Country as an independent sovereign Nation and free Republic, and since the ratification of our Constitution.

DESTRUCTION OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT WAS ALWAYS FIRST AND FOREMOST IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY JUDICIARY COMMITTEE MEMBERS’ CROSSHAIRS.

While expressing concern for the survival of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147 (1973)* which was certainly a central point of discussion manifested through three days of Confirmation Hearings, Democrats made abundantly clear, on the flipside, their disgust for the salient holding in Heller vs. District of Columbia, 554 U. S. 570, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637 (2008). Indeed, at times, Democrats’ expression of their disdain for Heller eclipsed their concern for the preservation of Roe vs. Wade. In fact, as Senator Diane Feinstein began her questioning of Judge Kavanaugh, during the first day of the Confirmation Hearing, the first set of questions that she directed to Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court nominee did not involve the issue of female reproductive rights, but were aimed squarely at the Second Amendment—namely and most notably at so-called “assault weapons”—which, as one of a plethora of antigun measures that antigun zealots would love to impose on the Nation as a whole, this one, in particular, has been, for decades, the especial target of Congressional Democrats. Wallowing in the abyss of fallacious reasoning and seeming self-pity, they plead with Judge Kavanaugh to forsake centuries of case law and jurisprudential history, ostensibly to ensure the safety of children, but oblivious to the fact that it is not the firearm, an inanimate object--their singular target for annihilation--that is the cause of violence, but, rather, a weakness of heart and will that prevents them from actively and avidly enforcing the hundreds of laws that Congress has enacted to forestall aggressive acts of those who would wreak violence on innocent lives: the lives of innocent adults as well as children.

WOULD DEMOCRATS BE SUCCESSFUL IN IMPLEMENTING A FEDERAL ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN IN 2019 IF THEY WERE TO CEMENT MAJORITIES IN BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS?

To be sure, it is by no means certain that Democrats will take control of the House in November, after the midterm elections. Less likely, but of greater concern, is the prospect of Democratic Party control of the U.S. Senate. If Democrats do take control of both Houses of Congress, what is certain is that they intend to muscle through Congress a new “assault weapons” ban, modeled on the New York Safe Act of 2013.Democrats would get substantial assistance from progressive State Governors, led by the virulently anti-Second Amendment Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo—assuming, which is likely, albeit depressing to contemplate, that Cuomo does prevail in the coming New York Gubernatorial election, in November, to secure a third term in Office.

SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN’S RAISON D’ETRE IS TO PROHIBIT CIVILIAN OWNERSHIP AND POSSESSION OF ANY FIREARM THAT SHE PROCLAIMS TO BE AN “ASSAULT WEAPON.”

If you recall, Feinstein attempted to ram through an “assault weapons” bill in 2013. That bill was even more draconian than the original restrictive U.S. Senate Legislation, “The Violent Crime and Control Protection Act of 1994.” In Subtitle A of Title XI of the 1994 Act, Senator Feinstein laid out a comprehensive nation-wide ban on an “assault weapons.”  Subtitle A of Title XI severely restricted the “manufacture, transfer, and possession of certain semiautomatic assault weapons.” The “assault weapons” provision included a sunset provision and, in 2004, the “assault weapons” provision of the 1994 Act did expire. It was not reauthorized by Congress.Feinstein wasn’t done. On the heels of enactment of, and in lockstep with, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s New York Safe Act, signed into law by Cuomo, on January 15, 2013, U.S. Senator, Dianne Feinstein, sought to generate public interest in a new and incredibly ambitious federal “assault weapons” ban, modeled in substantial part on the “assault weapons” provisions of the NY Safe Act. The Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy provided the pretext for this.Feinstein’s bill, used much of the language of Cuomo’s NY Safe Act, but to emphasize her personal distaste for firearms, the federal bill included over 110 specifically named firearms and categories of firearms. This categorization of specifically named firearms was unnecessary as the list was redundant. No matter, Subtitle A of Title XI “The Violent Crime and Control Protection Act of 1994” included the list anyway. Feinstein’s “assault weapon”, bill, if successful, would have caused the entire Nation to suffer the constraints on a weapon in common use by the American citizenry that Cuomo’s New York assault weapons ban has imposed on residents of New York.Fortunately for American citizens, Feinstein’s federal bill, the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013, went nowhere because the Senate Democratic Party Majority Leader at the time--Harry Reid--stripped Feinstein’s assault weapon ban out of a broader gun control bill that Democrats sought to pass. Senator Reid evidently believed that doing so would make the restrictive gun control measures more palatable to reluctant members of the Senate. Feinstein was furious, but Reid remained undeterred. The bill, sans Feinstein's “assault weapons” ban provision, was still soundly defeated on Roll Call vote of the Senate held on April 17, 2013.

IF BRETT  KAVANAUGH IS CONFIRMED TO THE U.S. SUPREME COURT AS AN ASSOCIATE JUSTICE, A FEDERAL ASSAULT WEAPONS’ BILL THAT BECOMES LAW IS LIKELY TO BE STRUCK DOWN AS UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee know full well that, even if they were to secure majorities in both Houses of Congress, any “assault weapons” bill they happen, in 2019, to enact into law would be immediately challenged on the ground that a ban on an entire category of weapons in common use is contrary to the core of the Second Amendment, as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court in the 2008 Heller decision and as reiterated by the high Court in the 2010 McDonald decision (561 U. S. 742, 780, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894 (2010)). Unlike the unhappy present situation with core Second Amendment cases that wend there way to the high Court, that are invariably not taken up for high Court review, this is likely to change with Brett Kavanaugh sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court as a petition for a Writ of Certiorari would likely be granted. Brett Kavanaugh would provide the crucial fourth vote necessary for a Second Amendment case (subsequent to the seminal Heller and McDonald cases) implicating the core of the Second Amendment, to finally be heard.** Once granted, and the case heard, a Conservative-wing majority, properly employing sound judicial and logical and jurisprudential reasoning, would likely determine that an outright ban on civilian ownership and possession of a substantial number of semiautomatic firearms—including handguns, rifles, and shotguns, as well as non-semiautomatic weapons, such as  revolving cylinder shotguns, along with so-called large capacity magazines, that are all in common use in this Nation—would be and must be struck down as inconsistent with the import and purport of the Second Amendment, as interpreted by the high Court’s Majority in the U.S. Supreme Court Heller and McDonald cases. And this explains why Senate Democrats are particularly worried over the confirmation of Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court—enough so that they devoted substantial time to questioning Judge Kavanaugh over his methodology for resolving cases involving the Second Amendment. And this explains why the American people must suffer through a delay on a confirmation vote of the Senate Judiciary Committee, due to the 11th hour political stunt pulled by Senator Dianne Feinstein, herself. Feinstein has raised an issue concerning a naked, uncorroborated allegation against Judge Kavanaugh, of a purported event allegedly occurring decades ago, that the Senator learned about through a letter she received in July of this year, and which she had sat on all this time, obviously to bring up at an inopportune time as it serves purely as a convenient political delaying tactic. Chairman Grassley and Senate Democrats, sitting on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, should not allow Democrats to turn the Confirmation process into a circus act. Unfortunately, Democrats are not acting alone. Senate Republican, Jeff Flake, who also sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee said he wishes to hear from Judge Kavanaugh's accuser before he will vote to allow the Confirmation process to proceed. It is no secret, though, that Senator Flake, who will be stepping down from the Senate, anyway, has no love for President Trump, and apparently takes delight in constantly admonishing him to the Press. It therefore stands to reason why Senator Jeff Flake would jump ship and play with Democrats in opposing the President's nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to sit on the high Court even though a brilliant jurist, such as Judge Kavanaugh, sitting on the highest Court in the Land would help preserve our free Republic and strengthen our Bill of Rights. Does Jeff Flake think so little of the President that he would be willing to sacrifice the well-being of both the Nation and the American citizenry by placing obstacles in the President's path. Apparently this is so. For our part, we believe that Jeff Flake cannot leave Congress soon enough. That is the best thing he can do for this Nation and its people.

IN OUR UPCOMING ARTICLE:

The methodology which Judge Kavanaugh utilizes to analyze and resolve Second Amendment cases, which Democrats sitting on the Senate Judiciary Panel, scarcely touched upon, but denigrated nonetheless, will be discussed in detail in our next article on the Kavanaugh U.S. Supreme Court Confirmation Hearing. We look specifically at Judge Kavanaugh's critical important dissenting opinion in the case popularly styled, Heller II (Heller vs. District of Columbia, 670 F.3d 1244 ; 399 U.S. App. D.C. 314; 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 20130).___________________________________________*Associate Justice Byron White and Justice William Rehnquist dissented from the Majority Opinion, penned by then Chief Justice Warren Burger. Note: Justice Antonin Scalia had not yet been appointed to the high Court at the time Roe was decided. Justice Scalia was confirmed to the high Court in 1986, the same year that then U.S. President Ronald Reagan nominated Justice Rehnquist to serve as the new Chief Justice to replace retiring Chief Justice Burger, and whom the Senate subsequently confirmed as the new Chief Justice.Six years later, in Casey vs. Planned Parenthood, 505 U.S. 833, 112 S. Ct. 2791, 120 L. Ed. 2d 674 (1992), the high Court essentially reaffirmed the holdings in Roe, namely that a Constitutional right to elective abortion exists, but only until viability as the State “has legitimate interests from the outset of the pregnancy in protecting . . . the life of the fetus that may become a child.” Casey vs. Planned Parenthood, 505 U.S. at 846. The majority in Casey held that an elective abortion is a fundamental right but the Casey Majority loosened the standard for determination of whether a State regulation unduly burdens a woman’s right to elective abortion. The Court replaced the stringent strict scrutiny approach, that favors a State’s interest in protecting an unborn child, to a lesser standard that would operate in favor of a woman’s decision for an elective abortion. Note: Justice Scalia who dissented from the Majority made clear that nothing in the Constitution elevates a woman’s decision to have an abortion to the that of a fundamental right. His dissenting opinion is critical to the methodology of textualism and originalism. Justice Scalia opined: “The States may, if they wish, permit abortion on demand, but the Constitution does not require them to do so.” Casey vs. Planned Parenthood, 505 U.S. at 978. Further, Justice Scalia opined:“That is, quite simply, the issue in these cases: not whether the power of a woman to abort her unborn child is a ‘liberty’ in the absolute sense; or even whether it is a liberty of great importance to many women. . . . A State’s choice between two positions on which reasonable people can disagree is constitutional even when (as is often the case) it intrudes upon a ‘liberty’ in the absolute sense. Laws against bigamy, for example—with which entire societies of reasonable people disagree—intrude upon men and women’s liberty to marry and live with one another. But bigamy happens not to be a liberty specially ‘protected’ by the Constitution.The [majority on the high] Court destroys the proposition, evidently meant to represent my position [which they in fact misrepresent, namely] that ‘liberty’ includes ‘only those practices, defined at the most specific level, that were protected against government interference by other rules of law when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified,’ ante, 505 U.S. at 847 (citing Michael H. v. Gerald D., 491 U.S. 110, 127, n.6, 105 L. Ed. 2d 91, 109 S. Ct. 2333 (1989). That is not, however, what Michael H. says; it merely observes that, in defining ‘liberty,’ we may not disregard a specific, ‘relevant tradition protecting, or denying protection to, the asserted right,’ ibid. But the Court does not wish to be fettered by any such limitations on its preferences. The Court’s statement that it is ‘tempting’ to acknowledge the authoritativeness of tradition in order to ‘curb the discretion of federal judges,’ ante, 505 U.S. at 847, is of course rhetoric rather than reality; no government official is ‘tempted’ to place restraints upon his own freedom of action. . . . The Court’s temptation is in the quite opposite and more natural direction—towards systematically eliminating checks upon its own power; and it succumbs.” Casey vs. Planned Parenthood, 505 U.S. at 979-981. Justice Scalia’s remarks are directed against a jurist’s wrong, albeit, natural tendency, as is the case with anyone who wields power, but particularly jurists, who--specifically invoking the force of law in their decisions--operate without restraint, when they ought to be circumspect. As a result, such jurists tend to create an ever expansive array of dubious substantive rights. Not surprisingly, we see these same jurists irreverently curtailing fundamental rights and liberties that do exist and have existed since ratification of the Bill of Rights, namely and particularly, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, which they happen to be personally philosophically opposed to.AQ’s Note: The liberal wing of the Supreme Court—and the liberal wing of U.S. District Courts and U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal, as well—sees fit to play with standards of review whenever it suits the result it wants. Thus, liberal wing judges and the liberal wing of the U.S. Supreme Court tend to revert to “interest-balancing” approaches to judicial review as that approach invariably serves to support the results they want, that is to say, tends to support predetermined decisions. Thus, in Second Amendment cases, liberal-wing Judges of the lower Courts and liberal-wing Justices of the high Court employ “interest-balancing” to support restrictive, draconian firearms’ regulations even where Government enactments clearly and blatantly impinge upon and infringe the right of the people to keep and bear arms—a right succinctly codified in the Bill of Rights. These same jurists also resort to “interest-balancing” in abortion cases, but, in those cases, rather than using “interest balancing” to support legitimate actions of Government that seeks to preserve the life of the unborn child, these jurists conclude that “balancing” the interests of Government, on the one-hand, and the interests of the individual on the other hand—the interests of the individual seeking abortion ought prevail over that of Government that seeks to protect the unborn child. With little wonder, then, Justice Scalia was leery of invoking a traditional, "interest-balancing" standard of review in Heller that might, after the fact, ostensibly, give judicial cover to a liberal-wing Judge who happens to detest the very existence of the Second Amendment.It is clear enough that some regulations, such as the District of Columbia law banning, altogether, citizen ownership and possession of handguns within the jurisdiction of the District of Columbia, are clearly, categorically unlawful. Thus, the majority in Heller saw no need to revert to an "interest-balancing" standard of review, when it rendered its opinion that the D.C. handgun ban is de jure unconstitutional; for, application of any traditional standard of review would amount to mere legal pretense—an empty, redundant exercise, devoid of import. Although Justice Scalia was circumspect in penning the Majority’s Opinion, one finds, clearly enough, when perusing the opinion, that the Majority in Heller knew full well that the D.C. handgun ban was audacious in its conception and abjectly ludicrous--a bald-faced "slap-in-the-face" at the fundamental right codified in the Second Amendment. The D.C. handgun ban therefore deserved no serious judicial consideration.If the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights were to have any meaning and purpose at all, the D.C. restriction had, properly speaking, to be struck down, and struck down unceremoniously; and so it was. The Heller majority, though, used the case to exemplify once and for all, beyond any further need for clarification, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is an individual right, unconnected to one’s service in a militia. With that point now clearly articulated, it was the fervent hope of the Heller Court’s majority, that Government action that fails to give proper deference to the right as codified in the Second Amendment would at once be struck down; and that it would be unnecessary for courts to go through tortuous gyrations to strike down firearms’ laws and regulations that are facially unlawful.Unfortunately, the late Justice Scalia, and Justices Thomas and Alito may not have realized the tenacity of governments and courts that abhor the Second Amendment, to find lawful governmental action that is facially and categorically unlawful. The philosophical disposition of jurists who personally abhor the Second Amendment, as we have seen, leads them to patently ignore the principal holdings of, and of the Majority's reasoning in Heller and McDonald, even as they perfunctorily mention those cases in their opinions to which they give no more than lip-service. Unfortunately, too, the late Justice Scalia, and Justices Thomas and Alito may not have realized the reluctance of moderates on the high Court--now the lone Chief Justice, John Roberts, now that Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy has retired--to take up cases that blatantly ignore Heller and McDonald. This means of course that this Nation requires the swift confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh to the high Court. Judge Kavanaugh would hold the crucial fourth vote, that would allow cases that infringe the core of the Second Amendment to receive high Court review that they deserve.The 11^th Hour attempt by Senator Dianne Feinstein to throw a wrench into confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh must not be allowed to gain traction. If Republican Senators Jeff Flake, and Lindsey Graham, who sit on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and who, according to news reports, indicated they may refrain from allowing the vote on the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh by the full Senate to proceed, then that would send a clear message to the American citizenry, that elected Donald Trump to the U.S. Presidency, that elements exist, both among Republicans and Democrats, who do not wish for the U.S. President to fulfill his promises to the American people. President Trump has promised to nominate people to the U.S. Supreme Court who believe in the sanctity of the Bill of Rights as ratified. A confirmation vote of the full Senate, on President Trump's nomination of John Kavanaugh to sit on the high Court, must proceed forthwith**See, Friedman vs. City of Highland Park, 136 S. Ct. 447, 193 L. Ed. 2d 483, 2015 U.S. LEXIS 7681, a Second Amendment case implicating the very core of the Second Amendment that failed to receive a critical fourth Supreme Court Justice vote, necessary for review. This case, as with others decided by liberal judges of the U.S. District Courts and U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal, who take a very dim view of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, deals directly with the issue as to whether so-called "assault weapons" fall within the core of the Second Amendment.Jurists deciding these cases use methodologies at odds with the reasoning of the majority in Heller and McDonald. Not surprisingly, these Courts invariably find for the government and against the American citizen in holding that firearms defined as "assault weapons" in l0cal regulations or State law, are not protected by the Second Amendment.  That was the finding of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in the Friedman case. These are the pertinent facts of the case: The City of Highland Park, Illinois, bans the manufacturing, selling, giving, lending, acquiring, or possessing many of the most commonly owned semiautomatic  firearms, which the City branded “Assault Weapons,” which many Americans own for lawful purposes like self-defense, hunting, and target shooting. The City also prohibited “Large Capacity Magazines,” a term the City used to refer to nearly all ammunition feeding devices that “accept more than ten rounds.” §136.001(G), id., at 70a. The City’s ordinances were challenged by an American citizen and resident of Illinois. The federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granted summary judgment for the City. The Petitioner appealed. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that routinely upholds such bans, affirmed the decision of the District Court. The Petitioner appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. Certiorari was denied as the case did not receive a fourth critical vote from the Justices, necessary for the case to be heard. When cases are not decided for high Court review, the reasons for refusing to take up a case are not generally stated. The high Court simply asserts that a Petitioner's Writ is denied, and the Court leaves the matter at that. The nature of the votes cast by each Justice is never given, either. In the Friedman case, it is clear that the Seventh Circuit blatantly ignored the reasoning of the Majority in Heller and McDonald. The Writ for Certiorari should have been granted. It wasn't. It is clear enough that the liberal-wing of the Court and two members of the conservative wing, likely the so-called swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy, who recently retired, along with Chief Justice Roberts, did not want the case to be heard, and they did not want the case heard for a specific reason. They obviously feared that application of the holdings of Heller and McDonald, together with the reasoning of the majority in those cases, would dictate the overturning of the Seventh Circuit Court's decision in Friedman, and that, in turn, would result in a cascading effect, across the Country, where assault weapon bans would be overturned in every jurisdiction that presently ban or severely restrict the ownership and possession of a large category of semiautomatic weapons, including firearms that are not semiautomatic in operation, namely, revolving cylinder shotguns. Understandably, Justices Thomas and Scalia were livid that Heller and McDonald could and would dare be blithely ignored by jurists for ideological reasons, predicated on personal biases, mandating results that are contrary to law. Justice Thomas wrote a blistering dissenting comment in response to the high Court's failure to review the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit's decision in Friedman. The late, eminent Associate Justice, Antonin Scalia, who penned the Heller decision for the Majority, joined Justice Thomas in the Associate Justice’s dissenting comment. We can reasonably infer that Justice Alito, who penned the majority opinion in McDonald, also voted in favor of reviewing the Friedman case, even though he did not join with Justice Scalia in Justice Thomas' dissenting comment. Even so, that meant that, at best, only three votes--one short, of the required minimum, four--were cast for high Court review of the Friedman case.Justice Thomas wrote in salient part:“[O]ur central holding in” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637 (2008), was “that the Second Amendment protects a personal right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, most notably for self-defense within the home.” McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 780, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894 (2010) (plurality opinion). And in McDonald, we recognized that the Second Amendment applies fully against the States as well as the Federal Government. Id., at 750, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3026, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894, 903; id., at 805, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3058, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894, 938 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment).Despite these holdings, several Courts of Appeals—including the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in the decision below — have upheld categorical bans on firearms that millions of Americans commonly own for lawful purposes. See 784 F. 3d 406, 410-412 (2015). Because noncompliance with our Second Amendment precedents warrants this Court’s attention as much as any of our precedents, I would grant certiorari in this case. . . . Instead of adhering to our reasoning in Heller, the Seventh Circuit limited Heller to its facts, and read Heller to forbid only total bans on handguns used for self-defense in the home. Based on its crabbed reading of Heller, the Seventh Circuit felt free to adopt a test for assessing firearm bans that eviscerates many of the protections recognized in Heller and McDonald.The Court’s refusal to review a decision that flouts two of our Second Amendment precedents stands in marked contrast to the Court’s willingness to summarily reverse courts that disregard our other constitutional decisions. E.g., Maryland v. Kulbicki, ante, at 1 (per curiam) (summarily reversing because the court below applied Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668, 104 S. Ct. 2052, 80 L. Ed. 2d 674 (1984), “in name only”); Grady v. North Carolina, 575 U. S. ___ , 135 S. Ct. 1368, 191 L. Ed. 2d 459 (2015) (per curiam) (summarily reversing a judgment inconsistent with this Court’s recent Fourth Amendment precedents); Martinez v. Illinois, 572 U. S. ___, ___ , 134 S. Ct. 2070, 2077, 188 L. Ed. 2d 1112, 1120 (2014) (per curiam) (summarily reversing judgment that rested on an “understandable” double jeopardy holding that nonetheless “r[an] directly counter to our precedents”).There is no basis for a different result when our Second Amendment precedents are at stake. I would grant certiorari to prevent the Seventh Circuit from relegating the Second Amendment to a second-class right.” Had Judge Kavanaugh been sitting on the high Court, instead of Justice Kennedy, at the time the Court was considering Petitioner’s Writ in Friedman, it is highly likely that Judge Kavanaugh would have provided the critical fourth vote necessary for the Friedman case to be heard, along with one vote each cast in favor of review from Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito. Were the Friedman case heard, then consistent with the Heller and McDonald holdings—and this is a point that bears repeating—it is also highly likely the majority on the high Court would hold that so-called “assault weapons,” which include many popular semiautomatic weapons, and other kinds of weapons, including shotguns that operate through revolving cylinders, do in fact fall within the core of the Second Amendment. That would put to effective rest all the media fanfare and ridiculous uproar over this matter. Thus, any legislation that bans the civilian citizenry of our Nation from owning and possessing such weapons would be struck down as unconstitutional. This, then, easily explains, in great part, the apoplectic reaction by progressives, and by other left-wing radical elements in our society, toward Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to sit as the next Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. These left-wing elements know that unlawful legislation, which includes much of what it is they want, and what they would have obtained had Hillary Clinton won the 2016 Presidential election--and had she appointed non-originalists to the U.S. Supreme Court, which she would certainly have done--will not withstand judicial scrutiny at the level of the Supreme Court, with Judge Kavanaugh on the Bench. If Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed to sit on the high Court, that will put a damper on the efficacy of a Socialist agenda, ever coming to fruition, long after Donald Trump’s Presidency has ended. Thus, Donald Trump's legacy and, indeed, the jurisprudential legacy of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, will be preserved. Thus, the blood spilled by those who sought to create a free Republic, and the blood spilled by Americans, since--in all the wars and conflicts fought to maintain our free Republic--will not have been in vain._________________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

THE COURTS, NO LESS THAN CONGRESS, IS WHERE ONE WILL FIND THE SECOND AMENDMENT EITHER SAFEGUARDED AND STRENGTHENED OR ENDANGERED AND WEAKENED.

