Schadenfreude is sweet

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Last year’s Supreme Court case that expanded Second Amendment rights has wreaked havoc on the nation’s gun control laws, witnesses told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday.

Michael Macagnone
March 15, 2023
Senate hears about legal fallout from Supreme Court gun decision

We have been telling them for decades those 10s of thousands of laws were unconstitutional. And they ignored and mocked us. They should not expect any sympathy from us as we will not give them any. The schadenfreude is sweet.

Just wait until we have machine gun sporting events in the high schools and the prosecutions start.

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25 thoughts on “Schadenfreude is sweet

  1. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
    Thomas Jefferson

  2. As much as I hate to say it, I’m not sure which is less likely: High School Machine Gun sporting events, or politicritters actually facing a judge over their misdeeds. Mind you, I’d love to see BOTH, but I’m not as optimistic as you are, Joe.

    • What’s sad is that I’d put more odds on the high school machine gun shoot than the trials. Even though the trials are arguably more important.

      • With invasion on the So. border and banking going so swimmingly.
        Machine gun shooting might be the only way one gets to high school.
        And I’m thinking there won’t be any need for trials?

        • Only if we know where our elected employees are when their appearance before a tribunal for their violations becomes possible.

    • I said nothing about what I think the odds are of having MG sporting events in High Schools and trials for the criminals. I think the odds are low as well. But I know moving the Overton Window to include those end results increases the odds of them actually happening. It also increases the odds of getting something less than that, such as pellet gun and Skeet events in schools, and summary judgements against existing laws.

      Talk about the trials and make them defend against them. Let’s have the public debate in that domain rather than in the domain of how to define an “assault weapon” they want to ban. If you are defending, you are losing. Put them on the defensive.

  3. Once again, the MSM (MSN, in this case) is phrasing it wrong.

    Bruen did not “expand Second Amendment rights”. It reaffirmed Second Amendment rights. As I said in a previous post’s comments, Bruen isn’t “gun reform”, Bruen is a reset back closer to where Second Amendment rights should always have been.

    The fact they still consider Bruen a “reform” or “expansion” indicates that they still don’t believe “shall not be infringed” means what it says.

    Being that they’re “professional journalists”, I imagine they view the First Amendment’s “Congress shall make no law” prohibition similarly to how we view “shall not be infringed”. I wonder, then, where the disconnect is in their minds.

    • Spot on Archer!
      And I would like to mention that Bruen is reaffirming a second amendment prohibition on gun-control laws.
      We have no 2A rights. 2A is a restriction on government actions.
      It was the only thing Obama got right. Was when he said that much of the constitution was a bill of negative liberties. In telling the government where it is not allowed to go.
      And it’s as sweet as honey.

      • Fair point about 2A being a restriction on government action. Most Amendments in the Bill of Rights should be read and interpreted that way.

        Read properly, the text of 2A actually does both: it acknowledges what we think of as “Second Amendment rights” (“the right of the People to keep and bear Arms” — “RKBA” for short), and places a prohibition on government restricting those rights (“shall not be infringed”).

    • “…I imagine they view the First Amendment’s “Congress shall make no law” prohibition similarly to how we view “shall not be infringed”.”

      They probably don’t view it the same. Not if they are true Leftists. They want restrictions on what the Right can say in any venue. There is no such thing as “equality” in their minds, not when it comes to their ideology.

      • Quite true. “Rights for me, none for thee,” and all that.

        Just like how the Left touted equality for a very long time. They don’t anymore. Now they push for “equity”, which is not at all the same thing.

        It seems to me, the primary advantage of “equity” over “equality” is that it’s just as subjective and variable as the Left’s supposed ideology. Some are entitled to “equity assistance” and others aren’t, and who’s entitled and who’s not at any given moment depends on which will garner the most political and/or monetary support.

        Today the “chosen” group is “gun violence” victims. Tomorrow it might be “People Of Color”, or women (or better yet, “Women Of Color”), or maybe LGBTQIAA2++ (or whatever the current acronym is). Whoever it is, we can all but guarantee two things: 1. A few demographic groups (e.g. white people, Jews and/or Christians, straight males, political conservatives, etc.) are 100% ineligible; and 2. Everyone not in the “chosen” group-of-the-day can pound sand.

      • Have we not heard their latest iteration? That being, “No right is absolute.”
        And no one finishes the sentence for them with. “Even if that were true, nothing gives you authority to act on such a circumstance.”
        Which is what them being so special a person allows them, right?
        The real problem is that we refuse to casually acknowledge the untouchable caste to which we were born.
        Were such a nuisance. And we just don’t get it.
        That’s why Bill Gates wants us all dead.

    • In their commentary on the Citizens United decision, those that claim to be “professional journalists” have long been making it clear that they don’t mind violations of the 1st Amendment as long as “professional journalists” and the corporations they work for are exempt – without one thought as to the implications of having any arm of the government decide who is a “professional journalist” and allowed to report on the government’s doings.

  4. Machine gun sporting events!
    I’ve actually participated in one of those. Back in ’94, as a side event of the SOF’s 3 gun match. In an attempt to level the field for those who might not have much exposure to submachineguns, they decided to use the least likely gun for anyone to have actually encountered in work or play. A WW2 vintage STEN. Possibly the most unfriendly gun, let alone subgun, for left-handers. Yuck!

    • I’ve read that unless it was worked-over (essentially blue printed, to use a phrase from automobile racing) by the unit armorer and the soldier it was issued to, the STEN wasn’t particularly friendly to anyone, considering how it could jam or empty in a moment.

