BRUEN IS DEAD! SCOTUS MURDERED IT AND, IN SO DOING, HAS SLIT ITS OWN THROAT

The worst thing that could happen in a Second Amendment case has happened.

During its conference on Monday, April 5, 2025, SCOTUS declined to review Antonyuk vs. James. Who or what could have caused this inexplicable, horrid turn of events?

Why didn’t SCOTUS, through John Roberts’ influence as the Chief Justice, make Antonyuk happen?

This didn’t happen because Chief Justice Roberts didn’t want it to happen. And the late preeminent Justice Antonin Scalia isn’t with us who would otherwise have made it happen.

This tragic turn of events comes as a shock to us at the Arbalest Quarrel, as any bad SCOTUS decision would, even though this one does not come as a complete surprise.

Recent Court decisions in non-Second Amendment cases, decided against President Trump, where Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Amy Coney-Barrett joined the Liberal-wing, might have provided an inkling of bad tidings to come.

But this doesn’t explain why two seemingly “Conservative-wing” Justices, would turn against the American people.

Has the Chief Justice, along with one or more of Trump’s three nominees from his first term, been personally compromised?

If so, this means nothing less than the loss of the independence of the High Court: the Third Branch of the Federal Government.

It is not ridiculous to think this. This failure of the Court to take up Antonyuk, after several delays, quietly, perfunctorily, and without explanation—where such failure destroys the sanctity of the High Court’s prior seminal Second Amendment rulings going back seventeen years, to Heller—is as inexplicable to us, as it is profoundly disturbing.

Realizing the extraordinary importance of a final resolution in the Antonyuk case, apropos of the sanctity of the fundamental, unalienable right to armed self-defense against the predatory beast, the intractable predatory man-beast, and the perennial predatory man-beast of government, we fervently believed Antonyuk was on track to become the fourth seminal Second Amendment case, augmenting the rulings in the prior three landmark cases. And we inferred Snope vs. Brown to be the second most important case, after Antonyuk. How could the Court not grant review of this case? We were wrong.

There is evidently no limit to the inscrutability of Government and of the venality of those operating within its labyrinthine corridors.  

In a series of articles published on our website in February and March of this year, reposted in abridged format in Ammoland Shooting Sports News, we discussed at length why the Antonyuk and Snope cases are, bar none, the two most important, consequential Second Amendment cases to come before the U.S. Supreme Court since Bruen.

And, as these two cases involve the most important natural law right, without which a free Constitutional Republic and a Sovereign People, cannot exist, these two cases are the most important to come before the Court, of all the thousands that have wended their way to the Court, in the last couple of years, regardless of the nature of the legal issue.

We considered possible SCOTUS scenarios once Snope vs. Brown and Antonyuk vs. James came to the Court, and the ramifications were the Court to deny review, or accept review and rule for the State against the Petitioners.

We did expect that the High Court would decide at conference whether or not to review Snope vs. Brown, prior to tackling Antonyuk, since the Court had pushed back on a final disposition of the Snope case a few times before taking even one look at Antonyuk.

We were puzzled at what transpired on April 5, 2025.

That the Court decided to delay a vote on Snope vs. Brown, turning its attention to Antonyuk, and thereupon denying certiorari in Antonyuk, suggests to us the Court won’t vote to grant review in Snope, either.

This doesn’t mean SCOTUS won’t grant review of some other 2A case this term. It does mean that any future Second Amendment case the Court may grant review of means nothing because the Court has just told the American people the right to armed self-defense, as a fundamental right, is and shall always remain a second-class right, as Justice Clarence Thomas had long feared and had scolded the Court for tacitly proclaiming it to be so.

The Second Amendment is on its deathbed. This is not exaggeration.

Back on February 12, 2025, in our article titled, “Scotus, Stop the Merry-Go-Round On The Second Amendment Antonyuk Case Impacting Bruen, Grant the Writ of Certiorari,” we stated,

The U.S. Supreme Court must take up this [the Antonyuk] case. If it fails to do so, that means the New York Hochul Government has won. . . Further weakening of a citizen’s right to keep and bear arms in New York will continue . . . until nothing is left of the right.

As important as the pending Snope case is . . . , Antonyuk is, without doubt, the most important Second Amendment case to come before the Court since Bruen because it directly impacts Bruen in a way that no other pending case does. The new York State CCIA is both a direct response to Bruen and operates in open and blatant defiance of it. . . .

If the Court does review this case, it must strike down the guts of New York’s amendments to its Handgun Law. If it rules in favor of the New York Government, then the Court slits its own throat by undermining its own decision in Bruen and it opens the Country up to tyranny. Bruen would be functionally dead as would the second amendment, [and] freedom, and liberty.

Nor can the Court take a pass on this case. For the result is the same.

The New York Government has treated the Bruen rulings as garbage and has treated the Court, the Third Branch of the U.S. Government, as a Branch without credible authority.

If New York can arrogantly, defiantly violate the Bruen rulings, which were, after all, directed, first and foremost at New York, then any other jurisdiction will feel confident it may do the same, perceiving it has tacit “license” to do so. The Bruen rulings will cease to have meaning and significance.

Anti-Second Amendment states would then see the Court in the same vein as the world has perceived the demented, dementia-riddled Joe Biden, and his Administration—as [an] effete, ineffectual, frightened, and imbecilic little creature, to be taken advantage of or simply ignored.

Anti-Second Amendment states and local jurisdictions would be constantly emboldened to continue violating the citizen’s fundamental right to armed self-defense, and they would act aggressively—flagrantly violating the law and the Constitution.  

In time, the right to armed self-defense in the public domain and even in the home would be second-guessed. That would result in a deleterious domino effect. Heller and McDonald will in turn be weakened. For, each case depends on and clarifies points of the others. They are all connected.

We hope and pray that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have as much sway over Chief Justice Roberts as had the late eminent Justice, Antonin Scalia.

They must impress on Chief Justice Roberts, and on the other ostensibly Conservative-wing Justices, the imperative need to take up Antonyuk this term and to strike down New York’s ridiculous and dangerous Handgun Law. And they must hold that the date of ratification of the Bill of Rights, in 1791, is the date on which the methodological test of “Historical Tradition” in Second Amendment cases must rest.”

Jump forward to April 5, 2025. Antonyuk is dead—a case that has taken well over two years to make it to SCOTUS on a final appealable order. And Bruen has died with it.

Our guess is that Justices Thomas and Alito are, understandably, apoplectic with rage at the cowardice exhibited by the other ostensibly Conservative-wing Justices to support them. So, they likely didn’t, this time, bother to write a dissenting comment that would have supported taking up the case, striking down the CCIA.

Plainly these two stalwart Justices could not muster support from at least three other Justices to strike down the unconstitutional, unconscionable New York “Concealed Carry Improvement Act.”

So, rather than voting to grant certiorari—which only requires four votes—Chief Justice Roberts may have offered Justices Thomas and Alito a choice to allow the petition for review to die at conference or to accept review of the case where a majority of the Court would eventually find the “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (CCIA) constitutional.

The effect of such a “choice” is dire, amounting to no real choice at all.

Still, the Liberal-wing would love to see the case taken up only to rule in favor of New York.

Chief Justice Roberts and at least one other Associate Justice would have gone along with a ruling favoring the New York Government, thereby creating a narrow majority, sufficient to defeat the Petitioners’ hope for redemption after well over two years of enormous effort and the expenditure of substantial funds to vindicate the Bruen rulings.

The abject failure of the U.S. Supreme Court to enforce its own rulings is painful to behold. Where are the originalists and textualists among the Justices?

This methodology—employed by the late Associate Justice Scalia, a methodology that was, for decades, the mainstay of jurisprudential analysis at the High Court—is at an end.

The two remaining adherents of that methodology, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, cannot maintain it by themselves.

And Trump’s three nominations were, we see, not up to the task.

Here, then, is a newsflash for the legacy Press: The U.S. Supreme Court does not sit six Conservative-wing Justices. There remain only two after Scalia’s death—the preeminent Associate Justice of our time.

Of the remaining seven Justices on the Court, there are three far-left Internationalists, and four anemic, inconsistent fence-sitters, ever buffeted hither and yon by the prevailing political wind.

SCOTUS need now only throw Bruen into a ditch and cover it with dirt. The Court can bury Heller and McDonald with it.

The rulings in all three cases are frozen in time, to be systematically whittled away by the Marxist State Governments.

Snope is now an afterthought. For, the decision not to review Antonyuk does not bode well for that Snope.

Snope is important, but not as important as Antonyuk because Antonyuk was the only case operating as a direct challenge to Bruen.

Mainstream media simply refers to the Court’s decision to deny review of Antonyuk, as a decision to forego reviewing New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA), “Sensitive Place” restrictions” mandate and the “Good Moral Character” requirement.

Yet, the impact of the High Court’s failure to review Antonyuk goes far beyond a failure to review two major components of the New York’s CCIA.

The Duke Center for Firearms Law views the denial of the Writ for Certiorari as an attack on a core aspect of Bruen and Heller—the standard of review to be employed by reviewing courts when testing the constitutionality of a governmental action that impacts the core of the Second Amendment.

The Duke Center for Firearms Law said,

The Court re-distributed Antonyuk—the New York post-Bruen sensitive places and licensing case—for last week's conference and denied cert this morning.  This development can be read as at least an implicit endorsement of the Second Circuit's observation that "[i]t would be incongruous to deem the right to keep and bear arms fully applicable to the States by Reconstruction standards but then define its scope and limitations exclusively by 1791 standards."

If true, this suggests that SCOTUS wishes to avoid any discussion of the historical tradition standard, aware that it is a nebulous, essentially unworkable concept. But that is how Chief Justice Roberts and, apparently, several other Justices wish to leave it, rather than tackling the problem with this standard, head-on.

In a short statement about the Court’s denial of the Writ of Certiorari, that appeared on the Governor’s official website, Kathy Hochul said,

New York's strong gun safety laws save lives, and gun violence has declined by 53 percent since a pandemic-era peak. In 2022, after the Supreme Court decided to overturn New York's century-old concealed carry laws, I fought to pass new legislation to keep our streets and subways safe from gun violence — and we got it done. Today, the Supreme Court has officially rejected an attempt to block this critical legislation, ensuring the core tenets of the law I signed in 2022 will remain in effect. Public safety will always be my top priority, and I'll continue fighting to keep New Yorkers safe.

Public safety was never Hochul’s concern despite her assertion to the contrary, judging by the continuous criminal violence plaguing New York and the insouciance of the State’s Criminal Justice System to rid the streets of legions of psychopathic killers and dangerous lunatics running amok. But, as for her remark that, “the Supreme Court has officially rejected an attempt to block this critical legislation, ensuring the core tenets of the law I signed in 2022 will remain in effect,” she is, unfortunately, correct.

SCOTUS has stamped the  “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” with its official imprimatur. Hochul will use that imprimatur to add further draconian measures to the New York Handgun Law.

Other States will take notice of this. They will pay even less heed to the High Court, now.

But blame for this New York CCIA abomination rests principally with the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court has effectively struck down Bruen, and, with that, it has destroyed its own authority and credibility.

America’s Patriots must harbor no illusion as to the deadly import of this awful decision by the Court. For, the failure to grant review in Antonyuk operates as no less than a decision, and the worst possible decision, had it granted review of the case, and ruled for the New York Government. The effect of denial of Certiorari is the same. The Court has essentially destroyed Bruen, McDonald, and the parent case, Heller, and has, thereby, slit its own throat.

The only upside to this is that the citizenry should now realize that the Right of the people to keep and bear arms does not rely, nor ought it ever rely, on Congress, on the President, on the U.S. Supreme Court, or on the States, or on any other transitory, man-made contrivance.

Rather, the God-given Right rests, ultimately, where it had always rested and must always reside—intrinsically, inextricably, eternally—in the American people themselves.

___________________________________

THE DIRE STATE OF CIVILIAN CITIZEN ARMED SELF-DEFENSE IN THE “DIRE STATE” OF NEW YORK AND ELSEWHERE IN THE NATION

The Arbalest Quarrel commends Ammoland Shooting Sports News for posting three recent back-to-back articles that highlight the nature of the problem plaguing exercise of the fundamental, unalienable, non-transitory, absolute right to civilian citizen armed self-defense.

The problem rests on a peculiar mindset of Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions that perceive the armed citizen as a scourge rather than as an effective solution to  intractable violent crime in those jurisdictions.

Two of the articles are authored by F Riehl, Editor in Chief of Ammoland. One, posted on March 5, 2025, is titled “Report: Notorious NYPD License Division Drags its Feet on Gun Permits.” The second, posted one day later, on March 6, 2025, is titled “More Gun Owners Take NYPD to Court Over Concealed Carry License Delays.”

Both articles draw attention to the notorious New York State handgun licensing scheme.

The March 6, 2025, article cites an AQ paper, posted almost three years earlier, on May 27, 2022, indicative of a continuous and stubborn matter affecting the NYPD and, by extension, a matter negatively impacting Americans residing or working in New York City who desire to exercise their fundamental, unalienable, natural law right to keep and bear arms.

Only through the carrying of a handgun can these Americans ensure their life and safety, navigating an unpredictable and often hostile environment that New York City poses.

The AQ article, as posted in abridged format in Ammoland, is titled “Corruption & Unfairness Plague The NYPD Firearms License Division.”

The AQ paper published in unabridged format as an essay is available for viewing on the AQ website, under essentially the same title, “Corruption And Unfairness Plague The NYPD Firearms License Division.”

The paper was published in AQ on  April 13, 2022. That paper is one of a series of essays serving as an exposé of problems attendant to New York City’s “Concealed Handgun Carry” schema.

Even after the U.S. Supreme Court in the third landmark Second Amendment case NYSRPA vs. Bruen struck down the “Proper Cause” standard—which had been in force for decades and which had led to summary and illegal denial of thousands of applications for concealed handgun carry licenses—the NYPD hasn’t let up.

Since the NYPD License Division can no longer easily and casually deny issuance of concealed handgun carry licenses outright, it now resorts to a tactic long in use and designed to frustrate Americans’ exercise of their right to armed self-defense: NYPD License Officers deliberately or negligently delaying, the final resolution of applications for handgun licenses.

The State Handgun law requires processing of firearms applications within 6 months of filing. A six month wait is too lengthy; yet, the License Division often delays its decision, to grant or deny issuance of a license far beyond that six month period, without providing a written explanation to the applicant, explaining the reason for the delay. And, importantly, such delay, regarding the applicant, can only be for “good cause.” Yet that written explanation often goes wanting.

This dismissive attitude demonstrated by the NYPD License Division, involving a serious matter—one’s exercise of his fundamental, unalienable right to armed self-defense—is unconscionable and unconstitutional. Yet this occurs with regularity.

NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (4-b), sets forth,

Processing of license applications. Applications for licenses shall be accepted for processing by the licensing officer at the time of presentment. Except upon written notice to the applicant specifically stating the reasons for any delay, in each case the licensing officer shall act upon any application for a license pursuant to this section within six months of the date of presentment of such an application to the appropriate authority. Such delay may only be for good cause and with respect to the applicant. In acting upon an application, the licensing officer shall either deny the application for reasons specifically and concisely stated in writing or grant the application and issue the license applied for.

The NYPD License Division routinely delays final action on an application well beyond the six month deadline. This might be due to administrative inefficiencies, or there might exist a more sinister reason for non-compliance with deadlines——

The State Government’s long-standing antipathy to civilian citizen ownership and possession of firearms (going back to the dawn of the Republic), and its ability—since the advent of handgun licensing—to effectively engage in delaying issuance of licenses helps explain the City Government’s disheartening, lackadaisical and callous attitude toward handgun license application processing and extends to the processing of rifle and shotgun permits as well, which New York City code also requires, even though the State doesn’t require a permit to own and possess a rifle and shotgun that isn’t “semiautomatic” in operation.

How can the Governor’s Office and the NYC Mayor’s Office so easily, mindlessly shirk their obligation under the law of New York?

The Government is able to evade its obligation for lack of any penalty attaching for bad cause or no cause delay in processing applications. And how can that be? Could the State Legislature in Albany have forgotten to include a penalty for non-action on an application against a police department when the Legislature drafted  NY CLS Penal § 400.00. That defies belief. This lack of a penalty provision in the Handgun Statute must be deliberate.

For renewal applications, State law establishes rigid deadlines for the filing of all such “renewal” applications yet leaves to the licensing authorities the power to craft their own deadlines when submitting new applications for handgun licenses, along with supporting documents for those applications.

Applicants must adhere firmly to policy directives when applying for a handgun license for the first time. These policy directives have the force of law. And a New York licensing official will not accept an excuse for failure of an applicant to comply fully with every policy directive, and to respond truthfully in response to every question and to be honest in every declaration made.

Failure to provide all necessary documentation as requested (i.e., demanded) by the licensing officer results in summary rejection of the application. And false statements can subject the applicant to criminal liability and prosecution.

Renewal applications, unlike first-time applications, fall under NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (10-b). Failure of timely recertification operates as an automatic revocation of one’s license.”

All licensees shall be recertified to the division of state police every five years thereafter, except as otherwise provided in paragraph (d) of this subdivision. Any license issued before the effective date of the chapter of the laws of two thousand thirteen which added this paragraph shall be recertified by the licensee on or before January thirty-first, two thousand eighteen, and not less than one year prior to such date, the state police shall send a notice to all license holders who have not recertified by such time. Such recertification shall be in a form as approved by the superintendent of state police, which shall request the license holder’s name, date of birth, gender, race, residential address, social security number, firearms possessed by such license holder, email address at the option of the license holder and an affirmation that such license holder is not prohibited from possessing firearms. The form may be in an electronic form if so designated by the superintendent of state police. Failure to recertify shall act as a revocation of such license. If the New York state police discover as a result of the recertification process that a licensee failed to provide a change of address, the New York state police shall not require the licensing officer to revoke such license.

See also NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (10-d). The date for recertification of a license issued under NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (2) (f) is three years from the last date of issuance.

NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (10-d) provides,

Licenses issued under paragraph (f) of subdivision two of this section shall be recertified or renewed in the same form and manner as otherwise required by this subdivision, provided however, that such licenses shall be recertified or renewed every three years following the issuance of such license. For licenses issued prior to the effective date of this paragraph that were issued more than three years prior to such date, or will expire in less than one year from such date shall be recertified or renewed within one year of such date.

And, for failure to recertify a license for a “semiautomatic rifle,” a person faces punitive penalties as well as revocation of his license and faces summary denial of any future license for any kind of firearm.

NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (10-c) sets forth,

A license to purchase or take possession of a semiautomatic rifle as defined in subdivision two of this section shall be recertified to the applicable licensing officer every five years following the issuance of such license. Failure to renew such a license shall be a violation punishable by a fine not to exceed two hundred fifty dollars, and such failure to renew shall be considered by the licensing officer when reviewing future license applications by the license holder pursuant to this chapter.

AQ must emphasize here that the problems attendant to handgun licensing are not to be ascribed to rank and file police officers. They don’t craft police policy. They don’t enact laws. They carry out official edicts that come from their superiors. The problems with handgun licensing in New York therefore stem from the laws that legislators pass and the policies that high Government officials craft to turn those laws, rules, codes, and regulations into operational policy directives.

In New York City, the Police Commissioner sets the policies of the Department. The Commissioner is appointed by the Mayor of the City, and is beholden to him and, will, as is invariably the case, accommodate the Mayor, by instituting policies that adhere to the Mayor’s personal beliefs toward firearms and to the Mayor’s personal predilections concerning civilian citizen ownership and possession of firearms.

The New York City Police Commissioner’s sentiments will also cohere with those of the Governor. This means that the Police Commissioner’s policies will reflect Governor Hochul’s and Mayor Adam’s antipathy toward those citizens who seek to carry a handgun in public, for self-defense.

Keep in mind that, that the New York City Police Commissioner is not elected by the people and is not, therefore, answerable to the people.

Traditionally, the mayors of New York City and the State’s Governors vehemently oppose the arming of civilians. This is reflected in State firearms laws and local rules, codes, and regulations, which are themselves reflected in the policies of the NYPD Department.

County Sheriffs unlike municipal Police commissioners are elected by the people of the respective counties. Many of the Counties in New York are predominately conservative-oriented and have a strong belief in the sanctity of the right of the people to keep and bear arms as codified in the U.S. Constitution.

Those sheriffs—consistent with the will of and attitudes of their constituency—do not share the sentiments views of municipalities that are controlled by Democrats, who vehemently oppose the arming of civilian citizens.

Corruption, endemic in the upper echelons of the NYPD, which can trickle down to the lower echelon leadership, is not the same thing as bad law and bad policies that lend themselves to corruption, although the two often go hand-in-hand. Bad law entices corruption.

Corruption in the NYPD is at the moment de minimis to the extent we can infer—likely due to prominent and negative Press coverage.

But the possibility of corruption is always close where Government officials and rank and file officers, too, wield inordinate power, where opportunity for great ill-gotten financial gain (bribery) exists, and where one’s feelings of grandiosity can incubate. In the NYPD license Division, there once was a time, and not that long ago, when officers working in the Division wielded essentially absolute discretion in the awarding of coveted concealed handgun carry licenses.

The old proverb, “absolute power corrupts, absolutely” remains is no less true today than it did back in the Nineteenth Century when the British Politician Lord Acton first coined the proverb.

The discretion of Government officials must be constrained. The human appetite for power, especially rampant in Government is insatiable. If not constrained, then the courts must step in. But, the courts, too, wield inordinate power. Judges and magistrates are no less immune from feelings of superiority, and that superiority is often reflected in biased orders and legal opinions.

The U.S. Supreme Court realizes all of this, and has acknowledged the problem in Bruen. Bad laws and policies lend themselves to an atmosphere where corruption may flourish.

Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito know this well. Through a perusal of their many rulings, their strong love toward our fundamental rights, especially the right of the people to keep and bear arms, has consistently shone forth. Their judicial opinion on Second Amendment issues is clearly established. They have never wavered on their adoration of the Bill of Rights and, especially, the Second Amendment.

So, too, had the late eminent Justice Antonin Scalia long strove to strengthen the eternal right codified in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. It is left now primarily to Justices Thomas and Alito to rein in the rambunctiousness of callous States and municipalities that go astray.

For the worst sacrilege to our Nation founded as the only truly Free Constitutional Republic, involves devolving into Tyranny. This is not only possible or probable, but a certainty if a citizen’s right to armed self-defense is weakened to the point of becoming de facto void.

This would occur if those elements operating in every institution of this Country would have their way, and their say, in this. And they have worked methodically and tirelessly for decades to destroy the natural law right to armed self-defense.

If that right goes, the rest of the Bill of Rights and the entirety of the Constitution goes with it.

Many journalists and academicians have, in the last few years, feel emboldened in their call for abolition of the Second Amendment, and strict reining in of the First.

They openly express their disdain for our Constitution, and they deny the idea that “natural law” rights preexist government. They believe that natural law rights like any other right or law is a manmade construct to be ignored, rejected and annulled when whim or circumstance, as they see it, dictates.

They believe the time is now at hand to dismantle the Bill of Rights and to rewrite the rest of the Constitution, the Articles, both of which they detest.

Where the natural law right to armed self-defense, and freedom of expression, and association are attacked, the Republic teeters on disaster. One sees this occurring in States and localities run by Marxists. They have always existed in the Nation—albeit often resting dormant, lurking in the shadows. Lawlessness and corruption follows them wherever they.

Corruption in New York (and particularly, in New York City), became problematic with the inception of handgun licensing, over 111 years ago with enactment of the “Sullivan Act,” in 1911.

The sponsor of the Sullivan Act, a Democrat Party Politician and New York State Senator, Timothy Daniel Sullivan—referred to by various mobster-like identifiers, including “Big Tim,” “Big Feller,” “Dry Dollar,” and the “King of the Bowery”— was, himself, a corrupt politician—a powerful political leader of New York City’s influential “Tammany Hall” machine. See, e.g., story in historynet.com and article in NY Irish History.

Thus, New York’s handgun licensing regime came into being. Through the passing years and decades, this licensing regime would become more and more extensive, convoluted, and bloated.

The application of the “Proper Cause” standard to the Sullivan Act in 1913—which gave essentially absolute discretion to handgun licensing officers—allowed for the inception of corruption in the issuance of coveted handgun carry licenses.

This “Proper Cause” standard was the signature achievement of those who loathe the natural law right to armed self-defense. The addition of “Proper Cause” to the Sullivan Act in 1913, became the impetus for the development of an increasingly oppressive, handgun licensing scheme, crafted to undermine the exercise of the fundamental right to civilian citizen armed self-defense.  

The New York Courts were keenly aware of this legal blemish, but lamely allowed it to continue, instead of striking it down as they should have done. In fact, these New York Courts strengthened “Proper Cause,” ruling it lawful and constitutional, and stamping that finding in stone, with their official judicial imprimatur.

They opined, rationalized really, that, if an applicant for a concealed handgun carry license was aware of abuse of discretion on the part of a licensing official, he had recourse available to him. He could simply appeal, to the courts, the refusal of the licensing official to issue a handgun carry license to him, thus securing “due process.”

All this is well and good, but the standard the State Courts have adopted to reverse a decision of a licensing official—a finding of “arbitrary and capricious” conduct on the part of the licensing official—rests on the applicant to demonstrate.

The applicant must prove, to the Court’s satisfaction, that the licensing official has abused his discretion. The burden of proof to substantiate “abuse of discretion” on the ground of “arbitrary and capricious” conduct falls on the party asserting it.

Proof of “abuse of discretion” is a difficult burden to bear—and, therefore, one very rarely sustained. Moreover, filing a Court action is an expensive, tedious, time-consuming process, and a psychologically debilitating ordeal.

Understandably, it is one that few applicants for a handgun license, including the coveted concealed carry license is able or willing to bear. Most applicants simply give up.

They surrender to the sad reality that they will never be able to effectively defend themselves against a life-threatening assault, whether that assault is random or planned. Either one is a distinct possibility in New York City.

But this result—forsaking one’s quest for a handgun license—is precisely what the New York Government wants and what it expects to happen.

With enactment of New York’s “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (CCIA) on July 1, 2022, the Hochul Government crafted an adequate if not, to its liking, an ideal replacement for “Proper Cause” after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that standard.

The State now uses a bolstered “Good Moral Character” standard to defeat substantial numbers of applications. And State licensing authorities, like the NYPD, simply continue the unlawful, and certainly unethical, practice of delaying issuance of concealed handgun carry licenses—for a lengthy stretch of time, as if waiting six months weren’t long enough. See New York Statute provisions, supra.

Such deliberate defiance of U.S. Supreme Court rulings and the State’s constant insufferable actions undertaken to frustrate the issuance of handgun carry licenses has led to a plethora of lawsuits being filed in Federal Court.

Now, well over two and a half years since the Bruen decision came down the pike, a satisfactory resolution to the Hochul Government’s illegal actions continues to remain elusive, awaiting a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court whether to grant or deny Petitioners’ Writ of Certiorari in the New York case, Antonyuk vs. James.

A THIRD RECENT AMMOLAND SHOOTING SPORTS NEWS ARTICLE

On March 7, 2025, a third article dealing with the problem plaguing exercise of the right to civilian citizen armed self-defense in New York City appeared in the Ammoland Shooting Sports News website.

Authored by NRAHQ, titled “CPRC: The Many Ways Concealed Carry Permitees Enhance Public Safety,” the article makes a solid case for national concealed carry reciprocity.

The NRA mentions notable Second Amendment scholars such as Gary Kleck and John Lott whose work supports the inference that persons who lawfully carry have “defended themselves or others from a criminal attack.” This assertion contradicts the erroneous claim perpetuated by “gun control proponents that continue to insist that concealed carrying has no public safety benefits and that lawfully armed civilians simply escalate the risk to first responders and others nearby.”

We, at the Arbalest Quarrel, find it serendipitous that the March 5 through March 7 articles have come out on Ammoland Shooting Sports News at a time when AQ has been strenuously engaged, in the last few months, researching matters most acute to the sanctity and, indeed, the survival of the fundamental, unalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms, in the years and decades to come.

Back in early 2013 when AQ commenced operation, writing first on the New York Safe Act, we knew the issue of the constitutionality of “firearms licensing” would need to be dealt with by the U.S. Supreme Court. For no other “device” has served Anti-Second Amendment proponents better than utilization of licensing schemes to undermine a citizen’s natural law right to armed self-defense.

We knew that, after the seminal Heller case, the legality of state licensing of firearms would have to be addressed head-on. And the Bruen case only made this realization plainer.

Another crucial issue to be addressed pertains to the concept of “Public Safety” in relation to the concept of “(Armed) Personal Safety.”

New York Governor Kathy Hochul and other Anti-Second Amendment Governors constantly harp on the need to provide for “Public Safety.”

