“THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS”: STEPHEN HALBROOK’S NEW BOOK IS A MUST-READ!

By Stephen L. D’Andrilli, President,Arbalest Group LLC.The title of Stephen P. Halbrook’s new book is the very question at issue in the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Corlett, which the United States Supreme Court recently decided it would hear in its next term. The timing and importance of both the book and this case couldn’t have been better! See Arbalest Quarrel article on the Corlett case, titled, “Supreme Court to Take Up New York Second Amendment Case At Last!” In Corlett, the applicant for a concealed carry handgun license was denied a license for lacking “good cause” – a purely subjective requirement established by New York State’s highly discretional firearms licensing scheme. The decision, in this case, could strike down, as unconstitutional, Government infringement on a fundamental right – both in New York and in other “may-issue” states throughout the Country where similar practices prevail. What happened in Corlett could happen to you, too!It has been over a decade since the High Court ruled on a major Second Amendment case.In 2008, in District of Columbia vs. Heller, “held that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia and to use that firearm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.”The judicial interpretative methodology used by the Court’s majority was based on “text, history, and tradition” and the Court’s majority rejected the judge-empowering interest-balancing inquiry, too often used by liberals, which defers to legislatures to decide if various interests outweigh recognition of a Constitutional right.Two years later, in McDonald vs. City of Chicago, “the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protected the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense and that the Second Amendment was fully applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment.” The Court also made clear that this right is deeply rooted in the nation's history and tradition.The High Court rejected out-of-hand the City’s argument that the Court, “in effect . . . treat the right recognized in Heller as a second-class [“watered down”] right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees that we have held to be incorporated into the Due Process Clause. The Court also, as it did in Heller, “expressly rejected the argument that the scope of the Second Amendment right should be determined by judicial interest balancing.”It’s mind-boggling that some federal and state courts resist these Supreme Court holdings and render conflicting decisions, dismissing fundamental rights that are plainly stated in the Constitution, while inventing others that do not exist in the Constitution.Halbrook’s book serves as a literary weapon in support of our Second Amendment right by clearly identifying what the Second Amendment means and requires.The Corlett case and Halbrook’s book comes to us at a time when the Bill of Rights in its entirety – all ten of them – are on trial!The very soul of our Nation and the meaning of what it is to be “an American” is constantly and relentlessly challenged by well-organized and well-funded Progressive Left-Wing and outright Marxist and Anarchist groups such as BLM and Antifa.These groups promulgate and agitate for “Wokeness” and “Cancel Culture.” They demand the Nation’s institutions implement fictional doctrines such as “Critical Race Theory,” and “the 1619 Project.” They attack dissenting viewpoints with insulting claims of “White Extremism” and “White Supremacy.” They create “Defund the Police” and “Dismantle Police” campaigns. They have gone as far as infiltrating our military with their “patriot extremism.” This threatens our Country. If they weaken our military, we are undone. And they deliberately sow discord and suspicion among Americans to weaken the Country to further their Radical Left agenda.Crime is not only on the rise and has reached historical proportions in major cities across our Country. True as that is, Americans were always mistaken in their belief that they can rely on the police to protect them. The police have no duty to provide protection for individuals, except in rare circumstances.The salient function of the police is to provide general protection for the communities they serve, not to guarantee the safety of individuals within the community. They aren’t personal bodyguards for average Americans.See the following three Arbalest Quarrel articles on the role of the police and the role of the citizen on the matter of personal safety, published on Ammoland Shooting Sports News:“Can We, As Individuals, Rely On The Police To Protect Us,” referencing an article co-authored by Stephen L. D’Andrilli and David Kopel B. Kopel, titled, “Personal Safety: Individual Responsibility,” that is as relevant today as it was when it appeared over thirty years ago, in the May 1989 issue of “Women and Guns;” and, two,“Police Have No Duty To Secure The Life Of Americans From Threat Of Physical Harm;” and, three,“The Government Cannot Protect You! You Must Protect Yourself!”But now, with calls made to defund the police and reduce the number of police, the public cannot even rely on the police to provide even a modicum of general protection for the community, which is and always has been their main function. It is the police who are “handcuffed,” not the criminal element.This means that now, more than ever, people must assume responsibility for their own safety and well-being. And many more Americans recognize this, and they want to own a firearm for personal protection.This turn of events disturbs Radical Left politicians and fanatical Radical Left-wing groups as they intend to prevent average Americans from exercising their Second Amendment right of self-defense to carry a handgun, the best means available for ensuring one’s life.Radical Left-wing politicians and groups obviously don’t care about the life and well-being of individuals. That idea is, after all, contrary to the tenets of Marxism. All they care about is furthering their agenda and wielding increasingly more power and control over the American people — a desire that is insatiable.And this comes at a time when Radical Left Soros funded “prosecutors” refuse to prosecute even the most violent criminals, and release more and more of them out on the streets to prey on innocent Americans. But this, too, is part of the Radical Left agenda. It is all designed to keep the public off guard, in a constant state of bewilderment and fear, as the fabric of society unravels.Meanwhile, the police are constrained from providing even minimal community protection, given draconian policy directives and for fear, not unreasonable, that Radical Left politicians will second-guess their every move and treat them as the criminal element rather than as society’s protector.Since Radical Left politicians fear an armed citizenry more than they do hardened criminals, the public is left essentially defenseless. This is contrary to the Nation’s history and heritage, which Stephen Halbrook lays out in a comprehensive, scholarly manner.He explains clearly and convincingly the import of the right to bear arms and its practice, from its origins in England – going back as far as the early 1300’s – through colonial America, and then through ratification of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, up to the present day. His thorough analysis includes references to and explanations of important state and federal court cases.Given the danger presented to the Nation due to a rampaging Radical Marxist agenda, permeating society from the highest levels of the Federal Government to the local government level, and given dramatic increases in violence on our streets, the Nation’s need for Stephen Halbrook’s book is pressing. The material presented directs the public’s attention back to where that attention needs to be directed: toward an understanding of and appreciation of our Nation’s historical roots.The information provided in Halbrook’s book should be shared by everyone – regardless of political or ideological persuasion – all who truly value and appreciate the freedom, liberties, and rights we enjoy in America.Buy a copy and read it now!____________________________________Copyright © 2021 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

WHAT WOULD MICROSTAMPING DO TO STOP RISING VIOLENT GUN CRIME? NOTHING!

In the immortal words of New York Yankees legend Yogi Berra, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” Anti-Second Amendment forces are at it once more, attempting to get the jump on enforcing the “Microstamping” of all semiautomatic handguns.It is a curious thing that, with rising violent crime in Democrat-controlled jurisdictions, Democrats continue to blame society’s violence on firearms. They blame rising violent crime on the police. They blame it on “systemic racism.” They blame it on “white supremacists.” They blame it on Trump. They blame it on Republicans. They “Blame It On The Bossa Nova.” The Democrats in Congress and in the States, along with the teeming mass of Progressives and Marxists throughout the Country and the seditious Press, continue to blame society’s ills on anyone and anything but where the fault truly rests: on themselves and on their own miserable, flawed, bankrupt political, social, and economic philosophy, grounded on the tenets of Collectivism.In an article posted yesterday on Ammoland, the NRA-ILA pointed to the Democrat Party-controlled State Legislature in Albany that will soon vote on three Anti-Second Amendment bills that recently passed out of Senate Committee. One of these three bills, the Microstamping of semiautomatic handguns, is nothing new. California was the first out of the gate with this when then California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, signed it into law in 2007.An odd thing about that 2007 California law, apart from the fact that it would do nothing to reduce gun crime, is that it could never be enforced because the microstamping technology has patent law protection.In June 2014, in a comprehensive article titled, “Microstamping: What Is It? Does It Work? Why Have It?”, detailing the many problems associated with the technology, the Arbalest Quarrel wrote, in pertinent part:“At the time of the publication of [Dorothy] Kenney’s law journal article, [Firearm Microstamp Technology: Failing Daubert and Federal Rules of Evidence 702, 38, Rutgers Computer & Tech. L.J. (2012)], California’s microstamp technology law was in effect and had been in effect, thanks – or no thanks – to then Governor Schwarzenegger’s having signed it into law in 2007. And, Kenney said, that, ‘while the Microstamp technology law is currently in effect in California, it is owned solely by a company called Identification Dynamics, LLC, which recently acquired the U.S. patent. However, the California legislature required the Attorney General to certify that the technology was available to more than one [gun] manufacturer unencumbered by any patent restrictions before it could take effect. In essence, the requirement does not activate until Microstamping is outside of patent protection but the manufacturing company has a patent on it that runs until approximately 2023. Thus far, this certification requirement has not been satisfied so the legislation is practically nonfunctioning.’ Be that as it may, on May 17, 2013, Rochelle C. East, the Chief Deputy Attorney General did certify, under California Penal Code Section 31910, Subdivision (b)(7)(A), that very technology. The Chief Deputy Attorney General, Rochelle, said in important part: ‘The California Department of Justice has conducted a review of the known available patent restrictions applicable to the microscopic-imprinting technology described in §31910, Subdivision (b)(7)(A). Based on this review, the department certifies that, as of May 17, 2013, this technology is available to more than one manufacturer unencumbered by patent restrictions.’” In that same AQ article, we also pointed out that, “Apparently, New York is relying on the certification report that the Chief Deputy Attorney General of California published, as New York drafts its own legislation, mandating adoption of microstamping technology in its own State.” An excerpt of the AQ article appeared on Ammoland Shooting Sports News on June 30, 2014; and, on September 27, 2014, Arbalest Quarrel’s President, Stephen L. D’Andrilli, delivered an address on microstamping of firearms at the 29th Annual Gun Rights Policy Conference held in Chicago, Illinois. AQ posted, the day before, a summary of Stephen’s address to the Gun Rights Policy Conference.Very recently, on May 23, 2021, California Assembly Majority Whip, Jesse Gabriel, published a Press Release, stating, inter alia,“In collaboration with Team ENOUGH and the Brady Campaign, Assembly member Jesse Gabriel (D - Woodland Hills) announced new legislation today that would make California the first state in the nation to require firearms used by law enforcement to include microstamping technology.The measure, Assembly Bill (AB) 876, would build on the landmark Unsafe Handgun Act (UHA) [Cal Pen Code §31910 et.seq.] and mark a major step forward in the effort to require firearms manufacturers to incorporate microstamping technology, which has long been a top priority for gun violence prevention advocates. Importantly, microstamping technology imprints unique markings—known as micro stamps—onto individual firearms as well as discharged bullet casings, thereby allowing law enforcement to connect fired casings to a particular firearm.”Is it just coincidence that New York is now following suit with its own Microstamping Bill, to be voted on in the coming days: 2021 Bill Text NY S.B. 4116 [AN ACT to amend the penal law, in relation to requiring semiautomatic pistols manufactured or delivered to any licensed dealer in this state to be capable of microstamping ammunition]?”Even so, this isn’t the first time that New York has attempted to enact a microstamping gun law because, in 2007, the New York State Assembly introduced its Bill 2007 NY A.B. 9819. Did New York take its cue from California, back in 2007? Probably. Did the two States work together on this? Are they still working together to pass Anti-Second Amendment legislation, in tandem? To what extent are other Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions also coordinating their efforts to destroy the Second Amendment? One can only wonder just how closely these jurisdictions are working together.The 2007 Bill did pass the Assembly but failed in the New York State Senate. New York Anti-Second Amendment proponents had since tried, numerous times, but without success to add a microstamping requirement to the sale of all semiautomatic handguns. But, with the legislature now firmly in Democrat Party hands, 2021 Bill Text NY S.B. 4116 has better than an even chance of passage, notwithstanding the improbability of any New York State Republican Senator voting for it.Important note: the microstamping requirement, as set forth in the Bill, were it to become New York law, does not take effect until January 1, 2023, which happens to coincide, as discussed supra, with the date that Identification Dynamics, LLC’s microstamping patent expires. And, the language of 2021 Bill Text NY S.B. 4116 makes that fact clear. Hence, any jurisdiction that has previously enacted a semiautomatic handgun microstamping law, such as California, cannot enforce the law until the expiration of the patent on January 1, 2023. But, Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions obviously want to get a jump on that. Still, they can't be happy with the wait.We can already hear the grumbling in these Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions as they are compelled to wait several more months before they can begin to enforce this draconian and ludicrous law. ACTION NOTICE ALERT: If you live in New York, do not stand idly, doing anything. Contact your State Senator NOW and tell your New York State Senator that you oppose the enactment of this bill. Required microstamping of semiautomatic handguns should not occur now, nor on January 1, 2023 with expiration of Identification Dynamics, LLC’s patent, nor at any time in the future, so long as this Nation continues to exist as a free Constitutional Republic.____________________________________Copyright © 2021 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

THE CANIGLIA CASE: U.S. SUPREME COURT APPALLED BY ACTIONS OF RENEGADE GOVERNMENT AND LAX JUDICIARY

Nothing, absolutely nothing, defines the essence of what it means to be an American citizen more than the sanctity and inviolability of Selfhood; in other words, “personal autonomy.” The sanctity and inviolability of Selfhood, i.e., personal autonomy, logically entails freedom from unwarranted Governmental intrusion over person and personal effects. ‘Personal autonomy’ is the sine qua non of what it means to be an American.The notion of ‘personal autonomy’ is embedded in and is the raison d’être of the Nation’s Bill of Rights; the central theme running throughout it, and the predicate basis for it. Without it freedom and liberty in the truest, most basic, and rawest sense are impossible.The Nation’s very existence as a free Constitutional Republic, along with the inherent sovereignty of the American people and the supremacy of the American people over Government, depends absolutely upon it.Caniglia, as treated by both the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island is a “case study” of the mishandling of U.S. Supreme Court precedent by lower Federal Courts—glaringly so. And, as a result, those lower Federal Courts erred in the decision they reached. This happenstance isn’t all that unusual, unfortunately,Too many lower Federal and State Courts—their judgment clouded by unyielding and flawed ideological, philosophical prejudices, impulses, and biases pertaining to the import and purport of the Bill of Rights—routinely misread and misapply U.S. Supreme Court rulings and holdings.This is likely intentional. Many of these Courts know exactly what they are doing but go ahead misapprehending and misapplying High Court rulings, misconstruing High Court reasoning, and blatantly ignoring High Court precedent anyway, cloaking their flawed reasoning, rulings, and logic in abstruse legalese. This is seen most prominently in the mishandling and misreading of the seminal Second Amendment Heller and McDonald case rulings. And it occurred most recently in the Fourth Amendment Caniglia case.

WHY DID THE U.S. SUPREME COURT DECIDE TO REVIEW THE CANIGLIA CASE?

It is rare for the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a case, any case, for review. Petitioners cannot, as a matter of right, demand that the High Court do so.Rarer still does the Court come to a unanimous agreement in cases that it does review. Nonetheless, all nine Justices came to a unanimous agreement in Caniglia.This happenstance is all the more remarkable today, where differences in jurisprudential and methodological approaches to case analysis exist and where philosophical differences between the two wings of the High Court are so vast and so stark as to make well-nigh impossible nine Justices coming to a mutual agreement on anything.A broad gulf exists between the liberal wing and the conservative wing of the Court, and that wide divide and bright-line are mirrored in Congress and in the Nation at large.Also remarkable is the fact that Caniglia is short in length and that several Justices wrote independent concurring opinions, joining in the concurring opinions of the others, suggesting they were much of one mind.For all these reasons and for one more, that the case at bar involves an issue that goes to the very core of a fundamental right, with ramifications on several others, the Caniglia case begs for close scrutiny.Caniglia speaks volumes about the importance—at least in some instances, as in the case at bar—where the liberal wing of the High Court, attaches as much importance to the sanctity and inviolability of one’s personhood, and, by extension, to one’s personal effects, as does the conservative wing of the Court.Also, as noted by many writers, Caniglia touches upon, albeit briefly, so-called “Red Flag” laws. Justice Alito mentions this in his Concurrence, asserting: “This case also implicates another body of law that petitioner glossed over: the so-called ‘red flag’ laws that some States are now enacting. These laws enable the police to seize guns pursuant to a court order to prevent their use for suicide or the infliction of harm on innocent persons. . . . Provisions of red flag laws may be challenged under the Fourth Amendment, and those cases may come before us. Our decision today does not address those issues.”Since the liberal wing of the High Court is loath to strengthen, or for that matter, loath to preserve exercise of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, Alito asserts his hope that the Constitutionality of “Red Flag” laws might at some point be addressed by way of the Fourth Amendment, rather than via the Second since the liberal wing is sensitive to the Fourth Amendment. He seems to direct this point to his brethren in the liberal wing. That would explain why he bothered to mention “Red Flag” laws in his Concurrence. After all, Petitioner's firearms were unlawfully taken from him, and Petitioner did raise the Second Amendment issue in his complaint at the U.S. District Court level. The Second Amendment was certainly implicated even if the Second Amendment issue wasn't addressed at the U.S. Supreme Court level.Red Flag laws are the sort of thing that the Progressive Left in our Nation and the far more extreme Marxist faction have pushed for in the last few years in their ongoing overzealous attack on the Second Amendment to the Constitution—a full-frontal assault on the Second borne from their singular, rabid abhorrence of it and of their marked frustration with it, exemplified in caustic and frenzied desperation to do away with it once and for all time. Progressives and Marxists see this as necessary because, for them, the very existence of an armed citizenry is an anathema, something totally at odds with their agenda, the ultimate goal of which is the realization of a single, all-powerful, one-world government. Achievement of that goal is impossible as long as the Nation’s Bill of Rights, and especially the Second Amendment, continues to exist.Progressives and Marxists all ascribe to the principles and tenets of COLLECTIVISM, encompassing a vast domain and array of political, social, economic, and cultural precepts all of which are antithetical to the core principles and tenets of INDIVIDUALISM, upon which the free Constitutional Republic was constructed. INDIVIDUALISM is the polar opposite of COLLECTIVISM, as the precepts of COLLECTIVISM are precisely what the founding principles and tenets of our Nation ARE NOT grounded on.The tenets and principles of INDIVIDUALISM extol the virtues and qualities of Personal Autonomy and Personal Responsibility. Morality emanates from an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, benevolent, loving, Divine Creator. COLLECTIVISTS deny this. They argue that morality is an artificial social and political and cultural construct, and they infer that the Nation’s Bill of Rights, are, as well, nothing more than a set of social and political constructs devised by Government that may be lawfully dispensed with by the Government that creates them.As the principles and tenets of COLLECTIVISM gain prominence and impetus in America, concomitant with control of the Legislative and Executive Branches firmly in the hands of Progressives and Marxists, the principles and tenets of INDIVIDUALISM lose prominence and recede into the background; eventually to be erased from the public's awareness. and, thence, from the public's memory.To accomplish the task of eroding the historical, cultural, and ethical foundations of our Nation, the Progressives and Marxists will leave neither Americans nor their institutions alone. They intend to use their power to encode an entirely new set of precepts in the psyche of Americans, grounded in the precepts of COLLECTIVISM. This requires controlling both thought and conduct. Progressives and Marxists intend to preclude all dissent and to corral and redirect all impulses toward an embrace of COLLECTIVISM.Progressives and Marxists argue that all behavior and thought that does not cohere to dictated Governmental norms is deviant and contrary to the running of a well-ordered society and must not and will not be tolerated. Progressives and Marxists insist that Americans must learn to behave to the New Order. Americans must acquiesce to Government encroachment in and intrusion upon all aspects of their lives.Naturally, Progressives and Marxists would be and are suspicious and jealous of those Americans who wish for nothing more than to be left alone and who insist on being left alone; Americans who cherish and revere above all else the right of the individual TO BE individual; free from suffocating rigidity of thought and conduct thrust upon them by the mindless drones of a NEW DOGMA, who compel blind, obsequious obedience to the dictates of “DIVERSITY, EQUITY” and INCLUSION—the new mantra of the Authoritarian Progressive and Marxist extremists.“RED FLAG” laws—the common vernacular for the more accurate, legal expression, “EXTREME PROTECTION ORDERS” —have become a prominent fixture in the mind of the Anti-Second Amendment, seditious Press and in the mind of other Anti-Second Progressive Left and Marxist elements in our Nation.With control of the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch of Government presently in the hands of Radical Democrats, these Progressives and Marxists have now launched a full-frontal assault on the Second Amendment, borne from their singular, rabid abhorrence and naked fear of it and from their marked frustration with it. Their recent actions, of which the American people have obtained as yet just a foretaste, are exemplified in caustic and frenzied desperation to do away with the Second Amendment altogether.Group Responsibility and, concomitantly, Group Dynamics are features of and critical to the tenets of Collectivism. Collectivism eschews the notion of personal autonomy and personal responsibility in favor of Group identity where the Self is immersed in and lost in the Societal Collective, the Hive.The impetus behind the enactment of and application of “Red Flag” laws is to quell even minimal threats to the cohesiveness of the Collective, the Societal Hive. To contain the “Threat to Self and Others” by dispossessing a person of his firearms is the purported goal of “Red Flag” laws, or so those who ascribe to their enactment say. But containing the perceived “Threat to Self and Others” is itself a basic tenet of Collectivism. For, personal autonomy is itself the basic threat to Self and Others.Progressives and Marxists believe that the Individual Self is only adequately contained when the Self is fully immersed in and merges with THE GROUP, in THE COLLECTIVE, i.e., when one loses Oneself to the Group. Only then is the threat of SELF ‘TO ITSELF’ and ‘TO OTHERS’ contained, neutralized. And, as the ‘FIREARM’ is identified with and emblematic of SELF and with “PERSONHOOD,” and with “PERSONAL AUTONOMY,” in a clear and emphatic way, the FIREARM, the “GUN,” must be removed from the “SELF.”And this brings us back to consideration of the critical importance of the Caniglia case.The truly frightening thing about the actions of the police in Caniglia, and with the lower Federal Courts’ handling of Caniglia is not the allusion to the creeping, dire influence of “Red Flag” laws on one’s personal identity and autonomy, horrible as those laws are, but, rather, that the Police didn’t even comply with those laws, and the lower Federal Courts didn't so much as suggest that they should have done so. The police didn't obtain a judicial warrant but unlawfully intruded upon Petitioner's home; unlawfully confiscated his personal property, his firearms; and unlawfully intruded upon Petitioner's right of personal autonomy, the right to the integrity of Body, Mind,  and Soul.This is particularly worrisome and distressing because Rhode Island did enact a Red Flag law. The Red Flag law of Rhode Island is found in the General Laws of Rhode Island, Title 8, Chapter 8.3—Extreme Protection Orders, Sections 8-8.3-1—8-8.3-14 et. seq.These laws lay out in minute detail:Filing of the Petition for an emergency protection order; Contents of the petition; Temporary Order Proceedings; Hearings on the Petition, including grounds for issuance, and the Contents of the Order; Service of One-Year Extreme Protection Orders; Termination, Expiration, including Renewal of Orders; Firearms Return or Disposal; Penalties; Liability; Required Notice on Orders and Confidentiality of Proceedings; Appeal; and Severability.In particular, R.I. Gen. Laws § 8-8.3-8, provides that, (a)Any firearm seized or surrendered in accordance with this chapter shall be returned to the respondent upon his or her request, within ten (10) days, when:(1) The respondent produces documentation issued by the court indicating that any extreme risk protective order issued pursuant to this chapter has expired, terminated, or has not been renewed. Respondent shall not be required to acquire any additional court order granting the return of seized or surrendered firearms; and(2) The law enforcement agency in possession of the firearms conducts a national criminal records check and determines that the respondent is not otherwise prohibited from possessing a firearm under state or federal law.Rhode Island’s Red Flag laws, had they been adhered to, would have provided at least a modicum of due process, at least in respect to Petitioner's firearms, because judicial intervention would have been necessary before the Government could dispossess an American citizen of his firearms. In Caniglia, though, the Red Flag laws weren’t applied. They could have been, but they weren’t.In Caniglia, the police not only unlawfully confiscated Petitioner’s firearms but forced a psychiatric evaluation on the Petitioner. The police unlawfully invaded the sanctity of Petitioner's house; they unlawfully deprived Petitioner of his personal property; they violated Petitioner's personal liberty in unlawfully compelling him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation; and they violated the sanctity and the inviolability of one's own Self in violation of the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The police further compounded their unlawful actions by refusing to return Petitioner's firearms to Petitioner upon Petitioner’s release from the hospital the following day when he lawfully demanded the police to release his firearms to him. Petitioner was compelled to retain the services of an attorney to retrieve his firearms.  Yet the lower Federal Courts saw nothing wrong in any of this. Ostensibly relying on a U.S. Supreme Court case that they took completely out of context, the District Court and U.S. Circuit Court essentially relied on common law, and, applying it ad hoc, deprived an innocent man of his fundamental right to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures of both personhood and personal property. The danger of reliance on interest balancing is immediately seen in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ assertion that,“Although an individual has robust interests in preserving his bodily autonomy, the sanctity of his home, and his right to keep firearms within the home for self-protection, these interests will sometimes have to yield to the public's powerful interest ‘in ensuring that 'dangerous' mentally ill persons [do] not harm themselves or others.’”Isn't it nice of the Court to acknowledge the right of personal autonomy, the sanctity of home, and the right to keep firearms within the home for self-protection? These are fundamental rights that the Court felt the Government, in its wisdom, could violate when “in ensuring that ‘dangerous’ mentally ill persons [do] not harm themselves or others.’”But, was Petitioner mentally ill? Hospital staff found he wasn't mentally ill, and promptly released him. And it certainly wasn’t so obvious to all the police who came to Petitioner’s house, as they didn’t think so. The facts as recited by the Court itself refutes the accuracy of the Court’s own inference:“When the officers asked him about his mental health, he told them ‘that was none of their business’ but denied that he was suicidal. Officer Mastrati subsequently reported that the plaintiff ‘appeared normal’ during this encounter, and Officer Russell described the plaintiff's demeanor as calm and cooperative. This appraisal, though, was not unanimous: Sergeant Barth thought the plaintiff seemed somewhat ‘[a]gitated’ and ‘angry,’ and Kim noted that he became ‘very upset’ with her for involving the police.The ranking officer at the scene (Sergeant Barth) determined, based on the totality of the circumstances, that the plaintiff was imminently dangerous to himself and others. After expressing some uncertainty, the plaintiff agreed to be transported by ambulance to a nearby hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.” Caniglia vs. Strom, 953 F.3d 112 (lst Cir. 2020).One might make a strong argument that Petitioner’s surprised reaction at seeing the police showing up at his house was completely understandable and rational.Justice Thomas who drafted the main opinion, laid out the serious error of both the Government and the Courts at the outset of the opinion. Justice Thomas opines,“Decades ago, this Court held that a warrantless search of an impounded vehicle for an unsecured firearm did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U. S. 433 (1973). In reaching this conclusion, the Court observed that police officers who patrol the ‘public highways’ are often called to discharge noncriminal ‘community caretaking functions,’ such as responding to disabled vehicles or investigating accidents. Id., at 441. The question today is whether Cady’s acknowledgment of these ‘caretaking’ duties creates a standalone doctrine that justifies warrantless searches and seizures in the home. It does not.”The horror of the Caniglia episode is that the Government deprived a man of his fundamental right to liberty, personal autonomy, personal property, the integrity of the body, and the integrity of Self, and, all of this without application made to the Court for a warrant that even the most draconian of a State's Red Law procedures required. When the police officers arrived at Petitioner's home, in response to Petitioner's wife's request, they should have stated to Petitioner's wife that, absent a warrant from the Court, they could not lawfully compel Petitioner to undergo a psychiatric evaluation; nor could they lawfully confiscate the Petitioner's firearms. Petitioner's wife had made clear she did not feel threatened by her husband, and there was nothing in Petitioner's behavior upon which the officers could reasonably infer that Petitioner constituted a threat either to himself or to his wife.The police should have informed Petitioner's wife that if she truly felt the need to dispossess her husband of his firearms she should petition the Court for an Order. That the police failed to adhere to the law, illegally compelling Petitioner to undergo an immediate psychiatric evaluation and then confiscating Petitioner's firearms anyway, when telling Petitioner that they would not do so, and in fact could not legally do so. The actions of the police and the acquiescence of the District Court of Rhode Island and of the U.S. Court of Appeals to the Government's actions, illustrate just how far this Nation has slid on the road to tyranny.This is not to suggest that “Red Flag” laws aren't to be seen as a dire threat to the Nation's fundamental rights and liberties. They are. But if, as in the Caniglia case, the State can deny a man his liberty and property, ignoring even the constraints of bad law, as “Red Flag” laws are, as Rhode Island’s Red Flag is, and if a heedless, feckless Judiciary gives the State the Court's imprimatur to establish that such actions are acceptable, even commendable, then our Nation has found itself in uncharted, perilous waters, unlike any our Nation has countenanced before.In Caniglia, the Government operated completely outside the law, invading and violating both a person’s sacred, inviolate “Self” and his personal property. This was awful. Yet, the Rhode Island Federal Courts, rather than calling out the Government for their lawless acts, demonstrated a profuse and odd proclivity to defend those lawless actions. If Government can get away with that, Government can get away with anything, for, at that juncture, neither the Constitution nor Statute means anything. Written laws are seen as nothing more than a set of guidelines at best, to be followed or not as the Government wishes; and, at worst they are simply empty vessels existing simply to give the populace a false sense of security from the specter of tyranny looming over it, even as that tyranny has long taken root and has acquired a firm hold on the Land, and long after the American citizenry has been demoralized, degraded, and subjugated.Since this is something the Progressives and Marxists want, what they are working toward, what they are attuned to, what they identify with, what they long for, they see the annihilation of a free Constitutional Republic and the debasement of a once-proud sovereign people as a good thing, a positive thing, as they never believe in the sanctity and inviolability of the human being anyway. All they believe in and are concerned with is the well-being of the COLLECTIVIST HIVE, and they believe a dominant and domineering, omnipresent, omnipotent, centralized Government, giving marching orders to the States and to the people is the best vehicle for ensuring the well-being of the HIVE, the HERD. And a BEEHIVE or a HERD OF ANIMALS is how these Progressives and Marxists perceive the American citizenry, and an overbearing,  Government is just the sort of mechanism for keeping an unruly herd of animals or a nameless, swarm of bees in check. But this is something that the U.S. Supreme Court—all nine Justices—could see manifesting in the actions of the Rhode Island police and in the reasoning and rulings of the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island and as those rulings were affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. The High Court must have seen the danger a renegade Government and a conniving or oblivious Judiciary pose to the preservation of a free Constitutional Republic and to a Sovereign People when Government operates completely outside the law to deprive an innocent American citizen of his personal property and worse when that Government and Judiciary deprive a man of the sanctity and inviolability of bodily integrity and Personal Selfhood.To see even the liberal wing of the Court aghast by the actions of both Government and the Rhode Island Judiciary must give one pause.But how long will the U.S. Supreme Court retain even a vestige of independence if the Progressive Left and Radical Marxists, that presently control two Branches of Government, take firm control of the Third Branch as well?____________________________________Copyright © 2021 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

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

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

HOW ARE MAJOR NEWSPAPERS HANDLING THE ANNOUNCEMENT?

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

A LACKLUSTER NYC MAYOR AND NYPD’S BRASS THAT WON’T SHINE

PART ONE

NYC MAYOR DE BLASIO’S RECIPE FOR DISASTER

Crime is rampant in New York City today. A rational person would expect the Mayor of the City, Bill de Blasio, to work diligently with the Commissioner of Public Safety to develop and implement a comprehensive, concrete plan to deal expeditiously and effectively with this public disorder. Instead, the Mayor remonstrates against the police and essentially orders the police to stand down. This suggests either that the Mayor doesn’t comprehend the severity of the problem affecting the City and is incompetent or he is intentionally inviting anarchy to reign in the City, and the man is insane.In a City as large as NYC the Mayor’s failure to take charge and deal with the mounting violence and chaos amounts, at the very least, to a serious dereliction of duty. Perhaps the Mayor thinks violence and chaos will sort itself out by itself. It won’t; it never does. A person must be dull-witted to think otherwise. Something must be done. Consider——New York City, with a population of over 8.7 million people, is the largest City in the Country,  and among the largest in the world.Moreover, NYC has the highest density of any major U.S. City, with over 27,000 people per square mile. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/planning-level/nyc-population/population-facts.page.But does population density itself have an impact on crime? If so, does population density tend to increase the crime rate, or reduce it?In 2011, the Radical Left publication “The Atlantic,” writing about population density and crime rates,said this:“To offer a policy observation, higher density helps reduce street crime in an urban environment in two ways. One is that in a higher density city, any given street is less likely to be empty of passersby at any given time. The other is that if a given patch of land has more citizens, that means it can also support a larger base of police officers. And for policing efficacy both the ratio of cops to citizens and of cops to land matters. Therefore, all else being equal a denser city will be a better policed city.” The Atlantic’s first observation, that higher population density reduces street crime in an urban environment, is false.Professor Keith Harries, Department of Geography and Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland, posted, in an academic publication—“International Journal of Criminal Justice”—his study that deals with the issue of population density and crime rates and refutes the Atlantic’s conclusion. The Professor’s article serves as a well-reasoned, scientifically supported counterpoint to the Atlantic’s assertion.In the opening abstract to the study, published in July 2006, Harries states that——“The role of population density in the generation or suppression of crime has been the subject of debate for decades. The classic argument is that high density offers opportunities for property crimes, given that it is a surrogate for the distribution of private property, much of which offers attractive targets to thieves. On the other hand, densely populated areas offer natural surveillance that has the effect of inhibiting violent crimes in so far as witnesses are more abundant and events are more likely to be reported to police. In this analysis, property and violent crimes were selected from a database of over 100,000 crimes reported in Baltimore County, Maryland, U.S.A., in the year 2000. Densities of population and of property and violent crimes were calculated for city blocks. Blocks with population densities above the mean of all blocks were then retained for further consideration.” Professor Harries concludes—— Analysis demonstrated that both property and violent crimes were moderately correlated with population density, and these crimes largely affected the same blocks. It was concluded that at the block level of geography, no evidence of a differential between property and violent crimes based on population density could be detected.” So, contrary to The Atlantic’s naked, unsupported remarks, the size of population and density do correlate with both property crime and violent crime; and they do so directly, not inversely, which means that, as population density increases in a given “block level of geography,” both property crime and violent crime increase as well.The Atlantic’s second observation is that, as the size of a community grows, a community’s police force also grows and, concomitant with a larger police force, “all else being equal a denser city will be a better policed city.”That observation, true once, perhaps, in all jurisdictions, is true no longer—not today—and certainly not in the jurisdictions comprising the Radical Left’s bizarro world.

DESTRUCTION OF A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC IS THE END GOAL OF THE RADICAL LEFT

Radical Left mayors, taking their cue from domestic terrorist organizations like Black Lives Matter and Antifa, have defunded their police or are seriously considering doing so. They have substantially reduced the number of police—despite or, perhaps, in arrogant defiance of the continuous, rampant violence afflicting their cities, and notwithstanding the absence of a corresponding decrease in population size—or have seriously considered doing so.These Mayors have also hamstrung those police remaining in their community—those who have not been summarily let go or who have otherwise voluntarily, and certainly understandably, resigned or who have taken early retirement—and in droves.After all why should police officers, honorable citizens, subject to the same feelings and emotions of any other law-abiding American citizen, wish to remain in service to a community when a city’s leadership prevents those officers from effectively performing their duties to preserve and protect the residents of their community and to maintain public order, civility, and decorum; when a city’s leadership refuses to prosecute crime; when a city’s leadership establishes policies that do nothing to constrain or curtail crime, and actually endanger the lives and well-being of police officers; and when a city’s leadership castigates and demoralizes the police, by continually railing and remonstrating against them, and, at once, extolling as virtuous the very rabble that seeks to tear down a community—a community that is the home of the police officers themselves.In fact, some Radical Left mayors have even considered eliminating police departments from their communities. The result is, as any reasonable person would expect, utter chaos, wanton destruction of public and private property, contempt for both the police and the criminal justice system; and willful and horrific violence directed against both police and innocent people.Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago represent,  for the political and social scientist, pertinent case studies of what happens when a City is rudderless and law and order break down; when politicians and the Press, too, deny the fact of and the scale of the horror that besets a nation; when public leaders act like irresponsible children, falling in line with a seemingly popular but misguided clique of sanctimonious, pretentious do-gooders who have nothing beneficial to offer the American people except venom, vitriol, and spite.The police are not society’s enemies. America’s police departments are the guardians of society. The Radical Left knows this. Anarchy reigns if the police are not permitted to function. They know this too. That is why they attack the very concept of  the ‘community police department.’ They know that, once the police go, society goes with it—down the drain. That is what they want: The United States, a free Constitutional Republic eradicated; erased; the vision of the founders forgotten. That is the aim of the Neoliberal Globalists and of the Radical Left of all stripes: A Counter-Revolution to reconstitute America into a thing utterly alien: a hideous, despondent, depleted mutant creature.New York City—as with Portland, Seattle, Chicago, and Minneapolis—is metastasizing into just such an abhorrent creature; and, if uncontained and unconstrained, it can bring down the rest of the Country with it.The burning question: With a huge and heterogenous population, the City requires an equally massive police force—one capable of quelling riots, suppressing crime, and maintaining peace and public order. But is New York up to the task? It is possible, but not with a Marxist Nihilist City Mayor like Bill de Blasio at the helm.___________________________________________________

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO STANDS IN THE WAY OF A SAFER NEW YORK

PART TWO

AN AMERICAN CITY REQUIRES BOTH A COMMUNITY POLICE FORCE TO MAINTAIN THE PEACE AND TO PROMOTE PUBLIC ORDER, AND A WELL ARMED CITIZENRY TO PROTECT PERSONAL LIFE AND PROPERTY AND TO GUARD AGAINST TYRANNY. UNDER DE BLASIO NYC HAS NEITHER ONE

America’s cities, as components of the Nation—a free Constitutional Republic—require both a community police force to maintain peace and to promote public order, and a well-armed citizenry to protect personal life and property and to guard against tyranny. Each component lends to peace, prosperity, and liberty. They each work in tandem, for the benefit of all Americans.Through time, how well has New York City faired in the matter of maintaining a capable, efficient, effective police force and in recognizing the right of the people to keep and bear arms? Let us see.

IS THE NYPD UP TO THE TASK TO PERFORM ITS DUTIES IN A MAMMOTH, HIGHLY CONCENTRATED AND DIVERSE POPULATION?

On its website, this is what the NYPD tells us—“The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is the largest and one of the oldest municipal police departments in the United States. . . . The NYPD was established in 1845, and today, is responsible for policing an 8.5-million-person city, by performing a wide variety of public safety, law enforcement, traffic management, counterterror, and emergency response roles.” The NYPD adds this comment on its website: “In the past 25 years, the department has achieved spectacular declines in both violent and property crime, ensuring that New York City has the lowest overall rate of major crimes in the 25 largest cities in the country.” Does this statement ring true? Well, it was once true.Under former City Mayors, Rudolf Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, crime was in fact brought under control. And it in fact took 25 years to do so—to repair the carnage wrought to the City under the stewardship of David Dinkins, a Democrat, who served as Mayor for one term: from January 1, 1990 through December 31, 1993.The public had had enough of Dinkins. He was defeated by a Republican, Giuliani, in 1994.We compliment Giuliani and Bloomberg on what they did right, improving the City’s economy and taking a hard stance on crime. But their consistent attack on the fundamental, natural right of armed self-defense is indefensible.A WELL-EQUIPPED, WELL ORGANIZED, WELL-FUNDED, COMMUNITY POLICE DEPARTMENT IS NECESSARY TO FIGHT CRIME, TO MAINTAIN ORDER, AND TO KEEP THE PEACE IN INDIVIDUAL COMMUNITIES; BUT A POLICE DEPARTMENT DOES NOT STAND AS, AND CANNOT STAND AS, A SUBSTITUTE FOR THE ARMED CITIZENRY, AS ONLY AN ARMED CITIZENRY CAN ADEQUATELY PROVIDE FOR, AND HAS THE SOLE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROVIDE FOR ITS OWN DEFENSE AND TO SERVE AS THE BEST DETERRENT OF AND THE FINAL FAIL-SAFE TO THWART THE ONSET OF TYRANNY; THEREFORE IT IS WELL SAID AND HAS BEEN ETCHED IN STONE THAT “A WELL-REGULATED MILITIA BEING NECESSARY FOR THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE, THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.”The maintenance of public safety and order, to preserve and protect a community, is, and always has been, the frontline duty of a community’s police force. That is why the modern police department exists and has existed in our cities since at least the first third of the 20th Century, although the institution of policing existed much earlier, going back to the colonial days.But the duty to preserve and protect one’s own life and that of one’s family is personal, and the duty to ensure the security of and continuity of a free state and the immutable, illimitable sovereignty of the American people over Government remains forever in the hands of the people themselves; never in a standing army; nor in a federal or state or local police force; nor in the Nation’s massive intelligence apparatus, nor even in the Nation’s system of laws, which are, as has been disturbingly, depressingly shown, especially in the matter of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, susceptible to flagrant abuse; nor, as it has come to pass, in a Press that has misused its freedom, selling out our Country and our Nation’s people. And, of late, the Press has done so with wild abandon: officiously, audaciously: sermonizing endlessly, and sanctimoniously, and condescendingly to the American citizenry, as if the citizenry were merely an ignorant flock of sheep that must be constantly herded lest it go astray.Only through force of arms does the raw and awesome power of the American citizenry ring true. Only through force of arms can the American citizenry maintain the security and continuity of a free State as against those—be they inside or outside the Nation—who would dare usurp ultimate authority from the citizenry in whom that authority and sovereignty rightfully belong. Only through the force of arms can those who would dare hobble the American spirit be effectively constrained and contained and learn well that Americans are not to be toyed with.Apparently, neither New York City mayors nor New York State governors have gotten the message. Or, if they have, they have failed to heed it, and must be reminded of it.And it isn’t the duty of the police to provide for one’s personal safety; nor is it the duty of the police to guarantee the security of a free State, and never was. That duty rests solely, as it always has, as it always must, and as it was always meant to rest, in the people themselves.Yet, the City’s mayors have invariably, and grievously, and notoriously mistaken the duties, and functions, and responsibilities of the one with the duties, and functions, and responsibilities of the other; ultimately conflating the two; inferring, whether erroneously or disingenuously, that the police are fully capable of and should alone be tasked with the duties, functions, and responsibilities that the founders, in their wisdom recognized, and mandated must rest, as the Divine Creator intended, in full accord with the natural order of things, solely on the individual.The founders codified that natural law in the U.S. Constitution. More than two centuries have past since ratification of the U.S. Constitution. The Nation has adhered to natural law. Natural law is the foundational strength upon which the Constitution, the blueprint of our Nation, rests: the Nation's Bill of Rights. And through no accident, our Country has become the happiest, most productive, most  prosperous, most powerful, and most beneficent Nation on Earth.Now, though, we see cracks, deep fissures forming in our beautiful, wondrous blueprint. Why is that? How did that come about? There are sinister, ruthless, and jealous forces at work who are hell-bent on destroying the foundational principles of our Nation. Although these forces have actually been at work to tear down our Nation since the moment it came to fruition, in 1788, with the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. But only recently has the full nature of and fury of these malevolent, malignant forces come to light. Americans are seeing unnatural, loathsome elements taking control of many major urban centers. And the Democrat Party—or, rather, what the Democrat Party, controlled by their own Globalist puppet-masters, has devolved into—is using these abhorrent hordes in a bid to take complete control over the reins of Government. These rabid, mindless hordes are operating with near complete abandon in several major urban centers. If the Democrats take control of Government in November, this rancid mob of malcontents will be unleashed, infecting all Cities, townships, and villages. Armageddon will ensue across the Nation.

THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS WAS CODIFIED IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT TO PREVENT THE NATION’S ANNIHILATION: THE VERY THREAT PRESENTED TODAY

Most States recognize the transcendent soundness of the Nation’s Bill of Rights and have adopted its language in their own State Constitutions, mirroring the Nation’s Constitution, including, most importantly, the language of the Second Amendment. But seven States have demurred, thinking they know better. One of those seven States is New York.THE SECOND AMENDMENT PRESERVES THE COUNTRY’S STABILITY; ITS LACK WILL END ITThe language of the Second Amendment appears nowhere in the State’s Constitution. Rather, the Second Amendment language, taken verbatim from the U.S. Constitution, but for the substitution of the  word 'shall' for 'cannot'—“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be infringed,”—appears in the Consolidated laws of New York, Article 2 (Bill of Rights) of the Civil Rights Law, along with certain other “Rights” but notably, not in THE Bill of Rights, Article 1 of the State Constitution itself.This means New York considers the right of the people to keep and bear arms to be statutory, not fundamental, and, hence, debased to the status of a privilege, not a true right, subject, then, to constant modification and tinkering, which of course it has been.The 2008 U.S. Supreme Court Heller case made clear what sensible Americans always knew; that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is an individual right, not tied to one’s service in a militia, and the subsequent 2010 U.S. Supreme Court McDonald case held that the right of the people to keep and bear arms applies to the States as well as to the Federal Government. No matter: New York, and several other jurisdictions routinely and contemptuously ignore those clear, adamant U.S. Supreme Court holdings. And New York’s residents pay the price for the New York judiciary’s insolence and contentiousness. Rampant destruction, understandable fear among the polity, and needless, senseless loss of life follow where armed self-defense ceases to exist.

NEW YORK CITY, A MAJOR URBAN CENTER, PROVIDES AN OBJECT LESSON IN THE TRAPS AND SNARES OF WRONGHEADED, PIGHEADED MAYORAL LEADERSHIP, COMMENCING WITH THE LUDICROUS IDEA THAT AN ARMED CITIZENRY ENDANGERS THE SAFETY AND SECURITY OF THE CITY, RATHER THAN ENHANCING THE CITY’S SAFETY AND SECURITY

The NYPD doesn’t comprise legions of personal bodyguards to serve millions of New York City residents. It has neither the resources nor, under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, the legal responsibility to do so. And, pretending that the NYPD can fulfill that function—a function, duty, and responsibility of the average citizen residing in New York—has had disastrous consequences for the City.Truth to tell, the constant danger posed to average, innocent citizens residing in New York requires both a massive police presence to provide public order and safety and an armed citizenry to promote armed vigilance and safeguard one’s personal life and well-being. It isn’t an either/or consideration. See Arbalest Quarrel article, posted on November 21, 2019, titled, “Can We, As Individuals, Rely On The Police To Protect Us?” 

THE IMPLOSION OF NEW YORK CITY OCCURRED ONCE, TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, UNDER DAVID DINKINS; UNDER DE BLASIO IT IS HAPPENING AGAIN, ONLY WORSE!

The Former New York City Commissioner of Public Safety (Police Commissioner), Bernard Kerik, recently and accurately pointed out, in newsmax, that,“Twenty-five years ago, New York City was about to implode.Violent crime and murder rates were the worst in the United States, tourism was declining, real estate values were plummeting, and economic development was in regression.There were close to 1.6 million people on welfare, and neighborhoods of color looked like the remnants of war-torn Beirut.City streets and highways were cluttered with stolen and abandoned cars.As Rudolph W. Giuliani focused on his second attempt to become New York’s mayor, most New Yorkers believed that New York City was just too filthy, corrupt, and violent to manage.Giuliani possessed a different view: He was adamant that no one wants to live, work, visit, or go to school in a place where they're not safe.For every percentage point he reduced violent crime, we witnessed increases in economic development, rising real estate values; and all-time highs in tourism. As he walked out of City Hall on his last day, there was close to 800,000 less people on welfare.New York City had become the safest large city in America.Over the next 12 years, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly carried on Giuliani’s anti-crime strategies, both achieving continued reductions in violent crime and murder.Mayor Bloomberg used that success to trumpet New York City as America’s economic and business capital of the world, which opened the floodgates for thousands of new companies and jobs.By 2014, New York City was one of the cleanest, safest, and fastest growing cities globally.Then came Mayor Bill de Blasio.” What happened next?Bill de Blasio single-handedly undid all the positive work of Giuliani and Bloomberg in rebuilding the City and making the City a safe place to live and to work. This hasn’t gone unnoticed; not least of all by police officers themselves. Retired NYPD sergeant, Joseph Giacalone, points out:“There have been more shootings so far this year in New York City than in all of 2019. . . . ‘“It only gets worse from here,” warned Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.’”The NYPD would do well to update its website to reflect the stratospheric rise in crime under the stewardship of Mayor Bill de Blasio. The Mayor, taking his cue from the domestic terrorist organization, Black Lives Matter, has completely hobbled the police, but, at one and the same time continues to resist recognition of the citizen’s right of “armed self-defense.”The right of the people to keep and bear arms continues to be a persistent bugaboo of all New York mayors. It is all the worse, today, in the topsy-turvy City of New York where a Marxist Mayor treats gang bangers, common criminals, dangerous lunatics, and Marxist rioters with kid gloves while at one and the same time castigates the police and spurns the public safety needs of ordinary citizens. The result——Bill de Blasio has single-handedly turned a once safe and thriving City into utter chaos, giving the green light to criminals and rioters and endangering the lives of average, law-abiding people.Quite an accomplishment! And de Blasio seems pleased with himself. His continuous obsequious behavior toward and grotesque relationship with Black Lives Matter demonstrates the toxic brew this creates, and the danger that such a coupling of Radical Left political leaders and domestic terrorist organizations poses to the stability of our Nation.The New York Post recently reported de Blasio as saying,“It was exactly the right thing to do to paint that mural and we’re going to keep sending that message constantly that Black Lives Matter in New York City, . . .”Marxist organizations—like Black Lives Matter—only matter to de Blasio. It is the organization, after all, that matters, and not actual Black lives.And, of course, de Blasio regularly denounces the NYPD. He has disbanded successful anticrime units; has demoralized the rank and file; has placed police officers in personal danger with his new policies; and he has advocated for the defunding of the entire Department.In having aligned himself with a domestic terrorist organization, Mayor de Blasio had apparently forgotten how he had not that long ago heralded the NYPD. Once, a little over a year ago, when Bill de Blasio hoped to secure his Party’s nomination for U.S. President, to take on Donald Trump—a long-shot bid if ever there was one—he realized that, to make headway, against a large field, he would have to take a major risk. He agreed to appear on Fox News, to be interviewed by Sean Hannity. The question of “gun control” came up.“Bill de Blasio defended his stance on gun control during an exclusive interview with Sean Hannity.De Blasio, the mayor of New York City, claimed New York is the safest large American city and that the police are the best outlet to keep people safe, on Wednesday’s ‘Hannity.’‘You’re in the safest big city in America. . . with the finest police force in America,’ he said.‘We keep people safe. Crime’s gone down for the last six years on my watch.’‘I believe right now what’s wrong in this country is not that people have rights around guns, it’s there are no gun safety measures like background checks.’” Of course, this exchange took place well before de Blasio hopped into the sack with Black Lives Matter. He has since forsaken the NYPD. Like many politicians, de Blasio is routinely dismissive of his audience, surmising wrongly, that the public is either too stupid or too gullible to notice the inherent inconsistencies and hypocrisies manifested in his bombastic utterings. See Arbalest Quarrel article, “NYC: The New Badlands,” posted on July 27, 2020.But, even if some Americans are oblivious to the pompous and vacuous assertions of this Mayor, they certainly cannot ignore what they see taking place; changes occurring at lightning speed; emphatic, insistent, and none of it pleasant: a City in turmoil; declining property values; the City’s economy shot-to-hell; skyrocketing crime; people leaving in droves; a Paradise to some—masochists and nihilists, likely—a vision of Hell to most; New York transformed into Venezuela.Governor Cuomo and Bill de Blasio continually bicker and snipe at each other, and blame their own failings on racism, Trump, Russia, or on anything or anyone else but for themselves. But they are of one mind when it comes to their Collectivist Dystopian vision. A Biden-Harris Presidency will see that Nihilist vision come true for the entire Nation.______________________________________________________

NYC MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO MUST BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE NOW

PART THREE

New York City cannot tolerate Bill de Blasio for the duration of his term. He must be removed before the City turns into the New Badlands. See, supra, Arbalest Quarrel article, titled, “NYC: The New Badlands,” posted on July 27, 2020.

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THIS MAYOR?

Most New York City residents desire stability and cherish the free Constitutional Republic our founders placed their life on the line to give us. These New Yorkers do not much appreciate or accept the Mayor’s policies. They reflect his Marxist principles and philosophy, antithetical to their own. And the negative impact is plain: a once safe, secure, vibrant, and economically thriving City drained of all vitality.Can the Mayor do whatever the hell he wants and get away with it? No!Mayor de Blasio may think his policies are a step in the right direction even as peace and public order have been shot to hell. Any normal, rational person, though, would say the Mayor has utterly failed at his job.This brings up a pressing question: what are the Mayor’s duties, after all? New York law spells this out.

A MATTER OF LAW AND THE RULE OF LAW IN NEW YORK

In the reign of Bill de Blasio, Mayor of New York City, the City’s residents would do well to peruse New York law. It says much regarding the duties and responsibilities of the Mayor who is supposed to serve them, but isn’t.NY CLS Sec Cl Cities § 54 (Duties of the Mayor) sets forth that,“It shall be the duty of the mayor to see that the city officers and departments faithfully perform their duties; to maintain peace and good order within the city; to take care that the laws of the state and the ordinances of the common council are executed and enforced within the city. . . .”Further, NY CLS Sec Cl Cities § 57 (Additional powers and duties) sets forth:“The mayor shall have such other powers and perform such other duties as may be prescribed in this chapter or by other laws of the state or by ordinance of the common council, not inconsistent with law. In case of riot, conflagration or other public emergency requiring it, the mayor shall have power to call out the police and firefighters; he or she shall also have power to appoint such number of special police officers as he or she may deem necessary to preserve the public peace. Such special police officers shall be under the sole control of the regularly appointed and constituted officers of the police department. They have shall have power to make arrests only for disorderly conduct or other offenses against peace or good order. In case of riot or insurrection, he or she may take command of the whole police force, including the chief executive officer thereof.”Do you think the Mayor is complying with NY CLS Sec Cl Cities § 54? Clearly not!Mayor de Blasio has done nothing to end riot, conflagration, and public emergency. To the contrary, he has stoked it. He should be removed from Office. But can he be?The short answer is, “yes;” the Mayor can be removed from Office, prior to election. The process in New York isn’t quick and it isn’t easy, but it can be done.Unfortunately, New York doesn’t have a recall procedure, unlike other cities. Removing the Mayor from Office through the electoral process, prior to the general election, isn’t open to New York City’s citizens. And the next regular election won’t take place until November 2021. So, removing de Blasio, sooner, barring death, must be done, if at all, through the Courts.But can the Mayor be taken to Court? He can if he is considered an “officer” under New York State law, who has committed crimes under color of law.Under New York law, the Mayor is an officer of the City: an ‘elected officer,’NY CLS Sec Cl Cities § 11 (Elected officers) provides that:“There shall be elected by the qualified electors of the city, a mayor, comptroller, treasurer, president of the common council and four assessors. There shall be elected by the qualified electors of each ward of the city an alderman and a supervisor. There shall also be elected by the qualified electors of the city and of the wards thereof such other officers as may be provided by law.”State law sets forth the grounds for removal of city officers. The mayor comes under the purview of NY CLS Sec Cl Cities § 20 (Charges against city officers): “An officer of the city . . . shall be removed only upon charges, such charges shall be for disability for service or neglect or dereliction of official duty or incompetency or incapacity to perform his official duties or some delinquency materially affecting his general character or fitness for the office unless otherwise specifically provided by law.” The follow-up question is this: Has there been “disability for service or neglect or dereliction of official duty, or incompetency or incapacity to perform his official duties” sufficient to support a legal basis to remove de Blasio from Office?As an avowed and devoted Marxist, de Blasio operates in accord with the tenets and strictures of Marxist Collectivism. His supporters might argue he’s faithfully carrying out official duties, consistent with his ideological bent, namely, to promote Marxism. And many City residents seem satisfied with that, having voted him into Office in the first place.But there is a specific act de Blasio has undertaken that is inconsistent with his duties as Mayor, rendering the matter of his political and social philosophy and posture irrelevant.The Mayor is a trustee of the public’s property. Under NY CLS Sec Cl Cities § 22, the Mayor, no less than any other officer of the City, whether elected or appointed, including members of the common council,“are hereby declared trustees of the property, funds and effects of said city respectively, so far as such property, funds and effects are or may be committed to their management or control, and every taxpayer residing in said city is hereby declared to be a cestui que trust in respect to the said property, funds and effects respectively; and any co-trustee or any cestui que trust shall be entitled as against said trustees and in regard to said property, funds and effects to all the rules, remedies and privileges provided by law for any co-trustee or cestui que trust; to prosecute and maintain an action to prevent waste and injury to any property, funds and estate held in trust; and such trustees are hereby made subject to all the duties and responsibilities imposed by law on trustees, and such duties and responsibilities may be enforced by the city or by any co-trustee or cestui que trust aforesaid. The remedies herein provided shall be in addition to those now provided by law.”Bill de Blasio has made clear his intention to defund the police to the tune of one billion dollars. But those funds are police funds, part of the budget necessary to maintain public order. His intention to take money away from the police is prima facie inconsistent with the Mayor’s principal duty “to maintain peace and good order within the City.” Doing so, during a period of rising crime—indeed, a stratospheric increase in crime—amounts to an act in flagrante delicto.The Mayor’s dislocation of valuable police resources, including disbanding anticrime units, hamstringing police operations, rewriting police policy to cohere with Marxist objectives that are wholly inconsistent with traditional and accepted police practice, destroying cohesion within the ranks of the police, and misappropriation of public funds necessary to the proper functioning police operations, demonstrate clear evidence of massive dereliction of official duties and incompetency, demanding de Blasio’s immediate removal from office.Of course, a lawsuit against de Blasio might not, and probably would not, succeed—as Radical Left forces along with a seditious Press would be marshalled against such a lawsuit—but it would send a clear and stark message, to both de Blasio and to those who support a Radical Left insurgency, nonetheless; a message that reverberates throughout the Country, that, yes, Radical Left political leaders can be prosecuted for their crimes, too.

WHAT OTHER ACTION MIGHT BE TAKEN TO CONSTRAIN A RENEGADE MAYOR?

Lawsuits against public officers are an expensive and time-consuming process. Can something expeditiously be done to curb de Blasio’s actions?As a stopgap, the present Police Commissioner, Dermot F. Shea, can try, at least, to keep the Mayor’s power in check, refusing to implement policies that endanger public order and safety. But would Shea even want to?Remember, Mayor de Blasio appointed Shea. He did so obviously because they share a similar political and social philosophy. In fact, The New York Times quoted de Blasio as saying he selected Shea “because he is a ‘proven agent’ of change.”And we know what kind of change de Blasio has in mind for the City: Marxist Collectivism.But even Shea realizes de Blasio is operating erratically, as the Times pointed out in that same August 3 article. “[Shea’s] criticism of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s law enforcement policies was stinging.” Apart from publicly criticizing the Mayor, Shea seems reluctant to go any further than that; he is unlikely to take action to countermand the Mayor’s policies concerning police operations. If he were to do that, Shea would jeopardize his own position because de Blasio would likely fire him. It is the Mayor’s prerogative to do so since the Police Commissioner is appointed by the Mayor. Shea knows that.In New York, as in many jurisdictions, the Police Commissioner, i.e., the “Commissioner of Public Safety,” isn’t elected by the people, so he isn’t directly answerable to the people. He is answerable to the Mayor who appointed him.NY CLS Sec Cl Cities § 12 (Appointive officers) provides that,“There shall be appointed by the mayor a corporation counsel, city engineer, commissioner of public works, commissioner of public safety, commissioner of public welfare and sealer of weights and measures.”Perhaps New York law should be changed to enable the residents to elect their police commissioner directly, as they do their mayor. If so, the police commissioner wouldn’t be answerable to the mayor, but directly to the people who elected him. That might help.But, in the interim, unless a party with standing—who also has the time, money, the moral fiber and strength of spirit—to file a lawsuit to remove a recalcitrant, intransigent de Blasio from Office, the public is stuck with him until the next mayoral election in November 2021.What kind of shape do you suppose the City will be in fifteen months from now with de Blasio still in office? Can the residents of New York City afford to wait that long? The prognosis isn’t good.Representative Lee Zeldin (R-NY) told Fox News, bluntly:“ ‘I don’t believe New York City is going to survive the remainder of Mayor de Blasio’s term in office,’ he told Fox News. ‘Certainly there are individuals who live in New York City who will not literally survive without any type of a change in the way New York City approaches policing, law and order, safety and security.’” _______________________________________Copyright © 2020 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

A MARXIST COUNTER-REVOLUTION THREATENS THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THREATENED ON INDEPENDENCE DAY

PART ONE

WHO SHALL SECURE THE RIGHT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS?

We begin with one simple basic, indisputable, but melancholy truth: No Branch of our Government cares deeply about preserving and strengthening the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; neither Congress; nor the U.S. Supreme Court; nor, for that matter, the Chief Executive of our Nation, President Donald Trump.Sure, there are outliers in Congress and on the High Court who seek to preserve, protect, and strengthen the sacred right of the people to keep and bear arms, but they are few in number; pathetically few in number; and President Trump’s own stand on the Second Amendment has been lukewarm at best. Yes, the President claims to support the Second Amendment. Like all politicians, he knows how to pontificate, and he does so better than most. But what has he done to set his lofty, grandiose words to action? The only concrete Second Amendment action he has taken that we can recall was one decidedly against buttressing our sacred, inviolate right.Do you remember what President Trump did? He ordered the DOJ to revise the definition of ‘machine gun’ to include bump stocks in the legal definition. The resulting change distorts decades of industry and military usage and understanding of the expression, ‘machine gun.’ Regardless, Trump ordered the DOJ to follow through with this change. He did this ostensibly to placate those folks who don’t want the American citizenry to own and possess firearms at all; to mollify those maniacal ideologues who have a visceral abhorrence of firearms; who harbor ill will toward those who wish to exercise their God-given right to own and possess firearms; and who will not rest until they have: one, banned civilian ownership and possession of firearms; and two, have collected all firearms and ammunition from American civilian citizens; and three, have destroyed all civilian caches of firearms and ammunition, imprisoning those who they deem hoarders of firearms and ammunition; and, four, have erased the language of the Second Amendment from the U.S. Constitution and from all lexicons.The appetite of those Destroyers of our Nation who would crush the American people into submission will never be sated until all thought and action have been brought under complete control through massive indoctrination and confiscation of all firearms from the commonalty.In an Arbalest Quarrel article posted on December 31, 2018, we cited President Trump’s memorandum directed to the Attorney General, who, at the time, was the useless, milquetoast, Jeff Sessions. President Trump wrote, in part:“ ‘After the deadly mass murder in Las Vegas, Nevada, on October 1, 2017, I asked my Administration to fully review how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives regulates bump fire stocks and similar devices. Although the Obama Administration repeatedly concluded that particular bump stock type devices were lawful to purchase and possess, I sought further clarification of the law restricting fully automatic machine guns. Accordingly, following established legal protocols, the Department of Justice started the process of promulgating a Federal regulation interpreting the definition of ‘machine gun’ under Federal law to clarify whether certain bump stock type devices should be illegal.’”And, what became of national concealed handgun carry reciprocity?On February 18, 2018, the Arbalest Quarrel wrote,“The ‘Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017’ (115 H.R. 38) amends the federal criminal code to allow a qualified individual to carry a concealed handgun into or possess a concealed handgun in another state that allows individuals to carry concealed firearms. Representative Richard Hudson (R-NC), introduced the bill on January 3, 2017. The bill passed the House by Roll Call Vote of 231-198, on December 6, 2017. It was sent to the Senate one day later, where it was read twice and then referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. President Trump supports it. The NRA supports it. And rank and file law enforcement officers support it too. But there has been to date no further action on it. The bill sits in limbo. Its prospect of passage is, at present, low. Why is that?” Did Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, harbor doubts about a national concealed handgun carry reciprocity law? We know McConnell can get things done when he wants to. But apparently McConnell didn’t want this.Perhaps, the Senate Majority Leader was waiting for a signal from President Trump to proceed, grounded on Trump’s stated policy position on the Second Amendment. Do you remember what President Trump originally had told the American public about the fundamental right of self-defense, and, particularly, what the President had to say concerning his position on national concealed handgun carry?The Arbalest Quarrel remembers well what Trump said.In our December 31, 2018 post, we cited Trump’s imperious words that,“ ‘The right of self-defense doesn’t stop at the end of your driveway. That’s why I have a concealed carry permit and why tens of millions of Americans do too. That permit should be valid in all 50 states. A driver’s license works in every state, so it’s common sense that a concealed carry permit should work in every state. If we can do that for driving – which is a privilege, not a right – then, surely, we can do that for concealed carry, which is a right, not a privilege.’ ~ Donald J. Trump on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms”Sadly, these were just the pompous, pretentious, empty, disingenuous words of a politician. In that same Arbalest Quarrel post, we cited to an article appearing in the Washington Examiner that reported: “ ‘President Trump told Republicans on Wednesday they should not include a measure that allows people with concealed carry permits in one state to carry across state lines in a comprehensive gun bill.‘ ‘I think that maybe that bill will one day pass, but it should pass separate,’ Trump said during a bipartisan meeting at the White House. ‘If you’re going to put concealed carry between states into this bill, we’re talking about a whole new ball game. I’m with you, but let it be a separate bill.’ ’” The President weaseled, giving, at best, only lukewarm support for national concealed handgun carry reciprocity legislation.Mitch McConnell likely interpreted Trump’s words to mean the President wasn’t behind national concealed handgun carry legislation, and, so, McConnell wouldn’t support this measure either. McConnell thereupon allowed the bill to die in Committee; And die it did, and that is the last anyone has seen of national concealed handgun carry reciprocity up to this very moment in time.What does this tell you? A Republican U.S. President and a Republican Senate—with both House and Senate in Republican Party majorities at that time—cared little, if at all, about preserving and strengthening the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms.Recall that in the 2018 Midterm elections the Radical Left Democrats took control of the House. National concealed handgun carry legislation became a dead letter and will remain so. Republicans had their chance and squandered it. Obviously they do not hold the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms in high regard.And the failure of the U.S. Supreme Court to defend its own Heller and McDonald case precedents demonstrates that, apart from a few Justices, the High Court has little or no desire to preserve and protect the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.In the upcoming General Election, the Radical Left Democrats intend to keep control of the House, gain control of the Senate—which will escalate New York Senator Chuck Schumer to the Senate Majority leader position—and regain the White House. If all this should transpire, the safety and well-being of the entire citizenry will be at substantial risk. The American public is getting a foretaste of this now as fanatical, rabid, dangerous Marxist and Anarchist protestors, rioters, arsonists, and looters run amok, given a free hand to destroy the very fabric of a free Constitutional Republic, and, in the process, jeopardizing the safety, security, and well-being of us all.What this means is that, despite a timorous, timid Republican-controlled Senate, and an irresolute President, this is the best we can hope for at the moment.Neither Senator Mitch McConnell nor President Trump will take affirmative steps to preserve and strengthen the right of the people to keep and bear arms. But, fortunately, they seem reluctant, at the moment at least, to take steps to severely weaken the Second Amendment.A neutral stance is the best we can expect from either of them. That will have to suffice given the appalling prospect for Americans if the Marxists prevail in the upcoming General election.

AS PUBLIC ORDER DEVOLVES INTO MASS DISORDER, EXPECT CALLS FOR TOTAL CIVILIAN DISARMAMENT

What does the present “summer of love,” as the Mayor of Seattle refers to the violence happening in Seattle and throughout the Country, portend? We are seeing it: a Marxist Counter-Revolution, long-simmering, now boiling over into a full-on Civil War.If ever the right of the people to keep and bear arms had critical import, it does so now; today, at this very moment. But the ruthless Globalist forces fomenting violence do not want to have to contend with an armed citizenry dead-set on preserving a Free Constitutional Republic.So, don’t be surprised to see a concerted attempt by Marxist State leaders calling for suspension of fundamental rights, especially the right embodied in the Second Amendment, in a Marxist led Government.We expect that Radical Left State and local Governments, sympathetic to the destruction of a free Republic, will call for a total ban on civilian ownership of firearms, citing a public emergency, as thousands of rioters, looters, arsonists, vandals, muggers, and murderers cause disruption across the Nation—destruction that these Marxist Governments not only allow to happen but actively encourage.So, then, the answer to the question posed at the beginning of the article, as set forth in the title of the article, is this:It falls to the American people, themselves, to secure their fundamental, unalienable, immutable, and illimitable right to keep and bear arms, thereby preserving and protecting the autonomy of the individual, and the integrity of selfhood, and maintaining the sovereignty of the American people over those serving in Government who would dare usurp power for themselves.The sanctity and inviolability of our Nation’s history and heritage are outrageously attacked from those within our midst. And all this occurs on the eve of our July 4, 1776, Independence Day Holiday. There is much irony in this._____________________________________________________

A NATION LOST: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION OF THE 18^TH CENTURY DEVOLVES INTO A COUNTER MARXIST REVOLUTION OF THE 21^ST

PART TWO

The germination of a powerful Nation and a free Constitutional Republic took hold on July 4, 1776, with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. A tremendous conflict ensued for control of the American colonies.King George III of England was the visible face of the threat to a Nation yet to be. But the true power behind the throne of King George III was invisible. The true power rested with the secretive, powerful Rothschild clan that provided the financial resources for the English monarchy.In the clash that followed, King George III and the Rothschilds lost. It was a bitter loss. But King George III and the Rothschild international bankers lost much more than control over the colonies. They lost control over both the untapped mineral resources available to the colonies and the massive, fertile geographical region that extended from the Atlantic Ocean on the East Coast to the Pacific Ocean on the West Coast, and that extended northward to Canada and southward to the Gulf of Mexico; and they lost control over the colonies whom they sought to integrate into a unified Global empire. But now, that ambitious goal would lie, not dead, but dormant.King George III would rant, and rage, and fume and he would die and be forgotten. And the power of the English monarchy would wane, as would the might and power of the British empire.But the Rothschild clan would not die, and the Rothschilds could not be forgotten since few ever knew they existed—a hidden den of vipers at the center of every European Country. And, through the centuries they would amass ever greater power, draining the wealth of European Nations for themselves. But the loss of the American colonies would never be far from their mind. And, they machinated and plotted and waited, seeking an opportune time to have their revenge.The American Revolutionary War ended in 1783. The United States became viable, taking its first breath with ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1789. And, at that moment, the United States of American became an independent, sovereign nation and a free Constitutional Republic. The ratification of the Bill of Rights followed in 1791.Ratification of the Bill of Rights not only confirmed the inherent power of the American people over the three Branch Federal Government system the founders created, but cemented the Sovereignty of the American people over that Federal Government.It was understood among the founders that the government they sought to construct would be one of limited powers, operating only by the grace and consent of the American people, as all other powers and authority, not exercised by a central “Federal” Government, would reside in the States and in the people.In the next 200 years the United States became a mighty Nation; the most powerful on Earth, made possible through the drive, ingenuity, and resourcefulness of the citizenry, and through the Nation’s access to abundant natural resources, waiting to be tapped.During the intervening years, decades and centuries, as the power of the United States would wax, the English monarchy would wane and the once-mighty British empire would diminish and wither.But unbeknownst to most populations comprising Western Civilization, the power of the satanic offspring of the Rothschilds would also wax; their power and wealth increasing exponentially through the vehicle of and their singular control over the central banking system, as conceived and implemented through their founder, Mayer Amschel Rothschild.The Rothschilds would extend their global financial reach throughout the world with one goal ever in mind: the creation of a one-world political, social, cultural, and financial system of governance over which they would reign supreme.And, as the age of monarchical empires came to an end, and as the age of independent nation-states is drawing to a close, the one-world Government scheme envisioned by the Rothschilds began to take shape; sharpening to crystal clarity through the creation of a new artificial construct: the European Union. The EU had its origins in 1945, at the conclusion of the Second World War, and would become concrete with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, on November 1, 1993. And the commonalty of Europe had no idea that a noose was slowly tightening around their neck, through the secretive machinations of a few men, all of them controlled by the Rothschilds.The Rothschild clan intends to merge more and more nation-states into the EU, on the road to their creation of a one-world governmental construct.Had the colonies lost the American Revolution, America’s resources would now be a prized asset, bound up in the Rothschild portfolio; and the entire geographical region would be merged into the EU; and the American people would be subjugated. But that would be no easy task; after all, the Rothschild clan lost the American Revolution. Yet they never accepted that loss.They were patient; and, through the centuries, they engineered their plan to regain access to America’s resources, and to gain control over the apparatus of America’s Government, and to gain control over America’s institutions and people. But their plan for conquest would not involve an external military invasion. Not this time. It would be accomplished through stealth, subterfuge. An elaborate plan took shape but it would take a couple of centuries to execute. The Rothschilds, through their toadies, would insinuate themselves into every major organ and institution of our Nation.Yes, the Rothschilds had failed to destroy a budding nation, that, at the time of the American Revolution, existed only as a germinating seed, two-plus centuries ago, but the Rothschilds could still emerge victor, and have their revenge.The Rothschilds have waged a quiet, but no less tangible war to destroy the United States, from within. The Rothchild clan’s scheme was all going according to plan, but the election of Trump threw a temporary wrench into that complex scheme, as the Rothschilds did not expect Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton. Very few expected this. Trump might not be as amenable to their control as were the Bushes, and the Clintons, and Barack Obama.After two centuries, dealing with the festering loss of control over “the colonies,” these excruciatingly secretive, fantastically wealthy, extraordinarily powerful, and abjectly ruthless, wily, and cunning Rothschilds, along with their Generals, a cadre of Billionaire Neoliberal Globalist companions, were growing impatient, and angry. They had all demonstrated infinite patience, but their patience had worn thin. They would wait no longer. They have had enough from these unmanageable, intractable Americans.Recently they unleashed their agents: the dead souls and carrion beasts of the underworld to wreak havoc across our Nation—ravaging and pillaging and laying waste to our Land; destroying with complete abandon and with alarming speed our irreplaceable National treasures, the wondrous monuments to our glorious past; desirous even of destroying the icons of our Nation’s Christian heritage; threatening the lives of innocent Americans; erasing all traces and vestiges of our history and culture, anything and everything that might remind Americans of their ancestral past; of their founding fathers’ vision of a Nation as a free Constitutional Republic where the American people are sovereign. But those American people must now be corralled, brought to heel.With the U.S. economy sorely weakened by a Global Pandemic, courtesy of the Xi Jinping of China, it is no longer certain that Trump can secure a second Term in Office. But it was the killing of a black petty criminal by a white psychopathic police officer, caught on video, that could yet more assuredly turn the tide in the Rothschilds’ favor. That killing, caught on video, would be the pretext for fomenting violence across America, bringing the Nation literally to its knees.What would commence as a protest, predicated on the ridiculous charge of systemic police violence targeting blacks, metastasizing into an imbecilic claim of systemic race hatred existent throughout the Nation since the Nation’s inception, has devolved into an explicit call for a Marxist counter-revolution, the purpose of which is to destroy the very underpinnings of the United States as a free Constitutional Republic and independent Nation-State under the sovereign control of the American people, themselves.There is no getting around the danger facing our Nation today. Its very survival as a free Constitutional Republic is at stake.The smug insufferable Globalist Rothschilds—through their captains and lieutenants in Government, industry, media, and academia—are no longer even pretending to mask their intentions. They aim to annihilate every vestige of our free Republic, including the very memory of it: our historical record.Those doing the bidding of the Rothschilds, who have ingratiated themselves with the Rothschilds will be richly rewarded with money and power. But those Americans who have been duped into believing the need for radical change in our Country will learn too late, that they have bought more than mere “change” to this Country, in having acquiesced to the mob. They have ensured subjugation and penury for every American.And no one in Government is truly lifting a finger to stop this; not Republicans in Congress, nor the President. Are they resigned to the Nation’s dire fate? The response to the social and political crisis unfolding throughout our Nation has been limp, at best.Perhaps nothing can be done to stem the overthrow of a free Republic, because the Government, so riddled with saboteurs, is reduced to impotency. Our one and last fail-safe? The armed citizenry!­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­_________________________________________________________

INDEPENDENCE DAY HERALDS IN A MARXIST COUNTER-REVOLUTION

PART THREE

With Independence Day only days away, this Country can hardly be in a celebratory spirit, as the very words, ‘nationalism’ and ‘patriotism’ are treated like obscenities.We witness two-legged predators laying waste the Land, destroying property, intimidating innocent Americans, causing bedlam and mayhem. The police, under fire, are ordered to stand down. Government cowers. Law and Order break down everywhere. The seditious Press and Radical Left members of Congress, along with Radical Left State Governors and City Mayors give their blessing to the perpetrators of this violence.In this topsy-turvy climate, we see New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo telling Americans that attacks on monuments are merely an example of “healthy expression.” Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan blathers, “We could have the summer of love;” and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf bellows, the city will investigate “nooses found on trees” as hate crimes. Yet the police, having investigated Mayor Schaaf's ridiculous assertions found those “nooses” to be merely ropes placed on tree limbs by an individual, several months ago. That individual, a local Black man, no less, intended these ropes to be utilized merely “as exercise equipment,” as reported by PJ Media. One can only wonder whether this radical Marxist Mayor was relieved at this news, or annoyed by it. She should be ashamed. But, these Marxists never are ashamed or embarrassed by being found out and called out for making absurd and dangerous remarks, that serve only to provoke more violence and civil unrest. But, then, that is their aim, isn't it? They just go about making further outrageous remarks to foment yet more division and divisiveness among Americans, and audaciously, irresponsibly, and unconscionably blame President Trump for the injuries to innocent people and damage to property they, themselves, cause.What is manifesting before our very eyes cannot reasonably, rationally be deemed to amount to mere peaceable assembly protected under the First Amendment. It is anything but that; and it is at once disturbing and absurd to behold. Is the control of the Globalist Rothschilds over the machinery of our Federal, State, and local Governments that complete that they can orchestrate wholesale upheaval to our Nation?Americans are witnessing the methodical, inexorable overthrow of their Government in real-time. It is all by design and all orchestrated by the trillionaire Rothschild clan and its legions of toadies that have, through the decades, infiltrated our Government at every level; have infiltrated the academia; have infiltrated the corporate sphere, and have infiltrated the Press.Instead of stopping this outrage—stopping it fast, and stopping it hard—our Government sits idle, committing suicide. And the seditious Press, under the control of the Rothschilds through the clan’s captains and lieutenants actively, avidly encourages the overthrow of our Nation.Serious crimes against the Nation are occurring before our very eyes and the Government does nothing to bring these criminals to justice. The crimes occurring openly, contemptuously, defiantly against us, the American people, are numerous. And among those crimes, we see the most serious of felonies imaginable, yet committed with aplomb and abandon. They include——18 USCS § 2381 (Treason) Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.Note: the crime of Treason appears prominently in Article 3, Section 3, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution, as well. The Founders viewed the crime—treachery to one’s Nation—as the most serious crime, and so, one crime, and the only crime, that is set forth expressly in the U.S. Constitution.18 USCS § 2384 (Seditious Conspiracy) “If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.”18 USCS § 2383 (Rebellion or Insurrection) “Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”

THE COLD AMERICAN CIVIL WAR BREWING SILENTLY IN THE 20^THCENTURY IS BURSTING INTO THE HOT CIVIL WAR OF THE 21^TH

The silent and secretive, malignant, and malevolent Destructors of our Country, the Rothschild family of international bankers Rothschild family still reside in the shadows but we see their agents all around us.These agents of destruction and terror include Marxist, Communist, Socialist, and Anarchist groups, most prominently of late: Black Lives Matter and Antifa, along with their sympathizers and various similar and affiliate organizations. These agents also include members of Congress and the people in State legislatures and State Governments. And they include employees of the federal Bureaucracy, the “Administrative Deep State;” along with legions of Radical Left individuals in the academia, and in the Press. And they include several Billionaire Chiefs of companies in the technology sector.We see the intelligence and internal police apparatuses’ M.O. in this, too, as the moles hidden within these organizations have employed tools and techniques to enlist tens of thousands of otherwise decent, but uninformed Americans, to join mindlessly in the destruction of their own Country, as a powerful nation cannot be undone without enlisting the aid or acquiescence of a majority of Americans.The Rothschild clan has built up its forces over time—a massive, intricate interweaving, interlocking network of governmental and multinational corporate groups, including media organizations and the academia. And the horrific colossus they have nourished is bearing its poisonous fruit, causing violence and fear across the Nation.National Guard forces are nowhere to be seen; and State and local police forces have been ordered by their Radical Left Governments to stand down or are being disbanded altogether.What more can occur before this Nation topples into ruin?We are awaiting an order from State and local officials that, for the sake of  “public order” and “ public safety,” it is necessary for those Americans who possess firearms, to surrender them to the local authorities.Expect to hear that order coming down sooner or later. As with Governmental orders pertaining to the Chinese Coronavirus Pandemic—a mere dress rehearsal—expect that this one, too, a far more audacious one will be attempted through executive fiat.After all, with criminals and terrorists running amok, and the police neutralized, the last thing any of these Marxists would want or need are armed citizens banding together to protect self and family; to bring some semblance of order back to American society.The Second Amendment remains the quintessential “fail-safe” to preserve a free Constitutional Republic from encroaching tyranny; and we may very well need to exercise it.The armed colonists, the Minutemen of the American Revolution, gave us our independence from tyranny. We, the Minutemen of the 21st Century, may well be called upon to gather our arms to preserve that independence.___________________________________________Copyright © 2020 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

THE ROBERTS’ COURT WILL NOT DEFEND THE SECOND AMENDMENT, EVER!

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

PART SEVEN

These last few weeks, the Arbalest Quarrel has been working steadfastly on analyzing the NYC gun transport case. We felt a detailed analysis necessary as we had serious doubts the Court would grant cert in any of the ten pending Second Amendment cases.The NYC case provided our best chance for a serious Court review of 2A, ten years after the McDonald decision, clarifying and cementing the import and purport of Heller and McDonald in Supreme Court case law. The opportunity provided the Court is gone. And, that lost opportunity is rightfully placed at the feet of the Chief Justice, himself. We intended to lay out what could have been gained and what was invariably lost from the failure of the High Court to consider the case on the merits; and we had hoped to post a comprehensive analysis of the NYC case prior to a final High Court determination, whether to grant or deny cert on any of the ten pending 2A cases.We expected the Court would once again relist all ten pending 2A cases, denying cert on each at them at the Court’s last conference for the Term. But the Court made its final determination on June 11, 2020.No surprise to us as to the denial of cert, but the final determination came earlier than we expected. Even so, it means something more than, and something other than, most Americans realize. The cryptic, “something other than,” pertains to Roberts.So, then, what went wrong? Actually, for Chief Justice Roberts and the liberal wing of the High Court, nothing went wrong. Everything went according to plan.Some proponents of 2A, including some readers of Ammoland, believe the NYC case mootness issue was properly decided. It wasn’t. And, we will be continuing our comprehensive analysis, as our multi-series essay—on the New York City transport gun case, and the ramifications of that decision on the exercise of the elemental, primordial, God-Given sacred and inviolate right of the people to keep and bear arms—continues; all in the context of the singularly critical seminal Second Amendment Heller case, that is constantly under fire.But the mootness issue is and was nothing more than a red herring. In fact, Chief Justice Roberts and the liberal wing anticipated that the City would amend its Rules and that the State would amend its laws to avoid a consideration of and a decision on the merits, which would have necessitated consideration of Heller. And that possibility was not be countenanced. It was something that the liberal wing of the Court and Chief Justice Roberts, as well as the City of New York and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, intended to avoid at all costs.Cuomo and the City of New York did what was expected of them. And Chief Justice Roberts and the liberal wing of the Court did what both they, and both the City and Cuomo, wanted: no review of New York City gun laws.The 2A Heller issue would not be heard.But, why did Kavanaugh side with Roberts and the liberal wing, and why did he write a puzzling and limp concurring opinion, basically telling Americans, albeit in an oblique manner, that he really does support the Second Amendment, and that the Court will have another chance to hear another case and, so, Americans should not worry?Kavanaugh is, at best, a weak supporter of the Second Amendment and of the Bill of Rights of generally but he does appear to adhere to Supreme Court precedent. His learned and reasoned dissent in Heller II is a testament to that.Kavanaugh likely did not wish to side with the liberal wing. We believe Chief Justice Roberts cajoled Kavanaugh into doing so. Why? It couldn’t be because a sixth vote was needed. It wasn’t. Robert’s fifth vote gave the liberal wing the majority it needed to find the case moot.But we are dealing with appearances here: smoke and mirrors. We believe that Roberts may have tried to get another Trump nominee, Neil Gorsuch, to join the majority, too; but Gorsuch would not do so.A 7-2 majority decision would give Roberts even more cover, and cover is what Roberts wants. It is what he needs.Clearly Roberts did not wish to appear alone, siding with the liberal wing of a Court, especially on a 2A matter. So, Kavanaugh reluctantly agreed to give cover Roberts cover, but insisted on drafting a concurring, to suggest: one that he does support 2A, if only half-heartedly; and, two that the Court “should” take up another 2A case soon, even as he knew full well that it wouldn’t—hence his use of the weak obligation word, ‘should,’ in the concurring, rather than the strong obligation word, ‘will.’But, if Roberts holds such antipathy toward the Second Amendment, why did he sign on with the majority in Heller?Roberts did, after all, side with the conservative wing in Heller and McDonald.The Press tells us Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy was the sole hold-out in Heller for the critical fifth vote needed and that the late eminent Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, who penned the Heller majority opinion, had to include language in that opinion to soften the rulings.The Press paints a picture of Justice Anthony Kennedy as the moderate swing vote on the Court. In doing so, the Press is engaging in just another deception.The truth of the matter is that Roberts, no less than Kennedy, and, conceivably, more so, compelled Scalia to add language to the opinion that, despite the rulings, provided Anti-Second Amendment proponents with a safe harbor; allowing Anti-Second Amendment governments to continue to do what they have been doing all along: to whittle away at the import of the Second Amendment.So, then, what does that say about Chief Justice Roberts?Roberts has, for a time, come across as a defender of our Bill of Rights. It was all ruse. He isn’t a defender of our Bill of Rights nor, more specifically, is he a defender of our Second Amendment; and he never has been.Roberts is as much a trickster as the man who nominated him: the “Skull and Bones” President, George W. Bush.Even as the Radical Left tabloid, The New York Times, refers to Roberts as a member of the conservative wing of the Court, he is no such thing, and the Times knows it. Nor is he to be perceived as a judicial, “moderate”—the proverbial swing vote, carrying the mantle of retired Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy.Roberts has no more desire to see our Second Amendment strengthened than do the Associate Justices of the liberal wing of the High Court, predominately, long "tenants" on the Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.Why, then, did Roberts and Kennedy agree to join the majority in Heller? We think that this says something about the force and indomitability of Scalia’s personality and intellect: something lost when Justice Scalia met with a deeply tragic and clearly puzzling death. And Roberts has no intention ever again to lock horns with another Justice who has the indomitability of spirit of Scalia.It is now Justice Roberts’ Court in fact not merely in name. It is no longer Justice Scalia’s Court.Recall that George Bush nominated John Roberts to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court as the Chief Justice, not merely as an Associate Justice. This was no accident.As Chief Justice of the High Court, John Roberts sets the tone of the Court and wields considerable leverage over the Court, as we deduce from Robert’s obvious success in cajoling Kavanaugh to side with him, to join the liberal wing on the mootness issue.The High Court is said to grant writs in four circumstances, as set forth in detail in the Peter Blair weblog:

• Conflict of law: The Supreme Court may elect to step in and make a ruling when different courts reach different conclusions about federal or constitutional law. With 13 federal circuits and 50 state supreme courts, the U.S. Supreme Court may want to step in and clarify certain legal issues so every court operates under the same law going forward.
• National importance: If a case has national significance and is important to the public as a whole, the Supreme Court may decide to take it on. The Supreme Court has discretion when it comes to taking these cases, such as Bush v. Gore after the contested 2000 election, Roe v. Wade, or US v. Nixon concerning the Watergate tapes.
• Lower courts disregarding Supreme Court decisions: If a case has arisen because lower courts are disregarding past Supreme Court decisions, the Supreme Court may decide to hear the case to correct the lower court or overrule the case without a full trial.
• Justices’ interest: In certain cases, a justice may want to hear a certain case because it addresses an issue in their personal favorite area of law.