REPUBLICAN CONTROL OF ALL THREE-BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT IS NECESSARY TO MAINTAIN BOTH THE SOVEREIGNTY AND INDEPENDENCE OF OUR NATION STATE, AND THE SUPREMACY OF OUR CONSTITUTION AND OUR SYSTEM OF LAWS.

The mandate of a Republican controlled Congress, and of a Republican President and of a federal court system--comprising jurists who recognize the supremacy of our laws and of our Constitution over foreign laws and over the decisions of foreign tribunals and who recognize and appreciate the critical importance of the fundamental rights and liberties of the American people, as codified in the Bill of Rights--is this: to maintain our roots as a unique People; to make certain that our Country continues to exist as a free Republic and as an independent, sovereign Nation, beholden to no other Nation or to any group of Nations; and to keep sacred the supremacy of our Constitution and our system of laws, grounded in the sanctity of the Bill of Rights--a Bill of Rights that has no parallel in any other Nation on this Earth. To succeed in this mandate it is imperative that: one, Congress retain a Conservative Republican majority; two, that Donald Trump remain as U.S. President through two terms in Office; and, three, that the U.S. Supreme Court hold a conservative-wing majority and that the lower federal Courts seat a majority of  jurists who recognize and appreciate the supremacy of our Constitution and of our laws and of our sacred rights and liberties, and who render opinions with that principle omnipresent.Obviously, those malevolent forces that seek to undermine the sovereignty of this Nation, that seek to subvert the will of the American People, that seek to undercut and subordinate our Constitution, our system of laws and our fundamental rights and liberties, are working for the precise opposite. They seek to gain Democratic Party majorities in both Houses of Congress in the midterm elections, and, if they can accomplish that, they will undoubtedly pursue efforts to impeach Trump, using the tenuous, ludicrous, tax-payer funded Mueller investigation, chasing after ghosts, as a springboard to destroy the Trump Presidency. These individuals and groups, bankrolled by a shadowy, secretive, ruthless internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist “elite”, hope, as well, to create a liberal wing majority in the U.S. Supreme Court. To do that, they must win back the White House.Those who seek to destroy the sovereignty of this Nation and to undermine the true import and purport of the Bill of Rights are rankled by two specific events that they cannot, and, obviously, will not abide: one, the failure to usher Hillary Rodham Clinton into the Office of U.S. President, which they thought was an assured bet; and, two, the failure to seat Merrick Garland—the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and President Barack Obama’s nominee—on the U.S. Supreme Court. These critical and monumental failures of the internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist “elite” who bankroll and control the Deep State of the federal Government—the forces that would dare crush this Nation and the American people into submission—have suffered an extraordinary setback in their plans for world domination. To reset the clock in accordance with their global strategy, they have been forced to show their hand. The negative forces that manipulate and control the Government of this Nation and that manipulate and control the Governments of those Nations that comprise the EU have emerged from the shadows and have forced their toadies in this Country to surface from the depths of the Deep State of the federal Government, to undermine, at every turn, the efforts of the duly elected President of the United States, Donald Trump. Not content to undermine and undercut the President's policy objectives, which they attack at every turn through the well-orchestrated media circus they control, they attack the man himself, disrespectfully, caustically, and reprehensibly; and, in so doing, they demonstrate as well their disrespect for this Nation, and  for this Nation’s core values, and for this Nation’s system of laws, and for the people of this Nation who elected Donald Trump, who was then inaugurated the 45^th President of the United States, on January 20, 2017, succeeding Barack Obama.The election of Donald Trump as U.S. President has thrown a wrench into the well-oiled and greased machine of the Deep State of the federal Government of the United States. This singularly important event has thrown the internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist elites, headed by the international Rothschild clan, into a state of consternation, of befuddlement, of rage and turmoil, of chaos. Their well-laid plans for world domination sees the United States as an important cog in an expansive industrial and financial machine comprising the New World Order, for no other Western Nation has as impressive a military and as impressive an intelligence apparatus, and as adept technological capabilities as those of the United States. As the forces that would crush this Nation and its people into submission have suffered a severe and costly set-back, they intend to set matters aright. The American people bear witness to the raw extent of the power and reach of these forces: one, the naked audacity of their actions; two, the evident contempt in which they hold the American people; three, the bald self-assurance and aplomb by which they plan and orchestrate a campaign of deliberate deception—through the mainstream media—a campaign of disinformation and misinformation through which they hope and trust they can manipulate the American people into accepting a bizarre worldview--one inimical to the needs and desires and well-being of the American people; four, the obscene loathing they express toward our Bill of Rights; five, the demonstrative malevolence they have shown toward the U.S. President and toward his Administration; and, six, the abject hatred they display toward this Nation’s Constitution, toward this Nation’s unique history, toward this Nation’s core values, toward this Nation’s system of laws and morals. And through the levers of media and of the Deep-State of Government that they control, they give mere lip-service and lip-homage to those very things Americans hold most dear.The Arbalest Quarrel has done its part. We have worked to help elect Donald Trump as President of the United States and have worked, as well, to defeat the confirmation of Judge Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court. But our work has not ended. It has, perforce, just begun.We must continue to support President Trump from the forces that, having failed to prevent his electoral success, seek, now, to place obstacles in his path, making it difficult for him to implement the policies he has promised—policies that are at loggerheads with those hostile internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist financial and industrial forces that seek global domination which, in accordance with their plans for world domination, requires the crushing of Western Nation States, including the crushing of our Nation State, the crushing of the sovereignty and independence of our Nation state; and, with that, the subordination of our laws to that of international laws and treaties and the subordination of our Courts to that of foreign Courts and foreign Tribunals; and the undermining of the sacred rights and liberties of the American citizenry. These extremely powerful, extraordinarily wealthy, and abjectly ruthless and cunning globalist forces seek eventually to topple Donald Trump and his administration. They seek also to take back control of the two Houses of Congress. We must therefore work to maintain House and Senate Republican Majorities.Further, we must work toward and anticipation of the confirmation of at least one additional, and, hopefully, two or, better yet, three conservative-wing Justices to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. With the passing of the eminent and brilliant jurist and true American patriot, Justice Antonin Scalia, we have lost a mighty champion of liberty in the vein of the founders of this Nation, the framers of our Constitution. We hope and trust and pray that, before the end of this year, 2018, Justice Anthony Kennedy and/or Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and/or Justice Stephen Breyer will retire. That will pave the way for President Trump to nominate at least one and conceivably two, and optimally three more American jurists, to sit on the high Court who, as with Trump’s nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, hold jurisprudential values and who would apply the same methodology to deciding cases as do Justices Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, which the late Justice Antonin Scalia had set the course. With strong and true conservative-wing Justices on the high Court, who hold a clear majority, we will see the Court agreeing to hear critical Second Amendment cases and, thereupon, rendering decisions that, with the Court’s untarnished and supreme judicial imprimatur, makes clear the import of the natural, fundamental rights and liberties of American citizens as codified in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution in the manner the framers’ intended.

THE ARBALEST QUARREL LOOKS BACK ON WORK COMPLETED IN 2017 AND THEN FORWARD TO OUR TASKS FOR 2018

WHAT WERE SOME OF OUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN 2017?

Let us step back for a moment and look at just a few of the tasks we completed in 2017, and remark briefly on tasks we have set for ourselves in 2018. Much of our work, consistent with the primary purpose of the Arbalest Quarrel involved detailed, comprehensive analyses of critical federal and State Court cases impacting the Second Amendment. One of those cases is Soto vs. Bushmaster Firearms International, LLC., 2016 Conn. Super. LEXIS 2626; CCH Prod. Liab. Rep. P19,932. Soto is an active case. The Soto case arises from the deadly attack that occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, when a deranged young adult, Adam Lanza, 20 years old, stormed Sandy Hook Elementary School, fatally shooting twenty children and six adults, before turning a handgun on and killing himself. According to the allegations of the Soto Plaintiffs' First Amended Complaint (CM), Adam Lanza murdered these school children and school staff with a Bushmaster AR-15, model XM15-E2S rifle. Defendant Bushmaster prevailed in the lower Superior Court (trial Court), and we analyzed the Superior Court decision in depth. Plaintiffs appealed the adverse decision directly to the Connecticut Supreme Court, bypassing the State Court of Appeals, and the Connecticut Supreme Court agreed to hear argument. We will be analyzing the Briefs of Plaintiffs and Defendants in the case and will also analyze selected amicus (friend of Court) Briefs in that case. Over 50 amicus briefs were filed in that case. We also provided comprehensive analyses in an “assault weapons” case, (Kolbe vs. O’Malley, 42. F. Supp. 3d 768 (D. Md. 2014); vacated and remanded, Kolbe vs. Hogan, 813 F.3d 160 (4th Cir. 2016); rev’d en banc, Kolbe vs. Hogan, 849 F.3d 114 (4th Cir. 2017) ), which we had hoped would be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court—the high Court failing to have granted certiorari in an earlier disastrous “assault weapons” case, Friedman v. City of Highland Park, 784 F.3d 406, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 6902 (7th Cir. Ill., 2015). Alas, the high Court failed to garner four votes, allowing the case to be heard in the high Court. Had the high Court agreed to hear the case, Americans would see a definitive ruling on whether so-called “assault weapons” fall within the core of the Second Amendment’s protection. Obviously, the liberal wing of the Court and at least two "apparent" conservative wing Justices, likely, Anthony Kennedy and the Chief Justice, John Roberts, did not want to resolve this case, and, so, to date, resolution of “assault weapons” as protected firearms within the core of the Second Amendment remains in abeyance, with liberal Circuit Court of Appeal Judges ruling that semiautomatic "assault weapons" do not fall within the core of the Second Amendment and, so, are not protected.In addition, we looked at two Congressional bills that, if enacted, strengthen the Second Amendment. We looked at national concealed handgun carry reciprocity legislation, pending in Congress, H.R. 38, and looked at Congressman Chris Collins’ bill, the “Second Amendment Guarantee Act” (H.R. 3576) (“SAGA”) which has been referred to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations, on September 6, 2017 where it presently sits. We also did our part to sidetrack Obama’s attempt to sit Judge Merrick Garland on the U.S. Supreme Court. When we feel it critical that our representatives in Congress be notified of specific and extraordinary dangers presented to our Nation, we have not hesitated to contact them. When, after the passing of the exceptional U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, we have seen that President Barack Obama wasted little time in nominating a person to serve as a new ninth member of the high Court who would, given the opportunity, assist the liberal-wing Justices—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan—in unwinding case law that Justice Scalia helped to shape in his many illustrious years on the Bench. That person who President Barack Obama had hoped to see confirmed is Merrick Garland, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The Arbalest Quarrel took strong exception to the possibility of seeing Judge Garland sitting on the high Court. We sent a letter to the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Chuck Grassley, requesting the Senator to refrain from allowing a confirmation hearing to proceed. Had a confirmation proceeding been held, that would have resulted in Judge Merrick Garland sitting on the high Court as an Associate Justice. Of that, we have no doubt, as U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch has articulated that point. According to the liberal political commentary website, "New Republic," Senator Hatch said that there was "no question" that Judge Merrick Garland would be confirmed were a confirmation hearing held. The Arbalest Quarrel explained the singular danger Judge Merrick Garland posed to the preservation of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, codified in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution if Merrick Garland sat on the U.S. Supreme Court. In our letter we took exception to pronouncements of several academicians who had also written a letter to Senator Grassley. Those academicians argued that nothing in the record of Judge Garland’s service as a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals suggests that an inference can be drawn concerning Judge Garland’s jurisprudential philosophy toward the Second Amendment. We disagreed with the pronouncements of those academicians. We pointed to specific examples in the judicial record that establish beyond doubt that Judge Merrick Garland holds great and abiding antipathy toward the Second Amendment; and that Judge Garland’s antipathy toward the Second Amendment is very much in evidence in the judicial record, contrary to the pronouncements of those academicians who promote the Judge’s ascendancy to the U.S. Supreme Court. Our concern was not directed to Judge Garland’s ability as a jurist. We have no doubt that Judge Garland has a bright and, conceivably, brilliant legal mind. But, when that brilliance is coupled with a philosophy at loggerheads with the philosophy of another brilliant Justice, Antonin Scalia, then we know that preservation of the natural, substantive fundamental rights of the American citizenry—particularly the right of the people to keep and bear arms—are in jeopardy. In a series of in depth articles, we have written extensively about Judge Garland’s jurisprudential philosophy. We pointed out that Judge Garland’s judicial approach is clearly antithetical to that of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, and that Justice Scalia’s illustrious work would be undone were Judge Garland to sit on the high Court. In our letter to Senator Grassley, we provided a link to the Arbalest Quarrel website and encouraged the Senator to peruse our analytical articles on Judge Garland, as the letter only touched upon the matters of concern.

THE MISSION OF THE ARBALEST QUARREL 

The mission of the Arbalest Quarrel is to preserve, protect, and strengthen the Bill of Rights, and, principally, to preserve, protect, and strengthen the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Arbalest Quarrel has written dozens of articles on newsworthy and noteworthy events, impacting the Second Amendment. Many of our articles appear in Ammoland Shooting Sports News. Most of the articles we prepare are comprehensive, extremely detailed, highly analytical expositions on Second Amendment issues. Many of our articles are written as part of lengthy, continuing series. Given the exigencies of time and of new and pressing newsworthy matters, we are often compelled to sidestep continuous work on a series, returning to a series later. Since threats to the Second Amendment are constant and continuous, much of the work that we may have left uncompleted in previous weeks or months is and remains pertinent. Some work that we do, involving analysis of active legal cases, such as the Soto case, cannot, of course, be completed until further action is taken by a Court and, in that event, we must await action before continuing discussion. In other cases, such as Kolbe, where we have commenced work, as part of a series, a higher Court, in this case, the U.S. Supreme Court has denied a writ of certiorari, which means that the ruling or rulings of the second highest Court, a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, remains the law in that judicial Circuit. But, as those cases involve an open-ended and critically important issue that the U.S. Supreme Court will, at some point be compelled to tackle, our analysis of lower U.S. District Court and U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal decisions are still relevant and, so, hold more than historical value in terms of their impact on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Kolbe, for example, deals directly with the issue whether semiautomatic weapons, defined as ‘assault weapons’ fall within the core protection of the Second Amendment. As antigun groups intend to deny American citizens the right to legally own and possess “assault weapons,” and, as they seek, eventually, to ban civilian ownership and possession of all semiautomatic weapons, it is incumbent upon us and important to consider the legal arguments they present. Thus, at some point in time when the U.S. Supreme Court does deal with the issue as to the extent of or whether semiautomatic weapons defined as ‘assault weapons’ fall within the core protection of the Second Amendment or whether semiautomatic weapons, as a broad category of firearms, fall within the core protection of the Second Amendment--and the high Court will, at some moment in time have to consider the issue--we will have addressed, in depth, all or virtually all of the salient arguments that litigants happen to make. As we look back at the work over the years, we note our article, titled “The Arsenal of Destruction.” Concerning antigun groups efforts to defeat the right of the people to keep and bear arms, what we mentioned in that article is as true then as it is today. We said: Here is what we deemed then, as now, to be the salient methodologies antigun groups use to undercut the Second Amendment. There are probably more; undoubtedly, the antigun groups are busy concocting others even as we publish this list:

• ENACTMENT OF RESTRICTIVE GUN LAWS

• REWRITING/RECONFIGURING/RECONSTITUTING THE SECOND AMENDMENT TO UNDERCUT THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INDEPENDENT CLAUSE: “THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.”

• EFFORTS TO REPEAL THE SECOND AMENDMENT OUTRIGHT

• INDOCTRINATION OF AMERICA’S YOUTH

• MILITARIZATION/FEDERALIZATION OF CIVILIAN POLICE FORCES ACROSS THE COUNTRY THROUGH THE MACHINATIONS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

• DIRECT MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA ATTACKS ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT

• USE OF PROPAGANDA AGAINST THE AMERICAN PUBLIC AND INDOCTRINATION OF THE PUBLIC BY MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA GROUPS

• SYSTEMATIC EROSION OF THE RULE OF LAW IN THE UNITED STATES

• DENIAL OF GUN POSSESSION TO ENTIRE GROUPS OF AMERICAN CITIZENS

• ILLEGAL ATTEMPTS BY CITIES AND TOWNSHIPS TO WEAKEN OR OVERRIDE STATE LAWS WHERE SUCH STATE LAWS ARE DESIGNED TO EXTEND SECOND AMENDMENT PROTECTIONS TO THEIR CITIZENS

• CREATING CONFUSION OVER THE CONCEPT OF ‘CITIZEN’ AND CREATING CONFUSION AS TO THE RIGHTS OF A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES

• EXECUTIVE BRANCH OVERREACH/USURPATION OF THE LEGISLATIVE FUNCTION BY THE UNITED STATES PRESIDENT IN CLEAR DEFIANCE OF THE SEPARATION OF POWERS DOCTRINE SET FORTH IN AND THE MAINSTAY OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION.

• OVERRIDING THE BILL OF RIGHTS THROUGH INTERNATIONAL PACTS, TREATIES, AGREEMENTS, AND CONVENTIONS

• FALLACIOUS REASONING OF ANTIGUN GROUPS AND ANTIGUN GROUP DECEPTION AS TO THEIR ULTIMATE GOAL: DE JURE OR DE FACTO REPEAL OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION

• ATTACK ON GUN RIGHTS’ ADVOCATES’ MORAL BELIEFS AND ETHICAL BELIEF SYSTEMS

• BATFE ADOPTION OF ONEROUS REQUIREMENTS FOR GUN DEALERS AND BATFE INTRUSION/ENCROACHMENT ON TRADITIONAL U.S. CONGRESSIONAL LAW MAKING AUTHORITY

• MISAPPLICATION/MISAPPROPRIATION OF THIRD PARTY PRODUCTS LIABILITY LAW AND LEGAL DOCTRINE TO UNFAIRLY TARGET GUN MANUFACTURERS

• FEDERAL GOVERNMENT RESTRAINT OF TRADE: COERCING LENDING INSTITUTIONS TO REFRAIN FROM GIVING LOANS TO GUN DEALERS

• MANIPULATION OF THE COMPOSITION OF STATE LEGISLATURES AND OF THE U.S. CONGRESS BY MULTI-MILLIONAIRE/BILLIONAIRE TRANSNATIONAL GLOBALISTS THROUGH THE BANKROLLING OF POLITICIANS—WHO ACQUIESCE TO THEIR WISHES, AND WHO ARE WILLING TO DESTROY THE SECOND AMENDMENT—AND THROUGH THE NAKED, SHAMELESS EXPLOITATION OF ATTACK ADS, TARGETING THE DEFENDERS OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT -- THOSE POLITICIANS WHO REFUSE TO KOWTOW TO THE ANTI-AMERICAN AGENDA OF THE RUTHLESS MULTI-MILLIONAIRE AND BILLIONAIRE TRANSNATIONAL GLOBALISTS.

• GLOBAL CENSORSHIP/CONTROL OF EXPRESSION ON THE INTERNET: UNDERMINING THE SECOND AMENDMENT BY CONTROLLING MESSAGING WITH THE AIM, ULTIMATELY, OF INSIDIOUSLY DESTROYING THE SECOND AMENDMENT THROUGH AN UNCONSCIONABLE INFRINGMENT UPON THE FIRST AMENDMENT: AS CONTEMPT FOR ONE AMENDMENT OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS IS SHOWN, SO, AS WELL, IS CONTEMPT FOR THE OTHERS DEMONSTRABLY SHOWN

• DESTRUCTION OF SOVEREIGN NATION STATES AND OF THE CONSTITUTIONS OF SOVEREIGN NATION STATES THROUGH THE CREATION OF, ESTABLISHMENT OF AND INEXORABLE EXPANSION OF AN INTERNATIONAL, NEOLIBERAL INSPIRED WORLD ORDER DEDICATED TO AND WORKING TOWARD THE DESTRUCTION OF INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS, THE DESTRUCTION OF INDIVIDUAL LIBERTIES, AND THE ERADICATION OF PERSONAL AUTONOMY