Yet, these same Governors fail miserably at providing this thing, “Public Safety,” if we grant that ensuring “Public Safety” is truly a concern of these Governors at all.

We have our doubts, given rampant violent crime that continues unabated, due to a lax criminal justice system and the lack of a necessary complement of police and the handcuffing of police who do serve but are unable to maximize their ability to protect both themselves and their communities due to a plethora of Governmental Progressive/Marxist idealogues infesting so many States and localities.

More to the point, these Anti-Second Amendment political leaders never mention “Personal Safety”—whether armed or otherwise—in their discourse. We find that both odd and disturbing.

Might it be that these politicians don’t recognize the import of “Personal Safety,” or the reality of “Personal Safety” concerns? Or, perhaps, they simply and tacitly subsume the concept of “Personal Safety” into the concept of “Public Safety,” and presume, albeit erroneously, that, one, these concepts are co-extensive when they aren’t, and, two, that, because the State takes upon itself the obligation to provide, through its Tenth Amendment Police Powers the role of both protector of society as a whole and protector of the individual members of it, there is no need for the citizen to take that responsibility upon himself by keeping and bearing arms for self-defense. 

Apropos of the latter false belief, the State argues that the armed citizen—far from serving a worthy purpose by being armed—compounds the problem that the State refers to as “Gun Violence.”

This idea is ludicrous in the assertion, and dangerous to the security and well-being of a Free Constitutional Republic, grounded on the sovereignty of the American citizenry over Government.

Why ought not the two, “Public Safety” and “Personal (Armed) Safety,” be seen as complementary, working in tandem and in harmony with each other and not in marked opposition to each other? There is no logical antithesis between the existence of the armed citizenry as the protector of a “Free State,” and a State’s obligation to provide for public safety, but for the State believing the two are in opposition.

ON the other hand, the State may be well aware of the falsity of the proposition, but, nonetheless, feels the need to cajole or seduce the target population to accept as self-evident true that the armed citizen poses an inherent threat to the State.

State Governments led by Progressive/Marxist leaders perpetrate and perpetuate the lie through continuous, incessant campaign of noxious psychological conditioning and mind control directed to the public. Through repetitious spouting of the nonsense they hope to hypnotize the public into accepting the lie as truth.

The public, so conditioned to accept the lie, becomes a zombie force, a useful tool, operating on behalf of the State to disavow and dissolve the armed citizenry.

One then comes to the realization that the State isn’t fearful of an armed citizenry as a criminal element in its own right, compounding “Gun Violence” the State seeks to contain, but, rather, is fearful of an armed citizenry that recognizes encroaching—incipient—tyranny the State has come to embrace and therefore intends to destroy lest the citizenry rebel against and topple that tyranny.

The import of and success of the American Revolution at the hands of the armed citizenry would likely invade the thought processes of the Tyrant who feels a need to prevent a brewing rebellion against that Tyranny. Is the NRAHQ for one, aware of this?

See “CPRC: The Many Ways Concealed Carry Permitees Enhance Public Safety.” Id. Supra. The NRAHQ writes,

Since 2007, the percentage of adults with carry permits has increased by about threefold. This exponential growth in permits and permitless carry coincides with “a general linear decline in rates of violent crime offenses. Violent crime fell from 4.77 per 10 million people in 2007 to 3.64 per 10 million people in 2023, a 24% drop.” The rise in lawful concealed carrying alone isn’t likely to be responsible, given the complexity of what drives changes in crime rates, but at the very least this shows there’s no “obvious positive relationship between permits and crime.” Additional details and studies are available in the CPRC’s amicus brief filed with the United States Supreme Court in the NYSRPA v. Bruen case.

The brief points out that the “debate surrounding the Second Amendment sometimes includes a simplistic, false dichotomy which can be summarized as: Guns versus safety.” The opposition to national public carry laws frames this as expanded public carry has no public safety benefits and will only intensify violent crime. Citizens, so the rhetoric goes, may have either guns or safety, but not both. If the gun control doomsayers were right about law-abiding citizens carrying in public allegedly fueling “the gun violence epidemic,” Baltimore, where lawful carry was until recently all but impossible, should have been the safest place in America. [emphasis our own]

A Tyrannical State doesn’t give a damn whether the armed citizenry correlates with reduction in violent crime or not. Given the laxness of Progressive/Marxist State officials attitude toward “Gun Violence” or Criminal Violence committed by any other means, due to the prevalence of psychotic and psychopathic members of criminal gangs and international cartels, infesting our Country.

And given that the Tyrannical State devotes much of its time, money, and energy constraining the average, responsible, rational, law-abiding citizen from keeping and bearing arms—rather than directing its attention to the hardened violent criminal and the psychotic maniac—we know wherefrom the Tyrant’s anxiety springs, and that anxiety does not arise from the psychopathic killer or rabid maniac.

Note: The phrase, “Guns versus safety,” that the NRAHQ utilizes, we refer to as “Personal (armed) Safety” versus “Public Safety.” (We will deal with this matter in detail in a future article).

Why should some States treat the two safety considerations as legal polarities?

We have explained, above, our explanation for this. Such appears to be the case when a government views the citizenry with suspicion. Suspicion directed to the populace is a feature of authoritarian and totalitarian governments.

It is also a feature of those free republics that turn one hundred and eighty degrees toward tyranny.

Despotic regimes view the armed citizenry as an inherent danger to that regime’s supreme power and authority.

Governmental leaders that espouse Political Progressivism, a.k.a. Marxism, are Despots. They exude despotism. They feign concern for the well-being of the populace.

The concern is always for “groups,” when viewed conveniently in the abstract, but Progressives demonstrate a noticeable lack of concern for individuals in the concrete. This is a point made by Victor Davis Hanson, “Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services.” He is spot on.

Recall the failure of Joe Biden and his Director of DHS, Alejandro Mayorkas, and Progressives in Congress who would never bother to mention or recite the names of innocent female Americans, brutally raped and murdered by psychopathic illegal aliens.

Yet these same Progressives/Marxists incessantly exclaim their concern over the welfare of millions of illegal aliens—failing to mention that these people—having broken our immigration laws, by entering our Country illegally, have no lawful right to be in our Country at all.

The ill-will of Despots toward the safety and well-being of individual citizens is expressed in the policies they craft and implement. And Progressives/Marxists are all onboard with this. But why is that?

It has everything to do with exerting control over the thoughts and actions of the citizenry, and little if anything to do with their safety, security, and well-being.

These Despots demand conformity, compliance, and blind obedience—a citizenry reduced to lassitude and impotence. The millions of illegals—who are looking for handouts, free housing, free medical care, free meals, and free education for their young—realize the boon they receive from a Government and become willing servants to that Government, that they may continue to receive handouts. They are freeloaders.

They become an underclass that, in sheer number—and yes—can serve to replace the American citizenry, who, steeped in adoration of our Constitution and natural law rights, are a difficult, obstinate force to control. Most Americans realize that, under the previous Administration, millions of illegals were encouraged to enter our Country and the Biden Administration spent, in the four years of their awful rein, to expend tens of billions of taxpayer dollars on illegal aliens, to buy their allegiance. The entry of millions of illegals into our Country wasn’t the result of simple incompetence. No! It was by design. A majority of the Electorate, aware of the Biden Administration’s treachery, elected Donald Trump to clean up the mess.

But our Country doesn’t belong to a treacherous Government. The Government is the servant of the American people, not its master. The Government, be it State or Federal, as run by Despots, see this, and are frightened by what they see.

An armed citizenry is an omnipresent threat to the power of Despots.

There is, then, no tenable concept of personal safety, not really. For that requires a Despot to acknowledge the sanctity and inviolability of the individual.

IF THE “INDIVIDUAL” HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE, THEN “PERSONAL SAFETY” HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE EITHER.

THE CONCEPT OF “PERSONAL SAFETY”—ARMED OR NOT—IS THEN DEVOID OF VALUE. A ready-made subservient caste, composed of millions of illegal aliens, has no need for, or understanding of, Personal Safety as a concept that comes within. They look instead to the Government Despot to provide all the “Safety” they need. And the Despot obliges them. The Despot methodically, inexorably moves American society toward a new societal construct—one grounded on “Collectivism,” and not “Individualism.”

IN A SOCIETY GROUNDED ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM, THE CONCEPT OF “PERSONAL SAFETY” NOT ONLY HAS MEANING, BUT IS AN ESSENTIAL FEATURE OF, AND  A SALIENT FIXTURE IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM. IN A SOCIETY GROUNDED ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF COLLECTIVISM, ON THE OTHER HAND, “PERSONAL SAFETY” IS VIEWED AS AN ABERRATION.

“Personal Safety” is a broad-based concept. It is one that embraces “Personal ARMED Safety” but gun control zealots abhor this latter concept and even harbor doubts about the former, GENERAL “Personal (UNARMED) Safety” if that is to mean the individual is ultimately responsible for his own survival.

Under COLLECTIVISM, the INDIVIDUAL has no purpose and no reality other than his service to and as a member of the GREATER WHOLE—THE GREATER COLLECTIVE.

Collectivists prefer to “SAFETY” in the context of “Public (COMMUNAL, i.e., COLLECTIVE) Safety”—as provided solely by and as both a RIGHT and DUTY of the State Government.

Governor Hochul and others believe that the State alone, through operation of its “Police Powers,” possesses the right to promote and provide for the Safety of the community, and this extends to the individuals of the community as well—hence, personal safety, as such, becomes, at best, merely a function of public safety, but otherwise has no independent reality—AS APPLIED TO THE PROLES—THE MASSES.

When the State does a satisfactory or, at least, adequate job providing for the well-being of a community, as a whole, i.e., promotes and provides some modicum of “Public Safety,” that will suffice to appease some members of a community—those who don’t reflect on the need to provide for their own personal and effective safety, which only the keeping and bearing arms can provide. They happily let the police provide for their safety, not realizing the police don’t have a duty to ensure the safety and security of anyone, except in very narrow, defined circumstances.

POLITICAL “PROGRESSIVISM A.K.A. “MARXISM” ADHERES TO THE PRECEPTS AND TENETS OF COLLECTIVISM, NOT TO THE PRECEPTS AND TENETS OF INDIVIDUALISM.

The Progressive/Marxist “elites” have a narrow, compartmentalized view of PERSONAL SAFETY, as a thing a thing intrinsic in themselves, GOVERNING RULERS. They are aware of the need for “Personal Safety” for themselves, but, since they can afford to hire armed security for themselves and their families, or derive security from the Government itself, as GOVERNING RULERS, they bear a dismissive attitude toward those Americans who, unlike themselves, are not so well-off and who are not RULERS. Most of us must provide for our own effective Personal Security, and that entails keeping and bearing arms ourselves. We are our own private security, then.

See the two AQ articles posted on Ammoland Shooting Sports News dealing with the fact that the Government has no duty or obligation to protect any individual American.

Plainly, the duty to provide for the well-being of the community does not extend to or imply a duty or obligation to provide and ensure the well-being of any particular member in that community.

Most Americans don’t realize this, and the Press, for its part, that detests the armed citizenry, no less so than the Progressive/Marxist politicians, avoids any mention of the limited role of the police in our society.

And the politicians don’t bother to enlighten the public about this incontrovertible truth either. For, if they did acknowledge the truth, the public would either demand that the police ensure the life, safety, and well-being of the individual—which is impossible—or accede to the individual’s demand that he keep and bear arms for his own defense—a right that is his intrinsically and eternally.

But many Americans don’t believe that they, as individuals and citizens of the United States, do have a fundamental, unalienable right to keep and bear arms that is not subject to lawful constraint by the State. And many Americans believe that Government has a right and duty to constrain exercise of the right, which they perceive as manmade, not natural law.

One of our articles on the concept of ‘sovereign immunity’ as applied to the State, is titled, “The Government Cannot Protect You! You Must Protect Yourself!”, posted on August 6, 2020. Another article on the subject of sovereign immunity is titled, “Can We, As Individuals, Rely On The Police To Protect Us?”, posted on November 26, 2019.

Public Safety, crafted into policy, is really a manifestation of a State’s exercise of its Tenth Amendment “Police Powers.” But what happens (as is the case in many a State now) when that State shirks its right and obligation to protect the community to such a degree that the State’s failure to provide for the safety of the community, generally, becomes noticeable to the life, well-being, and safety of the individual members of it?

What happens when the members of a given community come to the nightmarish realization that their individual (personal) safety and security are at enormous risk and the police are nowhere to be seen because there aren’t enough of them to effectively provide for the welfare of the community, or they find their hands tied, preventing them from doing their job.

Ineffectual Governor Tyrants like New York’s Kathy Hochul, and Arizona’s Katie Hobbs, and New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham, and Illinois’ JB Pritzker, and California’s Gavin Newsome, and Maine’s Janet Mills, and so many others like them, perfunctorily refuse to uphold the sacred, inviolate right of the people to keep and bear arms, to secure their Personal Safety, from predatory beast, and from predatory man, and from the predatory man-beast of Government, even as these Governors fail miserably to promote “Public Safety” which they point to incessantly.

These Governors are, of course, MOST CONCERNED over what they perceive as the threat posed by the armed citizen, who may well need to protect himself from them—these Governors—AS THE INCARNATION OF THE MAN-BEAST OF GOVERNMENT.

The exercise of a State’s “Police Powers” in a feigned (plainly dishonest) desire to promote “Public Safety” under the auspices of the Tenth Amendment ought not be at odds with a citizen’s exercise of his fundamental right to keep and bear arms to ensure his “Personal Safety” under the fundamental, unalienable right as codified in the Second Amendment.

Yet, the two are perceived by gun control politicians as competing antithetical notions or, otherwise, these gun control politicians use their image makers and the Press and media to create the illusion that the concepts of PUBLIC SAFETY and PERSONAL SAFETY are antithetical and incompatible; or, that the LATTER IS SUBSUMED IN THE FORMER, and THE TWO ARE TO BE PERCEIVED THEN AS EQUIVALENT, OR AN AMALGAM, under the auspices and control of the Government alone.

Or perhaps it is the case that the Government chooses to treat the LATTER AS UNREAL, AN INSUBSTANTIAL SPECTER, THAT SIMPLY DISSOLVES AWAY INTO THE AETHER. And there would be a reason for Government to presume this and to induce the public to presume this as well.

FOR, PERSONAL SAFETY including PERSONAL (ARMED) SAFETY is embodied in the concept of PERSONAL ARMED SELF-DEFENSE, in the absence of which a FREE REPUBLIC and a SOVEREIGN CITIZENRY cannot continue to exist. We, Americans, must see that the RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE DOES CONTINUE TO EXIST AND THAT THE REALITY OF IT AND THE NEED FOR IT BE FIRMLY IMPRESSED IN THE PSYCHE OF EVERY AMERICAN.

This is the ground upon which our fight exists. This is the ground upon which we, as the only truly Free People on Earth, must draw a clear and firm line in the sand.

FORTHCOMING IN THE ARBALEST QUARREL

In future articles that we are presently working on, the Arbalest Quarrel will deal in depth with the concepts of “State Police Powers,” “Personal (Armed) Safety,” “Public Safety,” the relationship between “Public Safety” and “Personal Safety,” State “Firearms Licensing,” Permit-less Concealed Handgun Carry, and the import of the concept of ‘Citizen,’ and the ever-present danger of Tyranny of government.

All these concepts and issues play an enormous part on the continued viability of the fundamental, unalienable right to civilian citizen armed self-defense and have a decisive impact on whether and to what extent we, Americans, can retain a truly free Constitutional Republic in form and substance as the Founders of our Nation intended.

_________________________________________

AT THE UPCOMING CONFERENCE, WILL THE U.S. SUPREME COURT FINALLY AGREE TO GRANT REVIEW OF THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT SECOND AMENDMENT CASES TO COME BEFORE IT SINCE BRUEN: SNOPE AND ANTONYUK?

On February 24, 2025, the website, “Bearing Arms,” in an article titled, “Sixth Time the Charm for Snope at SCOTUS?”, the author Cam Edwards, wistfully answers the question he poses in the title of his article, writing,  

We can only hope. The Supreme Court has once again scheduled both Snope v. Brown and Ocean State Tactical v. Neronha for debate in conference this week, keeping hope alive that the justices will grant cert to one or both cases next week. 

This Friday's [February 28, 2025] conference will be the sixth appearance for Snope (which is the challenge to Maryland's ban on so-called assault weapons), while Ocean State Tactical (taking on Rhode Island's ban on "large capacity" magazines) is up for its seventh go-round behind closed doors as the justice decide what cases they'll accept. The good news is that neither of these cases were disposed of in today's orders, but that still doesn't mean that either or both are guaranteed to be heard by SCOTUS in the future. . . .

I have to say that I'm still cautiously optimistic as well. Both Snope and Ocean State Tactical have been heard in conference since mid-December (December 4, in the case of Ocean State Tactical), which is more than enough time for Justice Thomas, Gorsuch, or Alito to write a dissent from denial of cert. 

Of course, that's also plenty of time for four justices to vote to hear one or both of these cases, and that doesn't appear to have happened yet either.

We, at the Arbalest Quarrel also fervently hope the High Court will garner at least four votes necessary to review the case. But our expectation is that it won’t. The issue presented for review, as succinctly stated in the Petitioners’ Brief in support of their Writ, is, we believe, too hot for Chief Justice Roberts to touch.

Whether the Constitution permits the State of Maryland to ban semiautomatic rifles that are in common use for lawful purposes, including the most popular rifle in America.

Yet, at some point the Court is going to have to take a stand on whether semiautomatic weapons fall within the core protection of the natural law right codified in the Second Amendment, or not. A positive ruling, consistent with the plain meaning of the Second Amendment and with the Court’s previous landmark rulings and reasoning, would make Snope the fourth landmark case.

As of the posting of this article on our site, the evening before the Court’s conference, we just don’t know what the Court will do.

We do fervently hope the Court will garner the four votes necessary to review the case.

But, our expectation is that it won’t, and would not be inclined to do so unless the Conservative wing of the Court is certain it has a clear majority were the case taken up, and that the majority will then proceed to posit a plain, emphatic, broad and bold ruling, not a tepid, watered-down narrow ruling.

THE CALCULUS OF HIGH COURT VOTES ON WHETHER TO GRANT OR DENY A PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI

If the Conservative wing Justices have any serious doubt about securing a consensus among the majority of the Court, they will vote to deny granting the Petitioners’ Writ of Certiorari. They won’t risk a negative ruling if the Court garners four votes necessary to grant review of the case.

Now, when we refer to the “Conservative wing” of the Court we mean the true “Conservative wing.”

This true “Conservative wing,” consists, in our estimate, of just two Associate Justices, namely, Clarence Thomas (author of the Bruen decision) and Samuel Alito (author of the McDonald decision), both of whom supported the Heller decision, penned by the late eminent Justice Antonin Scalia.

If four Justices vote to grant review of Snope, this means that at least five members of the Court—a narrow majority—do in fact exist, sufficient to provide a favorable ruling for the Petitioners in Snope.

We do fervently hope the Court will garner the four votes necessary to review the case. But, our expectation is that it won’t, and would not do so unless the Conservative wing of the Court is certain it has a clear majority were the case taken up. If they have any doubt about the matter, they won’t risk an adverse ruling.

Too much is at stake, i.e., whether semiautomatic weapons fall within the core protection of the natural law right codified in the Second Amendment, or not.

By reference to the Conservative wing of the Court, we are referring to the true Conservative wing. That true Conservative wing consists presently of just two Associate Justices, Clarence Thomas (author of the Bruen decision) and Samuel Alito (author of the McDonald decision), both of whom supported the Heller decision, penned by the late eminent Justice Antonin Scalia.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito will not vote to grant the Snope Petition unless they know beforehand that Associate Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney-Barrett are fully onboard with them.

Worse than not taking up Snope is taking the case up only to have a ruling in Snope that semiautomatic weapons do not fall within the core protection of the Second Amendment. Such a ruling would be catastrophic to the survival of the fundamental, unalienable, natural law right codified in the Second Amendment and, by extension, a negative ruling—one against Petitioners—would be catastrophic for Heller, McDonald, and Bruen as they must be taken as inextricably tied together. If one falls, so do the others.

If the High Court does grant certiorari in Snope vs. Brown and the Court comes down with a clear, emphatic, categorical, and comprehensive ruling that semiautomatic weapons fall within the core of the Second Amendment’s protection, then Snope will become the fourth landmark Second Amendment case.

This ruling will, then, further strengthen the natural law right to armed self-defense, eventually making it impregnable to attack.

Chief Justice John Roberts would go along with this majority even if he would prefer not to. The reason why is this: Roberts would not side with the three Liberal wing minority dissenting Justices in a major Second Amendment case.

Moreover, having previously voted with the Conservative wing in Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, Chief Justice Roberts could not rationally explain away his inconsistency to others, no less to himself, why he would dissent from the majority in Snope. This is why he would prefer voting to deny the Petition and trust that the other nominally Conservative wing Justices as heretofore mentioned, would also vote to deny the granting of Certiorari.

WHY SNOPE IS OF CRUCIAL IMPORTANCE

State governments that detest Heller and McDonald have long frowned on civilian citizen ownership and possession of any class of firearms. These governments particularly detest civilian citizen ownership and possession of semiautomatic firearms, referring to them by erroneous wholly contrived appellations for political purposes, such as “assault weapons” and “weapons of war.”  They do this to create the illusion in the psyche of the public that these weapons are of no useful purpose. Mental laziness among many Americans makes them susceptible to dangerous psychological conditioning.

These Anti-Second Amendment governments thereupon find it relatively easy to enact laws, codes, rules, and regulations aimed at severely constraining or denying outright most civilian citizen possession and ownership of semiautomatic weapons, likening them—erroneously—to fully automatic weapons, or to selective fire weapons, and various other weapons and components of weapons that fall under the purview of the constitutionally dubious National Firearms Act (NFA).

The Snope case isn’t the first case involving a challenge to state government banning of semiautomatic firearms to come before the U.S. Supreme Court. It is simply the most recent.

This matter cane to the fore several years ago. Few people may remember a prior case that landed before the Court, but we would like to jog the memory of those Americans who may have forgotten.

Go back ten years. In 2015, the case Friedman vs. Highland Park came to the Court on a writ of certiorari. The salient issue in that earlier case is the same as in the present case, Snope vs. Brown.

Friedman dealt with the constitutionality of commonly owned semiautomatic weapons.

The Court rejected review of the case, realizing of course that the Court lacked at least five Justices that would vote to strike down a local government’s illegal outright ban on semiautomatic weapons. Justice Thomas was livid, and he wrote a lengthy and vigorous—even scathing—dissenting comment, laying out why the Friedman case ought to have been taken up. Had the Court done so, the American citizenry would have been spared having to suffer, these long years, the continuous barrage sprouted about semiautomatic weapons by the Press, media, and government. Americans would also have been spared having to expend substantial time, exorbitant amounts of money, and considerable effort filing lawsuits challenging unconstitutional firearms laws.

If the Court agrees to hear Snope, all this wasted time, money, and effort could henceforth be avoided.

Likely, John Roberts has Thomas’ dissent fresh in mind and that could be reason enough to encourage denying Petitioners’ writ, in Snope.

The late Justice Antonin Scalia obviously was no less appalled than was Justice Clarence Thomas by Chief Justice Roberts’ and Associate Justice Kennedy’s hesitancy in agreeing to take up the Friedman case.

Friedman could well have become, and should have become, the third Landmark Second Amendment case decision, in 2015, had Roberts and Kennedy agreed to join Scalia, Thomas, and Alito in taking up the case and ruling in favor of Petitioners.

Perhaps Roberts and Kennedy declined to accept review of the case, because, unlike in Heller, they could not perceive a way to dilute a positive ruling in Friedman. The case does not allow for narrowing the holding. Semiautomatic weapons either fall within the core of the Second Amendment’s protection or they do not. If they do fall within the core of the Second Amendment, then these state governments are stopped in their tracks from banning them. The use of rhetorical appellations like “assault weapons” or “weapons of war” to describe them would dissipate into the nothingness from which these rhetorical devices arose.

Unfortunately, Justice Scalia cannot help Justices Thomas and Alito to cajole Chief Justice Roberts and to urge other Justices to take up Snope because fourteen months after the Friedman case fell by the wayside, Scalia would be found dead in a hotel room in Texas, and under most mysterious circumstances, with precious few details ever forthcoming about the nature or cause of death.

JUSTICE THOMAS’ COMMENT IN FRIEDMAN

What did Thomas have to say about Friedman, that Scalia heartily agreed with? Given its similarity to Snope, Thomas’ comment can be lifted almost verbatim and utilized as the ruling in Snope, were the Court to take up the case. We provide Thomas’ dissent in full here.

[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.”

The city of Highland Park, Illinois, bans manufacturing, selling, giving, lending, acquiring, or possessing many of the most commonly owned semiautomatic firearms, which the City branded “Assault Weapons.” See Highland Park, Ill., City Code §§136.001(C), 136.005 (2015), App. to Pet. for Cert. 65a, 71a. For instance, the ordinance criminalizes modern sporting rifles (e.g., AR-style semiautomatic rifles), 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 gave anyone who legally possessed “an Assault Weapon or Large Capacity Magazine” 60 days to move these items outside City limits, disable them, or surrender them for destruction. §136.020, id., at 73a. Anyone who violates the ordinance can be imprisoned for up to six months, fined up to $1,000, or both. §136.999, id., at 74a.

Petitioners — a Highland Park resident who sought to keep now-prohibited firearms and magazines to defend his home, and an advocacy organization — brought a suit to enjoin the ordinance on the ground that it violates the Second Amendment. The District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granted summary judgment to the City.

A divided panel of the Seventh Circuit affirmed. The panel majority acknowledged that the prohibited weapons “can be beneficial for self-defense because they are lighter than many rifles and less dangerous per shot than larger-caliber pistols or revolvers,” and thus “[h]ouseholders too frightened or infirm to aim carefully may be able to wield them more effectively.” 784 F. 3d, at 411.

The majority nonetheless found no constitutional problem with the ordinance. It recognized that Heller “holds that a law banning the possession of handguns in the home . . . violates” the Second Amendment. 784 F. 3d, at 407. But beyond Heller’s rejection of banning handguns in the home, the majority believed, Heller and McDonald “leave matters open” on the scope of the Second Amendment. 784 F. 3d, at 412. The majority thus adopted a new test for gauging the constitutionality of bans on firearms: “[W]e [will] ask whether a regulation bans weapons that were common at the time of ratification or those that have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, . . . and whether law-abiding citizens retain adequate means of self-defense.” Id., at 410 (internal quotation marks omitted).

Judge Manion dissented, reasoning that “[b]oth the ordinance and this court’s opinion upholding it are directly at odds with the central holdings of Heller and McDonald.” Id., at 412.
II

The Second Amendment provides: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” We explained in Heller and McDonald that the Second Amendment “guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.” Heller, supra, at 592, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2797, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 657; see also McDonald, supra, at 767-769, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3036-3037, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894, 914-916. We excluded from protection only “those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” Heller, 554 U. S., at 625, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2815, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 677. And we stressed that “[t]he very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon.” Id., at 634, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2821, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 682 (emphasis deleted).

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. See 784 F. 3d, at 407, 412. All other questions about the Second Amendment, the Seventh Circuit concluded, should be defined by “the political process and scholarly debate.” Id., at 412. But Heller repudiates that approach. We explained in Heller that “since th[e] case represent[ed] this Court’s first in-depth examination of the Second Amendment, one should not expect it to clarify the entire field.” 554 U. S., at 635, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2821, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 683.We cautioned courts against leaving the rest of the field to the legislative process: “Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad.” Id., at 634-635, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2821, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 683.

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 asked in the first instance whether the banned firearms “were common at the time of ratification” in 1791. 784 F. 3d, at 410. But we said in Heller that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” 554 U. S., at 582, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2792, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 651.

The Seventh Circuit alternatively asked whether the banned firearms relate “to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” 784 F. 3d, at 410 (internal quotation marks omitted). The court concluded that state and local ordinances never run afoul of that objective, since “states, which are in charge of militias, should be allowed to decide when civilians can possess military-grade firearms.” Ibid. But that ignores Heller’s fundamental premise: The right to keep and bear arms is an independent, individual right. Its scope is defined not by what the militia needs, but by what private citizens commonly possess. 554 U. S., at 592, 627-629, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2797, 2817-2818, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 657, 678-680. Moreover, the Seventh Circuit endorsed the view of the militia that Heller rejected. We explained that “Congress retains plenary authority to organize the militia,” not States. Id., at 600, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2802, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 662 (emphasis added). Because the Second Amendment confers rights upon individual citizens—not state governments—it was doubly wrong for the Seventh Circuit to delegate to States and localities the power to decide which firearms people may possess.