In every case that has been brought to the Court’s attention since Heller and McDonald, all four of the above factors are satisfied.Yet, in all instances, the High Court has either denied cert or has side-stepped the Second Amendment issue altogether, as it had done in Voisine and in the recent New York City case.So what does that tell you? It tells you that the Court will take up a case when it wants to. And that’s that!In the instant case, Roberts and the liberal wing of the Court do not want to take up a 2A case, but then, the conservative wing won’t do so either, unless it can be assured that Roberts is on board with them. He isn’t and won’t be, ever.The Roberts’ Court will not take up another Second Amendment case unless the Court is able to sidestep the core 2A issue as in the Voisine case, or in the recent NYC gun transport case, or when or if the liberal wing knows it has a decisive majority. That would be calamitous. It would sound the death knell for Heller and McDonald. Once our right to keep and bear arms is lost, our Nation is undone.Thus, the conservative wing won’t wish to hear a Second Amendment case unless it knows that Roberts is on board, and Roberts will never be on board.Understand, each Justice knows how each of the others would resolve a case before any vote is cast to grant cert or to deny cert on a case.Justice Thomas’s scathing dissents reflect his knowledge—which obviously, he cannot express openly—that Roberts will not support the Second Amendment. It is as simple as that.So, forget further support from the High Court apropos of the preservation of and strengthening of our Bill of Rights, given the Court's current composition with five Justices clearly antithetical to preservation and strengthening of our fundamental, unalienable, immutable, illimitable rights and liberties. Those five Justices antithetical to the preservation and strengthening of our sacred rights and liberties include: Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Chief Justice John Roberts, whom the seditious, tabloid, New York Times continually, invariably, and deceptively includes in the roster of the conservative-wing of the High Court. Of the conservative-wing, only Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito adhere, most consistently, to the import of the text of the Constitution as originally ratified and to the import of Statutes as written.The Globalist puppet masters have been utilizing, of late, Radical Left Anarchist groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa, along with the common criminal class, to rain havoc on our Nation—to soften the Country up—encouraging rebellion and insurrection, even attempting to destroy public faith in the police. And it is all by design.The last thing these Globalist puppet masters want to have to deal with is internal police forces and an armed citizenry, in the midst of a civil war these puppet masters have, themselves, fomented. They are neutralizing the police, but they cannot so easily neutralize an armed citizenry; and if they cannot do that, they cannot win this civil war.____________________________________________Copyright © 2020 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

JUST OUT: SUPREME COURT DENIES WRITS ON ALL PENDING SECOND AMENDMENT CASES

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

PART SEVEN

The U.S. Supreme Court released its orders from the June 11, 2020 conference.  No Second Amendment cases were relisted for consideration. Worse, there will be no Second Amendment cases reviewed this term; all were rejected. The High Court denied certiorari in all of them.This comes as no surprise to the Arbalest Quarrel. We expected this and were making this very point in a comprehensive analysis of the New York City transport gun case we’ve been working feverishly on these last two weeks. Word came down from SCOTUS before we could get our series to print, but we intimated as much in numerous other articles.We realized how important the New York City gun transport case was to the preservation of our sacred Second Amendment right, even if many did not. We knew what a loss meant; and we did lose much, contrary to what some proponents of the Second Amendment may otherwise think. How much we lost is apparent from what just transpired in today’s SCOTUS morning conference.We held little expectation that the High Court would take up any new Second Amendment case, contrary to Justice Kavanaugh’s wimpish suggestion that the Court “should.” And, unfortunately, we were correct.In one of the cases the Court denied cert on, Thomas Rogers, et al. v. Gurbir Grewal, Attorney General of New Jersey, et al. on Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, decided June 15, 2020, Justice Thomas wrote another justified blistering dissenting opinion. Justice Kavanaugh joined Justice Thomas except for Part II of the dissent. We will analyze the dissenting opinion in a forthcoming article. But——

WHY DID KAVANAUGH JOIN THOMAS IN THE GREWAL DISSENT?

Recall Justice Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in the New York City case. Kavanaugh intimated the High Court would be taking up one of the new Second Amendment cases soon. That was nonsense and we suspect Kavanaugh knew it.The tactics and strategy of U.S. Supreme Court review of Second Amendment cases must not be underestimated. It defines what Second Amendment case is heard and when. As of now, it is clear that the liberal wing of the High Court, along with Chief Justice Roberts, intend to block review of any further Second Amendment case that comes before the Court in which the Heller and McDonald rulings come into play. This is no longer theoretical speculation. This is ice-cold fact.We suspect that had Kavanaugh voted to deny the mootness claim in the New York City case, joining the conservative wing—Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch—then Chief Justice Roberts would have joined Kavanaugh. He would have been forced to, if for no other reason than for the fact that Roberts did, after all, join the majority in the seminal Second Amendment Heller case.If Chief Justice Roberts were to stand with the liberal wing of the Court, alone, wholly apart from the conservative wing, in the first and only Second Amendment case—where the Second Amendment issue had not been altogether side-stepped as the issue was side-stepped in the Voisine case, to the justified frustration and righteous and virtuous indignation of Justice Thomas—would be untoward, unseemly, awkward. Appearances are, after all, important to the Justices. But when appearances become more important than intellectual honesty and logical consistency, then a Justice should not expect to garner and retain the respect of Americans.Chief Justice Roberts, as the Chief Justice, wishes to give the impression of his “supreme” impartiality and conviviality. But, at what cost to his the principles of intellectual honesty and logical consistency, and at what cost to our Bill of Rights?Each Justice votes to grant or deny a writ of certiorari predicated on his jurisprudential and ideological predilections; and those jurisprudential and ideological predilections reside as much on a visceral level as on an intellectual one. They inform a Justice's decisions—influenced, on occasion, by the internal give and take of political maneuvering and jockeying; but that political maneuvering and jockeying should come by sacrificing one's duty toward preserving and strengthening our Bill of Rights. Yes, Chief Justice Roberts sided with the Conservative wing of the Court in Heller and McDonald, but he would go no further—ever. He has made clear his visceral disdain for the Second Amendment, known.The progressive website, Politicus, made known Writing, today, on the results of the SCOTUS morning conference, Politicus reporters said, in an article with a title meant to “sock it to Trump” and to all Americans who happen to venerate our Bill of Rights. Politicus says, “Supreme Court Rejects 10 2nd Amendment Cases As Trump’s Bad Day Gets Worse”: “Chief Justice John Roberts doesn’t have an expansive view of the Second Amendment, which means that the odds of the Second Amendment being expanded or local and state gun laws being reversed by the high court is practically zero.”Roberts would prefer not to appear like a liberal wing, Anti-Second Amendment, Anti-Bill of Rights Justice, in the vein of the liberal wing, even if he is one. He would not like to be seen standing alone with the liberal wing on a Second Amendment case. The jig would be up if he were to join the liberal wing of the Court, finding the New York City gun transport case moot, and no non-liberal wing Justice stood with him.Did Roberts pressure Kavanaugh to go along with him? It is not improbable. Perhaps, that explains why Kavanaugh’s really did file his singularly odd concurring opinion in the New York City case after all. It may be that Kavanaugh did agree with the Associate Justices, Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch—wanted to join them—but was strongly urged by the Chief Justice not to; was cajoled to side with the liberal wing. Perhaps, as the newest member of the Court, Kavanaugh was reluctant to draw the ire of Chief Justice Roberts.Clearly the liberal wing of the Court did not need Kavanaugh’s vote. Robert’s vote gave the liberal wing the fifth vote needed—a majority—sufficient to prevent the substantive merits of the case from being heard. But, Roberts, standing with the liberal wing of the Court on the mootness issue would make patently clear the Chief Justice’s negative views toward the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and would also make clear the Chief Justice’s jurisprudential leanings and tendencies in matters concerning the Second Amendment: those in line with the liberal wing of the Court, comprising: Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Justice Roberts obviously sought to prevent that perception.By voting with the liberal wing of the Court in the New York City case that ruled the case moot, Kavanaugh gave cover to Roberts, and Roberts also gave cover to Kavanaugh. Who loses? We do, the American people.The New York City gun transport case took a page out of the Heller case playbook, albeit to obtain a negative rather than positive result: weakening the Second Amendment; not strengthening it.We surmise that Chief Justice Roberts, no less than retired Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, had an understanding with the conservative wing. They would agree, both of them, to join the conservative wing or neither of them would. Both of them would join the conservative wing or neither of them would. And if they couldn't both get on board, Heller would have failed and we all know how much worse off we would be now for it.The late eminent Justice Antonin Scalia, who penned the Heller majority, was compelled to mute what otherwise would have been a stronger opinion that he, and Alito, and Thomas had much preferred to write, making a one-point crystal clear.The point is this: Government action infringing the core of the right of the people to keep and bear arms must be struck down. Courts are forbidden to engage in interest-balancing, which is nothing more than a ruse anyway; a ruse created to rationalize and legitimize unconstitutional, unconscionable government action infringing the fundamental, unalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms. That point was muddied, obfuscated, diluted. It was a concession that Justice Scalia, Justice Alito, and Justice Thomas were forced to make to obtain Chief Justice Roberts acquiescence and Justice Kennedy's acquiescence. To obtain the acquiescence of those two Justices, necessary to obtain a slim, but critical majority, Justice Scalia wrote,“. . . nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” This assertion has nothing whatsoever to do with the Heller rulings and the majority's reasoning. But it had to be made to appease Kennedy and Roberts. The result was to undermine the efficacy of Heller. We have seen in the years since how Anti-Second Amendment governments rely on the softening of Heller to enact laws that directly and contemptuously attack the right of the people to keep and bear arms; and we see courts using interest-balancing to defend these unconstitutional laws. Heller was meant to rein in both government and courts. But, the language that Justice Scalia was compelled to include in Heller gave Anti-Second Amendment State governments and Anti-Second Amendment courts a way to deviously slither around the impact of the Heller rulings and holdings, even if it is clear to everyone what these governments and courts were doing. In fact, to provide a safe harbor for Anti-Second Amendment State governments and Anti-Second Amendment courts, Justice Scalia had to reiterate the point that these governments may do whatever the hell they want to eviscerate the Second Amendment, notwithstanding the dictates of the Second Amendment. The point was made in the last paragraph of the majority opinion. Compelled to humble themselves before the anti-Second Amendment crowd, Justice Scalia, joined by the conservative wing, wrote:“We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country, and we take seriously the concerns raised by the many amici who believe that prohibition of handgun ownership is a solution. The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns.” The sickening concession to anti-Second Amendment amici and Anti-Second Amendment governments and Anti-State Courts that the majority was forced to make and which we, Americans are forced to endure has served the Anti-Second Amendment zealots well. Heller and McDonald are routinely ignored.Chief Justice Roberts and the liberal wing of the High Court will make damn sure that the rulings of those two seminal Second Amendment cases will never be clarified. That is where we are now and where we will remain unless or until another Justice sits on the High Court who actually honors the oath he takes to the Constitution.

WHAT IS TAKING PLACE IN OUR NATION TODAY IS NOT A PRETTY PICTURE

We are seeing a massive campaign of brainwashing taking place in our Nation at this very moment, and we are getting much more than a foretaste. We are getting a choking mouthful of what the Marxists, Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, and billionaire Neoliberal Globalists have in store for each of us.We are holding onto our Nation by a thread. Make no mistake about that. The puppet masters have brainwashed the mass of Lemmings, and they intend to destroy those of us who are immune to the nonsense spouted.Today we see every monument to our glorious past—our ancestral memory—being wiped out; erased. Tomorrow, we will see the absolute destruction of our Bill of Rights. No question about it.If Trump fails reelection and if the Senate is lost, we will lose everything irreplaceable: but likely not before the “cold” War at home turns “hot.”I know what my next purchase will be; and it won’t be a toy.____________________________________________Copyright © 2020 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

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

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

PART SIX

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

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

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

Conditional should means if and is used for hypothetical situations.

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

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

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT REVIEWS VERY FEW CASES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WILL THE SECOND AMENDMENT SURVIVE GOVERNMENT ACTION TO DESTROY IT?

PART FIVE

WHAT WILL BECOME OF U.S. SUPREME COURT HELLER AND MCDONALD PRECEDENT?

Commentators and readers—pro, con, or ostensibly neutral toward the Second Amendment—presume the U.S. Supreme Court will soon take up, on review, one or more of the several pending Second Amendment cases awaiting a vote by the Court. But will they?SCOTUS Blog reporter, Amy Howe, reported, on April 28, 2020, that, “We expect orders from Friday’s conference on Monday, May 4, at 9:30 a.m. EDT.Mance v. Barr – Whether the federal ban on interstate handgun sales violates the Second Amendment or the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.Rogers v. Grewal – In a challenge to New Jersey’s handgun carry permit scheme, whether the Second Amendment protects the right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense; and whether the government can condition the right to carry a handgun outside the home on the showing of a special need to carry a firearm.Pena v. Horan – In a challenge to a California law banning most commonly used handguns, the petition asks the justices to weigh in on the scope of the Second Amendment.Gould v. Lipson – In a challenge to Massachusetts’ handgun carry permit scheme, whether the Second Amendment protects the right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense; and whether the government can condition the right to carry a handgun outside the home on the showing of a special need to carry a firearm.Cheeseman v. Polillo – Challenge to New Jersey handgun carry permit scheme.Ciolek v. New Jersey – Challenge to New Jersey handgun carry permit scheme.Worman v. Healey – Challenge to Massachusetts ban on the possession of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.Malpasso v. Pallozzi – In a challenge to Maryland’s handgun carry permit scheme, whether the Second Amendment protects the right to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense.Culp v. Raoul – Whether the Second Amendment requires Illinois to allow nonresidents to apply for a concealed-carry license.Wilson v. Cook County – Challenge to Cook County’s ban on assault rifles and large-capacity magazines, as well as to the Second Amendment analysis used by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit to uphold the ban.This post was originally published at Howe on the Court.”But, as of the posting of Part Five of this multi-series article on the Arbalest Quarrel, AQ has not yet heard whether the High Court will be reviewing any of the aforesaid cases, even as CNBC News reported, on Sunday, May 17, 2020, that,“The Supreme Court is looking eager to weigh in on the Second Amendment weeks after it punted on its first substantial gun rights case in nearly a decade.”Eagerly looking forward to weighing in on a Second Amendment case? Really? Well, apart from Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, who had previously written or joined dissenting comments asserting strong displeasure for the failure of the Court to take up any one of several cases, to date—and, we presume, apart from Associate Justice Samuel Alito who had penned the McDonald majority opinion, and Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who had penned the dissenting opinion in Heller II when he had served as a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, before joining the U.S. Supreme Court as an Associate Justice—the idea that the liberal wing of the High Court and the idea that the Chief Justice, himself, John Roberts, also relish the opportunity to review any Second Amendment case, except to rein in the fundamental, natural, immutable, unalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms, if they have the opportunity to do so, is a bit of a stretch. The only other Justice who would, if he could, had a strong desire to review another Second Amendment case would be the late eminent Associate Justice, Antonin Scalia, who had penned the majority opinion Heller rulings and holdings.The U.S. Supreme Court has had many opportunities to do so since the Court’s majority handed down the seminal rulings in the 2008 Heller and the 2010 McDonald cases. But, apart from the quasi Second Amendment Voisine case and the recent New York City Gun transport case, the Court never did review a Second Amendment case. Concerning those two cases, Justice Thomas remarked of the former, that, while the Court did review Voisine, it never did address the Second Amendment issue, which might explain why the Court decided to hear the case at all. And, as for the latter—the New York City gun transport case—the High Court’s majority, comprising the Anti-Second Amendment liberal wing, along with Chief Justice Roberts, and, surprisingly, Associate Justice Kavanaugh, the recent addition to the Court, both ruled against allowing the case to proceed to the merits.Can Americans be so certain that another Second Amendment case is going to be taken up soon? Consider how many writs of certiorari come before the High Court during any term.On the U.S. Supreme Court site, supremecourt.gov, we are told:“The Term of the Court begins, by law, on the first Monday in October and lasts until the first Monday in October of the next year. Each Term, approximately 7,000-8,000 new cases are filed in the Supreme Court. This is a substantially larger volume of cases than was presented to the Court in the last century. In the 1950 Term, for example, the Court received only 1,195 new cases, and even as recently as the 1975 Term it received only 3,940. Plenary review, with oral arguments by attorneys, is currently granted in about 80 of those cases each Term, and the Court typically disposes of about 100 or more cases without plenary review. The publication of each Term’s written opinions, including concurring opinions, dissenting opinions, and orders, can take up thousands of pages. During the drafting process, some opinions may be revised a dozen or more times before they are announced.” Do you honestly think one of the pending Second Amendment cases will garner the four votes necessary for the U.S. Supreme Court to review it, and relatively soon?With a clear schism between, on the one hand, the entrenched liberal-wing of the High Court that detests any notion of a God-given, fundamental, immutable, unalienable, natural right of the people to keep and bear arms, and vehemently disagrees with the majority’s rulings in Heller and McDonald, and, on the other hand, the entrenched conservative-wing Constitutionalists of the High Court, consisting of Associate Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch who are adamant in their desire to preserve the Second Amendment as the framers of the U.S. Constitution had intended, it is to be seen whether Americans will henceforth be able to continue to own and possess firearms as a fundamental and unalienable right, rather than as a mere Government privilege. It will all come down to how Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Kavanaugh decide any such Second Amendment case.Keep in mind, it only takes one vote, either Roberts or Kavanaugh, to rule with the liberal wing of the High Court to affirm the rulings of U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld unconstitutional government actions, counter to the rulings of Heller and McDonald, striking a flagrant blow to Supreme Court precedent. But, it takes two votes, both Roberts and Kavanaugh joining the conservative-wing, to reverse or, otherwise, to modify, or vacate and remand, a badly decided lower court ruling.Our guess is that, with a U.S. Presidential election approaching this year, which will, as well, also decide whether Democrats maintain majorities in the House and secure a majority in the Senate, the U.S. Supreme Court would prefer to await the outcome.If Democrats win the Presidency and take control of the Senate, the liberal wing of the Court may be willing to provide the four votes necessary to hear a Second Amendment case. The liberal wing of the Court would do so not to chastise the Federal Circuits for failing to adhere to Heller and McDonald precedent, but to overturn those precedents, or, at least, to weaken Heller and McDonald, as they always took the position that the majority had wrongly decided Heller and McDonald. Of course, if the four members of the liberal wing of the Court do decide to vote in favor of reviewing a Second Amendment case, it would do so only if they feel confident they would obtain a “conservative” wing majority, meaning that both Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Kavanaugh must join Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, to reverse outright a Circuit Court of Appeals decision that upheld a government action infringing the core of the Second Amendment.But, whatever the High Court decides to do with this new batch of Second Amendment cases, it behooves us to take a moment and proceed down memory lane to contemplate those cases the Court could have reviewed, should have reviewed, but failed to secure even four of nine votes necessary to review a case implicating the core of the Second Amendment: cases decided by U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals that blatantly, defiantly, arrogantly, egregiously denied and defied Heller and McDonald precedent.

CASES ATTACKING THE CORE OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT THAT THE U.S. SUPREME COURT REFUSED TO HEAR

Because the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in cases discussed infra, had blatantly ignored and dismissed Heller and McDonald precedent, Justice Thomas and the late Justice Scalia, and, later, Justice Gorsuch, were visibly annoyed, angered really, at the failure of the High Court to take up any of the cases, as evidenced in several dissenting comments.Those Justices were confident that, had any one or more of the below cases secured the four votes necessary for a Second Amendment case to be heard, Justice Roberts, and, at the time Justice Kennedy, would have been compelled to join the Conservative wing, reversing the decision of the Circuit Court.Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy would have been required to join the conservative wing even if they had a predilection against doing so, based on their own obvious lukewarm regard for the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution. They would have had to overturn any U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision that clearly attacked the core of the Second Amendment, as the below cases attest to. They would have been obliged to do so, consistent with Heller and McDonald precedent, and, more particularly, consistent with those Justices own decisions in Heller and McDonald, having joined the majority in those decisions. And, given that imperative, they evidently decided to take the “safer” course of action. They refused to hear any one of those cases.These cases include:Silvester vs. Becerra: Petition for certiorari denied on February 20, 2018“Issues: (1) Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit improperly applied lenient scrutiny in a Second Amendment challenge to the application of California’s full 10-day waiting period to firearm purchasers who pass their background check in fewer than 10 days and already own another firearm or have a concealed carry license; and (2) whether the Supreme Court should exercise its supervisory powers to cabin the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit’s concerted resistance to and disregard of the Supreme Court's Second Amendment decisions.” California’s full 10-day waiting period to firearm purchasers remains in effectJustice Thomas was livid:The ABA pointed out: “Justice Clarence Thomas asserted the Second Amendment is ‘a disfavored right’ in the U.S. Supreme Court when he dissented Tuesday from the denial of certiorari in a gun case.Thomas said the Supreme Court should have heard Silvester v. Becerra, a challenge to California’s 10-day waiting period for gun purchases. His dissent starts on the 34th page of the Supreme Court order list.In upholding the law, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals used rational basis review, though it claimed to be using intermediate scrutiny, Thomas said.‘If a lower court treated another right so cavalierly, I have little doubt that this court would intervene,” Thomas wrote. “But as evidenced by our continued inaction in this area, the Second Amendment is a disfavored right in this court.’”In his dissent for failure of the high Court to hear the case, Justice Thomas said with particularity and with righteous indignation:The Second Amendment protects “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,” and the Fourteenth Amendment requires the States to respect that right, McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 749-750, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894 (2010) (plurality opinion); id., at 805, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Because the right to keep and bear arms is enumerated in the Constitution, courts cannot subject laws that burden it to mere rational-basis review. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 628, n. 27, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637 (2008).But the decision below did just that. Purporting to apply intermediate scrutiny, the Court of Appeals upheld California’s 10-day waiting period for firearms based solely on its own ‘common sense.’ Silvester v. Harris, 843 F. 3d 816, 828 (CA9 2016). It did so without requiring California to submit relevant evidence, without addressing petitioners’ arguments to the contrary, and without acknowledging the District Court’s factual findings. This deferential analysis was indistinguishable from rational-basis review. And it is symptomatic of the lower courts’ general failure to afford the Second Amendment the respect due an enumerated constitutional right.If a lower court treated another right so cavalierly, I have little doubt that this Court would intervene. But as evidenced by our continued inaction in this area, the Second Amendment is a disfavored right in this Court. Because I do not believe we should be in the business of choosing which constitutional rights are “really worth insisting upon,” Heller, supra, at 634, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, I would have granted certiorari in this case.Drake v. Jerejian: Petition for certiorari denied on May 5, 2014No hearing; no comment“Issue: (1) Whether the Second Amendment secures a right to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense; and (2) whether state officials violate the Second Amendment by requiring that individuals wishing to exercise their right to carry a handgun for self-defense first prove a ‘justifiable need’ for doing so.”The weblog, outside the beltway, had this to say about the case:“Well it’s official. The Supreme Court has abdicated the Second Amendment.No Second Amendment right, in New Jersey, to carry a handgun outside the home; and proof of “justifiable need” to carry handgun outside the home for self-defense remains in effect in New Jersey“Today, the Court denied cert in Drake v. Jerejian, the New Jersey carry case. This case offered a perfect vehicle to test whether the Second Amendment applies outside the home. It was relisted a few times, which this term has been a prerequisite to cert. Yet, it was denied today.Since the Supreme Court decided McDonald v. Chicago in 2010, they have not deigned to take a single Second Amendment case. Not one. Several have been relisted a few times, but all ultimately denied, with not even a statement concurring or dissenting from denial of cert.As I noted in this post, this strategy of ‘deny, deny, deny’ is reminiscent of the absence of Cert grants in cases concerning Guantanamo Bay. There, the Court seems content to let the D.C. Circuit rewrite habeas law. I suppose, in a similar fashion, the Court is happy with a plethora of nation-wide Circuit splits about the meaning of the right to keep and bear arms.” Jackson vs. City & Cnty. of San Francisco: Petition for certiorari denied on June 8, 2015 “Issue: Whether San Francisco’s attempt to deprive law-abiding individuals of immediate access to operable handguns in their own homes is any more constitutional than the District of Columbia’s invalidated effort to do the same.”Requirement to keep handguns inaccessible in home remains in effect in San Francisco.(Thomas dissenting; Scalia joins dissent) Thomas with righteous indignation, writes:“‘Self-defense is a basic right’ and ‘the central component’ of the Second Amendment’s  guarantee of an individual’s right to keep and bear arms. McDonald v. Chicago 561 U. S. 742, 767, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894 (2010) (emphasis deleted). Less than a decade ago, we explained that an ordinance requiring firearms in the home to be kept inoperable, without an exception for self-defense, conflicted with the Second Amendment because it ‘ma[de] it impossible for citizens to use [their firearms] for the core lawful purpose of self-defense.’ District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 630, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637 (2008). Despite the clarity with which we described the Second Amendment core protection for the right of self-defense, lower courts, including the ones here, have failed to protect it. Because Second Amendment rights are no less protected by our Constitution than other rights enumerated in that document, I would have granted this petition.”Friedman vs. City of Highland Park, Illinois:Petition for certiorari denied on December 7, 2015 “Issue: (1) Whether the Constitution allows the government to prohibit law-abiding, responsible citizens from protecting themselves, their families, and their homes with a class of constitutionally protected ‘arms’ that includes the most popular rifles in the nation; and (2) whether the Constitution allows the government to prohibit law-abiding, responsible citizens from protecting themselves, their families, and their homes with ammunition magazines that number in the tens of millions and make up nearly half of the nation’s total stock of privately owned ammunition magazines for handguns and rifles.Semiautomatic weapons defined as ‘assault weapons,’ even if in common use remain illegal in City of Highland Park, IllinoisThomas dissenting: “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.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 five 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.IIIThe Court’s refusal to review a decision that flouts two of our Second Amendment precedents stands in marked contrast to the Court’s willingness to summarily reverse courts that disregard our other constitutional decisions. E.g., Maryland v. Kulbicki, ante, at 1 (per curiam) (summarily reversing because the court below applied Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668, 104 S. Ct. 2052, 80 L. Ed. 2d 674 (1984), ‘in name only’); Grady v. North Carolina, 575 U. S. ___ , 135 S. Ct. 1368, 191 L. Ed. 2d 459 (2015) (per curiam) (summarily reversing a judgment inconsistent with this Court’s recent Fourth Amendment precedents); Martinez v. Illinois, 572 U. S. ___, ___ , 134 S. Ct. 2070, 2077, 188 L. Ed. 2d 1112, 1120 (2014) (per curiam) (summarily reversing judgment that rested on an ‘understandable’ double jeopardy holding that nonetheless ‘r[an] directly counter to our precedents”).There is no basis for a different result when our Second Amendment precedents are at stake. I would grant certiorari to prevent the Seventh Circuit from relegating the Second Amendment to a second-class right.Kolbe vs. Hogan: Petition for certiorari denied on November 27, 2017No hearing and no comment Issues: (1) Whether District of Columbia v. Heller excludes the most popular semiautomatic rifles and magazines from Second Amendment protection; and (2) whether they may be banned even though they are typically possessed for lawful purposes, including self-defense in the home.Maryland’s ban on ‘military-like’ ‘assault weapons’ and ‘high-capacity magazines upheld. To provide ostensible legal support for an inherently unconstitutional State Government action, the Fourth Circuit Court majority said, in pertinent part,‘Being satisfied that there is substantial evidence indicating that the FSA’s prohibitions against assault weapons and large-capacity magazines will advance Maryland’s goals, we conclude that the FSA survive intermediate scrutiny. Simply put, the State has shown all that is required: a reasonable, if not perfect, fit between the  FSA and Maryland's interest in protecting public safety. And, as for plaintiff’s equal protection claim, the Fourth Circuit said: ‘The Supreme Court has recognized that equal protection ‘is essentially a direction that all persons similarly situated should be treated alike.’ [citation omitted] Thus, a plaintiff challenging a state statute on an equal protection basis ‘must first demonstrate that he has been treated differently from others with whom he is similarly situated and that the unequal treatment was the result of intentional or purposeful discrimination.’”In other words, the average person is just a peasant. If one dies at the hands of a predator because he could not adequately defend himself, he can rest in peace knowing that every other peasant may well receive the same end: as the lives of all peasants receive equal treatment: the lives of all peasants are equally worthless.Peruta vs. California: Petition for certiorari denied on June 26, 2017Issue: Whether the Second Amendment entitles ordinary, law-abiding citizens to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense in some manner, including concealed carry when open carry is forbidden by state law.California law denying law-abiding citizens the Second Amendment right to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense in the absence of a showing of “good cause” remains in effect.Thomas Dissenting; Gorsuch joins dissent:The Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that ‘the right of the people to keep and bear Arm[s] shall not be infringed.’ At issue in this case is whether that guarantee protects the right to carry firearms in public for self-defense. Neither party disputes that the issue is one of national importance or that the courts of appeals have already weighed in extensively. I would therefore grant the petition for a writ of certiorari.ICalifornia generally prohibits the average citizen from carrying a firearm in public spaces, either openly or concealed. With a few limited exceptions, the State prohibits open carry altogether. Cal. Penal Code Ann. §§25850, 26350 (West 2012). It proscribes concealed carry unless a resident obtains a license by showing ‘good cause,’ among other criteria, §§26150, 26155, and it authorizes counties to set rules for when an applicant has shown good cause, §26160.In the county where petitioners reside, the sheriff has interpreted ‘good cause’ to require an applicant to show that he has a particularized need, substantiated by documentary evidence, to carry a firearm for self-defense. The sheriff’s policy specifies that ‘concern for one’s personal safety’ does not ‘alone’ satisfy this requirement. Peruta v. County of San Diego, 742 F. 3d 1144, 1148 (CA9 2014) (internal quotation marks omitted). Instead, an applicant must show ‘a set of circumstances that distinguish the applicant from the mainstream and cause him to be placed in harm’s way.’ Id., at 1169 (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). ‘[A] typical citizen fearing for his personal safety—by definition—cannot distinguish himself from the mainstream.’ Ibid. (emphasis deleted; internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). As a result, ordinary, ‘law-abiding, responsible citizens,’ District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 635, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637 (2008), may not obtain a permit for concealed carry of a firearm in public spaces.Petitioners are residents of San Diego County (plus an association with numerous county residents as members) who are unable to obtain a license for concealed carry due to the county’s policy and, because the State generally bans open carry, are thus unable to bear firearms in public in any manner. They sued under Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U. S. C. §1983, alleging that this near-total prohibition on public carry violates their Second Amendment right to bear arms. They requested declaratory and injunctive relief to prevent the sheriff from denying licenses based on his restrictive interpretation of “good cause,” as well as other “relief as the Court deems just and proper.” First Amended Complaint in No. 3:09-cv-02371, (SD Cal.) ¶¶149, 150, 152. The District Court granted respondents’ motion for summary judgment, and petitioners appealed to the Ninth Circuit. In a thorough opinion, a panel of the Ninth Circuit reversed. 742 F. 3d 1144. The panel examined the constitutional text and this Court’s precedents, as well as historical sources from before the founding era through the end of the 19th century. Id., at 1150-1166. Based on these sources, the court concluded that “the carrying of an operable handgun outside the home for the lawful purpose of self-defense . . . constitutes ‘bear[ing] Arms’ within the meaning of the Second Amendment.” Id., at 1166. It thus reversed the District Court and held that the sheriff’s interpretation of “good cause” in combination with the other aspects of the State’s regime violated the Second Amendment’s command that a State “permit some form of carry for self-defense outside the home.” Id., at 1172. The Ninth Circuit sua sponte granted rehearing en banc and, by a divided court, reversed the panel decision. In the en banc court’s view, because petitioners specifically asked for the invalidation of the sheriff’s ‘good cause’ interpretation, their legal challenge was limited to that aspect of the applicable regulatory scheme. The court thus declined to ‘answer the question of whether or to what degree the Second Amendment might or might not protect a right of a member of the general public to carry firearms openly in public.’ Peruta v. County of San Diego, 824 F. 3d 919, 942 (2016). It instead held only that “the Second Amendment does not preserve or protect a right of a member of the general public to carry concealed firearms in public.” Id., at 924 (emphasis added).IIWe should have granted certiorari in this case. The approach taken by the en banc court is indefensible, and the petition raises important questions that this Court should address. I see no reason to await another case.’AThe en banc court’s decision to limit its review to whether the Second Amendment protects the right to concealed carry—as opposed to the more general right to public carry—was untenable. Most fundamentally, it was not justified by the terms of the complaint, which called into question the State’s regulatory scheme as a whole. See First Amended Complaint ¶63 (‘Because California does not permit the open carriage of loaded firearms, concealed carriage with a [concealed carry] permit is the only means by which an individual can bear arms in public places’); id., ¶74 (‘States may not completely ban the carrying of handguns for self-defense’). And although the complaint specified the remedy that intruded least on the State’s overall regulatory regime—declaratory relief and an injunction against the sheriff’s restrictive interpretation of ‘good cause’—it also requested ‘[a]ny further relief as the Court deems just and proper.’ Id., ¶152. Nor was the Ninth Circuit’s approach justified by the history of this litigation. The District Court emphasized that ‘the heart of the parties’ dispute’ is whether the Second Amendment protects ‘the right to carry a loaded handgun in public, either openly or in a concealed manner.’ Peruta v. County of San Diego, 758 F. Supp. 2d 1106, 1109 (SD Cal. 2010). As the Ninth Circuit panel pointed out, ‘[petitioners] argue that the San Diego County policy in light of the California licensing   scheme as a whole violates the Second Amendment because it precludes a responsible, law-abiding citizen from carrying a weapon in public for the purpose of lawful self-defense in any manner.’ 742 F. 3d, at 1171. The panel further observed that although petitioners ‘focu[s]’ their challenge on the ‘licensing scheme for concealed carry,’ this is ‘for good reason: acquiring such a license is the only practical avenue by which [they] may come lawfully to carry a gun for self-defense in San Diego County.’ Ibid. Even the en banc court acknowledged that petitioners ‘base their argument on the entirety of California’s statutory scheme” and ‘do not contend that there is a free-standing Second Amendment right to carry concealed firearms.’ 824 F. 3d, at 927.BHad the en banc Ninth Circuit answered the question actually at issue in this case, it likely would have been compelled to reach the opposite result. This Court has already suggested that the Second Amendment protects the right to carry firearms in public in some fashion. As we explained in Heller, to ‘bear arms’ means to “wear, bear, or carry upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person.” 554 U. S., at 584, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637 (quoting Muscarello v. United States, 524 U. S. 125, 143, 118 S. Ct. 1911, 141 L. Ed. 2d 111 (1998) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting); alterations and some internal quotation marks omitted). The most natural reading of this definition encompasses public carry. I find it extremely improbable that the Framers understood the Second Amendment to protect little more than carrying a gun from the bedroom to the kitchen. See Drake v. Filko, 724 F. 3d 426, 444 (CA3 2013) (Hardiman, J., dissenting) (‘To speak of ‘bearing’ arms solely within one’s home not only would conflate ‘bearing’ with ‘keeping,’ in derogation of the [Heller] Court’s holding that the verbs codified distinct rights, but also would be awkward usage given the meaning assigned the terms by the Supreme Court’); Moore v. Madigan, 702 F. 3d 933, 936 (CA7 2012) (similar).The relevant history appears to support this understanding. The panel opinion below pointed to a wealth of cases and secondary sources from England, the founding era, the antebellum period,  and Reconstruction, which together strongly suggest that the right to bear arms includes the right to bear arms in public in some manner. See 742 F. 3d, at 1153-1166 (canvassing the relevant history in detail); Brief for National Rifle Association as Amicus Curiae 6-16. For example, in Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243 (1846)—a decision the Heller Court discussed extensively as illustrative of the proper understanding of the right, 554 U. S., at 612, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637—the Georgia Supreme Court struck down a ban on open carry although it upheld a ban on concealed carry. 1 Ga., at 251. Other cases similarly suggest that, although some regulation of public carry is permissible, an effective ban on all forms of public carry is not. See, e.g., State v. Reid, 1 Ala. 612, 616-617 (1840) (‘A statute which, under the pretence of regulating, amounts to a destruction of the right, or which requires arms to be so borne as to render them wholly useless for the purpose of defence, would be clearly unconstitutional’).Finally, the Second Amendment’s core purpose further supports the conclusion that the right to bear arms extends to public carry. The Court in Heller emphasized that ‘self-defense’ is ‘the central component of the [Second Amendment] right itself.’ 554 U. S., at 599, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637. This purpose is not limited only to the home, even though the need for self-defense may be ‘most acute’ there. Id., at 628, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637. ‘Self-defense has to take place wherever the person happens to be,’ and in some circumstances a person may be more vulnerable in a public place than in his own house. Volokh, Implementing the Right To Keep and Bear Arms for Self-Defense: An Analytical Framework and a Research Agenda, 56 UCLA L. Rev. 1443, 1515 (2009).CEven if other Members of the Court do not agree that the Second Amendment likely protects a right to public carry, the time has come for the Court to answer this important question definitively. Twenty-six States have asked us to resolve the question presented, see Brief for Alabama et al. as Amici Curiae, and the lower courts have fully vetted the issue. At least four other Courts of Appeals and three state courts of last resort have decided cases regarding the ability of States to regulate the public carry of firearms. Those decisions (plus the one below) have produced thorough opinions on both sides of the issue. See Drake, 724 F. 3d 426, cert. denied sub nom. Drake v. Jerejian, 572 U. S. ___, 134 S. Ct. 2134, 188 L. Ed. 2d 1124 (2014); 724 F. 3d, at 440 (Hardiman, J., dissenting); Woollard v. Gallagher, 712 F. 3d 865 (CA4), cert. denied, 571 U. S. ___, 134 S. Ct. 422; 187 L. Ed. 2d 281 (2013); Kachalsky v. County of Westchester, 701 F. 3d 81 (CA2 2012), cert. denied sub nom. Kachalsky v. Cacace, 569 U. S. ___, 569 U.S. 918, 133 S. Ct. 1806, 185 L. Ed. 2d 812 (2013); Madigan, 702 F. 3d 933; id., at 943 (Williams, J., dissenting); Commonwealth v. Gouse, 461 Mass. 787, 800-802, 965 N. E. 2d 774, 785-786 (2012); Williams v. State, 417 Md. 479, 496, 10 A. 3d 1167, 1177 (2011); Mack v. United States, 6 A. 3d 1224, 1236 (D. C. 2010). Hence, I do not see much value in waiting for additional courts to weigh in, especially when constitutional rights are at stake.The Court’s decision to deny certiorari in this  case reflects a distressing trend: the treatment of the Second Amendment as a disfavored right. See Friedman v. Highland Park, 577 U. S. ___, ___, 136 S. Ct. 447; 193 L. Ed. 2d 483 (2015) (Thomas, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (136 S. Ct. 447; 193 L. Ed. 2d 483, 484) (‘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’); Jackson v. City and County of San Francisco, 576 U. S. ___, ___, 135 S. Ct. 2799; 192 L. Ed. 2d 865 (2015) (same). The Constitution does not rank certain rights above others, and I do not think this Court should impose such a hierarchy by selectively enforcing its preferred rights. Id., at ___, 135 S. Ct. 2799; 192 L. Ed. 2d 865, 866) (‘Second Amendment’ rights are no less protected by our Constitution than other rights enumerated in that document’). The Court has not heard argument in a Second Amendment case in over seven years—since March 2, 2010, in McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894. Since that time, we have heard argument in, for example, roughly 35 cases where the question presented turned on the meaning of the First Amendment and 25 cases that turned on the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. This discrepancy is inexcusable, especially given how much less developed our jurisprudence is with respect to the Second Amendment as compared to the First and Fourth Amendments.For those of us who work in marbled halls, guarded constantly by a vigilant and dedicated police force, the guarantees of the Second Amendment might seem antiquated and superfluous. But the Framers made a clear choice: They reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense. I do not think we should stand by idly while a State denies its citizens that right, particularly when their very lives may depend on it. I respectfully dissent.”Justice Thomas is absolutely right.Justice Thomas is absolutely right. He asserts over and over again: The Second Amendment is not to be treated as “a disfavored right.” It isn’t a “second-class right.” “Second Amendment rights are no less protected by our Constitution than other rights enumerated in that document.”  “This discrepancy is inexcusable, especially given how much less developed our jurisprudence is with respect to the Second Amendment as compared to the First and Fourth Amendments.” And, still, the liberal wing of the High Court does just that. Because the liberal wing of the Supreme Court finds the fundamental, unalienable right embodied in the Second Amendment personally distasteful, it allows itself to embrace the pretense, or more likely the delusion, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is to be expressed today as something less than the fundamental, unalienable right that it in fact is; indeed, that the right embodied in the Second Amendment isn't to be treated even as a minor, non-fundamental right, but, rather, as nothing more than a minor concession, a privilege, to be bestowed on American citizens at the whim of Government; something even less than “gender rights” that Radical Left groups, such as overbrook.org would dare raise to the level of a fundamental right, contorting, distorting, twisting the U.S. Constitution to such an extreme extent that it becomes unrecognizable as the sacred, immutable document it once was and was forever intended to be, becoming a horrible mutation; a grotesque travesty of what was once something profound, beautiful, sublime.Radical Left and New Progressive elements in American society today, prefer to call the U.S. Constitution, as they choose to perceive it today, a so-called “Living Constitution,” grounded on what some legal scholars and academicians refer to as “living Constitutional theory;” a theory opposed to “originalism,” the latter theory of which seeks to preserve the U.S. Constitution as written, and that seeks to preserve a free Republic as the Founders of the Nation intended. See, e.g., “Living Constitutional Theory,” by Andrew Coan, Duke Law Journal, Volume 66, June 2017. Not surprisingly, proponents of so-called living Constitutional theory would attempt to buttress this new living constitutional theory by denigrating originalism, and its corollary textualism, by misquoting the late Associate Justice, Antonin Scalia.It is one thing for a lower Federal Court to abdicate its responsibility to defend and protect the U.S. Constitution. It is quite another thing for the U.S. Supreme Court to do so. Yet the lower Courts take their cue from the Highest Court in the Land. If the U.S. Supreme Court abdicates its responsibility, it should well expect the lower Courts to do so. And, they have.______________________________

POSTSCRIPT———

CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS IS DEAD WRONG: SOME JUSTICES DO WORK IN A POLITICAL MANNER

OVERTLY POLITICAL LIBERAL-WING OF SUPREME COURT INTENDS TO CONSTRAIN AND EVENTUALLY DESTROY THE SECOND AMENDMENT

Given the substantial opportunity for the U.S. Supreme Court to review several U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decisions that upheld facially unconstitutional Government decisions, infringing the very core of the Second Amendment, it is remarkable that the  High Court failed to take up any one of them. One would have thought the High Court would have done so, would have been compelled to do so, consistent with their Oath to do so. And one would have thought the High Court would relish doing so, given blatant lower Court hostility toward the Second Amendment and a dismissive attitude toward clear, categorical Supreme Court precedent as laid down in the 2008 Heller and 2010 McDonald cases. But, many Justices obviously were not content to do so. That the Supreme Court failed to garner even four votes on any one of a substantial number of cases, coming on the heels of the seminal Second Amendment Heller and McDonald U.S. Supreme Court cases, where State, County, or Municipal Governments visibly, defiantly, blatantly, defiantly attacked the very core of the Second Amendment, this necessarily bespeaks a decided, decisive, and unruly antipathy expressed by many Justices on the High Court, toward the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Associate Justice Clarence Thomas rightfully, justifiably, and clearly articulated his frustration with both the U.S. Supreme Court and the lower federal U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal in his comprehensive, dissenting comments in several of those Circuit Court of Appeals cases.If the High Court had taken up any one of the myriad Second Amendment cases within the first few years that Heller and McDonald were decided, it is likely the writs filed in many of the cases, mentioned and discussed, supra, would never have been filed; would never have to be filed, as the U.S. District Court Judges and U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judges would be loath to attract the righteous ire of the U.S. Supreme Court. But, as the High Court routinely refuses to hear any one of many egregious U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decisions, these Courts, not surprisingly, continue to dismiss the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms, and, just as blatantly dismiss out-of-hand the rulings of the Supreme Court in Heller and McDonald.Of course, the normally reticent Chief Justice, John Roberts, doesn't normally interject remarks outside the Court setting but felt no reluctance to do so when, the U.S. President, Donald Trump, correctly exclaimed how political the Supreme Court is.The New York Times, always a media source that can be counted on to incessantly, viciously attack the President and laud those who do the same, was quick to jump on the remarks of the Chief Justice in late 2018, reporting: 

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. defended the independence and integrity of the federal judiciary on Wednesday, rebuking President Trump for calling a judge who had ruled against his administration’s asylum policy “an Obama judge.”

