Criminal justice reform is a lot like gun control. It’s not about changing the rules for everyone. It’s about selectively enforcing them along political lines.

So for example, the left will lecture you for hours about gun crime and how afraid they are of guns and they hate guns and guns are bad. But they don’t really feel that way. They oppose stop and frisk, which saved thousands of lives by taking many thousands of guns off the street. But they’re totally opposed to that.

Meanwhile, they’re working deep into the night, for example, to disarm law-abiding Virginians in rural Virginia who commit essentially no violent crime and are a threat to no one.

They’re not for gun control. They are for punishing people who don’t vote for them, and the same thing is happening here.

The left doesn’t want criminal justice reform. If they did, they’d be on Roger Stone’s side. No. What they really want is to send their political enemies to jail and that’s what they’re trying to do.

Julia Musto
February 15, 2020
Tucker Carlson: Roger Stone case is about the left wanting to send political enemies to jail
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Tiers of scrutiny (strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, and the variants thereof) might sometimes be appropriate for judicial review of non-prohibitory gun regulations. Under Heller, bans on common arms are categorically unconstitutional, without need for use of the means-ends balancing tests of strict or intermediate scrutiny.

David Kopel
February 12, 2020
What arms are “common”?
Amicus brief challenging California rifle ban
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

That’s the problem with too many rules: it rewards gaming the system more handsomely than actually being good, useful, productive, and wise.

Rolf
February 15, 2020
Comment to Quote of the day—Karlyn Borysenko
[Excellent observation!

Perhaps some elaboration is worthwhile. More rules restrict those who are rule followers. But those who are more “flexible” will see the advantages of bypassing the rules and do so when they cannot compete with the rule followers or desire the profits obtainable by disobeying the rules more than the safety of following them.

Those willing to bribe, blackmail, and threaten those who enforce the rules have an even greater advantage over those who follow the rules. And in fact, want even more rules created to hinder their competitors even more. And, of course, the enforcers and creators of rules/laws are more likely to become and/or attract corrupt people the greater the potential for profit from excess rules.

California state Sen. Leland Yee is a prime example.—Joe]

They don’t need to take the bad guys guns. The bad guys aren’t who they are trying to control!

Bob Stockbriidge
February 9, 2020
Comment to 2nd Amendment Alert
[This hypothesis fits the known data.

Respond appropriately.—Joe]

If you have a problem with the truth, who’s the bad guy?

Dan O’Kelly
February 7, 2020
Former ATF agent at center of legal dispute over AR-15
[The answer should be obvious. The problem is that the truth is a problem for a lot of people and they will insist the truth teller is the bad guy. Worst than that telling the truth can make you the enemy. And frequently it’s not just the enemy of one or a few people. You can be enemy of the state. In some countries that can get you prison or even death sentence.

O’Kelly is telling the truth and making himself the enemy of a lot of people. Fortunately, in this country he is unlikely to earn official sanctions from the government even though he is certainly making a lot of people in government very uncomfortable.

I wish him well in his continued truth telling.—Joe]

As the days go by, the School House Rock version of politics that Americans have been accustomed to has increasingly become a distant memory, thanks to DC’s thorough embrace of managerial politics. So, no matter who’s in charge, politics is business as usual, which means more government growth at the expense of local jurisdictions and civil society. However, politics is the art of the possible, especially when people appreciate the value of American federalism and all of its implications. The opportunities are endless, provided that people break free from the conventional wisdom they’ve been fed about political action and start acting locally. Gun rights issues could be the catalyst that kicks off a decentralization revolution America desperately needs.

José Niño
February 6, 2020
What’s Next for the Virginia Sanctuary Movement?
[It’s a pleasant thought. But I’m far from convinced it has a high probability of turning out that way.

Also by José Niño: How Gun Control Became an Instrument of Tyranny in Venezuela.—Joe]

It is true that the Swiss surrender their ammo back to the local armory at the end of each summer’s training. It is also true that the political tradition of democracy is so deeply ingrained that it would be impossible for any Swiss government to refuse to return those weapons the following summer. The Swiss are not a disarmed population. They simply let the government store the ammo during the year. The attitude is not that the government lets the citizens have access to weapons. The attitude is that the citizens allow the government to store the ammo.

Gary North
December 24, 2012
In Defense of the Second Amendment
[H/T to Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras for bringing this to my attention.

There are some interesting observations and history in his post.—Joe]

As a nation we need to live up to the principles of America and that means devotion to the nation and its people.

Self centered elites who break the law all the time for personal gain of power and money are a criminal class. They are not in any way interested in devotion to our people or our country.

Kevin M. Washington
January 28, 2020
Anti-2A lawmakers completely ignore facts, push sweeping gun control legislation
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Under intermediate scrutiny, “[i]t is the legislature’s job, not [the courts’], to weigh conflicting evidence and make policy judgments.” Pena, 898 F.3d at 980 (quoting Kachalsky v. Cnty. of Westchester, 701 F.3d 81, 99 (2d Cir. 2012)). Based on the summary judgment record, and the decisions of the six federal circuit courts upholding ten-round LCM restrictions, section 32310 is constitutional under the Second Amendment.

Xavier Becerra
Attorney General of California
October 7, 2019
APPELLANT’S REPLY BRIEF
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

____________________

VIRGINIA DUNCAN, RICHARD LEWIS, PATRICK LOVETTE, DAVID MARGUGLIO, CHRISTOPHER WADDELL, AND CALIFORNIA RIFLE & PISTOL ASSOCIATION, INC., A CALIFORNIA CORPORATION, Plaintiffs and Appellees,

V.

XAVIER BECERRA, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA; AND DOES 1-10, Defendant and Appellant.
[See all the court filings in this extremely important case.

Interesting claim. What appears, to this non-lawyer, to be the claim is that if the standard of review is “intermediate scrutiny” then no constitutional protection exists. It’s open season on whatever, supposedly, protected right the legislature takes aim at.

It would appear such decisions and thought processes are in need of a serious reset.—Joe]

The Democrats want you dead and gone, and your culture not just destroyed but forgotten.  To finish the job, they need to take your guns from you.  They have already stolen your votes by importing millions of foreigners and federal government drones.  They silence your voices from the media.  They hide the crimes commit against you in the news.  Their corrupt judges rule from the bench with an iron fist in a black robe.  They bankrupt you with inflation and debt.

When the soap box has been burned,
When the ballot box has been stolen,
When the jury box has been corrupted,
That only leaves Pandora’s box.

May God have mercy upon their souls, for we must have none.
God help us all.

McChuck
December 29, 2019
Virginia
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Anyone who hasn’t figured out that antigun legislation is cultural warfare, and not public safety policy-making, isn’t paying attention.

The disarming of political/cultural opponents is not done for the benefit of the group that is disarmed.

Don Kilmer @donkilmer
Tweeted  on January 09, 2020
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]