Lastly, the Seventh Circuit considered “whether law-abiding citizens retain adequate means of self-defense,” and reasoned that the City’s ban was permissible because “[i]f criminals can find substitutes for banned assault weapons, then so can law-abiding homeowners.” 784 F. 3d, at 410, 411. Although the court recognized that “Heller held that the availability of long guns does not save a ban on handgun ownership,” it thought that “Heller did not foreclose the possibility that allowing the use of most long guns plus pistols and revolvers . . . gives householders adequate means of defense.” Id., at 411.

That analysis misreads Heller. The question under Heller is not whether citizens have adequate alternatives available for self-defense. Rather, Heller asks whether the law bans types of firearms commonly used for a lawful purpose—regardless of whether alternatives exist. 554 U. S., at 627-629, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2817-2818, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 678-680. And Heller draws a distinction between such firearms and weapons specially adapted to unlawful uses and not in common use, such as sawed-off shotguns. Id., at 624-625, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2815-2816, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 676-677. The City’s ban is thus highly suspect because it broadly prohibits common semiautomatic firearms used for lawful purposes. Roughly 5 million Americans own AR-style semiautomatic rifles. See 784 F. 3d, at 415, n. 3. The overwhelming majority of citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful purposes, including self-defense and target shooting. See ibid. Under our precedents, that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons. See McDonald, 561 U. S., at 767-768, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3036-3037, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894, 914-915; Heller, supra, at 628-629, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2817-2818, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 679-680.

The Seventh Circuit ultimately upheld a ban on many common semiautomatic firearms based on speculation about the law’s potential policy benefits. See 784 F. 3d, at 411-412. The court conceded that handguns — not “assault weapons” — “are responsible for the vast majority of gun violence in the United States.” Id., at 409. Still, the court concluded, the ordinance “may increase the public’s sense of safety,” which alone is “a substantial benefit.” Id., at 412. Heller, however, forbids subjecting the Second Amendment’s “core protection . . . to a freestanding ‘interest-balancing’ approach.” Heller, supra, at 634, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2821, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 683. This case illustrates why. If a broad ban on firearms can be upheld based on  conjecture that the public might feel safer (while being no safer at all), then the Second Amendment guarantees nothing.
III

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. 306 , 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. 833, 843 , 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.”

WHAT ABOUT THE ANTONYUK CASE THAT IS ALSO PRESENTLY UP FOR A VOTE BY THE COURT ON A PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI?

Apart from Snope, there is another case that, in one important respect, is, at the moment, even more pressing than Snope. The case is Antonyuk vs. James.

While the Snope case flows naturally from Heller from the standpoint of Court meticulously reviewing categories of firearms that fall within the core protection of the Second Amendment, the Antonyuk case addresses a matter that goes directly to the authority of the U.S. Supreme Court as the Third Branch of the Federal Government that the New York State Government openly defies.

The Antonyuk case challenges New York’s defiance to adhere to the Bruen rulings. If the U.S. Supreme Court fails to take up this case, it effectively capitulates to state Governments, allowing them to blatantly ignore High Court rulings they happen to take exception to.

The Court must take up Antonyuk and strike down New York’s amendments to its Handgun Law, for those amendments are patently unconstitutional.

The enforcement of them by New York constitutes a direct attack on the legitimacy of the High Court to have the final word on the meaning and the purport of the Second Amendment.

Both Antonyuk and Snope are extremely important to the inviolability of our natural law rights, and, particularly, that right in our Nation’s Bill of Rights without which a Free Constitutional Republic and a sovereign citizenry cannot truly continue to exist—"the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” a right that “shall not be infringed.”

______________________________________________

SCOTUS, STOP THE MERRY-GO-ROUND ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT ANTONYUK CASE IMPACTING BRUEN, GRANT THE WRIT OF CERTIORARI, AND EXPEDITE REVIEW ON THE MERITS

"THE FATE OF THE HIGH COURT'S DECISIONS IN HELLER, MCDONALD AND BRUEN AND THE FATE OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT ITSELF, HANG IN THE BALANCE!”

Will the U.S. Supreme Court, at long last, review, on the merits, the first and most prominent Second Amendment case to come down the pike since the Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022)?

We had our doubts but now have some hope, given New York Gun Owners filing of their PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI, requesting review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

This is the Antonyuk Petitioners SECOND request for review.

Petitioners filed their Second Petition for Writ of Certiorari last month, on January 22, 2025. The citation is 2025 U.S. S. CT. BRIEFS LEXIS 219 (No. 24-795).

The case has gone through several captioning iterations since Petitioners’ first filing challenging the New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s amendments to the State’s Handgun Law following the publication of Bruen on June 23, 2022.

In the first case, captioned Antonyuk vs. Bruen, referred to as Antonyuk I (an abbreviation that serves as a useful shorthand descriptor), Petitioners brought their lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.

The District Court dismissed the case “without prejudice,” on motion of the Court itself having found some of the parties to the action did not have standing to sue and, therefore, that the Court did not have subject matter jurisdiction. Dismissal of the case without prejudice meant that the proper party to the suit, could refile the case.

The District Court opined that the sole individual Party Plaintiff, Ivan Antonyuk, did have standing to bring his action against the New York Government.

Ivan Antonyuk promptly refiled his case in the same Court, and Other individuals joined him as Party Plaintiffs.

Shortly, after filing their Complaint, in a case referred to by the courts as Antonyuk II, the Plaintiff Petitioners filed their motion for Preliminary Injunction to prevent the Hochul Government from lenforcing the amendments to the Handgun Law while the Parties litigated the issues presented at trial, on the merits.

The District Court granted Petitioners’ injunction and enjoined Governor Hochul from enforcing the core provisions of a sizable set of the amendments enacted immediately after the Bruen decision came down. The New York Government appealed the District Court’s granting of the Preliminary Injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

The Second Circuit’s decision is found in the case captioned Antonyuk vs. Chiumento, 89 F.4th 271 (2nd Cir. 2023), decided on December 9, 2023. Several other plaintiffs filed actions in NY sister Federal District Courts (the Southern and Western District Courts of New York) and their cases were merged with the U.S. Northern District of New York case.

But, the original Antonyuk II case would always remain the lead case challenging Governor Hochul’s amendments to the State’s Handgun Law, in response to Bruen, as reflected in the name of the principal plaintiff, whose case set in motion all actions since filed against the Hochul Government’s amendments to the New York Handgun Law.

What provoked these challenges? Responsibility falls on the NY Government.

Governor Hochul did not comply with the High Court’s rulings and she made plain that her Government had no intention of complying with the Bruen rulings.

In our system of law and justice the High Court can’t act on its own initiative to force compliance of an impudent State, until a cause of action comes before it.

The Court needs a case and controversy brought before it for the Court to have jurisdiction sufficient to preside over it. That requires a legal cause of action brought by an injured party, and and NYSRPA versus Bruen is just such a case. The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association brought action against Kevin Bruen, in his official capacity of Superintendent of the New York State Police alleging serious constitutional violations inherent in the New State Handgun Law.

Associate Justice, Clarence Thomas laid out the cause of action in the first two paragraphs of the case decision.

The State of New York makes it a crime to possess a firearm without a license, whether inside or outside the home. An individual who wants to carry a firearm outside his home may obtain an unrestricted license to “have and carry” a concealed “pistol or revolver” if he can prove that “proper cause exists” for doing so. N. Y. Penal Law Ann. §400.00(2)(f ). An applicant satisfies the “proper cause” requirement only if he can “demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community.” E.g., In re Klenosky, 75 App. Div. 2d 793, 428 N. Y. S. 2d 256, 257.

Petitioners Brandon Koch and Robert Nash are adult, law-abiding New York residents who both applied for unrestricted licenses to carry a handgun in public based on their generalized interest in self-defense. The  State denied both of their applications for unrestricted licenses, allegedly because Koch and Nash failed to satisfy the “proper cause” requirement. Petitioners then sued respondents—state officials who oversee the processing of licensing applications—for declaratory and injunctive relief, alleging that respondents violated their Second and Fourteenth Amendment rights by denying their unrestricted-license applications for failure to demonstrate a unique need for self-defense.  The District Court dismissed petitioners’ complaint and the Court of Appeals affirmed. Both courts relied on the Second Circuit’s prior decision in Kachalsky v. County of Westchester, 701 F. 3d 81, which had sustained New York’s proper-cause standard, holding that the requirement was “substantially related to the achievement of an important governmental interest.” Id., at 96.

In Bruen, published on June 23, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the “Proper Cause” standard, which had stood for decades as the core of the Handgun law that severely impacted a person’s right to armed self-defense in the public domain.

The Government had long utilized that standard to justify (really rationalize) severely restricting the number of concealed handgun carry licenses it issued to civilian citizens residing or working in New York. Application of “Proper Cause” severely handicapped an American citizen’s fundamental right to armed self-defense.

Forced to delete “Proper Cause” from the State’s Handgun Law, the Hochul Government crafted a mechanism to mask use of that standard under the rubric of “Good Moral Character,” which presently existed in the Handgun Law. The U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule on the constitutionality of that.

So, the State utilized that seeming lapse by the Court, to imbue “Good Moral Character” with increased functional utility to serve as an adequate, if not ideal, substitute for the “Proper Cause” standard, thereby allowing the State to continue to constrain issuance of concealed handgun carry licenses, despite Bruen.

Yet, the State Government would still be compelled to issue many more concealed handgun carry licenses under the “Good Moral Character” standard than under the “Proper Cause” standard because the Government could not so easily arbitrarily and capriciously deny the issuance of concealed handgun carry licenses as they once had done through application of “Proper Cause.” So the Government had to devise a new strategy—one that would lessen the usefulness of a concealed handgun carry license for self-defense by restricting the places where a holder of a concealed handgun carry license could LAWFULLY CARRY and LAWFULLY USE a handgun for self-defense.

To that end the Government enacted a stringent set of “sensitive location” restrictions that precluded lawful carry and use of a handgun for self-defense purposes in those locations.

Instituting sensitive location restrictions, that had not previously existed, effectively transformed a licensee’s unrestricted concealed handgun carry license into a restricted concealed handgun carry license.

New York—and especially the City of New York—has become a veritable patchwork quilt of “PATCHES” consisting of LAWFUL CARRY (SAFE) and UNLAWFUL CARRY (UNSAFE) of hopscotch squares, that severely inhibit the exercise of a person’s right to protect him or herself against a dangerous predatory threat to life and safety that New York City, in particular, is inundated with.

The very thing that Justice Thomas, the author of the Bruen decision, had warned the New York Government not to do, Kathy Hochul and the Democratic Party majority Legislature in Albany machinated to do anyway, and did so in bold, blatant defiance to the Court’s stated admonishment to the Hochul Government.

The Government packaged these amendments under the label, “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (CCIA), a misleading and truly absurd name for an awful set of legal provisions, crafted to hide the incongruity and unconstitutionality of the Hochul Government’s actions, all directed to avoiding and overriding the Bruen rulings.

The State Senate in Albany passed the CCIA into Law on July 1, 2022, eight days after the High Court published the Bruen decision, and Kathy Hochul signed the Act into law the same day.

The law enacted would take effect on September 1, 2022, and the Government began enforcement of the CCIA on that day.

Petitioners filed their complaint, on July 11, 2022, challenging the CCIA, in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, just ten days after Hochul signed the CCIA into law, on July 1, 2022. That signing occurred just eight days after the Supreme Court decision in Bruen.

The case, Antonyuk versus Bruen, 624 F. Supp. 3d 210 (N.D.N.Y. 2022), was the first case out of the gate to challenge the constitutionality of the amendments to the New York Handgun Law.

The Petitioners, Ivan Antonyuk, and three organizations, Gun Owners Of America, Inc.; Gun Owners Foundation; And Gun Owners Of America New York, Inc. alleged violations of their rights under the First, Second and Fourteenth Amendments, and also under 42 USCS § 1983 of the Civil Rights Act (Deprivation of Rights). On July 20, 2022, Petitioners filed their Motion for a Preliminary Injunction against enforcement of the CCIA—that was to take effect on September 1, 2022—until the Court had ruled on the merits of their case.

The Defendant, Kevin P. Bruen, in his official capacity as the Superintendent of the New York State Police, at that time, opposed the Complaint and Motion.

But, the District Court recognized the merits of the Petitioners cause of action and recited his arguments in a lengthy opinion. Yet, the Court dismissed the case without prejudice, for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, because Petitioner organizations did not have standing to bring suit. They had brought action in their own right and they could not legally argue injury-in-fact, apart from such injury suffered by their members whom they did not name.

However, since the District Court dismissed the case “without prejudice,” against the organizations only, this meant that Ivan Antonyuk, in his individual capacity, was the lone Petitioner who had standing to sue and could refile his complaint against the Government.

Still, the Court could not ethically tell Ivan Antonyuk to refile the case, but, seemingly the Court, subtly, encouraged him to do so, suggesting that, if he were to do so, the Court would likely grant a motion for preliminary injunction. The Court made that plain in its lengthy opinion.

The granting of preliminary injunction is grounded in part on the party filing the motion presenting a strong argument supporting the inference that the movant will prevail on the merits once the case proceeds to trial.

Hochul didn’t bother to consider the import of the Court’s ruling. She took the dismissal of the case as a win, not bothering to inform the Press or the Public that a world of difference exists, in law, between the court’s dismissal of a case “with prejudice” and the court’s dismissal of a case “without prejudice,” and that such a dismissal of a case without prejudice for lack of standing is oft a technical error, easily corrected through the refiling of a case with the same set of facts and law but with the proper parties as plaintiffs.

Hochul evidently thought she could play up this win as politically advantageous to her Administration, although only temporarily, despite the legal marsh her Government was and is stuck in. But, “the optics” played well, in the Press, at least for a time. The idea she sought to convey is that the New York courts were all on her side. Well, some of them were and are, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. But, it would be a while before a case would wind up before the Federal Appellata Court.

Hochul must have known the Petitioner, Ivan Antonyuk, would refile the case, and he did so. Her staff attorneys would likely have told her that challenges to the CCIA were not going away. And, Ivan Antonyuk did refile his case.

The courts would henceforth refer to the new case as Antonyuk II.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, did grant the Petitioners their Motion for Preliminary Injunction, as they had every reason to expect.

The Government opposed the granting of the motion. That, too, was expected.

Eventually, the Antonyuk case wended its way to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where the Second Circuit merged it with a few other similar cases, filed in other New York District Courts.

The Second Circuit’s first major decision came down on December 8, 2023. The case is captioned Antonyuk versus Chiumento, 89 F.4th 271 (2nd Cir. 2023).

True to form the Second Circuit sided with the Government. It vacated the stay of enforcement of the CCIA in place after the U.S. District Court granted the Antonyuk Petitioners’ motion for preliminary injunction. The Government was once again free to enforce its “Concealed Carry Improvement Act.”

Petitioners thereupon appealed the adverse decision to the U.S. Supreme Court through their Petition for Writ of Certiorari. What happened?

The High Court DID GRANT the Petitioners FIRST WRIT but delayed its review of the case on the merits, seemingly oddly, by request of the Antonyuk Petitioners themselves.

Petitioners had made a strong case for review of their case in 2024, but in the last paragraph of their Brief, they asserted the possible application of another case that the Petitioners said might have an impact on Antonyuk. That case is United States versus Rahimi. The Petitioners therefore requested the Court to delay its review of Antonyuk, pending the possible application of Rahimi, once the Court decided that case.

Back in February 2024, the Court had not yet completed its review of  Rahimi, or, otherwise, the Justices had not finalized their drafts and were not prepared at that point to publish their decision. But is Rahimi applicable to Bruen and to Antonyuk? Petitioners had a good reason for believing so, and their reason for asking the Court to delay review goes to an analysis of the test of “Historical Tradition” that replaced “interest balancing.”

This was first discussed and dealt with in Heller and analyzed at length in Bruen. Rahimi dealt with “Historical Tradition” if only tangentially. But Rahimi would be helpful to resolution of Antonyuk if the Court could tie up the loose strands in the methodology of “Historical Tradition” that were left in Bruen.

Even so, the delay gave the Roberts Court some respite.

Both the Chief Justice and the Liberal Wing of the Court must have been relieved. They could continue to delay a reckoning on Antonyuk. That certainly wouldn’t displease Governor Hochul and the Democrat Party Legislators in Albany. If the Government could enforce the CCIA unimpeded, that would be enough.

In its Order issued on July 2, 2024, the High Court said it is remanding the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

In its remand to the Second Circuit Appellate Court, the U.S. Supreme Court said,

On petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Petition for writ of certiorari granted. Judgment vacated, and case remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for further consideration in light of United States v. Rahimi, 602 U. S. ___, 2024 U.S. LEXIS 2714 (2024).

On June 21, 2024, the Court decided Rahimi. The citation is now complete: United States versus Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680; 144 S. Ct. 1889 (2024).

The Second Circuit had to act. Still, the Second Circuit Court did not issue its decision until late October 2024, over three months from the date the U.S. Supreme Court remanded Antonyuk to its jurisdiction.

The Appellate Court stated, not surprisingly, that, having considered the High Court’s decision in Rahimi, it stands by its earlier decision. It was that adverse decision that led Petitioners’ to file their request for review to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Second Circuit Court once again vacated most of the lower District Court’s granting of Petitioners’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction that had stayed enforcement of the core of Hochul’s CCIA.

The case citation is Antonyuk versus James, 120 F.4th 941 (2nd Cir. 2024), decided on October 24, 2024.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals then remanded the case to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, ordering the lower Court to review the case anew in light of the Second Circuit’s latest findings.

This is the same District Court that took up Petitioners’ FIRST CHALLENGE to Governor Hochul’s amendments to the State’s Handgun Law. And that case was, on information and belief, the first case anywhere, directly challenging the constitutionality of New York’s “Concealed Carry Improvement Act.”

We will provide a more detailed timeline of the litigation and provide more in depth analysis of the cases and the stakes involved in an upcoming essay on our website.

Antonyuk has great significance to the sanctity of the Second Amendment because no other Second Amendment case to date has such a direct impact on Bruen. A final resolution of Antonyuk is now at hand, and the U.S. Supreme Court must not squander this opportunity.

After the Second Circuit reiterated its conclusion that the core of Hochul’s amendments to the State’s handgun law are legally and constitutionally sound and therefore do not offend Bruen, and, after the Court remanded the case back down to the same Court that dealt with the case over two and half years earlier—which bought more time for the New York Government and for the Second Circuit Court—the Antonyuk Petitioners were not going to continue to allow the Government or the New York Courts to play any more games with time, constantly delaying a final reckoning on the constitutionality of the CCIA and, thence, on the legality of continued State enforcement of the CCIA.

Petitioners informed the U.S. District Court that they intended to file an immediate appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court——their SECOND WRIT OF CERTIORARI. They would not bother filing a request to the Second Circuit for reconsideration of the Court’s adverse decision. That would be a colossal waste of time, effort and money. And further litigation at the District Court would also be a waste of both time and valuable resources.

The District Court—that had granted Petitioners’ motion for Preliminary Injunction back in 2022, only to have the U.S. Court of Appeals stay execution of the Injunction—agreed to continue its own stay of the original case, pending the filing of the Writ.

That original case (with proper party plaintiffs), Antonyuk II, was, at the time, formally captioned Antonyuk versus Hochul.

The District Court of New York entered its stay by “Text Order,” dated December 2, 2024.

Petitioners then were free to file their second Writ of Certiorari, and, on January 22, 2025, they did so. The document is 2025 U.S. S. Ct. Briefs Lexis 219 (No. 2475 January 22, 2025).

This second appeal includes much of the argument presented in their first Writ to the High Court.

The Petitioners arguments are as sound now, both legally and logically, as they were back in 2024.

Petitioners reiterated the questions for review and argument in support of granting the Writ but now point to the Rahimi case as critical in explaining a definitive temporal locus to be employed in factoring in the test of “Historical Tradition” in judging the constitutionality of state actions impacting the sacred right of the people to armed self-defense.

This is why, it has become apparent, that, in Petitioners’ FIRST Petition for Writ of Certiorari, they decided to request a remand of the case rather than immediate review of Antonyuk, on the merits, even though a remand to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, would serve to delay final resolution of the case yet again. They felt awaiting a Rahimi decision, if favorable, would be worth the delay. The case has proved beneficial to Petitioner’s cause of action apropos of the temporal element of “Historical Tradition” that courts must use when reviewing State action impacting the core of the Second Amendment. This is a crucial part of Petitioners’ argument for striking down the CCIA. The issue of the temporal point at which “Historical Tradition” should frame court review of the constitutionality of a State’s action impacting the core of the Second Amendment is decisive of a reviewing court’s determination of constitutionality of that State action. That is one reason the Antonyuk Petitioners had sought delay in review of their case.

Moreover, as the Supreme Court had granted the Petitioners’ FIRST WRIT—albeit resulting in a remand of the case to the Second Circuit and further delay of final resolution—still this granting of the first Writ means the High Court is well-aware of and sensitive to the issues and arguments of the Petitioners and and is amenable to granting the SECOND WRIT, and is ready to spring into action with an expeditious ruling, consistent with Bruen and, therefore, beneficial to the Antonyuk Petitioners.

TIME MAY WELL HAVE BEEN ON THE SIDE OF THE NEW YORK HOCHUL GOVERNMENT SINCE ENFORCEMENT OF THE CCIA HAS CONTINUED FOR WELL OVER TWO YEARS. BUT TIME IS RUNNING OUT FOR NEW YORK. AN ULTIMATE RESOLUTION OF THE CASE IS, WE BELIEVE, AT HAND.

These are the opening remarks and questions for review as presented in the Antonyuk Petitioners’ SECOND PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI:

Moments after this Court issued N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), striking down New York's discretionary firearms licensing regime, state politicians decried the decision as "reprehensible," vowing to resist the "insanity" of "gun culture" that "possessed . . . the Supreme Court." Rather than following Bruen, New York enacted a "Concealed Carry Improvement Act" that makes it more difficult to bear arms than before Bruen was decided.

A panel of the Second Circuit upheld much of this law in an opinion this Court vacated in light of United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024). But on remand, the panel doubled down, reissuing a nearly identical opinion and dismissing Rahimi as having "little direct bearing on our conclusions." Relying almost entirely on a few late-19th-century outlier laws rather than Founding-era practice, the panel again affirmed New York's requirement of "good moral character" as a precondition to public carry, along with most of its gun bans in all manner of nonsensitive public places. These holdings clearly contravene Bruen's rejection of discretionary "suitability" assessments and warning not to declare all of Manhattan a "sensitive place." The questions presented are:
1. Whether the proper historical time period for ascertaining the Second Amendment's original meaning as applied to the states is 1791, rather than 1868; and

2. Whether "the people" must convince government officials of their "good moral character" before exercising their Second Amendment right to bear arms.

The Antonyuk Petitioners then proceed to lay out the reasons for the High Court’s granting of their Petition for review of their case.

REASONS FOR GRANTING THE PETITION

THIS CASE PRESENTS AN EXCEPTIONALLY IMPORTANT QUESTION WHOSE ANSWER WILL AFFECT MANY SECOND AMENDMENT CASES.

Bruen and Rahimi Left Unresolved the Appropriate Temporal Focal Point for Second Amendment Analysis.

Although acknowledging "an ongoing scholarly debate on whether courts should primarily rely on the prevailing understanding" when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, or when the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, Bruen ultimately left the question unresolved "because . . . the public understanding . . . in both 1791 and 1868 was . . . the same. . . . " . Yet Justice Barrett anticipated that this question "might make a difference in another case," explaining that "1791 is the benchmark" and "Reconstruction-era history" alone is "simply too late" and "too little." Id. at 82 (Barrett, J., concurring). Cautioning the lower courts, Justice Barrett rejected any "freewheeling reliance on historical practice from the mid-to-late 19th century. . . .” Id. at 83.

But following Bruen, the lower courts have failed to coalesce on this temporal question and, like Bruen, Rahimi did not "resolv[e] the dispute." Rahimi at 692 n.1. And like Justice Barrett in Bruen, Justice Jackson called the temporal question an "[e]xtremely pertinent inquir[y]" which "await[s] resolution. . . ." Id. at 746 n.4 (Jackson, J., concurring). Indeed, there is a multi-way circuit split on the question, and the district courts are in disarray, with divergent approaches continuing to multiply as to which historical sources to use.

This case presents an excellent vehicle for this Court to resolve the debate between 1791 and 1868, which presents at all stages of litigation. Below, the panel relied – almost exclusively – on historical laws enacted well after the Second Amendment's ratification, with the earliest being nearly half a century after the Founding. Strikingly, Bruen considered and rejected each of the three earlier purported analogues the panel did reference. Thus, the panel's singular focus on mid-to-late 19th-century sources was outcome-determinative in this case because, "apart from a handful of late-19th-century jurisdictions" (Bruen at 38), no historical tradition exists to justify the CCIA. Resolution of the temporal question not only will correct the panel's errors below, but also will provide critical guidance to innumerable lower courts analyzing similar challenges.

This Court's Second Amendment Decisions Confirm 1791 Is the Proper Focal Point.

Note: the Antonyuk Petitioners make plain that the “historical tradition” test of Bruen is resolved in Rahimi—

COURTS SHOULD INVOKE 1791—THE DATE OF RATIFICATION OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS—AS THE APPROPRIATE, DEFINITIVE TEMPORAL ARBITER FOR COURT REVIEW OF AND TESTING OF THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF STATE OR FEDERAL ACTS THAT IMPACT THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

In other words, reviewing courts should defer to the text of the Second Amendment itself for determining whether government action infringes the core of the Second Amendment.

IT IS TIME TO STOP THIS RIDICULOUS MERRY-GO-ROUND. THE U.S. SUPREME COURT MUST NOT ALLOW LOWER COURTS TO PLAY THEIR GAME OF DELAY AND APPEASEMENT ON BEHALF OF THE FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS THAT  CONTINUE TO DEFY U.S. SUPREME COURT DECISIONS THEY DON’T LIKE AND THAT ARE CONTRARY TO THEIR AIMS AND AGENDA. THEY WANT THIS THIRD BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT TO BE A RUBBER-STAMP FOR THEM, NOT AN INDEPENDENT BRANCH THAT THWARTS THEIR WILL. THAT MUST NOT BE!

ONE OF THE TOP OBJECTIVES OF THESE RUTHLESS AND DESTRUCTIVE FORCES IS THE ELIMINATION OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT. THEY ATTACK ALL ATTEMPTS BY CITIZENS TO STRENGTHEN IT.

TREACHEROUS FORCES OPPOSE AN ARMED CITIZENRY WHICH EXISTS TO SECURE BOTH LIFE AND LIBERTY. THESE FORCES SEE THE ARMED CITIZENRY AS A COUNTER-FORCE THAT WOULD PREVENT A STRONG CENTRAL GOVERNMENT EXERTING CONTROL OVER THE PEOPLE. THEY CANNOT ABIDE THIS.

BUT, WITH BIDEN OUT OF OFFICE AND TRUMP IN OFFICE, THEY SEE THEIR WELL-ENGINEERED PLANS TO TRANSFORM OUR COUNTRY INTO A DESPOTIC STATE QUICKLY UNRAVELING. THEY ARE ENRAGED AND DISTRAUGHT BY RECENT EVENTS.

THE ARMED CITIZENRY IS THE MOST EFFECTIVE DETERRENT TO THE REALIZATION OF THEIR OBJECTIVES—INSTITUTION OF TYRANNY OF GOVERNMENT. THE FORCES THAT SEEK TO DESTROY THIS COUNTRY KNOW THAT THE ARMED CITIZENRY WAS AND REMAINS THE BEST DETERRENT TO TYRANNY.

THIS IS WHY THESE FORCES THAT CRUSH ARE OBSESSED WITH DESTROYING THE SECOND AMENDMENT AND THE ARMED AMERICAN CITIZENRY.

IF THESE FORCES ARE SUCCESSFUL IN THEIR TREACHEROUS ENDEAVORS, THEY CAN EASILY SUBJUGATE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, CONTROLLING THEIR THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS.

LET US NOT BE DISTRACTED FROM THE SALIENT CRISIS AT HAND. IT IS FRONT AND CENTER AND IT IS DIRE.

We now await the U.S. Supreme Court decision whether to grant or deny the Writ once they return from recess.

The U.S. Supreme Court must take up this case. If it fails to do so, that means the New York Hochul Government has won. And further weakening of a citizen’s right to keep and bear arms in New York will continue to be eroded until nothing is left of the right.

