The NRA along with GOAL filed an Amicus Brief in response to MA Gov. Baker's decision to close gun shops in MA
U.S.A. -(AmmoLand.com)- This week, NRA joined the Gun Owners’ Action League and filed an Amicus Brief in support of federal court action taken in response to Gov. Baker’s decision to close gun shops in Massachusetts.
Governor Baker’s administration has used the COVID-19 pandemic as a means to brazenly threaten our Second Amendment rights. On March 23rd, Gov.Baker issued COVID-19 Order. No. 13 which failed to designate gun shops as “Essential Businesses.” On March 31st, Gov. Baker issued COVID-19 Order No. 21, which designated gun shops as “Essential Businesses.” This reversal was forced by a decision from the Trump Administration – through the Department of Homeland Security – that firearm and ammunition dealers, shooting ranges, and manufacturers are part of the nation’s critical infrastructure and should not be shut down.
However, late afternoon on March 31st, after gun rights advocates praised the decision, the Baker Administration removed firearm retailers and shooting ranges, once again, from the list of essential businesses. Gov. Baker’s closure of firearm retailers effectively bans firearms sales to law-abiding Massachusetts residents.
Gov. Baker’s actions are an unacceptable deprivation of our Second Amendment rights at a time when residents are concerned for the safety of themselves, their loved ones, and their communities.
This is breaking and developing news, and as more details become available, we will update NRA members further. Please stay tuned to www.nraila.org/coronavirus.
About:
Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Visit: www.nra.org
Trudeau Acts Unilaterally to Ban “Assault Weapons” in Canada
U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- Trudeau acts, apparently unilaterally, and with speed, to ban “Assault Weapons” in Canada. On April 30, 2020, the Hill reported that:
“Canada’s government is set to announce a ban on assault-style weapons following a deadly shooting in Nova Scotia this month that killed 22 people.
Officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's administration will announce the ban before the week’s end, though the key provisions have already been decided by his Cabinet.
Among the weapons set to be banned include the AR-15 and the Ruger Mini-14. It wasn’t initially clear whether Canadian citizens who currently own such weapons will be required to turn them in.
After a deadly shooting in New Zealand, officials banned assault-style weapons and instituted a buyback program.
Trudeau’s Liberal Party pledged to enact an assault-style weapons ban in last year’s election campaign, at the time pledging to implement a similar buyback program.
The move comes after a gunman killed 22 people, including a police officer, during a rampage through the rural province of Nova Scotia while driving a car meant to look like a Royal Canadian Mounted Police cruiser. The suspected gunman, 51-year-old Gabriel Wortman, was killed by police.”
“Trudeau was asked during a briefing with journalists in Ottawa on Thursday about a report published by the Globe and Mail newspaper that said the government plans to issue a new list of banned high-power firearms including the notorious AR-15 weapon used in recent mass shootings in the U.S.
‘We have made a firm commitment to Canadians to ban military assault-style weapons because, in Canada, there’s no room for weapons made to kill large numbers of people,’ Trudeau said.
‘We were almost ready to announce measures to strengthen gun control when Parliament was suspended because of the pandemic and we will be making announcements in days to come and will give more details on this then.’
Trudeau made good on his word. On May 1, one day later, the BBC reported Trudeau’s announcement to the world:
“Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has introduced a long-promised ban on assault-style weapons following the country's worst gun massacre in April.
New rules would make it illegal to sell, transport, import or use 1,500 varieties of assault weapons.
The ban is effective immediately but there will be a two-year amnesty period for law-abiding gun owners to comply.
Mr Trudeau also said he would introduce legislation, which has yet to pass, to offer a buy-back programme.
Unlike the US, gun ownership is not enshrined in Canada's constitution, but gun ownership is still popular, especially in rural parts of the country.
Mr Trudeau made a point of saying that most gun owners are law-abiding citizens, but argued that assault-weapons serve no beneficial purpose.
‘These weapons were designed for one purpose and one purpose only — only to kill the largest amount of people in the shortest amount of time,’ he said in a press conference on Friday.
‘You don't need an AR-15 to bring down a deer.’
The call to ban assault weapons was heightened after a number of high-profile shootings—in 2017, at a mosque in Quebec, in 2018 on a commercial street in Toronto and most recently, in a rampage across the province of Nova Scotia that became the deadliest shooting in Canada's history.
RCMP have said that the shooter was not licensed to own firearms, but had what appeared to be an assault-style weapon, as well as other guns. The RCMP did not specify which kind, so it is unknown if it will be covered by the ban.
Mr Trudeau campaigned on the ban ahead of last November’s election, and he said he was planning on introducing the ban in March, but it was delayed because of coronavirus.