We intended to do an article on each of these 21 strategies within the series. We didn’t complete the series, but we did write on several of these strategies and some of the strategies were touched upon in other articles. For example, our most recent article on the NY Times new “gag order” policy preventing its employees from exercising their freedom of free speech on their own time in vehicles other than the New York Times newspaper, actually is a response to two strategies we delineated on in “The Arsenal of Destruction":ONE: GLOBAL CENSORSHIP/CONTROL OF EXPRESSION ON THE INTERNET: UNDERMINING THE SECOND AMENDMENT BY CONTROLLING MESSAGING WITH THE AIM, ULTIMATELY, OF INSIDIOUSLY DESTROYING THE SECOND AMENDMENT THROUGH AN UNCONSCIONABLE INFRINGMENT UPON THE FIRST AMENDMENT: AS CONTEMPT FOR ONE AMENDMENT OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS IS SHOWN, SO, AS WELL, IS CONTEMPT FOR THE OTHERS DEMONSTRABLY SHOWN; and,TWO: USE OF PROPAGANDA AGAINST THE AMERICAN PUBLIC AND INDOCTRINATION OF THE PUBLIC BY MAINSTREAM NEWS MEDIA GROUPS.Our principal mission and raison d’etre—as mentioned, supra—is to preserve, protect, and strengthen the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the preservation of, protection of, and strengthening of the Second Amendment all go hand-in-hand. There exist forces both inside and outside this Country that would like to repeal the Second Amendment. Of course, they realize that repealing, de jure, any one of the Ten Amendments to the U.S. Constitution that comprise the Bill of Rights is virtually impossible. As natural rights, there is no mechanism for repealing these rights and liberties anyway, since no man created them. The Framers of the Constitution merely codified the rights that exist intrinsically in each American citizen. That doesn’t mean that a sacred right cannot be ignored or de facto repealed which effectively reduces the right to a nullity even as the words remain intact. Thus, if the words remain, but the intent behind the words is absent, hollowed out, the right, in essence, ceases to exist. We have seen this before. The fundamental right of Americans to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures has been hollowed out, as Government agencies like the CIA and NSA download and keep digital records on everyone and everything. This is patently illegal, but Federal Government agencies do it anyway. The fundamental right of free speech is beginning to be hollowed out, too, as censorship, in the guise of “political correctness” is taking its toll on free speech. The fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms was dying a slow death until the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court in two seminal cases, District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570; 128 S. Ct. 2783; 171 L. Ed. 2d 637 (2008), and McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 780, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894 (2010)), made clear what that right entails. The high Court made poignantly and categorically clear that this right—a right that must be recognized by both federal Government and by the States—is an individual right, a right, then, not connected to one’s service in a militia. Still, those Legislators and Jurists who seek to disembowel the Second Amendment have either ignored the holdings of the U.S. Supreme Court or have actively tinkered with it, working around the edges of the Heller and McDonald holdings to slowly weaken the Second Amendment. But, to weaken the right is tantamount to destroying it; for the rights codified must be understood in the context the framers of the Constitution intended, as absolute imperatives. This doesn’t mean restrictions ought not be enacted that operate as deprivations on some individuals but, this deprivation is justified only if the threat posed by the one threatens the lives of millions of others, or where the threat posed by an individual undermines the sovereignty of this Nation.Consider the Second Amendment. Federal law bars persons adjudged mentally incompetent from owning and possessing firearms. Thus, the absolute right to own and possess firearms infringes the right of a person adjudged mentally incompetent but this is necessary to protect the lives of millions of innocent, law-abiding Americans. Federal law also prohibits illegal aliens from owning and possessing firearms. And, in so doing, we protect the sanctity of the notion of a Nation State comprising a unique citizenry. Antigun groups, though, don’t perceive the Bill of Rights as a set of natural rights, existing intrinsically in the individual, endowed by the Creator to the individual. They see the Bill of Rights in the same vein as do internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist “elites,” as mere man-made creations-- statutes enacted and repealed at the will and the whim of the of the rulers that draft and enact them. As they see nothing positive in the right of the people to keep and bear arms, they see nothing that mandates the preservation and strengthening of that right. So, those who attempt to restrict the right of the people to keep and bear arms do not consider restrictions on the exercise of that right from the standpoint of the restriction's negative impact on the majority of rational, responsible, law-abiding American citizens, who wish to exercise their right, but, rather, see restrictions on the exercise of that fundamental right from the utilitarian consequentialist position. Consistent with utilitarian consequentialism, it is firearms in the hands of law-abiding rational, individual, not the occasional criminal or lunatic, that is perceived as posing the real danger, the real threat. And, what is that threat? It is a threat perceived as directed against society— against an amorphous collective “hive”—a threat perceived, eventually, as one directed against the entirety of the “free” world, a free world constituted as a "New World Order." It is not the criminal or lunatic possessing a firearm that concerns those that hold to the utilitarian consequentialist theory of morality that poses the greater threat to the well-being of society. In a constant flurry of new draconian firearms bills introduced in Congress, we see, in the draft language of these bills, that it is really the average law-abiding individual--the rational, responsible, law-abiding American citizen--against whom restrictive gun measures are really targeted and leveled. These restrictive gun bills are drafted and enacted in clear defiance of the right guaranteed in the Second Amendment.Our mission, our raison d’être, is to call out those disreputable groups and to call out those legislators and to call out those Hollywood film stars and moguls and to call out those mainstream news commentators and journalists and "comedians" and to call out those inordinately wealthy, extraordinarily powerful, extremely secretive, and absolutely ruthless internationalist, trans-nationalist, globalist forces that mean—all of them—to destroy our Nation State and that mean to destroy our Bill of Rights, and that mean to do so all the while claiming their efforts have a rational, ethical basis. But their actions belie their assertions. Their actions belie their true intent. These individuals, these groups, these cold-hearted ruthless internationalist, trans-nationalist, globalist “elites” that control the levers of finance and industry, that control major media organizations, that operate within and control the Deep State of Government within our own Nation mean to destroy the sovereignty and independence of this Nation and they mean to upend and to destroy the supremacy of our laws and of our Constitution.These individuals distort truth; they sow seeds of discord; they confuse and confound the ill-informed masses by challenging the Nation's core values and by interposing false substitutes for those core values. They rail against and dare to rewrite our Nation's history. They attack our Judeo-Christian ethic and our Christian heritage and traditions. They mean to destroy our Nation and our sacred Bill of Rights to pave the way for an antireligious, morally bankrupt trans-global corporate New World Order conglomerate—an amorphous, muddled indistinguishable conglomeration of once proud and unique independent Nation States—a union of populations comprising the entirety of the “free” world, which these internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist financiers and captains of industry plan to rule. We are beginning to see what this portends for the U.S. as they consolidate their power in the EU, with the assistance of their technocrats, their puppets.In their concerted effort to destroy the structure of and the very notion of the sanctity and sovereignty of Nation States, and of the sanctity and sovereignty of our Nation State in particular, we see insidious and perverse attempts by these internationalist, trans-nationalist globalist “elites”—through the mainstream media whom they control and through members of Congress whom they have bought—to play with language—to suggest that the notion, the idea of ‘American,’ of what the word ‘American’ means is simply a matter of personal belief. Why is such a ridiculous notion fostered? It is fostered for a reason. For, if what it means to be an ‘American,’ or, for that matter, what it means to be a Frenchman, or German, or Italian, or Canadian, for example, comes down to personal opinion and belief, then, the bonds between a person and that person’s Country is tenuous, amorphous, fragile, elusive, even illusive, and, ultimately, unimportant. This has serious ramifications for Nation States and repercussions for the people residing in a Nation State. Thus, if a person is to be deemed an American, for example, who simply and essentially believes him or herself to be an American, then, on that basis, alone, may presumptuously presume a right to live in this Country, to emigrate to this Country and to be endowed with all the rights and liberties that the United States Constitution provides.This open-ended concept of what it means to be an ‘American’ is deliberately and unconscionably fostered by those who seek an end to the very notion of a Nation State; who seek to portray people not as citizens of this or that Country but, literally, as “citizens of the world”—who may freely move about as they wish. This “open borders” philosophy is anathema to the concept of the primacy and sovereignty of Nation States which demands that independent, sovereign Nation States have a right and duty and responsibility to maintain and control their borders, and, in so doing, forestall emigration of undesirables to this Country. To allow essentially anyone and everyone to emigrate to this Country, is to denigrate and ultimately destroy the very foundation of the sovereignty and independence of a Nation State. A Nation State’s core ethical and religious and social values are in danger of erosion. That Nation’s historical roots are in danger of erosion. That Nation’s jurisprudential values and core economic principles are in danger of erosion.When educators, along with news organizations and legislators in the United States proclaim that illegal aliens are Americans, the Arbalest Quarrel has stepped in to set the record straight. Co-Founder and President of Arbalest Group, LLC., Stephen L. D’Andrilli wrote a reply to an article written by the Vice President of the United Federation of Teachers that appeared in the Union’s publication. The Arbalest Quarrel's response was published in Ammoland Shooting Sports News. Stephen has penned other cogent responses to the UFT that we, as strong supporters of America’s Bill of Rights, have taken exception with.

THE WORK AHEAD FOR THE ARBALEST QUARREL IN 2018

In 2018 we will continue to analyze federal and State gun laws; federal and State gun bills; and federal and State Court cases. We anticipate seeing one and perhaps two openings on the U.S. Supreme Court. It is imperative that President Trump have the opportunity to nominate one or more individuals to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.It is in the Courts, no less than in Congress that our Bill of Rights and, especially, our Second Amendment, will be preserved, strengthened, and expanded. We will otherwise see our Bill of Rights debilitated, weakened, and restricted.The House and, more importantly, the U.S. Senate must remain firmly in the hands of Republicans and, more especially, in the hands of those who espouse a conservative philosophy, reflective of the views and philosophy and sensibilities of the Founders of our Nation, the Framers of our Constitution, the Creators of our Free Republic—not those Centrists like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, who hold to a decidedly globalist philosophy, who demonstrate globalist sympathies, and whose support of our Bill of Rights is lukewarm at best.The Democrats intend to take control of both Houses of Congress and they intend to weaken our Bill of Rights and to weaken especially the First Amendment Freedom of Speech, and the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms. They intend, in league with their internationalist, trans-nationalist, globalist benefactors, to weaken, debase and eventually curtail our natural, fundamental rights and liberties. For they mean to draw us insidiously into the arms of a New World Order. They intend to do this through the vehicle of international pacts and treaties and through mainstream news organizations that condition the American public to accept open borders and to accept an amorphous notion of what it means to be a citizen; and by conditioning the American public to accept the legitimacy of foreign courts to hear cases impacting our fundamental rights; and to condition the American public to accept the supremacy of international law over that of our Constitution, and over our system of laws, and over our jurisprudence; and to condition the public to accept historical revisionism, to accept bizarre, alien notions of morality and gender identity; and to condition the public to accept the dismantling of a Nation that is grounded in Christianity and in notions of self-reliance and initiative, individual responsibility. All these things are on the table, as Democrats and many Centrist Republicans seek to weaken the foundation of a Nation as designed and understood by the Founders of it.

IN CLOSING, WE SET FORTH THE FOLLOWING POINTS AND CAUTIONARY IMPERATIVES FOR OUR READERS:

If the American people are to maintain their unique roots, we must work, first and foremost to keep sacred the Bill of Rights, and that means we must understand the import and purport of the Bill of Rights as the drafters intended, and we must insist that rights and liberties be preserved, protected, and strengthened. We must argue for the continued primacy of this Country as a sovereign, independent Nation State and we must insist that the federal Government’s first order of business, as servants of the American people, is to see to the needs of and well-being of, and security and safety of the American people. And, who are the American people? They are the citizens of this Country and those citizens, the American people, do not include anyone who resides here illegally, whatever that person's motive or circumstance for being here. And, no individual who resides elsewhere has a right to emigrate to this Country simply because that person seeks to live here, for good or for ill; and no one who has entered this Country illegally, whether consciously or through no fault of their own, can demand, as a matter of right, as a matter of law, the right to remain here. For law is not ad hoc. If Congress deigns to allow illegal aliens to remain here, then Congress must refrain from granting such individuals, citizenship. For, to grant citizenship to those who have consciously or not ignored our law, or who claim an exception to law that does not presently exist in law will serve only to destroy our system of laws. To change law or to ignore law on a whim sets a poor precedent and such action, in the seeming moral sense of it, will destroy this Country from within.We must hold to our core values. We must not be seduced into accepting notions of moral and legal relativism and we must not fall prey to historical revisionism. These notions are poisonous, pernicious, debilitating. We are a People with one common language, English. No Nation has remained a separate and distinct Nation State that has inculcated, internalized a notion of bilingualism or multilingualism or that has abided bilingualism or multilingualism.No one, whether inside or outside Government, shall indoctrinate the American people. Each American citizen has a right to free expression and to freely express his or her mind. That an individual may wish to express an idea or to possess a physical item that another individual may personally dislike, or even abhor, so what of it? The founders of our free Republic and the framers of our Constitution did not undertake to institute or to insinuate into the natural and fundamental rights and liberties of the American people a notion of “political correctness.” Such a notion is of modern invention and vintage, designed to serve an ulterior purpose. Indeed, had the founders of our Republic thought of such an absurd concept at all they would undoubtedly have held political correctness to be decidedly politically incorrect. Nothing is more devastating or destructive to the citizenry of this Nation or, for that matter, to the citizenry of any nation state, than the sins of hypocrisy and sanctimony. Unfortunately, both are in abundance in this Nation. We can for that thank the arrogance of mainstream media and of those with power and money and influence, both here and abroad, who wish to dictate a mode of thought the rest of us are obliged to adhere to. The American people should be particularly wary of those legislators and those presumptuous “elites” who bandy about such expressions as “rule of law,” and “living Constitution,” and “open borders,” and “citizen of the world” and “job creator,” and “commonsense gun laws,” and “social Darwinism, and “identity politics,” and “political correctness.” These expressions, and there are others, have become trite and dangerous clichés, shorthand simplistic sloganeering, that are either misunderstood and therefore misused, or are otherwise given to suggest or convey something overtly positive, even exemplary, when, in fact, their utilization is meant to harm the American citizen, meant to harm you! Always be mindful of seemingly noble sounding and high-minded verbiage thrown out to the masses for consumption like so much popcorn and roasted peanuts and cotton candy. Be observant, be cautious, think critically before throwing your lot in with everyone else simply because everyone else is “doing it” or “believing it.” You are no longer in high school. There is no longer any need for you to belong to this or that “clique,” in order to "fit in."The framers of the Constitution glorified the right of the individual to be individual and to accept personal responsibility for one’s actions. Our sacred rights and liberties as codified in the Bill of Rights are a testament to that fact. That is our birthright. The right of free speech; freedom of association; the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures; and the right of the people to keep and bear arms. These are not mere platitudes. These are a few of the most important natural rights, codified in the Bill of Rights. They are absolute and unconditional, and they are slowly being eroded. Americans should consider, critically, how the words of a news commentator, or of a Hollywood star, or of a mega-sports star, or of a legislator, or of a financier, or of a government bureaucrat, or of a highly paid comic on nighttime  television meant to cajole or persuade Americans would impinge on or infringe those rights and liberties before you throw your lot in with them. For you may be hoodwinked into giving up everything of real consequence._________________________________________________Copyright © 2017 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

NATIONAL CONCEALED HANDGUN CARRY RECIPROCITY IS THE ANSWER TO INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM IN THE UNITED STATES.

On January 3, 2017, Richard Hudson, (R-NC), introduced the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 (115 H.R. 38) in the House of Representatives. This Bill, if enacted would allow an individual “who is carrying a valid identification document containing a photograph of the person, and who is carrying a valid license or permit which is issued pursuant to the law of a State and which permits the person to carry a concealed firearm or is entitled to carry a concealed firearm in the State in which the person resides, may possess or carry a concealed handgun (other than a machinegun or destructive device) that has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce, in any State that has a statute under which residents of the State may apply for a license or permit to carry a concealed firearm; or does not prohibit the carrying of concealed firearms by residents of the State for lawful purposes.” What is the status of this bill? It languishes in Committee. Nothing is being done on it, but momentum is building across the Country to compel Congress to take action. Antigun politicians are angered and frightened that national concealed handgun carry will become a reality. In response, they create unsound, bogus arguments directed to containing the very possibility of it. Case in point: Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, according to an article by Mark Moore, appearing in the June 25, 2017 edition of the New York Post, titled, “DA: I am sure ISIS supports concealed carry reciprocity bill, asserts, ludicrously, that national concealed handgun carry will play into the hands of Islamic terrorists. This is merely a new twist on the favorite tired line of antigun groups—that this Nation has a gun problem—as if to suggest that guns, inanimate objects, are responsible for criminal violence. That idea is not only false, it is imbecilic. Sentient beings are responsible for violence, and it is those beings who engineer violence who are to be constrained, not the implements the perpetrators use to promote and do violence.Of course, as we have seen, most notably, in Europe, but also here at home, Islamic terrorists don’t demonstrate a preference toward any one implement when destroying lives: bombs, knives, axes, gasoline, even trucks and automobiles as well as firearms are used--and often several of these implements in one horrific act of violence have been used--by Islamic terrorists, and with devastating effect against innocent civilians--and against soldiers and against police officers as well.Why are guns singled out as the cause célèbre of violent deeds? The emphasis on guns plays into the tiresome raison d’etre of antigun groups: "get rid of guns," so they say, "and all will be right with the world." That is utter nonsense, of course, but the theme plays out in the remonstrations of politicians and as echoed in the choruses of pundits and journalists of the mainstream media through endless, insufferable iterations—an incessant cacophony of meaningless sound bites.Violent crime is a sad fact of life, but its impact can be minimized. In fact, the impact of violent crime can be and has been minimized by arming, not by disarming the American public, and the impact of violent crime can be further minimized through strict enforcement of criminal penalties against those who inflict pain and suffering on innocent Americans. The latest incarnation of violent crime, international Islamic terrorism, is a special species of violent crime, to be sure, a species of crime that must, of course, be dealt with, and must be dealt with at the highest Government levels.In the U.S., the threat posed by international Islamic terrorism is being dealt with sensibly, rationally, and directly, by the U.S. President, Donald Trump. An armed American citizenry can certainly aid the U.S. President in his efforts.Courts in the Ninth Circuit though disagree. Not content merely to disarm the American public—inhibiting Americans from exercising their natural right of self-defense with the best means available—a firearm—the Courts of the Ninth Circuit have attempted to throw a wrench into the President’s efforts as well—opining, wrongly, that individuals, non-citizens, who reside outside of this Country, have rights secured under the Bill of Rights and that, in effect, the rights of these non-citizens apparently transcend the security of this Nation and the security of its people. Non-citizens residing outside our Country, though, have no rights or liberties under our Bill of Rights and the concerns of non-citizens residing outside our Country do not transcend—will never transcend—the needs and security of the citizens of our own Nation.The U.S. Supreme Court's June 26, 2017 decision is consistent with that principle. The high Court essentially stayed the preliminary injunctions of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, opining that the preliminary injunctions were valid only to the extent that a refugee could establish a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States. Trump v. Int'l Refugee Assistance Project, 2017 U.S. LEXIS 4266. Justice Thomas, joined by Justices Alito and Gorsuch, concurred in part and dissented in part in the unanimous decision of the high Court. In his dissent Justice Thomas stated that he, joined by Justices Alito and Gorsuch, would have granted a full stay of the preliminary injunctions. Justice Thomas stated in pertinent part:"The Government has satisfied the standard for issuing a stay pending certiorari. We have, of course, decided to grant certiorari. . . . And I agree with the Court’s implicit conclusion that the Government has made a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits—that is, that the judgments below will be reversed. The Government has also established that failure to stay the injunctions will cause irreparable harm by interfering with its “compelling need to provide for the Nation’s security.” Finally, weighing the Government’s interest in preserving national security against the hardships caused to respondents by temporary denials of entry into the country, the balance of the equities favors the Government. I would thus grant the Government’s applications for a stay in their entirety."Clearly, the best defense against international Islamic terrorism and the first-line of defense for our Nation is found in an armed citizenry. To paraphrase a statement of NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, the best deterrent against a “bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”  That may seem like a trite slogan, but, time and time again, it has been proved true.The natural right of self-defense should never be restricted and must never be trivialized. Unfortunately, those who hold an irrational hostility toward gun ownership and toward gun possession by the law-abiding citizenry will continue their efforts to constrain the natural right of self-defense. But, they are losing. They are left flailing about, trying to drum up support for their doomed cause: namely, destruction of our Nation’s sacred Second Amendment. The bizarre, irrational statements of antigun proponents, like those of the Manhattan DA, Cy Vance, aptly illustrate the extent of their desperation.The Arbalest Quarrel is a strong supporter of National Concealed Handgun Carry legislation. We provide a strong case for it in our continuing series: “A ROAD TRIP WITH A GUN.” You will find those articles and much more right here, on this website.________________________________________Copyright © 2017 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved

WHERE DOES THE MOST SERIOUS THREAT TO THE PRESERVATION OF THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES OF AMERICANS REST? FROM CONGRESS? FROM THE PRESS? FROM THE PRESIDENT? FROM ALL THREE TAKEN TOGETHER? THE ANSWER MAY SURPRISE YOU!

KOLBE VS. HOGAN:

INTERIM REMARKS

The Arbalest Quarrel has been working steadily on a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the Kolbe case. We are taking a short timeout with this segment, subtitled, “Interim Remarks,” to place the substantial time we are devoting to Kolbe in proper perspective. We feel our analysis has singular importance now with the Senate Judiciary Hearings on the Gorsuch confirmation that took place these past few days, and which have concluded. Senate Democrats are now filibustering, to prevent a vote on the confirmation of Judge Gorsuch as Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.The Arbalest Quarrel will continue its comprehensive, analytical exposition of the Kolbe case, considering its negative impact on the Second Amendment and considering, as well, the failure of the Fourth Circuit to take proper note of and abide by the rulings and reasoning of the high Court in the seminal Heller case. The high Court provided clear guidance to the lower Courts for the proper handling of Second Amendment cases where government action attacks the core of the Second Amendment.What is unfortunately abundantly clear now is that lower federal Courts will, at times, ignore rulings and reasoning and guidance of the U.S. Supreme Court if those lower federal Courts do not agree with the methodology, the rulings, the reasoning, and the jurisprudential underpinnings of the law as reflected in specific cases. So it is that we see some United States Circuits ignoring the precepts of Heller. But, regardless of a jurist’s political and social philosophy, precedent must not be ignored. Precedent must never be ignored. All too often as we see, though, judicial precedent is ignored, and it is, not infrequently, ignored in the most important cases: those cases negatively impacting our most sacred rights and liberties.If anything came out of the Neil Gorsuch confirmation hearings —where Judge Gorsuch had to suffer through days of torturous questioning and insufferable pontificating of Senate Democrats sitting on the Judiciary Committee—the public has come to see that Judge Gorsuch believes fervently in the importance of legal precedent as the cornerstone of our system of laws. This is necessary if our system of laws is not to be reduced to a set of discordant, inconsistent body of law, providing no guidance on which Courts may reasonably rely.The public has also seen that Judge Gorsuch gives credence to the law enacted by Congress, as written. Judge Gorsuch does not allow personal feeling to sway his rulings. That seems to bother some members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It should, though, give the public hope. For, the public can rest assured that Judge Gorsuch, sitting on the high Court as an Associate Justice, will demonstrate proper restraint—applying the law to the facts as that law exists, and not as he may, perhaps, rather like the law to be.What the law ought to be is subject matter for legal and political philosophical musings set down in essays. When a judge opines on a case before that judge, the jurist is not to render judgment on what the law ought to be but must predicate his or her rulings on what the state of the law is, and elucidate findings of fact and conclusions of law on that basis and on that basis alone. Frankly, all too often we do not see this. The worst and most dangerous example of improper legal judgment is judgment reflected in personal feeling peppered, if only tacitly, but unmistakably, in legal opinions—personal feeling overriding judicial restraint in matters directly impacting the Bill of Rights, not least of which, we see on the continued assault against the clear meaning and purpose of the Second Amendment.The rabid assault on the sanctity of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution continues unabated notwithstanding the clear reasoning of and holdings in the Heller case. But, where do the greatest and gravest threats rest?Contrary to popular opinion on the matter, the greatest threat to our Bill of Rights, generally, and the gravest danger to our Second Amendment, particularly, rests less upon the assertive, pretentious, sanctimonious, noxious rhetorical flourishes and rancor of some elected officials who disdainfully, arrogantly voice their antipathy toward the Second Amendment—even if that rancor is masked through the obligatory assertion, “but of course I support the Second Amendment,” as if, through the addition of that assertion to the official’s polemic, the elected official may effectively hide his or her clear distaste toward the very idea that the average, law-abiding, rational, American citizen—not working as a policeman, or as a soldier, or as a licensed bodyguard, or as a government or private security officer, or in some unknown, secretive governmental capacity, but merely, solely as a civilian—should actually ever be armed with—horror of horrors—a firearm.And, contrary to popular opinion on the matter, the greatest threat to our Bill of Rights, generally, and the gravest danger to our Second Amendment, particularly, rests less upon the loud, vociferous, discordant voice of writers, editors, and owners of mainstream media whose antipathy toward the right of the people to keep and bear arms is well-known by the public, and is at once both longstanding and supremely malevolent.Rather, the greatest threat to our Bill of Rights, generally, and the gravest danger to our Second Amendment, particularly, rests more on the actions of activist Jurists of the federal District and Circuit Courts whose arcane opinions, seemingly well-learned and well-reasoned, merely obscure an intent to defeat the Second Amendment despite clear guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court.The threat posed by an activist Judiciary to the preservation of our basic liberties, as envisioned by the founders of our Free Republic is very real, not to be reasonably denied. And that threat posed to our Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms is ultimately greater than that posed by either a recalcitrant Congress or a derelict Press.The danger posed by an activist Judiciary is greater and graver to our sacred rights and liberties because the Judiciary is the final arbiter of what our law means and, therefore, how the law impacts our lives.As our Constitution sets forth, Congress makes the law we live by. The Executive enforces the law that Congress enacts. But, as the grand interpreter of the law—what the law means and whether the law is consistent with the U.S. Constitution—whether a law shall operate at all, and, if so, the effect it has on our lives—it is for the Judiciary to say. It is not for Congress to say; and it is not for the U.S. President to say; and it is certainly, not for the Press to tell the American people what the law of the Land is.No! The Judiciary, alone, is the final arbiter of what the law is. Some may think the Judiciary wields less power than the two other Branches of Government. After all, the Judiciary does not have the power of the purse, which, along with the unequivocal and singular power to make law, exists in Congress alone. The Judiciary does not wield power over the military, or over the federal police agencies, or over the vast intelligence apparatuses, all of which fall within the direct purview of the Executive. But, as the final arbiter of our law—what the law means and how the law is to be applied—assuming we remain a Nation ruled by law, truly ruled by law, and not by men—no American should underestimate the power the Judiciary wields over our lives.Even the most uninformed citizens among us knows full well the power of the Judiciary in the matter of immigration. That has been on full display. That power can and, most recently has tied the hands of the U.S. President, as Commander in Chief of our Nation, taxed with the singular duty to protect the People of our great Nation from all threats both foreign and domestic.President Donald Trump, promising to do his best to defend this Nation against imminent and serious threat posed by Islamic terrorists —clearly among his most important duties as U.S. President—has been constrained and frustrated in that effort due to the machinations of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and thereafter by the U.S. District Court of Hawaii—Courts that have, through their actions, placed the welfare of this Nation and the physical safety of its citizens at considerable risk as those Courts, through their opinions, demonstrate that the wishes of non-citizens who seek to emigrate to America from failed States are to be given more consideration than are the health and well-being of this Nation and the physical safety of American citizens. And, it doesn’t stop there, with immigration.Activist U.S. District Court and U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges express their disdain of the Second Amendment and their continued defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court through decisions that rein in the right of the people to keep and bear arms. They denigrate the import and purport of our Second Amendment through manipulation of legal doctrine.If our pronouncement be undiplomatic, untactful toward the Judiciary, so be it. This is not a time for niceties. For the decisions of the Judiciary—the words expressed in opinions—are proof of political activism that strike at the heart of the health, welfare, and safety of our Nation and at the import and purport of our Bill of Rights.No less has the Fourth Circuit, in our estimate, manipulated legal doctrine, in denigration of U.S. Supreme Court precedent. Obscuring opinion in arcane legalese does little to disguise the fact that legal opinions coming out of this Circuit in the recent Kolbe case are antithetical to and involve a misunderstanding—whether consciously deliberate or incautiously but honestly mistaken—of the rulings and reasoning of the Heller Court.The Fourth Circuit relies for support, in part, on similar rulings of its sister Courts, most notably, those of the Second, Third, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits. By relying for support on opinions of their sister Courts, the Fourth Circuit aims, it seems to us, to deflect honest criticism away from itself, thereby suggesting that similar rulings of these other Courts that belie the rulings, reasoning, and clear guidance of the majority opinion, penned by Justice Scalia, in Heller, do somehow demonstrate that the Fourth Circuit does give due consideration to the holdings and reasoning of Heller, rather than contradicting the holdings and reasoning of that seminal Second Amendment case. But that is not the case at all.We firmly believe—as we have explained and will elucidate yet further—the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, en banc, having taken its cue from the U.S. District Court of Maryland and from the opinions of various sister Courts, strained to find a loophole in the Heller case to justify finding Maryland’s Firearm Safety Act to be legal. There isn’t any. So, the Fourth Circuit created one out of whole cloth.The gravest error of the Courts of the Fourth Circuit consists in the application of a standard of review that the Heller Court specifically rejected. Proceeding from an improper footing, an erroneous decision—but one the Fourth Circuit obviously wanted—could not but follow from the application of the wrong standard.Happy the Fourth Circuit would be, as would other United States Circuit Courts that elicit similar sympathies, if Heller were simply overturned. Were Judge Merrick Garland to have sat on the high Court, that pipedream for the antigun movement would come to pass. There is no doubt about that. Clearly, that was one end that Barack Obama had in mind which is why he nominated Merrick Garland to Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. It was one end that Hillary Clinton would have had in mind were she to have been elected U.S. President. For, she would certainly have been elated to sit Judge Garland on the high Court. Thankfully, neither the previous U.S. President or the one who would be Queen will never get their wish.If Judge Neil Gorsuch is confirmed and he should be and undoubtedly will be—despite a Democratic threat of filibuster of his confirmation which is now unfolding—the Heller case should remain untouched—even if ignored by various Circuit Courts as we see in Kolbe. Heller is the first case that extends—albeit tacitly—the idea that, where the very core of a fundamental right is attacked in a government action—a facial challenge to that governmental action will be given proper consideration.The U.S. Supreme Court made clear enough in Heller, to the surprise and, we are sure, much to the consternation of the D.C. Government and to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, that the U.S. Supreme Court would not shrink from applying facial challenge methodology to an action by government that attacks the core of the Second Amendment even if that had not previously been done. We should see that methodology applied as well in Kolbe if Kolbe or a similar case is heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. We hope and trust and pray that Judge Gorsuch sits on the high Court as the Ninth Justice when this happens.We continue with our analysis of the Kolbe case with Part Five of our multi-series article, to be posted shortly._________________________Copyright © 2017 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved. 