As important as the pending Snope case is (which the U.S. Supreme Court continues to delay voting to grant review or not), the ANTONYUK case is, without doubt, THE MOST IMPORTANT SECOND AMENDMENT CASE TO COME BEFORE THE COURT SINCE BRUEN BECAUSE IT DIRECTLY IMPACTS BRUEN IN A WAY THAT NO OTHER PENDING CASE DOES. THE NEW YORK STATE CCIA IS BOTH A DIRECT RESPONSE TO BRUEN AND OPERATES IN OPEN AND BLATANT DEFIANCE OF IT.

If the U.S. Supreme Court does not take up any other Second Amendment case, this term, it must take up Antonyuk.

If the Court does review this case, IT MUST STRIKE DOWN the guts of New York’s amendments to its Handgun Law. If it rules in favor of the New York Government, then the Court slits its own throat by undermining its own decision in Bruen, and it opens the Country up to Tyranny. BRUEN WOULD BE FUNCTIONALLY DEAD AS WOULD THE SECOND AMENDMENT, FREEDOM, AND LIBERTY.

Nor can the Court take a pass on this case. For the result is the same.

The New York Government has treated THE BRUEN RULINGS as garbage and has treated the Court, the THIRD BRANCH OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, as a Branch without credible authority.

If New York can arrogantly, defiantly violate the Bruen rulings, which were, after all, directed, first and foremost at New York, then any other jurisdiction will feel confident it may do the same, perceiving it has tacit “license” to do so. The Bruen rulings will cease to have meaning and significance.

Anti-Second Amendment states would then see the Court in the same vein as the world has perceived the demented, dementia-riddled Joe Biden, and his Administration—as effete, ineffectual, frightened, and imbecilic little creatures, to be taken advantage of or simply ignored.

Anti-Second Amendment states and local jurisdictions would be constantly emboldened to continue violating the citizen’s fundamental right to armed self-defense, and they would act aggressively—flagrantly violating the law and the Constitution.  

In time, the right to armed self-defense in the public domain and even in the home would be second-guessed. That would result in a deleterious domino effect. Heller and McDonald, will in turn be weakened. For, each case depends on and clarifies points of each of the others. They are all connected.

We hope and pray that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have as much sway over Chief Justice Roberts as had the late eminent Justice, Antonin Scalia.

They must impress on Chief Justice Roberts, and on the other ostensibly Conservative-wing Justices, the imperative need to take up Antonyuk this term and to strike down New York’s ridiculous and dangerous Handgun Law. And they must hold that the date of ratification of the Bill of Rights, in 1791, is the date on which the methodological test of “Historical Tradition” in Second Amendment cases must rest.

Antonyuk will thereupon become THE FOURTH LANDMARK SECOND AMENDMENT CASE. This would be a fitting gift to the American people in 2025, and a feather in the cap of President Trump.

President Trump will thus be remembered as the leader who reclaimed, for the American people, their Nation’s ancestral history, heritage, culture, and moral stature. He will also be remembered as the leader who restored the Nation to its former grandeur. May this all come to pass!

_________________________________________

NEW YORK GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL TALKS A GOOD GAME ABOUT COMMON-SENSE GUN LAWS BUT IS MUM ON COMMONSENSICAL ARMED SELF-DEFENSE

To say the New York Hochul Government, like the Cuomo Government before it, detests armed self-defense is the mother of all understatement.

While guns in the wrong hands threaten society, firearms in the right hands protect society. This is a truism that Anti-Second Amendment States like New York deny out-of-hand.

A seditious Press and medical organizations give these Anti-Second Amendment States ammunition to continue their false, noxious, monotonous, zealous tirades over “GUNS” and over the loaded phrase, “GUN VIOLENCE,” which has become a ludicrous stand-in for “CRIMINAL VIOLENCE” that, disturbingly, is rarely mentioned. The reason why is plain.

The phrase ‘CRIMINAL VIOLENCE’ directs one’s attention to the sentient agent of that violence. The phrase ‘GUN VIOLENCE,’ on the other hand, draws attention to the inanimate object, alluding to “THE GUN” as the threat to “PUBLIC ORDER AND SAFETY”— obscuring and minimizing the AGENT who CAUSES the violence, for it is the AGENT who bears sole responsibility for commission of a heinous crime. It is not the object that the AGENT happens to use to commit an act of violence that bears responsibility.

But that’s why “ANTI-GUN” proponents continue to use the phrase “GUN VIOLENCE.” They intend to focus attention solely on the implement used in violence, not the perpetrator of it.

But concomitant with that purpose, there is an insidious design element here. An “ANTI-GUN” government seeks to frustrate the law-abiding citizen’s access to firearms.

The New York Government historically has abhorred the civilian citizen’s access to firearms. The State’s harsh and extensive firearms’ laws exemplify that abhorrence.

The State talks incessantly about a need to fight “Gun Violence” to give short shrift to any discussion of the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms.

How is it that an inanimate object can cause violence? It can’t. Only a sentient agent can operate as a “causal” agent.

The New York Government detests both “THE GUN” and those individuals who wish to exercise their GOD-GIVEN RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS.

Defeating exercise of the right is an ever present, ever-insistent goal of the New York Government, insinuating and sliding through and infiltrating every policy touching upon public safety.

To be sure, promoting public safety is an obligation of a state. It is an important function if not THE MOST IMPORTANT function of a state. But, exemplifying the State function of promoting and ensuring PUBLIC SAFETY does not mean that the citizen has no responsibility providing for HIS PERSONAL SAFETY.

Of course, if New York’s Hochul Government had demonstrated quantifiable success in providing for PUBLIC SAFETY, many New Yorkers might perceive less reason to provide for, and be less predisposed to take action to secure their PERSONAL SAFETY from random violence.

They would exhibit less anxiety over that, notwithstanding the responsibility for securing one’s own SAFETY and WELLBEING rests today—as it always has—ON THE INDIVIDUAL, NOT ON THE STATE.

The Arbalest Quarrel has written extensively on this. See our articles in Ammoland Shooting Sports News: one titled, “The Government Cannot Protect You! You Must Protect Yourself!”, posted on August 6, 2020, and a second titled, “Can We, As Individuals, Rely On The Police To Protect Us?”, posted on November 26, 2019.

Government bears no responsibility for ensuring the safety of individuals within its jurisdiction except in rare, carefully defined circumstances.

In promoting PUBLIC SAFETY a state, and the regional and local governmental bodies, bear responsibility to provide for the safety and security of their respective communities as a whole, not the individual members who comprise those communities.

But Kathy Hochul has done a lousy job as the leader of New York in securing public safety. And New York City Mayor, Eric Adams, hasn’t done any better protecting the residents and workers of this immense metropolitan area.

The draconian State handgun law coupled with the NYPD’s numerous handgun codes and regulations have consistently frustrated the efforts of the citizens residing or working in NYC from ensuring their personal safety when traveling through the State—especially when navigating in, around, under, and through the concrete jungle of the State’s largest metropolitan center and one of the largest in the U.S., “THE BIG APPLE”—New York City.

Hochul jealously guards the State’s prerogative in promoting public safety and continuously fails. And at once, she frustrates a civilian citizen’s fundamental, unalienable, natural law right to provide for his own safety, utilizing the most effective means to do so, a firearm. Her obstinacy is insufferable.

Every word spoken about guns and every action taken by the Hochul Government to thwart exercise of the fundamental and unalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms serves as a testament to the New York Government’s contrariness toward both the certitude of the natural order of things in God’s creation and to the certainty of eternal natural law rights.

The Right of Self-defense of Mind, Body, and Soul is predominant in God’s Creation. This one Right subsumes all other natural law eternal rights.

This preeminent NATURAL LAW RIGHT grounds the SANCTITY and the INVIOLABILITY of the INDIVIDUAL (“THE COMMON MAN)”, in undeniable truth, demanding the subservience of government to the sovereignty of the COMMON MAN.

Here the COMMON MAN is the American citizenry—each and every one of us—in whose name the government (be it federal, state, or local) is permitted to function, and upon our will, is permitted to exist and persist.

But this requires government to serve OUR interests, consistent with the dictates of the Articles of the U.S. Constitution, the amendments thereto, and our original Bill of Rights.

The Sanctity and Inviolability of the Individual pervades the U.S. Constitution. This is by design.

The Sanctity and Inviolability of the Individual is concreted in the doctrine and philosophy of Individualism.

INDIVIDUALISM ENTAILS FREEDOM AND LIBERTY.

The lack of FREEDOM and LIBERTY impelled America’s FIRST PATRIOTS to action—their WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE—against the Tyrannical Rule of King George III of England.

Without extraordinary courage and the formidable power of their firearms and cannon, these Patriots could not have begun to effectively confront Tyranny, much less defeat it.

That they succeeded, is a testament to the indomitability of the individual spirit to confront Tyranny firmly, but no less is that success due to the caching of and efficaciousness of their weaponry and ammunition without which these First Patriots could not feasibly vanquish Tyranny.

THE RIGHT OF ARMED SELF-DEFENSE FOLLOWS FROM THE NATURAL INSTINCT TO SELF-PRESERVATION AND IS EMBODIED IN THE GENERAL RIGHT OF SELF-DEFENSE.

The RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE isn’t something distinct from but is implied in the general expression, “RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENSE.”

A person cannot ably defend himself from a dire threat to Self without the necessary tools to do so.

For the average person, this means becoming adept in the use of one’s firearm and having the will to use it when necessary to protect self and family.

The firearm is the beyond doubt the best defense against a violent predatory attack. And that holds true whether such predatory attack emanates from a beast of prey, or a predatory man that preys on innocent men, or the predatory man-beast of Government that—having abandoned all service to the interests of the citizenry and the Constitution that it is sworn to serve—malevolently, unlawfully, and ruthlessly turns against that citizenry, finding a new purpose in preying upon it.

THE KEEPING AND BEARING OF ARMS PURCHASED THE COMMON MAN’S FREEDOM FROM TYRANNY AND ONLY THROUGH THE KEEPING AND BEARING OF ARMS WILL TYRANNY OF GOVERNMENT REMAIN AT BAY.

PREDATORS ABOUND THROUGHOUT SOCIETY AND WITHIN GOVERNMENT.

It is a paradox rarely if ever mentioned, and, if mentioned, then vociferously denied by advocates of BIG GOVERNMENT, and of the “WELL-ENGINEERED SOCIETY.”

Both Government and Society are nothing more than social and political artifacts. They serve a vital function but only if they function on behalf of the Common Man. Unfortunately, though, through time, these artifacts tend to grow in size.

They become bloated, obese, and are extraordinarily expensive to operate. They forget whom they were created to serve. They serve only themselves and other craven beings who satisfy their wants. They transform into predatory creatures.

And, the American citizenry, the Common Man, suffers from the usurpation of lawful authority that rests in and with that citizenry, that Common Man—the American people.

The predator on the streets of a city continues to prey with abandon on the innocent citizen because Government and Society allow it, tolerate it, perhaps even encourage it.

The common man reacts to this. A GOVERNMENT MAY BELLOW ALL IT WANTS ABOUT ITS CONCERN FOR THE COMMON MAN AND ITS DESIRE TO PROVIDE FOR PUBLIC  SAFETY. BUT, the old adages, “WORDS ARE CHEAP, and “THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING” take on renewed significance—especially in New York.’

Just two days after the Bruen decision came down, NY Governor Kathy Hochul issued a statement, on her official website.

The Supreme Court’s reckless and reprehensible decision to strike down New York’s century-old concealed carry law puts lives at risk here in New York,  . . . Since the decision was released, I have been working around the clock with our partners in the legislature to craft gun safety legislation in response to this ruling that will protect New Yorkers. My number one priority as Governor will always be to keep New Yorkers safe.

Two years later, Hochul commended the U.S. Supreme Court, when it issued the Rahimi decision, all the while reciting the same tiresome platitudes such as “gun safety laws save lives,” and exciting the passions with colorful but vacuous phrases such as “deadly weapons of war,” and extolling the virtues of New York’s gun laws.

Today’s Supreme Court decision reinforces a simple point: common-sense gun safety laws save lives.

In New York, we have some of the nation's strongest laws to keep people safe from gun violence and protect survivors. Our nation-leading efforts to expand Red Flag Laws and restrict access to deadly weapons of war are continuing to improve public safety. And in this past year's Budget, we invested more than $40 million to crack down on abusers like Zackey Rahimi and provide resources for survivors.

But our work is not over. The Bruen decision, and countless other lawsuits filed in its wake, are a chilling reminder that our gun safety laws are consistently under attack. New York will not stand by, and I’m committed to doing everything in my power to keep New Yorkers safe.

Yet, the Hochul Government has done little to nothing “to keep New Yorkers safe.”

“Crime in New York State 2022 Final Data” tells the tale:

Index crime in New York State increased (+22%) in 2022 compared to 2021, with 421,322 Index crimes reported. The increase was driven by a 25 percent increase in all three property crimes and increases in the violent crimes of robbery (+25%) and aggravated assault (+9%). Murder (-11%) and rape (-4%) both decreased. The state’s Index crime rate declined by 3 percent when comparing 2013 and 2022. During the same time period, the violent crime rate increased 11 percent and New York State experienced a 36 percent increase in firearm-related homicides when comparing 2013 to 2022 (See page 4 for additional details). This significant increase mirrored trends that occurred nationally.

New York City Index crimes increased 27 percent in 2022 compared to 2021, with increases in both vio lent crime (+15%) and property crime (+32%). Three of the four violent crimes saw increases: rape (+6%), robbery (+25%), and aggravated assault (+12%). Murder was the only violent crime to decrease (-10%). All three property crimes increased during the same period: burglary (+26%), larceny (+33%), and motor vehicle theft (+31%). Non-New York City Index crimes increased 16 percent in 2022 compared to 2021, largely due to an 18 percent increase in property crime. Violent crime increased about 1 percent, with decreases in murder (-11%) and rape (-11%), and increases in robbery (+9%) and aggravated assault (+3%). Property crime increased 18 percent, with increases reported in all three crimes: burglary (+10%), larceny (+20%), and motor vehicle theft (+13%). Appendix 3 lists crime rates by county for 2022 and Appendix 6 details crime counts by county for 2021 compared to 2022.

See also report of the New York State Comptroller.

What can the average, honorable, responsible man do to ensure his own safety and well-being and that of those dependent upon him from a PREDATORY THREAT, whatever the nature of THAT THREAT and wherever that THREAT LURKS?

One noteworthy person, Jocko Willink, a former U.S. Navy Seal, writer, podcaster, instructor, and businessman, has advice for THE COMMON MAN, going about his daily activities, not looking for trouble, but coming face-to-face with a vicious predator that is out to cause trouble, looking for an easy target. See the article in Business Insider:

Willink says,

If someone attacks me and they want to punch or kick me, I can just run away. They're not holding onto me. I can get away from them. It's when someone grabs you that you need some technique to get out of there, or someone takes you to the ground — that's when you need some technique to get out of there. If someone just wants to punch me, well, I'll walk away from them or run away from them. That's OK.

Hi, I'm Jocko Willink. I'm retired from the military and just wrote a book called Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual.

Obviously, I am a fan of jiu-jitsu. No. 1: It's very practical, like I said, for self-defense. And again, the goal of jiu-jitsu in self-defense isn't to take someone down to the ground — the goal in jiu-jitsu for self-defense is actually to be able to defend yourself on the ground, get up, and get away from an attacker. That's what the goal is.

Now, some people might think: ‘Well, Jocko, I don't want to run away if somebody wants to fight me. I want to fight them.’ Well, let's think about where that might end up for you. No. 1: You don't know if this person has a weapon or not. What if they have a knife? What if they have a pistol? What if they've got three or four friends? And now you're getting either shot, stabbed, mutilated, or otherwise maimed and killed. That's not what you're looking for on a Friday night as you're walking down the street.

OK, so let's say you're so tough that the other guy — he doesn't have a knife, he doesn't have a gun, he doesn't have any friends — and you take him out and break his arm, choke him, and put him to sleep. Well now guess what happens? You're getting arrested. Now you're getting in a lawsuit. Now you have to pay this person money that you actually wanted to beat up.

So it's a lose-lose situation to get in a confrontation on the street. If you can break contact and get away, break contact and get away. That's what you should learn self-defense for. Obviously, if someone is doing something that they're attacking someone in your family and you have to step in to defend yourself, well, that's why you continue training all the time — because that might happen, and you have to be prepared for that. Optimally, you get out of there: You break contact, you get away. If you have to stand and fight, you train yourself so that you're able to do it.

Sure, it helps to be physically strong and to become adept in the martial arts. But that takes a modicum of time and money, and a presumption of physical prowess many people lack, including not a few senior citizens and young (or old) physically disabled individuals, women (of all ages) generally, and those Americans who have suffered grievous injury serving their Country in war. And likely, such an elderly person or a disabled civilian or veteran of combat cannot easily run or outrun a predator intent on committing physical assault or murder. What does a person do, then?

Willink has an answer for that, too, but it is one that a “left-center bias” website like Business Insider likely frowns on, and, so, refrains from mentioning.

But another website we came across that cites this Navy SEAL’s remarks on personal defense, does not display such reticence. We point to that site, a military website, for the answer. See “We are the mighty”:

When it comes to self-defense . . . Jocko Willink . . . has some answers. And they are surprising. . . .

When it comes to self-defense, Willink’s top recommendation isn’t a martial art in the strictest sense. It’s a gun and concealed carry. [emphasis our own]

‘If you are in a situation where you need to protect yourself, that is how you protect yourself,’ he said, noting that potential adversaries will have weapons, they will be on drugs or suffer from some psychotic condition. ‘If you want to protect yourself, that is how you do it.’”

Bar none, a handgun is the best defense against a dangerous threat. You can’t “reason” your way out of a threat posed by a lunatic hopped up on drugs or a psychopathic killer looking to have some “fun” at the expense of an innocent citizen. If these creatures were sane and reasonable, they would not engage in physical violence.

But suppose—notwithstanding the Bruen rulings—a jurisdiction effectively denies the citizenry from carrying a handgun in public for self-defense through the enactment of extremely onerous, expensive,  time-consuming, and frustratingly incoherent licensing schemes.

Jocko Willink continues,

Okay, great. That works in the states that have ‘constitutional carry’ or ‘shall issue’ carry laws. But suppose you are in California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Rhode Island, or Delaware which the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action notes are ‘Rights Restricted – Very Limited Issue’ states where obtaining a concealed carry permit is very difficult?

Willink then recommends Brazilian jujitsu, followed by Western boxing, Muay Thai, and wrestling (the type you see in the Olympics, not the WWE – no disrespect to the WWE). Willink is a proponent of jujitsu in particular – recounting how he used it to beat a fellow SEAL in a sparring match who had 20 years of experience in a different martial art.” Id

But, even protecting yourself without a firearm is fraught with peril.

Again, Jocko Willink knows this, and finds this so disconcerting, he feels it important enough to mention and and we reiterate [see citation infra].

OK, so let’s say you’re so tough that the other guy — he doesn’t have a knife, he doesn’t have a gun, he doesn’t have any friends — and you take him out and break his arm, choke him, and put him to sleep. Well now guess what happens? You’re getting arrested. Now you’re getting in a lawsuit. Now you have to pay this person money that you actually wanted to beat up.

So it’s a lose-lose situation to get in a confrontation on the street. If you can break contact and get away, break contact and get away. That’s what you should learn self-defense for. Obviously, if someone is doing something that they’re attacking someone in your family and you have to step in to defend yourself, well, that’s why you continue training all the time — because that might happen, and you have to be prepared for that. Optimally, you get out of there: You break contact, you get away. If you have to stand and fight, you train yourself so that you’re able to do it.”

Just ask Daniel Penny about lawsuits and criminal indictments. See the article in the Daily Mail. This is the situation that a person defending himself or others,

A grand jury has indicted former Marine Daniel Penny for the chokehold killing of homeless man Jordan Neely during a subway confrontation last month, sources have told The Post — even as Penny’s attorneys vowed to ‘aggressively defend’ their client in court.” Daniel Penny indicted in chokehold death of Jordan Neely. Fortunately, a jury found Penny not guilty of criminally negligent homicide, after an acquittal on the more serious manslaughter charge.

See also the 2007 article by Marko Kloos, titled, “Why the Gun Is Civilization,” in “The Patriot Post.”

Those jurisdictions that restrict armed self-defense, such as New York, typically impose limitations on basic self-defense measures, not just firearms. That is the point raised by Jocko Willink. He knows well that this world is not civilized. Dangerous predators abound all around us. He doesn’t mince words. That is refreshing. And obdurate governments like New York’s Hochul Government refuses to acknowledge the world is as uncivilized today as at any time in the past.

Claiming that disarming the public will somehow promote safety is imbecilic if in fact government leaders truly believe that. All it will succeed in doing is making society less safe, opening it up to more, not less, predation.

So, then, why do governments, like the Hochul Government, make a pretense of concern over the well-being of the Common Man—the Public?

The only reasonable answer is that governments themselves are predatory beasts. They do their best to disguise that fact by claiming that universal disarmament protects us all. That is all a cloak.

Instead, universal disarmament opens up predation to the worst of predators: the Man-Beast of Government.

Willink is one man standing up to monsters.

And the Hochul Government is one such monster.

The Government does nothing to reduce the ever-present danger to the Common Man. Instead, it exacerbates it.

It allows predators to rampage in New York, and, at once, frustrates the innocent New Yorker who simply wishes to mitigate a danger directed against himself, be it from a lunatic on the street or—not inconceivably—from the psychopathy of the Government itself, inching ever closer to Tyranny.

__________________________________________________________

THE SNOPE CASE CAN BLOW ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT FOES OUT OF THE WATER BUT ONLY IF THE CONSERVATIVE WING OF THE U.S. SUPREME COURT HAS THE WILL TO DO SO

[THIS ARTICLE WAS SUBSTANTIALLY EDITED AND PROOFED ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 12, 2025]

IT IS HIGH-TIME THE HIGH COURT HOLDS THAT AMERICANS NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS EXTENDS TO ALL SEMIAUTOMATIC WEAPONS

AS THIS ESSAY GOES TO PUBLICATION ON THE ARBALEST QUARREL, THE U.S. SUPREME COURT HAS VOTED [FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 2025], ON THE CASES IT WILL REVIEW THIS TERM, BUT THE COURT HAS NOT AS YET RELEASED ITS REPORT ON THOSE CASES. THE COURT SAYS IT WILL DO SO ON MONDAY, JANUARY 13, 2025, AT 9:30 AM. See “Today at the Court - Friday, Jan 10, 2025”

In this essay we discuss why we feel the U.S. Supreme Court should review Snope vs. Brown and we also explain why it is—perhaps seen as paradoxical—that we have doubt the Court did vote to grant the writ.

The Court has made its decision, which the public will come to know on Monday, January 13.

We do fervently hope the Court did garner the four votes necessary to review the case. But, our expectation is that it did not, and would not be inclined to do so unless the Conservative wing of the Court has a clear majority.

By reference to the conservative wing, we mean the true, consistent Conservative wing, consisting presently of just two Associate Justices, Clarence Thomas (author of the Bruen decision) and Samuel Alito (author of the McDonald decision), both of whom supported the Heller decision, penned by the late eminent Justice Antonin Scalia.

If four Justices have voted to grant review of Snope, sufficient to support the granting of the writ of certiorari, this means that at least five members of the Court—a majority—do exist, sufficient to provide a favorable ruling for the Petitioners.

Now, if Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh are in agreement with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the Court will have the five votes necessary to warrant review of the case, and Snope vs. Brown will, in the ensuing months, become the fourth landmark Second Amendment case.

This case will, then, strengthen the Second Amendment, making the fundamental, natural law “right of the people to keep and bear arms” impregnable to defeat from the foes of the Second Amendment.

Now, if Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh are in agreement with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, they will have the five votes necessary to warrant review of the case, and Snope vs. Brown will become the fourth landmark Second Amendment case, strengthening the Second Amendment, making the natural law “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” impregnable to defeat.

Chief Justice, John Roberts, would go along as well even if he would prefer not to grant Petitioners’ writ for certiorari.

The reason why is this: Roberts would not be caught dead siding with the three liberal wing dissenting Justices in a major Second Amendment case. Moreover, having previously voted with the Conservative wing on Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, he could not rationally explain away his inconsistency here were he to dissent with the liberal wing in Snope.

There are presently three Second Amendment cases before the Court on a writ of certiorari this term.

The Court will not likely grant review of more than one Second Amendment case if they grant review on any. And of the three writs to be voted on, the question in Snope focuses attention squarely on a State’s claim that it can ban civilian ownership and possession of semiautomatic weapons and that doing so does not conflict with the import of the language of the Second Amendment. This is the most contentious Second Amendment claim and it is the salient legal issue on a writ of certiorari before the U.S. Supreme Court.

This issue is as contentious as the question concerning the legality/constitutionality of abortion. The legacy Press has made it a contentious issue, a cause célèbre: “GET RID OF THESE EVIL TERRIBLE ASSAULT WEAPONS,’”—so the Press and Democrats, and the foes of an armed citizenry say.

And many uninformed, gullible Americans, not realizing the dire import and impact of what that portends for the future of a FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, buys into the simplistic rhetoric and sloganeering, and march compliantly to the drumbeat.

But, unlike the issue of abortion and, contrary to the contention of some that the deliberate killing of an unborn child amounts to a fundamental right, which it isn’t and never was, and, which, on reflection is an abomination, much, much less than a “right,” ithere is no question that the right of the people to keep and bear arms IS a fundamental right.

No one can reasonably doubt the framers of the Constitution felt that armed self-defense is in fact a right, a fundamental and unalienable right and one crucial enough to the safe-keeping of one’s own life and well-being and that of his Country, to inscribe that right in stone. And the framers of the U.S. Constitution did so, even if some people today believe the framers should never have done so, as having done so drives these people apoplectic with rage.

Those people must now contend with the fact that, in the United States, the fundamentality of the nature of armed self-defense as a natural law right is self-evident, true, and not up for debate.

They don’t try to contend with that. Instead, they argue that it no longer matters.

These nay-sayers draw attention to other countries. They assert no other country accepts this, and we shouldn’t either, and that, for these Anti-Second Amendment proponents and zealots, this is the end of the matter. But did it ever occur to such nay-sayers that, perhaps, the belief systems of these other countries, from a moral as well as from a functional, pragmatic standpoint, are faulty—that freedom and liberty, True FREEDOM and LIBERTY, is not likely attainable, and definitely not sustainable, where the people remain unarmed?

But, be that as it may, from a LEGAL STANDPOINT, the United States is an independent, sovereign Nation, subject to its own Constitution and not beholden to or under the legal jurisdiction or command of any other nation or conglomerate of nations, or of any other political entity. In our Nation, unlike any other, “THE COMMON MAN” is, always was, and shall ever remain the SOLE SOVEREIGN OVER GOVERNMENT.

GOVERNMENT IS NOT, WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE, AND WILL NEVER BE A SOVEREIGN AUTHORITY OVER THE COMMON MAN—NOT IN OUR COUNTRY.

THIS IS NOT BLUSTER BUT ONLY AS LONG AS THE AMERICAN CITIZEN REMAINS WELL-ARMED. AND THE FATHERS OF OUR COUNTRY, THE FRAMERS OF OUR CONSTITUTION, THE FOUNDERS OF A TRULY FREE REPUBLIC KNEW THIS. THAT IS WHAT THEY INTENDED. THAT IS WHAT. IN THEIR HEARTS THEY WANTED. THAT IS WHAT THEY ALL AGREED TO, EACH OF THEM, TO A MAN. THAT IS WHAT THEY FOUGHT TO ACHIEVE AND DID ACHIEVE. THAT IS WHAT THEY ALL INSISTED UPON. AND THE EXISTENCE AND PRESERVATION OF THE ARMED CITIZENRY IS THE ONLY REASON THIS NATION HAS SURVIVED AND THRIVED AS A TRULY FREE REPUBLIC, THE MOST POWERFUL, PROSPEROUS, AND SUCCESSFUL NATION THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN.

Whatever Chief Justice John Roberts thinks about preservation of the Armed Citizenry, he likely doesn’t see the issue important enough to embroil the Court in a matter that he wishes to place the Court once again in the crosshairs. Hence, it is unlikely that the Court will take up a case, namely Snope vs. Brown, that will cause consternation among some of the Justices even if Snope is a case the Court should take up as it brings up a matter long overdue—a matter central to the continued existence of a Free Constitutional Republic. The Maryland ban on civilian ownership and possession of semiautomatic weapons cannot be allowed to stand. It creates a dangerous precedent to our Free Republic.

Unfortunately, even if one or more of the Associate Justices, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney-Barrett, do tend to agree with Justices Thomas and Alito, that Maryland has irresponsibly, reprehensibly, unconscionably, and plainly unconstitutionally trampled on a sacred right, the Court may balk from taking up a deeply contentious matter at this time, as important as the Second Amendment is to the security of a Free State, especially in view of how close this Country had come to fall irrevocably, irretrievably into a state of abject tyranny under the Biden-Harris Administration.

