This is a big win. Not just for gun rights but for the freedom movement in the battle against billionaire elitist gun prohibitionists like Michael Bloomberg. West Virginia just told him he can’t buy away our Second Amendment rights.
Alan Gottlieb
March 7, 2016
Gun control group ‘livid’ about permitless carry override veto
[While there is a certain amount of truth to this, 10s of millions, or more, of dollars can buy more repression of our rights than we care to tolerate.
Probably the best we can do is make the cost, in time, money, and public opinion, as high as practical such that the return on Bloomberg’s investment is as low as possible. In the case of West Virginia, gun rights supporters caused him to do the equivalent of setting a very large pile of $100 bills on fire. Bloomberg has an distressingly large number of $100 bills he is willing to throw on the fire but getting nothing except reports of his failures in return for spending large amounts of money will be discouraging to both him and the people he is funding. It also demonstrates that the claim that “the greedy gun manufactures with lots of money” and the NRA get legislative votes by outbidding the virtuous anti-gun activists is false. With this key assumption falsified it demoralizes them and makes it more difficult for them to recruit additional people and raise money in general.—Joe]
It’s a federal crime to conspire to deprive someone of their constitutionally enumerated rights.
Once we understand the fact that we’re dealing with criminals, and act accordingly, the problem can be solved. Until then we’re engaging in holding actions, kicking the can down the street, so to speak, for future generations to solve.
I’d rather be engaging in first-generation (constitutional) law enforcement, rather than fourth-generation warfare. Either way the perpetrators would be brought to justice. In the present situation, which is properly described as lawlessness, we’re forced to spend our time and resources in perpetuity, just to maintain some half-way exercise of our rights while always having to look over our shoulders for the next attack.
It’s like repeatedly suing a serial robber, winning some cases and losing others, rather than having him arrested and jailed. It’s great for the lawyers, but there’s no justice in that, and no liberty.
When we can get prosecutors do their job in regards to these civil rights deprivations we will have won. To get there we need to change the culture. It’s no different than when lynching people because of their skin color was accepted in certain circles and now, appropriately, it is considered an horrible crime by the vast majority of people in this country. That came about by changing the culture.
I understand the difference between a horrible crime, and something that is perceived as a horrible crime.
Anyway, my comment was intended as a “keep your eyes on the prize” statement. Crimes are being committed, people are suffering and dying because of it, and it is not enough to merely slow down or even stop the crimes. Not by a long shot. Crimes demand justice. It is therefore incumbent on us to keep that in mind, actually discuss it, and work toward it as much as is possible.
Playing defense, or the tactical retreat, is sometimes necessary. I get that, but if it’s all we do we’ve put the hierarchy in the wrong order. We’ve put the criminal aggressor in charge (they attack, we defend, they attack again, we defend, ad infinitum). That just won’t do.
Bloomberg and others of similar mind must be made to understand that they are criminals and that they’ll be treated appropriately at the nearest opportunity. There is a general shortage of discussion of that point in legal circles, and so I will bring it up from time to time until it catches hold. This isn’t the old political game of “you get your pound of flesh and I get my pound of flesh and we both go home happy and do it again tomorrow, as a full-time career”. This isn’t a game at all, and we owe it to all concerned to make that point clear.
Could someone swear out a complaint with a D.A. For deprivation of a right under color of law, making it a criminal case, or would the Ninth Circuit find a standing or ripeness issue to kill the action?
I will have a party with alcohol, balloons and cake when Michael Bloomberg dies. In his simpleton little evil mind he even thinks he is doing God’s work and will be rewarded in Heaven. Wrong, the place he is destined for is a lot hotter.
Not so fast. He could just create a foundation like Joyce and keep screwing us from hell.
We need to get him to loose intrest in guns. That is the only way to stop this nonsense.
Our best bet is just to keep overturning these laws and making him look feckless.
The spread of the “Constitutional Carry” concept has surprised me (pleasantly) by going further and faster than I’d have expected. The danger we face with a certain Democrat Presidential Contender is that, IMO, she’ll attempt to make every gun rights issue a literal “Federal Case” as she seeks to rule over us peasants.
Indeed. On the other hand, I don’t trust Trump either on this (or much of anything else). He talks a good story, but his vaunted “flexibility” and the absence of any discernible principles leads me to believe that his support of the right to arms is subject to change without notice. Considering that he has already proposed to stomp on the 1st amendment, there’s no reason to believe the others will be any safer.
Ultimately he will want to be liked by all the “cool kids” he used to hang out with before last Summer. He thinks the media is harsh and should be muzzled now, wait until he wins. Conservatives can then make common cause with the Communists over the 1st Amendment, but we must make sure that protection of the 2nd Amendment is acted on first, instead of later, as Communists usually negotiate things.