TRUMP, UNSHACKLED BY REPUBLICAN PARTY DISUNITY, REMAINS STRONG TO WIN!

TRUMP, UNSHACKLED BY REPUBLICAN PARTY DISUNITY, REMAINS STRONG TO WIN!“. . . if the populace had any intelligence at all, the world wouldn’t be in its present condition. . . .” ~Captains And The Kings, by Taylor Caldwell, Part One, Chapter 24, page 260 (Doubleday & Company, Inc.)(1972)

INTRODUCTION

WHAT AMERICA GAINS THROUGH A TRUMP VICTORY IN NOVEMBER IS A RETURN TO SANITY; AND THE RETURN TO TRADITIONAL GOALS; AND A RETURN TO THE IDEALS OF OUR NATION AS HELD AND PROMOTED BY OUR FOUNDERS—IN SUM: PLACING THE NEEDS OF OUR NATION FIRST, NOT CONFLATING THE NEEDS OF OUR NATION WITH THOSE OF OTHER NATIONS AND WITH OTHER PEOPLES; AND IN EXTOLLING THE PRINCIPLE THAT WE ARE A NATION THAT RESPECTS AND HONORS THE  SANCTITY OF EACH LAW-ABIDING AMERICAN CITIZEN; AND THAT WE ACKNOWLEDGE THE INHERENT RIGHT OF EACH LAW-ABIDING AMERICAN CITIZEN TO LIVE HIS LIFE UNHINDERED BY GOVERNMENT AND FREE FROM THREAT OF GOVERNMENT RETRIBUTION FOR HAVING EXERCISED HIS OR HER RIGHTS UNDER THE BILL OF RIGHTS—THAT EACH CITIZEN HAS THE RIGHT TO BE LEFT ALONE.

The American public remains abysmally unaware of the danger posed by a Clinton Presidency. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have wreaked havoc with the economy, with our security, with our health care system, with our social and educational institutions, with our Constitution—in fact—with our National Identity. We are a unique people with a unique history, with a unique perspective on life, and with a unique way of life worth preserving. We are a Nation that places value on the individual and awards individual effort. These ideas are central to Donald Trump's political philosophy as one can deduce from an analysis of his speeches. But Clinton and Obama don’t agree with that philosophy. Their political philosophy devalues the individual. Their political philosophy subordinates the worth and sanctity of the individual to that of the collective, of the hive. We hear Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama express these alien, anti-American ideas in their own speeches. We see these alien, anti-American ideas expressed in their policy directives. They pontificate. They lecture Americans. They treat Americans in a condescending manner, drumming their drivel into the public's psyche through simplistic slogans, catchy phrases, and sanctimonious sermons. The mainstream media is their willing, treacherous accomplice in all of this, heralding, trumpeting the bizarre messages of Obama and Clinton and those like them, who seek to undermine the importance and sanctity of the individual and the sovereignty and independence of this Nation. Obama and Clinton suppress as subversive anything that is incompatible with the goals, aims and directives of their silent, secretive partners and benefactors who seek ever more control over the lives of Americans.Obama and Clinton, in accordance with the directives of their secretive partners and benefactors denigrate the notions of individual initiative, individual drive, and individual effort. Obama and Clinton seek to rework, reshape the American public in the mold of sameness. They seek to erase our sacred rights and liberties as heresy for those rights and liberties are grounded on yet one more basic and sacred right they cannot and will not abide: the right of the individual to be individual. Trump displays the very attribute of individuality that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and their benefactors and partners seek to stamp out, must stamp out if their goal of a New World Order is to succeed; and the powerful and corrupting influences at work in this Country and in the world at large know this very well. Through the tool of the mainstream media, they do everything in their considerable power to attack, demean, and discredit Trump—to discredit the right of the individual to be, in that person’s thought and actions, individual.

PART ONE

NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, IS MORE IMPORTANT, MORE CRITICAL TO THE SURVIVAL OF THIS NATION THAN THE PRESERVATION OF OUR RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES—ALL TEN OF THEM—AS CODIFIED IN OUR BILL OF RIGHTS. THESE RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES ARE NOT TO BE IGNORED, REFUTED, DEBASED, SUPPRESSED OR DIMINISHED BY STATE OR FEDERAL LAW, BY EXECUTIVE FIAT, BY INTERNATIONAL LAW, OR BY OPERATION OF FOREIGN PACT, TREATY, UNDERSTANDING, OR AGREEMENT.

The primary, primordial right of the individual to be individual is embodied in our jurisprudence, in our Constitution, in the very existence of our Nation. We are the only Country in existence, founded on the sacred principle that the rights and liberties of this Nation’s citizens are not privileges, granted to the people through the grace of the State, but natural rights, preexistent and preeminent in the people themselves. Our Nation is also founded on the principal that the federal Government exists by grace of the People to serve the People. Government does not exist by its own grace; and the American People are not subjects or indentured servants of the State: they are not to be perceived as such and they are not to be treated as such. America’s citizens are individuals in whose hands, and in whose hands alone, ultimate power and authority resides. But, we don’t hear these points recited by our present President, Barack Obama, or by the Democratic Party nominee for U.S. President, Hillary Rodham Clinton.For all their pretentious pronouncements, Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama forbear from remarking on the import of our sacred rights and liberties. They forbear on remarking, that the power and authority residing in the American People is preeminent; that such power and authority given to the federal Government is by grant of the people; that such power and authority that Government has is limited; and that such power and authority the Government has exists to serve the People, not the other way around. Why do you suppose that is? The question is rhetorical. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton don’t talk about this. They don’t talk about our sacred rights and liberties in any meaningful way. They slither through any discussion of the citizenry’s sacred rights and liberties and they dismiss altogether any suggestion that ultimate power and authority resides in the American People. They do so because they mean to exercise power and authority for themselves, as regents on behalf of the puppet masters—the silent and secret masters who control them. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton muffle criticism and muzzle those who speak out in defiance to the lies and hoaxes they perpetrate on Americans. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton muffle criticism and muzzle those who dare point to the Obama and Clinton puppets’ callous disregard and contempt for Americans’ rights and liberties; for the callous disregard these puppets have for the Constitution and for the rule of law; for the callous disregard these puppets have for the security and well-being of this Country’s citizenry.

PART TWO

THE FOUNDERS OF OUR REPUBLIC WOULD FIND THE ETHICAL SYSTEM PROPOUNDED BY AND PROMOTED BY CLINTON AND OBAMA REPUGNANT TO THE FOUNDERS’ CONSCIENCE AND INCONSISTENT WITH THE IMPORT AND PURPORT OF THE NATION’S BILL OF RIGHTS.

Obama and Clinton assert they know what is in the best interests of the American People. Their notion of what is in the best interests of the American People is grounded in the ethical theory of utilitarianism, which looks at what is deemed to be in the best interests of society as a whole, as a collective. The problem with this notion is that it is antithetical to the founders’ ethical system. The Arbalest Quarrel has written extensively on this in an article posted on our site on June 1, 2015, titled, "Guns, Knives, and Occam's Dangerous Razor." In codifying our rights and liberties, the founders of our Republic emphasized the importance of the individual, not the collective. But Obama and Clinton don’t like that idea. It gets in the way of their ability to interfere with and to interject themselves into the lives of average law-abiding Americans. For, if Obama and Clinton are going to create and implement policies grounded in notions of what is best for the collective—consistent with the principals of socialism and communism—then the needs and interests of the individual cannot and must not be factored into the mix.It is through the natural, inalienable rights and liberties codified in our Bill of Rights that the individual’s needs and interests—not those of the collective—may be expressed—and may be expressed free from Government control and interference.Indeed, Obama and Clinton argue that the exercise of individual rights and liberties is archaic. The individual is expected to give up any pretense of such individual right or individual liberty. He or she must do so for the benefit of society as a whole—for the benefit of the collective. Obama and Clinton operate as if the Bill of Rights doesn’t exist.Similarly, Obama and Clinton don’t mention that ultimate power resides in the American People because that fact is inconsistent with the Imperial Presidency. Through this notion of an Imperial Presidency, Obama has sought to accumulate ever more power in the Executive Branch at the expense of the other two Branches of Government. He obliterates the suggestion that our Constitution is structured on the governing principal that ultimate power and authority resides in the American People, not in the Federal Government, and certainly not in one Branch of Government. Clinton’s view of the Imperial Presidency would build on Obama’s.President Obama and Hillary Clinton have contempt for our rights and liberties as codified in the Bill of Rights. They have contempt for the Separation of Powers doctrine, reflected in the first three Articles of our Constitution. And, they have contempt for the fact that ultimate power and authority resides in the American People, not in the Government.As evidenced in their political philosophy, in their foreign and domestic policy directives, in their utilitarian consequentialist ethical system, which our Nation’s founders never ascribed to, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton respect not our Constitution, or our system of laws, or our traditions, culture, and history. They are both, at heart, Globalists and Internationalists, not Nationalists. For Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the expressions, ‘Nationalism,’ ‘National Pride,’ and ‘National Identity,’ ‘Protectionism,’ ‘Isolationism,’ and ‘Non-interventionism,’ ‘Secured Borders,’ and ‘Immigration Quotas,’ are vestiges of an earlier time, having no import today. Indeed, for Obama and Clinton such expressions are pejoratives.What the Arbalest Quarrel provides for you in this multipart series article is a comprehensive look at the nature of the stakes. We provide you a view of the political landscape that you won’t find in the mainstream media. We don’t paint for you a pretty picture here; but the conclusions drawn follow from the facts as we see them. We welcome your comments.

PART THREE

THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA DELIBERATELY DISTORTS THE GRAPHIC IT DRAWS OF TRUMP. IT RAISES TRUMP’S PECCADILLOES TO THE LEVEL OF CRIMES WHEN THERE IS NO EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT CRIMINAL CHARGES OR CIVIL TORT LAWSUITS; AND NO CRIMINAL INDICTMENT OR CIVIL ACTION IS FORTHCOMING AGAINST HIM. INVERSELY, THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA’S ESTIMATION OF CLINTON’S MISCONDUCT IS, FOR THE MOST PART, ALL FLOWERS AND SUNSHINE. THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA CONVEYS THE IDEA THAT CLINTON’S FEDERAL FELONIES ARE NOTHING MORE THAN NON-ACTIONABLE “MISTAKES” NOTWITHSTANDING THE EXISTENCE OF SUBSTANTIAL AND SUBSTANTIVE EVIDENCE THAT CLINTON INTENTIONALLY OR THROUGH GROSS NEGLIGENCE COMMITTED SEVERAL FEDERAL FELONIES, AND DID SO REPEATEDLY, AND DID SO OVER AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF TIME.

The mainstream media does not set the record straight. Rather, the mainstream media is the greatest enabler of and for the unlawful policies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The power the mainstream wields, as guaranteed to the Press under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution is all for naught. The sacred right is squandered. The mainstream media refuses to discuss the serious issues of the day. The media treats politics as entertainment, no more important than a sports event or celebrity show, perhaps even less important. The media, at the behest of the wealthy powerful, secretive, globalist interests that control them, treat the public to fluff and nonsense.Realizing how ridiculous it is to have endorsed a criminal for President of the United States, namely Hillary Rodham Clinton, the mainstream media finds it useful to attack her opponent’s character rather than to pay serious attention to the idiocy of their endorsement of Clinton. So, the mainstream media offers distractions for public consumption, raising embarrassing episodes in Donald Trump’s past, blowing those episodes up to major imbroglios as if to suggest that anything in Trump’s past could truly compare to the horrific conduct of Hillary Clinton: mishandling confidential government information, lying to federal investigators, selling out this Country for personal gain, and allowing Americans to die because it is inconvenient to send American troops to protect them. Hillary Clinton has committed felonies. The Nation has suffered because of them; lives have been lost. But, Trump’s personal indiscretions—none of them prosecutable crimes and certainly not felonies—are deemed by the Press to be worse. Fancy that!Clinton has harmed this Country. She has placed its citizens at unnecessary risk. She has placed this Nation’s system of laws and jurisprudence at risk. She has placed this Nation’s institutions at risk. She has shown her utter contempt for our Country’s Constitution, and she has demonstrated a flagrant disregard for the rights and liberties of American citizens under the Bill of Rights. Hillary Clinton has broken federal law both intentionally and through gross negligence. She has committed serious crimes. She has done so repeatedly and through an extended period of time. Not improbably, she still does. Yet, Americans are to believe, as professed by the mainstream media, by political pundits, by policy analysts, by news commentators, and by her supporters—albeit wrongly—that Clinton is fit to hold the Office of President of the United States and that Donald Trump is not.But, on the measure of misconduct, whose sins are greater, really? Clinton’s criminal misconduct is not unimportant or irrelevant. Many commentators point to the fact that Clinton has, to date, not been indicted, as if to suggest or to expressly assert she committed no crime. But failure of prosecutors to indict does not entail, either in law or logic, that a crime has not been committed. There are often many reasons prosecutors do not indict a person on criminal charges even if prosecutors have probable cause to believe a crime has been committed. In the case at hand, it is not beyond the realm of reasonable inference that the U.S. Department of Justice was prepared to indict Clinton but was pressured not to. That suggests our Government has suffered a quiet coup d'état. If so, what is at stake for the American People in this election is not simply a choice of different political philosophical viewpoints: Democratic or Republican? No! What it is that is at stake in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election suggests something no less critical than the greatest ordeal to face this Nation since the American Revolution: Americans either retake their Country that totters, now, at the brink of dissolution or Americans suffer the loss of their Country forever.

PART FOUR

THE CORRUPTING FORCES AND INFLUENCES THAT CONTROL THE INNER WORKINGS OF THIS COUNTRY AND THAT SEEK TO MAINTAIN THE STATUS QUO AT ALL COSTS ARE AFRAID OF TRUMP.

As the 2016 U.S. Presidential election grows near, mainstream media, including major newspapers, like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and major broadcast networks, namely and particularly, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX News Channel, mislead the Public to promote an agenda that has nothing to do with providing fair, unbiased reporting of the news. They do so endlessly, relentlessly, tirelessly, and tediously. Trump draws flak from the billionaire donor class, from international globalists, multinational conglomerates, and from neoliberal economists. He draws flak from President Barack Obama, and from Obama’s wife, Michelle. Trump draws flak from Hollywood moguls and film actors. He draws flak from the Communist Party USA, from Democratic Party leaders, and from Clinton followers.Each, in his or her or its own way, seek to displace Trump and place Hillary Rodham Clinton in the White House, using every sleight of hand and subterfuge, every dirty trick, every artifice, every psychological methodology and propagandist tool at their disposal—anything and everything to nudge the public to accept Hillary Clinton as the best choice, the inevitable choice—the legitimate choice, the only real choice for U.S. President.If Hillary Rodham Clinton, by hook or crook, as the case may be, as the case certainly is, successfully claws her way to victory in November, it will be through no small help of her vast army of surrogates, benefactors, and enablers. If she secures the U.S. Presidency, she will lead this Country to its destiny. But that destiny is one the average American would find both unfamiliar and most disagreeable: the destruction of the U.S. Constitution, the end of the rule of law, and the end of this Country as an independent, sovereign Nation State. The Clinton family will make out just fine. They will be paid handsomely by their Globalist Benefactors as they sell this Country out, for pennies on the dollar, like privateers and hucksters who sell off the assets of a company for their own personal gain, heartlessly casting the employees out into the void, leaving the company a dry, empty husk.In their effort to promote, for U.S. President, the most corrupt politician this Country has ever seen, Hillary Clinton, those individuals and groups, who seek to sit their puppet, Clinton, in the Oval Office, attack the Republican Party candidate, Donald Trump viciously and unconscionably. They do so on specious, spurious grounds. They drum up titillating material to thwart Trump’s campaign because they know his policy issues are rational and sound but detrimental to their goals of a tightly nested confederation of Western member nations—all of them ruled through a single technocratic governing European body, the New World Order, presided over by trillionaire international bankers: the Rothschild clan.The Rothschilds have pulled out all the stops. The clan overtly supports Hillary Clinton for President, as acknowledged by the New York Times, and as the Arbalest Quarrel has written about in an article posted on our site, on September 12, 2016, titled, "Hillary Rodham Clinton: The Candidate Of Choice Of The Secretive, Powerful, Incredibly Wealthy Internationalist Rothschild Family."The proponents of the New World Order have their own Agenda. It is one contrary to the well-being of and continued sanctity of the United States as an independent sovereign Nation.

PART FIVE

DO CENTRIST REPUBLICANS SECRETLY SUPPORT THE AGENDA OF CLINTON’S SUPPORTERS AND BENEFACTORS?

WHERE ARE CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS TO BE FOUND? WHY HAVE THEY NOT COME TO TRUMP’S AID?What we find difficult to understand and vehemently take exception with are attacks against Trump by many Congressional Republicans. Do they not realize that, by attacking Trump, they are playing into the hands of Clinton’s supporters and benefactors, especially the Rothschild clan? From their actions we can only surmise that Congressional Republicans who speak out against Trump share, if tacitly, the sentiments of those who actively support Clinton. And, those Congressional Republicans who remain silent, who fail to take a stand to support Trump, are nonetheless complicit in the condemnation of Trump and, so, no better than those Republican Congressmen who speak out, overtly, against him.No Republican Congressman can sit idle, inconspicuous in this, riding the waves quietly like a jellyfish. The American People are not fooled. There is no place for reticence here, not when the very survival of our Country, and of our Constitution, and of our very way of life is at stake.

WHAT DO CLINTON’S BENEFACTORS WANT? WHAT ARE THEIR AIMS AND THEIR WISH FOR THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY?