A second case before the Court on a writ of certiorari, Gray vs. Jennings also raises a question concerning a State’s draconian ban on semiautomatic weapons but this one, coming out of Delaware, does not deal with the issue of semiautomatic weapons squarely, but only tangentially, in the context of a “preliminary injunction.”

And, as with Snope, as discussed infra, the parties, in Gray, describe the salient issue differently.

The Petitioners in Gray as the Petitioners in Snope, have drafted the issue concisely and emphatically,

“Whether the infringement of Second Amendment rights constitutes per se irreparable injury.”

Petitioners argue that, where a State (in the case at bar, Delaware) summarily places——

. . . bans on common firearms and magazines (which the State dubs “assault weapons” and “large capacity magazines”) without even inquiring into whether those bans are likely unconstitutional, . . . [t]hat refusal to treat the harm inflicted by the loss of the Second Amendment rights as per se irreparable squarely conflicts with the decisions of the Seventh and Ninth Circuits, which have held that the irreparability analysis “does not change where the constitutional violation at issue is a Second Amendment violation [and not a First Amendment violation]. . . .

And by treating violations of the First Amendment as inherently irreparable but not violations of the Second, the decision below demotes the right to keep and bear arms to “a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.” New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 70 (2022) (quoting McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 780 (2010) (plurality)). No monetary damages can adequately compensate a plaintiff for the loss of his inalienable constitu tional rights. The Framers charged this Court and the Nation’s other “independent tribunals of justice” with “resist[ing] every encroachment upon rights expressly stipulated for in the Constitution by the declaration of rights,” 1 ANNALS OF CONG. 439 (1789) (statement of Rep. James Madison). . . .

Petitioners argument boils down to the assertion that, where constitutional rights are at stake, irreparable harm must be presumed—thus requiring the court of competent jurisdiction to grant a preliminary injunction, staying execution of a challenged State law enactment infringing those rights, until the merits of the case are heard and adjudicated by the court.

The Respondent, Attorney General of Delaware, in the Gray case argues that a finding of per se irreparable harm here is improper, and that Petitioners lack standing to bring a claim for injunctive relief, because, as a matter of law, they cannot demonstrate imminent, irreparable harm.

The questions presented by the Delaware Attorney General, on behalf of the State, allude to the manner in which Delaware would like the U.S. Supreme Court to review this case if the High Court takes up the case at all:

1. Whether the court of appeals correctly rejected Petitioners’ attempt to sidestep the ordinary preliminary injunction inquiry with a rule of per se irreparable harm for Second Amendment claims.

2. Whether Petitioners lack Article III standing to challenge either law

The Arbalest Quarrel cannot find the U.S. Supreme Court’s own recitation of the issue were it to agree to grant Petitioners’ writ of certiorari. This suggests to us that the Court has decided to deny the writ.

Gray vs. Jennings alludes to Antonyuk vs. James, which also dealt with a petition for preliminary injunction.

The Second Circuit had reversed the decision of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York that had, in treat part, granted Petitioners’ preliminary injunction.

This meant that New York’s Hochul Government was free to enforce the “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (“CCIA”)—the State Government’s unlawful and arrogant response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in the 2022 Bruen case.

The New York State Senate’s passage of the CCIA and Hochul’s signing it into law the same day—all of which took place only one week after publication of the Bruen decision (strongly suggesting the Hochul Government and the Legislature in Albany had anticipated a negative decision in Bruen after oral argument in November 2021 had taken place, seven months before the decision came down)—led, as justifiably expected, to an immediate challenge, commencing with the Antonyuk case in early July 2022.

A flurry of filings followed, along with a plethora of additional cases brought in other U.S. District Courts around the State. Most of those cases, including the lead Antonyuk case, remain mostly unresolved, well over two years after the filing of the original complaint and petition for injunctive relief.

With the New York Government and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second Circuit, taking their sweet time to respond to the challenges (since the Second Circuit had allowed the Hochul Government to continue enforcement of the CCIA, apart from some minor tinkering around the edges), and Antonyuk bogged down with no appreciable Appellate Court relief in sight, after Antonyuk Petitioners filed a writ of certiorari to the High Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court remanded the case to the Second Circuit, with Justice Alito strongly cautioning the Hochul Government not to dawdle. But dawdle the Hochul Government did.

Once the Second Circuit had entered a final judgment in the case, finding the Government’s CCIA constitutional, and with Petitioners’ second writ before the U.S. Supreme Court, the High Court granted the case for review. This was expected since the CCIA is wholly and pretentiously inconsistent with the Bruen rulings. The Hochul Government hardly conceals its contempt for the High Court and for the Court’s rulings.

The Petitioner’s second writ of certiorari should, in our estimate, have asked plainly and categorically for a decision on the merits. But, a bit inexplicably, the Petitioners asked the Court to remand the case to the Second Circuit in light of another pending case before the Court that Petitioners discerned might have bearing on the “Good Moral Character” requirement, a major component of New York’s amendments to its pretensious, and rigid handgun licensing schema.

And the U.S. Supreme Court gave Petitioners no more than the innocuous relief it had asked for: The Court remanded the case to the Second Circuit.

The case Petitioners’ Brief in support of their writ of certioriorari referred to and which the High Court had subsequently decided is United States v. Rahimi.

Rahimi, although a Second Amendment case, strikes us as essentially irrelevant to the matters before the Court—certainly unncessary to a consideration of teh merits of Antonyuk—since the Antonyuk case involves a direct, undeniable challenge to the constitutionality of the State’s amendments to its rigid handgun licensing regime, a direct and undeniable affront to Bruen.

After all, what more would the High Court wish get its hands on and deal with than a recalcitrant Government and U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that snubs the U.S. Supreme Court—telling the Court essentially: “We don’t like the Bruen decision (nor for that matter, the Heller decision upon which Bruen is based) so we will not follow it and we trust you will do nothing about that.”

Just imagine how Justice Antonin Scalia would have responded to this. Likely, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, too, would wish to have taken up Antonyuk immediately: no more dawdling on this.

The three Associate Justices would have demanded that New York’s insufferable affront to the Court, along with the acts of a willful, wayward Federal Appellate Court would compel the Chief Justice to strike down New York’s CCIA, reaffirming the primacy of its holdings and reasoning in Bruen and Heller, making plain to both the Federal Government and to all state governments and to both state courts and to lower federal Courts, that the U.S. Supreme Court, the highest Court in the Land, that it would not suffer unnecessary delays or defiant responses from obdurate governments and lower courts.

That being so, we cannot understand the Antonyuk Petitioners’ seemingly sheepish request for a remand in its Brief in suppport of its writ of certiorari.

Perusing Petitioners’ Brief, the Petitioners have provided, for the U.S. Supreme Court, everything the Court needs to overturn the New York Hochul Government’s defiant response to Bruen. The

Petitioners have effectively written the Court’s Opinion.

But, because the U.S. Supreme Court remanded Antonyuk to the Second Circuit, the New York Circuit Court of Appeals took the opportunity to simply reaffirm its earlier decision and thereupon remanded the Antonyuk case to the District Court, thereby assuring a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the merits won’t be seen for yet another year or more—if ever it happened to wend its way back to the High Court.

This means more unnecessary delays, and a massive failure of justice for the citizens residing in New York and, by extension a failure of justice for citizens residing in other states, around the Country.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, has now used the occasion of the High Court remand, as one would expect it would do, essentially reiterating its past stance, and remanding the case to the lower District Court, thereby ensuring that the Hochul Government can continue to enforce its unconscionable and unconstitutional handgun regime, and delay final resolution by the U.S. Supreme Court, effectively indefinitely.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals asserted, in principal part,

On June 21, 2024, the Supreme Court decided United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. , 144 S. Ct. 1889, 219 L. Ed. 2d 351 (2024), upholding the facial constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), which criminalizes the possession of firearms by certain individuals subject to a domestic violence restraining order. In the wake of Rahimi, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Antonyuk, summarily vacated our judgment in that case, and remanded the case to this Court for further consideration in light of Rahimi (as it did with all other Second Amendment cases then pending before it). Having reconsidered the prior decision in light of Rahimi, and the parties' supplemental briefing regarding the effect of that decision on our reasoning in this case, we now issue a revised opinion in Antonyuk. We reach the same conclusions that we reached in our prior consolidated opinion. Accordingly, we AFFIRM the district court's injunction in part, VACATE it in part, and REMAND the case for further proceedings consistent with this amended opinion.

The bottom line here is that New York’s handgun licensing schema still exists in essentially the same form as it has existed for over a hundred years. “Good Moral Character” has become the stand-in for the “Proper Cause” standard that was struck down as patently unconstitutional. Illegal government action, infringing the most important right of the American people now continues, unabated, and worse, the lower courts are reckoning with a weak U.S. Supreme Court, and using the opportunity to affirm unconstitutional actions by the state governments they preside over, rubber-stamping unlawful actions. None of this bodes well for New York handgun owners.

For, even though the State has issued more handgun licenses than it had hithertoo issued, the State has watered down the usefulness of those licenses through enactment of a new Statute that created a plethora of “sensitive places” where a licensee cannot lawfully carry a handgun for self-defense. Thus, for those New Yorkers who had previously acquired a handgun license under the original “Proper Cause” requirement, those licensees find themselves with something less than they had before the High Court struck down “Proper Cause”—a handgun license that has become as “restricted” concealed handgun carry license whereas before they had possessed an unadulterated “unrestricted” concealed handgun carry license.

The Hochul Government has deliberately, arrogantly, and more than a trifle diabolically, and definitely unconstitutionally, managed to sidestep the Bruen decision.

Again, why Petitioners in Antonyuk had diluted their own writ of certiorari, by requesting a remand to the Second Circuit instead of requesting a review on the merits of a case ongoing for well over two years since the Bruen decision came down and since the New York Legislature passed and the Governor signed into law the horrendous CCIA, is mystifying to us.

For in its brief, Petitioners had laid out a convincing case for High Court review and for a decision on the merits in their favor.

The Hochul Government’s “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (“CCIA’) serves as a case study in deliberate, contemptuous defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen rulings. The Court would likely have reviewed the case and struck down the CCIA had Petitioners plainly requested the Court to review the case. And, Antonyuk would have gone down in our jurisprudence as the fourth landmark Second Amendment case. That didn’t occur and likely never will, as the New York Courts will keep Antonyuk in perpetual motion spiralling up and down the Federal Court system, never making its way back up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

This is remarkable because Petitioners had done the difficult work for the Court, effectively having written the High Court’s opinion, if Petitioners had simply asked for review of the case instead of suggesting a remand to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, on the basis of Rahimi which, to our mind is hardly relevant.

We cite the Antonyuk Petitioners’ Brief in support of their writ of certiorari at length, below. It is excellent.

Moments after this Court issued N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), striking down New York's discretionary firearms licensing regime, New York politicians decried that decision as "reprehensible," vowing to resist the "insanity" of "gun culture" that "possessed . . . the Supreme Court." Rather than following this Court's decision, New York sought to nullify it through a "Concealed Carry Improvement Act" that makes it more difficult to exercise the right to bear arms in public than before Bruen was decided.

Relying almost entirely on a few outlier laws from the late 19th century, rather than common practice at the time the Second Amendment was ratified, the Second Circuit affirmed most of New York's " Bruen response bill," sanctioning the requirement that carry license applicants demonstrate their "good moral character" to licensing officials despite Bruen's rejection of discretionary "suitability" determinations. The Second Circuit also endorsed New York's firearm bans in all manner of nonsensitive public places, rendering carry licenses of almost no value.” . . .

"The Second Amendment's plain text . . . presumptively guarantees . . . a right to 'bear' arms in public for self-defense."  N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 33 (2022). But just days after that statement was made, New York defiantly enacted its " Bruen response bill," purporting to comport with this Court's decision, but instead seeking to nullify it. Intent on maintaining its de facto prohibition on public carry, New York decided that, if it must issue licenses to ordinary citizens after Bruen, it first would do whatever it could to discourage applicants by imposing novel and onerous licensing requirements, and then render any remaining licenses a practical nullity by prohibiting carry virtually everywhere in the State by declaring a multitude of brand new "sensitive locations."

Although the district court issued a "thorough opinion" that carefully applied the framework established in Bruen, found Petitioners "likely to succeed on a number of their claims," and enjoined large portions of the New York law, the Second Circuit ("the panel") quickly stayed that order without providing "any explanation for its ruling."  The Second Circuit has now issued an opinion largely vacating the district court's injunction, affirming only as to two of the least defensible provisions of the New York law.

To justify New York's widespread carry ban across much of the State, the panel below concocted a historical tradition composed almost entirely (and at times exclusively) of mid-to-late 19th-century statutes that reveal nothing about what the Second Amendment meant to those who ratified it. And to justify New York's requirement that a person prove so-called "good moral character" to licensing officials before being "entrusted" to exercise an enumerated right, the panel sanctioned the very sort of "open-ended discretion" to determine "suitability" that Bruen explicitly prohibited.

If New York's challenged law was its "Bruen response bill," then the panel's decision represents the Second Circuit's" Bruen response opinion." Brazenly, the panel repeatedly justified wholesale rejection of Bruen's methodology, claiming that Bruen was an "exceptional" case, and that in "less exceptional" cases—like this one, apparently—courts are free to contrive their own approach. Audaciously, the panel repeatedly chastised the district court for having hewed too closely to Bruen. And in one instance, the panel faulted the district court for having "failed to properly appreciate" a historical analogue that appears never to have existed.

The panel's repudiation of Bruen was no accident. In support of its rejection of this Court's holdings, the panel referenced a law review article written as a playbook for "lower courts" to "mitigate" Bruen by "engag[ing] in the time-honored practice of 'narrowing Supreme Court precedent from below.'"

This Court's intervention is necessary for several reasons. First, to correct the panel's flagrant methodological errors which conflict with this Court's precedents. Second, to repudiate the panel's unabashed refusal to abide by the Bruen framework. And third, to provide lower courts that actually desire to follow this Court's directive with critical guidance on how to analyze Second Amendment cases.

The lower courts need a definite pronouncement that the proper time period for ascertaining the scope of the Second Amendment is at the Founding—not the last two decades of the 19th century, as the panel apparently believed. And this case would allow this Court the opportunity to clarify that government may not selectively disarm law-abiding members of "the people" whenever licensing officials feel they are of poor character, potentially dangerous, or otherwise unworthy of enjoying the natural right to self-defense with which they were endowed by their Creator. These necessary course corrections not only would rectify the errors in the panel's decision, but also would provide critical guidance to the lower courts who are struggling with (and split on) the questions presented here. . . .

When this Court decided District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), its recognition of a pre-existing, individual Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was met with swift and widespread resistance in the lower courts. Nearly uniformly, the lower courts refused to believe that Heller's rejection of "a freestanding 'interest-balancing' approach" would deny to them the "power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon." Id. at 634. Many years of constitutional infidelity followed, during which courts invented atextual tests applying their own conceptions about which laws ran afoul of the Second Amendment.

Expressing concern over this Court's hesitancy to review those decisions, Justices Thomas and Scalia observed that "[t]he Court's refusal to review a decision that flouts . . . our Second Amendment precedents stands in marked contrast to the Court's willingness to summarily reverse courts that disregard our other constitutional decisions." Friedman v. City of Highland Park, 577 U.S. 1039, 1043 (2015) (Thomas, J., dissenting from the denial of certiorari).

[Note: we discuss the Friedman case infra, quoting Associate Justice Thomas’ dissent, and we are pleased the Petitioners have cited it in their Brief in support of their writ; for Friedman is not only relevant to but critically important to both Heller and Snope].

Absent substantive vindication of the Second Amendment in the years that followed, Justice Thomas reiterated this concern, observing that "the lower courts seem to have gotten the message" that "[t]he right to keep and bear arms is apparently this Court's constitutional orphan." Silvester v. Becerra , 583 U.S. 1139, 1149 (2018) (Thomas, J., dissenting from the denial of certiorari).

With N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), this Court corrected this "message" and decisively ended the Second Amendment's relegation to constitutional steerage. Declaring the Second Amendment a "second-class right" no longer, Bruen reaffirmed the traditional American right to carry arms in public, rejecting a New York law that treated the right as a mere privilege conditioned upon an applicant's demonstrating "proper cause" to licensing authorities. Id. at 70. This Court repudiated the Courts of Appeals' atextual, ahistorical, "judge-empowering 'interest-balancing,'" and explicitly reaffirmed Heller's standard of review "centered on constitutional text and history." Id. at 22. Reiterating Heller's first principles, Bruen instructed the lower courts to ascertain the scope of the right to keep and bear arms as originally understood by the people who adopted it. Id. This standard rightly places the burden on the government to prove affirmatively that its interposition between "the people" and their right to "keep and bear arms" comports with early American practice. Id. at 24. . . .

Even before Bruen's ink was dry, New York Governor Kathleen Hochul decried the decision, calling it "disturbing," "shocking," "reckless," and "reprehensible." 3 Alarmed at the prospect of an armed populace empowered to defend against New York's criminal element, the Governor made her plan clear: "This decision [is] not what New Yorkers want. And we should have the right of determination . . . [we] have a moral responsibility to do what we can . . . because of . . . the insanity, of the gun culture that has now possessed . . . the Supreme Court." 

Governor Hochul's "Concealed Carry Improvement Act" ("CCIA") passed almost immediately. This "swift and bold action" to combat this Court's "senseless[]" decision was New York's answer to "the resulting increase in licenses and in the number of individuals who will likely purchase and carry weapons" in Bruen's wake. Accordingly, the CCIA maintains business as usual in the Empire State where, one way or another, the ordinary citizen is not to be permitted to carry a firearm in public for self-defense. Although Bruen abrogated "may-issue" licensing, the CCIA — by design and intent — makes the licensing process so onerous, and the list of newly "sensitive" places so expansive, that in New York it is as if Bruen was never decided.

The CCIA effectuates its Bruen nullification scheme first by overhauling New York's licensing regime. In place of the discretionary "proper cause" standard that Bruen invalidated, the CCIA requires an applicant to demonstrate "good moral character," defined as "having the essential character, temperament and judgement necessary to be entrusted with a weapon and to use it only in a manner that does not endanger oneself or others." App.436. To implement this ahistorical morality test, the CCIA demands character references, information about cohabitants and adult children, a personal "interview" with a licensing official, more than two full days of firearms training, a list of social media accounts, and "such other information" as might be demanded. App.438-39.

For those who persevere through this process, the CCIA then restricts where in public a licensee may carry a firearm, declaring not just "the island of Manhattan" but virtually the entire landmass of New York a "sensitive place," making public carry so risky that even the hyper-law-abiding CCIA licensee would not dare to carry. In fact, when asked where New Yorkers could carry under the CCIA, Governor Hochul responded "[p]robably some streets."  These so-called "sensitive locations" comprise 20 categories, and more subcategories, including the most ordinary locations normal people visit as they go about their daily lives. See App.432-34. Finally, filling the gaps in this disarmament scheme, the CCIA effectively commandeers all private properties in New York, declaring them "restricted locations" where firearms by default are prohibited unless the owner posts "clear and conspicuous signage" or "giv[es] express consent." App.431.

C.  Procedural History

Petitioners filed suit in the Northern District of New York on September 20, 2022, challenging various of the CCIA's provisions under the First, Second, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Following briefing and oral argument on a motion for preliminary injunction, the district court issued a lengthy opinion partially granting preliminary relief on November 7, 2022, enjoining enforcement of many of the CCIA's licensing requirements and sensitive locations. App.216-428.

Respondents appealed the district court's preliminary injunction to the Second Circuit, seeking an emergency interim stay of the injunction and a stay pending appeal. The Second Circuit reflexively granted New York a "temporary stay" before Petitioners could respond, and later a stay pending appeal without analysis.

On December 21, 2022, Petitioners sought emergency relief from this Court to vacate the Second Circuit's unexplained stay. Although this Court declined to intervene at that preliminary stage, Antonyuk v. Nigrelli, 143 S. Ct. 481 (2023), Justices Alito and Thomas issued a statement explaining that "[t]he New York law at issue in this application presents novel and serious questions under both the First and the Second Amendments," and noting that the district court's "thorough opinion" found "that the applicants were likely to succeed . . . as to twelve provisions of the challenged law." Id. (Alito, J., joined by Thomas, J., statement respecting the denial of the application to vacate stay).

After briefing, and oral argument on March 20, 2023, the panel issued its opinion in a consolidated appeal on December 8, 2023. App.1-215. Distinguishing Bruen as an "exceptional" case (App.35, 112), the Second Circuit vacated much of the district court's injunction, finding virtually all of the CCIA to be facially constitutional under the Second Amendment.

REASONS FOR GRANTING THE PETITION

I. THIS CASE PRESENTS AN EXCEPTIONALLY IMPORTANT QUESTION WHOSE ANSWER WILL AFFECT HUNDREDS OF SECOND AMENDMENT CASES.

A. Bruen Left Unresolved the Appropriate Temporal Focal Point for Second Amendment Analysis.

Although Bruen "acknowledge[d] . . . an ongoing scholarly debate on whether courts should primarily rely on the prevailing understanding" when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, or when the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, the Court ultimately left the question unresolved, determining that it "need not address this issue today because . . . the public understanding of the right to keep and bear arms in both 1791 and 1868 was ... the same with respect to public carry." Bruen at 37-38. But while unnecessary to answer in Bruen, this question is central to this and many other Second Amendment cases. Indeed, Justice Barrett's concurrence seemed to anticipate that the Court soon would be called on to resolve this important question, and suggested that "1791 is the benchmark" because "Reconstruction-era history" alone would be "simply too late" and "too little." Id. at 82 (Barrett, J., concurring). Cautioning lower courts, Justice Barrett warned that the Court's "decision should not be understood to endorse freewheeling reliance on historical practice from the mid-to-late 19th century. . . ." Id.

Although it has been nearly two years since Bruen was decided, the lower courts have failed to coalesce around a definitive answer to the question of 1791 versus 1868. There is a multi-way circuit split on the question, and the district courts are in disarray. See Section III, infra. If anything, the lower courts' approaches have only continued to diverge and multiply, since this issue arises in most Second Amendment challenges.

This case presents an excellent vehicle for this Court to resolve the debate between 1791 and 1868. Below, the panel relied—almost without exception—on historical laws enacted well after the Second Amendment's ratification, with the earliest being nearly half a century after the Founding. Strikingly, of the three earlier analogues the panel did reference, every one was considered and rejected in Bruen. And the only time the panel did examine a series of Founding-era statutes, it affirmed that part of the district court's injunction.

In other words, the Second Circuit's singular focus on mid-to-late 19th-century history was outcome-determinative in this case. And, "apart from [this] handful of late-19th-century jurisdictions" ( Bruen at 38), the panel would have been forced to admit that no historical tradition exists and affirm the district court's injunction. Thus, in addition to correcting the errors in the opinion below, resolution of this important structural questionwould provide critical guidance to innumerable lower courts analyzing similar challenges.

B. This Court's Second Amendment Decisions Confirm 1791 as the Proper Focal Point.

Although Bruen found it unnecessary to definitively answer the 1791 vs. 1868 "scholarly debate," that does not mean the lower courts were left without guidance. Far from it. Not only Bruen, but also Heller and McDonald, provided significant confirmation that the Second Amendment should be construed as originally understood in 1791. To the extent that earlier or later sources are utilized, it is only to confirm the understanding that existed at the Founding. Indeed, Bruen stated that this was the Court's "general[] assum[ption]." Id. at 37.

In Heller, although not addressing a state law, the Court explained that "[c]onstitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them. . . . " Heller at 634-35. Noting that, "[i]n the aftermath of the Civil War, there was an outpouring of discussion of the Second Amendment," the Court explained that "those discussions took place 75 years after the ratification of the Second Amendment, [and thus] do not provide as much insight into its original meaning as earlier sources." Id. at 614. Thus, after primarily examining sources from the Founding era ( id. at 582-603), the Court secondarily considered sources "through the end of the 19th century" ( id. at 605), which served only to confirm what the Court already had established ( id. at 605-25). Thus in Heller, as in Bruen, the tradition of both time periods was "the same. . . ." Bruen at 38.

McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), provides further confirmation. There, the Court reiterated its rejection of "'the notion that the Fourteenth Amendment applies to the States only a watered-down, subjective version of the individual guarantees of the Bill of Rights,'" refusing "to apply different standards 'depending on whether the claim was asserted in a state or federal court.'" Id. at 765. And, as had Heller before it, McDonald examined "[e]vidence from the period immediately following the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment," but only because it "confirms that the right to keep and bear arms was considered fundamental." Id. at 776; see also at 780. 

Unsurprisingly, Bruen did not upset the apple cart, instead providing significant further confirmation that 1791 is the focal point to determine the Second Amendment's meaning. First, the Court described the "Second Amendment" as being "'intended to endure for ages to come,'" noting that "its meaning is fixed according to the understandings of those who ratified it. . . " Id. at 28. Second, the Court reaffirmed that constitutional rights have the same meaning "against the States . . . as against the Federal Government." Id. at 37. Third, the Court noted that "we have generally assumed that the scope of the protection applicable to the Federal Government and States is pegged to . . . 1791." Id. (emphasis added). Fourth, the Court again made clear that 19th-century history provides—at best—murky insight and "'do[es] not provide as much insight into [] original meaning as earlier sources.'" Id. at 36.  And fifth, the Court explained that, to the extent 19th-century evidence is to be consulted at all, it can only be to provide "'mere confirmation of what the Court thought had already been established.'" Id. at 37.

Heller, McDonald, and Bruen thus provide unwavering confirmation that the Second Amendment is to be understood based on the original "public understanding of the right" when it was adopted in 1791.

C. This Court's Other Precedents Confirm 1791 Is the Proper Focal Point.

In addition to Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, other decisions indicate that 1791 is the appropriate focus for determining the original meaning of the Bill of Rights. Indeed, Bruen referenced several such decisions ( Bruen at 37, collecting cases), which make several analytical precepts clear. . . .

There is no question that this uniform 1791-centric approach should apply to Second Amendment cases, as the Second Amendment is not "subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees." McDonald at 780. The above principles apply to the Second Amendment with equal force, regardless of the entirely academic "ongoing scholarly debate" as to 1791 or 1868. Bruen at 37. Indeed, such academic debate has long been laid to rest. See id. at 82 (Barrett, J., concurring). Yet the panel found otherwise, charting its own path, and claiming "1868 and 1791 are both focal points" of analysis. App.39 (emphasis added). This Court should grant certiorari to correct that obviously erroneous holding and to make clear that 1791 is the singular focal point for Second Amendment analysis.

II. THE DECISION BELOW DEFIES THIS COURT'S PRECEDENTS.

A. The Second Circuit Boldly Stated Its Intent to Evade Bruen's Framework.

Repeatedly, the panel advanced the remarkable theory that it was not bound to apply the Court's methodology in Bruen. Labeling Bruen a case of "exceptional nature," the panel surmised that courts are not required to follow Bruen's lead "in cases challenging less exceptional regulations." App.35. The panel repeated this claim no fewer than four times, each time justifying circumvention of a portion of Bruen's framework on the theory that Bruen came out the way it did only because it was "exceptional." See App.28, 35 ("a lack of [historical] precedent was . . . dispositive in Bruen. But that was due to [its] exceptional nature. . . ."); App.37 ( Bruen rejected analogues affecting "'minuscule [and] territorial populations'" only because of "the exceptional context. . . . In less exceptional contexts," the lack of historical analogues "does not command the [same] inference. . . ."); App.112 ("True, Bruen did utilize the number of states . . . and their relative populations as indicia of the orthodoxy and representativeness . . . but New York's requirement was exceptional. . . .").

But although Bruen was a landmark decision, there was nothing "exceptional" about the framework of historical analysis the Court articulated. Rather, even Justice Breyer in dissent agreed that the Court was establishing rules to be used in future cases. Id. at 111. As the Court explained, Bruen's methodology is the "[o]nly" way to analyze Second Amendment challenges. Id. at 17.

Not so, according to the panel. Justifying its refusal to strike down the apparently "less exceptional" provisions of New York law in this case, the panel disagreed with Bruen that "[t]he government must . . . justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." Id. at 24. Rather, the panel claimed, "the absence of a distinctly similar historical regulation ... can only prove so much." App.33.