The chief justice said that was a profound misunderstanding of the judicial role.“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” he said in a statement. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”The Times took another dig at the U.S. President, when, almost one year later, they again reported with glee, on Chief Justice Roberts' further jabs at President Trump, reporting:

“We don’t go about our work in a political manner,” he told an audience of some 2,000 people at the Temple Emanu-El’s Streicker Center in Manhattan.

Asked about President Trump’s attack on a decision he said had been rendered by an “Obama judge” and a recent brief from Democratic senators that questioned the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, Chief Justice Roberts said he had no objection to criticism of the court.

“We probably do a better job criticizing ourselves in our dissents than anybody else could,” he said.

But he added that the outside criticism did not affect the court’s independence. “A lot of the criticism is based on a misperception,” he said.

People often note that the court is made up of five Republican appointees and four Democratic ones, he said, and they expect predictable 5-to-4 decisions along those lines.

“Last year,” he said, “we had 19 5-to-4 decisions, and seven of them were divided with the five justices appointed by Republican presidents in the majority and the four justices appointed by Democratic presidents in dissent.”

“That shouldn’t come as a surprise because we don’t go about our work in a political manner,” he said.”“That shouldn't come as a surprise”? There is something else that doesn't come as a surprise, but would be a nice indeed surprise were it to come about, namely, the judicial philosophy and attitude of Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Steven Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and retired Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, toward the fundamental, unalienable, immutable right of the people to keep and bear arms, as codified in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The American public knows where those Justices' allegiance rests when it comes to the Second Amendment. They seek to defeat it at every turn. Chief Justice John Roberts doesn't bother to direct the public's attention to that disturbing and hardly incidental fact about them; a fact that is anything but anomalous. This isn't a matter of judicial independence, where each Justice does whatever he or she wants. This is a matter of personal integrity, judicial restraint, the obligation to one's Oath, and reverence toward the sanctity of our natural rights, to be understood and applied to the facts of a case in controversy in strict accord to the dictates of the U.S. Constitution, as written, and as ratified, as the Framers intended.The Oath of the Supreme Court Justice is set forth in Statute: 28 U.S. Code§ 453. Oaths of justices and judges:Each justice or judge of the United States shall take the following oath or affirmation before performing the duties of his office: “I, ___ ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as ___ under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.”____________________________________________Copyright © 2020 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: FRIEND OR FOE OF THE NATURAL RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS?

PART FOUR

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail; often miscited in abbreviated form as: “Justice delayed is justice denied.” Various renditions of the quotation have come down through the ages, recited by many learned and famous men. The origin of the quotation likely came from William Penn (1644 to 1718), who asserted, “To delay Justice is injustice.”

WHAT IS JUSTICE?

Black’s Law Dictionary says this about the concept, ‘justice:’ “In jurisprudence. The constant and perpetual disposition to render every man his due. . . . In the most extensive sense of the word it differs little from ‘virtue;’ for it includes within itself the whole circle of virtues. . . . But ‘justice,’ being in itself a part of ‘virtue,’ is continued to things simply good or evil, and consists in a man’s taking such a proportion of them as he ought. Bouvier. Commutative justice is that which should govern contracts. It consists in rendering to every man the exact measure of his dues, without regard to his personal worth or merits, i. e., placing all men on an equality. . . .”

WAS JUSTICE METED OUT TO PETITIONERS IN THE NYC GUN TRANSPORT CASE?

Some good Americans think the principal Petitioner, the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association (NYSRPA) prevailed in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., vs. Petitioners V. City Of New York, 590 U.S ____ (2020), simply because New York City—evidently fearing loss if the case were decided on the merits—capitulated, redrafting New York City regulations and New York State Statute, permitting New York City holders of restricted handgun premise licenses to lawfully take their firearms out of the City. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the mootness issue and found for the City against NYSRPA.  Nonetheless, can this case legitimately be considered a win for NYSRPA? Holders of such New York City restricted handgun licenses are not permitted to use the firearm for self-defense outside of the residence or business to which the license confers or deigns a “right”  (more a “privilege”) of use for self-defense? And questions remain as to limitations on the import of travel to and from the residence or business establishment—questions that could only have been resolved were the case to be decided on the merits.Some Second Amendment scholars with whom AQ has since spoken believed the New York City case was not a good Second Amendment case to be decided by the Court, not least of all because it allowed the City to exploit the problems, predictably. These scholars believe that Kavanaugh, having urged, in his concurring opinion, for another Second Amendment case—among those presently pending on a writ of certiorari—to be taken up by the Court means that the Court will, shortly, take up another Second Amendment case. The idea, then, is that the NYC case was important for that reason alone.Be that as it may, it still does not explain why, if Justice Kavanaugh agreed with Chief Justice Roberts and the liberal wing of the U.S. Supreme Court in ruling in favor of New York City, against the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association (NYSRPA) in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., vs. Petitioners V. City Of New York, 590 U.S ____ (2020), on the mootness issue.Why didn’t Justice Kavanaugh just add his name to that of the liberal wing of the Court and to that of Chief Justice Roberts, in deciding in favor of the City, and leave it at that?Did Justice Kavanaugh feel a jurisprudential need to write a concurring opinion, knowing that going along with the liberal wing is not what would be expected of him, given his past deference to the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights, in his well-reasoned, comprehensive dissent in Heller II?Did Associate Justice Kavanaugh feel he needed to write a concurring opinion, knowing that siding with Chief Justice Roberts and the liberal wing of the High Court, against the conservative wing, comprising, Justices, Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch, would lead the American public, to infer, not unreasonably, legal and logical inconsistency and incongruous intellectual dishonesty on Kavanaugh’s part—something impossible for him to hide? Perhaps. But no one really knows because no reporter or commentator has even bothered to hazard a guess as to Justice Kavanaugh’s motivation for drafting a concurring at all.Does Justice Kavanaugh know for a certainty the High Court will in fact take up for review another and more significant Second Amendment case and did he intend to use a concurring opinion specifically to inform the legal community and the public of that fact?No commentator, to date, to our knowledge, has explored these questions and that leaves us in a quandary as to Kavanaugh's intentions.For example, on April 27, 2020, Amy Howe, independent contractor, and reporter, who writes regularly for the SCOTUS blog, simply reiterated the simple fact that—“Justice Brett Kavanaugh filed a concurring opinion in which he explained that he agreed with the majority that the gun owners’ original claims are moot and that the new claims should be addressed first by the lower courts. But Kavanaugh also indicated that he agreed with Alito’s ‘general analysis of Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago,’ in which the court made clear that the Second Amendment applies fully to the states, and that he shares Alito’s ‘concern that some federal and state courts may not be properly applying Heller and McDonald.’ Kavanaugh posited that the Supreme Court ‘should address that issue soon, perhaps in one of the several Second Amendment cases with petitions for certiorari now pending before the Court.’”In her follow-up article, dated April 28, 2020, on SCOTUS blog, Amy Howe, reiterated the  fact that:——“The court’s electronic docket reveals that Kavanaugh’s suggestion may come to fruition soon: By the end of the day yesterday, the Supreme Court had distributed for consideration at Friday’s conference 10 cases that had apparently been on hold for the New York case.”In that April 28^th post, Howe mentions the following cases to be reviewed on Friday, April 29, 2020, which we cite here, directly from her commentary:“Mance v. Barr – Whether the federal ban on interstate handgun sales violates the Second Amendment or the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.Rogers v. Grewal – In a challenge to New Jersey’s handgun carry permit scheme, whether the Second Amendment protects the right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense; and whether the government can condition the right to carry a handgun outside the home on the showing of a special need to carry a firearm.Pena v. Horan – In a challenge to a California law banning most commonly used handguns, the petition asks the justices to weigh in on the scope of the Second Amendment.Gould v. Lipson– In a challenge to Massachusetts’ handgun carry permit scheme, whether the Second Amendment protects the right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense; and whether the government can condition the right to carry a handgun outside the home on the showing of a special need to carry a firearm.Cheeseman v. Polillo – Challenge to New Jersey handgun carry permit scheme.Ciolek v. New Jersey – Challenge to New Jersey handgun carry permit scheme.Worman v. Healey – Challenge to Massachusetts ban on the possession of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.Malpasso v. Pallozzi – In a challenge to Maryland’s handgun carry permit scheme, whether the Second Amendment protects the right to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense.Culp v. Raoul – Whether the Second Amendment requires Illinois to allow nonresidents to apply for a concealed-carry license.Wilson v. Cook County – Challenge to Cook County’s ban on assault rifles and large-capacity magazines, as well as to the Second Amendment analysis used by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit to uphold the ban.”

THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SHOULD BE WARY OF THE LIBERAL WING OF THE U.S. SUPREME COURT, AND WARY, TOO, OF CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS AND ASSOCIATE JUSTICE KAVANAUGH

Yes, so, there are more cases coming down the pike the U.S. Supreme Court may take up. So what? Are Americans expected to wait, with bated breath, for the next Second Amendment case the High Court may or may not take upon review?Recall Justice Kavanaugh’s remark, as reiterated by Amy Howe, “that [Kavanaugh] shares Alito’s ‘concern that some federal and state courts may not be properly applying Heller and McDonald’” [and] “that the Supreme Court ‘should address that issue soon, perhaps in one of the several Second Amendment cases with petitions for certiorari now pending before the Court.’” Is this a cause for rejoicing simply because writs of certiorari in several Second Amendment cases have been filed with the Supreme Court and are pending a vote? The idea that the Supreme Court ‘should’ address the issue whether Courts are properly applying Heller and McDonald, doesn’t mean that the Supreme Court ‘will’ address that issue.Are those writs not simply a fervent hope of Americans who venerate our Bill of Rights hoping against hope that maybe, just maybe, the Supreme Court will review another Second Amendment case, if only reluctantly?But possibility is not the same thing as probability, and even less, certainty, that the High Court will agree to hear another Second Amendment case. And, if the Court does agree to hear another Second Amendment case, when might that be? And, if soon, will the Court actually address the issue whether Appellate Courts had properly applied Heller and McDonald?Recall the Voisine vs. United States case the Court took up prior to the New York City case—a case that, as Justice Thomas insisted, did include a tenable Second Amendment issue; yet the Court refused to consider the implications and ramifications of the Second Amendment. Would the Court refuse to consider the impact of Heller and McDonald in any future Second Amendment case it does deign to hear, lest a Supreme Court majority be seen as strengthening the fundamental, natural, immutable, unalienable right that it is loath to do? Lastly, how would such a case be decided? These are not spurious questions. They are serious ones and unsettling ones, worthy of speculation. And the point of this speculation is that the New York City gun transport case was the first case to come down the pike ten years after McDonald, involving a core Second Amendment issue (with the exception of the seeming quasi Second Amendment Voisine case)Keep in mind, too: there have been many Second Amendment cases that came before the High Court on writs of certiorari, in the intervening years between the seminal rulings in Heller and McDonald and negative decision in the New York City gun transport case. Each one of those cases “should” have been reviewed; truly required review, but were not reviewed. What happened to those petitions? The answer is nothing happened. Nothing happened because the high Court voted against taking those cases up.None of the cases garnered four votes necessary for any of those cases to be heard, precisely because the actions of State governments were unconstitutional, clearly so, blatantly so.Had the High Court taken those cases up, it would have had no choice but to overturn government action: egregious government action that clearly infringed the core of the Second Amendment; government action that was inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent categorically laid down in Heller and McDonald. By failing to review those cases that meant unconstitutional government actions, upheld by U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, infringing the Second Amendment, stood.State governments and U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals would remain confident that ridiculously, outrageously unconstitutional government action, infringing the core of our Second Amendment right would continue; and that high Court reticence in reviewing unconstitutional State action would thereby allow, invite, even encourage more and more invasions of a fundamental right, each one building on the one before; becoming more flamboyant, more destructive of Americans’ exercise of their natural right to keep and bear arms.In our next segment AQ provides the good reader with a reminder of several of those critical Second Amendment cases the U.S. Supreme Court could have taken up for review in the last several years; cases the High Court ought to have taken up; but cases, alas, the liberal wing of the High Court, together with the presumed “moderate Justice,” since retired, Anthony Kennedy, along with Chief Justice Roberts, likely didn’t want to take up, didn't dare to take up, and, so, didn't take up precisely because if those cases had been taken up, they would be compelled—unlike the liberal wing of the Court—to overturn unconstitutional State government action, as demanded by Heller and McDonald case law precedent; case law precedent that they, unlike the liberal wing of the Court, helped set.Those cases the Supreme Court failed to review involve actions of U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal that, to a one, reflect decisions blatantly, defiantly, irrefutably egregiously dismissive of binding precedent laid down in Heller and McDonald.

POSTSCRIPT——

In future segments, we will begin our comprehensive analysis of what to our mind is Justice Kavanaugh’s bizarre concurring opinion in the New York City gun transport case, and we will address the mootness issue head-on.We will strive to decipher Kavanaugh’s concurring to ascertain if Kavanaugh’s decision, siding with the Chief Justice Roberts and the liberal wing of the Court, is merely an anomaly or if it portends something ominous: an entire rethinking of Kavanaugh’s philosophy pertaining to the Second Amendment? Our aim, in forthcoming articles, will be to determine whether Americans can trust Brett Kavanaugh to remain true to his Oath to preserve and defend the Constitution of the United States.And what is that Oath? It is this:Each justice or judge of the United States shall take the following oath or affirmation before performing the duties of his office: “I, ___ ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as ___ under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.” 28 U.S. Code § 453. Oaths of justices and judgesAsk yourself: How many Justices in the past several decades have honorably and honestly sought to comply with the Oath of a Supreme Court Justice? And how many Justices have betrayed their Oath, disdaining and revoking a natural, fundamental, unalienable, immutable God-given right, thereby, consciously or unconsciously, making a Pact with Satan? And, yes, agnostics and atheists, and Godless immoral, abnormal, perverse and perverted Satanists, do draw breath and do walk among us.____________________________________________Copyright © 2020 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

ANTIGUN CROWD BREATHES COLLECTIVE SIGH OF RELIEF AFTER SUPREME COURT MAJORITY GIVES NYC A VICTORY IN GUN TRANSPORT CASE

PART THREE

The liberal wing of the High Court sided with Respondent in the New York City gun transport case. No surprise there. The liberal wing of the Court detests the Second Amendment.Chief Justice John Roberts joined the liberal wing. Robert’s vote gave the liberal wing of the Court—Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan—the critical fifth vote needed to secure victory for the Anti-Second Amendment, Anti-Bill of Rights crowd. A huge disappointment, of course, but no surprise there either, unfortunately. The two-page majority opinion went unsigned.Associate Justice Samuel Alito wrote a comprehensive and scathing thirty-plus page dissenting opinion. Associate Justice Clarence Thomas and Trump’s first nominee to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, joined Justice Alito, in rebuking the majority’s decision.

—OH! AND LET’S NOT FORGET THE LEGAL OPINION OF PRESIDENT TRUMP’S SECOND NOMINEE TO THE SUPREME COURT, BRETT KAVANAUGH.

The anti-Second Amendment, antigun crowd need not have worried itself over Associate Justice Kavanaugh, after all.Associate Justice Kavanaugh joined Chief Justice Roberts and the liberal wing majority on behalf of the Respondent New York City. Kavanaugh’s decision provided the Court’s majority with a sixth vote. And that is odd! Kavanaugh did know, of course, that jurists, attorneys, academicians, and lay Americans would perceive his as intellectually dishonest; and justifiably so. That explains why Kavanaugh apparently felt the need to write a separate opinion at all; to clarify an odd finding that neither attorney, nor jurist, nor academician, nor layperson would have expected from him.But, you would think that having bothered to draft a concurring opinion at all, Kavanaugh would have written a detailed exposition, setting out in particularity the reason or reasons for his unsettling and inapposite decision, having joined Roberts and the liberal wing of the Court. After all, the New York City gun transport case was, as most commentators assert, the first major Second Amendment case to come down the pike since the Supreme Court decided McDonald ten years earlier.*Moreover, Kavanaugh tends to write detailed opinions, but he didn’t do so here. That is out of character, especially since his decision in the Supreme Court case doesn’t square with the sound and logical and observant and discriminating and comprehensive dissenting opinion he drafted in Heller II when he served as a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District Columbia Circuit, a typical stepping-stone to an eventual seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. President George W. Bush nominated Kavanaugh to serve as an appellate judge in 2003.Yet, Brett Kavanaugh’s usual perspicuity, inclination, even fervor, for detailed exposition, is altogether lacking in the New York City case. Why is that do you suppose?Justice Kavanaugh provided detailed commentary for his decision in Heller II—a major Second Amendment Circuit Court of Appeals case—but oddly provided no explanation for his decision here in the first major Second Amendment case to be decided by the High Court in a decade (with the possible exception of Voisine) and the first Second Amendment case Kavanaugh had an opportunity to decide once he sat as a Supreme Court Associate Justice.Kavanaugh’s shoddy and vacuous concurring is perplexing. It is also deeply disturbing and disconcerting since, both in form and in substance, Kavanaugh’s concurring doesn’t dovetail with his earlier prolific, well-reasoned dissent in Heller II.The seditious Press, while, pointing to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring merely echoes his pronouncements, but eschews doing any analysis of it, seemingly lacking all journalistic alacrity and curiosity. Why is that?We will consider Brett Kavanaugh’s odd concurring, in detail, in the next several AQ segments. We will deal with the ramifications of that concurring and what it may portend for our sacred Second Amendment right, in the 21^st Century.Is Brett Kavanaugh second-guessing his own jurisprudential methodology and philosophy of the Second Amendment?  We do know that the jurisprudential leaning of Supreme Court Justices tends to evolve during the course of their tenure on the Court, but not with lightning speed as seems to be true of Justice Kavanaugh if the NYC case isn't to be dismissed as a mere anomaly. But, then, is Justice Kavanaugh’s concurring in the New York City gun transport case simply an isolated happenstance, an aberration, or is it an alarming and disheartening precursor of what we might expect from him in the future? We believe this to be a critical question, and, therefore, one worth investigating.__________________________________*Actually, the New York City gun transport case wasn’t the first Second Amendment case the High Court took up for review, since the 2010 McDonald decision. There was an earlier quasi Second Amendment case that the Court took up in 2015, five years after McDonald. The case is United States vs. Voisine.The Arbalest Quarrel wrote about Voisine. We said: “[Although] a salient issue in Voisine [United States vs. Voisine, No. 14-10154 (S. Ct. Dec. 17, 2015)] does involve the meaning to be given a word phrase in one particular section of a lengthy federal Statute, [n]onetheless, the Voisine case is the first Supreme Court case to be heard by the High Court that does impact the Second Amendment. [Justice Thomas made that point patently clear in his dissent in Voisine even if the Court’s majority assiduously refrained from even invoking the words, ‘Second Amendment.’] In fact, Petitioners did timely and properly raise a Second Amendment claim in their Briefs to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. And that claim was preserved, and that issue was ripe for review by the U.S. Supreme Court when it granted Petitioners’ Writ of Certiorari. Moreover, while the Second Amendment issue was set forth with particularity as a salient issue in Petitioners’ Brief, the Second Amendment claim was not set forth as an issue in the Government’s own Brief in Opposition to the Brief of Petitioners. And the Government, in its Brief in Opposition to the Brief of Petitioners, addressed Petitioners’ Second Amendment claim only perfunctorily, giving little thought to it, seemingly in deference to and happily therefor to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit’s treatment of it, for the First Circuit dismissed Petitioners’ Second Amendment claim outright. United States vs. Voisine, No. 14-10154 (S. Ct. Dec. 17, 2015). You can read the entire opinion, as a PDF Document. ____________________________________Copyright © 2020 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

ANTI-GUN FORCES WON’T REST UNTIL SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHT IS ERASED FROM MEMORY

PART TWO

SUPREME COURT MAJORITY JOINS FORCES WITH SECOND AMENDMENT FOES TO CHIP AWAY AT  NATURAL GOD-GIVEN RIGHT.

As reported in the leftist periodical Newsweek, on March 27, 2018———“Young activists calling for more gun control legislation should be more ambitious in their nationwide effort and focus on repealing the Second Amendment, according to retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.“In an op-ed published Tuesday in The New York Times, Stevens praised the students and young people who rallied in Washington and around the country over the weekend as part of the March for Our Lives. The demonstration was sparked by the shooting last month at a Parkland, Florida, high school that left 17 people, including 14 students, dead.Stevens wrote that he had ‘rarely’ seen such a wide scope of ‘civic engagement’ from young people in his lifetime and encouraged their efforts to go even further.‘That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms,’ Stevens wrote. ‘But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.’”March 27, 2018 article appearing in Newsweek, citing and extolling retired Justice John Paul Stevens, whose Op-Ed appeared in the NY Times on the same date: March 27, 2018. In that Op-Ed Stevens explicitly calls for repeal of the Second Amendment, an extraordinarily extreme position he alluded to but would dare not expressly assert in his dissent in the 2008 Heller case.

ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT MAINSTREAM MEDIA REJOICES OVER MAJORITY DECISION IN NEW YORK CITY GUN TRANSPORT CASE.

The seditious Anti-Second Amendment Press breathed a collective sigh of relief when the U.S. Supreme Court Majority voted for Respondent, New York City, against the Petitioner, NYSRPA, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., vs. Petitioners V. City Of New York, 590 U.S ____ (2020).* The New York City gun transport case was the first major Second Amendment case to be decided by the High Court since the McDonald case decision ten years earlier.Although the legal issue, a very narrow one, only implicated the bizarre, abhorrent, draconian, multifaceted, bloated, fascistic, and constantly refined and engineered handgun licensing requirements of New York City, apropos of Section 5-01(a) of Title 38 of the Rules of the City of New York, pertaining to a “premise handgun license,”, the antigun, anti-Second Amendment mob exhibited marked hysteria that the high Court had dared to hear the case at all; concerned that a decision for the NYSRPA against the City would open the floodgates to renewed attacks against restrictive gun regulations across the Country.The weblog “Bearing Arms,” said, at the time, just before oral argument: “Now, the Court is hearing arguments on the case. That’s more than enough to trigger anti-gunners to completely lose their crap.” In its article, Bearing Arms cited an unconscionable, reprehensible story that appeared in the Radical Left weblog news one in which the weblog denounced and denigrated Associate Justice Clarence Thomas for having the audacity to exalt the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Unabashedly mocking the esteemed Associate Justice, as if the writer for news one had any comprehension of U.S. Constitutional Law and of the critical importance of the natural, fundamental, unalienable, immutable right of the people to keep and bear arms to the proper functioning of a free Constitutional Republic, the writer blurted out:“Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been one of the most destructive justices on the court. However, his foolishness is about to hit a new level with the Second Amendment being revisited for the first time on the court in over a decade.In case you missed it, the Supreme Court is hearing a case to expand gun rights. Yep, you read that right. The majority conservative court might make it easier to have [sic] gun in a time when the majority of Americans are asking for more gun control.It all has to do with New York City, which has strict rules to protect people from gun violence. In July of 2019, New York City put in a strict rule that limited where New Yorkers could bring their guns, which included transporting legally owned guns outside city limits. No other city or state has this restriction, which was put into place after the horrific shooting of school children in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012.  Twenty-six people, including 20 children between six and seven years old, were killed.Well, Clarence Thomas isn’t happy and wants more people to have guns. The Washington Post reports, ‘Justice Clarence Thomas has complained that the lower courts have been too willing to uphold gun restrictions, accusing the courts of treating the Second Amendment as a ‘second-class right.’The Washington Post also asserts, ‘These justices apparently want to adopt a stricter test for courts to apply in Second Amendment cases, making it harder for gun laws to survive a legal challenge. If the court follows suit in the New York case, recent reforms such as red flag laws and universal background checks could be imperiled.’Many states have made their own changes to their gun laws, which the federal government has failed to do. However, if the Supreme Court finds that New York City went too far with the latest restriction, this could be a serious blow to gun advocacy groups like Everytown for Gun Safety, March for Our Lives, Moms Demand Action, and for the thousands of people.Leave it up to Clarence Thomas to be on the wrong side of history.”“Protect people from gun violence”— by removing the most effective means, i.e., a gun,’ with which the average, rational, law-abiding person might capably protect him or herself from a vicious predator? “Wrong side of history”— (i.e., revisionist history) because Justice Thomas defends our Nation’s cherished Bill of Rights?And Fox19 now, noted, after the New York City gun transport case decision came down:“The anti-climactic end to the Supreme Court case is a disappointment to gun rights advocates and relief to gun control groups who thought a conservative Supreme Court majority fortified by two appointees of President Donald Trump, Justices Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, might use the case to expand on landmark decisions from a decade ago that established a right under the Second Amendment to keep a gun at home for self-defense.Lower courts upheld the regulation, but the Supreme Court’s decision early in 2019 to step into the case signaled a revived interest in gun rights from a court with two new justices. Officials at both the city and state level scrambled to find a way to remove the case from the justices’ grasp. Not only did the city change its regulation to allow licensed gun owners to transport their weapons to locations outside New York’s five boroughs, but the state enacted a law barring cities from imposing the challenged restrictions.Those moves failed to get the court to dismiss the case before arguments in December, and gun control advocates worried that the court might adopt the reasoning Kavanaugh used in a 2011 opinion in his former job as a Court of Appeals judge. There, he wrote, gun laws “that are not longstanding or sufficiently rooted in text, history, and tradition are not consistent with the Second Amendment individual right.” Anti-Second Amendment foes need not have worried. But most Americans do need to worry about the future of Americans’ natural, fundamental, unalienable, immutable God-given right to keep and bear arms.The New York City gun transport case provides Americans with a blueprint for assessing the predilections of U.S. Supreme Court Justices on matters pertaining to the Second Amendment.First, the liberal wing of the High Court—comprising, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Steven Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan—abhors the Second Amendment. The liberal wing will routinely, if not invariably, rule in favor of Government actions that, on their face, infringe the core of the right. The liberal wing will contort the law to find Government actions constitutional that are clearly unconstitutional and that tend to weaken our fundamental, natural rights and liberties. The liberal wing will continue to demonstrate little reluctance in subordinating the U.S. Constitution and U.S. case law precedent to the dictates of international norms and standards that stand in marked conflict to our system of laws and jurisprudence.Second, the conservative wing of the High Court—comprising, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch—in the mold of the late, brilliant and esteemed Justice, Antonin Scalia, will continue to demonstrate great deference to our Constitution, and will, consistent with their Oath, always strive to preserve and strengthen our natural rights and liberties.Third, Chief Justice Roberts cannot and should not be considered a Judicial conservative. He does not exemplify those Justices of the conservative wing of the Court. Even the expression, Judicial ‘moderate’ may not be an accurate descriptor for him. He does not exhibit the appropriate deference to the Second Amendment as now exemplified in having sided, sans a qualified concurring opinion, with the decision of the liberal—dare we say, increasingly, ‘radical’—wing of the High Court. Justice Roberts will continue to see-saw between the two wings of the Court. But do not expect the Chief Justice to treat our Bill of Rights with deep, abiding respect and reverence.Fourth, prior to the decision in the New York gun transport case, one would have reasonably thought that Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the newest member of the Court—as of the posting of this article—would exhibit the same deference to the Bill of Rights as those Justices comprising the conservative wing of the Court. Certainly, given Justice Kavanaugh’s comprehensive, well-reasoned, and well-written dissent in Heller II, one would have expected Justice Kavanaugh to express the same desire for consistency and detail in his written opinions as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice that he had exhibited as a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Sadly, that does not appear to be the case. Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring in the New York City gun transport case appears oddly dull, imprecise, even apologetic in tone. And the decision is not consistent with his dissent in Heller II.Of course, Justice Kavanaugh’s decision would not have changed the outcome of the case, but it does give one pause. For, if that concurring opinion serves as an indication of what we might expect in the future from this Associate Justice, our sacred Second Amendment—along with our other fundamental rights and liberties—may well be in jeopardy; all the more so if the presumptive Democrat Party nominee for U.S. President, Joe Biden, actually defeats Donald Trump in November. That happenstance would be the manifestation of our Nation’s worst nightmare.Justice Kavanaugh’s jurisprudential philosophy remains at this point inscrutable and that is not a good thing. In the next several segments, we attempt to unpack Kavanaugh’s concurring, along with a review of past Second Amendment cases that the High Court denied cert, and a close look at the issue of mootness, as the majority decision in the New York City case wasn’t consistent with Supreme Court precedence; not even close.____________________________________*SCOTUSblog Holding and Judgment:Holding: Petitioners’ claim for declaratory and injunctive relief with respect to the City’s old rule on transporting firearms is moot, and any claim for damages with respect to that rule may be addressed in the first instance by the court of appeals and the district court on remand.Judgment: Vacated and remanded in a per curiam opinion on April 27, 2020. Justice Kavanaugh filed a concurring opinion. Justice Alito filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justice Gorsuch joined in full and Justice Thomas joined except for Part IV-B.____________________________________Copyright © 2020 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

BIDEN’S ODIOUS REMARKS TO CURTAIL SECOND AMENDMENT INVITE QUESTION OVER HIS ELECTABILITY AND SUITABILITY FOR HIGHEST OFFICE

JOE BIDEN WANTS YOU TO KNOW HE SUPPORTS THE SECOND AMENDMENT; IT'S JUST THAT HE DOESN'T SUPPORT YOUR OWNING AND POSSESSING FIREARMS

PART ONE

“Hello, I'm Mr. Ed.A horse is a horse, of course, of course,And no one can talk to a horse of courseThat is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed.Go right to the source and ask the horseHe'll give you the answer that you'll endorse.He's always on a steady course.Talk to Mr. Ed.People yackety yack a streakAnd waste your time of day.But Mr. Ed will never speakUnless he has something to say.A horse is a horse, of course, of course,And this one will talk till his voice is hoarse.You never heard of a talking horse?Well, listen to this:‘I am Mr. Ed.’”(Song lyrics to farcical television comedy, airing on CBS from 1961 to 1966)Can anyone talk to Mr. Joe Biden? Here is a man who tends to yackety-yack a streak even when he has nothing to say—which is all the time, or nearly all the time. You would think a person running for President of the United States would have something intelligent to say, and that he would be willing, able, and capable of orating intelligently, eloquently, and solicitously to the American public. That, though, isn’t Joe Biden.Biden is a windbag filled up with ill-conceived, half-formed thought forms, many false; dredged up from his distant past, sloppily pasted together, and then delivered pontifically to the American public as an incomplete, incoherent, haphazard, unconvincing, rambling sermon on the purported foibles of the Trump Administration; providing, too, an inkling of the way things will be and ought to be once he, Joe Biden, becomes President of the United States. Mr. Ed, at least, can speak coherently. Maybe Mr. Joe should receive coaching lessons on the art of oral communication from Mr. Ed.Consider Biden’s policy prescriptions for dealing with American’s fundamental, immutable, unalienable natural right as codified in the Second Amendment of the Nation’s Bill of Rights; a right bestowed on man by a Loving Divine Creator; natural law, not man-made law; God-given law, not Congressional enacted law; natural law upon which a free Constitutional Republic rests; upon which the personal autonomy of Americans depend; upon which the sanctity and inviolability of the individual is grounded, and upon which the sovereignty, supremacy of the American people over a centralized Government and over the crushing power of the State, is maintained—the right of the people to keep and bear arms; a right that shall not be infringed.And, yet there are those, both inside the Federal Government and outside it, who are all too happy to infringe this hallowed  right, this sanctified law, even as they say they would not; that they never would infringe it.Recall Hillary Clinton blatantly lying to the American people about her position on firearms and the Second Amendment when she gave her acceptance speech at the 2016 Democrat National Convention:The website Vox reported: “Clinton wants you to know one thing about her position on gun control: ‘I’m not here to repeal the Second Amendment. I’m not here to take away your guns. . . . I just don’t want you to be shot by someone who shouldn't have a gun in the first place.  ‘We should be working with responsible gun owners to pass commonsense reforms and keep guns out of the hands of criminals, terrorists, and all others who would do us harm.’Clinton is essentially sticking to the stance that Democrats, including President Barack Obama, have followed over the past few years: They want to restrict certain weapons and keep certain people from getting guns, but they’re not interested in taking away everyone’s firearms.”Clinton has offered up a policy prescription, amounting to a logical contradiction. So, reading between the lines, what Clinton is saying is this:I don’t want to take away your firearms and you can trust me when I tell you I will not take away your firearms; it’s just that you have to realize I do need to take away your firearms, much as I don’t want to; and, so, I will be taking your firearms away, and this is for your own good; to keep you safe from yourself and to keep me safe from you. I hope you understand, and I hope you’ll vote for me. Oh, and have a Good Day.Recall, too, Senator Leahy’s (D-VT) blatantly dishonest remarks, during Elena Kagan’s Confirmation Hearing as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010, prompting Kagan’s dutiful reply. The website, On the Issues, reported:Senator Leahy: “‘I am a gun owner, as are many people in Vermont, and I agreed with the Heller decision. And just yesterday in McDonald v. the City of Chicago, the Court decided the Second amendment right established in Heller is a fundamental right that applies to the States as well as the Federal Government. Is there any doubt after the Court's decision in Heller and McDonald that the Second Amendment to the Constitution secures a fundamental right for an individual to own a firearm, use it for self-defense in their home?’ SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan: ‘There is no doubt, Senator Leahy. That is binding precedent entitled to all the respect of binding precedent in any case. So that is settled law.’”Sure, Heller and McDonald are settled law—until they aren’t—and they won’t be if the Left-wing of the high Court, gains ascendancy. It will overturn those seminal Second Amendment cases if Radical Left and  new wave Progressive Left Democrats are able to “pack” the high Court with Left-wing Justices.And, this brings us back to Joe Biden, the apparent presumptive Heir Apparent Democrat Party nominee for U.S. President in 2020. How can a person believe Joe Biden’s claim of devotion to the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution—the mere assertion of his claim to support it—when his policy plank and his policy prescriptions serve clearly to shred it.When an American citizen dares demand that Biden provide concrete support for his policy position and policy prescriptions on the Second Amendment and on firearms, Biden is unprepared to discuss his position and the policy prescriptions he would implement. He becomes visibly, plainly flustered, and loses his temper. He lashes out. This unseemly behavior occurs because Biden doesn’t expect Americans to speak out. He perceives this as audacious conduct rather than acceptable behavior. Yet, you would think a U.S. Presidential candidate should expect questions from the public; that a Presidential candidate would invite and welcome questions concerning his or her policy prescriptions; and that the candidate would be able and willing to discuss, candidly, cordially, even cheerfully one’s policy prescriptions.A U.S. Presidential candidate should come before the public, fully prepared to clarify and support his or her policy positions and prescriptions—especially those affecting fundamental, immutable, unalienable, natural rights, not least of all the right impacting firearms and the American citizens’ unconditional right to own and possess them.Yet, Biden lashes, out; he treats the American public as if it were a conglomeration of stupid Hinterland Hicks; nothing more than a herd of dumb beasts; or a pack of feral dogs; or a brood of undisciplined, wayward children whom, as in time past, were expected to be seen and not heard.Biden’s detestable behavior was on full display when, during the Michigan Primary on March 10, 2020, a Detroit auto worker respectfully but pointedly challenged Biden on the claim repeatedly made that he supports gun rights. As reported by the website Mediaite:  “Former Vice President Joe Biden got into a heated exchange with a Detroit autoworker over gun rights Tuesday, with votes coming in during the Michigan primary.‘You are actively trying to diminish our second amendment right and take away our guns,’ one autoworker yelled at Biden while appearing to be looking at his phone.‘You’re full of shit,’ Biden fired back, adding, “I support the second amendment.”‘From the very beginning, I have a shotgun, I have a 20 gauge, a 12 gauge, my son’s hunt,’ Biden said, adding, ‘I’m not taking your gun away at all.’‘If you need 100 rounds,’ Biden said, before being interrupted while trying to find common ground with the union member.Biden then dismissed viral videos the autoworker was citing as not accurate and mentioned ‘AR-14’s’ [?]‘Look, here’s the deal, here’s the deal,’ Biden said. ‘Are you able to own a machine gun? Under the law?’Biden’s campaign has said previously that if elected, he would ban assault weapons.‘Machine guns are illegal,’ the autoworker responded.‘That’s right,’ Biden responded, adding, ‘So are AR-15’s illegal. . . .’‘There are more deaths in America from handguns then what you call assault rifles,’ the autoworker said, ‘why are you advocating for assault rifles. . . .’The autoworker then continued to argue with the former Vice President before being pulled away by a union leader.”Breitbart reports more of this exchange:“‘This is not okay,’ the man said, creating a buffer between the finger and his face.‘Don’t tell me anything, pal,’ Biden demanded.The worker continued to defend the Second Amendment and disputed Biden’s interpretation of ‘assault rifles.’‘Don’t be such a horse’s ass,’ Biden said before he walked away.” “Horse’s ass?” And Who is it that is really the talking Horse, here? Is it the autoworker or Biden? Is it Mr. Ed or Mr. Joe? And, what’s the deal Joe? What’s the deal? This, of course, isn’t the first time Biden lost his temper in front of the Nation; and there will be other times he will lose his temper as well. Yet, when confronted by average Americans who simply expect Biden to support his positions when queried about them, Biden should be willing and able to do so. He isn’t.As the purported remaining “moderate” Democrat Party Candidate for U.S. President, Biden wants, indeed expects, the public to take on faith he supports the Second Amendment when he doesn’t.This is deception and a poor attempt at deception, at that. Unfortunately, we have seen this deception at work many times before and we will continue to see it in the run-up to the General election in November 2020, as the ruthless, secretive, wealthy powerful, amoral, Centrist Neoliberal Transnationalist Anti-Constitutionalist, Anti-Second Amendment Collectivist Plutocrats and Oligarchs push their lackey, Joe Biden, on all of us.With Joe Biden in the Oval Office, the Globalists will then be able to move ahead once again with their agenda, and agenda that President Trump had cast aside, as he would not do their bidding. They will not abide further interruption of their goals: dismantling a free Republic, overriding the Nation’s Bill of Rights, overthrowing the sovereignty of the American people, subjugating the masses; subordinating the citizenry to their new dictates; and bending the citizenry to their will, that the U.S. might eventually be integrated into a one world political, social, cultural, and economic governmental scheme._________________________________________