His government had already expanded background check requirements and made it tougher to transport handguns, prior to November’s election.”
So that there is no mistake as to when the ban on “assault weapons,” takes place in Canada, The National Review announced, on May 1, 2020, that, as Trudeau makes clear, Canada’s firearms’ ban takes effect immediately.
“ ‘Effective immediately, it is no longer permitted to buy, sell, transport, import or use military-grade assault weapons in this country,’ Trudeau said at a press conference. Trudeau added that Canada was effectively ‘closing the market’ on certain firearms and categorized several mass shootings that have occurred in Canada as a ‘stain our conscience.’”
The ban will classify various firearms that have been used in mass shootings in Canada and around the world as ‘prohibited,’ including the AR-15 rifle, M14 semi-automatic rifle, Ruger Mini-14, and others.
‘From this moment forward, the number of these guns will only decrease in Canada,’ Public Safety minister Bill Blair said at the briefing alongside Trudeau. Blair emphasized that the ‘vast majority’ of Canadian gun owners are law-abiding and use their firearms safely.
Canada’s government will implement a buyback program for current legal owners of one or more of the 1,500 types of firearms covered by the ban. Owners will be granted a two-year amnesty during which time they must participate in the buyback program.”
Recall how Australia, back in 1996 also used a “mass shooting” as a pretext to ban semiautomatic firearms. Twenty-two years later in the U.S., Fortune Magazine expressed exuberance over Australia’s actions,
On March 21, 2019, as reported in the weblog, the Conversation:
“New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has just announced a ban in that country on specific military-style firearms. It will soon become an offence to own or possess semi-automatic firearms and shotguns with detachable magazines capable of firing more than five cartridges.”
“A rigorous study to ascertain ‘. . . the null hypothesis that the rate of mass shootings in Australia remained unchanged after introduction of the National Firearms Agreement’” was reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine, on July 3, 2018.
The bottom line: no causal connection can be established. The report states:
“ ‘Without a 22-year randomized controlled trial assigning only parts of a national population to live under the National Firearms Agreement, establishing a definitive causal connection between this legislation and the 22-year absence of mass firearm homicides is not possible.’ At most ‘a standard rare events model provides strong evidence against the hypothesis that this prolonged absence simply reflects a continuation of a preexisting pattern of rare events.’”
Strong evidence of a causal connection, though, is not definitive evidence, sufficient to establish a causal connection” between enactment of a strict “assault weapons” ban and a reduction in the incidence of “mass shootings.”
But, there is a more important point to be made here. The test reported in Annals of Internal Medicine applied the null hypothesis, as they state, only to “mass shooting” incidents, not all shooting incidents, and that limitation already limits and skews the results the null hypothesis at the outset.
“In the wake of the March 15 New Zealand shootings, advocates for new gun restrictions in New Zealand have pointed to Australia as ‘proof’ that if national governments adopt gun restrictions like those of Australia's National Firearms Agreement, then homicides will go into steep decline.
‘Exhibit A’ is usually the fact that homicides have decreased in Australia since 1996 when the new legislation was adopted in Australia.
There are at least two problems with these claims. First, homicide rates have been in decline throughout western Europe, Canada, and the United States since the early 1990s. The fact that the same trend was followed in Australia is hardly evidence of a revolutionary achievement. Second, homicides were already so unusual in Australia, even before the 1996 legislation, that few lessons can be learned from slight movements either up or down in homicide rates.”
The takeaway from all this:
If you would like to live in a Commonwealth Nation, as the subject of the Queen of England, have at it. The Government will take good care of you:
Security proffered by Government = Tyranny
Unlike the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the right of the people to keep and bear arms IS enshrined in the United States. Americans consider that a blessing—a fundamental, unalienable, immutable right bestowed on man by the Divine Creator, that no man or government can lawfully deny any man.
Let both the Queen of England and her subjects in the Commonwealth Nations and the atheist Marxists and Anarchists in our own Nation scoff at our God-given right, as a free sovereign people, to keep and bear arms.
We will never allow our Nation to be overrun with the ugly weeds of tyranny.
About The Arbalest Quarrel:
Arbalest Group created `The Arbalest Quarrel' website for a special purpose. That purpose is to educate the American public about recent Federal and State firearms control legislation. No other website, to our knowledge, provides as deep an analysis or as thorough an analysis. Arbalest Group offers this information free.
U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- Yesterday, Townhall published an op-ed by Tim Schmidt, president and founder of the United States Concealed Carry Association (USCCA), the largest and fastest growing organization focused on providing self-defense education, training and legal protection to more than 350,000 responsible American gun owners. Schmidt penned this piece amidst the coronavirus pandemic to emphasize the continued need for firearms education and training to ensure as more and more Americans are understanding their Second Amendment rights.