The attacks against Trump are vigorous, wearingly repetitive, and unremitting. What do these individuals and groups support? They support globalism, multiculturalism and neoliberal free trade agreements. They support constraints on freedom of speech. They support reduction in, if not outright elimination of, the rights and liberties of American citizens—those rights and liberties existent in our Nation’s citizenry as natural rights, as codified in the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights.Those who attack Trump support de facto if not de jure repeal of the Second Amendment right of the People to keep and bear arms. They support abortion on demand, open borders, and general amnesty for illegal aliens. They support federal control of State police forces, extension of federal powers and authority, and concomitant reduction in the powers reserved to the States through the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.The individuals and groups that attack Donald Trump support subordination of the U.S. Constitution and subordination of our body of laws and of our jurisprudence to the laws of other nations and to foreign jurisprudence, consistent with the dictates of the UN and with international pacts, treaties, and mandates. Yet the subordination of our laws, our Constitution, our jurisprudence to those of other nations, or to the dictates of foreign courts and to international courts, and to foreign tribunals, is anathema. Such notion is in contradistinction to the precept that the U.S. Constitution and U.S. law and U.S. jurisprudence supersede those of any other nation and supersede the dictates of orders of foreign courts and foreign tribunals.Our Constitution mandates the absolute supremacy of our laws and legal system. It does not allow the ceding of our Nation’s legal authority and dominance to anyone. It mandates the independence and superiority of our laws and our Court Orders over any ruling and any holding of any foreign court or foreign tribunal. It mandates dominance over the rulings and orders of international courts, over the rulings and orders of courts of other nations, and over the rulings and orders of any foreign tribunal or foreign administrative panel, regardless of any suggestion by treaty, or pact, or UN or EU decree to the contrary.Those individuals and groups that attack Trump support growth of the Welfare State and the continuation of deficit spending. They support elimination of the death penalty even for individuals convicted of the most despicable, heinous crimes. They support affirmative action and absolute federal control of public school education. They support expansion of the power of the Federal Reserve which they believe is a vital institution of Government even though it isn’t a Governmental institution at all but simply a private entity.The very existence and power wielded by the Federal Reserve System of Banking has devastated the financial well-being of this Country while enriching the international central banking consortium that operates to enslave us, the international Rothschild banking clan—a family that, collectively, holds trillions of dollars in assets. With the financial power the international Rothschild banking family wields, this one international family of bankers has controlled, through the centuries, up to the present time, the financial system of the world. Through the central banking system that the family’s Patriarch, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, created in the eighteenth century, and which has served the family well through the centuries—at the expense of the nations where these banks operate, leaving nations bankrupt—these privately held central banks operate in every corner of the world, in virtually every major nation on this planet. Like a black hole in the center of every galaxy in the universe, the Rothschilds, through their banks, control the destinies of nations, vacuuming up the lifeblood of each nation to fill their own coffers, leaving each nation bone dry.The individuals and groups that attack Trump support vast expenditures of taxpayer monies to foreign countries, absent proof of benefit to our own Country. They support endless war, and continued and costly foreign interventionism. They promote entangling—rather than untangling—foreign alliances.Such policy and philosophical goals, objectives, positions, and initiatives undermine the core values, principals, and traditions of our Country. Such policy and philosophical goals, objectives, positions, and initiatives undermine our Country’s economic well-being and physical security. Worst of all, such policy and philosophical goals, objectives, positions, and initiatives undermine the continued independence of and sovereignty of the United States. Hillary Clinton supports them, declaring her support openly, avidly. Donald Trump does not, and powerful interests both here and abroad know this. That’s why they want Hillary Clinton seated in the White House, not Trump. Hillary Clinton’s benefactors, first and foremost, the Rothschild clan—extraordinarily wealthy, all-powerful, secretive, immoral or otherwise amoral corrupting interests and influences at work in the world today are concerned—actually frantic with worry—over a Trump victory in November. But, average, law-abiding Americans have more to fear from a Clinton victory in November. After Brexit, Clinton’s benefactors do not intend to lose their control of the United States Government. They are controlling this U.S. Presidential cycle with the fury and frenzy of a shark attack.Through the power of the Office of the Chief Executive and as Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces, Hillary Clinton would, if elected U.S. President, command vast Governmental resources. She will be in the position to bend and violate our laws to benefit herself personally, to benefit her benefactors, to benefit her family, and to benefit the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation—all at the expense of the well-being of and the security of the American people, and at the expense of and well-being of U.S. interests. To get a handle on the corruption inherent in the Clinton Foundation. See the  “Clinton Cash Documentary Movie” (in full) on youtube.  See also the New York Post article on Clinton corruption, dated August 3, 2016, titled, "New revelations show a nation for sale under Hillary Clinton." All the while Hillary Clinton will claim her interests are to be equated with America’s interests—that they are the same, when in fact they are not. Such is the viewpoint of despots the world over, throughout history.

PART SIX

BARACK OBAMA AND HILLARY CLINTON DO NOT REPRESENT THE NATION’S  INTERESTS OR THE NEEDS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE; THEY FORCE A BIZARRE, ALIEN AGENDA ON OUR NATION AND ITS PEOPLE—AN AGENDA AT ODDS WITH OUR TRADITIONS, OUR HISTORY, OUR CONSTITUTION, AND THE PRINCIPLES LAID DOWN FOR THIS NATION BY AMERICA’S FOUNDERS.

President Obama has, throughout his Presidency, slowly, insidiously—often beneath the threshold of the American public’s conscious perception—insinuated an alien idea into the American psyche, and upon that idea he has, on behalf of the puppet masters to whom he has silently, secretly declared his true allegiance, the international Rothschild clan, betrayed his oath of Office; betrayed his duty to serve our Country; and betrayed his duty to uphold the U.S. Constitution.The idea germinating in the American psyche, as promoted by Obama, stated succinctly, is this: Americans are citizens of the world, not merely citizens of America. Obama, on behalf of his benefactors, has sullied a basic precept, namely that each Nation has a unique history; its own set of laws; and its own core values. That means each nation is to be left alone and to its own devices unless that nation aggressively interferes in the internal affairs of and in the security of another nation.That means, too, we, Americans, are not to interfere in the affairs of other nations unless those other nations interfere in our affairs or in our security, or with our clearly defined interests. And if such other nation interferes in the affairs of our nation or endangers the security of our nation, then we may deal with that nation directly and harshly, and with finality. We have done so in the past and we should return to that singular policy stance now. Obama doesn’t adhere to that policy position because he doesn’t adhere to the sanctity of the Nation State. He suggests the very concept of the Nation State is, at that concept exists today, destructive to world peace.Obama has made his position poignantly clear, during his last speech to the United Nations General Assembly on September 24, 2016. See, Obama's last speech to the UN General Assembly, delivered on September 20, 2016, as posted by the White House, on its own website. Obama says,  in pertinent part, “This speaks to a central question of our global age: whether we will solve our problems together, in a spirit of mutual interests and mutual respect, or whether we descend into destructive rivalries of the past. When nations find common ground, not simply based on power, but on principle, then we can make enormous progress. And I stand before you today committed to investing American strength in working with nations to address the problems we face in the 21st century. . . . On issue after issue, we cannot rely on a rule-book written for a different century. If we lift our eyes beyond our borders – if we think globally and act cooperatively – we can shape the course of this century as our predecessors shaped the post-World War II age.” On the surface, through a superficial appraisal of Obama’s speech to the UN General Assembly, the speech appears eloquent and innocuous and, to some listeners, no doubt, even uplifting. Yet, dig deep into an analysis of that speech, and the ugly underbelly of the policy aims set forth in Obama’s speech come to light. The insidious goals of Obama’s puppet masters, whom Obama owes his allegiance, are cloaked in moralistic terminology, as illustrated in Obama’s speech to the UN General Assembly. Yet, the central premise of the speech contains a frightening portent. Obama speaks of subordinating our Nation’s needs and using our Nation’s resources for the ostensible benefit of a nebulous world community. Obama’s seemingly lofty political message to the UN General Assembly this past September paraphrases a Marxian World Political Economy Doctrine, albeit one with an interesting twist. Instead of promoting the destruction of Nation States through the rise of international labor, Obama promotes a political and economic schema that would bring to fruition the dream of the Patriarch of the international Rothschild clan, Meyer Amschel Rothschild.The Governments of the major nations of the world, under the secret directive of the Rothschild clan, must cede economic and political control, and, eventually, they must cede social and lawmaking control. True power already resides in an integrated, intertwining, interlocking network of central banks. Eventually all decisions would emanate through a hidden cabal of powerful international financial robber barons, who, in turn, are ruled by and who receive their directions from the trillionaire banking Rothschild clan.In either scenario, be it a Marxian world political economic system ruled by labor through its international representatives or, as we see materializing, a world ruled by and under the Rothschild central banking system, and Rothschild technocrats  the destruction of the United States as an independent, sovereign Nation is assured. But, Barack Obama doesn’t talk about that. The social engineering program he employs, at the behest of the puppet masters, the Rothschilds, is subtle.Slowly, through the mainstream media, as a tool of social conditioning, Obama has conditioned Americans to accept the new precept, set forth more fully, thusly: Americans are citizens of the world and that, as citizens of the world, we must embrace the needs of and the dangers faced by those peoples of other nations, and that our citizens must suffer the needs and dangers of those others, though we be not the cause of such needs or sufferings of others; and that we, Americans, must accept the needs or sufferings or dangers, of other peoples of other nations in the world, willingly, obligingly, because it is the moral thing, the “right thing” to do.Americans are expected to accept this as our new precept, our new credo, even a mantra—one to replace our Nation’s precept as set forth in the Preamble to our Constitution, proclaiming our “Nation State” to be sacred and inviolate; proclaiming the duty of the leaders of our Country to abide by the constraints imposed in the Constitution.

PART SEVEN

OUR CONSTITUTION’S PREAMBLE MAKES PLAIN THAT THE NATIONS CONCERNS RESIDE WITH THE NATION AND WITH THE CITIZENRY OF THE NATION; THOSE CONCERNS DO NOT EXTEND TO NATIONS AND PEOPLES BEYOND OUR SHORES. WE SHOULD NOT INTERFERE IN THE AFFAIRS OF OTHER NATIONS, AND THEY, FOR THEIR PART, MUST NOT INTERFERE IN THE AFFAIRS OF OURS.

The core purport of our Nation as a unique Nation is set forth, thusly, in the Preamble to the United States Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”Nothing in our Constitution—certainly nothing in the Preamble, the Articles, or the Bill of Rights, the components of our Nation's Constitution—says, overtly, tacitly, or tangentially, that our Country is to be the police force of and the caretakers of the rest of the world. Yet, Obama’s ethical posture, and that of Hillary Clinton, as heralded by the mainstream media, is to do just that: to become the police force and caretakers of the world, to ignore the very import and purport of our Constitution. The posturing of these imposters, masquerading as concerned leaders of our Nation, displays their arrogance, the danger they pose to preservation of our Constitution and free Republic, and the harm they would callously inflict on our citizenry under the guise of promoting civil harmony, piety, and decorum in the affairs of our Nation.Yet, by interfering in the affairs of other nations and other peoples —which Obama sees merely as a benign coordinating of efforts with other Nations to ensure peace—we are inviting other nations and savage actors to wage war against us, and to interfere in our internal affairs. Hillary Clinton would continue the use of our Nation’s armed forces as a wrecking ball, plowing through the world, causing anger, resentment, and rage—all the while claiming that this Nation is working with other nations to maintain peace in the world. The existent dangers in the world today belie the stated objectives. Obama and Clinton argue, essentially, that we must foment unwinnable wars in order to maintain the peace. The blatant absurdity of this pronouncement—this doublespeak—should be lost on no one. The unrest and upheaval present in the world today was planned all along. Obama and Clinton play the American public for fools.Through the resulting confusion—one engineered quietly behind the scenes by the Rothschild clan—the resulting breakdown of law and order in the Nation States, including our own, leads inexorably and inevitably to the ultimate breakdown of the foundation of Nation States. For Americans, we witness the breakdown of our Nation State.By opening the floodgates of our Nation to millions of refugees, irrespective of the dangers posed to our Nation and to its citizenry, Barack Obama suggests that we, Americans, as citizens of the world, should adjust to the new reality, to share in the dangers posed to citizens in any other part of the world. He doesn’t say this but his actions support that idea. Hillary Clinton accepts the precept. If she secures the U.S. Presidency, her foreign and domestic policies will be influenced and informed by it. The danger to the safety and security of our citizenry is prescient; it is expected; it is even desired. And the American people will suffer for it.The public sees the breakdown of law and order. Hillary Clinton’s response: suspension of our Bill of Rights and, in particular, suspension of the right of the people to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment. She declares martial law. The foundation of our Nation fractures. Our Constitution, our system of laws, and the social and economic structure of our society all begin to crumble. Clinton engineers plans for the creation of a new Constitution—one consistent with those of the Countries of Western Europe. The affairs of our Nation become intertwined with those of other nations. We lose our National identity. We lose our Country.Obama’s new precept contradicts the inviolability of the ‘Nation State.’ The new precept is inconsistent with our Constitution, because it weakens our Constitution. Insinuation of the new precept into the design and implementation of foreign and domestic policies engenders the erosion of our institutions, of our laws, of our economy, of our culture and history, of our very identity as a unique and sovereign Country—one in which the citizens control Government and control their destiny—one contrary to the dictates of those powerful, internationalist interests who see our Country as part of a greater whole, a carbon copy of the others. To these individuals, to the Rothschilds, nations are politically identical to each other. The strength of all nations engenders relinquishing of individual national identity. This is, as the Rothschilds see it, as they want it, and as they plan for it. Through each nation’s contiguity to the other and in each nation’s political, economic, and social structure, each nation is essentially a carbon copy of the other. The goal is to dissolve the very concept of national unity, of national identity, of national pride. No nation is unique or is to be perceived as unique. Rather, each nation state must conform to the other, having the same  ideology, the same currency, the same constitution and set of laws, perhaps even the same language, identical—overseen and managed by one world government, abutting each other seamlessly like dozens of tessellating cubes. Individual history would be erased. National identity would be erased; culture, heritage, ethos--all amorphous, none unique.Under the new schema of political thought engendered by Obama, the concept of the ‘Nation State’ is archaic, obsolete, as is our Constitution. As liberal-wing U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, had infamously asserted, in her remarks to the Egyptian Government, on February 6, 2012, in an article, titled, “Ginsburg to Egyptians: I wouldn’t use U.S. Constitution as a model,” as posted by Fox News Politics, “I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.”  Apparently, the United States Constitution—one that has stood the test of time, as attested to by the greatness of our Nation—is no longer good enough for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Our Constitution is to be discarded like an old lease agreement, redrafted, and replaced with one that better reflects her own judicial, political, and moral philosophy, and her own jurisprudential concerns. Imagine Justice Ginsburg lecturing and scolding the founders of our Republic!Consider what the new Constitution would look like if Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, and past Supreme Court Justice, John Paul Stevens, and President Barack Obama, and Democratic Presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, all had a hand in redrafting the U.S. Constitution—one they see as more fitting for the 2lst Century.If Donald Trump wins the U.S. Presidential election, he will upend the Apple Cart of the imposters and destroyers of our Country and its Constitution. Trump's Presidency will mark a return to sanity, a return to traditional values, principals, and precepts—those held by the founders of our Nation. Hillary Clinton, though, will build on Obama’s legacy. Obama and Clinton hope that the familiarity of it is something they can build on it as this Country moves further away from its historical roots.

PART EIGHT

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA AND DEMOCRATIC PARTY PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE, HILLARY CLINTON, HAVE TWISTED AND CONTORTED THE SACRED PRECEPTS OF OUR NATION BEYOND ANYTHING OUR FOUNDERS WOULD HAVE ACCEPTED OR CONDONED.

The United States that exists today is something alien to anything our founders envisioned. What Obama and Clinton envision for our Country is abhorrent. They would use—have used—our armed forces to promote causes and interests that do not ensure the security of this Nation but, rather, endanger it.Obama and Clinton use advertisement firms, they use the mainstream media, they use speech writers, they use communication specialists, they use psychologists and propagandists, and they use social engineers to market their toxic policies and toxic brand to the American People. They market their poisonous policies and their initiatives as something palatable, even nourishing. The fact remains, their foreign policies and initiatives have weakened the security of our Nation.The Clinton and Obama economic trade policies are just as disastrous. Clinton and Obama spring them on the American people suddenly and offer them to the public as something as inviting, even necessary. Yet, NAFTA has devastated our domestic economy. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP)—drafted over several years in secret, that the public has only recently heard about—and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)—also drafted over several years in secret that few people even know about—both of which Clinton will sign if she becomes President if these trade pacts cross her desk—and make no mistake about the fact that she will sign them—will essentially end comprehensive manufacturing of quality products in this Country. Ever more struggling small and medium size businesses will cease to exist as the multinational conglomerates squeeze them out of existence.Hillary Clinton will work, quietly, behind the scenes, to make sure TTP and TTIP are actualized. She will do so because Obama seeks to have them implemented. She will sign them because she intends to pursue Obama’s policies if she becomes the next U.S. President. She will sign these trade pacts because they are her trade pacts as well, as she helped draft them. She will sign these trade pacts because the Rothschild family wants to see them implemented. Yet these trade pacts are designed not only to weaken our economy further, harming American labor and small business, but are also designed to weaken our Nation’s laws, our Constitution, our entire legal system, subordinating America’s sovereign interests to another entity entirely—one comprising an interlocking collective of foreign nations and foreign holding companies—a collective, ruled by the Rothschild clan, governed by the clan’s underlings, financial and political technocrats. These technocrats do not consider themselves and are not--in any reasonable sense of the word 'citizen'--citizens of the United States; nor are they--as Obama and Clinton would make Americans--"citizens of the world;" nor do not owe allegiance to any nation. They certainly do not owe their allegiance to the United States. Their allegiance is to the shadow world government, with the Rothschild clan at its head.These foreign intrigues, entangling alliances, liberal immigration policies, and disastrous trade policies, all reflect a trend toward subordination of American interests to the interests of a new amorphous confederation of nations, resulting in the transferring of our wealth, our resources, and even our lives to foreign interests, foreign pursuits, and foreign goals. Obama and Clinton tell us, duplicitously, disingenuously, and hypocritically that America’s sacrifices are necessary because they promote worthy causes. But, what worthy causes are they talking about, and worthy to whom, and for what purpose, and to what end?

PART NINE

HOUSE SPEAKER PAUL RYAN, PRINCIPAL LEADER OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, HARMS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND HARMS THE NATION BY DENOUNCING TRUMP

Why has House Speaker Paul Ryan, the leader of the Republican Party, spoken out against Trump? Having denounced Trump, he acknowledges his tacit support of Hillary Clinton. He cannot reasonably deny this, much as he may like to.Paul Ryan’s pious pronouncements against Trump are insupportable. They are reprehensible. Trump is guilty of nothing more than braggadocio. That isn’t a crime. But, that simple fact is lost in the noise generated by Clinton’s supporters, enablers, and surrogates, and further fanned by the flame of the machinery of the mainstream media. But, there is, for all the commotion, no basis for concluding that Donald Trump has engaged in prosecutable criminal conduct. Clinton’s supporters, enablers, and surrogates have not demonstrated otherwise because they cannot, much as they would like to.Clinton’s supporters and benefactors have dug deep into Trump’s past, and what they have come up with, ultimately, is merely nothing more than a man’s bravado, based solely on a private discussion between two men, which the mainstream media, to its shame, broadcast to the world. A parade of women, coming out of the woodwork of late, obviously as a result of the release of the private tape and almost certainly at the behest of Clinton’s supporters, hangers-on, and benefactors—alleging sexual assault by Trump—does nothing, in the insinuations, to support an actionable basis for a civil lawsuit, much less a crime.What the American public is witnessing is nothing less than a massive smear campaign, conceptualized and orchestrated by Clinton’s staff and by her benefactors to prop up their puppet and to draw attention away from her own failings, which, on balance, are much more serious, and have been much more harmful to this Country and to Americans than anything that Clinton’s supporters, staff, and benefactors have manufactured or can manufacture against Trump.Whatever one is to make of Donald Trump’s conduct, it pales in significance to that of Hillary Clinton. The F.B.I. was not—is not—interested in investigating Trump for malfeasance, for no allegations are forthcoming that Trump has done anything that would suggest he had harmed the interests of the United States or that he would ever wish to harm the interests of the United States. No one can make any such claim for Hillary Clinton, for she has harmed the United States and she has done so repeatedly and callously through a lengthy period of time. Hillary Clinton has committed crimes, serious crimes against this Country and against the American people. The Arbalest Quarrel has detailed those crimes in several articles. We draw your attention to two in particular: one posted on August 17, 2016, titled, "Pay to Play: The Clinton's Open Secret and Silent Purpose;" and a second on September 26, 2016, titled, "Hillary Clinton: A Flawed Character for Those Who See the U.S. as Flawed."   But the mainstream news media has precious little to say about Clinton’s crimes. Why is that? The mainstream media uses their resources, 24/7, smearing Trump over matters that don’t come close to the misconduct of Hillary Clinton. For, as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has endangered the security and well-being of this Nation and her actions have directly or indirectly harmed many Americans, including those that worked under her. One can only wonder at the damage she’d do to this Country as U.S. President, of the damage she is capable of doing to this Country and to American citizens.Curiously, if Hillary Clinton applied for a job with the F.B.I., her application would be denied out-of-hand. She is a security risk. That is plain and irrefutable. Given that simple truth, it defies credulity to believe she can be trusted with our Nation’s secrets—secrets she would have at her disposal as U.S. President.If Hillary Clinton loved our Country and truly had remorse for her past actions, she would not run for political Office. She would realize how shameful it is for her to consider running for any political office, let alone that of the highest Office in the Land.Obviously, Hillary Clinton has no remorse. She is utterly shameless. Clinton disingenuously says of her past criminal conduct that she has made mistakes and that she takes full responsibility for her actions. But what do those assertions even mean? What are the consequences of her criminal behavior? If nothing, then whom is she attempting to flatter with her feigned, half-hearted attempts to appease?  Is Clinton reproaching herself because she is sorry for committing serious crimes, even now that she, apparently, no longer has to fear retribution through criminal indictment on charges of committing federal felonies, thanks to our illustrious Department of Justice that has shirked its responsibility to mete out justice? Or, is Clinton exclaiming her concern over the fact that she has been caught and seeks to avoid the one repercussion of her criminal misconduct she truly fears, loss of the U.S. Presidency that she lusts for?Clinton’s expressions of concern are, like all of her other public pronouncements, nothing more than self-serving, vacuous platitudes. Clinton and the mainstream media know this. Yet, the mainstream media refrains from calling Clinton on the carpet for her empty, disingenuous remarks.

PART TEN

THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA MALIGNS TRUMP’S CHARACTER, BUT IT IS CLINTON’S CHARACTER THAT THE MEDIA SHOULD IMPUGN.

Hillary Clinton is a repugnant individual. Many who support her know this, yet may vote for her anyway because they seek to benefit personally from her position as President of the United States and/or they share the same goals. She is the darling of the abhorrent Rothschild clan.But, Hillary Clinton is also a sociopathic personality. That’s her nature. It is implied in her actions, in her words, in material she would like to suppress, and in material she has suppressed or intentionally destroyed. Hillary Clinton is also temperamental, vindictive, treacherous, duplicitous, and incapable of sympathy or empathy for others. She is subject to angry outbursts and diatribes. She is psychologically unstable and likely suffers from one or more neurological pathologies.Clinton is much like a viper. Yet, one doesn’t hate a viper for being a viper. One understands it is in the nature of a viper to cause harm. That is the essence of its character. So, how do we handle a viper? Well, we do not place a viper in a position where it can do harm. We mind it closely. We look for the possibility it may strike without notice. We contain it. We know its venom can kill.If we can forgive Clinton, it is because she, like a viper, is an inherently flawed character, altogether beyond redemption. But that does not mean or extend to supporting her candidacy. But, what we cannot, must not, forgive are those individuals who enable her. And, the worst of the lot are individuals like Paul Ryan. Republicans, like Paul Ryan, should know better. But they are amoral individuals, proverbial opportunists, more concerned about their personal success, accumulation of personal wealth, political survival, and personal well-being than for the well-being of the Country they are sworn to serve.Because politicians like Paul Ryan are not beyond redemption, they are worthy of our condemnation. We rightfully despise them when they fill the air waves with their false piety. They are hypocrites. They earn our condemnation.The Arbalest Quarrel has said, some time ago, in an article posted on our site, on February 18, 2014, titled, "Truth and Hypocrisy: 'Bill Of Rights' Betrayal." Hypocrisy is the worst behavior. Hypocrisy is, sadly, ubiquitous in politics. It need not be. It should not be. But, it is so.

