Note: this article contains the research links, audio transcripts and editing script for the corresponding podcast.
There’s a brand new gun bill to have passed the senate floor, and as of this morning, was signed into law by President Biden. This bill comes in the wake of the Uvalde protests, which have more or less their own story behind them, considering the conspiracy-laden claims on how the police handled the matter.
[gun bill audio]
A good number of the voting Republicans have joined their Democratic neighbors across the aisle in Congress to pass a gun bill that is said to be the biggest in DC in more than three decades.
[gun bill audio]
The first reports coming out of DC are that the gun bill addresses what Texas Senator John Cornin calls, “common sense issues.”
[Gun_Bill_Signed_Biden – Cornin]
But what’s common sense to most people these days is largely what’s being fed to them as common sense by the media. So I’ll be taking a look at the bill itself and seeing if I can make any sense of it.
My first reaction, however, from the initial reports coming out are that the Red Flag laws are actually being supported. These are troubling laws that basically translate to someone being able to call in the name of any gun owner to police, who then have the right to come to your home and take your guns away without a warrant, without any adjudication in the courts, and therefore, of course, without due process. This is an unconstitutional law if I’ve ever heard one. But let’s move on to the other items it brings up.
The next is heightened background checks for mental illness, which I am in firm support of. It will be difficult to know right off the bat what the state defines as a mental illness that might prohibit gun ownership. As someone with a learning disorder, this is a little troubling that I could be lumped into a pile with people who have mental disorders. But I’m hopeful that this doesn’t include me.
The initiative also cites funding approvals for communities and schools. So long as this doesn’t mean a militant presence of militarized police forces in these areas, I’d say that’s a good idea as well. In fact, I’m in favor of armed neighborhood watch organizations, and even having community members do armed volunteer watches in their children’s schools with body armor, and radio dispatches to law enforcement and school administration.
While I’m certain funding is not appropriated in the bill for that kind of thing, I am more sure that it likely translates to just stationing more armed, uniformed people at these locations.
Then, of course, there is the increase in scrutiny for purchasing guns by age. The various researching agencies on gun violence have apparently found out that younger citizens are more likely to be involved in active shooter scenarios. And that part of the bill will hopefully address that concern.
I suppose this all remains to be seen, and I’ll be keeping an eye on that story as it evolves.
Perhaps the most contentious part of the bill that nearly shut it down was the language it included about a “boyfriend loophole.”
[boyfriend loophole audio]
Leaving aside for the moment that calling it a boyfriend loophole, which assumes that men are the only abusers in domestic relationships, earlier attempts to to thwart this so-called loophole were all shot down because they bypassed another right that sets the American system of governance apart from other countries where basically anyone can make a claim about anyone else without a shred of evidence, and see that person thrown in jail or, in the case that democrats wanted to see happen, have someone’s guns taken away – permanently.
[ALL DV’S HAVE GUNS TAKEN AWAY]
See how they’re saying a “spouse or a boyfriend?” They want to permanently ban anyone’s rights to possess a firearm. And in this case, since it’s not called the “girlfriend loophole,” or the “domestic partner loophole,” but rather the “boyfriend loophole,” they’re specifically targeting men.
The research is clear that both wives and girlfriends kill their significant others in huge numbers across the US. And in fact, according to the Office of Justice Programs within the DOJ, for every 100 men who killed their wives in the United States, about 75 women killed their husbands. A staggering statistic, when you consider that the left would have you believe that men kill women at a rate of 9:1. By the way most left media outlets are citing a very popular 2017 article in The Atlantic.
In fact, HuffPost tried to sneak one by its readers in their September 21, 2016 article that skewed data from a study by the Violence Policy Center, stating:
“The report found that in 2014, over 1,600 women were killed by men. The most common weapon used was a gun. During that same time period, there were only 15 instances of women using firearms to kill a man in self-defense. Let that sink in. Fifteen.”
In case you missed it there, they plucked one fact: that men killed women with guns. Then they plucked another fact: women used guns to defend themselves. Then they put these facts together, in a sentence that would have you believe that there were only 15 instances in the entire year of 2014 where women used guns the same way men did. I’ll read that again. This time, pay attention to the language.
“The report found that in 2014, over 1,600 women were killed by men. The most common weapon used was a gun. During that same time period, there were only 15 instances of women using firearms to kill a man in self-defense. Let that sink in. Fifteen.”
They’re not comparing two equal datasets. If they were, they’d be citing the number of times that both women and men used a gun to defend themselves. Instead, they’re citing the number of times women defended themselves against any attacker, with the number of times that any man used a gun to kill a woman.
They left out that finicky detail about how often women kill men outside of self defense. That number was quite different. In fact, I’m willing to be that it was not what HuffPost wanted to say, so they just conveniently left that detail out. But I’ll be happy to share that with you.
According to a study that I could not find on the free internet, but which I found on my paid subscription to LexisNexis, and which I will cite in the article for this podcast, the DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs report NCJ175688, from 1999, found that between 1976 and 1997 – a 20-year period – women killed more than 60,000 men. That’s 3,000 men per year, and a little over eight per day on average.