TO COMPROMISE THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IS TO ENDANGER THE EXERCISE OF IT

PART TWO

Worse than thieves, murderers, or cannibals, those who offer compromise slow you and sap your vitality while pretending to be your friends. They are not your friends. Compromisers are the enemies of all humanity, the enemies of life itself. Compromisers are the enemies of everything important, sacred, and true. ~ L. Neil Smith, Libertarian, novelist, and non-fiction writer; from his political essay “Lever Action”Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles. ~Ayn Rand, writer and philosopher; from “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”Biden, like all scheming Anti-Constitutionalist Anti-Second Amendment Neoliberal Transnationalist Globalist Collectivist Establishment politicians, is an obsequious, compliant stooge of the secretive Billionaire Globalist Corporatists. He duplicitously and hypocritically claims to support the Second Amendment, when he does not. He suggests that compelling Americans to compromise the exercise of their fundamental, primordial, immutable, unalienable right—such as forcing Americans to surrender their semiautomatic firearms, and confining ammunition magazine capacity—is fully consistent with his claim to support preservation of the elemental right of the people to keep and bear arms. Does he really expect the American public to believe him? To accept Biden’s incoherent nonsense is the height of absurdity. Does Biden hold the American citizenry in such low regard that he expects the citizenry to accept his deceitful lies as self-evident truths. Who is Biden really fooling, here?The word, ‘compromise,’ has two alternate, incompatible meanings. It can connote: a ‘settlement of differences by arbitration or by consent reached by mutual concessions; namely ‘something intermediate between or blending qualities of two different things;’ ‘an agreement between two sides who have different opinions, in which each side gives up something it had wanted.’ But, the word, can also connote, ‘a concession to something derogatory or prejudicial a compromise of one’s principles;’ namely, ‘to expose or make vulnerable to danger, suspicion, scandal, etc.; jeopardize: e.g., a military oversight that compromised the nation's defenses.’ Here is Barack Obama’s view of the word, ‘compromise’: “A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, ‘huh. It works. It makes sense.’” From the New Yorker, May 31, 2004. Huh. It works. Makes sense? Asserting one’s support for the Second Amendment by simultaneously demanding concessions from those who wish to exercise the right is an odd way of asserting one’s devotion to a fundamental, unalienable, immutable and natural right.It is clear how Biden and, by extension, how all Radical Left and New Progressive Left Democrats use the word, ‘compromise,’ apropos of the Second Amendment. They suggest, deceitfully to the public, that they mean ‘negotiate’ “commonsense” restrictions on the exercise of the natural right. But, what they really mean, if only tacitly, is to eventually ‘prohibit’ exercise of the natural right of the people to keep and bear arms.As reported by the Washington Examiner, on August 10, 2020:“Joe Biden is calling for a cultural shift around how the country thinks about gun ownership.‘The Second Amendment — no amendment is in fact absolute,’ Biden told the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund's Presidential Gun Sense Forum Saturday in Des Moines, Iowa. ‘Folks, don't apologize at all about the Second Amendment,’ Biden advised, explaining how the amendment allows for limitations on who can own a weapon and what type. ‘These guys will tell you, the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots. Give me a break.’‘Can you go out and buy a flamethrower? Can you go out and buy an F-15?’ he added. “If you want to protect yourself against the federal government, you’re going to need at least an F-15.’”It defies belief that anyone, let alone a U.S. Presidential candidate, can, through his remarks, fall prey to such an abundance of fallacies—“red herrings,” “false analogies,” and “overgeneralizations,” to name but a few—or that a Presidential candidate could be so excruciatingly incoherent.Biden’s remarks amount to a mouthful of bland, flat, bald-faced lies and gross exaggerations, assuming one can decipher his remarks at all, as so many incoherent declarations emanate from him. Mostly, his remarks devolve into a series of rambling incoherent musings, inconsistencies, and mind-numbing disconcerting schizophasia—meaningless blather—all but impossible to unscramble, and apt to cause a migraine headache for anyone who tries.Listening to Biden yap, brings to mind the comedian Irwin Corey, the master of double-talk. The two would have made a fabulously successful comedy team in the fashion of Abbott and Costello, and the Smothers Brothers. Biden has missed his true calling.The sad and tragic thing is that Biden expects to be taken seriously. If he were a stand-up comic, it would be amusing to listen to him, all the more so since he tends to come across as patronizing—a nice touch were that a part of his comic skit. Biden must think that the failure of the public to understand him is due to the inability of most people to fully appreciate the intricacies of his genius; his mind a steel-trap; impossible for those of lesser intellect to fathom.The Washington Examiner had this to say about Biden, back in 2019:“Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic front-runner crowd, left some in the crowd at the Iowa State Fair mystified when he told them: ‘We choose truth over facts.'"Does Biden know what he is talking about? I don’t, and I would assume you don’t. And my guess is that Biden doesn’t know what he is talking about either.The words, ‘true’ and ‘false’ are referred to in logic as “Truth-bearers.” Truth-bearers aren’t facts, and facts aren't truth-bearers, but it is both wrong and incongruous to say a person chooses one over the other. And, Biden is correct, although unwittingly, when he implies that truth-bearers are not facts. But, that has nothing to do with the notion of choice. One doesn't choose truth over facts or facts over truth. That assertion is discordant. Logicians, mathematicians, and epistemologists do not conceive of facts and truth-bearers as incompatible things; as antinomies. Facts and Truth-Bearers,  are two distinct kinds of things, but the two do work in tandem. Logicians, mathematicians, and epistemologists know that the concepts, ‘truth’ and ‘falsity,’ are properties of propositional forms—not of  events, i.e., “facts.” Anyone who has taken an elementary course in symbolic logic learns that.And there are many different theories of truth. Under a typical theory, say, the correspondence theory, ‘truth’ does make use of ‘facts;’ better referred to as ‘events;’ or better yet, ‘states of affairs.’ A proposition is said to be ‘true’ if it corresponds with or mirrors a ‘fact,’ and a proposition is said to be ‘false’ if it doesn’t correspond to a fact. Thus, the proposition, ‘Joe Biden will become the 46th President of the United States,’ is said to be true, if the event, state of affairs, or “fact,” does comes to pass, i.e., corresponds with or mirrors the fact that Joe Biden does become President of the United States. And, the proposition is said to be false if the event, state of affairs or fact, does not come to pass. Whatever event happens to transpire, the event, (or state of affairs, or fact) is not itself, ‘true’ or ‘false;’ it simply is or is not the case. But the proposition or statement about the matter is the thing to which one properly utilizes the concept of truth, under the typical correspondence theory of truth. These critical points.Now, when Biden says that, “We choose truth over facts,” it may be Biden is enunciating or, at least, intimating a new, dramatic theory of truth. If there is anything to it, the impact on our understanding of logic, mathematics, epistemology and of any of the hard sciences—indeed, on the very notion of reality and ‘real things,’ impacting ontology, metaphysics, and information science—must be drastically revised; and Biden ought to be lecturing at M.I.T. or Cal Tech, and not wasting his talents on the campaign trail, yapping it up in front of we, the mere Hoi Polloi.The question of Biden’s mental acumen, for Americans, were he to become U.S. President, is no small matter. It is material and profound: Is Joe Biden a genius in disguise or an idiot? If the former, we should take notice. He may be a Godsend; or the Devil incarnate, heralding the End of Days, not only for Americans but for all of humanity. And, if he is a dolt, then the prospects for our Nation, our Constitution, and our people is no less horrifying, if he were to become U.S. President. In either event, evil genius or dullard, it says something, not particularly pleasant, about the Democrat Party that they would thrust Biden on all of us; that this is the Party’s best prospect for our Country; that he is the Great Hope they are banking on to defeat their nemesis, Donald Trump. But be not mistaken: Such horrors await us beyond imagining if Biden ekes out a win in 2020 and takes possession of the Oval Office. We will all be catapulted head over heels, into a Hellish realm. The Hellraiser Horror film franchise comes to mind.

LIKELY, BIDEN IS MORE BUFFOON AND HALF WIT THAN INTELLECTUAL MASTERMIND; BIDEN  DARES LECTURE THE PUBLIC ABOUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT

The problem for Americans is that Biden, the presumptive U.S. Presidential nominee of the Democrat Party, can feasibly become U.S. President. That fact makes Biden less amusing, and more frightening. Among those who are markedly incompetent to serve as U.S. President, we find Joe Biden. But, if he were at least affable, we could laugh at this clown, rather than frown. Americans know when politicians come across as crass, insulting, and derisive. A person cannot effectively serve as the leader of the Nation if that person treats the general public as contemptible lowborn plebeians. That was a major failing of Hillary Clinton, among a litany of others. Something she could not hide. And, Biden’s low regard for the average American has also become clear. We saw Biden’s churlish behavior recently, during his exchange with a Detroit auto plant worker. “Fox News later interviewed the Detroit auto plant worker, Jerry Wayne, regarding what became “an apparent contentious argument with former Vice President Joe Biden about Biden’s position on gun rights.”Jerry Wayne chatted with Fox & Friends on Tuesday and said Biden ‘could have easily said “I’m not taking questions” and I would have very respectfully walked away. But he wanted to listen to my question and I don’t think that he was ready for it.’ Wayne also noted that he tried to ask Biden questions about how he was going to improve the situations of union workers like himself in the future.‘We bare arms and we like to do that. If he wants to give us work and take us [sic] guns, I don’t know how he will get the same vote,’ Wayne said. He also called it ‘disturbing’ when Fox & Friends asked for his reactions to a clip of Biden expressing his view that assault weapons should be confiscated.‘Were you surprised that you asked a simple question and Joe Biden just went off the deep end on you?’ Steve Doocy [host of Fox & Friends] asked.‘Yeah. I thought I was pretty articulate and respectful,’ said Wayne. ‘I didn’t try to raise any feathers. And he kind of went off the deep end. I saw he was digging a hole. I just kind of let him talk for a while to dig a hole.’”Politicians love to equivocate, and Biden is no exception. But equivocation is hardly a talent of these people. And they love to talk about the Constitution, even when it appears they lack an understanding of Constitutional law and especially lack an understanding of the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. That should prevent them from proselytizing to the American public about a matter they know very little if anything about. But, then, they lack humility as well—another disturbing and all too common failing among many politicians.You would think a politician would be perspicacious enough to refrain from lecturing the public about matters that a politician knows little if anything about; let alone legislate over it; but a politician doesn’t refrain from lecturing the public or from legislating in ways catastrophic to the well-being of the Nation.Politicians, especially those on the Radical Left and new Progressive Left of the political spectrum, proceed along their merry way, seemingly having not a care in the world, either oblivious to the fact, or, perhaps, all too mindful of it, that the actions they take as legislators, compromising the citizenry's most sacred rights and liberties, diminishes them as Americans, undermines the Constitution, and creates a hell for the rest of us to live in.Yet, there is no compromise (in the sense of negotiation), on a fundamental, immutable, unalienable, natural right; nor can there be compromise. The word ‘compromise,’ here, denotes outright capitulation. That, of course, is what the Democrats want, and the Detroit autoworker, Jerry Wayne, was doing the public a favor in bringing to light the irrationality of Biden’s remarks on the Second Amendment. Biden obviously wasn’t able to respond effectively to the irrationality of his own position. How could he? His position is self-contradictory.One cannot claim rationally to support the Second Amendment, when one wishes to take steps to erase it. Biden may have realized the inconsistency inherent in his position on the Second Amendment when Jerry Wayne, the Detroit autoworker, had pointedly and demonstrably presented the inconsistency out to him. But, instead of admitting this, or otherwise doing what politicians are generally good at—disengaging and talking about something else when they do not wish to answer a question directly or cannot answer a pointed question directed to them—Biden lashed out, like a petulant child. This is a common failing of the Radical Left and Progressive Left elements of our society. They do not wish to debate; they would rather shout a person down. That is much easier for them.Sincerity was never Biden’s long suit; nor is controlling his anger. Biden’s obvious disinclination to engage the public, despite his efforts to demonstrate the contrary, comes across plainly and painfully. His rancor and deceit, irascibility and dissembling, along with an inability or lack of desire to even try to control his temper should not be lost on anyone.______________________________________________

HOW IS IT THAT BIDEN HAS  EMERGED, OVERNIGHT, AS THE DEMOCRAT PARTY’S FRONT RUNNER FOR U.S. PRESIDENT?

PART THREE

Joe Biden, the most mediocre candidate in a bloated field of mediocre Democrat Party candidates for U.S. President had, just a few short weeks ago, looked like his campaign was dead; that he would pass, like the rest of the field, into obscurity, leaving the “Democratic Socialist,” Bernie Sanders—who is a much better orator—as the de facto Party nominee for President, going into the Democrat Party Convention in July 2020. Such, apparently, is not meant to be.Instead, Joe Biden has mysteriously and miraculously become the frontrunner. James Clyburn (D-SC), “speaking to NPR on Tuesday night, Clyburn said, ‘I think when the night is over, Joe Biden will be the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination,’ adding, ‘If the night ends the way it has begun,’ then it's time to ‘shut this primary down,’ apparently meaning that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) should choose to cancel future debates.”This is most curious. The DNC, has, of course, manipulated the 2016 Primary to ensure Hillary Clinton would get the Party’s nomination to take on Trump, explaining then, as now, that Sanders is unelectable. It is obvious the DNC is doing the same thing now. The How and why is it that Biden has become the front runner?The seditious Press has weaved a fairy tale around this man. Consider the inescapable facts. Biden is politically inept. He is boring and stale. He is ordinary in demeanor. He is bereft of charm and charisma. He is devoid of character. He is an inveterate liar and clearly corrupt. He is spiteful and quick to anger. And, he lacks even rudimentary oratorical skills.One cannot choose but wonder how Biden has become the Democrats’ likely choice to represent our Country. But, on reflection, the reason manifests.Joe Biden can be and would be controlled by the Globalist Establishment. Biden knows this, accepts this, probably even relishes this, as it saves him from actually doing the duties of a U.S. President: namely, setting the foreign and domestic policy objectives for the Nation. The other candidate, Bernie Sanders—still in the race but losing momentum with each passing day—would not accept control by the Globalist Establishment. And, of course, U.S. President Donald Trump isn’t subject to control by the Globalist Establishment either, which is one solid reason why Americans elected him to Office in the first place. This rankles the Globalist Establishment to no end and explains the intensity and virulence of the attack on Trump, never before seen in our Nation’s history.It is odd to see the Establishment Press at once lauding foreign European EU leaders and excoriating Trump. If the Press doesn’t like Trump, you would think that it would at least respect the Office. But, then, the seditious Establishment Press doesn’t respect the Office either. It, too, owes its allegiance not to this Nation and its Constitution, but to foreign masters that have an agenda that calls for something else entirely: the dismantling of a free Constitutional Republic and the shredding of our Constitution.The mainstream Establishment Press and the Global Neoliberal Establishment Collectivist elites’ have no desire to preserve a free Constitutional Republic, but, rather, seek to establish a new framework for our Nation, where the institutions, our culture, the rights and liberties of the Nation exist merely in form; hollowed out. Our Nation is to be inextricably linked to and entwined securely with the EU, losing its sovereignty and independence. The majority of Americans intuit this. They don’t want it. Trump doesn’t either. Americans elected Trump for a very specific purpose: to move our Nation back to its roots: as an independent sovereign Nation, unbeholden to and taking orders from no other transnational oligarchic power center. Our laws are to remain supreme; our rights and liberties strengthened; our history left intact. Biden would be a false leader, delegating policy and decision-making functions to the “Establishment” bosses: the secretive, powerful insider Globalists and their Bureaucratic underlings that demand to pull the strings. Our Nation would backslide into the path Bill Clinton, the Bushes, and Barack Obama had obediently set for us: destruction of the fundamental rights and liberties of the American people, and the destruction of a free Constitutional Republic. If one can forgive Biden’s multiple personal failings, still, one cannot and must not forgive Biden’s policy prescriptions for our Country.It is on this score Biden and every other Democrat nominee for U.S. President fails, and fails miserably, since none of them would truly defend the U.S. Constitution. Not one of them accepts the fact that the sovereignty of the Nation rests—must rest—on the American people, not Government. None of these candidates can or should seriously be considered a political moderate since not one of them accepts our Bill of Rights for what it truly is: a codification of fundamental, immutable, unalienable, natural rights. And, since any one of these candidates, if elected President, would place more and more restrictions on the sacred, inviolate right of the people to keep and bear arms—a necessary condition upon which both a free Constitutional Republic and the sovereignty of the American people over Government rests—none of them merits serious consideration as President of the United States. The expression, political ‘Radical,’ more accurately describes each of them; not the word, ‘moderate,’ nor even the word, ‘liberal.’If Biden stands by this record, attacking the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and if, as is clear from his boastful remarks, he is truly proud of his record, you would think he would at least have the courtesy and common human decency to address the concerns of those Americans who might disagree with him and that he would do so in a calm, respectful, non-caustic, non-sanctimonious manner. After all, the right of the American citizen to own and possess firearms is a natural, God-given right that exists intrinsically in man. It isn’t a right bestowed on man by Government.What Government cannot bestow on man Government cannot lawfully deny to or rend from man. If Biden wishes to trample on a God-given right, one would hope, indeed expect, that Biden would spend a little time, at least, setting out his arguments in support of curtailing a right the framers of the Constitution felt important enough to include in the Constitution; and which has stood the test of time for well over 200 years. Yet, Biden cannot, apparently, be troubled with Americans who disagree with him. Of course, it may just be that Biden becomes visibly upset because he doesn’t have an answer for anyone who disagrees with him. He becomes flustered and attempts to cover up his discomposure and agitation with anger and resentment.

BIDEN’S CHARACTER FLAWS ARE SEEN IN ALL RADICAL LEFTISTS

Biden exhibits a disturbing character flaw common to all Anti-Constitutional Radical Left Collectivists. He is so smugly confident of the truth of his political, social, and ethical position that he feels it beneath his dignity to have to support his beliefs with cogent argument. If one persists in demanding a cogent, coherent, response, he becomes angry. Sometimes he rages. Recall his bizarre antics in Iowa, as reported in the Daily News.

Joe Biden angrily confronted a voter at an Iowa town hall who asked about the Ukraine scandal involving his son — and whether he is too old to take on President Trump.

When the voter questioned if Biden was “selling access” by letting Hunter Biden take a position on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma, Biden appeared to lose his cool.

“You’re a damn liar, man. That’s not true,” Biden said, walking up towards the man at the town hall in New Hampton.

The tense face-off came as Biden continues his “No Malarkey” bus tour of rural Iowa. Although Biden remains the Democratic front-runner in national polls, he is struggling mightily in the first-in-the-nation caucus state.

Biden forcefully told the man he was physically and mentally ready to face off against Trump.“Let’s do push-ups together, man. Let’s do whatever you want to do,” Biden said. “Let’s take an IQ (test).”Biden is of a kind with these peculiar people on the Radical Left of politics. He cannot be and will not be bothered with anyone who happens to disagree with him. He loses patience. He becomes spiteful, testy, indignant, even belligerent.Biden, as U.S. President, would only be required to maintain composure. But, from what we have seen of him to date, even that would be a difficult task for Biden.There is a takeaway from Biden’s apparent inability to effectively and successfully cope with criticism. From an emotional standpoint Biden obviously isn’t adept at responding honestly to or otherwise parrying tough questions, or abrasive comments. Instead Biden lashes out, like a petulant child. This suggests Biden lacks the will power to handle his emotions. This also suggests that Biden lacks the sharp mental acuity, capacity, and quick wit to proffer effective responses that one expects from a nation’s leader.If Joe Biden does become the presumptive 2020 Democrat Party nominee for U.S. President, each American should honestly consider and ask him or herself this question:Is this truly a man whom you would wish to elect President of the United States, to place your faith in to effectively lead this powerful Nation and to protect it against all enemies, foreign and domestic? If your answer is “yes, then, are you willing to surrender your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms along with your other natural God-given rights?___________________________________________________________

A CONSTITUTIONAL FREE REPUBLIC CANNOT LONG EXIST IN THE ABSENCE OF AN ARMED CITIZENRY TO DEFEND IT AND BIDEN HAS NO WISH TO PRESERVE THE NATION'S ARMED CITIZENRY

PART FOUR

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” ~Matthew 6, King James VersionJoe Biden is the Establishment Democrats’ choice for U.S. President. The American people should have no illusion about that or about what that means and whom it would be that Biden would serve were he to become U.S. President. Biden pays homage to the inordinately wealthy, highly secretive, abjectly ruthless, extremely powerful and well-organized Neoliberal Corporatist Globalist Collectivist Establishment “Elite-Elect.” That was true when Biden served as Barack Obama’s Vice President. Neither Biden nor Obama has truly defended the U.S. Constitution; and neither has served the interests of this Nation and its people. Both Biden and Obama have served foreign masters and a foreign Globalist agenda. And Biden would continue to do so were he to become U.S. President. Biden would never truly defend the U.S. Constitution; nor would he serve the best interests of this Nation; nor would he serve the best interests of the American people. He cannot serve two masters: Either the Nation and its Constitution or the Neoliberal Corporatist Globalist Collectivist Establishment Elite-Elect: one or the other but not both.Consider Biden’s quick rise to front runner status among the Democrat Party contenders for U.S. President. Biden’s campaign was essentially dead. He had little funds and his campaign organization was in disarray. Yet, in the span of a few weeks, everyone but Bernie Sanders has dropped out of the race. What might explain this odd and extraordinarily rapid turnabout? How has Biden won so many States with a campaign in shambles? Who is behind Biden’s meteoric rise? We can reasonably infer the Neoliberal Corporatist Globalist Collectivist Establishment “Elite-Elect” is supporting Biden from the shadows. He knows that. So, whatever he tells the American public, the fact remains Biden owes allegiance to Americans' adversary: those that seek to undermine the Republic and to destroy the Constitution.Biden would be a false leader, delegating policy and decision-making functions to the “Establishment” bosses: the secretive, powerful insider Globalists, the Establishment Collectivist Elite-Elect Globalists, along with their Bureaucratic underlings that demand to pull the strings and that would pull the strings.Our Nation would backslide into the path Bill Clinton, the Bushes, and Barack Obama had obediently set for us:destruction of the fundamental rights and liberties of the American people, and the destruction of a free Constitutional Republic. Biden would not make policy. Rather, he would dutifully carry out policy as dictated to him by the Oligarchic Elite-Elect, the Shadow Government that pulls the strings behind the scenes, taking his orders dutifully from them, kowtowing to their dictates, allowing the bloated to the  federal Bureaucracy, that, itself takes its orders from the Elite-Elect, to set and implement domestic and foreign policy: the secretive wielders of financial and corporate power. Biden would exist as a mere puppet, a figurehead, a standard-bearer for the Elite-Elect.And, can we forget that Biden even mentioned that he would only serve one term? What Candidate would make such a statement. If he had a policy agenda for the public would he not seek eight years to fulfill it? No President has ever made such a statement or intimated as much. Even the Left-Wing Politico has admitted that Biden claims to step down even before he has been elected to one term in Office. If so, why campaign at all for even one term? What would motivate a man to merely run for one term in Office? If he his not prepared to serve two terms because he might think himself incapable of doing so, why should the public feel Biden is physically or, for that matter, mentally equipped to serve even one term? This must have befuddled the Leftist website Politico that reported it:“Former Vice President Joe Biden’s top advisers and prominent Democrats outside the Biden campaign have recently revived a long-running debate whether Biden should publicly pledge to serve only one term, with Biden himself signaling to aides that he would serve only a single term.While the option of making a public pledge remains available, Biden has for now settled on an alternative strategy: quietly indicating that he will almost certainly not run for a second term while declining to make a promise that he and his advisers fear could turn him into a lame duck and sap him of his political capital.According to four people who regularly talk to Biden, all of whom asked for anonymity to discuss internal campaign matters, it is virtually inconceivable that he will run for reelection in 2024, when he would be the first octogenarian president.”Sanders would be an octogenarian, too, but he, certainly, hasn’t signaled a desire to step down after a first term in Office. It seems that Biden’s heart isn’t in this job. So, why run at all?And, then, we must consider Biden’s policy prescriptions.If one can forgive Biden’s multiple personal failings, still, one cannot and must not forgive Biden’s his policy prescriptions for our Country.It is on his policy prescriptions that Biden, and every other Democrat nominee for U.S. President, fails this Country and its people, and fails miserably, since neither Biden nor any of these also-ran nominees would truly defend the U.S. Constitution. Not one of them accepts the fact that the sovereignty of the Nation rests—must rest—on the American people, not Government. None of these candidates, then, can or should seriously be considered a political moderate.A couple of synonyms for ‘moderate’ are, one, ‘conservative’ and, two, ‘reasonable.’ There is nothing about these Democrats that is either conservative qua reasonable in their political outlook. Each of them desires, indeed demands, radical change to our free Constitutional Republic.Not one of these candidates, it is abundantly clear, accepts our Bill of Rights as a codification of fundamental, immutable, unalienable, natural rights. Rather, each of them holds an extreme view of the very meaning of our basis rights, suggesting they are man-made constructs and therefore can be modified, ignored, or abrogated.Each, if given the chance, would work toward containing and constraining the Right of Free Speech radically, and erasing the right of the people to keep and bear arms, entirely. And they have shown a penchant for rewriting the Articles of the Constitution.The first order of business for any of them, were any one of them to be elected to the Office of Chief Executive of the Nation, would be to place more and more restrictions on the sacred, inviolate right of the people to keep and bear arms. How harmful that action would be to the preservation of a free Republic is apparent when one recognizes that the Second Amendment is a necessary condition upon which both a free Constitutional Republic and the sovereignty of the American people over Government rests. But these Democrats would make the exercise of this sacred Right extremely difficult, and eventually impossible. None of these people ever merited consideration as President of the United States. The expression, political ‘Radical,’ more accurately describes each of them; not the word, ‘moderate,’ nor even the word, ‘liberal.’As reported by the National Review: “Here’s Joe’s combination of fantasy, braggadocio, and rodomontade on guns:‘We increased that background check when — when — during the Obama-Biden administration. I’m also the only guy that got assault weapons banned, banned, and the number of clips in a gun banned. And so, folks, look, and I would buy back those weapons. We already started talking about that. We tried to get it done. I think it can be done. And it should be demanded that we do it, and that’s a good expenditure of money. And lastly, we should have smart guns. No gun should be able to be sold unless your biometric measure could pull that trigger.’” Really? The Arbalest Quarrel has written extensively about smart guns. Back in 2016, we explained in detail why smart guns are not a smart idea.As with Barack Obama and the Clintons and, yes, the Bushes, Joe Biden doesn’t want to take away everyone’s firearms. He merely wants to take away the firearms of some Americans’ firearms. He wants to take away YOUR firearms; those of the Hoi Polloi, those whom these Globalist Neoliberal Establishment Collectivists consider the Preterite of American society; those firearms belonging to tens of millions of average  rational, responsible, law-abiding Americans. Biden doesn’t want or expect the especial, wealthy, powerful, Elite-Elect of society to surrender their firearms or surrender those firearms of their personal bodyguards.If Biden—the presumptive Democrat Party nominee—stands by his pronouncements and his record, attacking the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and if, as is clear from his boastful remarks, he is truly proud of his record, you would think he would at least have the courtesy and common human decency to address the concerns of those Americans who might disagree with him and that he would do so in a calm, respectful, non-caustic, non-sanctimonious manner. After all, the right of the American citizen to own and possess firearms is a natural, God-given right that exists intrinsically in man. It isn’t a right bestowed on man by Government.What Government cannot bestow on man Government cannot lawfully deny to or sever from man. If Biden wishes to trample on a God-given right, one would hope, indeed expect, that Biden would spend a little time, at least, setting out his arguments in support of curtailing a right that the framers of the Constitution felt important enough to include in the Constitution; and which has stood the test of time for well over 200 years. Yet, Biden cannot, apparently, be troubled with Americans who disagree with him.__________________________________

JOE BIDEN, THE POLITICAL “MODERATE,”  THROWS TEMPER TANTRUM WHEN QUESTIONED ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT

PART FIVE

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE EXPRESSION, ‘POLITICAL MODERATE?’

The seditious mainstream media refers to the former Obama Vice President, Joe Biden—the increasingly likely Democrat Party nominee for U.S. President, to take on President Trump—as a political “moderate.” But, is he? Is Biden really a political moderate?  The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines the noun form of the word, ‘moderate,’ as ‘not violent, severe, or intense.’ As applied to politics, the Dictionary defines, ‘moderate,’ as ‘professing or characterized by political or social beliefs that are not extreme.’ As an adjective, the word, ‘moderate’ means, ‘avoiding extremes of behavior or expression: observing reasonable limits.’ When used either as an adjective or noun, the word, ‘moderate,’ as applied to Biden, is a misnomer because one thing Joe Biden is not is “moderate.” Intemperate both in his public discourse and in his policy statements, Biden is anything but moderate.If Biden isn’t able to control his anger when an American citizen politely, if firmly, questions him on policy, how will Biden control that anger when goaded by professional journalists if he were to become President? Granted, he would never be disrespectfully, unceasingly hounded by the Press as the Press hounds Trump, as Biden and the seditious Press kowtow to the same Globalist elites. Biden is their man; their shill; their toady, and they would go easy on him. But he would still be subject to criticism, now and then, and he should expect that, and he should be able to respond effectively to criticism, when it occurs, without losing control of his emotions.If subject to a hot temper, a politician must learn to control that temper. Biden obviously cannot. Imagine, as a thought experiment, the Press hounding a “President” Joe Biden as that same Press has viciously, vilely, unceasingly hounded President Donald Trump. That would never happen of course; but Biden would still have to deal with day-to-day pressures unlike that of any other person.Would Biden be able to handle pressure? Trump has shown he can. In fact, Trump thrives under constant pressure. He has to. He has never crumpled, and that rankles the Establishment Press even more. But would Biden be able to control pressure? Based on his campaign performances to date, the answer is a definitive, “no, he would not; could not.” Biden would rapidly fall apart. But, then, the Bureaucratic Deep State would cover for him. They would be developing policy and implementing policy. Biden would merely be signing off on that policy. During the impeachment trial of Trump, this fact came out. Democrats argue that the Federal Bureaucracy develops the Nation's policy, and that the U.S. President must be mindful of that and treat the Federal Bureaucracy, the Deep State, with deference. Of course, that idea turns Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution on its head, for the Constitution says something much differently. There is only one policy maker, and it isn't the Federal Bureaucracy. It's the U.S. President. Biden, as U.S. President would delegate that policy making responsibility to the Federal Bureaucracy. But, there's the rub. The Policy Making duties of the U.S. President cannot be lawfully delegated. It is a core function of the U.S. President.To delegate a core function of the U.S. Presidency would be not only to discredit the Office of the U.S. President but it would amount to the emasculation of the Executive Branch of Government. In the Biden Presidency, Biden would be a mere figurehead. That wouldn't bother Biden. It should bother him, but it wouldn't. That would be his job as the lackey of  the Neoliberal Corporatist Globalist Collectivist Establishment “Elite-Elect”  and of the Elite-Elect's servants, the Federal Deep State Bureaucracy. But, even as a mere figurehead, Biden would still be the face of the Nation. Imagine that, if you will.Apart from Biden’s abjectly poor emotional demeanor, the use of ‘moderate’ as a political descriptor for Biden is patently absurd, as exemplified by his position on a fundamental, immutable, unalienable, natural right.Granted, expressions such as ‘moderate,’ ‘liberal,’ ‘radical,’ ‘centrist’ ‘conservative,’ and the like, as applied, inter alia, to political belief systems and policy positions are inherently vague if considered in a vacuum, nonetheless these terms do have explanatory value when comparisons are made between two or more political belief systems or policy.For example, one might conceivably infer Joe Biden to be a political moderate if one compares Biden’s political beliefs and policies to someone like Vladimir Lenin or Joseph Stalin, notwithstanding that application of Biden’s political policy prescriptions, if actualized in the U.S., would move our Nation toward a totalitarian political and social system and, so, must be rejected out-of-hand if Americans truly wish to preserve the Nation as a free Constitutional Republic.Words such as ‘moderate,’ ‘liberal,’ ‘radical,’ ‘centrist’ ‘conservative,’ when used in a political context, must, then, be construed relative to a particular system of governance and relative to specific policy prescriptions if they are to have any real meaning.One must look to the political and social and economic belief systems of a person and to one’s policy prescriptions as applied to our present system of governance and, more to the point, as applied to our system of governance relative to the citizenry’s fundamental rights and liberties, if any sense is to be made for calling a person a political moderate, or a political liberal, or a political radical, or a political conservative or, any political whatever.In the context of our own system of governance and when compared to Biden’s policy prescriptions pertaining to the Bill of Rights, Joe Biden is definitely not a political moderate.The use of the expression, ‘political moderate,’ for Joe Biden by the mainstream media, tells the American public more about the desire of that media to intentionally confound the public than to accurately inform the public about where a politician’s belief system and policy prescriptions accurately stand, on the political spectrum.Americans should not be duped by short descriptors the mainstream media uses to typecast politicians. Those are often merely a blind. Rather, Americans should look to a politician’s policy prescriptions. Most importantly, Americans should pay particular attention to a politician’s stance on the Bill of Rights, especially the right of the people to keep and bear arms. That is a simple a foolproof test of a politician’s loyalty and fealty to Nation, Constitution, and People.If a politician does not accept as an absolute, the idea of an armed citizenry, upon which the sovereignty of the American people necessarily depends, through which a free Constitutional Republic is preserved, then that politician does not and cannot serve the best interests of this Nation; nor does that politician serve the best interests of the Constitution; nor does that politician serve the best interests of the American people. Such a person is Joe Biden. He does not and cannot serve the best interests of Americans. Bereft of ability, intelligence, candor, integrity, moral courage, and antithetical to the very concept of an armed citizenry though which, and only through which our Nation can continue to exist as a free Constitutional Republic, this man, Joe Biden, owes loyalty only to his wealthy benefactors, the Oligarchic, Globalist, Elite-Elect. And, this wealthy, powerful, ruthless, and secretive Shadow Government has no regard for the American citizenry, whose power it envies, and in whom it sees only as a pathogen, dangerous to the world-wide schema they seek to implement.One of the first orders of business, if not THE first order of business for Biden, at the behest of his masters, will be to constrain the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms. Look to see a number of executive orders emanating from his Office were he to become the 46^th U.S. President. Indeed, it would not be surprising to see Biden, at the behest of his masters, declaring a National Emergency, warranting imposition of Martial Law, banning civilian ownership and possession of weapons. When the Shadow Government can emerge from the Shadows, no longer afraid to admit to the American public that the public was right all along in having inferred such a creature was lurking behind the curtain of open Government, and that Shadow Government now becomes the Open Government, as it would have no reason, any longer, to lurk in the shadows. The public would witness a new Order, a new Reality, taking shape before its very eyes, and it would have absolutely no say in the matter.____________________________________________________________________Copyright © 2020 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

GOVERNOR ANDREW CUOMO'S SAFE ACT: A WORK IN PROGRESS TO DESTROY THE SECOND AMENDMENT*

NY SAFE: THE HYDRA BEAST WITH SEVERAL HEADS

PART ONE

Andrew Cuomo, the rabid anti-Constitutionalist Governor of New York, currently serving his third term in Office, signed the New York Safe Act more than seven years ago.Coming on the heels of the tragic Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting incident, occurring in Newtown, Connecticut in December 2012—and ostensibly because of it—Cuomo demonstrated to New York’s residents that he would be the first Governor out of the gate to dramatically increase his State’s already highly restrictive gun laws, and it became so.On his website, Cuomo describes the Hydra monster he unleashed on New York, thus: “The SAFE Act stops criminals and the dangerously mentally ill from buying a gun . . . and imposes the toughest assault weapons ban in the country. . . [but that] For hunters, sportsman, and law-abiding gun owners, this new law preserves and protects your right to buy, sell, keep or use your guns.”  This is pure claptrap.The Arbalest Quarrel exposed the truth about Cuomo’s Safe Act and wrote extensively about it when first enacted and signed into law. We pointed out that Cuomo’s ambitions for disarming the public extend well beyond the confines of New York. He intends to make the Safe Act the model for restrictive gun laws throughout the Nation.We also pointed out that Cuomo has always intended for the Safe Act to be construed as a work in progress, not an end in itself. We concluded that, as with all anti-Second Amendment rights’ zealots, Cuomo would not rest until the Nation’s armed citizenry ceases to exist. The true scope of the anti-Second Amendment zealots’ agenda, as directed against the very idea of a “citizen army,” isn’t mere hyperbole. It is fact, and it is a critical step in the Collectivists’ goal to destroy the fabric of a free Constitutional Republic, along with the sacred, fundamental, immutable, unalienable rights and liberties of the American people that come with it.The sheer tenacity of Collectivists’ efforts to eliminate exercise of the Second Amendment, and the feral ferocity they have unleashed in our Nation, has been on public display for at least the last three decades and continues—a constant reminder that Anti-Second Amendment Collectivist fanatics, such as Andrew Cuomo, thoroughly detest the Second Amendment and will machinate and orchestrate behind the scenes, fanatically, frantically, tirelessly with like-kind—in the mainstream Press and in social media, in academia and in the technology, business, and financial sectors, in State Legislatures and in Congress, and in various Grassroots anti-Second Amendment groups and in segments of the medical community—to destroy it.Consider the glee with which The New York Times reported—on January 29, 2019, scarcely two months after Cuomo’s election to a third term as New York’s Governor, in an article titled “New York Passes First Major Gun Control Bills Since Sandy Hook”—the Governor’s extraordinarily wide-ranging assault against the Second Amendment:“New York lawmakers on Tuesday approved the most comprehensive set of gun bills in the state in six years, including measures that would ban bump stocks, prohibit teachers from carrying guns in schools and extend the waiting period for gun buyers who do not pass an instant background check.In total, six gun bills passed easily through the State Senate and Assembly, a remarkable sight in a Capitol that for years had resisted almost all new legislation on the subject.Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, last ushered a major gun safety package into law in 2013, after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The governor successfully corralled recalcitrant Senate Republicans into supporting the so-called Safe Act that expanded the state’s ban on assault weapons, tightened certification requirements, increased criminal penalties for illegal guns and closed private sale loopholes.Mr. Cuomo has described the Safe Act as one of his signature achievements. ‘Sometimes history irrefutably bears out your actions,’ the governor said on Tuesday, at a news conference lined with gun safety advocates. ‘Today is the next evolution in this ongoing crusade.’The relative ease of the laws’ passage highlighted, for the second time in just two days, the upheaval that November’s election brought to Albany. Democrats captured the Senate for the first time in a decade, delivering one-party control of state government. Since the legislative session began this month, both chambers have sent long-stymied bills in rapid-fire procession to the governor’s desk.”Collectivists, anti-Second Amendment advocates and anti-Constitutionalists, all, not only abhor the import and purport of the sacred right of the people to keep and bear arms, they detest the precious idea embedded in it and embedded in the entirety of the Bill of Rights of which the Second Amendment is an essential component. They refute the idea, the founders of our Republic took as axiomatic, that a body of rights and liberties exist in man, bestowed by the Divine Creator in man—salient rights and liberties intrinsic to man’s very nature—that are independent of any man-made laws and other ostensible rights (really privileges) bestowed on man by other men through man-made artificial, mutable and malleable political structures, namely governments.The notion that a body of rights exists, independent of and beyond the government’s lawful power and authority to modify, ignore, or abrogate, is anathema to the Collectivists’ ideology. Collectivists do not accept and, in fact, find, abhorrent the notion of and reality of natural law that falls beyond the power of government to lawfully regulate and manipulate.Proponents of Collectivism take as axiomatic that all law is a creation of man and therefore is subject to amendment or repeal by man, as time, circumstance, and even whim, dictates. The import and impact of the Collectivist ideology are evident in the Collectivists' constant, belligerent, bellicose attacks on the Nation’s fundamental, immutable, unalienable, primordial, and absolute rights and liberties. No clearer illustration is there than in their disregard and contempt for the elemental right codified in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.The very existence of an armed citizenry is, on a physical level, a bane to a government’s power over the citizenry. But, on a philosophical plane, the notion of an armed citizenry, one absolutely “necessary to the security of a free state”—grounded on the Divine right of a people to own and possess firearms, predicated on Divine law, independent of artificial social and political constructs designed by man, and arising from a teleological, God-based ethical and moral system—is a notion logically incompatible with the tenets of the Collectivist ideology and repugnant to those who adhere to those tenets.Specious rationales for enacting more draconian firearms’ laws are, then, unsurprisingly, no longer deemed necessary, thanks to well-funded, sophisticated media propaganda that has been successful in deluding many citizens; convincing the citizenry they no longer need their Second Amendment; that Government will surely provide for them and will assuredly secure their physical safety and well-being.What is behind the blatant falsehood? We know the reason, although it is never mentioned by the seditious Press. It is to destroy the armed citizenry.It’s the imposition of Government tyranny—clothed in innocuous terminology, suggestive of the “Nanny State”—that the Anti-Constitutionalist forces want. Yet, it was specifically tyranny against which the founders of our Nation revolted; it was tyranny the framers of our Constitution loathed and sought ever to prevent in the Constitutional Republic they created. But it is tyranny the American citizenry of the present day will certainly get if the Collectivists—Anti-Constitutionalist Democrats—do gain complete control over the reins of Government. If that should occur, the new wave Progressive and Radical Left Democrats will then have the necessary power to impose their will on the American public and do with the citizenry whatever the hell they want.We see this playing out in recent days in several States: a dangerous precursor to what Americans may expect to see played out on the National stage if either the New wave Progressive and Radical Leftists that the seditious mainstream media refers to, euphemistically and erroneously, as liberal Democrats, or if the establishment, statist Democrats, that the seditious mainstream media likens to political “moderates,” gain control of the Executive and Legislative Branches of Government and, inevitably, the Judicial Branch of the Federal Government, as well. Both factions of the Democrat Party adhere to the philosophical tenets of Collectivism. But, the philosophy of Collectivism is anathema to adherents of the philosophical tenets of Individualism, upon which our Nation was founded, the blueprint of which is manifest in the Constitution. The proof of the Collectivists’ goal to undercut the fabric of our free Constitutional Republic—predicated on the tenets of Individualism—is demonstrable and undeniable. See the Arbalest Quarrel article, titled, “The Modern Civil War: A Clash of Ideologies.”The transnational world order that Collectivists envision and wish to implement is inconsistent with the very notion of a free Constitutional Republic, the blueprint of which exists in the Nation's Constitution.But, to destroy a free Constitutional Republic, it is essential for the Collectivists to first destroy the one impenetrable barrier to the realization of their vision of a transnational political, social, economic, and cultural system of governance that transcends all nation-states. Collectivists must destroy the one guarantor of our free Constitutional Republic. They must eliminate the citizens’ exercise of the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms. That means they must destroy the armed citizenry.___________________________________________

BILLIONAIRE MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, GLOBALIST ELITE, WLL SPEND WHATEVER IT TAKES TO WIN THE U.S. PRESIDENCY AND, IF SUCCESSFUL, WOULD THEN PROCEED WITH HIS GOAL TO DESTROY THE SECOND AMENDMENT

PART TWO

WERE MICHAEL BLOOMBERG TO WIN THE DEMOCRAT PARTY'S NOMINATION FOR U.S. PRESIDENT AND TO PREVAIL IN THE 2020 GENERAL ELECTION, HE WOULD, AS HIS FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS, UNDERMINE THE SECOND AMENDMENT, PAVING THE WAY FOR DESTRUCTION OF THE NATION’S FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC

There are two strains of Collectivism in evidence in the modern Democrat Party: one, the Universal Socialist stateless world union governed by labor, as envisioned by Karl Marx, and, two, the Universal stateless Corporatist world, governed by an elite ruling Class: a central banking oligarchy. Either governmental construct is anathema to those nation-states that function as Constitutional Republics. And, only one true and free Constitutional Republic presently exists: The United States. The Blueprint of this free Constitutional Republic is the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution is grounded on, one, a federal government of specific, limited powers provided to and spread out among three co-equal Branches, and, two, a recognized body of elemental, primordial, fundamental, unalienable, unfettered, immutable and boundless natural rights and liberties that reside only in the American people, beyond the lawful power of the federal government’s to delimit, abrogate, modify, or ignore. Political and Social Conservatives recognize the importance of the Nation’s Bill of Rights to a true functioning Constitutional Republic, where the citizens are sovereign. Radical Leftist and Progressive Marxist Globalists, along with Centrist Corporatist Globalist elites (the world banking community), do not. The latter two groups are presently battling for control over the Democrat Party. But, on two matters, the respective Transnational Collectivist ideologies converge. Both groups would implement extraordinarily expansive and highly restrictive gun measures, with the aim to contain, constrain, and eventually curtail, an armed citizenry; for neither group accepts as a presumptive absolute: the fundamental, immutable, unalienable right of the American people to own and possess firearms, and, in fact, are adamantly opposed to the very existence of an armed citizenry because the presence of an armed citizenry poses an inherent and existential threat to governmental authority, and to the implicit idea of a centralized government—the idea that government is presumptively sovereign, not the people. But that idea turns the U.S. Constitution on its head. Collectivists also operate under the presumption of a "borderless nation-state." This is an oxymoron since, as a necessary condition, nation-states are defined by specific geographic borders, recognized by and respected by other nation-states. But, the Marxist-Socialist Democrats, on the one hand, represented prominently by Bernie Sanders and his adherents, and, on the other hand, the establishment neoliberal Globalist financiers, represented prominently by Michael Bloomberg and his adherents in the wealthy Global community of multinational corporatists and central bank financiers, both blatantly ignore the import of Congressional immigration laws that specifically prohibit, as a matter of law, illegal trespassing by aliens onto our sovereign territory. Failure to recognize the force of, and failure to support President Trump’s enforcement of, Congressional law apropos of our Nation’s immigration laws—which the President has a Constitutional duty to enforce, pursuant to his Article 2, Section 1 Oath of Office—is demonstrable evidence of Democrat Party disavowal of the Rule of Law that Democrats hypocritically claim to adhere to; peculiarly believing that the public is blind to the Democrats' obvious hypocrisy. That surly, disdainful attitude, dismissive of the import of our immigration laws is bad enough. But the impertinent, imperious and cavalier dismissal of our natural rights and liberties, and utter contempt for the Constitutional imperative demanding that these rights and liberties be treated as sacrosanct and inviolate, is of another order of magnitude. Both factions of the current Democrat Party may accurately be described as anti-Second Amendment—and, broadly, anti-Constitutionalist—Collectivist zealots and fanatics.But what is the explanation for the flurry of recent anti-Second Amendment bills coming out of State Legislatures? We certainly do not see Anti-Second Amendment Collectivist zealots, of late, falling back on their usual pretext for further firearms’ restrictions, namely, “mass shootings,” when pushing for more restrictive firearms legislation targeting the average, rational, responsible, law-abiding firearms' owner, as they have previously done. But, then, there has been a paucity of “mass shootings” of late. And, given the paucity of “mass shootings,” the anti-Second Amendment zealot Collectivists have been unable to rely on their usual pretext for a new wave of expansive firearms restrictions; and they simply do not wish to wait for the next pretextual exigency to occur. Perhaps this explains the recent push by anti-Second Amendment zealots and Collectivists for a new round of restrictive firearms measures.Or perhaps these anti-Second Amendment zealot Collectivists believe they now have sufficient backing from the polity and feel that they longer require a pretext to attack the Second Amendment with renewed vigor.Or, perhaps given the fact, in 2019, of Democrat Party majorities in some State Governments, such as—and most prominently—Virginia and New York, there no longer exists reliance on the heretofore necessary pretext for enactment of more restrictive anti-Second Amendment measures, which we now see rolling out in record numbers.Previously, when Republicans were in the ascendant, it would not have been possible or propitious for these Collectivists to ram through such restrictive anti-Second Amendment measures. They seem to be making up for lost time, for we see, today, a deluge of extraordinarily harsh, overbearing, and outlandish measures being tossed about with careless abandon.Whatever the reason for dispensing with the usual pretext, the recent spate of anti-Second Amendment bills coming out of State Legislatures, principally New York and Virginia, cannot be attributed to the occurrence of a specific tragedy—a knee-jerk reaction to the latest “mass shooting” which had previously been relied on as the obligatory rationale for instituting further restrictive firearms' measures, directed, as they generally were and still are, to the average, rational, law-abiding, responsible American firearms' owner, rather than to such societal luminaries, as your garden-variety career criminal, psychopathic gang member, religious “Allahu Akbar” fanatic, and occasional lunatic.And, so, the anti-Second Amendment zealots, advocates, and adherents of the tenets of Collectivism— heavily financed by Globalist billionaires, intent on creating a one-world political, social, economic, legal, and cultural construct, that they alone control—proceed on their merry way, drafting ever more restrictive firearms measures, targeting the average civilian citizen as they were ever wont to do.The American public is witnessing, today, an exceptionally well-funded, well-organized, precisely engineered, highly coordinated, intensely focused attack against the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms; unleashed with fury and unrestrained irrational ferocity, attributable to anxiety and impatience, no doubt to frustration that, after decades of effort, the Second Amendment still, obstinately exists.Most prominent and visible among the Globalist billionaires involved in heavily financing, orchestrating, and implementing expansive, precision attacks on the Second Amendment, in States across the Country, is Michael Bloomberg. He is the recent addition to the group of Democrat Party U.S. Presidential hopefuls. He has already plowed hundreds of millions of dollars of his own extraordinary wealth into his campaign, and he is prepared to invest hundreds of millions of dollars more.Was it Bloomberg’s personal wish to enter the Democrat Party contest, or did the “Globalist elites” encourage Bloomberg, as one of their own, the Apotheosis of the neoliberal Globalist elite, to enter the fray? Whatever the truth about Bloomberg’s sudden entry into the Democrat Party race, he intends to see it through, and the DNC is bending over backward to push his candidacy forward.Said one source, as reported by  Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire: “Mike will spend whatever it takes to defeat Donald Trump. The nation is about to see a very different campaign than we’ve ever seen before.” But, what is a promise to the establishment Democrat Party Globalist elites, is a threat to Americans who wish to preserve a free Constitutional Republic and their fundamental rights and liberties.Bloomberg is a darling child, the public face and great hope, of the centrist, establishment Globalist Corporatist power elites. These power “elites” are banking on Bloomberg—their proxy—to wrest control from Donald Trump, over the reins of Government, in 2020.The centrist establishment Corporatist neoliberal Globalists are adamant that the U.S. must return to the path that they had set for the Country, decades ago—moving inexorably, ever more quickly, since the early 1990s, toward its transformation—one bespeaking the demise of our Country as an independent sovereign nation, and its inclusion into a one-world system of governance.The Globalist elites’ agenda was rudely interrupted with the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. Presidency. But, with implosion of Biden’s campaign, and fear over the ascendancy of the avowed Marxist Socialist, Bernie Sanders, and with dawning awareness of deficiencies inherent in the so-called “moderates,” it is now clear the Globalist elites are impatient, frustrated, and furious over the probability that Trump will indeed be elected to a second term in Office. Such a happenstance is abhorrent to them and absolutely intolerable.So, despite his lack of oratorical polish and obvious dearth of charisma, Michael Bloomberg’s insertion into the race for the Democrat Party nomination, at this late stage, and Bloomberg’s extraordinarily fast rise among those remaining in the race, is a testament to the expansiveness of Bloomberg’s personal monetary resources that has artificially bought for him an enviable position among the present pack of disconcerted front runners who have, themselves, been in the race for months. But it is a testament also of the Neoliberal Globalist elites’ tenacity, temerity, and managerial ability to exert power behind the scenes to insert Bloomberg into the race at a late stage. And it speaks also to the ability of these ruthless, secretive forces to artificially boost Bloomberg's standing in the national polls, through dint of extensive advertisements that no other Democrat Candidate can ever hope of matching. And, Bloomberg has at his command a legion of behind-the-scenes image-makers, campaign pollsters, a bevy of personal advisors and strategists, and spokespeople; ubiquitous stand-ins for Bloomberg himself, effectively making up for Bloomberg's lack of charisma and oratorical ability.The mainstream media, including major cable news networks, radio, and major newspapers, such as the Washington Post and The New York Times have thrown their support to the establishment Globalist, Bloomberg. And we see them, at once, denigrating not only Donald Trump but also Bernie Sanders. And what are they doing? They are making the same tired, imbecilic claims they have made for years: that the Russians are interfering in our elections.But, is it Russian interference in our elections that the American public should be concerned about or is it the Transnational Neoliberal Globalist “elites” whom the public should be concerned about? Since the Neoliberal Globalist elites can “control” neither the President nor Sanders, they evidently hope that by manipulating public thought and behavior—directing attention to the bogeyman, Russia and its leader, Putin—they can induce the electorate to vote in another establishment candidate. If successful, the Neoliberal Globalists will once again move ahead with their agenda to finally cement for the 21^st Century, their goal of a transnational government that they had been on track to realize up until the time their rapid movement toward that goal was rudely interrupted by the election of Trump as U.S. President.The Globalist elites' operational plan requires a Chief Executive, who is either “one of them” such as the Bushes and the Clintons, or is one whom they were able to control, namely Barack Obama. The fact the DNC has, of a sudden rewritten its rules to permit Michael Bloomberg’s inclusion in the race, and to debate on the national stage is demonstrable and irrefutable evidence of the extraordinary power of these ruthless and amoral Corporatist Globalist puppet masters, and evidence also of their reach, across Nations.Will the Transnational Corporatist Globalist Bloomberg become the Democrat Party’s Nominee for U.S. President to take on Trump? Or, will it be the Internationalist Marxist Socialist, Sanders?Whomever it is, the Nation will face complete ruin. For, in either event, the existence of a free Constitutional Republic is incompatible with the ideology of either faction of Collectivism. The framework of the Nation the founders created and fought so hard to foster cannot exist under any world governmental scheme. The Nation will falter and fall.________________________________________________

VIRGINIA AND NEW YORK AT THE FOREFRONT IN ATTACKS AGAINST AMERICA’S SACRED SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHT

PART THREE

A FREE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC CAN ONLY PREVAIL WHERE THE CITIZENS ARE ARMED; TAKE AWAY THE CITIZENS FIREARMS, AND A FREE REPUBLIC MUST AND WILL FALL

The State Government of Virginia has wasted no time in waging war against the Second Amendment. Virginia’s Government, long a bastion of support for the Second Amendment, has reversed course with alacrity and speed.With the reelection of the Radical Leftist Anti-Constitutionalist fanatic Ralph Northam, and with Virginia’s Democrats in firm control of the Virginia State Legislature, thanks to Michael Bloomberg’s infusion of millions of dollars into the State elections, the Second Amendment is under concerted attack in Virginia. This turn of events would heretofore have been thought unbelievable. But, with a new wave of people moving into Virginia—those who hate the Second Amendment or who simply see it as irrelevant—and with Bloomberg’s able and substantial financial assistance, a new disturbing reality faces those Virginians who trace their ancestry back to the origins of the Nation.Indeed, it is mystifying and ironic that this old “Commonwealth”—a term which denotes that Virginia truly belongs to the people—no longer does belong to the people. And, that is, evidently, perfectly acceptable to many recent residents of Virginia, who obviously have no appreciation of, or even comprehension, of the Nation's Bill of Rights, and of the critical importance the Bill of Rights has to the very existence of and preservation of a free Constitutional Republic, a Republic where the citizens are truly Sovereign—a fact that no other Nation on Earth can honestly claim for itself.Virginia’s proposed expansive “assault weapon” ban bill—receiving massive pushback, to the surprise and consternation of Northam and other anti-Second Amendment zealots—has been tabled for a year, pending debate. This speaks to the determination, will, and fortitude of Old Virginia.And this brings us now to a discussion of New York. With Andrew Cuomo safely, securely ensconced as New York’s Governor, for yet a third term, and with Democrats now in firm control of the State Legislature in Albany, the Second Amendment is under renewed aggressive, vigorous assault.Cuomo is plowing relentlessly ahead with his anti-Second Amendment agenda. He is not one to accept delay, and he is using the Safe Act, as the framework upon which to launch a further offensive against the Second Amendment.Recall, although the Safe Act is often perceived principally as an Act placing a ban on a substantial number of semiautomatic weapons, the Act is much broader in scope, attacking the right of the people to keep and bear arms on multiple fronts. The Safe Act is New York’s many-headed Hydra beast.Significantly, Cuomo aims, one, to expand both the domain of banned firearms and the domain of Americans who cannot lawfully own and possess them; two, to attack companies and organizations that support the right of the people to keep and bear arms; and, three, to make the ownership and possession of firearms for those few New Yorkers, who can still lawfully own and possess firearms, so oppressive and repressive that they will eventually capitulate and voluntarily forsake the exercise of their sacred right.With Anti-Second Amendment, Anti-Constitutionalist Democrats holding majorities in both the State Senate and Assembly, a full-frontal assault on the Second Amendment is once again rearing its ugly head and is well underway. But, then, Andrew Cuomo promised those who elected him to Office that he would not ease up on his assault on the Second Amendment and would launch an aggressive new offensive against it. He is hell-bent on seeing that effort through, as New York’s “red-flag law” and other insufferable and restrictive  anti-Second Amendment bills sadly but clearly illustrate.

DO YOU WANT A GUN? CUOMO DEMANDS MENTAL HEALTH EVALUATION!**

THE NY SAFE ACT INFRINGES EVER FURTHER ON THE CITIZENRY’S UNALIENABLE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS

New York State Senator, James Sanders, Jr. Democrat, introduced New York Senate Bill 7065, on January 8, 2019.A few days later, on January 15, 2019, New York Assemblyman, Thomas J. Abinanti, introduced a mirror image of the Senate bill, in the New York Assembly: Assembly Bill 1589.These bills are directed to expanding the domain of Americans residing in New York who cannot lawfully own and possess firearms.While this Act does not have a short title descriptor, a synopsis of does set forth its purpose:“AN ACT to amend the general business law, the mental hygiene law and the penal law, in relation to requiring a mental health evaluation prior to the purchase of any firearm, rifle or shotgun.”Further, although this new Act makes no reference to the Safe Act, the allusion to the Safe Act is clear enough, as both bills amend sections of New York’s Consolidated Laws that were first amended in the Safe Act, and they operate to constrict the rights of New York gun owners further. Thus, logically, it is appropriate to consider New York’s Safe Act, and any subsequent restrictive firearms’ measure, as part and parcel of one expansive and unified anti-Second Amendment program, implemented incrementally and systematically to undermine the rights of New York’s gun owners. The aim of the New York anti-Second Amendment agenda is to whittle away at the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms to the point that the exercise of it in New York essentially ceases to exist.In that effort to undermine the Second Amendment we see New York doing the following: one, further constricting the types and number of firearms the average American civilian citizen who happens to reside in New York may own and possess; two, further contracting and constraining the domain of individuals in New York who may lawfully own and possess firearms; three, making gun ownership and possession so costly, and the regulations and licensing requirements so confusing and oppressive, among those few remaining civilians who may still lawfully own and possess firearms, that the psychological stressors become overwhelming and gun owners capitulate, voluntarily forfeiting their firearms, foregoing their exercise of the sacred right to keep and bear arms; and four, going after firearms’ manufacturers.Many New York gun owners may simply go “underground” but that opens them up to serious retribution if found out. Thus, they become felons and are no longer lawfully permitted to own and possess firearms in New York: an outcome that Cuomo and the other Anti-Second Amendment Zealot Collectivists find as no less an undesirable outcome. For this will mean the number of New York residents lawfully owning and possessing firearms is effectively, massively reduced.But what is happening in New York and Virginia is a foretaste of what Americans can expect if either the Marxist, Socialist Radical Left and Progressive Democrat Globalists of which Sanders is emblematic, or the Centrist transnational Corporatist Globalists of which Bloomberg is emblematic, take control of our Nation. We will rapidly see the decline and fall of our great Republic. Those of us who wish to preserve our Free Constitutional Republic know that the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution is absolutely essential to maintenance of that free Constitutional Republic and to the sovereignty of the American people; and to the autonomy of the individual; to the integrity of Self, and to a non-relativistic ethical system grounded in the eternal existence and vigilance of the Divine Creator. We know how President Trump feels. He has been under incessant, vile, relentless attack from the day he entered the Republican Party race for the Party’s nomination for U.S. President, through the point in time he took the Oath of Office, and up to this very moment. There has been no let-up, and there won’t be as long as Trump remains in Office. Similarly, the constant, obdurate attack by those elements both here and abroad who seek to tear down our Nation, and to tear down the very concept of the independent, sovereign nation-state, as evidenced through the artificial, bizarre, oddly cobbled-together EU, know full well that the U.S. can never become a cog of a transformative stateless new world order as long as an armed citizenry exists. The armed citizenry is an impossibility in the EU and in other Governmental constructs, such as exist and persist in the Commonwealth Nations, whose citizens—essentially subjects of the realm—are not permitted to own and possess firearms unless the Government deigns to bestow that privilege onto them, a privilege rarely provided the Hoi Polloi of society; and so, by that fact alone, the populace is perceived to be and is, in fact, dependent on, submissive to, and degraded and subjugated by the Government and will always remain so.______________________________________

WHAT DOES THE PROPOSED NEW YORK ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT MENTAL HEALTH EVALUATION BILL SAY?

PART FOUR

The merger of the New York Senate and Assembly bill, if enacted, would amend several sections of the Consolidated Laws of New York.Preeminent among the amendments is proposed Section 898 of the General Business Law of New York.A new proposed subsection of the General Business Law, subsection “1-A” of Section 898 reads: “Before any sale, exchange, or disposal pursuant to this article, a purchaser of any firearm, rifle, or shotgun shall submit to a mental health evaluation and provide the seller with proof of his or her approval to purchase such firearm, rifle or shotgun pursuant to subdivision (M) of Section 7.09 of the Mental Hygiene Law.”Proposed Section “2-A” would apply the same standard to anyone who wishes to sell, exchange, or dispose of a firearm, rifle, or shotgun.Proposed Section 7.09 (M) of New York’s Mental Hygiene Law sets forth the framework for a mental health evaluation:“The Commissioner shall establish within the Office of Mental Health and administrative process for the mental health evaluation of any individual prior to such individual’s purchase of any firearm, rifle or shotgun. The Commissioner shall promulgate regulations to establish the mental health evaluation process which shall include but not limited to provision relation to: (1) the mental health professionals approved to perform such evaluation, (2) the process for evaluation by such mental health professionals and (3) the development of a standardized form to be used by the Mental Health Professional performing such evaluation to approve or deny an individual for purchase of a firearm, rifle or shotgun. The denial of an individual for purchase of any firearm, rifle or shotgun may be reviewed de novo pursuant to the proceedings under Article Seventy-Eight of the Civil Practice Law and Rules.”For context, keep in mind that Federal law already addresses the mental health issue relevant to firearms ownership and possession. Federal Penal Code, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), says:“It shall be unlawful for any person who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce.”Since federal law has long since established mental health criteria apropos of firearms' ownership and possession, Cuomo's present New York law mental health reporting requirement is not only unnecessary, it is in conflict with Federal statute. Moreover, under Article 6, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution, referred to as the “Supremacy Clause,” the “Constitution, and the Laws of the United States . . . shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” This means that the federal Government, when exercising any of powers enumerated in the Constitution, prevails over and preempts any conflicting or inconsistent state exercise of power.Federal law places clear and very strict parameters around the use of mental health criteria, related to gun ownership and possession, and does so for very important and obvious reasons. First, the diagnosis of mental health conditions is often highly subjective, as much an art as a science, and deciphering the line between serious and non-serious mental health conditions is not and never has been clear-cut. There is a large, amorphous gray area. Second, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, a right that shall not be infringed, as expressly codified the Second Amendment, is a fundamental, immutable, unalienable, and natural right, intrinsic to man’s very being. This means that Government shall respect the right as sacred and inviolate. The infringement of the Second Amendment’s core is forbidden.Careful circumspection of Governmental action against it is essential and must be maintained if Governmental intrusion on the exercise of the right of the people to keep and bear arms is to pass rigorous, strict Constitutional scrutiny. The NY Safe mental health reporting requirement and the proposed mental health evaluation bill impermissibly infringe upon the rights and liberties of the American people and also violates the Supremacy Clause of Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution.To understand how pernicious both the NY Safe mental health reporting requirement and the proposed mental health evaluation bill are, we will drill down into the critical mental health area of both the reporting requirement of the NY Safe Act that has been enacted into law—Section 9.46, Subsection (b) of Article 9 of the Mental Health Law of the Consolidated Laws of New York—and the proposed mental health evaluation requirement, Proposed Section 7.09 (M) of New York’s Mental Hygiene Law. You will come to understand why it is and how it is that the mental health reporting requirement of the NY Safe Act is bad enough, and how it is that, as bad as that reporting requirement is, the proposed addition to the Mental Hygiene Law is substantially worse. You will see how the proposed bill builds upon the present mental health law affecting New Yorkers who simply wish to exercise their Second Amendment right, tightening the noose on those New Yorkers; for it is in New York’s Mental Hygiene Law that things become both interesting and dire.______________________________________________

THE SAFE ACT’S MENTAL HEALTH RECORDS REPORTING SECTION IS BAD BUT THE PROPOSED MENTAL HEALTH EVALUATION BILL, DIRECTED TO WOULD-BE GUN OWNERS, IS MUCH WORSE

PART FIVE

We will now drill down into the critical mental health area of the new restrictive New York gun bill so you can see and truly appreciate the extent to which the proposed bill builds upon the present mental health law affecting New Yorkers who simply wish to exercise their Second Amendment right, tightening the noose on those New Yorkers who wish to exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms; for it is in New York’s Mental Hygiene Law that things become interesting and dire.

THE NEW YORK SAFE ACT'S MENTAL HEALTH REPORTING REQUIREMENT

When Cuomo signed the New York Safe Act into law in 2013, Section 20 of the Safe Act was codified into law.A new State governmental reporting system was added to the Mental Health Law that did not previously exist. Section 20 of NY Safe, codified in Section 9.46, Subsection (b) of Article 9 of the Mental Health Law of the Consolidated Laws of New York, sets forth:“Notwithstanding any other law to the contrary, when a mental health professional currently providing treatment services to a person determines, in the exercise of reasonable professional judgment, that such person is likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others, he or she shall be required to report, as soon as practicable, to the director of community services, or the director’s designee, who shall report to the division of criminal justice services whenever he or she agrees that the person is likely to engage in such conduct. Information transmitted to the division of criminal justice services shall be limited to names and other non-clinical identifying information, which may only be used for determining whether a license issued pursuant to section 400.00 of the penal law should be suspended or revoked, or for determining whether a person is ineligible for a license issued pursuant to section 400.00 of the penal law, or is no longer permitted under state or federal law to possess a firearm.”Section 9.46 (b) of the Mental Health law of New York insinuates itself not only into the Second Amendment but also insinuates itself into the unreasonable searches and seizures clause of the Fourth Amendment and violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as well. No less Proposed Section 7.09 (M) of New York’s Mental Hygiene Law unconstitutionally infringe upon fundamental rights, but, its impact of those American citizens and residents of New York who wish to exercise their right to keep and bear arms is even more intrusive and egregious.

WHAT DOES NEW YORK’S ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT MENTAL HEALTH EVALUATION DO?

There is an obvious presumption in favor of maintaining sensitive medical information among medical providers. New Yorkers expect this as does every American. If that were not the case Americans would, quite understandably, be reluctant to divulge such information, especially if doing so might negatively impact the exercise of their fundamental right to keep and bear arms.But, New York State Government officials have their own agenda—and that agenda is unrelated to the needs and best interests of the individual. And the danger is very real since Government bureaucrats, operating with the “Hive Mentality” of all Collectivists, likely don’t give a damn about the privacy concerns of individual Americans, anyway. And, even if they did care about individual Americans' privacy concerns, they would be obliged to relinquish such concerns consistent with the requirement of their jobs and their wish to hold onto their jobs.Proposed Section 7.09 (M) of New York’s Mental Hygiene Law, were it to become law, would permit the State Government to entwine itself extraordinarily deep into medical matters, where it should never go, and it does so, even more so—much more so—than the mental health reporting requirement as set forth in the present New York law.No other State has anything like this or has, to our knowledge, proposed anything, as yet, quite like it. Andrew Cuomo wants New York to be in the vanguard of the most extreme and outrageous anti-Second Amendment measures existent in the Nation and he is succeeding in that endeavor. That was the purpose for Cuomo’s having pushed, quickly through the State legislature, in the dead of night, by emergency decree, sans debate, his New York Safe Act. And that is what informs Cuomo’s actions to this very day. But, you might wish to ask the New York Governor and the other anti-Second Amendment zealots who drafted the mental health evaluation bill why they feel that enactment of this bill is necessary since the Safe Act already requires mental health providers to divulge confidential mental health matters to State Government officials if those providers believe that a patient poses a danger to self or others.Keep in mind Section 9.46, Subsection (b) of Article 9 of the Mental Health Law of the Consolidated Laws of New York, itself, impermissibly infringes upon fundamental rights and liberties and impermissibly infringes on the Supremacy Clause of Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution as well. The application of Section 9.46, Subsection (b) of Article 9 of the Mental Health Law of the Consolidated Laws of New York, isn’t clear-cut either. For, drawing a medical conclusion as to whom poses a clear and present danger to others is often highly subjective; and reporting confidential information to New York State Government officials would likely create a chilling effect as New York residents could reasonably think twice before visiting a mental health provider since they must know that sensitive medical matters could wend their way into State Government records. And that fact could have potentially devastating impact on their lives, and in myriad ways that go well beyond the ownership and possession of firearms.Even so, one may well ask why Governor Cuomo and anti-Second Amendment New York State Legislators felt it necessary to interfere further in a citizen’s personal medical matters anyway, since federal law already forbids the seriously mentally ill from owning and possessing firearms, and does so, unlike the New York bill, by striking a very delicate balance between the fundamental right of individuals to own and possess firearms and the obvious right of everyone else to remain safe from dangers posed by the criminally insane. But we know the answer to that question, don’t we?Cuomo and New York’s anti-Second Amendment zealots so abhor the Second Amendment, that they have shown no reticence from treading willy-nilly on the fundamental rights and liberties of Americans, and on the centuries-old doctor-patient relationship, and upon common ethical standards of human behavior that recognizes the sanctity and inviolability of the individual and the inherent right to privacy. Cuomo’s Government recognizes no such inherent right of privacy, and recognizes no inherent right of the citizen to own and possess firearms, and cares not one whit about the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship where that relationship happens to touch upon or can conceivably touch upon exercise of the one's fundamental right to own and possess firearms. Cuomo’s Government is a prime example of the manner in which the ideology of Collectivism operates. Proponents of Collectivism will always run roughshod over individual rights and liberties. They deny outright the autonomy of the individual. They subordinate the individual completely to the dictates of the State, and they will invariably subjugate the polity to the perceived needs of the Greater Society, the Collective, the Hive.The New York Safe Act and New York's new mental health evaluation bill opens the floodgates to impermissible Constitutional infringement of a fundamental right from the get-go, unconstitutionally infringing exercise of the right of the people to keep and bear arms of every New York firearm's owner: tens of thousands of New Yorkers.

THERE IS ANOTHER REASON CUOMO AND THE ANTI-SECOND AMENDMENT LEGISLATORS WISH TO ENACT THE MENTAL HEALTH EVALUATION PROPOSAL INTO LAW AND THAT REASON ALLUDES TO THE TRUE HORROR OF THE  MENTAL HEALTH EVALUATION PROPOSAL WERE IT TO BECOME LAW.

As horrible as the New York Safe Act reporting requirement is, the mental health evaluation bill is many times worse. The NY Safe Act requirement depends upon mental health provider acquiescence to the reporting law.Under the provision of the New York Safe Act, the mental health provider must weigh the centuries-old sacred doctor-patient privacy right against a modern-day assault by Collectivist ideologues, who, abhorring the exercise of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, care not that the centuries-old sacred trust between a patient and his physician—and by extension, as between a mental health provider who may not have an M.D. degree but who is nonetheless a confidante of sensitive, personal medical information—has gone by the wayside.Cuomo and other Anti-Second Amendment zealots must have realized that mental health providers might very well be reluctant to violate a sacred trust between physician and patient--as doing so would be detrimental to the health and well-being of the patient, and contrary to the faith the patient has placed in his medical provider that the patient's sensitive medical information will remain confidential, and contrary to the rights and liberties codified in the U.S. Constitution. After all, there is an obvious presumption in favor of maintaining sensitive medical information. In fact, New Yorkers may, quite understandably, avoid conveying embarrassing and sensitive personal information to their physician or mental health provider if they believe such information can and will be divulged to New York State Government officials who have their own agenda—unrelated to the needs and best interests of the individual. That concern is very real, since Government bureaucrats, consistent with the “Hive Mentality” of Collectivists, likely don’t give a damn about the needs and concerns of individual Americans. And, even if they did care about the individual Americans' privacy, they would be obliged to relinquish such concerns consistent with the requirement of their jobs and their wish to hold onto their jobs.So, realizing that the mental health reporting requirements would not, or could not, and, perhaps, have not, yielded the results they wanted, the Anti-Second Amendment Collectivist zealots went back to the drawing board and devised a new scheme to avoid the problems inherent in the mental health reporting requirement as it presently exists. The scheme cunningly devised, as illustrated in the new mental health evaluation bill, essentially dispenses with the need for the New York Safe Act's mental health reporting requirement since New York State administrators, or those mental health practitioners working directly for the State Government, insinuate themselves directly into the firearms acquisition process in the first instance, obviating the need for mental health providers to get involved in the second instance.If the mental health evaluation bill were enacted into law, a person who wishes to acquire, sell, exchange or dispose of a firearm must undergo a mental health evaluation, irrespective of any ongoing relationship a person may have with a personal mental health provider.Behind this bizarre and sinister proposal--truly an enterprise--is an obvious desire of anti-Second Amendment zealots, such as Cuomo, to strongly discourage anyone from possessing a firearm. For, if an individual realizes that he or she must undergo a mental health evaluation that will forever be part of the State records, that person may have second thoughts about obtaining a firearm in the first place. Cuomo, along with the Legislative team that drafted the mental health evaluation measure, must have known this, and anticipating the results, are hopeful that many would-be firearms' owners would voluntarily forsake exercise of their fundamental right. After all, it would be far easier for Cuomo's Government if law-abiding New York residents were simply discouraged from being compelled to jump through the labyrinthine hurdles of obtaining a firearm at the get-go than it would be and, in fact has been, to attempt to divest New Yorkers of their firearms after the fact, when they would be more averse to do so. Cuomo, along with the Legislative team that drafted the mental health evaluation measure, would have known this—in fact, must have known this—hence the reason for proposing such a bill at all.If the mental health evaluation bill were enacted into law, a person wishing to acquire, sell, exchange or dispose of a firearm, must, at the inception, undergo a mental health evaluation, irrespective of any ongoing relationship that some individuals may have with a personal mental health provider. Such a scheme is extremely pernicious, even diabolical.Sure, the present NY Safe Act's mental health reporting requirement is, itself unconstitutional. But, if Cuomo and the other anti-Second Amendment zealots feel secure in the knowledge that the law will withstand legal action in New York’s State and federal Courts, they would certainly feel convinced of their invulnerability and invincibility and will be brazen enough to propose and enact increasingly more outrageous firearms’ measures. That may well explain how New York's mental health evaluation bill happened to be crafted in the first place._______________________________________________

NEW YORK’S MENTAL HEALTH EVALUATION BILL FOR WOULD-BE GUN OWNERS RAISES A “RED FLAG” OF ITS OWN

PART SIX

The proposed New York mental health evaluation bill, like the Safe Act of 2013, before it, is facially unconstitutional. It likely would be contested on Constitutional grounds were it to become law, and it likely would survive attack when brought before New York’s anti-Second Amendment federal and State Court jurists, who generally hold a jaundiced view of the Second Amendment.So, with a plethora of anti-Second Amendment jurists presently sitting on State and Federal Benches, we would expect to see this unconstitutional firearms' measure passing Constitutional scrutiny in the State and Federal trial and appellate courts, as have so many other measures, were New York's mental health evaluation bill to come before New York courts, once challenged, after enactment. And, there is no guarantee the U.S. Supreme Court would even take up the case on a Writ of Certiorari. And, even if the high Court did take the case up on appeal, resolution of high Court cases takes time and considerable sums of money to battle. Cuomo knows this.Still, we can only hope that enough New York Legislators will seriously consider the dire ramifications of the New York mental health evaluation bill before voting to enact it sans debate. They may take their cue from Legislators in Virginia who, fortunately, have, voted to table the ludicrous, “assault weapons” bill, at least for a time, to give Legislators an opportunity to debate it before voting to enact it.But, as for New York's mental health evaluation bill, the Arbalest Quarrel would like to give New York's Legislators a heads-up on this score.To fully appreciate the full extent of New York’s latest horror that anti-Second Amendment zealots, proponents, and fanatics would love to see enacted, we delineate below some of the specific problems with it; pertinent questions that can be legitimately raised about it; legal and ethical concerns that operate against it; and matters that ought to be addressed before the New York Senate and Assembly vote on it.First, Cuomo has said the NY Safe Act is designed to prohibit “dangerously mentally ill” persons from purchasing a gun. Is not the intent behind this bill nothing less than a presumptuous, arrogant attempt to unconstitutionally expand the domain of people who are to be denied possession of firearms? Keep in mind that Federal law already prohibits gun ownership and possession by individuals who have been voluntarily or involuntarily committed to a mental health hospital, i.e., the dangerously mentally ill, that Cuomo refers to. Yet New York’s proposed amendment attempts to skirt Federal law by potentially prohibiting anyone who has even a scintilla of “mental health issues” from possessing a firearm. This is an implicit presumption of the bill and indicative of Cuomo's intention and that of the like-minded anti-Second Amendment Collectivist New York Legislators' to use the NY Safe Act as a building block upon which they seek to enlarge New York's massive, tottering Anti-Second Amendment structure.Second, would retired police officers come within the purview of the bill? If not, why not?Third, who would design the battery of mental health tests?Fourth, how extensive would the mental health evaluation process be?Fifth, would the person who desires to obtain a firearm be responsible for remitting payment for the mental health evaluation process, or would taxes be raised on, and the costs borne by, the entire New York population to cover the cost of these new administrative procedures?Sixth, what is the proposed cost for designing the evaluation process and implementing it? Wouldn’t it be advisable to do a feasibility study to ascertain the costs of designing, implementing, and administering this program before enacting the bill into law?Seventh, who would administer the tests: A psychologist? A psychiatrist? A team of mental health practitioners? An Administrator who has no mental health training, for example, a police officer?Eighth, how would a mental health practitioner determine the relationship between the mere desire to possess a firearm and the mental health acuity of the individual who desires to possess a firearm? In that regard, might not the mere desire to possess a firearm be construed as suggestive of mental deficiency? In fact, is this not the rationale behind the bill, evidencing its ulterior motive?Ninth, would mental health tests extend to and be permitted to probe a person’s present life situation in minute detail; and, if so, would not that infringe on the unreasonable searches and seizures clause of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?Tenth, suppose a person is presently seeing a mental health practitioner or had, at one time, seen a mental health practitioner; or, perhaps, a person is taking antidepressant medications or had, at one time, taken such medications associated with mental or emotional conditions. Would questions be directed to probe and elicit that information? If so, would that not illegally invade a person’s privacy and unlawfully impinge upon the sacred doctor-patient relationship? And, would not such an evaluation impermissibly intrude upon and undermine the treatment of the patient by his or her own physician or mental health practitioner if the patient is undergoing treatment?Eleventh, how extensive would the mental health evaluation be? What would the test components comprise? Twelfth, would Government officials assess the statistical validity and reliability of those mental health evaluation tests that are devised, before their implementation, assuming new tests are constructed? If not, why not? And, who would assess the statistical validity and reliability of such mental health evaluation tests employed? Further, if Government officials make use of presently existing mental health tests of purposes of the proposed bill, wouldn’t those tests still need required scrutiny to ascertain their applicability to firearms ownership and possession?Thirteenth, who would be responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of these new mental evaluative test records and, would the individual’s personal physician or mental health practitioner have access to them? Would the person being evaluated be able to obtain a copy of or at least be able to view his or her mental health evaluation records? If not, why not?Fourteenth, what recourse would examinees have whose confidentiality is violated? Would examinees even know whether the records of their mental health evaluation had been misused, misplaced, hacked into, lost, stolen, or wrongly distributed or disseminated to individuals, Government agencies, private entities, academia, or the CDC, contrary to law or procedure? Would the New York State Government have a legal duty to inform the examinee of such loss or misallocation of sensitive, confidential, personal records? Would the examinee have legal recourse to obtain damages?Fifteenth, on what grounds might one appeal an adverse result, and what would be the costs of de novo review? And who would be required to bear those costs?Sixteenth, what is the time frame between setting up an evaluation process and obtaining the results of an evaluation?Seventeenth, can the mental health evaluation be reviewed and overturned by one’s own physician or mental health practitioner? If not, why not?Eighteenth, why should a person who has received an adverse decision be required to go to Court to obtain a reversal of an adverse decision? Why isn’t there a mechanism for a less costly and time-consuming intermediate administrative appeal process as there exists, for example, in present New York City handgun licensing rules and regulations?Nineteenth, after the mental evaluation process has concluded, and a person has passed the mental health evaluation process, what are the post-administrative steps?Twentieth, why must it be necessary for a person who has passed a mental health examination to be repeatedly required to take another mental health evaluation for every instance in which a firearm is purchased, exchanged, or disposed of? Would not this requirement be deliberately oppressive and also unnecessarily expensive, and unnecessarily administratively burdensome? Moreover, undergoing a mental health evaluation at all may work in ways that have negative unintended or intended consequences after the fact. Have such possible consequences been explored? If not, why not?Consider, for example, a person who has undertaken a mental health evaluation, and, then, whether passing the examination or not, happens to move to another jurisdiction. That jurisdiction may inquire of a person whether that person has ever had a mental health evaluation. The New York mental health evaluation may follow that person wherever he or she goes. And there is nothing in the bill, as presently drafted, that would prevent the New York State Government from divulging to another State Government, or to the Federal Government, the results of such mental health evaluations—especially, those suggesting negative outcomes—when, perhaps, a person seeks to obtain a firearm in another jurisdiction.All sorts of negative results ensue from this New York mental health evaluation bill were it to become law.Above, delineated, are just some of the legitimate concerns and questions that can be raised. There are certainly dozens more. But, as with the original Safe Act, and with other restrictive gun laws, we see Cuomo—and other anti-Second Amendment fanatics, who express a fervent desire to enact ever more restrictive, outrageous, or duplicative anti-Second Amendment laws in their own jurisdictions—again perfunctorily side-stepping the critical legal, ethical, Constitutional, and administrative ramifications of, and issues attendant to the measures he wishes to impose on American citizens who reside in New York.This callous disregard for the principle of fundamental fairness and for the sanctity of Americans’ fundamental rights and liberties isn’t alone peculiar to anti-Second Amendment proposals of Radical Leftists like Cuomo. It is characteristic of all those who espouse the Collectivist vision of governance.Cuomo and other self-righteous Radical Leftists are so convinced of their own moral superiority, and invincibility to criticism, and so invested in their smug self-assurance that it is little wonder they would tread on the rights and liberties of Americans with impunity—all to effectuate their new Collectivist vision on the Nation and to thrust their beliefs on everyone else. Radical Leftists don’t concern themselves with the Constitutional framework of a free Republic. Why should they? After all, they intend to dismantle it!Anti-Constitutionalist, Anti-American legislators, bureaucrats, jurists, and academicians treat the Constitution as if it were a compilation of mere rules of antiquated etiquette rather than an inviolate framework of governance; and they believe that the fundamental, immutable rights and liberties incorporated into the Constitution can be modified, set aside, or even dispensed with altogether in furtherance of their grand vision. And, what is their vision? It is a Socialist nightmare they intend to impose on the entire Nation. To make their Dystopian vision for the Nation a reality, these Anti-Constitutionalist Collectivists intend to systematically deny all average, law-abiding, rational, responsible Americans their unalienable right to keep and bear arms. Governor Cuomo and the rest of these Radical Leftist Collectivists are working feverishly to see that their vision for the Nation becomes a reality; and in short order.Implementation of New York’s recent Anti-Second Amendment mental health evaluation bill is representative of New York's Cuomo most recent attempt to unconstitutionally and unconscionably constrain the exercise of the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms. This recent bill is unseemly, unwarranted, and demonstrably inconsistent with our Constitution and our heritage as Americans. The bill is extraordinarily bizarre, predicated on a phobic fear of anti-Second Amendment zealots that every American is potentially a psychopathic criminal or psychotic maniac, or that an American will be magically transformed into an irrational, raving lunatic--a maniac on the prowl, looking for people to shoot--merely given that a person happens to own and possess a firearm. Upon perusal of New York’s mental health evaluation bill, one cannot but conclude it has been devised by fevered, paranoid minds that, may, themselves, do well to obtain a mental health evaluation from a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist, to get to the root of the problem concerning their own singular abhorrence of the Nation's Second Amendment and of their own peculiar, pathological fear of firearms and of those law-abiding Americans who happen to own and possess them._____________________________________________*Regular readers of the Arbalest Quarrel know that we review previous articles posted, making changes and corrections with some frequency. However, on very rare occasions, when amendments are extensive and where we rethink the content presented, we will delete the original article from our site and substitute that article with the reworked article. We have done so here. We apologize to our readers and hope that it does not cause undue consternation._____________________________________________**The Arbalest Quarrel wishes to acknowledge David LaPell’s timely reporting of this matter which he brought to the attention of Ammoland Readers on January 29, 2020. AQ takes an especial interest in New York’s restrictive gun laws, having written several articles on Cuomo’s NY Safe Act of 2013. Our present article on New York's new troubling, extraordinarily restrictive firearms' proposal, negatively impacting any law-abiding citizen, who simply wishes to exercise his or her fundamental, immutable, unalienable right to own and possess firearms, is not a rehash of David’s excellent exposition, but a supplement to it.__________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

TYRANNY IS AT HAND WHEN A NATION’S CITIZENRY IS DISARMED

THREATENED BY A SEDITIOUS PRESS, A DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED HOUSE, AND AN INSOLENT BUREAUCRACY, PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS HIS HANDS FULL, TRYING TO PRESERVE AND STRENGTHEN THE SOVEREIGNTY AND INDEPENDENCE OF OUR NATION; THE INTEGRITY OF OUR NATION'S BORDERS; THE SUPREMACY OF OUR CONSTITUTION AND LAWS; AND THE AUTONOMY AND SANCTITY OF THE AMERICAN CITIZENRY