Key Excerpts:
“As the coronavirus pandemic has spread in recent weeks, many Americans have begun truly evaluating their own levels of personal security and preparedness for the first time and are also considering what they would do if they were ever forced to protect themselves or their families.”
“Record firearms sales in virtually every state and municipality across the country… The National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers (NASGW) reported a 168 percent spike in ammunition shipments for the week ending March 14. Figures from the FBI show 3.7 million background checks were done that same month—the most for a single month since the system began in 1998.”
“Even as gun ownership has consistently risen year after year — with roughly 100 million gun owners in the U.S. today — preventable accidents have steadily decreased; there was a 44 percent decline from 1999 to 2018. A recent report from the National Safety Council, a reference resource for safety statistics, shows that preventable or accidental gun-related deaths totaled only 458 cases in 2018, which was the lowest figure since the organization began keeping record in 1903. This represented just 1 percent of all firearms fatalities in 2018, even as concealed carry permits have soared by more than 215 percent in recent years.”
“Being a responsibly-armed American does not stop with your constitutional right to bear arms. In fact, making the decision to carry a firearm, or even to simply keep a gun for home defense, is where the real responsibility begins.”
Since the rise of the coronavirus, record numbers of Americans have been purchasing firearms for self-protection during the current pandemic and it’s been confirmed that while gun sales have skyrocketed, crime has actually gone down across the nation.
Stay updated on news coming from the USCCA on gun ownership amidst the coronavirus crisis and details for first-time gun owners on education and training.
Below is a link and full text of the Op-Ed:
As Gun Sales Rise, Education and Training Are Critical
What I am about to say may surprise some people, especially considering that I am the president and founder of the United States Concealed Carry Association (USCCA). Despite the fact that I have been pleasantly surprised by the large swath of Americans who are working to improve their preparedness in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic — indeed, the last two months have seen record firearms sales — I want to emphasize that going out and purchasing a gun is not the sole requirement of actually being prepared. Rather, it's a small step at the beginning of a lifelong and life-changing journey for millions of Americans who want to keep their loved ones safe.
As the coronavirus pandemic has spread in recent weeks, many Americans have begun truly evaluating their own levels of personal security and preparedness for the first time and are also considering what they would do if they were ever forced to protect themselves or their families.
The result of such evaluations? Record firearms sales in virtually every state and municipality across the country. Gun sales in the states most affected by the virus thus far (California, New York and Washington come to mind) have been particularly high. Images of Americans — many of them first-time gun owners — lined up at gun stores and sporting-goods stores have become commonplace. The National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers (NASGW) reported a 168 percent spike in ammunition shipments for the week ending March 14. Figures from the FBI show 3.7 million background checks were done that same month—the most for a single month since the system began in 1998.
Perhaps not surprising in a world where seemingly everything is politicized, particularly when it comes to firearms, anti-gun groups and politicians have predicted that rising gun sales, coupled with schools being closed, will lead to more accidental shootings and deaths. Kris Brown, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, recently claimed, for example, that an “unintended consequence of these panic-induced purchases in response to COVID-19 could be a tragic increase of preventable gun deaths.”
Try again, Mr. Brown. The reality is that this type of fearmongering and effort by some to use the pandemic to further erode gun rights is not rooted in fact. Even as gun ownership has consistently risen year after year — with roughly 100 million gun owners in the U.S. today — preventable accidents have steadily decreased; there was a 44 percent decline from 1999 to 2018. A recent report from the National Safety Council, a reference resource for safety statistics, shows that preventable or accidental gun-related deaths totaled only 458 cases in 2018, which was the lowest figure since the organization began keeping record in 1903. This represented just 1 percent of all firearms fatalities in 2018, even as concealed carry permits have soared by more than 215 percent in recent years.
One key reason for this is that responsible gun owners take firearms safety very seriously. Many of these individuals have proven that they are willing to comply with the law by fulfilling all of the requirements associated with obtaining a concealed carry permit. In fact, a recent report by the Crime Prevention Research Center found that concealed carry permit holders are among the most law-abiding demographic of Americans today.
All of this aside, the bottom line is that all of us share the common goal of working to reduce future tragedies. Being a responsibly-armed American does not stop with your constitutional right to bear arms. In fact, making the decision to carry a firearm, or even to simply keep a gun for home defense, is where the real responsibility begins.
In addition to firearms safety, education and training must be top priorities for all gun owners, particularly for the thousands of Americans who have purchased a firearm for the first time in recent weeks. There’s no substitute for live-fire training, and many gun ranges have closed their doors during this pandemic, but gun owners still have the option to access countless online training materials and courses from knowledgeable instructors.