In support of this Bruen-defying conclusion, the panel cited (App.34 n.10) to a recent law review article that calls Bruen "unsatisfying," claims that Bruen "places outsized importance . . . on historical silence," and suggests "possible judicial . . . responses to the decision" in order to "read[] Bruen narrowly" and "engage in the time-honored practice of 'narrowing Supreme Court precedent from below.'" Jacob D. Charles, The Dead Hand of a Silent Past: Bruen, Gun Rights, and the Shackles of History, 73 DUKE L.J. 67, 67-149 (2023). Maligning this nation's historical tradition as "the dead hands of the past," the article recommends that, "though the Supreme Court may desire to sit as a superlegislature over nationwide gun policy, lower courts ... need not easily cede the people's ultimate authority." Id. at 71, 155.

Even the panel's reference to this law review article is disturbing, as it boldly recommends "pathways for . . . lower courts to implement [ Bruen]" with "significant refinement" and to decide cases "without voiding all reasonable attempts to regulate guns," advocating for judicial opinions designed to make this Court "rethink whether the test Bruen mandated should be continued." Id. at 80, 146, 154. But the panel did not stop there. After referencing this detailed plan to defy this Court, the panel implemented the playbook in its opinion.  Cf. Charles at 148, with App.35; Charles at 148-49, with App.33; Charles at 149, with App.22.

B. Freed from Bruen, the Second Circuit Manufactured Its Own Framework.

Having rid itself of Bruen, the panel engaged in precisely the sort of "freewheeling reliance on historical practice from the mid-to-late 19th century" that this Court implicitly -- and Justice Barrett explicitly -- indicated is not permitted. Bruen at 83 (Barrett, J., concurring).

First, the panel upheld many of the CCIA's novel restrictions despite admitting to having located no Founding-era analogue at all.  See, e.g., App.70 n.31 (conceding that "[l]icensing schemes" requiring good moral character "were a post-Civil War phenomenon"); App.111 (referencing the "absence of 18th- [or even] 19th-century regulations prohibiting firearms in medical establishments"); App.145 (recognizing "statutes banning firearms in analogous places [to parks] such as 'commons' or 'greens' were ... absent from the historical record"). These concessions are in open war with Bruen's teaching that "the lack of a distinctly similar historical regulation addressing that problem is relevant evidence that the challenged regulation is inconsistent with the Second Amendment." Id. at 26.

Second, the panel fabricated its own "historical record" piecemeal, based entirely on a smattering of late-in-time analogues, mostly from the 1860s and later. See, e.g., App.67-70 (upholding "good moral character" by relying entirely on "firearm licensing schemes from the years immediately following ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment"); App.143-44, 146-51, 154-57 (finding a tradition banning firearms in "parks and zoos" in various state, territorial, and city laws enacted between 1861 and 1897); App.106-19 (upholding firearm ban in healthcare settings based on three state laws enacted nearly half a century after the Founding); App.167 (upholding firearm ban in bars and restaurants based entirely on laws from 1867 through 1890); App.187-88 (approving firearm ban in "theaters" using five laws dating from 1869 through 1890).

Seeking to justify its polestar reliance on post-Reconstruction laws, the panel demurred that "evidence from Reconstruction regarding the scope of the right to bear arms incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment is at least as relevant as evidence from the Founding Era," and this "period of relevance extends past 1868 itself." App.68 n.27 (emphasis added). See also App.71 n.32 (claiming that even "[t]wentieth-century evidence is ... not weightless"). On the contrary, this Court has made clear that "19th-century evidence [i]s 'treated as mere confirmation of what the Court thought had already been established.'" Bruen at 37.

Third, the panel claimed to have discovered three Founding-era sources to uphold various portions of the CCIA: (1) the 1328 Statute of Northampton; (2) a 1786 Virginia statute; and (3) a 1792 North Carolina statute. App.147-48. The panel relied on these three laws repeatedly throughout its opinion. App.149-51, 153, 157, 187, 189-90. But, as this Court has already explained, the Statute of Northampton "has little bearing on the Second Amendment adopted in 1791." Bruen at 41. And laws like the 1786 Virginia statute "merely codified the existing common-law offense of bearing arms to terrorize the people," and thus "provide no justification for laws restricting the public carry of weapons." Bruen at 47; see also at 122 (Breyer, J., dissenting) (identifying the "1792 . . . North Carolina . . . law" and noting "[t]he Court discounts these laws primarily because they were modeled on the Statute of Northampton. . . .") In other words, Bruen considered and rejected the only three pre-Reconstruction-era laws on which the panel relied.

Fourth, the panel frequently chided the district court for its faithful adherence to Bruen's methodology, insisting that it was error to assume that Bruen meant what it said. See, e.g., App.75 (criticizing that "[t]he district court . . . seemed to draw strong and specific inferences from historical silence. . . ."); App.145, 160 (disparaging as "analogical error" the district court's observation that "statutes banning firearms in analogous places [to parks] such as 'commons' or 'greens' were . . . absent from the historical record"); App.167-68, 175 (rejecting the district court's distinction between 19th-century laws which, at most, prohibited firearm possession by intoxicated persons and New York's law banning firearm possession by anyone in the presence of alcohol, finding them "analogous enough"). The panel even faulted the district court for having "failed to appreciate" the seemingly non-existent 1792 North Carolina statute, claiming this "tainted the rest of the district court's analysis." App.190, 157-58. See n.15, supra.

Fifth, the panel minimized—or simply ignored and—Petitioners' showings of relevant   Founding-era traditions contrary to New York's prohibitions. See, e.g., App.159 ("unconvinced by [Petitioners'] argument that the former use of Boston Common and similar spaces as gathering grounds for the militia undermines a tradition of regulating firearms in urban public parks."); App.166-76 (ignoring Petitioners' evidence that firearms and alcohol were ubiquitously mixed during colonial times); App. 176-91 (ignoring Petitioners' contrary Founding-era historical tradition demonstrating that firearms were regularly carried in assemblies and taverns akin to "theaters"). Yet Bruen made clear that "we do not consider . . . 'instructive' . . . 'legislative improvisations[]' which conflict with the Nation's earlier approach" or "when it contradicts earlier evidence." Bruen at 66-67.

Thus, despite marshaling not even one non-repudiated Founding-era law to support the statute below, the panel upheld infringement after infringement based on a smattering of Reconstruction-era statutes it claimed demonstrated the sort of enduring historical tradition Bruen requires. The earliest of these sources arose nearly half a century after the Second Amendment's ratification, with the vast majority occurring well after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment—stretching even into the 1890s. Each time the district court determined there to be no Founding-era tradition and enjoined the statute on that basis, the panel scolded and reversed. And when Petitioners pointed to contrary Founding-era traditions, the panel ignored them.

Declaring this Court's emphasis on original meaning "implausible," the Second Circuit instead offered the Bruen-rejecting acumen that public understanding of constitutional rights can evolve "over the preceding era"—and beyond. App.39-40. But Heller rejected this sort of revisionist living constitutionalism when it announced that "[c]onstitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them. . . ." Id. at 634-35. Bruen was similarly unequivocal: the meaning of constitutional rights is "pegged to the public understanding . . .  when the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791." Id. at 37. In contrast, the panel's decision was pegged to nothing, allowing a few post-Reconstruction statutes to pry the Second Amendment's meaning from the cold "dead hands" of the Founders. . . .

IV. REQUIRING NEW YORKERS TO "PERSUADE" THE GOVERNMENT THEY CAN BE "ENTRUSTED" WITH ENUMERATED RIGHTS CONFLICTS WITH BRUEN AND CREATES A CIRCUIT SPLIT.

A. The Second Circuit's Decision Upholding New York's "Good Moral Character" Requirement Conflicts with Bruen .

In Bruen, this Court rejected New York's requirement that, to be authorized to bear arms in public, citizens first must demonstrate "proper cause" — defined as "a special need for self-protection." Id. at 12. Here, the panel sanctioned New York's stand-in requirement that citizens convince licensing officials of their "good moral character" prior to licensure. As the district court explained, New York simply "replaced" proper cause with good moral character, "while retaining (and even expanding) the open-ended discretion afforded to its licensing officers." Antonyuk v. Hochul, 635 F. Supp. 3d 111, 133 (N.D.N.Y. 2022) (partially granting temporary restraining order).

Rejecting the "proper cause" requirement in Bruen, this Court explained the problem with such a standard: it grants licensing officials "discretion to deny concealed carry licenses even when the applicant satisfies" ostensibly "objective criteria," without any historical evidence that such practices would have been permitted in the Founding era. Bruen at 14, 11; see also at 70-71, 79 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (rejecting the grant of "unchanneled" and "open-ended discretion to licensing officials"). Importantly, this Court contrasted 43 so-called "shall issue" states, "where authorities must issue concealed-carry licenses . . . based on . . . 'narrow, objective, and definite standards,'" with six so-called "may issue" regimes where "authorities have discretion to deny concealed-carry licenses. . . ." Id. at 13, 38 n.9, 14 (emphasis added). As the Court explained, under "may issue" regimes, applicants may be denied if they fail to "demonstrate[] cause or suitability for the relevant license," based on a licensing official's "'appraisal of facts, the exercise of judgment, and the formation of an opinion.'" Id. at 14-15 (emphasis added), 38 n.9. While Bruen specifically addressed New York's "discretion" to determine "proper cause," its broader analysis of "discretion" — and its specific reference to a "perceived lack of need or suitability" ( id. at 13, emphasis added) — points to other impermissible forms of discretion.

New York's "good moral character" standard is just such a prohibited "suitability" determination and, as the district court noted, is merely a surrogate for the "proper cause" standard that was struck down in Bruen. App.217. As this Court explained, a New York "license applicant . . . must convince a 'licensing officer' . . . that . . .  he is of good moral character. . . ." Bruen at 12 (emphasis added); see also at 11 (emphasis added) (license issued "only if that person proved 'good moral character'"). The district court understood the same. See App.321 (emphasis added) ("unless he or she can persuade a licensing officer that he or she is of 'good moral character'"). Indeed, under the CCIA, New York officials decide whether a person "ha[s] the essential character, temperament and judgement necessary to be entrusted with a weapon. . . ." App.436 (emphasis added).

It is quite difficult to understand Bruen's criticism of "suitability" not to include "good moral character." And it is even more difficult to believe that this Court would approve the discretionary power to deny carry licenses to "all Americans" unless they first "convince a 'licensing officer'" of their general morality. Indeed, some courts already have found that "good moral character" means "suitability." See Srour v. New York City, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 190340, at 39-40 (S.D.N.Y. 2023) ("the very notion[] of 'good moral character' [is] inherently exceedingly broad and discretionary. . . . Such unfettered discretion is hard, if not impossible, to reconcile with Bruen."); see also People v. Mosqueda, 97 Cal. App. 5th 399, 411 (2023).

But reaching the conclusion Srour found "impossible" seemed easy for the panel. Although seeming to admit that "suitability" and "good moral character" are the same thing, the panel pointed to the licensing regimes of Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island, which facially contain suitability requirements, but which this Court nevertheless believed operate as "shall-issue" in practice, conferring no discretion on licensing officials. App.83; Bruen at 13 n.1. Indeed, this Court also noted that Delaware law allows open carry without a permit. Id. None of this commentary demonstrates the resounding affirmation of a "good moral character" test that the panel claimed Bruen contains.

Nevertheless, the message the panel took from Bruen is that not all licensing discretion is bad, amorphously distinguishing between "discretion in the strong sense" versus "a certain bounded area of discretion" or a "modicum of discretion," and asserting that " Bruen does not forbid discretion" but rather only "impermissibly discretionary" licensing regimes. App.67, 55-56. But Bruen drew no such nebulous distinctions, instead contrasting "discretion" with "narrow, objective, and definite standards" ( Bruen at 38 n.9) — which New York's shapeless concept of "good moral character" certainly is not. The panel's attempt to find broad support for "good moral character" in Bruen's passing discussion of "shall issue" regimes is tenuous at best.

Dissenting in Kanter v. Barr, 919 F.3d 437 (7th Cir. 2019), then-Judge Barrett explained that any "power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns ... extends only to people who are dangerous." Id. at 451 (Barrett, J., dissenting) (finding no "evidence that founding-era legislatures imposed virtue-based restrictions on the right"); see also id. at 462 (rejecting the notion that "the legislature can disarm [persons] because of their poor character, without regard to whether they are dangerous"). Bruen was consistent on this point, noting that "shall issue" regimes "ensure" applicants " are, in fact, 'law-abiding, responsible citizens.'" Bruen at 38 n.9 (emphasis added).

The panel took a starkly divergent view, claiming that "good moral character" represents " a proxy for dangerousness," whereby licensing officials predict whether applicants are " deemed likely to pose [] a danger" based on " reasoned determination." App.55, 63, 59 (emphases added). The panel readily admitted that "'good moral character'" is a "spongy concept susceptible to abuse,"  which licensing officials may use "as a smokescreen to deny licenses" on such bases as "lifestyle or political preferences." App.64-65. Nonetheless, the panel concluded that this hugely discretionary standard comports with Bruen because "the core" and "[t]he gravamen of the 'character' inquiry is" dangerousness. App.63.

On the contrary, constitutional rights are not "spongy concept[s]." Bruen explicitly rejected the notion that licensing officials can exercise "discretion" — open-ended, "spongy," or otherwise — in determining whether Americans are worthy of Second Amendment rights.

The panel's opinion also conflicts with the decisions of the Third and Fifth Circuits. Flatly rejecting the notion that the Second Amendment only protects "law-abiding and responsible citizens" (App.60), the Third Circuit recently noted "th[at] phrase . . . is as expansive as it is vague. . . . We are confident that the Supreme Court's references . . . do not mean that every American who gets a traffic ticket is no longer among 'the people'...." Range v. AG United States, 69 F.4th 96, 102 (3d Cir. 2023); see also at 102-03 (rejecting "devolv[ing] authority to legislators to decide whom to exclude from 'the people'" by exercising "'unreviewable power to manipulate the Second Amendment by choosing a label'").

Likewise, the Fifth Circuit recently opined that "the legislature cannot have unchecked power to designate a group of persons as 'dangerous' and thereby disarm them," which would "render the Second Amendment a dead letter." United States v. Daniels, 77 F.4th 337, 353 (5th Cir. 2023).  This decision is entirely incompatible with the panel's conclusion that a historical tradition exists which permits any designated "local official" (not even an elected "legislature") to make an "individualized assessment" (far different than a "group . . . designat[ion]") whether individual applicants can be "entrusted" with Second Amendment rights. App.67, 74, 63.

This case presents an excellent vehicle to resolve the sharp circuit split on this important issue. No other constitutional provision is subject to a government precog's  guess as to whether a member of "the people" can be "entrusted" to exercise enumerated rights responsibly. And the Second Amendment is not "a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees." McDonald at 780. This Court should grant the petition and set the record straight.

One final issue deserves mention. Currently pending before this Court is United States v. Rahimi, No. 22-915. During oral argument, several Justices expressed concerns at how the amorphous concepts of "dangerousness," "responsibility," "virtuous[ness]," and "law-abiding" status might be applied in the context of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8)'s ban on firearm possession by those under domestic violence restraining orders. See United States v. Rahimi, Oral Argument (Nov. 7, 2023). Those questions have some overlap with the second question presented here, namely, whether a carry license can be denied based on a government official's discretionary determination that an applicant lacks "good moral character." Petitioners believe this Court's review of this case is warranted on both questions presented, but a decision on whether to grant review of the "good moral character" issue could be held pending a merits decision in Rahimi.

Petitioners squishy conclusion gives the Court an excuse NOT TO TAKE UP THE CASE. And, to our mind, it is not really clear what bearing Rahimi has on Antonyuk (as tacitly, and almost certainly acknowledged by the Second Circuit that discussed the case, at least in passing, because it had to do this, for after all, the Rahimi case was the ostensible basis for the High Court’s remand of Antonyuk to the Second Circuit).

The Remand would cost New York’s handgun owners another wait, another indefinite span of years, before the U.S. Supreme Court would again look at the case, if ever.

And all this predictably and disturbingly proceeds from a State Government that defiantly and caustically, flaunts a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

The New York Government—always abhorring civilian armed self-defense, instituted its Handgun licensing regime more than 110 years ago. Unconscionable in its inception, the Government has only become more emboldened over time. Its hostility toward and its contempt toward the gun owner is apparent as it crafts more and more draconian laws and regulations, effectively legislating exercise of the Second Amendment away.

THE SNOPE CASE

This discussion now brings us to the import of the Snope case. The Snope case—more than any other Second Amendment case in the last few years, including Antonyuk—flows naturally from Heller. But, as much as we would like the U.S. Supreme Court to grant review, we believe the Court—which has, this past Friday, already voted on what cases it will review—likely has skipped out on Snope.

Apart from the reasons we have given for this conclusion, supra, there is another matter to consider, and it is one that rests more on what we believe to be the conservative complement’s misgivings about taking the case up than on the liberal wing’s position on the case—thus inclining us to believe that the failure to grant the writ of certiorari is a foregone conclusion. We hope and pray we are wrong. We will determine the fate of Snope and the negative repercussions emanating from that failure to review Snope on January 13, 2025.

One thing concerning whether a case on a writ before the U.S. Supreme Court is granted or denied involves what the Justices likely believe the outcome of a case will be. Since the cases are fully briefed beforehand, it seems to us that each of the Justices know full well ahead of time how he or she will vote, and they have a good handle on how their brethren will vote.

On Second Amendment matters——

The conservative wing will not take up Snope nor any other Second Amendment case unless it can be assured of a decision supportive of the Second Amendment, especially if a decision will have a clear impact on the three previous seminal cases, Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, and this is certainly understandable and, in fact, an imperative consideration as to whether a writ is granted.

The liberal wing would lover to take the Snope case up on review if they knew they could obtain five votes to affirm the Maryland ban on semiautomatic firearms. If that occurred, then the rulings in the three landmark Second Amendment cases would be severely, likely fatally eroded, and that eventuality would inevitably lead to the overturning of Heller, McDonald, and Bruen. The horrific effects would have a cascading effect on all State and lower Federal cases.

Justices Thomas and Alito will never allow that to happen.

There is, then, just too much at stake to risk diluting three previous landmark cases that strengthen the natural law right to armed self-defense. And even with those cases, Anti-Second Amendment Governments have routinely ignored unambiguous rulings of the Court. Imagine if a ruling came down that on its face eroded those landmark cases. That is why we are unhappy that the High Court did not review Antonyuk on the merits. There was no reason that we can see why Petitioners in that case requested a remand on the basis of Rahimi. The liberal wing of the Court, and likely the Chief Justice as well, were happy to oblige.

One does not need to be a prognosticator to know how the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit was going decide that case and further handle it when the High Court remanded the case to the lower Court.

But a bad decision in Snope, were the High Court to take it up, would be infinitely worse than what we have seen with the handling of the Antonyuk case.

For, worse than a failure to review any of the Second Amendment cases, and especially the Snope case, is a vote to review a case that is an assured loss—severely eroding the Second Amendment and the seminal cases that have strengthened it.

The Country cannot risk even an improbable negative decision in the Snope case. Too much is at stake.

A defeat in Snope, severely weakens Heller, and will inevitably lead to further erosion and to its inevitable demise. And that means de facto repeal of the Second Amendment.

The seriousness of Snope—its far reaching effect and impact—is the salient reason we believe John Roberts and some other Justices would be hesitant  to take this case up on review.

There are far too many malevolent malignant forces in this Country who are constantly scheming to eradicate the Second Amendment.

If one thinks this morose fact is something too awful to contemplate, one should keep in mind that retired Associate Justice John Paul Stevens has called for a redrafting of the Second Amendment to make clear that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is no more than a mere collective right only (an argument he made in his dissenting opinion in Heller, but, while sitting on the Court, he wouldn’t dare suggest a rewriting of the language of the Second Amendment).

Compunctions of custom no longer restrained him once he retired from the High Court. In his book, titled, “Six Amendments,” and subtitled, “How And Why We Should Change the Constitution,” that was published on February 18, 2014, Stevens lays out how he would rewrite the Second Amendment.

A few years later, on March 27, 2018, in an Op-Ed published in The New York Times, the retired Associate Justice, went even further—calling for outright de jure repeal of the Second Amendment.

The unlikelihood of such a thing happening is beside the point. That an American citizen would suggest such a thing—especially a jurist who had once sat on the U.S. Supreme Court—is heresy.

Attacks on the Second Amendment and on the U.S. Constitution, generally, are no longer fringe ideas. Newspapers and magazines are routinely discussing these things. And academicians abound who posit this apostasy, and they have an audience.

While such bizarre, discordant views can be readily dismissed at the moment at least, but the slow whittling away of Heller and eventual overturning Heller and, by logical implication, the two other seminal Second Amendment cases is not inconceivable.

America came perilously close to seeing this horrible happenstance coming to fruition if the Attorney General, Merrick Garland, had worn the robe of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. He has already inflicted substantial damage to the Nation’s jurisprudence. Now just imagine the damage he would have inflicted on the Nation and on our sacred Bill of Rights had the U.S. Senate confirmed him to sit on the High Court?

Fortunately, Senate Majority Leader at the time, Mitch McConnel had prevented that from happening. The Senate had utilized its “advise and consent” authority and determined that it would not consent to a person who had no desire to strengthen the Nation’s Bill of Rights, but, rather, would inflict irreparable injury to it.

We explained our concerns and the serious damage he would inflict on the Second Amendment, grounded on actions he had taken as a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District Columbia Circuit.

Ammoland Shooting Sports News published our concerns in an article posted on March 18, 2016. This article was based on a letter we had written, back in 2016, to both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel and to the then Senate Judiciary Committe Chairman, Chuck Grassley, explaining our serious reservations concerning then Judge Merrick Garland, nominated by U.S. President Barack Obama to sit as a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

It is highly likely that the U.S. Senate would have confirmed Garland to sit as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court if a Hearing had taken place. It would be the height of irony and not in a good way for Garland to become a U.S. Supreme Court Justice on the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

In an article, published on March 16, 2016, CNN cited a prior Clerk to Justice Thomas, who had this to say of such a happenstance:

This seat could be transformational to the court because Justice Scalia’s fidelity to the Constitution was a real anchor for the court. If he were replaced by an Obama nominee that would give the court a solid five votes for enacting an extremely liberal agenda that the American people will not be comfortable with,” Carrie Severino, of Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative group opposed to any candidate getting a hearing until after the election. It would shift the court –that is somewhat balanced –to a liberal stronghold. She is a former clerk of Justice Clarence Thomas.”

Congress and the American public can never take our Freedom and Liberty for granted. We must always be on alert, for ruthless forces exist, both at home and abroad, who wish to destroy us. This is not a new phenomenon. There are many guardrails in place to protect our Freedom and Liberty, but there is but one sure defense to effectively repulse the insinuation of Tyranny on our Nation-State. That defense is the last FAIL-SAFE mechanism available to a FREE PEOPLE: “THE WELL-ARMED AMERICAN CITIZENRY.”

Of the three present Second Amendment cases up for a vote this term—which the U.S. Supreme Court has, on Friday, January 10, 2025, voted to grant or deny review on—the most important one is the Snope Case. The central issue in Snope—in fact the only issue before the Court in Snope vs. Brown is one that deals squarely with the right of the people to keep and bear semiautomatic weapons.

Do semiautomatic weapons in the hands of the civilian citizen fall within the core of the Second Amendment, consistent with the reasoning of Court majority and the rulings of the Court, or don’t they?

Ammoland Shooting Sports News gave its readers a heads-up on this case and others in its article posted on October 29, 2024, and followed that article up with another posted on January 7, 2025.  See also Alan Gottlieb’s article on the Snope case, posted on January 9, 2025.

The CCRKBA and the Second Amendment Foundation are among the Petitioners in the Snope case. In his Article on the Snope case, Alan cites to the Managing Director of the CCRKBA, Andrew Gottlieb, who points out,

“We’re definitely hopeful the high court agrees to take this case again and schedules oral arguments soon. . . .

An affirmative ruling by the Court which settles the question whether modern semiautomatic rifles are protected by the Second Amendment will have a far-reaching impact across the country. A decision that removes any doubt about the right of the people to keep and bear modern rifles is long overdue.

“Frankly . . . considering the emphasis anti-gunners place on the reference to the militia within the Second Amendment, it would clearly protect such firearms. The gun ban lobby obviously didn’t think their argument through very far. ”

As of the posting of this Article, the High Court has not yet voted on whether to review the Snope case or any of the others. If the Court does so, it likely will take up only one Second Amendment case. It should be the Snope case, but we have our reservations.

We fully agree with the points made in Alan’s article. He lays out succinctly why Snope is crucially important to strengthening our Natural Law Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Yet, it is that importance and the far reaching scope of the case that makes us less hopeful that the High Court will take the case for review. It is in the very need for review of and positive outcome of the Snope case that our wariness derives.  

The Snope case is the most important Second Amendment case to come before the High Court since Heller. This is not to lessen the impact of McDonald and Bruen, but Snope goes straight to the heart of the Second Amendment and to matters discussed in Heller.

If the High Court decides to take up just one of the three cases, it must be the Snope case.

The reason is this: Snope is the natural continuation of the First seminal 2A case of the 21st Century, District of Columbia vs. Heller.

Snope builds upon the specific reason for the Second Amendment’s inclusion in the Bill of Rights—why the Antifederalists insisted upon it. And the Snope case rebuts a claim continually espoused by the Anti-Second Amendment proponents, zealots, and outright fanatics. That claim can be phrased accurately as this:

Semiautomatic weapons are “assault weapons,” properly considered “weapons of war,” as they are “in the style of” military weapons. The Second Amendment doesn’t protect the right of any civilian citizen to keep and bear such weapons because they are offensive weapons, having no utility for self-defense.

IS THERE ANY JUSTIFICATION FOR THIS CLAIM? NO, THERE IS NONE—NOT IN LAW, NOR LOGIC, NOR MORALITY!

The claim isn’t merely false, it’s patently ridiculous. Yet, the foes of the Second Amendment take it as presumptively true.

In a nutshell, the claim appears, in various portions of the State’s Brief in Opposition to Petitioners Brief in Support of the granting of the Writ for Certiorari,as assumption, and argument, and inference,

The foes of the individual right of the American people to keep and bear arms contend wrongly that Heller supports this claim. It does not. They shred Heller, reconstructing it by reshaping parts of it to comport with their belief system.

That belief system isn’t simply antithetical to the existence of and preservation of the armed citizenry, it undercuts the principles of Freedom and Liberty that make a truly Free Constitutional Republic possible.

The armed citizenry is the mainstay of a Free Constitutional Republic, and of a Nation where the Common Man is the Sole Sovereign over Government.

The Destructors of our Nation, present both within the Country and outside it, know that a Free Republic will withstand all attempts, militarily or through quiet subterfuge, to defeat it so long as the armed citizenry exists.

The myriad attempts of these Destructors to chisel away at the Second Amendment bespeak a raw fear and rage exhibited toward America’s armed citizenry.

These attempts range from, ONE, overt unconstitutional enactments of Congress, State Goverments, and localities, and through illegal administrative regulations crafted by federal agencies like the ATF, to, TWO, cunning covert psychological tools involving deflection and misdirection directed to reshaping the American psyche.

Associate Justices, like Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and the late Antonin Scalia, were well aware of this. District of Columbia vs. Heller was their response to the danger presented to our Free Republic. They intended to bring to a screeching halt the myriad efforts crafted by ruthless forces bent on destroying Freedom and Liberty.

Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Anthony didn’t want to take Heller up on review. But, such was the indomitable will of Scalia, strengthened through strong support from Thomas and Alito, that Roberts and Kennedy acquiesced.

The latter two Justices knew that Heller would be the premier Bill of Rights case to save the Republic, thereupon sparing the Country from what otherwise would lead eventually, inexorably, inevitably to its decline and eradication. Perhaps, this explains why Roberts and Kennedy agreed, if reluctantly, to cast their votes to review Heller.

We have no doubt it took prodigious effort on the part of Justice Scalia, with the avid assistance of Justices Thomas and Alito, to prevail on the Chief Justice to allow Heller to be taken up and to gain assurances from the two, Roberts and Kennedy, that they would not subvert the effort to strengthen the Second Amendment, once the writ of certiorari was granted.

Once the Heller Holdings came down, the Destroyers of our Country knew it would be well-nigh impossible to defeat the natural law right of the people to keep and bear arms apart from overturning the case, and that too would be impossible.

The best that the foes of our Republic and of the sovereignty of the Common Man could hope for, to circumvent the will and strength of Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, was to attempt to subvert the rulings of Heller and of the two other landmark cases, McDonald and Bruen.

But Heller would remain the premier Second Amendment case. It would remain the crucial key to be exploited by those intent on eradicating the armed citizenry. Those courts predisposed to harm Heller, employed legalese to distort and contort the holdings and the legal dicta supporting the Heller holdings.