When considering the myriad threats to the preservation of our Nation’s Constitution and to the underpinnings of a Free Republic, generally, and when considering the myriad threats to the Constitution’s Bill of Rights and, especially, when considering the ever-present threat to the fundamental, immutable, unalienable, and absolute right of the people to keep and bear arms, upon which a free Republic—a truly free Republic—rests and exists, attention is invariably directed to vicious, virulent, constant, and noxious attacks by anti-American, anti-Second Amendment members of Congress and by those anti-American, anti-Second Amendment politicians in the State Governments hell-bent on weakening, through enactment of crass, unconstitutional legislation, the American citizen’s sacred Second Amendment right to people to keep and bear arms. But how is it that the public becomes aware of the sordid work of these public servants who betray their masters, the American people?The presence of oppressive Federal and State antigun legislation and attempts by anti-American legislators to enact ever new anti-Second Amendment legislation is invariably on the public’s radar, and it is on the public’s radar for two reasons. First, Congress and State Legislatures generally conduct their business in the open—albeit not invariably—as we unfortunately see most recently, in Congressional Democrats’ ongoing, outrageous operation to destroy the Trump Presidency through a ludicrous impeachment inquiry that has essentially shut out Republican oversight of and participation in the proceedings.Anti-American legislators openly, even brazenly, carry on their efforts to infringe the right of the people to keep and bear arms. They apparently believe that, by actively and vociferously communicating their efforts to rein in and ultimately to destroy the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, they are in fact doing a great service for and on behalf of the American people. And they apparently believe that by vocalizing their efforts raucously and vehemently, and by turns chiding, scolding, and condemning all Americans who might happen to disagree with them, they can prevail, winning most Americans over to their side. And, many uninformed Americans are drawn over to their side, readily seduced by empty political rhetoric. Not only do such Americans come to accept constraints on the Second Amendment, they come to appreciate, even laud the efforts of those politicians who, far from preserving and strengthening the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, dare to cheat Americans out of their most precious gift—a gift that the founders fought and died for to provide for us; a gift that many Americans, down through the ages fought and died for to secure for us. No matter. The betrayers of America intend to destroy all of it.The betrayers of America intend to undercut the Constitution; the very soul of our Nation. But, legislation to destroy fundamental rights and liberties must take place primarily in the open even if political wrangling and plotting, machinating and scheming all aimed at deluding and deceiving the American people must take place in the shadows; behind closed doors; out of sight and earshot.Second, the anti-Second Amendment legislators’ friend, the ubiquitous, seditious Press, avidly and vociferously hawks the ostensible benefits of reining in the citizenry’s gun rights. The Press has devolved into an effective propaganda tool of those elements operating in concert both here and abroad who seek to undercut our Constitution, thereby paving the way for our Nation’s inclusion in a new, transnational, supranational political, social, economic, and legal system of governance. A new world governmental order in which the very concept of  ‘citizen,’ and the concept of 'sovereign, independent nation states' and of national borders are viewed as archaic constructs, useful, perhaps, once upon a time, as in a fairy tale, but no longer. To make a go of it, the notion of fundamental rights and liberties that inhere in man must be swept aside, as something that once was seen, perhaps, as noble, but is now perceived as simply quaint and archaic; for that notion is not at all consistent with the onset of a new trans-global system of governance, marked by an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent ruling class, jealous of its power, and suspicious of the subject populations, falling now within a massive world Government enterprise.And, what of the idea of an armed citizenry—the only true and tenable check against tyranny of Government? That idea must be categorically denounced as not only anachronistic but dangerous—a visible threat to State power and authority. So, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution must go. And there is no pretense anymore by those who abhor and who have always loathed the very idea of an armed citizenry. No longer do we hear any antigun politician, prefacing his or her remarks against guns and gun ownership by asserting, “. . . but of course I respect and support the Second Amendment.” That dissembling is now a thing of the past.So, a seditious Press tries to sell the citizenry on the notion that the Second Amendment has no rational purpose in a modern society. The public is told that, for the good of society as whole—that is to say, for the good of the Collective, for the good of the Hive—for the maintenance of public safety and public order, it is necessary to ban all guns from the civilian populace, commencing with those whom the antigun politicians categorize as 'assault weapons' (a political fiction, to be sure, created for no purpose other than as a vehicle through which more and more firearms are to be banned, until all firearms are banned).The seditious Press falling in lockstep with the destroyers of our free Republic, takes the position that gun rights are best when exercised least. So it is that the Press, operating on behalf of anti-Second Amendment advocates in both State Legislatures and in Congress safety argues that public order and public safety is best served by extending the scope of gun background checks; and that public order and public safety is best served through enactment of laws making gun ownership and possession increasingly onerous; and that public order and public safety is best served through enactment of laws that restrict the number of and kinds of firearms, and the amount of and kinds of ammunition, the average, law-abiding, responsible American citizen is permitted to hold; and so forth and so on, until lawful civilian ownership and possession of firearms is effectively eliminated, making the Second Amendment essentially nugatory.But is public safety and public order secured by denying the right of the people to keep and bear arms? Of course not! That is merely a makeweight. The real goal is civilian population control; to prevent the very thing the framers of our Constitution intended to assure the American people of: that they would be able to deal effectively and harshly with those people in Government, who decide they would rather be the masters of the American people than the servants of the American people.Beyond calls for more and more restrictive State and federal gun legislation and for more and more restrictive local governmental gun codes, gun regulations, and gun ordinances, we hear Leftist politicians that are running for the Democratic Party nomination chiming in how Commonwealth Countries like Australia and New Zealand implement antigun laws easily, and that only in the United States is it difficult to do so and shouldn’t be. Never mind that neither Australia or New Zealand even recognizes a fundamental right of their people to keep and bear arms.In fact, such rights that do exist in New Zealand’s bill of rights aren’t meaningful rights and liberties at all. New Zealand’s bill of rights is nothing more than a collection of ordinary statutes--not a true bill of rights at all--subject to Government censure, or interpretation, or abrogation, essentially at will. And, Australia, for its part, doesn’t even have a bill of rights. And neither Nation recognizes a right to own and possess firearms for self-defense. Fancy that!Yet Democrat Party candidates for U.S. President believe our Nation should follow suit with these Commonwealth Nations. They perfunctorily deny, even betray, our own sacred right to keep and bear arms, rather than reverently lauding it.  And these Democrats, were any one of them to be elected President, have gone so far as to assert a willingness to create antigun law through Executive Branch fiat if need be if Congress doesn’t act in accordance with their personal beliefs concerning, and animus toward, guns and toward civilian gun ownership and possession. These Democrats denounce our Nation’s Constitution; our Nation’s culture; our Nation’s Judeo-Christian ethic; our Nation’s history. And, yet they consider themselves good and proper prospects for U.S. President. The idea is both shameful and absurd.These same politicians, with a sympathetic Press, also ignore or slam the seminal U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Heller and McDonald making clear that the right codified in the Second Amendment is not to be denied or circumvented, as the right set forth in the Second Amendment is an individual right, accruing to each American citizen. The right of the people to keep and bear arms is not a “collective” right accruing to the State; and it is not to be construed as such.The American public should keep well in mind that, in the final analysis, no better guard against tyranny exists than through the presence of a well-armed citizenry; and no better evidence is there of some politicians’ desire to pave the way for the very inception of tyranny than in legislation to rein in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES ON RADICAL LEFT/PROGRESSIVE DUPLICITY, MENDACITY, AND HYPOCRISY

HOLD YOUR TONGUE AND GIVE UP YOUR GUNS! THE MANTRA OF THE RADICAL LEFT AND PROGRESSIVES

PART TWO

THE RADICAL LEFT SPREADS HATRED AND VIOLENCE, NOT PEACE AND COMMUNITY AS THEY THRUST THEIR VALUE SYSTEM ON EVERYONE ELSE

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. . . . Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them. . . he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.” “If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.” ~  John Stuart Mill, Quotations from his work, “On Liberty”

RADICAL LEFTISTS SEEK TO CONTROL THE NARRATIVE AND SILENCE ALL DEBATE

The Democratic Party’s Radical Left contingent and the Radical Left’s sympathizers in the Press and the polity, namely those who espouse the tenets of Collectivism, contend that they ground their policy choices on morality, asserting the point vociferously—believing, erroneously, that spouting vitriol serves better to convince the public than appealing calmly to reason.All the while, these Radical Leftists maintain that Conservatives—those espousing the principles of Individualism as manifested in our Constitution, upon which our free Constitutional Republic is grounded—are a reactionary force, out of touch with “Neo-modernism,” and that the Conservatives' policy positions are decidedly immoral.But, is that true? Which ideological perspective really fosters amity and which one fosters enmity? Contrary to their assertions, it is the ideology of the Radical Left and the Progressives that is decidedly immoral, not the ideology of Conservatives. And, it is the Radical Left and Progressives that foster enmity among the polity, and, through the device of "identity politics," which the Radical Left and Progressives concocted, they demonstrate a desire not to to bring the Nation together, but, rather, to divide it. They seek to create hatred and fear, hoping that, through the divisions they deliberately create and foster, they can eke out a victory for the Democratic Party in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. And, the Radical Left and Progressives have a very powerful ally in the Press. Since assuming the mantle of the U.S. Presidency, the Press has waged an all-out war against Donald Trump, and those who support him.Instead of reporting the news and informing the public on the important news events of the day, the mainstream media has engaged in a constant, massive disinformation and misinformation campaign in a naked and despicable attempt to destroy the Trump Presidency, attacking the very institution of the Presidency. The mainstream media is actively supporting the Democrats' attempts to transform our Nation into a system that is completely at odds with the tenets of Individualism upon which our Constitution and upon which our free Republic rests. The Radical Left and Progressives that have taken over the Democratic Party adhere to the tenets of Collectivism, upon which the Radical Leftist political, social, and economic systems of Marxism, Socialism, and Communism are grounded. And the Radical Left and Progressives would have the public believe that these political, social, and economic systems--operating through massive Government enterprises, unwieldy, corrupt dictatorial regimes, that persevere only by force of arms, offering nothing for the populace but oppression and misery--are a positive force for good, when the opposite is true. And, these Radical Left systems, Marxism, Socialism, Communism are hardly new inventions. In fact, they are deeply flawed and decidedly and decisively unethical, outmoded political, social, and economic philosophical systems that have failed and have failed miserably in those Nations that have attempted utilization of them,* but which the Radical Left and Progressives, with the assistance of the Press, seek to resurrect from the dead. What they propose for our Country is not subject to criticism and not open to debate. And, that fact, too, is consistent with the Radical Left systems of Marxism, Socialism, and Communism. In part, this is due to the weaknesses of the intellectual underpinnings of those systems. Close scrutiny opens up the weaknesses of the systems to the light of day, and that is not something the proponents of those systems want. And, in part the weaknesses of the Radical Left Collectivist systems of Marxism, Socialism, and Communism, are symptomatic of the psychological makeup and predilections of the proponents of them. As the Radical Left has little regard for people, perceiving them to be random bits of energy that need constant guidance and control, like so much cattle that must be corralled, lest they run rampant and amok, destroying the well-engineered, tightly controlled society the Radical Left envisions for them, the totalitarian State will falter, totter and fall. Thus, the populace cannot be left to their own devices in the society to be erected. That society demands uniformity in thought and conduct. No dissenting comments or criticisms are permitted. It is no wonder, then, that the Radical Left and Progressives in our Nation are pressing forward with their goal of admitting millions of illegal, poorly educated aliens into our midst, as they have, then, the kind of people, they want and the kind of population they need for the sort of society they desire, a society comprising a multitude of mindless serfs who willingly allow themselves to be led so long as the Government provides for their basic physical needs. Such is the Nation they will thrust on all Americans. And the last thing the Radical Left and their Progressive cohorts will abide by is an autonomous, independent-minded, critical thinking citizenry that happens to speak their mind and maintains an arsenal of firearms and ammunition, informing the Radical Left and Progressives who it is that is really in charge, and for whom this Nation truly exists. Not surprisingly, the founders of our Republic, the framers of our Constitution—both Federalists and Antifederalists—rejected the Collectivist ideology and the systems so grounded on that ideology, out-of-hand. as the Collectivist vision of society, top down rule, and strict control over the conduct and thoughts of the populace, was clearly not something they envisioned for our Nation, not something they wanted, and, in fact, it was something they absolutely deplored. Why, then, would anyone, after 200+ years of seeing the founders' vision come to fruition in the culmination of a highly successful powerful and free Nation that the founders of our Republic gave us, wish to reverse that course? Is it because these Radical Leftists and Progressives really believe our Nation is grounded on immorality, or so these Radical Left politicians say and would have the American citizenry believe, in order to make them amenable to the creation of a radically changed society, grounded on the tenets of Collectivism. It may be that some of these politicians do truly believe that our Nation is predicated on unethical, immoral tenets, notwithstanding the fact that most Americans have prospered in our Nation, and all Americans have certainly been given the opportunity to prosper in our Nation if they choose to take advantage of the opportunities the Nation has provided for its citizenry. But, if, nonetheless, these Radical Left and Progressive politicians believe our Nation does not deserve to continue to exist as a free Republic, regardless of its success as a free Republic, founded on the principles of fundamental rights and liberties of man, because, simply, to these politicians, and to their hangers-on, the Nation is perceived as immoral and because they perceive the Nation to be grounded on immorality, then these Radical Left and Progressive politicians have a very  odd notion of morality.The oddity of the Radical Left’s morality is reflected in their policy choices. Grounded on the ethical system of Utilitarian Consequentialism, the Leftist extremist and his cousin, the Progressive, do not look to the motives, the intentions of a person’s actions, when ascertaining whether an act is considered morally good or morally evil, but, rather they look to the consequences of one’s actions—and only to the consequences of one's actions.Thus, for the Radical Left and for Progressives it isn’t the person who is the subject of blame for harm he or she does to another person; not really. Rather, it is the result of a person’s action—the consequences, alone—that is deemed to be morally good or morally evil. Further, Leftists infer that it is the negative consequences that one’s harmful actions have upon society as a whole. rather than the impact of the negative consequences on another individual that is considered the seat of the immoral conduct. Thus, for the Leftist Extremist and Progressive one’s conduct, good or bad, is a function of the effect that a given behavior has on society as whole, irrespective of the impact of the conduct--namely the harm imposed on another or benefit derived--that is deemed important in a determination of what constitutes good, morally correct, conduct and what constitutes evil, immoral conduct. For more on this see the Arbalest Quarrel article, “Guns, Knives, and Occams Dangerous Razor,” posted on June 1, 2014, and reposted in Ammoland Shooting Sports News, on June 2, 2014, under the title, "Coffee Conversations with the Anti Side."

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES ON RADICAL LEFT/PROGRESSIVE DUPLICITY, MENDACITY, AND HYPOCRISY

PART THREE

WHICH SIDE REALLY HOLDS THE MORAL HIGH GROUND: A POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONSERVATIVE OR THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIBERAL, A.K.A., RADICAL LEFTIST AND PROGRESSIVE?

I. THE ETHICAL SYSTEM OF THE RADICAL LEFT AND PROGRESSIVES

Consistent with the ethical system of Utilitarian Consequentialism, the value the Radical Left and Progressives place on the life, safety, welfare, and well-being of individuals is essentially irrelevant because the value of any individual human life, in the Radical Left’s ethical scheme, is subordinated to what is presumed to be of benefit to the society as a whole—that is to say, what is deemed most to benefit the safety, welfare and well-being of the Hive; of the Collective. Benefits accruing to individuals do not factor into their analysis of what makes for a sound ethical system. Concern for the individual is essentially irrelevant.A corollary to their ethical system that stresses consequences of actions rather than motives behind actions is that a person, being a component of society, is, ultimately, not responsible for his or her actions, because, as the Radical Leftist and Progressive concludes, a person is deemed to be a product of that society. So, then, the Radical Leftist and Progressive surmises that it is really society itself that is to blame for the harm that one does to others, and the human agent is basically blameless. Is it, then, any wonder that the Radical Left and Progressives seek to empty our prisons, letting even the most dangerous, sordid and loathsome elements of society out into the street to prey once again on the innocent? In the mind of the Radical Leftist and Progressive this is precisely what they want to do, and what they have asserted they will do if they take control of the reins of Government. So, to improve society, the Radical Left and Progressives ask: How can we maximize utility for society as a whole? And they include into the equation, for maximizing utility, the lowest common denominator in society: the illiterate and dangerous illegal alien; the career criminal; members of drug cartels and criminal gangs; the psychopathic killer; and the violent lunatic. The Radical Leftist and Progressive, then ask: What policy choices can we make to maximize public order in society? As proponents of Collectivism, the Radical Leftist and Progressive looks to Government to implement and maintain control over those policy choices. And, while looking the other way where the worst elements of society lie in wait to prey on the innocent, they look to Government to determine what is deemed to be appropriate conduct for everyone else, and they look to Government to curb what they deem to be the worst excesses of human behavior. But, what it is that is deemed to amount to the worst excesses of human behavior is not--contrary to what reason would dictate, and as a reasonable person would surmise--behavior involving physical harm to another, but, rather, behavior manifesting as undesirable political and social belief structures, which the Radical Left and Progressives, themselves, are certain they are in the best position to determine and to define.Understand, Radical Leftists and Progressives, as proponents of the social and political principles and tenets of Collectivism and as strong adherents of the ethical system of Utilitarian Consequentialism, look to a well-ordered and well engineered society as promoting ethical conduct among the populace. But the well-ordered, well-engineered society they conceive of is not one that permits dissenting voices, as that is perceived as threatening public order.Thus, the gravest threat to the well-0rdered and well-engineered society, for Radical Leftists and Progressives is one that fosters freedom of thought and conduct among the polity. What Radical Leftists and Progressives strive for, above all else, is uniformity in thought and conduct. But, what, then, do Radical Leftists and Progressives make of the criminal element and the criminally insane in their well-ordered and well-engineered society?The criminal element and the criminally insane are beyond the pale. That, of course, understood by everyone. But, the career criminal and the criminally insane are not considered an existential threat to the well-ordered and well-engineered society of the Radical Left and of Progressives.The conduct of this lowest common denominator of society does represent a threat to the innocent members of the polity to be sure. But Radical Leftists and Progressives do not concern themselves with the loss of life and and harm that comes to individuals, as long as the inner Hive, the greater society, the Collective remains intact. Behavioral conditioning can be used and would probably be used to keep the lowest common denominator in check. This idea is explored in the 1962 book, "A Clockwork Orange," by Anthony Burgess.But such behavioral conditioning has no impact on rational individuals who happen merely to adhere to a political and social philosophy--distinct from that of the Radical Leftist and Progressive who opposes and denigrates the political and social philosophy of the founders of our free Republic. The Radical leftist and Progressive does not and will not tolerate social and political philosophies that are at loggerheads with their own as we see today. Such people don't even wish to debate differences in philosophies.So, then, suppose a person holds to the ideas of the founders of our Republic who had a firm belief in the existence of  fundamental, natural rights that exist intrinsically in man, as bestowed upon man by the Divine Creator, an idea that operates as the great foundation of our free Republic. But, that idea constitutes a danger to the well-ordered, well-engineered society envisioned by the Radical Leftist and Progressive, and must be censored.If the Radical Leftists and Progressives take control of Government in 2020, they will be in the position of transforming this Nation into a Collectivist nightmare--a society inconceivable to the founders of a free Republic; a society grounded on principles inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights. Hence, if a society envisioned by the Radical Left and Progressives should come to fruition, then those individuals who hold to political, social, and ethical belief systems that are the inverse of those held by the Radical Left and Progressives, will be perceived as a direct and imminent threat to the atheistic ideals of Marxism, Socialism, Communism and to the societal structure grounded on one of those political, social, and economic systems. So, if the Dystopian vision of the Radical Left and Progressives is, in fact, realized, no belief system antithetical to their vision of a well-ordered, well-engineered society that is grounded on the principles of Marxism, Socialism, or Communism will be tolerated, and proponents of such other belief systems will be ostracized at best, and, at worst they will be banished from the Country or held indefinitely in detention centers or in asylums.

II. THE ETHICAL SYSTEM OF CONSERVATIVES

The Conservative, placing value of the life of the individual over that of an amorphous Collective or Society, or  “Hive,” holds individual as ultimate agents of therefore behavior and therefore holds the individual responsible for his or her actions.Such individuals who, then, adhere to the tenets and principles of Individualism, extol a normative view grounded on a deontological ethical system. In accordance with the postulates of this system, a human agent's conduct is determined to be good or evil on the basis of one's human motivation; intentions. A proponent of Deontology looks to a human agent's intentions in assessing whether conduct is good, bad, or neutral. This ethical system often proceeds from the idea that man, being created in the image of God, bears ultimate responsibility for his or her actions. This idea is an anathema to the Radical Leftist and Progressive as their belief systems do not posit the existence of a omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect Being. In fact, their philosophy rules out the existence of a Divine Creator. Thus, it should come as no surprise that Radical Leftists and many Progressives support late-term, at will abortion. But, the point here is that the views of most Americans are altogether antithetical to the tenets and principles of Collectivism and are antithetical to the ethical system of Utilitarian Consequentialism. The Conservative asks: How can the life, safety, and well-being of the individual American citizen be effectively secured? The Radical Left and Progressives, caring little for the well-being of individuals, and more for the ostensible well-being of society, do not profess concern for the individual at all and, so, dismiss the question posed by the Conservative, out-of-hand, as the question is meaningless, or even nonsensical to the Radical Leftist and Progressive.The political and social philosophy of the Conservative, predicated on the tenets of Individualism, as held by the framers of our Constitution, and, contrariwise, the political and social philosophy of Leftists, predicated on the tenets of Collectivism, are antithetical and, so, incapable of reconciliation. There exist two different visions for this Nation: one that seeks to preserve a Free Republic, along with the autonomy and sovereignty of the individual, consistent with the intention of the framers of our Constitution; and the other social and political philosophy that seeks nothing less than to wipe the slate clean, and, then, having stated over, working toward establishing a Marxist society, a Collective, to be injected into a transnational, supranational system of governance, based in Europe.

THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS IS ANTITHETICAL TO THE TENETS OF COLLECTIVISM

THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHIES OF INDIVIDUALISTS AND COLLECTIVIST ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE AND CANNOT BE RECONCILED WITH EACH OTHER

THE ETHICAL SYSTEMS AND THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHIES OF THE INDIVIDUALISTS AND COLLECTIVISTS, RESTING AS THEY DO ON A WHOLLY DISTINCT SET OF POSTULATES, ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE SYSTEMS AND CANNOT BE RECONCILED; THEREFORE NEGOTIATION AND COMPROMISE BETWEEN THE TWO IS LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. EACH SIDE EVINCES COMPLETELY DIFFERENT VISIONS FOR OUR COUNTRY AND THE VISIONS OF THE TWO SIDES ARE INCOMPATIBLE WITH EACH OTHER.

We see two different value systems of two distinct political and social philosophies, one reflecting the tenets of Individualism and the other reflecting the tenets of Collectivism. Each side frames the political, social, and ethical questions in mutually exclusive ways, as each side emphasizes different values, and, this in turn, is reflected in the policy choices each side makes, as that side attempts to resolve what it perceives as distinct political, social, and ethical problems and dilemmas. Given this indisputable fact, negotiation and compromise is impossible, as the vision each side embraces for this Country are absolutely at odds with each other.Hence, we see the different value systems of these two distinct political and social political philosophies reflected in the questions each side asks itself and, this, in turn, is reflected in the policy choices each side makes. Thus, we see each side taking completely different policy positions on every major issue: three of the salient, pressing ones, of late, being firearms, abortion, and immigration. But, why is that? Why are there such profound differences on social and political issues--such profound differences, in fact, that each side doesn't even ask the same questions, approaching the issues in such different veins that it is impossible for each side to even begin to understand the other side. It is as if each side is speaking a different language. And this being so, it stands to reason that resolution of political and social issues would reflect demonstrably distinct, antithetical policy choices that make reconciliation between the two sides impossible. It is for this reason that there can be no compromise, no negotiation between the two sides, as any attempt to do so, would be sterile, empty, as one side seeks to preserve the philosophical underpinnings upon which this Nation was created, the free Republic the founders placed their very lives on the line to create and to provide for future generations of Americans; and the other side seeks to rend and replace the Nation the founders created. The profound differences of the two sides being irreconcilable, and so profound, so resolute, and on existing on such a basic, elemental level, that the conditions for the possibility of an actual modern civil war unfolding, are very real.** The Radical Leftists and Progressives seek nothing less than to replace our free Republic with no less than a Marxist styled dictatorship, a regime that is visibly at odds with the Nation as it presently exists, and they intend to follow through with their plans. Those individuals who wish to preserve our Nation as a free Republic, as the founders intended , the political Conservative, will never permit or abide by the uprooting of the philosophical underpinnings of our Nation as a free Republic, where the individual is autonomous and sovereign.Leftist extremists have shown their contemptuousness of and open hostility toward the U.S. President, Donald Trump. They hate him for having the audacity to attempting to preserve our Nation as a Free Republic. These same Marxist, Radical Leftists and Progressives have shown no less a contemptuous attitude and hostility toward the founders of our Nation, the framers of our Constitution. The Radical Left and Progressives that have essentially taken control of the Democrats and of the Democratic Party, demonstrate open disrespect toward, and, in fact, deep loathing of and perverse, monstrous abhorrence toward the founders of our Nation, and have demonstrated their deep abiding contemptuousness of, and, in fact, open defiance toward our Nation's Constitution, and toward our Nation's fundamental, natural rights and liberties, toward our Nation's long, glorious history and culture, and toward our Nation's institutions, the entirety of it. The Radical Leftists disrespect of our Country and of its people, whom they bizarrely and erroneously divide into two disparate, armed camps of victims and overlords (victimizers), is not only extreme in the conception, but pathological in the use. In fact the very notion that this Nation, a Nation of free citizens, is comprised of two broad classes of people, the oppressed and their oppressors is outright ludicrous, but it does serve its ignoble purpose. The ruthless and reprehensible designers of disquiet and disruption in our Nation, the social engineers who desire to disrupt and corrupt the orderly operation of society, to weaken and confound the citizenry, have done so, that they more easily control it; so that they can remold it, reshape it, and insert it anew into the Marxist vision of Hell on Earth they have conceived: a world of vast surveillance and control over the mass of populations; a world where the mass of humanity is reduced to servitude and penury and where those who object, those who dissent, those who demand freedom and liberty are brutally crushed into submission. This cannot be reasonably denied, as there exists mounting evidence to the contrary: the rebellious, disaffected extremists have taken over the Democratic Party. The current Democratic speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, hardly a proponent of the Bill of Rights, has been principally silent. She has lost her grip of the House. Whether afraid to wrest control from the mutinous Radical Left or otherwise through an attempt to retain a modicum of power through obsequious acquiescence to it, Pelosi herself, has become subservient to the frenzied call for immediate transformation of the U.S. into a Marxist dictatorship. Those of the Left seek nothing less now than open revolt, audacious in the conception, frightening in scope; but hardly grandiose; simply disgusting, reprehensible, and absolutely insane. These Radical Leftists, who had sought to reshape society quietly, through the social policies of Barack Obama, and which were to continue through the regime of Hillary Clinton, were dismayed to see the election of Donald Trump and to witness his Administration throwing a wrench into their incremental path to a Marxist world State. And Seeing that their master plan for a quiet progression of the U.S. toward Marxism was failing, possibly could fail, the Internationalist Billionaire architects of a one World Government went to work. Their plans for a one world political, social, economic, and cultural system of governance would now have to be made plain, to be made obvious to the American people. And they set to work to destroy Trump's Presidency. They have attempted to do so audaciously, and they continue to do audaciously, attacking and ridiculing the man himself, as well as attacking the President's policies for returning our Nation to its historical roots. And what they desired to do incrementally, they now seek to do quickly, through one major push, one massive frontal assault on the Nation and its Constitution and its people. Whoever gains the nomination of the Democratic Party and whomever it is that might gain the U.S. Presidency, no longer matters. There are no political Moderates left in that Party who have the Will, the Backing, and the fortitude to wrest control from the dominant Radical Left. Whomever in the Democratic Party it is that retakes the White House, will be taking his or her marching orders from the Billionaire Internationalists, and through their minions in the Party. And, as these supranationalist, one-world Government organizers have lost patience with a slow, incremental transformation of this Nation into a Collectivist one-world State, expecting, anticipating this Nation's slow but inexorable, assured fall into unceremonious ruin, only to be rebuilt, but only to be rebuilt as a cog of a world super-state, they now seek a rapid advance. Should a "Democrat," any so-called Democrat, takes over the reins of the Executive Branch of Government, expect to see a rapid political, social, cultural, economic upheaval to occur, and as the new "President" will have the legitimacy of the Office of President, in which to mount the  upheaval of this Nation internally, it will be difficult to prevent the metamorphosis of this Nation into a Marxist Hell. And, what will all this mean for the American people?These Radical Leftists and Progressives desire to erase the very memory of our Nation as it is, and once was, and is ever to be. They seek to wipe the slate clean, to start over; to replace a free Republic and a free People with a thing that died long ago and that should have remained dead and buried long ago--the Marxist Collectivist Dystopian dream of a one world borderless political, social, economic, construct, ruled by an all seeing, all knowing, all powerful Government. This is the Collectivist nightmare of a world devoid of nations, devoid of free citizens, devoid of hope, dreams, and reason; a world containing serfs, drones, and slaves, all controlled by a small cadre of ruthless overseers, intent on containing, constricting dissent, and bending entire populations to their will, the goal of which is to provide uniformity in thought and conduct, along with confounding, oppressive stasis.____________________________________________**For a detailed account of the major political and social differences between Radical Leftists/Progressives, on the one hand, and Conservatives, on the other, the Arbalest Quarrel has pointed out the salient differences between the two sides, providing then the reason why compromise between the two is empirically impossible. One side ascribes to the basic tenets of Collectivism, an ideology upon which the social and political philosophy of the Radical Leftists and Progressives is predicated. The other side ascribes to the basic tenets of Individualism, an ideology upon which the social and political philosophy of the Conservatives is predicated, upon which our Nation was founded and upon which it presently exists. We invite interested readers to take a look at two Arbalest Quarrel articles on the subject, both of which were posted on AQ in October 2018: "In the Throes of the America's Modern Day Civil War," and "The Modern American Civil War: A Clash of Ideologies."____________________________________________

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES ON RADICAL LEFT/PROGRESSIVE DUPLICITY, MENDACITY, AND HYPOCRISY

PART FOUR

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY THAT EXISTS TODAY COMPRISES FEWER TRUE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIBERALS AND MANY MORE ILLIBERAL SOCIAL AND POLITICAL RADICALS AND PROGRESSIVE ELEMENTS

Let us postulate up front that the Democratic Party today reflects a much more radical social and political philosophy than in the past. It is much changed from the Party that existed even a few years ago, under the Obama Administration, extreme as the Obama Administration was.Although the mainstream media, which is in essentially in lockstep with the radical elements of the Democratic Party, manifests a continued predilection to use the expression 'liberal' to describe and represent the basic political and social orientation of the Democratic Party, nonetheless use of that expression to describe the prevalent outlook and orientation of the Democratic Party today is misnomer as the Democratic Party has, today, a clearly different orientation. The Party has been essentially if not completely radicalized, co-opted by the most radical elements in it, and these radical elements clearly present the Party and represent the Party's face to the Nation and to the world.The mainstream media, and, most notoriously, The New York Times, uses the term, 'liberal,' erroneously, and deceptively, and, therefore, to our mind, irresponsibly, to describe the Democratic Party as it is aware that the Party is a decidedly wildly Leftist extremist organization and, so, the term, 'liberal' is therefore wildly inaccurate.The mainstream media continues to use the expression, 'liberal,' instead of the clearly more accurate term, 'radical,' when mentioning Democratic Party politicians, and it does so to create the illusion that the Democratic Party is within the social and political mainstream fabric of the American polity when it knows very well that the Party is not within the political mainstream of the American public.Why, then, does the mainstream media deliberately use an erroneous term to describe the Democratic Party? It does so because the Press is most assuredly aware that the term, social and political, 'radical,' comes across as a pejorative to most Americans; understandably so, as Americans, for the most part, don't have a favorable view of Marxists, Socialists, and Communists--the very groups that, we know, are in league with the new Democratic Party and that are secretly supporting the Democratic Party. Several members of the Party have, indeed, unreservedly fashioned themselves as Marxists, Socialists, and, yes, Communists, too, even if very few of them use any one of those expressions to describe themselves, thus so. Their sympathies are clear enough through their statements and through their policy planks.

THE ILLIBERAL RADICAL LEFTIST AND PROGRESSIVE HAVE A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT VIEW OF RELATIONSHIP OF INDIVIDUALS TO SOCIETY AND TO GOVERNMENT

It is impossible for the Political and Social Conservative, on the one hand, and the illiberal, Political and Social Radical Left and Progressive, on the other hand to come to a mutually acceptable agreement on any public policy issue because, on a very basic, almost subliminal level, the two sides happen to view a human being in a completely different light and happen to view the relationship of the human being to society and to Government in a completely different light.Both the modern-day Conservative and the founders of our Free Republic, placed their faith in the human being and were wary of Government. Contrariwise, the Radical Leftist and Progressive place their faith alone in the State qua Government, not the human being. The Radical Leftist and Progressive are wary of individuals when left to their own devices, and trust Government to curb the worst excesses of the individual, oblivious, then, to the fact that Government itself, composed of individuals, is itself subject to the worst excesses, and, with control over the military and of the police and intelligence apparatuses, as well as over the media, presents the worst of dangers. For Government cannot help but become intolerant, autocratic, and, wielding the tremendous power it does if that power itself is not curbed, will invariably exhibit the worst excesses. It will demand uniformity in thought and action among the polity. It will crush the individual into submission to the Will of the State; and in so doing, will erase the very notions of a individual autonomy and individual self-worth and of integrity of Self. So, it is that the framers of our Constitution limited the powers of Federal Government and took the further step of distributing such limited powers the Government had to three separate but equal Branches of Government as set forth in the first three Articles of the Constitution. And, so it is that we see in the assertions of the Radical Left and in their policy choices, a fervent desire to countermand all that the framers of our Constitution, in their wisdom devised and implemented, as these Radical Leftists desire to place strict and stringent control over each American citizen’s behavior, and, indeed, over the individual’s thought processes as well; duplicitously, telling the public that this is a good thing, that society is better served when, contrary to the concerns of the framers of our Constitution, Government should not be constrained; but should firmly control the conduct and thoughts of all Americans, dictate to each American what constitutes correct and proper thought and conduct. In so doing, the Radical Left believes, society will be better served.It should come as no surprise to anyone, then, that the Radical Leftist and Progressive would seek to destroy the means by which and through which the individual may emphasize his or her individuality. The Radical Leftist and Progressive does not accept, indeed, cannot even understand that the American is expected and should be expected to take personal responsibility over his or her life, safety, health, and well-being, and be left alone, in peace. The Radical Left and the Progressives will have none of that. Thus, they seek to restrain and curb free speech, including the tacit right of freedom of association, codified in the First Amendment. They seek to deny to the individual the unalienable, immutable, natural right to protect him or herself with the best means of doing so, a firearm; more, they seek to deny to the individual the right to protect his or her life and liberty from the tyranny of Government, thus dismissing out-of-hand the idea that Government is best that Governs least; denigrating, obviating the import and purport of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Ever suspicious of the idea upon which our Nation was founded—that the individual must be left alone, they seek to keep tabs on the individual, to surveil the individual, creating dossiers on every American citizen from the moment of birth to the moment of death. This is, all of it, contrary to the dictates of the unreasonable searches and seizures clause of the Fourth Amendment. But, those who hold to the ideas of the illiberal Radical Left and Progressive, care not for the strictures of the Bill of Rights.NOTHING DISTINGUISHES THE TWO POLITICAL AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHIES—THAT OF THE RADICAL NEW PROGRESSIVE LEFT AND THE CONSERVATIVE ON THE OTHER—MORE THAN ON THE ISSUE OF FIREARMSThe Radical New Progressive Left abhors guns as much from an aesthetic standpoint as from a political, social, and ethical one. Thus, they never fail to use a particularly tragic albeit rare instance of misuse of a firearm by the criminal and the occasional lunatic to denounce firearms ownership and possession generally, vociferously, and this is reflected in the question they ask and the manner in which they ask it: How can society protect itself from the scourge of guns? You will note that their professed concern is that of society, of the Collective, the Hive, not that of the individual, even if they perforce assert that their concern is to protect lives. Be advised, the question they pose is really merely rhetorical as their answer to the scourge of guns is implied in the question as framed, namely: remove as many guns, and as many kinds of guns, and from as many people, as possible, and in the shortest amount of time. But, will doing so, really serve to protect people? The Radical Left and Progressive doesn't really respond rationally to this query, because they accept, as a given, even if statistically untrue; and the assumption is untrue that more innocent lives will be spared once guns are removed from the citizenry. Although the idea is false, one may reasonably ponder whether, on its face, the idea that the public will be served by banning, say,  every semiautomatic rifle, shotgun, and handgun from even plausible? Since millions of average law-abiding, rational Americans do you use semiautomatic firearms for self-defense and since, statistically, in any given years, hundreds of thousands of people and, according to some studies, over one million people, have used firearms successfully for self-defense. See, e.g., See, Guns, Crime, And Safety: A Conference Sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute and the Center for Law, Economics, and Public Policy at Yale Law School: Safe-Storage Gun Laws: Accidental Deaths, Suicides, and Crime, 44 J. Law & Econ. 659, 660-664 (1991) by John R. Lott, Jr., American Enterprise Institute and John E. Whitley, University of Adelaide. Who will protect the lives of the people when they they are denied the best means available for defending their life and the lives of family members? On the issue of gun violence, the Conservative, asks a different question entirely. It is this: How can the citizenry best protect itself from violent acts, generally? Framed in this way, the real issue, for the political and social Conservative, has less to do with guns and more to do with a desire to curb those elements in society that are the cause of violence, whether those elements cause violence by means of guns, knives, bombs, or any other implement, including the use of bare hands.Framing the question in the way that the Conservative does, three things become clear. First, it is manifestly clear that, for the political and social Conservative no less than for the framers of our Constitution, and consistent with the framers political and social philosophy, grounded on the tenets of Individualism, and not Collectivism, the critical concern is directed to maximizing the life, and safety, and well-being of the individual from both the violence of others and from the tyranny of Government. It is manifestly clear, second, that ultimate concern ought to be and must be for the life, health, safety, and well-being of the individual in society, since, for the Conservative, there is nothing beneficial to be perceived in maintaining order in society merely for the sake of the greater society, the Collective, the Hive. Rather, the central focus must be on ensuring the life, health, safety, and well-being of actual people, namely, for the hundreds of millions of innocent individual souls that comprise society. Third, it is manifestly clear that the best means of securing the life, safety, and well-being of the individual in society, and that also serves at the same time to prevent the onset of Governmental usurpation of the sovereignty of the American people—i.e., to prevent tyranny or, at least, to deter the onset tyranny—is by arming the citizen. This the founders new full well and they provided for it in codifying the right of the people to keep and bear arms in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Thus, the immediate answer to threats of violence from criminals and from the threat of lunatics hell-bent on creating violence, preying at will on the innocent members of the polity, is by seeing to it that every law-abiding, rational citizen who wishes to exercise his or her right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense and to deter the tyranny of Government is not prevented from doing so, as it is self-evident, true, both in the dim past and to the present day, that the individual will have the best chance of successfully thwarting the threat of aggression and violence if he has the best means of at hand of doing so, and that means arming the citizen with a firearm. Further the armed citizenry is the most effective means for thwarting the rise of totalitarianism in the Nation. For the Radical Left and Progressives, though, the very idea of arming the citizen is an anathema to them. They willingly accept, and many of them gladly accept,  the loss of innocent lives as long as the greater society, the Collective, the Hive, is secured; and societal order, as they see it, can only come about through the presence of a powerful Government, overseeing the Radical Left's vision of a well-ordered, well-engineered society. The armed citizen is, as they see it, a dire threat to the preservation of, and, as well, to the very existence of a well-ordered, well-engineered society. This means that any potential threat to the authority of Government must be checked. And, an armed citizenry is perceived as an ominous direct threat to the authority of Government. Of course, the Radical Leftist and Progressive knows well enough that, for what they have in mind, criminal misuse of firearms will continue, unabated, regardless of the insincere messaging the spew out to the public, directly or through their fellow traveler, the Press.But, it is passing curious strange that the Radical Progressive New Left draws attention to rare mass shootings but pays little, if any, attention to the more serious instances of constant shootings, commonplace in Cities like Chicago. Clearly, the Radical Progressive New Left perceive Chicago as a well-ordered society that clamps down on citizen possession of guns, even as rampant crime exists in that City, as the criminal element runs amok. It is obvious these Collectivists do not view crime and deaths by gun violence as a threat at all. Their sole objective is to deny to the average, law-abiding, rational citizen the means to best counter the threat of violence, whether by guns or by any other means, by precluding the law-abiding and innocent citizen the right to keep and bear arms.Thus the extremist Leftist elements have made clear that their disdain and abhorrence of guns is not predicated on a concern for alleviating violence, whether by guns or by any other means, contrary to what they happen to broadcast through the media, as their real fear is not mass shootings at all, or any other criminal act of violence for that matter. What it is they fear most, and what they refuse to countenance, is the continued existence of an armed citizenry. An armed citizenry constitutes the greatest threat, as they see it, to the emergence of an all-knowing, all-powerful Government, along with the emergence of a welfare-dependent citizenry existing in their socially-engineered Marxist-welfare State. It is no mistake, then, that the vast majority of firearms laws—federal, State, and local—that presently exist, and the many more the Radical Progressive New Left wants to enact, are directed to restricting the average, law-abiding citizen's exercise of their fundamental, immutable, unalienable right to keep and bear arms—more so than simply preventing the criminal and lunatic. For if they truly wished to prevent or reduce criminal use of firearms, they would argue for fervent enforcement of the laws that presently exist, and would ascertain that any new law they sought to create would zero in on the criminal and lunatic and not target millions of average, law-abiding, sane gun owners. If question about this, they would be compelled to admit it is so. Their justification is that criminals and lunatics will be brought under the umbrella of further restrictive gun laws and that any law-abiding American who wishes to exercise his or her right to keep and bear arms should understand that forced gun restrictions on law-abiding guns owners is the best way to protect everyone. But, this is no more than a makeweight and arrogant presumption, and it is an erroneous presumption at that.One can, of course, debate the issue of whether the loss of individual safety and well-being is an acceptable price to pay for presumed public safety and well-being. The Conservative would be willing to engage in debate the issue in front of the Nation. The Radical Progressive Leftist would never be willing to do so, finding it easier to shout down naysayers, rather than engaging in calm, rational, intelligent debate. Be that as it may, what is lost in any argument about safety and security is the nature of the right at stake.The founders accepted, as self-evident true that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a fundamental, unalienable, immutable, natural right existent in the individual American, as bestowed on the individual by the Divine Creator. It is not and never has been a mere privilege, and it is not to be seen as a privilege. But that is how the Collectivist sees it: something created by Government and, as such, the ostensible “right” to possess firearms is really nothing more than a privilege. And if Government creates the privilege, Government can bestow the privilege on some, as Government wishes, and can determine how that privilege is exercised. And Government as the creator of the privilege can just as easily rescind the privilege.Those who hold to the tenets of Collectivism and to the ethical system of Utilitarian Consequentialism view gun ownership and possession only as a privilege, not as right at all, whether fundamental or not. And, in that failure to accept the right embodied in the Second Amendment and the rights embodied in the other Nine Amendments, comprising our Bill of Rights, as things bestowed onto man by the power and authority of Government, must acknowledge that rights, as with any man-made statute, are ephemeral, mutable, subject to modification or abrogation by Government. But, that idea makes a mockery of our Constitution, and, denies, out of hand the sanctity of it and the immutability of the rights and liberties set forth in it, as understood by the founders of our Nation as a free, Constitutional Republic. Thus, the Collectivist denies, out of hand, the very underpinnings of a free Republic and the relationship between the American citizen and the federal Government.But, for inclusion of our Bill of Rights into our Constitution, the notion of gun rights would not exist and the notion of free, unrestrained and unconstrained free speech and unconstrained freedom of association would not exist—not because the rights really don’t exist, they do, but because some would choose simply not to recognize the fact of natural, immutable, fundamental rights preexistent in man. Fortunately, the Antifederalists among the founders made a point of requiring that a certain set of critical natural, immutable, fundamental rights be codified in the Constitution if the States were to ratify it. The Federalists thought it unnecessary to do so since, for them, the existence of natural rights and liberties were self-evident true, understood by all without codification, and were concerned that making a point of listing a few natural rights might lead some people to deny the efficacy of others, a misconception, a misconception of the Federalists but one that the Antifederalists dealt with, anyway, through inclusion of the text of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments into the Bill of Rights.One thing is patently clear: The New Progressive Left Collectivists accept as axiomatic the idea that our Bill of Rights, as with every other part of the Constitution, is infinitely malleable, subject to constant modification, refinement, or outright abrogation. It isn’t and believing it to be so, doesn’t make it so. But they don’t care. It doesn’t matter to them. They have, as is unfortunately apparent, convinced a substantial portion of the polity of this Nation, through incessant irrational and illogical and noxious proselytizing and propagandizing, that the polity would indeed be better off if the Second Amendment were stricken from the Bill of Rights. It would still exist of course since the right exists intrinsically in man’s very being, and not in the written text. But, in the act of striking the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights, or simply in ignoring it, the tyranny of Government would be noticeably at hand.