PART ELEVEN

HOUSE SPEAKER PAUL RYAN TURNS HIS BACK ON DONALD TRUMP AND, IN SO DOING, TURNS HIS BACK ON THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND ON THE COUNTRY.

In asserting he will no longer campaign for Trump, Paul Ryan has turned his back on the Republican Party and, more, he has turned his back upon the Country. Ryan may not like Donald Trump but Trump is the Party’s candidate for U.S. President. Republicans nominated him. Trump won the right to represent the Party. He fought hard for the nomination, against a large field of well-funded often very bright and, in a couple of cases, brilliant politicians. He did so fairly and squarely. Moreover, Trump singlehandedly raised tens of millions of dollars for the Party. Yet the Party bites the hand that feeds it.Republican Party officials are poor gamesmen. They play to lose, not to win. They should take their cues from the masters of Chess, for politics is like Chess. Chess is a complex game, as is politics. A grand master knows when to sacrifice a lesser piece to gain advantage. A grand master knows he must sacrifice Pawns. But he will also sacrifice Knights, Bishops, and Rooks to gain a tactical advantage.Occasionally, a grand master will even sacrifice his Queen, the most powerful game piece on the board. He will do so to gain strategic advantage, dangerous as that move is. But, neither grandmaster nor novice will sacrifice his King. He cannot. He must not; never. That’s axiomatic. For, once the opposing side knocks out the King, that signals, checkmate: game over.Paul Ryan, a political grandmaster, or seemingly so, should know that, by sacrificing his King—the Republican Party nominee for U.S. President, Donald Trump—he is not placating the opposing side and he is not making his own position secure. Ryan will never be able placate the other side. He should know this, and he has not ensured the security of his own position. Rather, he has simply capitulated. He has thrown in the towel. He has checkmated the Republican Party. He has conceded the game, without a fight.The other side’s King—Hillary Clinton—is safe. Her Party supports her even if many in the Democratic Party base do not. But, unlike the game of Chess that impacts no one but the players, the political game of Chess may have dire ripple effects. If Hillary Clinton secures the Presidency for the Democratic Party, the impact of the Democratic Party victory will have immediate effects on this Country and those effects will not bode well for this Country or its citizenry. The effects will definitely not bode well for this Country or its citizenry.Paul Ryan’s vociferous denouncement of Trump has set in motion the machinery that may allow Hillary Clinton to succeed to the White House. If she does, she will decimate our Country, and much of the blame for that will fall in great measure to the actions of Paul Ryan.The Arbalest Quarrel has predicted the resulting diminution or destruction of the Republican Party if the Republican Party did not stand together. We pointed out what could befall a Party that does not stand together. We discussed this in an article we posted on our site, two years ago, on November 9, 2014, titled, "The Arbalest Quarrel's Take On The Midterm Election Results."  And, on August 22, 2016, in another article posted on our site, titled, "The Opera Won't Be Over 'Till the Fat Lady Sings'--In Federal Court--And The Opera Isn't Over Yet." In that article we mentioned that our fear had come to fruition. The present, multi-series article builds on the previous two articles, setting forth with particularity the catastrophe that will befall the Republican Party and this Nation if Hillary Clinton secures the U.S. Presidency in November. The impact of a disintegrating Republican Party will be seen in the disintegration of our Country as an independent sovereign Nation State.If Hillary Clinton wins the election, she will destroy the Nation. Of that, there is no doubt. The House Speaker may think that a Republican majority in Congress can work with Clinton; can negotiate with her; contain her. Again, he should know better, but does not.Hillary Clinton is incapable of restraint. If Clinton cannot bend Congress to her will, she will make law through Executive fiat. She would use Executive Orders in defiance of Congressional Statute, just as Barack Obama has done, but she will do so even more frequently, with greater fervor, and with greater negative consequences for the American People. Anyone and everyone Clinton appoints to operate the federal bureaucracy she will control with an iron fist.Clinton will only appoint toadies, thousands of them to fill a bloated Government bureaucracy. Clinton’s nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court and to the lower federal Courts will be those who share her philosophy, who agree with her social goals. Justice Scalia’s legacy will be undone.The Arbalest Quarrel has written extensively on the danger posed by Obama’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Merrick Garland. Garland is someone whom Clinton would support. See our article, dated, March 18, 2016, titled, "Justice: For Or Against The Second Amendment? A Commentary On President Obama’s Nominee For Associate Justice On The U.S. Supreme Court: Judge Merrick Garland.”If Paul Ryan and other House Republicans, along with Senate Republicans, think they only need to maintain Republican majorities in both houses of Congress to contain Hillary Clinton, to contain Congressional Democrats, and to maintain control over the Legislative process—that they are in a better position to do so once they sacrifice Trump—they are sorely mistaken. Such thinking is misguided. Those Congressional Republicans who think their reasoning sound would do well to see a psychiatrist for clinical evaluation. They would do well, too, to see a psychologist for an IQ test, for both their rationality and intelligence are sorely in question.Why do we say this? We say this because Congressional Republicans who denounce Trump have weakened their hand. We explain as you continue reading.

PART TWELVE

CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS WHO FAIL TO SUPPORT TRUMP ARE MAKING A POOR CALCULATION FOR THEMSELVES, FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, AND FOR THIS COUNTRY.

If Congressional Republicans believe they can cede two Branches of Government—the Executive and Judicial Branches—and still maintain control over the Government simply by holding majorities in one Branch of Government, the Legislative Branch—and there is no assurance of that—they are making the poorest of wagers. The payout is low—simply one Branch of Government is secured, when two Branches might have been secured: the Executive and Judicial Branches of Government; and the risk of irreparable damage to this Country is high if they lose the wager: Democrats will then control all three Branches of Government.One comes away thinking, and rightfully so, that Paul Ryan and others like him are merely concerned about holding onto their seats and onto the fringe benefits and perks that go with their lofty position as Congressmen, notwithstanding and regardless of the loss of Republican Party control of the Executive and Judicial Branches of Government. They may think that, by sacrificing Trump, their chances of holding onto their seats are higher even if Democrats ultimately hold more seats in each House of Congress. If so, these Republican Congressmen should lose their Congressional seats. They don’t deserve to retain them.Ryan and other Congressional Republicans presumably know that Clinton has a distorted view of our Country’s history, of its traditions, of its values, and of its culture. She will stamp this Country with her own sociopathic personality if she secures the Office of the Presidency.During the Democratic Party campaign for the U.S. Presidency, up to the present moment, Hillary Clinton has kept a very low profile. But refraining from making public appearances does not mean Clinton has a quiet persona. That is deceptive. If Clinton secures the Office of the U.S. Presidency, heads will roll, and the Country will itself be turned on its head. If House Speaker, Paul Ryan, can’t see this, or if, perhaps, he chooses not to, he should step down as House Speaker.Apparently, Ryan doesn’t care who ultimately secures the U.S. Presidency. For, if Ryan did truly care about safeguarding this Country’s future, he would stand steadfastly with Trump and, in doing so, he would lead other Republicans to do so by his example.Ryan, as Republican House Speaker, would be, and should be, expected to take all possible measures to prevent the very possibility of Hillary Clinton ever winning the White House. By speaking out against Trump, though, Ryan is probably gambling on Clinton winning the election, anyway. But, by speaking out against Trump, that act can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.If Ryan thinks that Clinton has a better chance of winning the Presidency, regardless of what Ryan does, and if he is simply attempting to get into her good graces by speaking out against Trump now, before the votes are counted, that may backfire on him. Moreover, he is acting despicably. Indeed, by speaking out against Trump, Ryan must want Clinton to win. He must count on Clinton winning the election in November. If so, that is even more despicable.But, the notion that Ryan wants Hillary Clinton to win the U.S. Presidential election is the logical inference for one to draw. It is the only rational inference for one to draw. For, Paul Ryan must know that, if Trump wins the election—even if Ryan thinks the possibility of that is remote—Ryan’s relationship with Trump will be acrimonious, bitter, poisonous, probably irreparably damaged. Thus Ryan must assume that, given his negative comments against Trump, he will have a decent relationship with Clinton if she secures the U.S. Presidency. Through negative comments directed at Trump and by refraining from saying anything negative about Clinton—The House Speaker is cautiously, calculatedly sidling up to Clinton. Ryan must be secretly, silently hoping for a Clinton victory, having openly, and clearly, and unabashedly rebuffed Trump.But, if Ryan’s calculations are wrong, and Trump does secure the U.S. Presidency, then Paul Ryan would probably have to forfeit his position as House Speaker. He would obviously lose the position of House Speaker if Democrats obtain a majority. But, Ryan likely would have to forfeit his position as House Speaker even if Republicans maintain control of the House. He would either be forced to forfeit the House Speakership or, at least, he would be encouraged to do so because Trump likely would have little to do with Ryan thereafter.But a Trump Presidency would not bode well for the Clintons either. Circumstances for the Clintons would be substantially worse than what happens to befall Paul Ryan.If Trump secures the Presidency, Hillary Clinton and her wayward husband, Bill, would both likely face federal felony charges. Their lives would be relegated to: one, attempting to preserve for themselves the tens of millions of dollars they made, illicitly, selling out this Country; and, two, working with their legal team, attempting to avoid incarceration in federal prison for tens of years. Each of them can then say, and truly mean it: “I take full responsibility for my actions.” Yes, you do, Bill! Yes, you do, Hillary!

PART THIRTEEN

CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS WHO EXPRESSLY ATTACK TRUMP OR WHO SNUB HIM THROUGH THEIR SILENCE ARE ALL HYPOCRITES.

Congressional Republicans, like the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, are quintessential hypocrites, pretending to care about the Party and their Country, but looking out only for themselves. Instead of standing behind the Republican Party nominee for U.S. President, they castigate the nominee. Paul Ryan and other House and Senate Republicans—mostly, if not invariably, the leaders and power brokers, consisting of Party Centrists and Statists—believe, erroneously, that they can maintain Republican majorities in the House and Senate, and that they can protect themselves and the Republican Party, all the while throwing Donald Trump to the wolves. They are wrong. Rank and file Republicans won’t forgive them, nor will millions of other good Americans who will suffer under a Clinton Administration.Paul Ryan and other Centrist, Statist Congressional Republicans fail to understand that the power of the Republican Party would operate most effectively by seating a Republican in the White House. Donald Trump is not a traditional Republican, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. The Republican Party has become ossified. That is evident. Donald Trump brings a fresh outlook to the Party. He holds to conservative values. He would help bring our Nation back to its traditional roots.Those Republicans resigned to having Clinton in the White House demonstrate their own weakness as representatives of the American people and of their particular constituencies. These Legislators cannot lead the Nation through capitulation. They cannot, reasonably, expect the Republican base to support them. They may have signed their own political death warrants. If they wish to commit political suicide, then fine. As individuals, we can tell them, “good riddance.” But, in their position of power it means they have also signed the death warrant of the Party and, worst of all, they have signed the death warrant of the Country. That, however, is altogether unacceptable.This Country cannot suffer, should never be compelled to abide a criminal and sociopath for U.S. President. That is odious and abhorrent.This Country and its citizenry cannot and ought not to suffer a person whose stated policy objectives are destruction of both the Bill of Rights, the undercutting of the security and well-being of the American people, and the undermining of the independence and sovereignty of the United States. Yet, Paul Ryan, and other Republicans of his ilk believe they can somehow preserve the Party and the Nation with Hillary Clinton at the helm. That is patently absurd. Have these Congressional Republicans lost their senses?Conceivably, Centrist Republicans and Statists not only expect Hillary Clinton to win the Presidency, they secretly want her to win. Centrist Republicans and Statists would want Hillary Clinton to win the U.S. Presidential election because they believe Clinton would implement foreign and domestic policies they are actively supportive of or, at least,  definitely amenable to, which the Republican base, clearly, is not, having nominated Donald Trump for U.S. President. If so that suggests an irreparable schism between Centrist Republicans and Statists and the Republican Party base. This idea may not be far-fetched. After all, the Party faithful, the power brokers of the Party, the Centrists and Statists, fully expected Jeb Bush to secure the nomination. Trump was expected to be merely a foil for Bush just as the Democratic Party power brokers fully expected for Bernie Sanders to be a foil for Hillary Clinton. Neither political Party truly appreciated how weak their favorites for nomination really were.Among Republicans, Jeb Bush represents the interests of the Centrists and Statists, the power brokers and Party leaders. Jeb Bush certainly supports the TTP and TTIP—trade agreements that are harmful to the economic well-being of the Party’s base and to the Nation as a whole. Trump actively campaigned against these trade pacts. Jeb Bush, along with the Centrists and Statists of the Party, strongly supports them.Jeb Bush, whom the power brokers of the Party, the Republican Centrists and Statists, had hoped would secure the Party’s nomination, also supports immigration reform. Immigration reform is coded language. Immigration reform means general amnesty for millions of illegal aliens who reside among us--among them members of criminal drug cartels. Those who support immigration reform also support the continuation of open border policies, notwithstanding their assertions to the contrary.To Democrats, immigration reform means votes for their Party. To Republican Centrists and Statists—the power brokers of the Republican Party—immigration reform connotes dirt cheap labor and that inevitably hurts American workers—able craftsmen. So, Jeb Bush supports immigration reform. Jeb Bush represents the interests of the Party's power brokers. Trump and the Republican base do not.Jeb Bush and the power brokers in the Republican Party, the Centrists and Statists, also support continued use of the armed forces for unwinnable wars. That translates into substantial wealth for defense contractors as that, for them, is sufficient to support a purpose for war.Hillary Clinton is in the same camp as the Centrist Republicans and Statists when it comes to use of the military to line the pockets of the defense contractors. Making defense contractors wealthy is not a legitimate use of our armed forces. We should use our armed forces circumspectly. For use of our armed forces inevitably means loss of American lives. We should ask, "is our national security really at risk?" If so, then we consider deploying our armed forces. If the answer is, "no," then we shouldn't.Trump is not reluctant to use America’s armed forces but, he believes, rightfully, we should do so with the intention to win a war or other armed conflict. If there is any doubt about our ability to win a war or other armed conflict or, if our goals are not clear and cannot be made clear, to the American People—and, first and foremost, if our National Security isn’t threatened—then we should not be getting into wars or any other armed conflict.Trump is not a fan of the Big Banks, whom the American public had to bail out and may have to do so yet again. The power brokers in the Republican Party, the Centrists and Statists, are strong supporters of the big banks as is, of course, Hillary Clinton.The disturbing but unavoidable conclusion to draw here is that many of the aims and concerns and desires of the Centrists and Statists of the Republican Party are identical with or, at least, closely aligned to those of the Centrists and Statists of the Democratic Party but are not the aims or concerns of the Republican base. In fact, the policy goals of the Centrists and Statists of both political Parties are all too often detrimental to the well-being and security of our Nation and its citizenry. The average American knows this. Recognizing this, the Republican base, average hard-working law-abiding Americans, have through their support of Trump, made clear that they have had their fill of both the Bush family and of Centrist and Statist Republicans who have operated for many years merely to serve their own narrow interests and feeding, through receipt of tax-payer dollars, their own shallow desires, ignoring entirely the plight of average Americans and demonstrating callous indifference to the well-being of and security of this Nation.The Republican Party has done little to contain and to restrain Obama as he proceeds on his merry escapades. The Republican Party has made clear, through its attack on Trump and overt or covert support of Clinton that it has misused the loyalty of its base, consigning it to Hell. Between Centrist and Statist Republicans and their counterparts in the Democratic Party, there is, then, little to distinguish the two. More, one may remark, how similar they both are to one another.Hillary Clinton represents the interests of the power brokers of both political Parties. She is out of touch with the American public. But the Centrists and Statists of the major political Parties don’t care about any of that. They care only about plodding along same tired road—one that benefits them and their benefactors—the ruthless international globalist power brokers—but harms the Country. The continued independence and sovereignty of our Nation is threatened, the lives of average law-abiding Americans become ever more tenuous, and small business in this Country simply vanishes, becoming but a footnote in economic textbooks.

PART FOURTEEN

TRUMP IS THE ONLY HOPE FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, AND FOR OUR COUNTRY.

Only one thing can save the Republican Party and the Country now, and that is a Trump victory in November. The Republican leadership must support Trump. But, if they think that Trump doesn’t represent the interests of their Party, they should keep in mind that the Party doesn’t belong to them alone even as they have treated it as if it did belong only to them. But, they are wrong. The Party belongs to the millions of Americans who voted them into Office and can, just as easily vote them out of Office. The Republican leaders will be in for a rude awakening if they don't come to their senses and consider the needs of their base and the well-being of the Nation, which take precedence over their own narrow, selfish interests. The Republican Party that seeks to maintain itself as it has existed for many years, simply benefiting a few, and rotting from within, will be left to wither away, as it deserves to.Republican Congressmen must stand behind Trump. In standing steadfastly behind Trump, Congressional Republicans are supporting a free Republic; they are supporting the rights and liberties of the American citizenry under the Constitution; they are supporting our unique history, our culture, our heritage, our morality, and traditional American values; they are protecting the security of our Nation and our citizenry; and they are guaranteeing the preservation of the United States as an independent sovereign Nation. All this goes out the door if Hillary Clinton secures the U.S. Presidency.Do Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders honestly believe they can protect this Nation and its People if Clinton were ensconced in Office? If so, they are deluding themselves. For, once Clinton secures the U.S. Presidency, she will appoint thousands of individuals who will respond to her every wish, her every desire—and none of it will bode well for either this Country or its People. Even if Republicans can maintain majorities in both Houses of Congress—which is highly doubtful absent Party unity—Clinton will pacify Congress. Through her Imperial Presidency and through her control of the entire federal Judiciary, she won’t need to negotiate with a Republican Congress. She will do essentially whatever she wants. She will bypass Congress whenever necessary to do what she pleases.Who in Congress can defy Clinton? Congress has shown its ineptitude in failing to ensure that Clinton would be brought to justice. If Congress fails to control Clinton’s excesses before she secures the U.S. Presidency—and to date Congress has shown incredible cowardice to act—on what logical ground can the public believe Congress will be able to rein Clinton in after she secures the U.S. Presidency?For a person who sees herself above the law and with the means to act with impunity as if she were above the law, and has shown, as we have seen firsthand, that she is, for all intents and purposes, clearly above the law, as the U.S. Department of Justice has shown itself to be powerless to bring her to justice, and as Congress has failed to exert its own power to bring a criminal to justice, who, then, in Congress will be able to constrain Hillary Clinton from committing the worst excesses once she succeeds to the Presidency? If there is none in Congress who will bring Clinton to justice now, before she succeeds to the Office of the U.S. Presidency, why should the public believe Congress will be able to constrain Clinton once she assumes the mantle of the highest Office in the Land?If Politicians have learned anything about any of the Clintons, it is that they have no compunctions about breaking the law. Politicians should know they cannot contain a viper—neither Congressional Democrats, nor Congressional Republicans. Hillary Clinton will rule with force, with impunity. Only a Trump Presidency can prevent a horrific future for our Country.Yet some Republicans, not content simply to drop their support for Trump, have had the gall to call for Donald Trump to give up his bid for the U.S. Presidency. Instead, they should have long ago called for Hillary Clinton to give up her bid for the U.S. Presidency. They could have done so. They should have done so, given substantial evidence of serious criminal misconduct on her part when she served as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration.

PART FIFTEEN

CLINTON CAN STILL BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE BEFORE THE ELECTION BUT CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS MUST ACT NOW!

House Republicans should have supported the Independent Counsel Reauthorization Act of 2016, introduced by U.S. Congressmen, Michael Turner and Rick Allen. The Independent Counsel Reauthorization Act compels integrity in Government. Had the Act passed, independent Counsel—free of the baggage of the political appointees of the Justice Department, specifically, James Comey and Loretta Lynch—would surely have indicted Hillary Clinton on federal felony charges. Clinton’s bid for the White House would never have come to fruition. It could not.What happened? Why is it we never hear about the Act? Why is the Act suspended in Committee? Why hasn’t the Act come before the full House for discussion, debate, and a Floor vote? The Arbalest Quarrel attempted to ascertain what became of the Independent Counsel Reauthorization Act of 2016 that, if passed, would have mandated integrity in Government. We wrote a letter to the sponsor and co-sponsor of the Act, asking them for an update on the status of the bill. We posted the letter, on August 27, 2016, within an article, titled, "The Foundation of Justice Undone By The Foundation, Clinton." To date, we haven’t heard a word from any member of Congress.It isn’t too late for House Republicans to move on this Act, but time is rapidly running out. They show they can act quickly when they want to. After all, they acted very quickly in denouncing Trump. Those Republicans who have denounced Trump can still redeem themselves. But, will they do so? Do they have the moral courage to stand with the Party, to stand with the American People, to stand with this Nation? Do they have the courage of the founders of our Nation?Trump certainly has shown courage. He stands proudly with our founders. Trump alone has openly expressed the need for a Special Prosecutor to reinvestigate Hillary Clinton’s federal crimes. Is he the only individual with the backbone to insist on integrity in Government? He would demand integrity in Government once he became President. He would make certain that Clinton would be called to account for her crimes against this Nation and against the American people. He would make certain the U.S. Department of Justice is called to account for its failure to indict a high Government official on a multitude of felonies. He would maintain our Nation as one of law and equal justice under our Constitution and system of laws.Donald Trump shows courage, fortitude, his mettle. He shows that, if necessary, he will stand alone to uphold our Constitution and that he will uphold the rule of law even as those in his own Party seem afraid to do so. He shows, by way of his good example, that he definitely has Presidential character. In that regard, he is unlike Hillary Clinton, whom one rarely hears from. She stands well back in the herd of her benefactors, campaign officials, and image makers. Everything she does and says is carefully orchestrated and choreographed. What the public sees—what the public is allowed to see of her is nothing more than a façade, a mask, an illusion. She is Medusa. Her character is poisonous. Once in Office, her true capacity for unleashing a Hell in this Country and on this Earth will be readily apparent. At that point, though, it will be too late—much too late—for Americans to do anything about her.So, Republicans must act with haste. They must act now on the Independent Counsel Reauthorization Act of 2016.With passage of the Act even at this late date independent counsel could reinvestigate Clinton’s criminal misconduct, bypassing the corrupt or compromised Department of Justice. Independent counsel would have authority to indict Clinton on federal criminal charges. She would have to step down. Why hasn’t Congress acted?Trump’s failings pale compared to the irresponsible, shameful, duplicitous, illegal, treacherous activities of Hillary Clinton. The mainstream media, in shameful misuse of the power of the Press under the First Amendment, manipulates public opinion. It endorses Clinton, a flawed character, who has exhibited ineptitude and lack of acumen in her Cabinet level position as Secretary of State and who has conducted herself shamefully, criminally. The Press either shamefully ignores this clear and irrefutable fact or more shamefully defends and praises Clinton’s abominable record and conduct. The Press then unabashedly, heatedly goes after Trump with all the tact and subtlety, and with all the respectfulness and thoughtfulness of a dog chowing down on and devouring a hunk of meat. But, having no legitimate basis to attack Trump on logical, rational grounds, as Trump can and would represent the interests of this Nation adeptly, the mainstream media resorts to trickery—inflating innocuous events beyond sensible bounds and spreading scandalous lies and rumors—doing this to inflame public opinion against Trump, appealing to the public’s emotion rather than to its intellect.The mainstream media is intellectually dishonest, and Congressional Republicans are irresponsibly falling for the nonsense spouted by a disreputable Press. They are allowing themselves to be played for fools, and it’s the Republican Party and worse, this Nation and its citizenry that will suffer for the lack of courage of the Republicans to act.If a catastrophe is to be avoided, Congressional Republicans better get their own act together and they better do so quickly. If they do not, they would do well to realize that, if Donald Trump loses the election, he won’t go down alone. The Republicans will likely lose the House and the Senate.