Safe firearms storage is also critical. Every new gun ships with a gun lock. A gun owner should use that lock or another secure storage device any time he or she is not either training at a range or carrying said sidearm. Many police and fire stations offer free gun locks — no questions asked. Again, when not in use, a firearm should be stored in a secured lockbox to which only the lawful owner or another authorized individual has access.
There will continue to be political and policy disagreements about gun ownership in the coming days — and beyond — and that’s OK. But right now, as millions of Americans continue to embrace their right to self-protection and others still are just starting to open their minds to the responsibly-armed lifestyle, we need to remember that education, training and safety must remain the uncompromisable tenets on which we all stand.
The U.S. Concealed Carry Association (USCCA) provides education, training and self-defense protection to responsible American gun owners. Headquartered in West Bend, WI, the USCCA is the largest and fastest-growing association whose sole focus is the responsibly armed American.
... Donald Trump, tweeted “Liberate Minnesota,” and then “Liberate Michigan,” and “Liberate Virginia, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under ...
U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- Concealed carriers complying with the governor’s executive order to wear face masks in public settings as a precaution against Covid-19 transmission could find themselves facing serious legal consequences, Fox Illinois reported Monday. That’s because, per Illinois Statutes, “A person commits the offense of unlawful use of weapons when he knowingly…Carries or possesses in a vehicle or on or about his person any pistol, revolver, stun gun or taser or firearm or ballistic knife, when he is hooded, robed or masked in such manner as to conceal his identity…”
“According to the law, this is a class 4 felony,” the report elaborates. “Although this is one of the least severe penalties, it can still carry a potential jail sentence between 1 to 3 years.”
Not to worry, the Illinois State Police implies in its statement in response to concerns:
“The Governor’s Executive Order regarding the wearing of masks or protective facial coverings in public settings during this serious global pandemic was not intended to negatively impact permit holders under the Illinois Concealed Carry Act while legally carrying firearms. The Executive Order does not require or suggest that law enforcement should arrest or criminally charge conceal carry license permit holders for wearing protective masks while in public as long as they are complying with the other provisions of the Illinois Concealed Carry Act and are not committing any other violations of Illinois law. ISP has confidence that law enforcement officers across the state will use appropriate judgment and that elected State’s Attorneys will likewise exercise sound prosecutorial discretion.”
That expression of “confidence” is not a guarantee and has no authority to override enacted law. Relying on “judgment” (with an “appropriate” qualifier) and “discretion” is an admission that any such decisions will hinge on how enforcers choose to respond to a given situation and detainee. It also means a mask charge could be tacked on to an inadvertent violation where no criminal intent exists. (Case in point, how much “discretion” could be involved in defining “partially exposed”?)
It also presupposes everyone in the chain of command has been informed and will act in accordance with ISP’s tepidly-stated intent. We know from experience that expecting all police officers to be informed on such matters falls far short of 100%, often with life-threatening consequences.
Again, case in point, in Ohio, I had petitioned three successive attorneys general over the years to ensure law enforcement officers received training to acknowledge that open carry was legal. Despite that, incidents had been reported of cops holding armed citizens at gunpoint, and two even cavalierly traded Facebook jokes about “double-tapping” open carriers.
That also recalled the incident where a California detective laughed about wanting to shoot gun owners “and get 2 weeks off!!!” and lorded his “Only Ones” status over them:
“Haha that's when you attend one of their meetings and laugh at them cuz they can only dream to have a ccw”
Closer to home, since we are dealing with Illinois concerns, we mustn’t forget the chilling words of former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, who rabidly opposed concealed carry and made what should have been considered an actionable threat with his “shoot first” training policy:
“I don’t care if they’re licensed legal firearms. I’ll train our officers that there is a concealed carry law, but when somebody turns with a firearm in their hand the officer does not have an obligation to wait to get shot to return fire and we’re going to have tragedies as a result of that. I’m telling you right up front.”
Sucks to be a plainclothes officer, a LEOSA retiree, or a federal agent around him. Not to mention a lawful citizen.
With all the cases of documented abuses and in light of its noncommittal “commitment,” we can’t forget that ISP has a history with armed citizens, particularly women, that is ridiculous and offensive. It was not that long ago women were being advised not to have a gun, but instead, if confronted by an attacker, to vomit, and stab ‘em with a rat tail comb.
Illinois gun owners need something more binding than the ISP statement. It’s on Attorney General Kwame Raoul to issue an unequivocal directive and ensure that law enforcement agencies so instruct their officers. Then again, noting the guy’s monomaniacal obsession with grabbing guns, I wouldn’t be holding my breath.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
... even if they are embracing their 1st Amendment right to petition their government by embracing what they view as their 2nd Amendment right to bear ...