      • I suspect that particular gun was tuned in this case, since there were a lot of mags run through it over the ~week they ran the competition, and no complaints were heard regarding it’s function. It actually seemed somewhat accurate, in that you could dump all rounds into a reasonably sized group at the 25yd(?) range that was used. (I spent most of my attention keeping it from eating my hand, so performance was so-so) Better than the MAC-10 (.45acp) I had the misfortune to waste ammo in. Complete with can, I’m not sure I could even hit paper at 15yds with it. That piece of trash was the worst full auto I have ever worked with. Smaller caliber versions were not bad, but that thing would have made a better hammer than gun.

  5. Last year’s Supreme Court case that expanded civil rights has wreaked havoc on the nation’s Jim Crow laws, witnesses told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday.

    • As Leon Uris reported the Russian Marines said in “Battle Cry”,
      “Toughsky Shitsky.”

  6. I’ve been seeing comments from gun-grabbers, for years, saying that mass shootings are bad and we should obviously just all turn in our guns already.

    I usually respond: you think that time is on your side, but you’re wrong. States have been quietly affirming gun-owners’ rights, one state at a time. Perhaps it is the gun-controllers who should be throwing us a bone, to earn some goodwill, while they still can.

    They never listen, of course. But hey, they can’t say they weren’t warned.

  7. I think, at somepoint, there will be a preference cascade from the states RE: almost everything Federal.

    There are indications some states are stirring and if not heading in that direction, at least checking maps to see what paths might potentially exist. Texas just announced a takeover of Houston’s school district because the entrenched bureaucracy had become so bad at its job it could no longer be ignored; while that’s firmly a state issue, there is this completely useless federal agency that has its thumb in th epie and I have no doubt that involvement will be xamined as part of the corrective process. Texas has also announced it will review and study the prospect of secession.

    It has been promised that a Fair Tax bill will be presented on the floor of the House this session and while it will quite likely go only a very short distance, that’s not “go nowhere” and names will be attached to votes. There is nothing in the federal Constitution that would prohibit a state eliminating its income tax and enacting a Fair Tax ; why that hasn’t been pushed by Fair tax advocates I do not know.

    The southwest rankles over federal action encouraging invasion across the border; this is changing attitudes in several states and has the potential to be a catalyst for regional unity against federal abuse.

    Universities and colleges, many of which exist only because they have been propped up by “Dollars from DC” are not that far from radical operational revision, if for no other reason than employers are complaining to state legislatures that what the colleges produce is unusable.

    A number of states have enacted laws prohibiting state agents fom assisting federal agents operating within that state’s borders; despite fed dot gov court cases attacking the practice, I doubt it will go away. Rather, it will morph into much the same thing cloaked in court-acceptable language.

    I’m waiting for the first state to decide sending dollars to DC to get nickels and dimes back is a poor practice and begin capturing at least part of the flow (never mentioned is the Colorado House resolution in the early 1980s to do exactly that regarding gasoline taxes; that resolution unsurprisingly died in committee fairly quickly but it was introduced and got some, if slight, media mention at the time).

    As mentioned by commenters above, the Constitution does not grant rights, it affirms the pre-existence of rights and establishes limits on government’s interference with them. It would not surprise me if some states begin throwing their 10th Amendment weight around, and as Hochel in New York has done with Bruen, telling the feds “Oh, yeah? Well, make us” which, unlike Hochel’s stand on Bruen, will serve to carve some new roads through the federal legal wilderness.

    • The Tenth Amendment doesn’t cover or protect what Hochul is doing in NY. It says (paraphrasing) that the powers not granted to the federal government nor denied the States, belong to the States or to the People.

      Bruen struck down much of what Hochul is trying to re-enact by other means. If it was struck down, that means SCOTUS found that the Constitution denies that authority. It does NOT belong to the federal government, nor to the States, nor to the People.

      Thus, Hochul’s and the New York State government’s efforts to re-enact their carry restrictions are not protected by the Tenth Amendment.

      • “Thus, Hochul’s and the New York State government’s efforts to re-enact their carry restrictions are not protected by the Tenth Amendment.”

        Never said they were.

        Read this again:
        “Hochel in New York has done with Bruen, telling the feds “Oh, yeah? Well, make us” which, unlike Hochel’s stand on Bruen, will serve to carve some new roads through the federal legal wilderness.”

        I’ll grant that I may not have stated it as clearly as it should have been, but “… which, unlike Hochel’s stand on Bruen,..” doesn’t sound to me like saying the 10th Amendment supports Hochel’s actions.

        On the other hand ” It would not surprise me if some states begin throwing their 10th Amendment weight around, …..will serve to carve some new roads through the federal legal wilderness” does sound like states have the 10th Amendment as a tool to use against federal overreach.

        But, thanks for calling it to my attention, I’ll attempt to be more clear in the future.

    • “A number of states have enacted laws prohibiting state agents from assisting federal agents operating within that state’s borders; despite fed dot gov court cases attacking the practice, I doubt it will go away. Rather, it will morph into much the same thing cloaked in court-acceptable language.”

      There is honored precedent for such actions. In the decades before the American Civil War, despite the Fugitive slave clause in the Constitution (No Person held to Service or Labor in one state, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labor, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labor may be due.” Article IV§2(3),.
      The States that did not allow slavery within its borders had very strict rules about what procedure to follow, what was adequate evidence, and what constituted proof that the person was in fact held to Service or Labor in another state.
      Eventually the South got its act together and the Fugitive Slave Act that was intended as part of the “Compromise of 1850” was passed as a stand-alone act enabling the slavers to recover the escaped slaves and numerous others.

      Eventually the national government will move to Occupy the Field as the saying goes, and as it was in the 1850’s, states will object.

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