Renegade American Governments at all levels would also ignore the rulings. And sympathetic Courts would engage in legal, logical, and syntactical gyrations to give their imprimatur to their legally dubious and logically fallacious, unconstitutional rulings.

And a friendly Press would urge public support through manipulation of the American psyche.

Malevolent courts hated Heller.

They figured that if they could treat Heller like a puzzle—a jigsaw puzzle—they could simply spill the tiles on the floor, recut them, and reassemble them to form a new scene—one more to their liking.

The wily Antonin Scalia knew that Heller would be—must be—only the first of several cases to come, to return the Second Amendment to its rightful prominence and purpose in our Free Constitutional Republic, as a bulwark against the encroachment of Tyranny.

WITH THE SECOND AMENDMENT AS THE MAINSTAY OF TRUE FREEDOM AND LIBERTY, AND WITH THE HELLER CASE AS THE LINCHPIN TO STRENGTHENING IT, THIS MEANS THAT——

Government—all Government, be it Federal, State, regional, or local—cannot be permitted to insinuate TYRANNY on the American people. And the American people must never acquiesce to dilution of THE MOST POWERFUL VEHICLE OF LIBERTY the world has ever seen or will ever see. TYRANNY MUST NEVER GAIN A FOOTHOLD IN OUR COUNTRY.

The singular import of Heller, conveyed in Scalia’s recitation of the history of the Second Amendment underscores the salient holding: THE RIGHT of the people to keep and bear arms is an INDIVIDUAL RIGHT NOT a collective right tied to a person’s connection to a militia or to any other military body.

This Nation alone, of every other Nation or political entity in the world, recognizes and posits: “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The assertion logically entails that the United States belongs to the people—the Common Man—and not to, NEVER TO, a few elite oligarchs or to a solitary monarch. EXERCISE OF THE NATURAL LAW RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE PREVENTS THIS.

The natural law right to armed self-defense does not, then, exist as mere wish-fulfillment.

THE RIGHT MUST BE EXERCISED, NOT MERELY ACCEDED TO. IF A MAN KEEPS AND BEAR ARMS, HE KEEPS THREATS, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE AT BAY.

The power and sovereignty of the Common Man reigns supreme in this Land and the language of the Second Amendment is the written embodiment of the eternal promise that this Land shall always remain so, FREE, but only so long as the people bear arms from the threat of beast, man, and the man-beast of Government.

Some people argue that the Second Amendment is vague. It is not!

There is nothing—absolutely nothing—in the Second Amendment to suggest that the right mentioned requires clarification, refinement, reappraisal, or reassessment. And it does not mean something less than the absolute commandment recited.

That commandment serves as a strong imperative, cautioning Government, ALL Government:

DO NOT TREAD ON THIS RIGHT! IF YOU DO, THAT SHALL BE TO YOUR DETRIMENT AND TO YOUR EVERLASTING SHAME!

THIS NATURAL LAW RIGHT IS PLAIN AND ABSOLUTE.

The words of the Second Amendment, in the Bill of Rights, serve merely as a stand-in for the reality from which the right derived: The Divine Creator.

The Antifederalists insisted on codifying the fundamental right along with the others, as a constant reminder to the obtuse among us and to those in Government who would deny the existence of this and other natural law rights if not written in stone.

Fortunately, the Antifederalists, among the Nation’s framers, demonstrated profound prescience, grounded on their cognizance of the nature of presumptuous, ruthless men predisposed to wield power and authority over other men. Such malevolent, rude, malignant men who dare exert dominion over other men have always existed and always will.

Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, like the Antifederalists, have known this as well, even if the other Justices did not and do not wish to contemplate that sad truth.

This natural law right exists in man intrinsically, bestowed upon him, by the Creator. Therefore this right cannot be lawfully bestowed upon, denied, or rescinded on man by other men, or by the Government and its agents.

The right is fundamental, unalienable, unmodifiable, and eternal.

Among the holdings in Heller, the Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, said clearly, concisely, and categorically:

“In sum, we hold that the District's ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment.”

Note: this holding applies universally, across the United States, and it would have ramifications for the constitutionality of other firearms that fall within the purview of natural law right of the people to keep and bear arms.

Chief Justice John Roberts and retired Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy demanded restraint in the drafting of the majority opinion if the true Patriots—Scalia, Thomas, and Alito—were to obtain the votes of Roberts and Kennedy, who likely were hesitant to sign onto Heller.

The latter two Justices were well aware that Heller would be the most important Second Amendment decision to come out of the U.S. Supreme Court up to that time and that it would continue to have a profound impact on all Second Amendment cases that would arise thereafter.

But John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy had hoped that the constraining language would prevent wholesale disruption of Government attempts to rein in application of “THE WELL-ARMED CITIZEN.”

Even so, Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Kennedy could not prevent Associate Justice, Antonin Scalia, from laying substantial groundwork for subsequent landmark Second Amendment decisions. He did this through carefully worded prose. Scalia was a “SLY FOX,” and a MASTER OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Despite what Anti-Second Amendment proponents and zealots wrongly presume but constantly assert, nothing in Heller suggests the right of the people to keep and bear arms is limited to the right to own and possess handguns only. Moreover, there is nothing in that holding to suggest any limitation on the types of handguns Americans can keep and bear, be those handguns single or double action revolvers, or semiautomatics. And there is nothing in the holding to suggest a limitation on the caliber or type of ammunition handguns may be chambered for.

More to the point, Heller poses no limitation on other kinds of weapons the citizen can keep and bear, apart from an ostensible sop Scalia, Thomas, and Alito gave to Roberts and Kennedy.

The Respondent, the Attorney General for the State of Maryland, in Snope, either doesn’t see this or has deliberately chosen not to in subservience to the State Government—a Government that manifests CONTEMPT AND ABHORRENCE TOWARD THE ARMED CITIZEN.

To seemingly placate Roberts and Kennedy, Scalia opines,

“We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time.’ 307 U.S., at 179, 59 S. Ct. 816, 83 L. Ed. 1206. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons’” [citations omitted].

This paragraph serves as an apparent sop to Roberts and Kennedy.

But, even with that, Scalia demonstrates his subtle trickery against the foes of our Nation’s Bill of Rights.

The phrase “common use” must be scrutinized, as it comes up frequently, nowadays, as Scalia knew it would.

Were the government to decide to take weapons from the public that it presently keeps and bears, might not THE GOVERNMENT thereafter say,

“Well, such weapons that were once in common use are not in common use any longer, so we can now take those weapons from the public, and the public cannot be heard to complain and, more, has no legal recourse if it sought to challenge THAT TAKING.

DO NOT CONSIDER THIS A TRIVIAL OR MEANINGLESS POINT, FOR IT ISN’T!

This brings up our concern for the notorious “National Firearms Act of 1934” (NFA).

Once enacted, its enforcement began to tightly regulate machine guns, short-barreled shotguns, submachine guns, assault rifles, and such components as suppressors—weapons and items that likely were at one time in “common use” but had after enactment of the NFA become difficult to obtain a license for—and such weapons and components then, effectively, could be said to be no longer in common use. But, that happened only because Government had artificially stepped in to make such weapons “uncommon.”

Might not Government interference with civilian citizens keeping and bearing semiautomatic weapons tend to do the same thing?

Did Scalia have anything to say about that? Yes, he did! He had much to say about this.

Two paragraphs down from referencing “dangerous and unusual weapons,” in seeming deference to Miller, Scalia opines,

It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M-16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment's ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right” [emphasis our own]

The above paragraph certainly weakens, and more likely negates the notion that the Miller test of “dangerous and unusual weapons” precludes Second Amendment protection for civilian citizen ownership and possession of those weapons.

The expression “dangerous and unusual” is legally suspect and logically vague. Let’s parse this.

Many items can be construed as “dangerous” if one wishes, just by saying so.

Such items as firearms, yes, but also knives, cars and trucks, and chainsaws can be construed as dangerous. But it is the person, the sentient agent, not the inanimate object, in whom the concept of ‘danger’ rests. For, it is solely within the nature of the person—in the nature then of that agent who wields the object—through which the danger does or does not manifest.

The expression ‘unusual’ is also legally suspect and logically vague. The concept, as applied to an object, has meaning only in the sense that and manner in which the sentient agent chooses to think of it. And, what a person happens to think of an object often is a function of time or place, custom and tradition, and circumstance. And who is to be the ultimate arbiter of what is deemed to be unusual?

Is it the Individual? A Few Men? A Plurality? A Majority? An Entire Population? The Leader of the Nation? A Legislative Body? A Judicial Body? An Administrator?

Scalia was well aware of the nebulousness of terminology. And we may rightly infer that he likely found the intentional misuse of language to undermine the natural law rights of the American citizen to be especially repugnant. He knew, then, exactly what he was doing as he carefully, adroitly phrased the holdings and reasoning of the Heller majority opinion to appease Roberts and Kennedy.

Thomas and Alito understood well what Scalia was doing and were pleased at the result of the opinion as drafted notwithstanding changes made to the draft, to appease the concerns of Roberts and Kennedy.

The three Justices—Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito—were plainly appalled by attempts of Courts to continuously reframe legal opinions to comport to their own personal ideologies.

Roberts and Kennedy were likely aware of Scalia’s linguistic interpolations and nuanced exposition, designed to give the impression of watering down the breadth of Heller to placate those two.

Scalia had hoped that recitation of prior U.S. Supreme Court case law, like Miller, would serve to give the illusion of constraining the broad contours of Heller as he penned what would become a landmark  opinion. One can readily surmise how Scalia would have boldly drafted Heller had John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy allowed him a free hand to write the opinion as he had wished and as his brethren Thomas and Alito would also certainly have wished.

But as drafted, what was presented to Roberts and Kennedy was enough to get the two on board. That gave the true conservative wing—Scalia, Thomas, and Alito—the majority needed so that the right of the people to keep and bear arms would have a fighting chance to survive future attacks by the Anti-Second Amendment zealots. Those zealots would maintain an indefatigable resolve to eradicate the Second Amendment, and with that accomplished, dissolve the Republic forthwith.

Moreover, Scalia discusses “ARMED SELF-DEFENSE” as if to suggest this might mean nothing more than armed self-defense against predatory man or predatory beast, only. But, plainly, Scalia means much more than this.

His salient concern, was, as was the concern of Justices Thomas and Alito, the same as that of the Founders of the Republic—the man-beast of Government, Tyranny.

In that regard, Heller makes patently clear that MILITARY PERSONNEL WEAPONS ARE WHAT THE SECOND AMENDMENT SPEAKS OF—PRECISELY THOSE KINDS OF WEAPONS THAT FALL WITHIN THE PROTECTED PURVIEW OF THE LANGUAGE OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

True, the question in Snope, doesn’t address that.

But, then, Petitioners don’t need to address this. The Petitioners in their August 21, 2024, petition for writ of certiorari pose the question for review by the High Court as:

Whether the Constitution permits the State of Maryland to ban semiautomatic rifles that are in common use for lawful purposes, including the most popular rifle in America.

THAT RECITATION OF THE ISSUE IS ENOUGH. NO MORE NEED BE SAID FOR THE IMPORT OF THE ASSERTION TO BE UNDERSTOOD.

In its Response filed on November 12, 2024, the Respondent Attorney General for the State of Maryland framed the question on review differently and not at all concisely, urging the Court to deny review and, if the Court were to review the case, then the Attorney General urged the Court to render a decision favoring the State, rebuffing Petitioners.

The Attorney General for Maryland posed the question for review by the Court as this:

Should this Court decline to grant certiorari to consider the constitutionality of Maryland’s assault weapons ban where

(1) that ban is consistent with this Court’s recognition in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), that jurisdictions may ban ‘weapons that are most useful in military service—M-16 rifles and the like’;

(2) the Fourth Circuit faithfully applied New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), to conclude that Maryland’s law is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of ‘regulating those weapons that were invented for offensive purposes and were ultimately proven to pose exceptional dangers to innocent civilians,’ Pet. App. 69a; and (3) there is no need to resolve a conflict among the lower courts?”

It need be said that Respondent’s recitation of the question to be taken up by the Court IS NOT the question the Court has agreed to take up if it votes to review the case, but that of Petitioners.

THE COURT HAS ACCEPTED THE QUESTION AS FRAMED EXACTLY BY PETITIONERS.

This is no small matter, as the question as proposed by Petitioners and as accepted by the High Court, goes to the crux of the matter, hearkening back to the message hidden in the contours of Heller.

The Attorney General for Maryland assumes that military weapons or military ‘style’ weapons are not the sorts of firearms protected by the Second Amendment. Since this is the foundation for the banning of semiautomatic weapons in Maryland, the State’s Brief stands or falls on this false presumption, and this false belief is the faulty foundation upon which the entire argument rests and falls. The Attorney General makes plain at the outset that military weapons aren’t protected by the Second Amendment. That is a marked and naked assumption:

This Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), left intact its pronouncement in Heller that “M-16 rifles and the like” are weapons that “may be banned.” Nonetheless, this Court vacated an earlier appellate decision in this case and remanded for consideration in light of Bruen. The en banc Fourth Circuit, in turn, reaffirmed the principles set forth in Heller and held that the assault weapons covered by Maryland’s law fell outside of the Second Amendment’s protection because, like the M-16, they are militaristic weapons that are ill-suited for self-defense.”

The AG for Maryland then goes on a polemic about “assault weapons.” His Brief in Opposition comes across more as a policy tract for organizations like “Everytown for Gun Safety” and the “Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence” than as a cogent legal Brief addressed to the U.S. Supreme Court. No one on the Court can reasonably be impressed by it. Sure, the liberal wing would affirm the decision of the Maryland Court of Appeals not for what Respondent has to say, but, rather, in spite of Respondent’s remarks. The liberal wing of the Court is after all in bed with Anti-Secondment foes. The liberal wing is ideologically predisposed to eradicate “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

The argument presented is simply wrong and begs the very question at issue. Does the citizen solider have an unalienable right to keep and bear military personnel weapons?

Heller neither expressly stated nor implied that M-16 selective fire weapons or those weapons the State considers to be like military weapons are not protected by the Second Amendment because such weapons “are ill-suited for self-defense.”

If such weapons are not suited for self-defense, then, really, how? Are such weapons ill-suited as a defense against Tyranny, or is it, rather, that they are aptly suited as a defense against tyranny?

Isn’t the citizenry’s keeping and bearing arms suitable for defense against tyranny the raison d’être of the Second Amendment?

And what is the best weaponry available to counteract Tyranny if not military weapons in the hands of a couple hundred million citizens, well-trained in their use, primed for rebellion against a Tyrannical Government? For what does a Tyrannical Government fear more than the “WELL-ARMED CITIZENRY”—WELL-ARMED AND WELL-VERSED IN THE USE OF MILITARY WEAPONS TO REPEL TYRANNY?

The High Court can deal effectively with these questions, thrusting the very abhorrence the Tyrant has against the Armed Citizen right back at him, but only if the Court garners at least four votes to take up the Snope case. We will see.

There is reason enough for the Court to take up Snope vs. Brown now, especially in light of so many  decades of propaganda spouted by Anti-Second proponents and zealots in Anti-Second Amendment organizations, in the Democrat Party, and in the Legacy Press, in blind obedience to Government hell-bent in creating Tyranny.

Is it not HIGH TIME NOW FOR THE HIGH COURT TO CEMENT THE SECOND AMENDMENT DOWN SO THERE IS NO MISTAKE AS TO ITS PURPOSE AND ITS INTENT?

A Federal Government, knowing its place, beholding to and properly subservient to the Sovereign Authority in the Land—the AMERICAN PEOPLE—has no reason to fear the people. It only does so, if it seeks to usurp that authority. And that is what we Americans were and are always faced with.

Is it not unsurprising that the Progressive-Marxist Democrats who go on about how they are the true Defenders of “Democracy” (albeit without ever bothering to explain what they mean by the word) and at one and the same time harangue Americans who insist on keeping and bearing arms? Whither that thing “Democracy” (if what is meant by it is not, “FREEDOM AND LIBERTY”) and a citizen army to defend that Democracy?

Recall, what Justice Kavanaugh said, when he cast the deciding vote, at the behest of the Chief Justice in the 2020 case, N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. City of New York.

Kavanaugh stated—in an odd and unconvincing concurring opinion, joining the majority liberal wing and Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion, contra the dissenting opinion of Associate Justices Alito and Thomas—

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.” [So why couldn’t the Court address that concern in the case at bar?]

Whether Kavanaugh meant what he said, the Bruen case, in any event, followed in 2022.

Snope vs. Brown should be the next major case taken up by the Court.

State Governments that detest the rulings in Heller and McDonald have long enacted laws and regulations severely constraining or denying outright civilian citizen possession and ownership of semiautomatic weapons, likening them to weapons falling under the purview of the unlawful and unconstitutional National Firearms Act (NFA).

This came to the fore several years ago. Few people remember, but we would like to jog the memory of those American who may have forgotten.

Go back ten years. In 2015, the case Friedman vs. Highland Park came up to the Court on a writ of certiorari. The salient issue in that earlier case is the same as in the present case, Snope vs. Brown.

Friedman dealt with the constitutionality of commonly owned semiautomatic weapons. The Court rejected review of the case, realizing of course that insufficient Justices would vote to strike down the Government’s outright ban on semiautomatic weapons. Justice Thomas was livid, and he wrote a vigorous dissent.

The late Justice Scalia, who obviously was also appalled by the reticence of Chief Justice Roberts and Kennedy to vote to take up the Friedman case and provide for a third Landmark decision, in 2015, had joined him. Justice Scalia would be found dead fourteen months later, in a hotel room in Texas, and under most mysterious circumstances, with precious few details ever forthcoming about the Justice’s death.

CBS News, for one, would assert this much about the matter, in its article, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia found dead in Texas - CBS News

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead Saturday, CBS News has confirmed. A spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service said he appeared to die of natural causes.

According to the San Antonio News-Express, which was first to report his death, Scalia was found dead in his room at a West Texas resort.

Scalia, 79, was one of the staunchest conservative members of the court. He was nominated in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan and is the longest-serving member on the court.

He championed the philosophy of "orginalism," meaning he interprets the Constitution according to what he believes the original authors intended over 200 years ago. . . .

In a statement on behalf of the Supreme Court and retired Justices, Chief Justice John Roberts called Scalia, "an extraordinary individual and jurist, admired and treasured by his colleagues."

"His passing is a great loss to the Court and the country he so loyally served. We extend our deepest condolences to his wife Maureen and his family," he added.

It is singularly odd that an extraordinary Jurist and dominant personality on the Court, without whom the Heller case would probably never have materialized, would be lost to the Country forever, scarcely one year after Friedman—followed by many more Second Amendment cases coming down the pike plainly due to the Heller rulings.

What did Thomas have to say about Friedman, that Scalia heartily agreed with? Given its similarity to Snope, we provide Thomas’ dissent in full to our readers. Thomas’ comments can be readily applied as rulings in Snope if the Court did vote to hear it. The public will learn the fate of this case, on Monday, January 13.

Likely the Roberts Court has Thomas’ dissent fresh in mind. What Thomas opined is either the reason the Court voted, this past Friday, to grant the writ of certiorari, or it was for fear of Thomas’ dissent in Friedman, that the Court denied the writ—a second time:

“[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.”
I

The city of Highland Park, Illinois, bans manufacturing, selling, giving, lending, acquiring, or possessing many of the most commonly owned semiautomatic firearms, which the City branded “Assault Weapons.” See Highland Park, Ill., City Code §§136.001(C), 136.005 (2015), App. to Pet. for Cert. 65a, 71a. For instance, the ordinance criminalizes modern sporting rifles (e.g., AR-style semiautomatic rifles), 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 gave anyone who legally possessed “an Assault Weapon or Large Capacity Magazine” 60 days to move these items outside City limits, disable them, or surrender them for destruction. §136.020, id., at 73a. Anyone who violates the ordinance can be imprisoned for up to six months, fined up to $1,000, or both. §136.999, id., at 74a.

Petitioners — a Highland Park resident who sought to keep now-prohibited firearms and magazines to defend his home, and an advocacy organization — brought a suit to enjoin the ordinance on the ground that it violates the Second Amendment. The District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granted summary judgment to the City.

A divided panel of the Seventh Circuit affirmed. The panel majority acknowledged that the prohibited weapons “can be beneficial for self-defense because they are lighter than many rifles and less dangerous per shot than larger-caliber pistols or revolvers,” and thus “[h]ouseholders too frightened or infirm to aim carefully may be able to wield them more effectively.” 784 F. 3d, at 411.

The majority nonetheless found no constitutional problem with the ordinance. It recognized that Heller “holds that a law banning the possession of handguns in the home . . . violates” the Second Amendment. 784 F. 3d, at 407. But beyond Heller’s rejection of banning handguns in the home, the majority believed, Heller and McDonald “leave matters open” on the scope of the Second Amendment. 784 F. 3d, at 412. The majority thus adopted a new test for gauging the constitutionality of bans on firearms: “[W]e [will] ask whether a regulation bans weapons that were common at the time of ratification or those that have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, . . . and whether law-abiding citizens retain adequate means of self-defense.” Id., at 410 (internal quotation marks omitted).

Judge Manion dissented, reasoning that “[b]oth the ordinance and this court’s opinion upholding it are directly at odds with the central holdings of Heller and McDonald.” Id., at 412.
II

The Second Amendment provides: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” We explained in Heller and McDonald that the Second Amendment “guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.” Heller, supra, at 592, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2797, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 657; see also McDonald, supra, at 767-769, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3036-3037, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894, 914-916. We excluded from protection only “those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” Heller, 554 U. S., at 625, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2815, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 677. And we stressed that “[t]he very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon.” Id., at 634, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2821, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 682 (emphasis deleted).

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. See 784 F. 3d, at 407, 412. All other questions about the Second Amendment, the Seventh Circuit concluded, should be defined by “the political process and scholarly debate.” Id., at 412. But Heller repudiates that approach. We explained in Heller that “since th[e] case represent[ed] this Court’s first in-depth examination of the Second Amendment, one should not expect it to clarify the entire field.” 554 U. S., at 635, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2821, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 683.We cautioned courts against leaving the rest of the field to the legislative process: “Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad.” Id., at 634-635, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2821, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 683.

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 asked in the first instance whether the banned firearms “were common at the time of ratification” in 1791. 784 F. 3d, at 410. But we said in Heller that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” 554 U. S., at 582, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2792, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 651.

The Seventh Circuit alternatively asked whether the banned firearms relate “to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” 784 F. 3d, at 410 (internal quotation marks omitted). The court concluded that state and local ordinances never run afoul of that objective, since “states, which are in charge of militias, should be allowed to decide when civilians can possess military-grade firearms.” Ibid. But that ignores Heller’s fundamental premise: The right to keep and bear arms is an independent, individual right. Its scope is defined not by what the militia needs, but by what private citizens commonly possess. 554 U. S., at 592, 627-629, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2797, 2817-2818, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 657, 678-680. Moreover, the Seventh Circuit endorsed the view of the militia that Heller rejected. We explained that “Congress retains plenary authority to organize the militia,” not States. Id., at 600, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2802, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 662 (emphasis added). Because the Second Amendment confers rights upon individual citizens—not state governments—it was doubly wrong for the Seventh Circuit to delegate to States and localities the power to decide which firearms people may possess.

Lastly, the Seventh Circuit considered “whether law-abiding citizens retain adequate means of self-defense,” and reasoned that the City’s ban was permissible because “[i]f criminals can find substitutes for banned assault weapons, then so can law-abiding homeowners.” 784 F. 3d, at 410, 411. Although the court recognized that “Heller held that the availability of long guns does not save a ban on handgun ownership,” it thought that “Heller did not foreclose the possibility that allowing the use of most long guns plus pistols and revolvers . . . gives householders adequate means of defense.” Id., at 411.

That analysis misreads Heller. The question under Heller is not whether citizens have adequate alternatives available for self-defense. Rather, Heller asks whether the law bans types of firearms commonly used for a lawful purpose—regardless of whether alternatives exist. 554 U. S., at 627-629, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2817-2818, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 678-680. And Heller draws a distinction between such firearms and weapons specially adapted to unlawful uses and not in common use, such as sawed-off shotguns. Id., at 624-625, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2815-2816, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 676-677. The City’s ban is thus highly suspect because it broadly prohibits common semiautomatic firearms used for lawful purposes. Roughly 5 million Americans own AR-style semiautomatic rifles. See 784 F. 3d, at 415, n. 3. The overwhelming majority of citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful purposes, including self-defense and target shooting. See ibid. Under our precedents, that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons. See McDonald, 561 U. S., at 767-768, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3036-3037, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894, 914-915; Heller, supra, at 628-629, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2817-2818, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 679-680.

The Seventh Circuit ultimately upheld a ban on many common semiautomatic firearms based on speculation about the law’s potential policy benefits. See 784 F. 3d, at 411-412. The court conceded that handguns — not “assault weapons” — “are responsible for the vast majority of gun violence in the United States.” Id., at 409. Still, the court concluded, the ordinance “may increase the public’s sense of safety,” which alone is “a substantial benefit.” Id., at 412. Heller, however, forbids subjecting the Second Amendment’s “core protection . . . to a freestanding ‘interest-balancing’ approach.” Heller, supra, at 634, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2821, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 683. This case illustrates why. If a broad ban on firearms can be upheld based on  conjecture that the public might feel safer (while being no safer at all), then the Second Amendment guarantees nothing.
III

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. 306 , 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. 833, 843 , 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.

Note, there is no suggestion here that civilian possession of military weaponry is to be considered unlawful. The idea is subtle and tacit and rebuts the notion that semiautomatic weapons must be banned because of a presumptive association with military weaponry. Again, Heller doesn’t shy from acknowledging the historical significance of having an armed citizenry precisely to deal with military matters—whether emanating externally by foreign actors or through internal Government treachery directed against Americans, portrayed as “Domestic Terrorists” by the present head of the DOJ Merrick Garland, and the present head of the FBI, Christopher Ray, both of whom will soon be sent packing and good riddance to both.

Now, Thomas does reference “weapons specially adapted to unlawful uses and not in common use, such as sawed-off shotguns” as falling outside the purview of Second Amendment protection. [emphasis our own]

But, by using phraseology like “sawed-off shotguns” rather than the standard phraseology, “short-barreled shotgun” (SBS) and “short-barreled rifle” (SBR) Thomas appears to be poking fun at political neologisms and colloquialisms bandied about for rhetorical flourish as if they are proper terms of art (they are not). Such terminology is imprecise at best, not recognized by or utilized by the military or by the trade industry.

Think of Anti-Second Amendment terminology like “assault weapons” and “weapons of war.” Such phrases are fictions devised to confound the ill-informed, for the purpose of achieving a political goal.

That terminology has no consistent definition among politicians and the Press and are otherwise so amorphous as to be nonsensical. As defined in the laws of various States, there is no common agreement among these States, and the language is subject to change, leading to rampant confusion for everyone.

CONSIDER——

Now I might have no legitimate, lawful use for a “sawed-off shotgun.” But I can conceive of the utility of a “short-barreled shotgun” in my house, or in a truck when out and about driving in the wild or if I were to find myself in an urban cesspool like Chicago, Seattle, Oakland, LA, SF, or NYC, to name a few such areas around the Country.

And, if I can purchase a “Mossberg Shockwave” or a “Remington Tac-14” quite readily from a licensed gun dealer with little effort, why must I fill out the appropriate ATF Form and pay a fee for an SBS to lawfully to do the same, when the additional hoops I have to jump through are not required for the former two firearms.

And this fact is all the more remarkable since it is easier to learn to master a shotgun with a stock, i.e. an SBS, than it is to master the aforementioned Mossberg or Remington sans stock—outfitted with a birds head pistol grip.

Let us hope the High Court has voted to take up the Snope case. We shall soon know.

If so, then, once that is accomplished, let us prevail on Congress to repeal the NFA.

With Americans well-armed with military personnel weapons, this Free Constitutional Republic will be able to successfully withstand the worst tyrannies thrown at us.

_____________________________________________

THE GREATEST GIFT TO AMERICA FOR THE NEW YEAR, 2025: PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY HERALDS A GOLDEN AGE FOR AMERICA: A WELCOME CONTINUATION OF HIS FIRST TERM IN OFFICE AND A PROMISE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FOR DECADES TO COME

Future Historians and U.S. Presidential Scholars—untainted by Progressive Politics and Marxist ideology pervading American society and proliferating unchecked through our many   institutions of Federal, State and local Governments, Education and Academia, Business and Finance, the Press, Broadcast and Cable News, Social Media, the Arts and entertainment, and even Science, Technology, and Medicine—will admonish Joe Biden, casting him, undeniably, as among THE Country’s worst Presidents, likely ranking him dead last.

