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By Dan Roberts

Gun Rights - The Latest Civil Right To Come Under Fire

AmmoLand Gun News

Manasquan, NJ --(Ammoland.com)- While its certainly true that firearms rights and freedoms have seen an exponential increase over the last thirty years, its equally true that those rights have been hard won.

Gun owners having to constantly push back against a tsunami of deliberate misrepresentations and out right lies foisted on an uneducated public by various gun control groups, aided and abetted by their ideological puppet-masters in the mainstream media.

These anti freedom demagogues have NO moral or ethical constraints to restrain them from their malicious malfeasance, so it’s left to the true grassroots individuals and assorted groups on the side of freedom to take up the task of informing the public of the facts. The 2008 SCOTUS Case Heller v DC is just one recent example. The anti gun zealots insisted to anyone that would listen up to, during, after and even today, nearly three years after the ruling; that this case was the first time the Supreme Ct ruled in such a way.

This is bald faced LIE and is something that can easily be proven as such with a simple five minute Google or Amazon search for a book titled ” Supreme Court Gun Cases” which covers two centuries and ninety two separate cases where the Supreme Court addressed the issue of the Second Amendment and firearms ownership and use as an individual and protected right.

The more recent case of Chicago v McDonald, affirming that the Second Amendment was a protected individual right, binding against the States via the Fourteenth Amendment, should have been the final nail in the coffin for the gun banners, yet the various groups, anti gun politicians and their enablers in the media have obstinately persisted in their efforts to do everything within their power to actively work to deny this fundamental civil right to as many people as possible, in every way they can conceive, with some of the most twisted logic and absurd reasoning ever voiced or put to paper.

Sadly, this is not the first time in our Country’s history we have born witness to this type of despicable and despotic behavior before and should easily recognize it.

We saw it with the enactment of the Sullivan Law in NY, designed solely to deprive recent immigrants their American Civil Right to firearms, because they were viewed as a threat to the ” establishment ” and slandered in the most vicious manner imaginable.

We saw this repeated again with the Civil Rights movement and again with the anti gay rhetoric during the 80′s. Anti Firearms ownership, use, and carry is just the latest iteration of a decades old dogma, one that you would think the majority of the population would have learned by now to dismiss for what it is, a baseless, bigoted, immoral and ethically bankrupt mindset.

During the Civil Rights Era, many people, citizens and politicians alike excoriated Rosa Parks for daring to stand up for herself and the rights of all African Americans by challenging the status quo. She and many, many others endured vicious verbal attacks, physical attacks, threats and the worst of human behavior at the hands of her fellow citizens, as did homosexuals when they first gained the courage to “come out of the closet”.

Pro Freedom, Pro Firearms patriots of every color, creed, race, socioeconomic level, and sexual orientation now find themselves enduring the same despicable behavior. I find it disturbing that the people that claim the loudest to be the most open minded and inclusive are the same people that yell the loudest about how backward, unenlightened, uneducated and dangerous firearms owners are.  How they deserve to be shunned, shamed and viciously attacked for nothing more then daring to uphold the ideals of the Founding Fathers.  Or the desire to embrace their freedom and civil rights and have the ability to defend their lives and the lives of their loved ones from criminal predators that our justice system has shown time and again to be unable or unwilling to deal with in any meaningful manner.

More articles, commentary and information by Dan Roberts available at That Every Man Be Armed.com

Filed under: Shooting Industry News by DRoberts 1 Comment »

By Marina Salsbury

Texas Upholds the 2nd Amendment or Does it?

AmmoLand Gun News

Manasquan, NJ --(Ammoland.com)- The Constitution is the guiding instrument of American society, so it is not surprising that issues dealing with the document or its amendments command the highest level of attention and tend to create controversy.

One of the more controversial provisions of the Constitution is the Second Amendment, in which [god] grants Americans the “right to keep and bear arms.” Despite having been ratified in 1791, the Second Amendment continues to be a subject of fervent debate, and the amendment was implicated in Jennings v. McCraw, a lawsuit decided in Texas district court Thursday. The suit found the National Rifle Association denied in its attempt to overturn a Texas law barring 18- to 20-year-old Texans from carrying concealed weapons.

Although the litigation focused on the legitimacy of a Texas state law, Jennings implicated questions of criminal and Constitutional interpretation. According to the NRA and three Texans serving as plaintiffs, the Texas gun statutes violated both the Second and Fourteenth amendments, the latter containing the oft-cited Equal Protection Clause. The plaintiffs called the Texas laws unconstitutional and discriminatory, but U.S. District Judge Sam Cummings disagreed, granting the defendants’ motion for summary judgment. A motion for summary judgment granted in favor of the defendant acts as a dismissal, as meeting the standard indicates that a judge feels it impossible for a reasonable jury to find for the plaintiff.

The NRA’s counsel also moved for summary judgment, but the motion was denied by Judge Cummings, who dismissed another case in which the NRA challenged the constitutionality of gun restrictions in September 2011. According to Judge Cummings, the Texas law in question did not violate the Second Amendment which criminology experts hold that it “does not confer a right that extends beyond the home.”

As with any litigation involving Constitutional interpretation, the question of how accurately the framers’ intent is channeled through the decision will be questioned. Anti-gun organizations and the Brady Center, a legal action project focused on controlling gun violence that intervened in the case on behalf of the defendants, hailed the decision as a victory in which the Constitution was upheld.

However, the Second Amendment has been interpreted more broadly in the past, as in the U.S. Supreme Court decision on District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). In its opinion, the Court noted that the amendment protects firearm possession and use for “traditionally lawful purposes,” as the plaintiffs in Jennings wished to. Such decisions have not prevented states from being restrictive, however.

In Burton v. Sills, 53 N.J. 86 (1968), the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment’s use of the term “militia” made it applicable only to organized militias, such as the National Guard.

Clearly, such inconsistent interpretation is at best confusing and inconvenient, and is an impedance to the creation and enforcement of effective laws. While the aforementioned opinion of the New Jersey Supreme Court is hardly the standard, such decisions indicate that the Second Amendment may not always receive the deference it deserves.

Similarly, the Jennings decision suggests that the doctrine of federal preemption may be subject to erosion, an issue that has consequences reaching far beyond the Second Amendment and affecting the integrity of the Constitution as a whole.

About:
Marina Salsbury planned on becoming a teacher since high school, but found her way instead into online writing after college. She currently writes on a variety of topics, but always seems to veer back to education-related articles. She currently writes for a masters degree website.

Filed under: Gun Rights News by Ammoland 1 Comment »