PART SIXTEEN

REPUBLICANS SACRIFICE THEIR NOMINEE FOR U.S. PRESIDENT TO THEIR PERIL AND SHAME.

By willingly, unconscionably, duplicitously, irrationally sacrificing the Republican Party’s leader, its “King” (Trump), there is no win and no draw for Congressional Republicans in this political rendition of the game of Chess. The Democrats have no wish to sacrifice their “King” (Clinton), although having a criminal as their nominee brings disgrace to the entire Party. But, they don’t care. They know that, if Democrats control the Executive Branch of Government, they also control the Judicial Branch, because Clinton’s U.S. Supreme Court nominee—a nominee that Congress, at some point, will have to confirm—will give the liberal wing of the U.S. Supreme Court, a fifth vote—a majority. The Senate Judiciary Committee cannot hold off the confirmation process indefinitely.Yes, there is nothing in the Constitution mandating that any set number of Justices sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. But, if Hillary Clinton secures the U.S. Presidency, the full brunt of her Office and of the mainstream media will come to bear to compel the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold a Confirmation Hearing on her nominees. Once the Senate Judiciary Committee does hold a Confirmation Hearing, it is inevitable that one of Clinton’s nominees, be it Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, or, otherwise, someone like him, will be confirmed sooner or later—probably sooner—as the ninth U.S. Supreme Court Justice. That ninth seat will give the liberal wing of the High Court the majority it needs to transform society into that image Hillary Clinton sees and ordains for it.Among the first couple of cases to be overturned—probably the first couple of cases ever to be overturned within just a few years of their precedential holdings—will be the seminal Second Amendment Heller and McDonald cases: District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637 (2008); and, McDonald vs. City of Chicago, 130 S. Ct. 320, 177 L. Ed.2d 894, 2010 U.S. LEXIS 5523 (2010).  The decisions of the high Court’s liberal wing will influence the outcome of critical cases and, so, change the makeup of our Nation’s culture for decades. Democrats may also control one or both Houses of Congress. In that event, Democrats will have won the Grand Trifecta.

CONCLUSION

Democrats know without doubt the Republican Party is in disarray and the Republicans have done nothing to suggest to Democrats otherwise. The Republican Party has done nothing to demonstrate to Democrats and to this Nation, that the Republican Party is united. The Party has ceded the political Chess game to them.The ceding of the U.S. Presidential election, the capitulation of the Republican Party to its opponent, before the voting even takes place, is unprecedented and unforgivable. The Republican Party is, at this juncture, at this critical moment in our Nation’s history, with the U.S. Presidential Election just around the corner, vanquished, thanks, in no small part, to the actions of Paul Ryan and other Republicans who have behaved like him.The vanquishing of the Republican Party is bad enough surely. But, we Americans will have lost our Country, and that will be infinitely worse. There will be no return match for House and Senate Republicans. There can’t be. It will be much too late for that; for them and for us.[separator type="medium" style="normal" align="left"margin-bottom="25" margin_top="5"] Copyright © 2016 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

JUSTICE THOMAS SPEAKS OUT IN THE VOISINE CASE

UNITED STATES vs. VOISINE

PART 1

This is the first of a three part series article.Anyone who keeps abreast of the U. S. Supreme Court knows that Justice Clarence Thomas broke a ten-year silence when he posed questions to counsel during oral argument on February 29, 2016 in the case United States vs. Voisine, No. 14-10154 (S. Ct. Dec. 17, 2015). The other seven Justices retained an austere demeanor. But they must surely have been surprised at Justice Thomas’ uncharacteristic lack of reticence. The Press, for its part, was noticeably, and understandably, thunderstruck.One may speculate why Justice Thomas chose to take part in the questioning of counsel in this case, at this time. Not improbably, Justice Thomas did so, in part, out of deep respect for the memory of Justice Antonin Scalia. Justice Scalia would have had much to say in Voisine as the case touches on two landmark Second Amendment cases: District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) and McDonald vs. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010). “Heller holds that a law banning the possession of handguns in the home (or making their use in the home infeasible) violates the individual right to keep and bear arms secured by the Second Amendment.” In the subsequent McDonald case, the U.S. Supreme Court held that, “the Second Amendment creates individual rights that can be asserted against state and local governments.” Together, the two cases strengthen the Second Amendment more so than any previous holding of the high Court. The two cases constrain local, State and federal governments from whittling away at Americans’ fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms in their individual capacity.Justice Scalia wrote the Majority Opinion in Heller, joined by Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kennedy. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the Opinion for the Majority in McDonald, joined by Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy. Not surprisingly, the liberal wing of the Court, comprising Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Breyer dissented, and they did so strenuously.Now, contrary to common belief, the U.S. Supreme Court, does not have to accept and, indeed, does not accept every case that happens to come before it. No one can appeal an adverse decision to the U.S. Supreme Court as a matter of right. Indeed, the Supreme Court grants A Petitioner’s writ of certiorari in only a few cases in any given term. And, in the Court’s information sheet, presented to those who seek to have their case heard, the Court says clearly, even bluntly, that “review on writ of certiorari is not a matter of right but of judicial discretion.”Generally, the high Court will agree to hear a case where there is disagreement and conflict among the various federal Circuit Courts of Appeal. This often takes years to develop. Even so, many cases that the high Court does agree to hear often involve arcane legal issues, very narrow in scope, that are difficult for the non-lawyer to grasp, and, so, quite understandably, difficult for anyone but a lawyer to appreciate. The Voisine case may, at first glance, appear to be just such a case. It isn’t.To be sure there is a complex, arcane issue here, but there is also a straight-forward Second Amendment issue as well. The Second Amendment issue would have been given no consideration at all but for Justice Thomas’ interjection. Be thankful that Justice Thomas spoke up during oral argument in the Voisine case. This is not theatrics as presented by the mainstream media. Justice Thomas' questions and remarks were precise, well-honed, to the point and surely took the U.S. Government off guard.In the Opinion to be handed down in the coming months it is unlikely that the Court will not give the Second Amendment issue at least some consideration and will do so precisely because of, one, Justice Thomas’ questions to counsel for Respondent, U.S. Government, two, counsel's responses to the Court, and, three, Justice Thomas' comments. If no other Justice mentions the Second Amendment in the Majority's Opinion, or in a concurring or dissenting Opinion, Justice Thomas most certainly will.Now, a salient issue in Voisine does involve the meaning to be given a word phrase in one particular section of a lengthy federal Statute. Nonetheless, as we heretofore explained, the Voisine case is the first Supreme Court case to be heard by the high Court that does impact the Second Amendment. In fact, Petitioners did timely and properly raise a Second Amendment claim in their Briefs to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. And that claim was preserved; and that issue was ripe for review by the U.S. Supreme Court when it granted Petitioners’ Writ of Certiorari. Moreover, while the Second Amendment issue was set forth with particularity as a salient issue in Petitioners’ Brief, the Second Amendment claim was not set forth as an issue in the Government’s own Brief in Opposition to the Brief of Petitioners. And the Government, in its Brief in Opposition to the Brief of Petitioners, addressed Petitioners’ Second Amendment claim only perfunctorily, giving little thought to it, seemingly in deference to and happily therefor to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit's treatment of it, for the First Circuit dismissed Petitioners' Second Amendment claim outright.In fact during oral argument before the Supreme Court, the Second Amendment was only mentioned twice and that occurred toward the end of oral argument when Justice Thomas brought the issue up. Justice Thomas did so, in part, as we said earlier, because Justice Scalia certainly would have done so had he lived. And, Justice Scalia would have done so for a very good reason, quite apart from and notwithstanding the otherwise cursory treatment of the Second Amendment issue by the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit Court. For Voisine is the first case to come before the Supreme Court that implicates the Second Amendment, however obliquely or tangentially, or seemingly cursorily since the high Court decided the McDonald case in 2010, over one-half decade ago.Although the other Justices took great pains to avoid entertaining the Second Amendment issue in Voisine – preferring to address, alone, the meaning attached to a few words in one federal Statute – Justice Thomas would not let the matter rest, much to the satisfaction of Petitioners, who clearly sought to have their Second Amendment issue heard, and much to the chagrin of Respondent, the United States Government, that sought to keep the Second Amendment issue moot.Moreover, by querying Government’s counsel on Petitioners’ Second Amendment claim, Justice Thomas may have been initiating a not so subtle payback to other Justices for a snubbing that both he and Justice Scalia suffered at the hands of those other Justices. For, both Justices Scalia and Thomas were more than a trifle perturbed that the majority of the Justices of the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Friedman vs. City of Highland Park, Illinois, 784 F.3d 406 (7th Cir. 2015). The Seventh Circuit in Friedman clearly manifested its contempt for the high Court’s holdings in Heller and McDonald. Justices Scalia and Thomas clearly wanted, and had expected, the high Court to grant certiorari in Friedman and, by failing to do so, Justices Scalia and Thomas expressed their righteous indignation by drafting a dissenting Opinion in Friedman.Very rarely do Justices explain their reason for refusing to grant a writ of certiorari in a case. Even more rarely will one find a dissenting opinion written by a Justice, expressing disfavor for the failure of the majority of Justices to grant the writ in a case.Surely, had the Supreme Court granted Petitioner’s writ of certiorari in Friedman, Justices Scalia and Thomas would have taken the Seventh Circuit to task for patently ignoring the Heller and McDonald holdings. The Arbalest Quarrel discusses the Friedman case at length in the article, titled, “A Court Of Law That Rejects U.S. Supreme Court Precedent Undermines The Rule Of Law And Undercuts The U.S. Constitution,” posted on December 14, 2015. For our discussion of Friedman and its importance to the Heller and McDonald cases, readers are encouraged to read our article.In spirit Justice Scalia was certainly in attendance during oral argument in Voisine. Since the Supreme Court would not entertain the Friedman case which was a direct and audacious attack by a United States Circuit Court of Appeals on the clear and cogent holdings in Heller and McDonald, Justice Thomas, on behalf of Justice Scalia, clearly intended to raise and, so, did raise Petitioner’s Second Amendment issue in Voisine – a case that the U.S. Supreme Court did decide to entertain.From the get-go it had been clear that no other Justice would weigh in on the Second Amendment implications of Voisine, and take the Government to task. Justice Thomas made certain that Justice Scalia’s disdain for a federal Government that cares not one whit for the sanctity of the Second Amendment would dare not go unchallenged.Americans who understand and can appreciate the importance of our Bill of Rights as the foundation of a free Republic and who can, in particular, understand and appreciate the importance of the Second Amendment as a critical check on the accumulation of power by the Federal Government, and by improvident State governments as well, will do well to ponder the Nation's incredible loss. Justice Scalia, together with Justice Thomas, made adamantly clear that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is an individual right unconnected to a person’s participation in a militia. The Heller decision rankles several Justices on the Supreme Court and many Globalists, both in this Country and outside it, as well, who are working quietly but incessantly and inexorably in the shadows, intent on undercutting America’s Bill of Rights, generally, and undermining America’s Second Amendment, particularly.We know, without doubt, that President Obama – or her royal Majesty, Queen Hillary Rodham Clinton – seek to nominate to the highest Court of the Land, a person who would chomp at the bit to reverse Heller and McDonald on the ground that, for them, the cases are discordant. They are discordant to these judges and to powerful, ruthless individuals because they happen to strengthen rather than weaken America’s Bill of Rights.In Part 2 of this Article, we will deal in depth, with the legal issues in Voisine and you will come to understand, one, why the high Court, apart from Justice Thomas, does not wish to deal with the impact that a negative decision in Voisine would have on the Second Amendment and, two, how it is that a specific question posed by Justice Thomas to counsel for the U.S. Government elicited from counsel a most remarkable, illuminating, and, in fact, frightening comment. You will come to see why a negative holding in Voisine does have negative implications for our Second Amendment.So it is that the mainstream media would much rather keep the dire implications of Voisine in the shadows. We, on the other hand, intend to bring those implications out, for all to see, into the light of day. In so doing, we trust we will help keep the memory of Justice Scalia alive, and in keeping Justice Scalia’s memory alive, preserve, as well, the holdings in Heller and McDonald that bespeak Justice Scalia’s devotion to the import of the Second Amendment. Ever mindful, then, are we of those who are hell-bent in destroying it.[separator type="medium" style="normal" align="left"margin-bottom="25" margin_top="5"] Copyright © 2015 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF THE ANTIGUN MOVEMENT

The ultimate goal of the antigun movement is this: the universal elimination of civilian firearms’ ownership and possession. This is true and incontrovertible. Everything the antigun movement does is directed to the attainment of that goal. Nothing the antigun movement does diverges from the path to that goal. When asked to admit the truth of the assertion, the antigun movement, and its sounding board, the mainstream corporate media, will deny it, curtly and vehemently. But, the antigun movement’s actions belie its blunt denial.Realization of the movement’s goal amounts to de facto repeal of the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms – a right expressed clearly and cogently, succinctly and indelibly, in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Yet, if there exist any residual doubt as to the import of that right, the U.S. Supreme Court laid such doubt to rest in the 2008 Heller and 2010 McDonald decisions.In Heller the Supreme Court held: “the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” This right, the high Court maintains, operates as a constraint on the federal government. The question subsequently arose, in McDonald, whether the Heller holding applies to the States as well. The high Court held that it did, asserting, clearly, categorically, unequivocally, “the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment right recognized in Heller.”Still, the antigun organizations, and many lower courts amenable to their views, resist Heller and McDonald, and continue to advance strategies altogether inconsistent with the High Court’s holdings. The arguments – actually rationalizations – for more and more restrictive gun measures may be distilled to the following: one, no one needs a gun because the police will protect you; two, curtailing civilian gun ownership precludes gun violence and gun accidents; three, civilized people don’t want guns and are repulsed by them; four, since no one can know who, among the population, will go off “half-cocked” – presenting a danger to self or others – it is best to curtail civilian gun ownership and possession; and, five, the Second Amendment is obsolete; no other Country has anything like it, and the U.S. shouldn’t either. These five arguments are a ragbag of elements gleaned from utilitarian ethics, psychology, sociology, politics, economics, and even aesthetics. But they all embrace one central tenet: governmental control of the American public.The antigun movement does not recognize the sanctity and autonomy of the individual, which is the linchpin of the Bill of Rights. Rather, the antigun movement sees each individual American as a random bit of unharmonious energy, running hither and yon – an individual who is likely to harm self or others unless appropriately constrained for his or her own good and for the good of the greater society. A firearm in the hands of a civilian lessens government’s ability to control that individual. Ergo, the government must keep the two – firearm and individual – separated. What NRA works to keep conjoined, antigun groups wish to sever and keep disjoined.As the antigun movement works incessantly, inexorably toward its ultimate goal, the movement invariably butts up against the NRA, which the movement routinely and pejoratively refers to as the “gun lobby.” But, the antigun movement refrains from referring to itself as the “antigun lobby.” Now, lobbying activities are protected speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and NRA is open about its lobbying efforts on behalf of its millions of members. Yet the antigun movement cloak’s its own lobbying activities and blatantly panders to the U.S. President. President Obama, for his part, has not shied away from using the power of his Office to further the agenda of the antigun movement through issuance of executive actions, and he has formally announced, in January of 2016, his intention to do so.Now, Congress, under Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, has sole authority to make law. The question is whether Obama’s antigun measures operate within the framework of existing Congressional firearms laws, as he claims, or operate beyond the boundaries of existing law. That Congress might obtain some resolution of that question, U.S. Senator Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., Chairman of the Subcommittee On Commerce, Justice and Science, requested Attorney General Loretta Lynch to appear at a hearing, held on January 20, 2016, to discuss the President’s recent executive actions.Senator Shelby made abundantly clear that the President does not have the authority to tell Congress what it must do. But the President has done just that, using the mechanism of executive directives, crafted by the Attorney General, herself, to conduct an “end-run” around Congress. The President isn’t asking Congress and the American people for permission to do what he wants to do. He is telling Congress and the American people what he’s going to do and cajoling both Congress and the American people to get on board with his game plan. That is extreme hubris.If the antigun movement is able to harness the Office of the President to craft its own laws to further a personal agenda, in defiance of both Congressional legislation and U.S. Supreme Court decision, then the Constitution is belittled and the Republic is endangered.[separator type="medium" style="normal" align="left"margin-bottom="25" margin_top="5"] Copyright © 2015 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

A COURT OF LAW THAT REJECTS U.S. SUPREME COURT PRECEDENT UNDERMINES THE RULE OF LAW AND UNDERCUTS THE U.S. CONSTITUTION

CITY OF HIGHLAND PARK, ILLINOIS DEFIES U.S. SUPREME COURT HOLDINGS IN HELLER AND MCDONALD AND SEVENTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS BOWS TO THE WILL OF GOVERNMENT IN FRIEDMAN CASE