Contrariwise, these future experts will identify Donald Trump as one of the Nation’s best Presidents, and, not improbably, America’s Best President since the founding of our Republic.

We base this conclusion on four major factors: Trump’s personal characteristics and abilities required of a successful leader; his singular accomplishments; the steadfastness of the man in grappling with and contending with dire threats to the security of a free state and to the well-being of the Country and its people; and the pernicious actions directed against Trump, in both his official and personal capacities.

Concerning this last factor, the nature, expansiveness, and inventiveness of, and the feral ferocity, constancy, and duration of actions taken against Trump, are unprecedented.

And they are ongoing.

In the annals of American history, no other President has undergone such vile, virulent invective that Donald Trump has endured; nor has any other U.S. President suffered and yet endure such savage, brutal, unwarranted actions—actions all in defiance of the Constitution, Congressional Statutes, and Congressional Rules of Order. A lesser man would have crumpled long ago.

From the moment he first entered the political arena, vying for President as the Republican Party candidate in the 2016 race, Trump faced merciless attack.

The Leftist cable news network CNN took its first jab at Trump.

On June 15, 2015, CNN reported that Donald Trump had launched his run for the Presidency. The news account gives an inkling of the Media’s distaste for a Trump Presidency:

The real estate mogul and TV reality star launched his presidential campaign Tuesday, ending more than two decades of persistent flirtation with the idea of running for the Oval Office.

“So, ladies and gentlemen, I am officially running for president of the United States, and we are going to make our country great again,” Trump told the crowd in a lengthy and meandering 45-minute speech that hit on his signature issues like currency manipulation from China and job creation, while also taking shots at the president and his competitors on the Republican side.

“Sadly the American dream is dead,” Trump said at the end of his speech. “But if I get elected president I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before.”

. . . Trump made his announcement at the lavish Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York, laying out a vision to match his incoming campaign slogan, ‘Make America Great Again.’

. . . But Trump showed Tuesday that he won’t shy away from the out-of-reach luxury and opulence that makes up his day-to-day lifestyle.

Instead, he flaunted his wealth and success in business as a centerpiece of his presidential platform, and he began that officially on Tuesday, trumpeting his whopping $8.7 billion net worth during his announcement speech. Trump’s net worth was previously estimated at roughly $4 billion. . . .

The CNN news report hardly masks its contempt and jealousy of Trump. That contempt and jealousy would be replicated in the coming weeks and months and would become more and more scathing. CNN and other legacy news media would treat Trump as pompous, and worse, they would treat him as a person motivated exclusively by self-interest. They were wrong.

CNN and the rest of the Leftist Press and Social Media have always “GOTTEN IT WRONG.”

Trump’s business success and his well-earned pride in his abilities as a businessman and as President of the United States were never meant as a conceit. Had they been so, he would never have suffered the slings and arrows that almost took his life—literally. On July 13, 2024, the New York Post reported:

Former President Donald Trump was wounded on a Pennsylvania campaign stage by a sniper’s bullet Saturday night in an apparent assassination attempt that nearly claimed his life, law enforcement sources told The Post.

Trump, who was speaking at a packed outdoors rally in Butler, Pa. when bullets started flying, later posted on his Truth Social site saying he “felt the bullet ripping through [his] skin,” and that it “pierced the upper part of my right ear.”

“I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin,” said the 78-year-old presumptive Republican presidential nominee. “Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening.”

The gunman was later identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, sources told The Post.

Shots broke out just after 6:10 p.m. as Trump showed off a chart of border crossing numbers. Footage shows him grabbing his ear as shots are fired — with the crowd screaming behind him — and then someone yelling “Get down, get down, get down, get down!” as Secret Service agents piled on top of him to shield him.

If Trump’s vying for the U.S. Presidency were grounded on self-interest, he would not have run for President, ever.  He would not place his life in danger and suffer the incessant, unjustified and blistering savage personal attacks launched upon him.

Moreover, if his motivation for gaining the U.S. Presidency were governed by anything less than unabashed love for his Country, and for the American people, and concern for the survival of our Free Constitutional Republic, he would have bowed out once an assassin’s bullet almost took his life. He never wavered in his resolve to protect our Nation, our Constitution, and our people from all threats, both foreign and domestic.

His clenched fist held high in the air, with blood soaking his ear and clothes, and defiantly voicing the word “Fight” over and over, reverberated and rippled over the crowd, and would be remembered by the Nation forever, as a continuing testament to our Nation’s indefatigable courage and indomitable will, existent from our first War against Tyranny in 1776, to the present time. See New York Post article posted July 13, 2024, with incredible, indelible, ineradicable photograph.

Trump’s hairbreadth escape from certain death served only to cement his intention and resolve to regain the Presidency in November 2024. Another assassin attempted to murder Trump on September 15, 2024. That attempt, fortunately, also failed. See NBC News report, updated September 17, 2024.

Trump remains ever unperturbed. His spirit is indomitable—what more demonstrates the mark of a born leader?

But a pressing question remains and the American public must demand answers.

Did these Assassins operate alone? Not likely. Yet, Biden’s DOJ, FBI, and the Secret Service remain, to the present day, peculiarly reticent about the assassins and about the attempts on Trump’s life, relaying little information of value to the public.

Such comments made are noticeably vague, inconsistent, and even nonsensical. Clearly, these Government organizations are hiding information from the American people. And in the last several weeks, the public has heard nary a word. Why is that? There is only once reasonable inference and that inference in not grounded on simple incompetence or mistake.

Plainly, powerful, ruthless interests residing in the shadows want Trump dead, and they have orchestrated a plot to accomplish that end, as nothing else they did sufficed to dissuade Trump or to deter him from fulfilling his Oath of Office.

Utilizing the power they wield over the Federal Bureaucracy, they have crafted and implemented a multitude of comprehensive, multivarious sophisticated schemes and stratagems directed against Trump, against the MAGA agenda and aims, against his his Administration, and supporters—and all of that at taxpayer expense, no less.

Trump’s removal from Office took precedence over every other pressing issue affecting the Country—as if Trump himself were THE MOST pressing issue. And, for those destructive influences who seek the dissolution of the Republic, TRUMP’S REMOVAL FROM OFFICE IS OF PARAMOUNT AND SOLE IMPORTANCE.

Everything Americans have seen for the last eight years—from the time Trump stepped into the political arena up to this present moment within a few weeks of Trump’s Inauguration, as the 47th President of the United States, speaks to that.

All the unlawful, reprehensible, endless attempts to prevent Trump from performing his official duties and to remove him from Office since his inauguration as the 45th U.S. President, on January 20, 2017, followed by the illegal manipulation of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election that prevented Trump from serving a second term, commencing January 20, 2021, and the subsequent unlawful, unconstitutional, heinous attempts to discourage him or prevent him from running for President in 2024 have failed.

Two monstrous attempts to Assassinate Trump, are shocking, but not surprising in light of the expansiveness of, costs and deviousness of the efforts that cruel, vindictive forces have contemplated and undertaken to forestall a second Trump term.

Assassination is the last gambit of desperate, frustrated secretive men that see Donald Trump as much more than a mere annoyance. He is a major hindrance, an insurmountable and intractable obstacle, effectively thwarting their carefully laid plans for the eventual, inexorable takeover of the Country from the American people, so that their dream of a monolithic Marxist world empire can finally come to fruition—with the remains of America serving as their prized trophy.

The aims of these cruel men and groups, engineering the Nation’s distructions are plain to those who have watched or studied what has befallen the Country since the mid-1960s. The extent of that frustration and desperation has become painfully visible, manifesting in two assassination attempts. Will more follow?

There is an agenda, and that agenda too is no longer hidden from the American people. Americans see that agenda plainly: the transformation of the Nation into a hideous Collectivist Autocracy—a cog in a mammoth Global Empire. Trump stands in the way of that.

A seditious Legacy Press and Media handles the information side of the Collectivist agenda package, feeding the public with noxious, false, imbe narratives of the evil of Trump, MAGA, and of the Electorate that supports Trump.

This Legacy Press and Media doesn’t hide its own Collectivist socio-political, economic proclivities.

The Legacy Press is one more institution that plays to these powerful, but shadowy interests that dominate Government, Business, Finance, Education, Academia, Entertainment, social media, the medical profession, and science and technology. The aims of the Press reflect a philosophy that is antithetical to that philosophy reflected in our Nation’s sacred documents: the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution and especially in that part of the Constitution that sets forth the fundamental freedoms of the American people: The Bill of Rights.

Collectivism—the ideology of Collectivism—is the opposite of Individualism, the ideological tenets and precepts upon which the U.S. Constitution exists and has persisted.

COLLECTIVISM is incompatible with Freedom and Liberty.

The precepts and principles of Collectivism are inconsistent with and antithetical to Natural Law Fundamental Rights, including the right of Free Speech and Free Association, the right of the individual to possess and have exclusive use of and enjoyment of his personal property, and the Right of the Common Man to keep and bear Arms against Government Tyranny.

A Trump Presidency represents an existential threat to the agenda and aims of those elements both at home and abroad that seek to destroy the United States as an independent, sovereign Nation and Free Constitutional Republic.

Prior to Trump’s first term in Office, these ruthless forces had implemented policies directed to achieving their ultimate goal: bringing the most powerful, vibrant, successful, prosperous, and scientifically and technologically advanced Nation the world has ever seen, “to heel.” But, to succeed, they realized they must engineer Donald Trump’s defeat.

During his first term in office, the Nation’s enemies sought to disrupt Trump from achieving his policy goals.

They could not prevent Trump from accomplishing many of his tasks and making substantial headway in meeting many others, consistent with his campaign promises to the Electorate and with his Oath of Office.

Trump had successfully undercut the reprehensible work his predecessors, Bush and Obama, had laid for other Presidents to follow—all directed to dismantling a Free Constitutional Republic, driving citizens to penury, and to dependency on the Government for satisfaction of all their basic wants and needs.

The forces that seek our Nation’s demise could not and would not countenance a second Trump term.

They planned and schemed and machinated for months to sabotage the integrity of the Nation’s Electoral Process. Using unethical and outright illegal schemes, these forces stole the 2016 election from the people.

They succeeded in planting a puppet in the Oval Office: an enfeebled, corrupt, depraved, dementia-riddled, surly creature—a person who had all the traits they were looking for in an effective puppet—and a few more to boot, traits demonstrative of weakness and of someone worthy of contempt—a shell of a man, exhibiting servility, complacency, indolence, and apathy.

Joe Biden fit the bill. Biden, or, rather, what was left of him, had commenced his “Presidency” happily, even elatedly, like a child in a toyshop. He took the Oath of Office like an actor reading a script for a play. Biden was a man who could betray a sacred Oath and betray that Oath he did.

Likely he was too far gone to know what the Oath of Office of the U.S. President meant. And if he did know, he didn’t care, as borne out by his subsequent actions—an exquisitely painful disgrace to behold, to the Country, to the  Constitution, to the American people, and not least of all, to the Divine Creator, in whose name Biden took the Oath of Office. Given the depth and breadth of his betrayal, Biden’s Soul is likely in grave jeopardy. All the money he has accrued selling out his Country to the Nation’s competitors and outright enemies will not serve him to buy his way into heaven.

But here on Earth, Biden would do his masters’ bidding. Like a child, he happily luxuriated in the trappings of power, albeit wielding none. The lack of wielding actual power mattered not to him.

Joe Biden signed all papers placed before him that required a “President’s” imprimatur. Americans’ tax dollars—hundreds of billions of dollars at least—went out the door, wasted.

Hard earned tax-payer money not only failed to be placed in service to Americans and America’s interests, but severely harmed the public and severely harmed those interests.

The taxpaying citizens of the Country never received anything of benefit from Joe Biden and his Administration, and both he and his Administration placed the security of the Country in jeopardy.

But Biden did serve his masters, well—those masters who were instrumental in placing him in the Oval Office. They demanded payment, and he paid them well. He did everything they asked of him—that they had demanded of him.

Biden, his Administration, and the bloated Federal Government Bureaucracy—at the behest of and likely on the orders of secretive financial and business interests—instituted and implemented policies designed to weaken the Country from within, irrevocably—from the disastrous open border policies, to the inculcation of Marxist ideology in all of the institutions of the Country, to the disastrous foreign policies, and to the wasteful spending.

And the Puppet Biden and the captured Federal Government did indeed weaken the Country from within and, in so doing, harmed the Country’s standing in the world, thereby priming the Country for eventual takeover by its enemies in the East, CCP China and China’s allies, and by its ostensible but false friends in the West, the Neoliberal Globalist and Central Bank Empire Builders.

But, before 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, the Puppet Masters’ had had enough of Joe Biden who was failing him due to his increasing decreptitude, and they prevailed on their Democrat Party Leadership lackeys to replace him. For Biden could not feasibly assist them in completing the task of bringing about the Nation’s dissolution because his physical and mental decay had grown so pronounced that such enfeeblement and infirmities could no longer plausibly be denied, or even implausibly be denied or hidden.

The Puppet Masters induced the Democrat Party leadership to toss the Biden Puppet aside, like a rag doll, and appoint a suitable, or, at least, seemingly adequate, replacement.

The Party Leadership—Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Barack Obama, and other high Party functionaries—decided on “coronating” Biden’s Vice President, Kamala Harris, as the presumptive Democrat Party replacement to contend with Republican Party nominee Donald Trump for U.S. President, in 2025.

Joe Biden was unsurprisingly irate at this turn of events—how quickly and casually his ostensible “friends” would cast him aside. He understood well enough THAT they intended to get rid of him.

But, with a mind so riddled by dementia, as it was, he could not comprehend why they would carelessly throw him out like so much trash; nor could he appreciate that the people who had discarded him were, after all, just like him, no less contemptible, reprehensible, and ruthless than he.

To this day, after the election, Biden remains convinced that he could beat Trump, when Harris could not. Biden is delusional, yet the question remains how badly Democrats would have lost to Trump had Biden remained as the Party’s choice.

But that didn’t happen. Pelosi and the other Party Leadership strongly urged, or compelled, Biden to stand aside from running for a second term in Office. He would not and never did concede that Kamala Harris had a better chance of defeating Trump.

The most that he would acknowledge—before the fact of her actual defeat to Trump on November 5, 2024—is that he would give a younger person a chance, doing so for the good of the Party. He likely didn’t believe that, and he may now even derive some malicious joy in whatever active part of his brain still functions, that Harris lost to Trump.

Biden’s address to the Nation was written for him as all of his addresses doubtless were and still are—in these last few weeks before Trump’s inauguration, to the extent the Party allows Biden to utter words to the public at all.

In hindsight, he plainly placed his trust in the wrong people. But there is nothing he might do about that now, but pout, and throw tantrums like a petulant child that he, in his diminished state of mind, has devolved into.

And, once again, perhaps, he may find some small solace in the fact that with the Party and its leadership in disarray, they are no better off than he.

Be that as it may, the fact remains that this odious Biden puppet is out, and the other repulsive member of the Administration, Kamala Harris—the smug, cackling, imbecilic hyena—is also out.

And the contemptible Marxist-Democrat Party is in tatters, left to feed on itself.

The Puppet-Masters, for their part, are likely upset at everyone: Biden, Harris, the Democrat Party and the Party leadership for failing in achieving their aim: the dissolution of the Country.

The Puppet-Masters likely now realize, albeit a bit late in the day, that reliance on the Democrat Party for use as their principal instrument in bringing about the demise of the United States was a bad investment. They failed to see the fatal flaw existent in the Party itself.

Unwilling to relinquish its insufferable belief system—a system that has grown increasingly more ludicrous and revolting over time—the Democrat Party is caught in a vise.

Unable to reflect on and to come to terms with its arrogance, it cannot extricate itself from its misfortunes which are of its own making. Instead, it blames and lashes out at the American public and engages in acts of self-flagellation.

The Democrat Party has effectively destroyed itself, but that is a good thing for the American people. The Party will remain inert and ineffectual for years and, possibly, for decades to come—and hopefully will wither and die on the Democrat Party vine.

So, Biden is out, and that other smug, odious member of the Administration, Kamala Harris, is also out.

The Majority of the Electorate has fortunately escaped from the mental asylum the Democrat Party Marxist Cultists and the sinister forces that had whipped them into a frenzy of whirling dervishes had thrust the Country into.

Having elected Donald Trump as the Nation’s 47th President, America’s Patriots have closed the door to the madhouse and have locked it behind them, leaving the Democrats and the rest of the lunatic fringe to themselves to fee on themselves.

The Country has a chance now to remove the fog from its brain and clean up the mess left by the maniacs.

This will be a lengthy process and an expensive one but a necessary one if our Country is to turn to its roots as a Truly sovereign, independent Nation and Free Constitutional Republic—a Free Republic where the American People are and remain sole sovereign over Government and where they adhere to the tenets, precepts, and principles of INDIVIDUALISM, upon which our Constitution and our Greatness and Success as a Nation rests.

It is left to Trump once again to repair the extensive damage to the Country and to its people wrought by the Democrats and the Demented Harlequin Biden, his imbecilic Administration, and the bloated, profane Bureaucracy that catered to them.

Trump’s signature slogan, “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” a motto, representing a return of the Country to its roots and to its former prosperity, remains now, on the eve of Trump’s ascendancy as the Nation’s 47th President on January 20, 2025, as it had more than a decade earlier when he served the Nation as its 45th President, that commenced on January 20, 2017.

This phrase, “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” is much more than a mere campaign slogan. It serves as both a Promise made, and a Promise kept.

The American Electorate yearns for a return to its past Greatness, and for release from the absolute lunacy of the Biden years and from the awful Obama years and from the disastrous Bush years before that.

And Americans can justifiably lay much of the blame for the ruination of America on the Legacy Press as well as on the Federal Government.

This seditious, treacherous and loathsome Legacy Press—a foe of and contributor to the decline of America’s influence, power, prowess, and greatness—has, if historically, only tacitly, but in recent years, conspicuously willingly, acknowledged its complicity in abetting that harm to the Nation. The Press hides behind the First Amendment’s Freedom of the Press, betraying the rationale behind it.

And what is the nature of the harm that the Legacy Press and companion news networks and social media organizations have acknowledged and have openly, absurdly, and even grotesquely dignifed? It is the presence of a monstrous, malodorous, oily contagion seething and congealing just below the surface of our Free, Constitutional Republic.

This monster, wrapping its tentacles around the United States, is TYRANNY.

The word ‘Tyranny’ has several definitions, all of which refer to oppressive, unrestrained, and arbitrary Government rule.

More to the point, as applied to a Country such as, and namely, the United States, a Country conceived and crafted as a Free Constitutional Republic, “TYRANNY” ENTAILS THE FEDERAL GOVERMENT’S UNCONSTITUTIONAL USURPATION OF POWER AND AUTHORITY EXCLUSIVELY in the “COMMON MAN,” THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, the SOLE SOVEREIGN of the NATION.

Although powerful, ruthless interests have sought to overturn our Nation’s Free Republic since its founding, with ratification of the Constitution on June 21, 1788, the Republic has withstood every challenge.

However, in the first 25 years of the 21st Century, but for a four year reprieve, when the Electorate voted Donald Trump into Office as the 45th U.S. President whose mandate, “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” encompassed reaffirmation of the founding precepts of a Free Constitutional Republic, the Country’s future, as a Free Republic, was uncertain because powerful interests plotted to place their puppet in the White House.

The corrupt, weak-willed, physically lame, brain-addled puppet, Joe Biden, became the willing instrument of powerful, shadowy forces that wasted no time reinstating the devious, scurrilous agenda, actively and avidly pursued by Trump’s predecessors, Bush and Obama, that remained in effect in the 8 years prior to Trump’s inauguration, on January 20, 2017, and that would then return in the 4 years after Trump’s First Term in Office—due to a GRAND THEFT OF THE ELECTORAL PROCESS IN 2020.

Once the Obstructors and Destructors of our Nation’s Republic had securely ensconced their Puppet, Biden, in the White House, the compliant, complicit Legacy Press and social media went to work.

They engaged in a massive propaganda campaign to confound and reconfigure the psyche of the polity, to redefine the socio-political and economic fabric of the Nation, and to redefine what it means to be an “American.”

Educators across the Nation, held hostage to, or otherwise sympathetic to, the aims of the powerful National Education Association (“NEA”), did their part, to mold and reshape the psyche of the youth of our Nation.

Marxist Academicians in the Colleges and Universities did the same.

The CENTRAL DIRECTIVE and aim: To Psychologically Condition—”BRAINWASH”—Americans TO LOATHE their Nation’s history, heritage, and founding principles, and to feel antipathy toward the Nation’s Founders and first Patriots.

Controlled by an agenda imposed on the Country by Biden and his Administration at the behest of and under the control of unelected secretive, malevolent masters whom they owe allegiance to, Americans’ impulses have slowly and inexorably, quietly and softly below the threshold of conscious thought, turned away from their Country and from their birthright as Americans.

Many Americans began to shun their Nation’s glorious past, to spurn their faith in the Divine Creator, and to reject fundamental moral truths derived from the Creator.

These Americans began to display disdain toward the precepts and tenets of INDIVIDUALISM upon which a Free Constitutional Republic rests.

These deluded Americans expressed doubt toward and even contempt toward the sanctity and inviolability of our Natural Law Rights and Liberties—Fundamental Rights and Liberties, codified in our Nation’s Bill of Rights.

Fundamental Rights and Liberties are intrinsic to man, bestowed on man by the Divine Creator. These Sacred Rights and Liberties ARE NOT external gifts possessed by Government or its agents, bestowed on, rescinded, or denied to man by Government, an artificial construct.

Four years living under the dictates of the Biden-Harris Administration, the United States drew perilously close to a state of Tyranny—one grounded on Marxist principles, a manifestation of Despotism falling in the broad domain of COLLECTIVISM, as practiced in CCP China and in China’s puppet state, North Korea; in Trudeau’s Canada, and in other Countries of the British Commonwealth; and in the Countries of the European Union (EU).

Marxism, Socialism, Communism are all representations of and are subsumed in the AUTOCRATIC-TOTALITARIAN domain of COLLECTIVISM.

THE IDEOLOGY OF COLLECTIVISM is the POLAR OPPOSITE of INDIVIDUALISM, the latter of which is the foundation FREEDOM AND LIBERTY and of AMERICAN REPUBLICANISM.

No Country, other than the United States, exists as a truly Free Constitutional Republic because no Country, other than the United States, proclaims that Government exists only by the will and consent of the people.

This means that the American people are and remain the sole legitimate sovereign over Government. This also means that Government exists for the sole purpose of serving the interests of the American people, consistent with the Articles of the Constitution, in deference to Americans’ Bill of Rights. All this is inconsistent with Marxist ideology.

The Marxist rebuke of Capitalism, Private Enterprise, American ingenuity, the sanctity and the inviolability of the Common Man, the sovereignty of the American citizenry over Government, and the Marxist rebuke of absolute rights and liberties, as a genuine reality, which exist inherently in man INDEPENDENT OF ANY GOVERNMENT, have slowly been inculcated into the psyche of Americans.

The most intrusive and destructive idea concomitant with Marxist thought, and one anathema to the American spirit, pertains to THE FALSE IDEA OF THE conditional, impermanent, unimportant, and unnecessary nature of man.

To the Marxist the individual man is nothing more than a malleable physical creature, whose temporary existence on Earth has no meaning or purpose other than to serve the State, as a servile cog in a machine. To the extent he dutifully devotes himself to that service, he has utility.

If that “cog” is unable or unwilling to serve the State, then that “cog” is unceremoniously dispensed with. Utility to the State is the sum total measure of a man’s worth in a Marxist regime—of very little worth in the grand scheme of the Marxist World Order.

Marxist ideology therefore entails the denial of fundamental, unalienable Rights and Liberties, intrinsic to man and to his inherent nobility, irrespective of Government.

Marxism has no use for “RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES.” For Rights and Liberties of Man are incompatible with and detrimental to the well-being of the finely tuned and engineered Marxist State. Marxism demands conformity and rigidity in thought and conduct, defined solely by the State. Deviation is not tolerated.

The Marxist sees Elemental Rights and Liberties as insubstantial, illusory objects or tokens and perceives the notion of Fundamental Rights and Liberties as wholly antithetical to the construction of and to the maintenance of the Marxist State.

America’s Bill of Rights, codifying fundamental, unalienable Rights and Liberties that emanate from God, means that Rights and Liberties are much more than mere objects or tokens. They are tangible, unmodifiable, unconditional, absolute and eternal reflections of God—internal to man’s Being that define a man and that are for his use for his well-being. The exercise of them defines the “SELFHOOD.”

These ideas are not fathomable to Marxists. They dismiss them out-of-hand.

The Marxist sees such a Man, this Common Man—the intelligent, responsible, independent-minded, independent-thinking, educated, and well-armed American Citizen—as an existential threat to the existence of and well-running of the Marxist State.

From both an ideological and pragmatic point of view, the Marxist, then, cannot abide such a person. The Marxist sees a FREE-THINKING, ARMED MAN, JUSTIFIABLY SUSPICIOUS of GOVERNMENT, as a Deviant.

To the Marxist, GOVERNMENT, i.e., THE STATE, IS GOD—the MAKER of MAN’S LIFE AND PURPOSE ON EARTH. THE STATE IS THE ONLY GOD TO THE MARXIST.

For the Marxist, Socialist, Communist—whatever the flavor—they are Despotic ideologies all.

MARXISTS SEE FREEDOM AND LIBERTY AS ARCHAIC, ANACHRONISTIC IDEAS OF NO PRACTICAL USE OR BENEFIT TO THE STATE. THEY MUST THEREFORE BE CAST ASIDE.

True Americans disagree with COLLECTIVISM. So, does Trump. He thought the matter of concern was important enough to mention it, in an address to Congress and the Nation.

Recall President Trump’s promise to the American people as asserted in his 2019 State of the Union Address, delivered to Congress and the American people. As reported by Fox Business,

Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence — not government coercion, domination and control. We are born free, and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will NEVER be a socialist country.

Trump can now keep that promise to the American people once he is sworn in as the 47th U.S. President on January 20, 2025.

Indeed, Trump, the de facto President, is already at work, and has been working on behalf of the Country and the American people, while Biden, still de jure “President,” for a short time remaining, is off on another vacation, probably slumbering away.

Trump’s promise to the American people that America would never become a “Socialist State”—the most profound and important promise he, or any President, could make—would have been unmet had Kamala Harris become President, a frightening thought.

Trump made certain his promise to the American people would be kept.

After the disastrous Bush and Obama Administrations, when Trump first came into Office as the 45th U.S. President, he commenced the difficult task of returning America to its former prosperity and to its pride and confidence in itself. Americans grasped a sea change in perspective and saw that it was good.

Trump began the work of repairing a wounded Republic and a wounded American people on January 20, 2017.

“MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” became a battle cry and the raison d’être of Trump’s Presidency from January 2017 to January 2021.

Trump must once again begin the arduous task of repairing the damage wrought by Joe Biden and his Administration, and by those secretive fixtures behind the scenes, that had controlled Biden and the Biden-Harris Administration—the public faces of the unseen masters who had plotted the Biden Administration’s every move, and likely plotted to keep the Administration going with their new puppet, Kamala Harris. That may well have come to pass had Trump been felled by an assassin’s bullet. One cannot but wonder whether the plotters who controlled Biden and his Administration were not behind the attempt to murder Trump. Will they try to do so again?

Can Trump and the American people trust the leadership of the Secret Service to protect him?

The days and weeks since the 2024 U.S. Presidential election saw Trump victorious, seem interminable. January 20, 2025, cannot come soon enough. The American people need Trump in Office NOW!

In the next couple of articles we will concentrate on each of the factors that make for effective leadership, and which Trump has in abundance.

We will turn first to a consideration of the dire threats faced by our Country from its inception, and the manner in which our past Presidents have effectively dealt with them, juxtaposing and comparing those past threats to the present threats directed to Trump and to our Country.

POSTSCRIPT

The purpose of this essay is twofold:

The first is to provide further evidence to support our conclusion that Donald Trump is the best President this Country has ever had. We believe his second term will serve to cement the truth of this conclusion.

The second purpose of this essay is to lay out what we expect of Republicans in Congress to assist Trump in his efforts to “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”

Trump’s service to our Country as President is vital to safeguarding our Nation’s heritage and our core values, both for our future and for the future of Americans yet to come.

But we American Patriots must demand that Congressional Republicans work together assist Trump in his efforts to strengthen our Country against the forces at large that dare to destroy it. Congress cannot sit idly by or squabble. We have won a major battle, true. But the war continues.

The war against THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE will always exist. America must ever protect its sacred Rights and Liberties.

Ultimately, the fate of our Country rests with the American Patriot, as always. He must ever be strong of will, independent in spirit, and well-armed that he may effectively stave off all threats, both foreign and domestic.

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