INTRODUCTION TO SERIES ON RADICAL LEFT/PROGRESSIVE DUPLICITY, MENDACITY, AND HYPOCRISY

PART FIVE

THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF THE RADICAL LEFT AND PROGRESSIVE ELEMENTS IN THE U.S.

The Radical Left and Progressive movement seeks the creation of a well-ordered, well-engineered society, one grounded on the realization of the Marxist Utopian vision--a holistic society, one existing beyond the confines of the Nation, embracing the entire world; a New World Order, comprising at first all western nations, and ultimately all nations. In this vision, the very notions of ‘nation-state’ and ‘citizen,’ are obsolete. Also obsolete, are the very  notions of national culture and history. But, this goal can only be achieved if the populace of all nations, including the populace of the United States, are willing, or if not willing then required, to relinquish such rights and liberties specific nation-states may happen to have. The Radical Left and the Progressives envision an omnipotent, omniscient transnational, supranational Governmental construct, and the populations of all Western nations will be required to submit to the dictates of this entity. But, although what they envision may work—indeed is working in the nations comprising the EU, notwithstanding the EU is facing substantial and harsh push-back—and as it has worked or is working in the Commonwealth nations comprising Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, it is not something that can work and was never meant to work in the United States. For, unlike all other nations on Earth, the United States alone, has embodied in its Constitution—the blueprint of the Nation as a free Republic—a Bill of Rights. This is the critical Document the Federalists, among the framers of the Constitution, felt unnecessary, to incorporate into the completed Constitution, but a Document the prescient Antifederalists demanded, nonetheless, be incorporated into the Constitution if the States were to ratify the Constitution.Fortunately, the Antifederalists, among the framers, made a convincing case for incorporation of a Bill of Rights into the Nation’s Constitution and it is for this reason alone, and no other, that our Nation, to this day, still exists as a free, Constitutional Republic. The existence of our Bill of Rights,understood to be a codification of natural law, that supersedes all man-made law and that exists intrinsically in man, preexisiting any and all societal and governmental constructs exists is perceived as no less than a slap in the face to Radicals and Progressives.But, for inclusion of our Bill of Rights into our Constitution, the notion of gun rights would not exist; the notion of free, unrestrained and unconstrained free speech and unconstrained freedom of association would not exist.Thus, the Radical Left and Progressives seek to destroy it all and are frustrated and enraged over their inability to do so even as they have apparently convinced a substantial portion of the polity of this Nation, through incessant irrational and illogical and noxious proselytizing and propagandizing, to forsake its God-given, fundamental and immutable right of the people to keep and bear arms and to forsake its other fundamental, unalienable, immutable, elemental, rights and liberties, upon which this Nation was founded and upon which this Nation cannot otherwise exist.____________________________________________*Even in the Scandinavian Countries, especially Sweden, that the Radical Left here refers to as an example of a social and economic system that works, Socialism is not all that it is cracked up to be as reported by the website, frontpage. Further, it must be pointed out that the Scandinavian Countries like Sweden are Countries with a small, homogenous population, unlike the populations of United States and Russia. In fact, it has become apparent that, with Angela Merkel’s influence, the EU has been flooded with millions of refugees, primarily from the Middle East. The political and social and cultural background of these people are extraordinarily rigid. They have no concept whatsoever of the philosophical principles of Ancient Greece and Rome, upon which the culture of Western Nations are grounded, and have shown no propensity to assimilate. In fact, these Middle Eastern refugees have demonstrated a perverse desire to force their own radical social and cultural theocratic value system onto their host Countries, rather than complying with the laws of their host Countries, and inculcating the traditions and culture of their host Countries andUnderstandably, the Scandinavians are not amused by what they have experienced with a flood of Middle Eastern refugess into their Country. Moreover, the apparent Socialism of Sweden—see Forbes article—that might have some efficacy in a small homogenous society like Sweden breaks down quickly when a heterogenous population is inserted, unceremoniously into the Nation, and is immediately looking for, and even demanding, “handouts.” Even the left-wing weblog, Courthouse News Service, that expresses concern over the rise of “Nationalists” in Sweden, admits, if only  grudgingly, that the welfare system of Sweden is crumbling in part, at least, because of the presence of so many unassimilable refugees.Now imagine the impact of millions of illegal aliens in the U.S., and the Radical Left’s argument for a massive increase in the welfare state even as the debt in this Country approaches $1,000,000,000,000! As the Economist Milton Friedman warned, as reported in the website, daily hatch, “It is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. You cannot have both. If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which a resident is promised certain minimum level of income or a minimum subsistence regardless of whether he works or not produces it or not. Well then it really is an impossibility.”You have to ask yourself, do Radical Leftists, like U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who welcome an endless progression of illiterate, illegal aliens, and an expansive welfare State, know what this bodes for our Nation? For the U.S. Senator, he likely does know. Senator Sanders is intelligent. To realize his dream of a Socialist State in America, he wishes to destroy the Nation as a Free Republic, and rebuild it in his image of a magnanimous Socialist Utopia. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, unlike Sanders, is a moron, but simply abhors America and seeks, as well, to destroy it, in order to transform it into a massive welfare State. If they, both of them, have their wish, our Nation would indeed be destroyed. But, no Phoenix would arise from the ashes of that destruction, as they wrongly presume would happen. No! The Nation would be ruined forever; the remains to be subsumed, albeit it in a diminished state, into a new, transnational, supranational political, social, economic, cultural, financial and legal system of governance, likely headquartered in Brussels, which is the very heart and brain of the monstrosity known as the EU, and the the people of those nations and of our Nation, too, will be reduced to penury and servitude, and all subjects, of this new world order (no longer citizens of their Nations as Nations will no longer exist), will live under duress, and under the severe and stern hand of an all-seeing, all-powerful Government, watching one's every move, and controlling every thought. __________________________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

INTRODUCTION TO ARBALEST QUARREL SERIES ON RADICAL LEFT/PROGRESSIVE DUPLICITY, MENDACITY, AND HYPOCRISY

PART ONE

“Those whom heaven helps we call the sons of heaven. They do not learn this by learning. They do not work it by working. They do not reason it by using reason. To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven." ~Chuang Tse: XXIII, translated by the American writer, Ursula K. Le Guin; epigraph to Chapter 3 of her 1971 Sci Fi novella, “The Lathe of Heaven”

THE RADICAL LEFT AND PROGRESSIVES WILL CRUSH AMERICA INTO SUBMISSION IF THE NATION CONTINUES TO LISTEN TO THE NONSENSE  THEY SPOUT, FOR IT ISN'T KNOWLEDGE OR UNDERSTANDING THEY HAVE; AND HAVING NO WISDOM TO IMPART, THEY HAVE NOTHING OF NOTE TO SHARE

LOSS OF OUR NATION BEGINS WITH LOSS OF AN ARMED CITIZENRY

Never in our history, since the birth of the Nation itself, has our Nation faced a direct threat to its survival as it is facing today. This isn’t hyperbole. This is fact. Even in the face of the ravages of the American Civil War, and the calamity of the Second World War, and the threat posed to our Nation by Russia during its existence as the once powerful Soviet Union, during the Cold War era, has this Nation come closer to Armageddon. This fact is plain as day, on constant display, having commenced on the very day the Presidency of Donald Trump began—on noon EST on January 20, 2017, when Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States.Jealous and powerful elements both here and abroad have mobilized and joined forces to bring Trump down and have failed miserably. They are apoplectic over their consistent failures, and have been raging ever since.Immensely powerful, extraordinarily wealthy, abjectly ruthless, sinister, secretive forces, residing both here and abroad, have operated in concert to attack Trump’s Presidency and by extension to attack millions of Americans who voted for him in the General Election of 2016.These rapacious forces are ever devising and orchestrating, machinating and scheming. And they do so through the amalgam of: a duplicitous and compliant Press; treacherous and hypocritical politicians; recalcitrant and poisonous Federal Government bureaucrats; pestilential sympathizers in the entertainment business; virulent and violent and bellicose Radical Left activists; injurious or lackadaisical jurists; a pernicious academia; rapacious technology chieftains; and a host of hangers-on and fellow travelers and Anti-American sympathizers among the polity, have—all of them—failed to bring destruction both to the man and the Nation. They have failed to topple Trump and to destroy his Administration; and they have failed to destroy the will of the American people; and, to date, they have failed, utterly, to convince Americans to relinquish their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms; albeit, not for want of trying; and they are still doggedly trying.The only thing these perfidious, treacherous, malevolent, abhorrent forces have succeeded in doing is to draw unwanted attention to their goal of sucking the lifeblood out of this Nation, in a naked attempt to bring the Nation to heel; into the fold of the EU; and eventually, inexorably, unerringly into the grip of a new trans-global, supranational political, social, cultural, economic, financial, and legal system of governance; a new socialist world order ruled by a small cadre of sinister ministers, its heart resting in the interstices and bowels of Brussels.With 2020 hindsight the envious, fuming forces that had connived, threatened, and cajoled, albeit all for naught, to bring their stooge, the duplicitous, hypocritical, arrogant, and loathsome Hillary Rodham Clinton, to the seat of power in Washington, D.C., have licked their wounds and are intent on redressing their previous failure; to force the United States back on track toward realization of the goal of a one world socialist Government. And, if these ruthless forces succeed in placing their lackey, their factotum in the Oval Office, in 2020, everything this Nation has gained through the sacrifices of American patriots, from the American Revolution to the present day, will have been in vain. For, Americans will lose everything that has defined them and that has defined the Nation for over two hundred hears, commencing with loss of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, the most sacred fundamental, immutable right of all.

WHAT CAN ALL OF US DO TO KEEP THE RADICAL LEFT ANTIGUN MOB FROM INFRINGING THE FUNDAMENTAL, NATURAL, UNALIENABLE, IMMUTABLE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS?

Tell your Congressional Delegation, and your State and local Legislators that you expect them to honor their sworn oath and commitment to uphold the U.S. Constitution, as this requires them to take action to preserve and strengthen the right of the people to keep and bear arms; and that means protecting the natural right of self-defense. It also means that such firearms that are in common use including semiautomatic rifles, shotguns, and handguns, as well as revolvers, should be available to the average, law-abiding, rational American citizen. How can we best to achieve this goal? We can achieve this goal by meeting the threat to our most sacred, sacrosanct right by meeting those who would destroy our Nation’s Birthright head-on. Tell your Congressional Delegation to recommit to passing National Concealed Handgun Carry legislation.The most effective way to attack antigun Radical Leftists seeking to weaken the Second Amendment that it may wither on the vine, is not—as all too many Republicans have been seen doing—by capitulating to the Radical Left on the issue of gun ownership and gun possession; nor is it by sheepishly agreeing with and groveling to Radical Left antigun politicians in the Democratic Party and to Grassroots antigun activists. Doing so won’t serve to preserve our sacred right, but, rather, will compromise our sacred, unalienable right. No! We must not capitulate and we must convince Republicans in Congress not to capitulate to the antigun mob. They must never capitulate.

WE CANNOT SECURE OUR NATION BY RELINQUISHING OUR FIREARMS BUT WE SHALL SURELY LOSE OUR NATION FOR HAVING DONE SO

Americans cannot preserve the Second Amendment by negotiating with those intent on destroying it. And the Radical Left, along with the inordinately wealthy Globalist elites, who lust for world domination, have no intention of preserving the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in any form. Consider: no American can any longer easily and readily obtain a machine gun, submachine gun, selective fire assault rifle, short barrel shotguns and rifles, since they are all stringently regulated by the Federal Government. Even though these rifles, shotguns, and other firearms are personnel weapons, they are no longer readily available to the public, as the availability of these weapons went out the door with the passage of the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA), over eighty years. And, as the Arbalest Quarrel has repeatedly stated, the assault on “assault weapons” is an attack on all semiautomatic weapons, as the Radical Left antigun mob is aggressively mounting a campaign to ban all of them, not just some of them. Recently, the Radical Left “Mother Jones” made this very point. The title of the article, written by the Blogger, Kevin Drum, says it all: “We Need to Ban Semi-Automatic Firearms.”At least the guy is being honest, and not pretending to convey the impression that most Radical Left antigun proponents attempt to convey to the public, namely, that they wish to ban only some semiautomatic weapons, not all of them, just “weapons of war,” qua “assault weapons.” Were the antigun mob to get their way, an effective ban on some semiautomatic weapons would lead eventually and invariably to a ban on all semiautomatic weapons. And, from there, the Radical Left antigun mob would move for a ban on revolvers, single action and double action; and, on and on, to a ban on single shot firearms and black powder muzzle loaders. The Radical Left intends to confiscate all firearms, thus essentially negating lawful exercise of the right of the people to keep and bear arms.The best way to defend the unalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms is by clashing with the Radical Left elements in Congress and in the populace who seek to destroy it—bringing the fight directly, unabashedly, unreservedly, and forcefully to them.Keep uppermost in mind: the goal of the Radical Left is the same as the goal of transnationalist Globalist Elites. For, they both seek to undermine the United States as an independent sovereign Nation-State—to transform the Nation into a Socialist haven for millions of illegal aliens who have no understanding of our Nation’s history or any appreciation for our Nation’s Constitution, or of the nature of natural rights upon which our free Republic is grounded. The Radical Left and the transnationalists Global elite have no desire to educate illegal aliens, or even legal immigrants, for that matter, that they may readily assimilate; for, to do so, would defeat the aim of the Radical Left and the transnationalist Global elites, as they are in agreement on what they both seek to accomplish. They seek to effectuate a massive political, social, cultural, and economic transformation of our Country and, thereby, to bring the United States into the fold of the European Union. This was already underway during the Obama era, and it was to continue under Hillary Clinton, had she been “crowned” President.Fortunately, the Clinton Presidency bid failed. But, undaunted, the rapacious forces, that have sought ever to destroy this Nation, fervently desire to get back on track and to get back on track quickly, if need be, no later than 2020. They could not do so to date, try as they did, orchestrating a complex strategy directed to impeaching President Trump and removing him from Office. That didn’t happen. And it isn’t going to happen. But, there is no guarantee that these anti-American forces won’t succeed in sitting a Democratic Party stooge in the White House in 2020, and they are plugging away to do just that. But, in the interim, with their plan of undermining the sovereignty of our Nation—if not sooner, then later—they know they must weaken the Bill of Rights. And to do so, they know they must commence with de facto repeal of the Second Amendment. We see this occurring with the latest call for new curbs on semiautomatic weapons that the Radical Left subsumes under the false vernacular of ‘assault weapon.’ We see it in the Radical Left’s call for universal background checks, whatever that means. And, we see it in the call for application of so-called “Red Flag” laws, throughout the Nation.As the Arbalest Quarrel has previously stated, antigun groups have undertaken three salient tactics in their aggressive assault on the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and these tactics are always taken out of the closet whenever a mass shooting occurs, as such a tragic event operates as a useful pretext for through which the Radical Left antigun zealots assail the Second Amendment again and again.Their tactics include, first, expanding the domain of banned firearms. Americans see this in the ferocious, noxious, incessant attack on semiautomatic firearms, aka, assault weapons.Their tactics include, second, expanding the domain of individuals who are not permitted to own or possess any firearm. Americans see this in the attempt to impose draconian, unconstitutional “Red Flag” laws on thousands of average, law-abiding American citizens. Red Flags operate by turning this Country into a Nation of spies, Shoo-flies. Doing so is the hallmark of the Totalitarian State, where people spy on others and pry into the affairs of others.And, their tactics include, third, making it increasingly difficult for Americans to exercise the right to keep and bear arms—increasingly difficult for those Americans who don’t otherwise fall within a statutory prohibition preventing them from owning and possessing firearms or fall victim to oppressive Red Flag laws.This third tactic involves making gun ownership and possession an administratively demanding, daunting, onerous, expensive, and psychologically depressing experience and proposition for gun owners, as gun owners will never know when something they do or something they say might tend to negatively impact continued exercise of their Second Amendment right. Radical Left antigun elements in our Nation, along with their transnationalist benefactors, know that one major stumbling block to defeating the Second Amendment and, in fact, one major stumbling block in compromising any of the other Nine Amendments to the U.S. Constitution that comprise our Bill of Rights, is to effectuate a change in the way in which Americans view their Bill of Rights, to change their mindset. What does that mean? Just this: The founders of our Free Republic perceived the Bill of Rights to comprise laws intrinsic to man. That is to say, the founders perceived the rights, codified in the Bill of Rights, to precede the creation of the Nation. They perceived the rights as an indelible part of the psyche of man. And, what does that mean? It means that the first Ten Amendments comprise rights and liberties bequeathed to man by the Divine Creator. This is what the founders meant by referring to the rights as fundamental, unalienable, and immutable. Since such rights are not created by man, no man can lawfully or morally rescind those rights. This proposition entails that Government, as a man-made construct, cannot lawfully or morally rescind the rights embodied the Bill of Rights, either.For the Radical Left and their transnationalist benefactors, these ideas, that serve both as the cornerstone of our Constitutional Republic, and the cornerstone of individual autonomy, are an anathema. That is why they feel obliged to ignore, modify, abrogate or utterly erase any Right set forth in the Bill of Rights, when circumstance, as they see it, dictates, or mere fancy happens to affect them. For both the Radical Left and for their transnationalist benefactors, no rights and liberties exist that are not perceived as man-made, bestowed on man by other men or by Government; and, so, they perceive nothing in rights and liberties and laws that isn’t subject to refinement or outright abrogation. This is a very dangerous viewpoint; one that is at loggerheads with the very preservation of our Nation as a free Republic; and one that is at loggerheads with the idea of the dignity and autonomy of man.We will explore these ideas in depth in the next several articles, utilizing the assertions and policy statements of two Radical Left “Potentates,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and U.S. Senator (D-CA), Kamala Harris, as examples of the logically unsound underpinnings of the Collectivist ideology that the Radical Left embraces.We will demonstrate, through an analysis of their assertions and policy statements, the true danger the Radical Left poses to our Nation, to its Constitution and to its people. By extension we will show how the assertions and policy positions of the Radical Left are incoherent and nonsensical, and that, on logical grounds, alone, do not provide an intellectually satisfactory and morally and legally sustainable basis for transformation of this Nation in the way and manner they seek.The Socialist Utopian dream that both the Radical Left and the Globalist “elites” envision, as bringing public order and comfort to its inhabitants, is doomed to failure. Indeed what it is they truly seek to accomplish is more likely a cold calculated ruse in which to bind this Nation to other Western Nations, in a reprehensible attempt to effectuate a one world Socialist union of once independent nation-states. In that effort, if they succeed, we will witness the dire realization of a Radical Left Socialist Dystopian nightmare; a nightmare that will bring misery, remorse, and profound unease to us all.__________________________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

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

PART SIXTEEN

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

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

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

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

PART SEVENTEEN

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

WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON HERE?

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

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

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

UNLEASHED AND UNCHECKED, FAKE NEWS MEDIA PROPAGANDA WILL DESTROY AMERICA

PART FOURTEEN

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP STANDS AS A LONE BUT POWERFUL VOICE AND BULWARK AGAINST A SOCIALIST TAKE-OVER OF OUR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC AND OUR FREEDOMS!

What we, Americans, are witnessing today is the incestuous union of technology, the Federal Bureaucracy and of radical, hateful elements in Congress, in the social media and in the Press, working in concert, at the behest of Billionaire Neoliberal transnationalists, in a naked, reprehensible bid to destroy our Great Nation and a free people, and all in an attempt to usher into existence a new system of governance—one devoid of once powerful Nation States—a neo-feudalistic New Monstrous Collectivist World Order, one comprising a few ruling “Elect Elites” on the one hand, and a multitude of serfs, hundreds of millions of citizens, including those of our own Country, citizens stripped of their citizenship and of their fundamental rights and liberties; reduced to abject servitude and misery, namely, the new Preterite (the Damned), the new denizens of the New World Order.This is the vision of Radical Left Marxists and Antifa Anarchists—their notion of a paradise on Earth; but really a hell-world they wish to bring to fruition, into actuality. This is their vision of a new transformative America that they would bequeath to us in lieu of that bequeathed to us by the Founders of our Great Nation.And insidiously, outrageously these Radical Left Marxists and Anarchists use the very power inherent in our Constitution and the very power of a free market economy upon which our Constitutional Republic exists, against that very Republic, and against the citizenry of this Nation. In so doing, these Radical elements would dare rob the American people of their birthright; all the while proclaiming that this a good thing; that this should happen; that this must occur to bring about equality and equanimity and justice; that this the way things ought to be—reducing us all to squalor, unrelenting malaise and poverty. It is happening before our very eyes, gathering increasing momentum. And the words and actions and methods of these Radical Left elements and Anarchists in Government, in the Press, in social media, in the entertainment business, in the information technology sector, and among the citizenry itself are becoming more and more outrageous, more and more bizarre, more and more acute.Every day we see the worst excesses engaged in by those malevolent forces bent on destroying all that most Americans, the silent majority, hold most dear and sacred. And, only, we, the American people, can prevent it from playing out to its disastrous end, an end which means the destruction of our Nation’s Constitution; the loss of our people’s personal identity, history, culture and personal autonomy; the end of the independence and sovereignty of our Nation State, the end of our centuries old system of laws, and justice, and jurisprudence: all of it gone; and that this supposed to be a good thing! The end of the exercise of our own Free Will!

HERE, BELOW, ARE DELINEATED, A FEW OF THE SCHEMES RADICAL LEFT MARXISTS AND ANARCHISTS HAVE DEVISED AND UTILIZED TO UNDERCUT THE CONTINUED EXISTENCE OF THE UNITED STATES, AS AN INDEPENDENT, FREE REPUBLIC.

ENCOURAGE AMERICAN CITIZENS TO ABORT THEIR BABIES, REDUCING THE POPULATION OF EDUCATED AMERICANS, INCULCATED WITH A KNOWLEDGE OF THEIR CONSTITUTION AND OF THEIR FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND LIBERTIESENCOURAGE UNSKILLED, ILLITERATE ITINERANTS TO EMIGRATE ILLEGALLY TO THE U.S., THEREBY FOSTERING A NEW POPULATION OF DRONES, CONDITIONED TO SERVITUDE AND IGNORANT OF OUR CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT AND OBLIVIOUS TO AND UNCONCERNED ABOUT THE IMPORT AND PURPOSE OF OUR NATION’S FUNDAMENTAL, NATURAL, UNALIENABLE AND IMMUTABLE RIGHTS AND LIBERTIESENCOURAGE THE AMERICAN PUBLIC TO FORSAKE AND FORGET ITS UNIQUE HISTORY, HERITAGE, AND CORE CHRISTIAN VALUES, THROUGH MEDIA USE OF PROPAGANDA; AND THROUGH CENSORSHIP OF ALTERNATIVE VIEWPOINTS TO SUPPRESS ALL DISSENT; AND THROUGH NOXIOUS, INCESSANT, REPETITIOUS CONDEMNATION OF AND EVEN ASSERTIONS OF HATRED, ABHORRENCE DIRECTED TOWARD OUR NATIONAL EMBLEMS, AND THROUGH ASSERTIONS OF LOATHING DIRECTED TOWARD OUR NATION’S INSTITUTIONS, AND THROUGH ATTACKS AGAINST OUR NATION’S WELL-DEVELOPED AND HONORED SYSTEM OF LAWS AND JURISPRUDENCE THAT HAS WELL STOOD THE TEST OF TIME; AND--AS IF ALL THAT WERE NOT HORRENDOUS ENOUGH--THROUGH INCESSANT ASSAULTS DIRECTED AGAINST OUR NATION’S ILLUSTRIOUS, LOVING FOUNDING FATHERS—AS THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA OUTRAGEOUSLY QUESTIONS WHETHER THE FOUNDING FATHERS, THE FRAMERS OF OUR SACRED CONSTITUTION, EVEN DESERVE OUR CONTINUED REVERENCE AND DEVOTIONSUBVERT AND SUBORDINATE THE SUPREMACY OF OUR CONSTITUTION AND STATUTES THROUGH ATTEMPTS TO BIND OUR NATION TO SECRETIVE INTERNATIONAL PACTS AND TREATIES, IN ORDER TO UNDERMINE OUR NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY AND INDEPENDENCE AND TO UNDERCUT THE PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF OUR NATION, GROUNDED ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL: OF INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY AND INTEGRITY AND SANCTITY OF SELFDIVIDE THE NATION AGAINST ITSELF THROUGH THE MECHANISM OF IDENTITY POLITICSRAISE THIS IDEA OF VICTIM-HOOD TO THE LEVEL OF A VIRTUE AND HOLY PRINCIPLE, INSERTING THIS FALSE IDEA INTO THE MIND AND PSYCHE OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN; TO CREATE IN THE AMERICAN PUBLIC A SENSE OF COLLECTIVE GUILT, THEREBY WEAKENING THE RESOLVE OF OUR NATION’S CITIZENRY TO THWART ATTEMPTS TO DESTROY A CITIZENRY’S PRIDE IN SELF AND NATIONINDOCTRINATE THE YOUTH OF OUR NATION TO ACCEPT COLLECTIVIST TENETS AND MARXIST POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES AS SUPERIOR TO THE TENETS OF INDIVIDUALISM UPON WHICH OUR NATION'S CONSTITUTION RESTS  AND UPON THE NOTIONS OF PERSONAL PROPERTY AND OF FREE MARKET CAPITALISM, THAT ALONE ARE CONSISTENT WITH THE IMPORT AND PURPORT OF OUR CONSTITUTION AND OF THE STRUCTURE OF A FREE REPUBLIC REEDUCATE THE ADULT POPULATION OF OUR NATION TO ACCEPT THE PRECEPTS OF COLLECTIVISM, TO CREATE A SENSE OF DEPENDENCY OF THE POPULATION ON GOVERNMENT TO SATISFY THE POPULATION’S NEEDS AND WANTSTO CRUSH THE INDIVIDUAL INTO SUBMISSION BY INCULCATING IN THE POPULATION A DESIRE TO BELONG TO THE GROUP THROUGH PRE-PROGRAMMED BEHAVIOR—DEFINED BY AGENCIES OF GOVERNMENT—THEREBY THWARTING THE PUBLIC TO RISE UP AGAINST THE TYRANNY OF GOVERNMENT.DISARM AMERICAN CITIZENS TO PREVENT THOSE WHO DO NOT COMPLY WITH THE NEW COLLECTIVIST PHILOSOPHY FROM SECURING FOR THEMSELVES THE MEANS TO HOLD GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABLE TO THE PEOPLEA compliant propaganda-laden Press, sold on the idea of a Marxist style one world Government—a vision of global domination of all Western Nation States, contemplating the end of the very notions of ‘nation state’ and ‘citizen of a nation state’—has demonstrated an ecstatic willingness and resolve to work on behalf of and to take its marching orders from the Marxist enterprise that the Democratic Party has slowly, inexorably, and inevitably devolved into. And, this Political Party, in turn, in all likelihood, takes its marching orders from our ostensible “allies” in Europe, in whom the Party shares common cause.And, what is that common cause? It is nothing less than the destruction of the sovereignty and independence of all Western Nations, along with the subjugation of the polity of those Nation States, including the citizenry of the United States.And, who are these purported allies of the Democratic Party? They include the innately and highly secretive, extraordinarily powerful, inordinately wealthy, inherently corrupt, abjectly ruthless, hedonistic and amoral, and insufferably decadent Rothschild clan and the clan's minions, most infamously, George Soros—whom, curiously, Fox News has just begun to mention on its nightly news programs. And, how long shall it be before the Fox News media organization demonstrates the moral courage to mention the name, Rothschild, itself—the Centuries old family, inbred, through the ages, with the royalty of Europe—in whom plans were first drawn up for domination of the nations of the world, and that remains today the principal architect of plans for the dissolution of the Nation States of Europe and of the United States.Simply witness the impact that implementation of their plans have had on the citizenry of the Nations of the European Union. The creation of the EU just didn’t happen by accident. The Blueprint for its construction began long ago, actually centuries ago, with the creation of the diabolical and horrific Central Banking System through which wealthy financiers, commencing with the ruthless Rothschild clan would be able to, were in fact able to, and were desirous of controlling the destines of Nations. And, the descendants of  the family Patriarch, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, have been machinating to bring their schema for a trans-global political, social, economic, financial, legal, and cultural system of Governance—the New World Order—to fruition.What Americans are witnessing occurring in their own Country, and what native populations of the Nations of the EU are now witnessing occurring in Europe, is the gathering storm of disaster for European and U.S. citizens alike—a cascading sequence of events—a horrific, cataclysmic reconfiguration of the entirety of Western Civilization into something out of science fiction--a Dystopian nightmare reality, for the populations of of Europe, and for the citizenry of the United States, from which no one can awaken. _____________________________________________

PART FIFTEEN

THE GREAT THREAT TO OUR NATION’S SURVIVAL COMES NOT FROM RUSSIA OR CHINA, BUT FROM RADICAL ELEMENTS HERE AT HOME, FED BY SO-CALLED “ALLIES” FROM ABROAD.

The Arbalest Quarrel has been warning about the threat posed to our Nation and to the Nations of Europe, by the Rothschilds; and we have discussed both the fact of and the nature of the attack by the transnationalist one-world, Government crowd on all that the populations of Europe and Americans, at home. Europe may not be salvaged, given the merciless grip of the Rothschild clan on Europe; but, then, apart from Nationalist fervor, a love of one’s Country, and history, and culture, and language, the citizenry of those Nation States of Europe did not have, and do not have a Bill of Rights to bind Governments and truly protect the rights and liberties of the populations of those Nation States, from tyranny. Americans, however, do have, in their Bill of Rights, that the framers of our Nation, lovingly and wisely gave to us, the means through which the citizenry’s natural, fundamental, unalienable, immutable rights, bequeathed to that citizenry from a Loving, All Powerful Creator—are able to hold fervently and ably onto their individual autonomy. Individual autonomy, secures, for each American citizen, through the Nation's Bill of Rights, in clear, categorical, imperatives, the definitive proclamation of one's right to be left alone; that each individual American citizen has the right as  an individual to truly remain individual.Our Bill of Rights is the living testament to The Creator’s Divine Imperative—that Government cannot, ever, lawfully deny to the American citizen the Integrity of Self-hood; for the Creator gave to each of us an individual living Soul. The Human Soul is a unique marker, defining one's existence as an individual. And the very existence of our Bill of Rights makes that fact plain. The import of Individual Expression and Individual Autonomy succinctly and clearly exemplifies us as Americans.But, how do Americans best protect their Sacred, Inviolate Self, against the evil of Government? By force of arms. For it is only by force of arms that Government, a necessarily corrupt, artificial construct, must forbear, from imposing its will on the individual American citizen. It is only through the codification of the right of the people to keep and bear arms in the Second Amendment that the might of the Federal Government is kept well in check. The Radical Left and the Progressive elements in society know this. And the Transnational Neoliberal Globalists know this. And the Radical Anarchist Group, Antifa—that horrid, disgusting group of malcontents knows this, too.Antifa is beginning to learn about the power of firearms. Not incidentally or accidentally, the Globalists are  arming members of Antifa, with knives and other weapons. The public has recently heard about this from the Radical cable networks, like CNN, that oddly argue that this is a good thing. Likely, Globalists are also beginning to surreptitiously provide Antifa with firearms, teaching them how to use firearms to attack Americans who merely seek to uphold a Constitution and free Republic, in the form the founders gave to the people of our  Nation that we would remain free from the heavy hand of Government control; that Government should know and accept, even if only grudgingly, that each American citizen is an individual, who should be permitted to carve out his own destiny in America, as long as he harms no one else; that the life, well-being, and individual autonomy of each American citizen is sacrosanct, and inviolate. But the transnationalist Globalist elite find that idea offensive, repugnant, even; and, so they find an armed citizenry intolerable, as it upsets their plans for world domination. So it is likely beginning to arm those groups that do its bidding, like Antifa. And the mainstream media, a Seditious, virulent, Press, misusing the power the framers gave to it through the First Amendment, acts as an apt and pompous and singularly duplicitous, hypocritical apologist for the worst excesses carried out by that Group—rationalizing the Antifa’s heavy-handed tactics as just and necessary.And, so, through the medium of “fake news,” the mainstream Press conducts a virulent, vicious, merciless campaign on the Bill of Rights--condemning especially the free exercise of the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The Press maliciously, sanctimoniously engages in an incessant reprehensible attack on the sanctity of our Nation’s Constitution and on the supremacy of our Nation’s laws.The mainstream Press engages in a continuous and vicious assault on our Country as an independent Sovereign Nation State. It argues incessantly for open borders, knowing full well that a Nation that cannot and, in fact, is ordered by a corrupt Congress to refrain from defending the integrity of its land, the integrity of its borders, amounts to a wholesale denial of the right of a Nation to exist as a Nation. In fact, the Radical Left, along with Anarchists, openly assert that our Nation has no justification for existing as an Independent Sovereign. And those sentiments are echoed in the mainstream Press. We are to become, then, no more than a geographic region, no longer a Sovereign State. And, were that end to be realized, we would see as well that the very notion of what it means to be a citizen of the United States and the very notion of a what it means for a Country to exist as an independent, Sovereign ‘Nation State,’ would become meaningless concepts.All that we have laid out here as true is now being openly attested to by at least one major news outlet: Fox News, as it rightfully condemns what it sees occurring in our Country; enabled by a vicious, virulent, renegade Press. Thus, the truth of what the Arbalest Quarrel relates to you, our kind reader, is vindicated by a major news source. Yet, it was surprising, to be sure, but both refreshing and wondrous to hear the night show host, Laura Ingraham exclaiming with singular clarity, to the insidiousness and ferocity of the attendant dangers that Collectivists pose to our Nation’s continued existence if, in the next few years, their vision comes to fruition.In case you missed the recent broadcast, here are a few excerpts from the show that caught our attention (and more available at the Fox News website):LAURA INGRAHAM: . . . American identity under assault. That's the focus of tonight's ‘Angle.’The historical purge that we're witnessing all over the country. It's part of a larger agenda to destroy what it means to be American. And it's getting more audacious by the day. In St. Louis Park, Minnesota, the geniuses on the city council there recently decided to ban the Pledge of Allegiance from town meetings. Their reason, to create a more welcoming environment to a diverse community. Welcoming to everybody, but Americans who actually love the pledge. Well, residents were rightly outraged by this insanity and local Patriots turned out and they stood up to the city council.And then in San Francisco, the public defecation capital of the world, taxpayers are going to shell out $600,000 to paint over a George Washington mural that offended a few snowflakes there. So, let me just get this straight. People peeing in the fountains and stepping on dirty needles. That's not offensive. But the first founding father is? Perfect.So, why would anyone after hearing these kinds of stories be surprised when someone like Left, a soccer star Megan Rapinoe who knelt during the national anthem back in 2016 still refuses to respect it today. Or when midfielder, Allie Long drags the American flag on the ground while representing the U.S. on the world stage. And while mugging for the cameras then drops the flag like it's a piece of trash.Thankfully another midfielder, Kelly O'Hara picked it up. And of course, Rapinoe discovered early on though really that you'll win permanent MVP status when you kick Donald Trump. Like when she used foul language nixing any traditional White House visit to the champions and this was before they even won the World Cup. [A REAL HUMAN BEING isn’t she, THAT Rapinoe; and New York gives the TEAM a ticker-tape parade; but for whom, exactly? Whom is it that the TREAM represents? The United States? Even as the TEAM drags our Flag on the ground? A bit discordant, no? Other Nations must have been embarrassed for us].The easiest path to social media stardom today is one where you take cheap swipes at American symbols and traditions and you must understand that the Left truly believes America itself is illegitimate to its core. What am I talking about? Well, its founding was fraudulent. They believe its founding documents meaningless. All because of slavery and the people who were involved in it. Our progress on racial issues is conveniently ignored by cynical actors who are frankly using these past horrors for a power grab and they hope eventually a total reorganization of our society here and a massive wealth confiscation. The phrase white privilege. Well, it's now the preferred weapon of choice and it's used by socialists know nothings to tar their political opponents and avoid real debate. Only guess what? Now even old white Democrats are in the privileged crosshairs.AOC blasts everyone and anyone any time of the day or night on social media. But when the leader of her own party calls her out, she cries foul. No, no Nancy is not a racist, but - well, but President Trump is routinely subjected of course to this kind of attack while his plan to put citizenship that question on the census was roundly derided as racist by Democrats. And today, referring to that issue, he shot back.{VIDEO CLIP} DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT: Now, they're trying to erase the very existence of a very important word and a very important thing, citizenship. We must have a reliable count of how many citizens, non-citizens and illegal aliens are in our country.INGRAHAM: Bingo. How is this controversial? Asking about citizens. It's like a question that has nothing to do with race at all. It's about who is American and who is not. [see Stephen D’Andrilli’s UFT article republished, in unabridged format in Ammoland Shooting Sports News]. And by the way, African Americans have been the most directly impacted by the mass flow, massive flow of illegal immigrants in the United States. No wonder polls now show that a majority of both black and Hispanic voters support adding the question to the census. Are racing our history our sense of who we are is making it easier to turn America into just kind of another member of a globalist super state.Europeans sacrificed their identities years ago on the altar of globalism, when they formed the European Union. Look at what it got them.INGRAHAM: Now, we may have masked morons of ANTIFA to deal with. . . . There is a price for surrounding your sovereignty and your identity. And we're going to pay it if we don't defend our history and our traditions. And that's “The Angle.” Joining me now is Victor Davis Hanson, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover's Institution. Victor why can't the Left see the value of symbols and traditions that don't blur the differences or the mistakes we made but that have the effect of binding us together at a time when so much else rips us apart.VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, SENIOR FELLOW, HOOVER'S INSTITUTION: I think they feel that if they were to do that Laura, they would not win elections and that they have to change the past and the present, so they can have power in the future. It's a war where demography, it's a war over making residents, the equals of citizens and in their view, the argument that they're advancing as we were so sin, we the Americans were so sin at our origins, we can't be modified, adapted or improved. We have to be dismantled and reconstituted on their agendas, according to their agendas and therefore they're going to have a lot of power and influence in the future.And so when you mentioned all of these incidents of the San Francisco murals or the Nike shoe controversy or the soccer team, this is the trench warfare or these are the soldiers at the front who are fighting for these elites that we see in the Democratic primary who are advocating Medicare or health care for all, who cross borders, who are escorting people illegally into the United States, who are attacking the past, demanding reparations or the New York.Remember the New York Times video op ed where they said we're just OK, we're not really exceptional or what Representative Omar detailed in a recent Washington Post interview where she said, she was very disappointed after leaving a refugee camp to see things weren't too good here in the land of her host.And so, this is the - I don't know the raw side of what the elites are talking about, but it's the same agenda, it's to create a new future by reconstituting or redefining the past and the present. INGRAHAM: And Victor, don't you agree if America herself is illegitimate. Of course, the founding documents and the principles undergirding those documents either have to be completely swept away and rewritten because they were written by a bunch of all racist white guys or many of them old racist white guys. That has to be rewritten, reconstituted, reformed, refounded as something very different. That seems to be where this is going. Because there is no concern for actual historical reference, historical context. It's either evil or good—. . . .HANSON: No, there isn't.INGRAHAM: And everything in the past is evil and everything now and present is good until that becomes evil, I guess.HANSON: Yes, we're not a physical society where we work all day in the field. So, we have the luxury of affluence and security and leisure to think that the world works the way your app does or your smartphone. And we believe that if we're not perfect then we're not good and that the sins of humanity which exists today, sexism, racism in every country to a much greater degree than they do in the United States. Those are uniquely our sins because we should be perfect just like our technology.”A few courageous broadcast networks and commentators, along with our astute and heroic President, Donald Trump, recognize the seriousness of the dangers facing our Nation and to its citizenry and are meeting the forces that would dare crush us into submission, head-on.The real danger to our Nation’s survival as a free Republic is not coming from, and never did come from Russia, or even from China. That was deception—carefully planned and carried out. How could those Nations harm us, fatally, really? Think about that for a moment. The silliness of the notion should be self-evident to all Americans. The public has been played for fools, ever since Trump took the Oath of Office. The true threat to our Nation’s survival as a free Republic is coming from so-called allies of us—the Commonwealth Nations and the EU; from ruthless, corrupt, and powerful Neoliberal Globalists and from those whom those Transnationalists, and Economic and Political Globalists control and fund, and organize and promote, within our Nation: the Radical Left; anarchist Groups, like Antifa, from Left-wing social media Tech Giants; from corrupt politicians and Government bureaucrats; and from a compliant Press. The Rothschild Globalist "Elite," has nurtured dissident elements within in our Nation. years ago, these stooges  of the Rothschild clan and its minions were sold on the idea that the United States must eventually be subsumed into transnational unified World Government, transforming the entirety of the Western Civilization into a neo-Feudalistic construct overseen by a secretive, insular Global Aristocracy.This is the unfortunate but true, insidious nature of the real threat to our survival as a free Republic and a free people: that we might lose all we hold most dear and sacred from forces weakening us from within, fed with the necessary funds and organizational might and expertise from what the mainstream media refers to as our “allies”--those reprehensible, loathsome, ruthless forces from outside the U.S. ______________________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.