State governments and local governments that enact or establish antigun laws, ordinances, rules, and regulations must comply with the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings in District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) and McDonald vs. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010). State and local governments are not allowed to take the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court lightly; and they are certainly not permitted to ignore the rulings of the High Court in the Heller and McDonald cases out-of-hand. This is not an option. It may therefore come as a shock to some people and an unpleasant surprise to many that State and local governments often do just that. Many State and local governments, not only ignore, but openly defy the U.S. Supreme Court’s holdings in Heller and McDonald. Worse, some federal and State courts, when called upon in lawsuits filed by plaintiffs -- individuals and groups -- to review plaintiffs' challenges to governmental actions, directly and negatively impacting the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms, often give legitimacy to unconstitutional laws enacted by State legislatures and to unconstitutional ordinances, rules, and regulations adopted by local governments, rather than striking them down as an unconstitutional restraint on the exercise of a fundamental right. Antigun proponents zealots, unsurprisingly and unremarkably, don’t see -- never see -- a problem with this. Indeed, Michael Bloomberg’s antigun group, “Everytown for Gun Safety,” for one -- the antigun political group that Bloomberg created upon leaving office as Mayor of New York City, after serving as its Mayor for twelve years -- is ecstatic over an April, 2015 decision of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Friedman vs. City of Highland Park, Illinois, 784 F.3d 406 (7th Cir. 2015). Just read the report by the left-wing news commentary site, “AlterNet,” on this. The article, which was posted on December 12, 2015, is titled, “Aggressive Pushback at Evil NRA Is Working; Lives Will Be Saved as a Result.”While the antigun crowd sees reason to applaud any attack on Americans’ Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms, even, and especially, those negative decisions, impacting the Second Amendment, handed down by courts of law -- the institution of last resort, called upon to defend Americans' rights and liberties -- an institution that reasonably would be expected to preserve and defend, assiduously, the fundamental rights and liberties of Americans -- no American, regardless of personal sentiment, or ethical view or political persuasion, should be pleased when the Second Amendment is in fact denigrated. No one should be pleased when the Second Amendment is attacked and denigrated because an attack on the sanctity of any one Amendment of our sacred Bill of Rights is, in essence, an attack on the sanctity of all of them. Political rhetoric should not be given equal weight with – much less lord over -- our system of laws, and political rhetoric should not be used as a wedge to divide the public on matters directly impacting our fundamental rights and liberties, guaranteed to all Americans in our Bill of Rights.Steven Rosenfeld, the author of the aforesaid “Alternet” article obviously disagrees. He argues that curtailment of Americans’ Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, politically motivated, is politically warranted, even if not legally warranted, consistent with antigun rhetoric, spawned in the political world. And, Rosenfeld laments that our Second Amendment right is “bogged-down” in the legal world. So it is that Steven Rosenfeld waxes poetic and exclaims, exuberantly, how wonderful it is when the Second Amendment of our Bill of Rights is denigrated,  and when unconscionable, abhorrent and unconstitutional laws, ordinances, rules, and regulations of States and Cities, that negatively impact our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, are allowed to flourish -- with the assistance of and, indeed, blessing of those courts of law that write decisions, giving credence to and that sanctify those State and local laws, ordinances, rules, and regulations; and that advance no compelling governmental purpose; and that, in fact, are specifically designed to undermine and defeat Americans’ fundamental rights.Courts that give credence to and that, in effect, sanctify such restrictive and oppressive and unconstitutional "edicts" of government are to be singled out for condemnation. In lieu of rendering decisions that defend and preserve Americans' fundamental rights, such courts of law are to be seen as operating subordinate to, subservient to and merely as an extension of government, rather than as a component of a legitimate, independent institution in its own right, whose singular purpose is as overseer of government and protector of our laws and of our fundamental rights and liberties under the U.S. Constitution.  Case in point: the aforesaid Friedman vs. City of Highland Park, Illinois, 784 F.3d 406 (7th Cir. 2015), decided in April of 2015.In the Friedman case the Plaintiff Appellants, including an individual, Ari Friedman, and a group, the Illinois State Rifle Association, brought suit against Defendant Appellee, City of Highland Park, in the State of Illinois. Highland Park had passed an ordinance, prohibiting the possession of “assault weapons” and “large capacity magazines,” namely ammunition magazines that can accept more than ten rounds. The ordinance defines an ‘assault weapon’ as any semiautomatic gun that can accept a ‘large capacity magazine’ and has at least one of five banned features, including, inter alia, a pistol grip without stock; a folding, telescoping stock; a grip for the non-trigger hand; or a barrel shroud. Moreover, the ordinance prohibits the ownership and possession of some firearms by name, such as AR-15s and AK47s.Plaintiff Appellant Friedman lawfully owned a banned rifle and several large capacity magazines, before the ban took effect. The prohibited firearm and magazines are not "grandfathered in" by the ordinance. In that respect, the Highland Park ordinance goes well beyond the highly restrictive and oppressive New York Safe Act, insofar as and particularly as those residents of New York who lawfully owned and possessed firearms defined as 'assault weapons' prior to the effective date of the NY Safe Act, on January 15, 2013, are permitted to retain their weapons so long as they are timely registered in accordance with New York law. In Illinois, though, under the unconscionable City of Highland Park ordinance, Plaintiff Appellant Friedman was forced to surrender his banned weapon and banned ammunition magazines to the government. And had he failed to do so, he would be criminally prosecuted for possessing the very items that were perfectly legal for him to own prior to implementation of the ordinance. Friedman, as a law-abiding citizen dutifully, albeit certainly not happily, surrendered his "assault weapon" in order to avoid certain prosecution, and he wants to own these weapons back.To have any chance of regaining possession of his weapons -- his personal property -- Friedman had no recourse but to file an action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, challenging the oppressive ordinance and hoping that the federal court would strike down the restrictive gun ordinance as an unconstitutional infringement on the exercise of a fundamental right. Friedman, along with the Illinois State Rifle Association, that joined him in the lawsuit, argued that the City of Highland Park ordinance was inconsistent with the right of the people to keep and bear arms, guaranteed to all Americans, as an individual right under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and inconsistent, too, with Supreme Court holdings in Heller and McDonald. The District Court, nonetheless, found in favor of the Defendant Appellee, City of Highland Park, and Plaintiffs thereupon appealed the adverse decision to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, citing Heller, at the outset of its Opinion, acknowledged that “Heller holds that a law banning the possession of handguns in the home (or making their use in the home infeasible) violates the individual right to keep and bear arms secured by the Second Amendment.” The Seventh Circuit also pointed to the holding of the high Court in the subsequent McDonald case, decided in 2010, where the U.S. Supreme Court held that, “the Second Amendment creates individual rights that can be asserted against state and local governments.” McDonald essentially took the holding of Heller -- which applies to unconstitutional actions of the federal Government impacting the Second Amendment, under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment -- to  unconstitutional actions of State and local governments, impacting the Second Amendment under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.Given the clear, cogent, unambiguous, and comprehensive import of these two holdings in Heller and McDonald, the salient issue before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals was certainly easy to promulgate and should have been: whether the Highland Park ordinance, that proscribes certain weapons, operates as an unconstitutional constraint on a person’s right to keep and bear arms and, if not, then, whether the ordinance is the least restrictive means available to the City for advancing a compelling governmental purpose. Had the legal issue been set forth in this way, in accordance with the actual holdings of the U.S. Supreme Court in Heller and McDonald, utilizing the appropriate standard of review, namely the stringent strict scrutiny standard, to test the constitutionality of the Highland Park ordinance, the Seventh Circuit Court would have struck down the ordinance as an impermissible constraint on an Americans’ right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment, consistent with the holdings of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Heller and McDonald cases. For, under the strict scrutiny test there is no logical, coherent reason for the City of Highland Park to adopt an ordinance, negatively impinging upon and infringing a fundamental right that mandates a wholesale ban on an entire category of firearms, firearms that had been, prior to adoption of the ordinance, perfectly legal for law-abiding residents of the City to own and possess -- namely and specifically firearms that the City arbitrarily defines as impermissible “assault weapons" and on ammunition magazines that happen to hold more than ten rounds. And, the government proffered no empirically and legally sound reason for the ban. Yet, the Seventh Circuit refused to apply the strict scrutiny test to the Highland Park ordinance even though, the City ordinance, on its face, impinged upon and infringed a fundamental right, and, indeed, the ordinance was specifically designed to do so.*In its decision the Seventh Circuit also dismissed, inexplicably, the holdings of the U.S. Supreme Court in Heller and McDonald, giving nothing but lip-service to them, through the mere act of reciting the holdings in the Court’s opinion, but failing, utterly, in adhering to them. In fact, not only did the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals fail to apply – as it should have done – a strict scrutiny standard of review to an ordinance impacting a fundamental right, the Court really failed to apply any standard of review in assessing the constitutionality of the Highland Park ordinance. Instead, notwithstanding the clear import and purport of the High Court’s holdings in Heller and McDonald and, notwithstanding that the Seventh Court of Appeals had before it, for its review, an ordinance directly, and emphatically, and categorically impacting a fundamental right, under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Seventh Circuit upheld the City of Highland Park ordinance. In permitting an unconstitutional local ordinance to stand, rather than striking it down, the Court of Appeals relied not on actual holdings of the high Court in Heller and McDonald, but on dicta in those cases, arguing that, because the high Court did not – according to the Seventh Circuit’s faulty reasoning – define the scope of the Second Amendment in its entirety, the Seventh Circuit was free to read into Heller and McDonald essentially whatever it wanted to.Curiously, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals applied a “political” rationale to its decision, foregoing, altogether, application of the appropriate legal standard of review, and this becomes evident in the issue that the Court framed for itself and thereupon sought to resolve, namely: “whether the ordinance leaves residents of Highland Park ample means to exercise the ‘inherent right of self-defense’ that the Second Amendment protects.” The legal issue, that the Court framed for itself in this odd way, totally ignores the fact that many of Highland Park residents desire to hold onto an entire category of weapons and magazines that were and are perfectly legal to own and possess under the Second Amendment, consistent with the holdings in Heller and McDonald, where the U.S. Supreme Court made absolutely clear that government laws and ordinances that ban, wholesale, entire categories of weapons, are patently illegal.By constructing the legal issue in the way that it did, the Seventh Circuit not only took away the freedom of the people to own and possess firearms that they previously had lawful access to but deliberately and defiantly refused to consider the constitutionality of the City ordinance at all in light of the Second Amendment and in light of the holdings of the U.S. Supreme Court in Heller and McDonald. In the issue that the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals devised for itself, the Court insinuated politics into the issue, and in the resolution of the issue that the Seventh Circuit constructed for itself, the Court begged in the question the very answer it sought.The Seventh Circuit surmised that, because the City of Highland Park did not prohibit all weapons, the City could prohibit some of them – including an entire category of weapons that had been perfectly lawful to own and possess prior to adoption of the City ordinance – and that the City could, in fact, prohibit, perfunctorily, without cause, those weapons and weapons' paraphernalia, such as – what the City deemed to be – high capacity ammunition magazines, as it wished. In the issue that the Court devised for itself to resolve, the Seventh Circuit didn't even need to listen to and consider the absurd arguments that the City put forth ostensibly in support of its wholesale gun ban. The Court included the rationale of the City government in its Opinion, to give seeming weight to its decision. But it was all empty "effect," for the Court had ipso facto decided that, so long as the City of Highland Park left its residents with the means to own and possess at least one kind of firearm -- whatever firearm the City deigned to allow its law-abiding citizens to possess -- say an antique Blunderbuss -- virtually all other firearms could lawfully be, and eventually would be, banned. In fact the Court's reasoning leaves the door open for just that result: eventual adoption of yet further gun bans.The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeal's decision is grounded not only on faulty legal reasoning, but on faulty logical  reasoning -- reasoning truly at odds with the principles of sound logic and reasoning that is, at once, at odds with the holding in Heller. The Heller holding entails, by logical implication, that bans on entire categories of weapons are impermissible absent a clear and compelling reason for government to do so and this means that a government is not permitted to ban entire categories of weapons unless the court of review satisfies itself that a particular governmental law, or ordinance, or rule, or regulation is the least restrictive means available for advancing a compelling governmental interest.Moreover, The Heller holding that constrains the federal government from enacting laws that constitutionally impinge upon and infringe the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms applies to the States and local governments through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, in accordance with the holding in McDonald. Thus, neither the federal Government, nor State and local governments, are permitted to infringe the Second Amendment’s right of the people to keep and bear arms absent extremely stringent scrutiny of the laws, ordinances, rules, and regulations by a reviewing court of competent jurisdiction. The Seventh Circuit failed, utterly, in performing its legal duties. Let's take a closer look at the Seventh Circuit's reasoning in Friedman to see more precisely where faults in the Court's legal and logical reasoning rest.The Seventh Circuit’s reasoning in Friedman is faulty, first, because the holdings of Heller and McDonald make abundantly clear that choice of weapons – those that have been available to Americans in the past – should continue to be available to Americans in the present, and into the future, absent a compelling reason set forth by government, to the satisfaction of the reviewing court, that establishes a lawful need to preclude ownership and possession of those weapons. In that regard, it is not for government to decide which firearms to permit Americans to continue to own and possess and which ones must be surrendered, based on mere personal predilections of government. That the City of Highland Park would do so – that it would dare to do so – amounts to an unconstitutional taking of property and serves at once to denigrate the import and purport of the holdings in Heller and McDonald because the ordinance amounts to a ban on an entire category of firearms and ammunition magazines absent any showing by the City of Highland Park that the City has in fact a compelling reason to do adopt such bans and absent any showing on the part of the City that the language of the ordinance as adopted is the least restrictive means available to the City  to advance a compelling local governmental interest -- which is to say that the compelling governmental interest is so critical that the government is justified in infringing a fundamental right – the right of the people to keep and bear arms. This is the strict scrutiny test.*The Seventh Circuit did not consider strict scrutiny criteria at all when rendering its decision, and it should have done so. It simply allowed the City of Highland Park to assert an ad hoc assortment and array of non-empirical declarations of the usual sort developed by and utilized by antigun proponents to further a personal social and political agenda: de facto repeal of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to force our unique Constitution toe the line with those of other Western nations -- nations whose history and culture are markedly different from our own.The Supreme Court, in Heller, made abundantly clear that the District of Columbia could not ban an entire category of firearms. In Heller, the District of Columbia attempted, unlawfully, to ban all handguns from the hands of the District of Columbia populace. The Supreme Court struck down the ordinance as unconscionably broad and an unconstitutional infringement of the Second amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms. Similarly, and by logical implication, then, the City of Highland Park could not constitutionally mandate a wholesale ban on so-called “assault weapons” and on magazines that happen to hold more than ten rounds of ammunition. Certainly the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals could not allow the Highland Park ordinance to stand without first applying strict scrutiny to the City’s infringement of a fundamental right. The Seventh Circuit devised a makeshift standard of review, relying on political considerations to arrive at the "political" decision it wanted. The Court  failed to apply the appropriate standard of review – or any recognized legal standard of review, for that matter. This amounts to prejudicial error, subjecting its decision to remand for further consideration, requiring application of the appropriate standard of review. The Seventh Circuit devised a makeshift standard to arrive at the "political" decision it wanted.Second, in affirming the decision of the lower, District Court, the Seventh Circuit made the dubious assertion that, “the best way to evaluate the relation between assault weapons, crime, and self-defense is through the political process and scholarly debate, not by parsing ambiguous passages in the Supreme Court’s opinions.” But, there is nothing in the holdings of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Heller and McDonald cases that are ambiguous, and there is nothing in those decisions that suggest that a court of review can or should consider political matters when rendering a legal decision, impacting a fundamental right. Certainly, the Seventh Circuit did not point to any ambiguities in the Justices’ text, and there is nothing in the Supreme Court holdings that so much as intimate that political considerations are merited when testing the constitutionality of a governmental law, ordinance, rule or regulation. The Seventh Circuit simply made a bald and bold pronouncement.The best way for a court of review – in fact the only lawful way for a court of review – to review a governmental law, or ordinance, or rule, or regulation that impinges on and infringes a fundamental right is for that court of review to demand that the government that enacts or adopts such a law, or ordinance, or rule, or regulation, sets forth, in the first instance and to the complete satisfaction of the reviewing court, the government's legal argument, supporting the government's  contention that a given law, ordinance, rule, or regulation is, in that government's contention is constitutional. The government necessarily has a heavy legal burden to carry for a court of law must assume that any such law, ordinance, rule, or regulation that negatively impacts a fundamental right is unconstitutional. A court of law, reviewing such governmental law, ordinance, rule, or regulation, negatively impacting an American's fundamental right, has no discretion in the matter. The reviewing court must apply the strict scrutiny standard to test whether the governmental action can stand or be struck down. Moreover, and importantly, judicial deference to the political process is not a legally tenable basis or mechanism through which to test whether a law, or ordinance, or rule, or regulation that is clearly directed to and impacts a fundamental right is permitted to stand. The matter before the court is a purely legal one, and it is one that goes directly to the constitutionality of the law or ordinance. Political concerns are of no moment, or consequence in the reviewing court’s determination.The issue of the constitutionality of a law, or ordinance, or rule, or regulation that impinges upon and infringes a fundamental right is solely and precisely and absolutely a legal issue, not a political one. Deference to political concerns has no place, where, as here, in the Friedman case, an ordinance directly impacts a fundamental right, and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals was wrong in opining that there is one.Furthermore, and it bears repeating, where fundamental rights are at stake, government is under a heavy burden to justify any restriction on an American’s exercise of a fundamental right. That means, once again, that a governmental law, or ordinance, or rule, or regulation  is presumed, from the get-go, to be unconstitutional, when a court of review begins its analysis of the impact of a law or ordinance on a fundamental right, such as the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and the burden of proof is on the government to demonstrate that a given law or ordinance is in fact constitutional. If a court of review finds that the government has failed to meet its burden, which is to say, that the court of review finds that the law or ordinance is, prima facie, unconstitutional, then that court of review must strike down the offending statute or ordinance. It has no choice in the matter, regardless of what it may otherwise wish to do. But suppose the court of review finds that the government has met its burden of proof and that the court finds the offending statute or ordinance to be facially constitutional. That doesn’t end the matter under the standard of strict scrutiny. That doesn't mean that the governmental law, ordinance, rule, or regulation is permitted to stand. For, even if the government, in the first instance, is able to carry the heavy burden of proof and demonstrates to the satisfaction of the court that the law or ordinance is not facially unconstitutional, the matter doesn’t end there. Strict scrutiny embraces a two-part test. The court of review must then decide whether a given law or ordinance that is ostensibly constitutional is, for all that, still, in the government’s adoption of that statute or ordinance, or rule, or regulation, the least restrictive means available to the government by which to advance a compelling governmental purpose. If so and only if the court  of review finds to its satisfaction that an oppressive law or ordinance that impacts a fundamental right is the least restrictive means available to that government to enable it to advance a compelling governmental purpose, can the court of review then and only then allow the oppressive law or ordinance to stand. Otherwise the court must strike down the offending law, or ordinance, or rule, or regulation. In that judicial review of a State law or local governmental ordinance, rule, or regulation impacting a fundamental right, no deference is to be given to the political process. When a court of competent jurisdiction is called upon to review the constitutionality of laws, ordinances, rules, or regulations that impact fundamental rights, consideration of political issues, social issues and the political process are wholly inappropriate. Governmental laws and ordinances and rules and regulations impacting fundamental rights are most serious. An analysis of them involves the application of law, not politics, and courts of review are called upon to make a legal assessment  of them. Matters impacting fundamental rights are never to be left to the wishes or to the wants or to the will of government. And, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals is absolutely wrong to assert that they can be and, for that matter, ought to be, left to government. And, by failing to apply the legal standard of strict scrutiny to an ordinance that directly impinges upon and infringes a fundamental right, the Seventh Circuit reduced itself to a servile vessel of government, giving deference to government action, where it should never have done so.Third, in its deferential, even obsequious regard for government, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals added that, “the central role of representative democracy is no less part of the Constitution than is the Second Amendment: when there is no definitive constitutional rule, matters are left to the legislative process.” This is patently false. The matter before the Seventh Circuit has nothing to do here with public policy any more than it has to do with the political process. The matter before the Court in the Friedman case has everything to do with the City government’s creation of  and adoption of an ordinance directly and negatively impacting a fundamental right. And, a definitive constitutional rule, established by the U.S. Supreme Court in Heller, does exist, contrary to the Seventh Circuit's assertion that there is none. The Seventh Circuit simply decided to ignore the Supreme Court’s clear and categorical and cogent holding. The Seventh Circuit’s argument in the Friedman case is not a direct and perceptive and critical review of a governmental ordinance, directly impinging upon and infringing the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms, but an unconscionable digression from its duty to review, critically, the constitutionality of the Highland Park ordinance. The Seventh Circuit altogether ignores its duty, a that duty rests squarely on testing the constitutionality of the Highland Park ordinance in light of the holdings in Heller and McDonald.Fourth, the Seventh Circuit said, “another constitutional principle is relevant: The Constitution establishes a federal republic where local differences are cherished as elements of liberty, rather than eliminated in search for national uniformity.” Even so, where, as here, the exercise of a fundamental right is at stake, the assertion of such a principle in this instance amounts to nothing more than rhetorical flourish, not sound legal reasoning. The Court’s assertion is not sound and has absolutely no relevance here because, once again, where a fundamental right is at stake, the application of that right – the right of the people to keep and bear arms – applies “across the board,” that is to say, nationally – and the holdings of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Heller and McDonald cases make this point poignant, clear, categorical, and unequivocal. “Local differences” are absolutely beside the point where fundamental rights, as set forth in our Bill of Rights, are at stake.The Seventh Circuit simply and erroneously sets up a peripheral straw man issue and ignores the salient one which goes to the very heart of the import of the Second Amendment: whether the City of Highland Park Ordinance is unconstitutional on its face and, were it not so, then, whether that ordinance is, nonetheless, the least restrictive means available to the City of Highland Park for advancing a compelling governmental interest. By failing to consider the impact of the City of Highland Park ordinance on the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms, the Seventh Circuit improperly reduced a serious constitutional issue before it to one of mere public policy, political process, and local political and social concerns. Such analysis by a court of review might be adequate to address some minimal social concern or political matter, but not one that goes to the heart of our rights and liberties under the U.S. Constitution, namely and specifically, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.In his lengthy dissent, Judge Manion asserted, in his opening remarks, that “by prohibiting a class of weapons commonly used throughout the country, Highland Park’s ordinance infringes upon the rights of its citizens to keep weapons in their homes for the purpose of defending themselves, their families, and their property. Both the ordinance and this court’s opinion upholding it are directly at odds with the central holdings of Heller and McDonald: that the Second Amendment protects a personal right to keep arms for lawful purposes, most notably for self-defense within the home.” The dissenting Judge also noted that Plaintiff Appellant Friedman did, in fact, lawfully keep in his home, for self-defense, the weapons and ammunition magazines that the ordinance now bans, and that Friedman was compelled to surrender them to the authorities or face a misdemeanor conviction that is punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of between $500.00 and $1,000.00. The City of Highland Park ordinance thus forces a law-abiding citizen either to forsake his Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms or to become a misdemeanant, end up in jail, pay a fine, and probably never again be able to own or possess any firearm.Once the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the decision of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, finding for the Defendant Appellee, City of Highland Park, against Plaintiff Appellants, Friedman and the Illinois State Rifle Association, the Appellants petitioned for a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan all were in attendance to consider the writ of certiorari. A majority of Justices denied the writ. Justices Thomas and Scalia were so incensed at the refusal to grant the petition for writ that Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Scalia, admonished their brethren in a dissent.In his opening remarks, Justice Thomas wrote, “‘[O]ur central holding in’ District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570 (2008), was ‘that the Second Amendment protects a personal right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, most notably for self-defense within the home.’ And in McDonald, we recognized that the Sec­ond Amendment applies fully against the States as well as the Federal Government. Id., at 750; id., at 805 (THOMAS, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Despite these holdings, several Courts of Appeals including the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in the decision below—have upheld categorical bans on firearms that millions of Americans commonly own for lawful purposes. See 784 F. 3d 406, 410–412 (2015). Because noncompliance with our Second Amendment precedents warrants this Court’s attention as much as any of our precedents, I would grant certiorari in this case.” It is abundantly clear that the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has failed in its duty to carefully review a governmental ordinance that, on its face, amounts to a deliberate, audacious, callous, caustic, and defiant attack, not only on the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but on clear and unambiguous holdings of the U.S. Supreme Court in Heller and McDonald that directly apply to the Friedman case and inform the Court how to review an ordinance that impacts the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms. By failing to consider the import and purport of the U.S. Supreme Court’s holdings in Heller and McDonald, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in its holding in Friedman improperly and defiantly ignored the holdings of the U.S. Supreme Court in Heller and McDonald.The Seventh Circuit has capitulated to local government; ignored the directives of the U.S. Supreme Court; failed to apply the appropriate legal standard when testing the constitutionality of a law or ordinance, infringing a fundamental right; reduced a serious constitutional issue to a mere administrative one; saw fit to prostate itself before a mere local government, raising that government to the level of potentate; made itself, wittingly or not, into a subservient ally of antigun groups; and allowed its status as an independent trier of law and fact to play a subordinate role to political forces. In ceding its own, critical judicial role, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has demonstrated a callous disregard of its duties and joined with government in undermining the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It is most unfortunate that the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices paid no heed to the remonstrations of Justices Thomas and Scalia. In denying the Friedman Appellants' petition for writ of certiorari, the majority of Justices allowed a clearly unsound and deeply offensive ruling of the Seventh Circuit to stand, unchallenged.The adverse and legally and logically unsound decision of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Friedman, coupled with the failure of the U.S. Supreme Court to grant Appellants' petition for writ sets a bad precedent. Had the Justices, instead, granted the petition and determined to review the decision of the Seventh Circuit, then, thereafter, federal, State, and local governments and, too, federal and State courts would be placed on notice that the holdings of Heller and McDonald are not to be taken lightly. What has transpired in the Friedman case will only embolden antigun groups and their allies in government and in courts friendly to their political objectives to take further steps and ever more daring and outrageous steps to undercut the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms. Erosion of our remaining rights and liberties, as set forth in our Bill of Rights will, as well, follow suit.Indeed, when one takes the time to pause and consider what has, of late, been occurring in our Nation, one becomes immediately aware that the destruction of our Bill of Rights -- most prominently, our First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments, along with our sacred Second Amendment -- is already well underway.____________________________________

*UPDATE AND CLARIFICATION:

Reviewing this post, we must clarify the points made in our analysis of strict scrutiny as a standard of review in Second Amendment cases. In our jurisprudence, where fundamental rights are at stake, such as exercise of one's Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms, governments must apply the least restrictive means to accomplish their goals. And, Courts will use strict scrutiny to assess the constitutionality of laws, impacting fundamental rights, when a challenge is made as to the constitutionality of them.The U.S. Supreme Court in Heller did not, though, articulate a specific standard of review a court must use when assessing the constitutionality of a law when a constitutional challenge to a law impacting the Second Amendment is raised, apart from stating that the most liberal standard of judicial review, rational basis as a means test, is altogether inappropriate for means testing. It is not clear that the Highland Park Court used any standard of review but merely and essentially rubber stamped government edit. If the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals applied any standard of review, in Friedman vs. Highland Park, then, tacitly, the Court applied "rational basis," the lowest most deferential standard of review. But, The U.S. Supreme Court in Heller pointedly remarked that rational basis was never the correct standard of review in Second Amendment cases and can never be appropriately applied in any Second Amendment case.That the  high Court did not apply a standard of review in Heller though was probably due to the fact that the Court found the District of Columbia's total ban on handguns to be facially, per se, invalid. The law was designed to destroy the core value of the Second Amendment and therefore had to be struck down as a blatant example of a law that was unconstitutional. So, the high Court found it unnecessary to apply strict scrutiny.For those laws, infringing the Second Amendment right that do not, on their face, appear to be invalid, then, arguably, consistent with Heller, heightened scrutiny of such law must be invoked and applied by a court of review.Strict scrutiny, as a means test, is, traditionally, the most durable and most stringent standard of heightened security a court or judicial review can apply, when deciding the constitutionality of a law. Yet, some Courts--those obviously antithetical to the Second Amendment-- have, through the failure of the Heller Court to articulate a definitive standard of review, tended to apply an intermediate scrutiny test or, as in the Friedman vs. Highland Park case, a rational basis, if a standard of review was applied by a Court at all, if only tacitly. Again, rational basis is not an appropriate standard for means testing a law infringing upon the Second Amendment in any circumstance. Curiously, rational basis is used by New York Courts and is used by those Courts with regularity to justify the NY Safe Act and to justify any other restrictive gun law that the New York State Legislature and other governmental bodies in New York implement. Under strict scrutiny or even under intermediate scrutiny, it is unlikely that New York's draconian gun laws would stand. New York Courts know this, and that may explain why they rigidly adhere to application of an incorrect, liberal standard of review at all.[separator type="medium" style="normal" align="left"margin-bottom="25" margin_top="5"] Copyright © 2015 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.