Perhaps even worse than that was an FBI investigation that studied 10,000 familial murders – in other words, murders within the family. That study found that 41% of those charged were women. And that’s just charged with murder.
Now, I can cite statistics all day long that confound the leftist agenda on gun rights. I’m a journalism professor. I teach aspiring researchers all over the world how to read into the agenda of news, and find the right information from the most reliable sources. So, that’s what I decided to do for the podcast you’re listening to right now.
Suffice it to say, you’re being lied to by a woke media monster with a very limited scope of understanding for the ability of its audience to think critically, and for themselves. But that’s a podcast for another day.
To bring it back to the discussion at hand, obviously there was enough pushback from republicans that the various powers that be, agreed that the previous versions of the “boyfriend loophole” violated a number of rights, including the right to due process. That and the red flag gun laws, which are simply “boyfriend loopholes” that extend to non-domestic partners, will be an item many second Amendment supporters will want to watch for.
With all of that said, however, on the very same day that the gun bill was pushed forward, a longstanding unconstitutional gun law that’s kept New York citizens unarmed in the face of steadily rising crime in recent years, has been dashed.
It’s a pretty big win for gun rights advocates in New York and all over New England states as well.
The law that’s allowed many criminals to get away with carrying handguns and making ghost guns in New York, but which has also kept law abiding citizens to live in fear of those lawbreakers, has finally been shot down in a supreme court ruling last Tuesday.
Biden shot back pretty quickly, enforcing his stance on the Second Amendment, but he made no comment on the longstanding affects it’s had on citizens living and traveling in the American Northeast.
Even for anyone driving through New York with guns in their vehicles, criminal charges could be filed against them, and their property seized. And since New York covers the entire land-locked access from every state in New England to every other part of the country, that means every single driver who hopes to transport their guns between the two regions of the country are hindered under these laws.
According to Hudson Valley Criminal Law, it is illegal for anyone without a valid [New York gun permit] to transport a handgun, whether loaded or unloaded. And of course, according to New York’s lofty restrictions placed on those who apply for guns, you’re not only required to be a resident of New York, you’re also required to have or plan to open a business for which the gun permit application is being submitted.
So, it’s not just New Yorkers that have suffered through that era of staunch anti-constitutional, anti-gun legislation.
The long outmoded law that the state government in New York has been relying on for violating the constitution’s view of gun ownership for more than 100 years, was a 1913 ruling that required New York citizens to show “proper cause” in order to get a license to carry a gun in public spaces.
Since then, the requirements have steadily grown more robust as the years have past. At this point, according to ny.gov’s permit requirements, the list is as follows:
Must be a New York State resident, you must be 21 years old, you must have no prior felony or serious offense convictions (which can and has been opined in many ways to avoid approving permit requests). You must be of good moral character, which is also a matter of opinion. You must have a legally recognized reason for wanting to possess or carry a firearm, and you must [have, or] be ready to open the business for which the license is being applied.
Nevertheless, these requirements are about to change, since the Supreme Court’s decision was a 5-4 vote in the state legislature that the right to bear arms applied to New York under the 14th Amendment.
And for those of you wondering, the very first section of the 14th Amendment states, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” And it is for this exact language that I think that the New York Supreme Court’s decision will be used as precedent in other states.
But reeling it in for the purposes of the gun bill discussion, this new revelation for New York, which will almost assuredly have an impact on other states, is almost as momentous as the newest gun bill to be approved this morning. It’s the first major Second Amendment decision from SCOTUS in more than a decade.
Even so, the New York Post reports that the Supreme Court’s decision on the matter is “disappointing,” quoting Mayor Eric Adams, who’s already fretting about how to ensure the city won’t become, as he put it, “the Wild Wild West” and promising to work “to limit the risk this decision will create.”
Perhaps the changes in the outdated New York law have come in light of surging gun violence throughout the state, and centering in the capital city. I’m thinking that because law abiding citizens have, for the last century, been abiding the law and even with that being the case crime has only increased, it may be time for another experiment: To actually abide by the constitution, and instead of gambling on the US government to protect us, we be trusted to protect ourselves.
This, after all was the entire point of ceding from the British Empire, which was clearly going to continue pinning us down under tyrannical rule. So, I say let the games of citizen ownership begin. Be careful, though, folks! There will be a lot of statistics coming out of this next era for New York. The left will undoubtedly be doing everything they can to skew the facts and scare the bejesus out of society so they can say, “we told you so,” and repeal this new, landmark decision.
And as this new flurry of news comes out, keep in mind that they also swept a glaring hate crime under the rug by a deranged man who clearly was not legally in possession of his guns when, just three months ago, he enacted carnage.
Don’t remember that? I’ll jog your memory. A 62-year-old black Pennsylvania resident named Frank James, boarded a subway and fired more than 30 rounds into the crowd, making contact with ten of those victims. And yet, instead of allowing the subway goers to arm themselves, New York’s antique laws made them sitting ducks.
James spent years posting racist material on social media linked to black identity extremist ideologies, including the Nation of Islam, Black Panthers, Black Liberation Army, BLM and an image of black nationalist cop-killer Micah Johnson. And instead of calling this what it was, which was a clearly racially motivated hate crime, New York insisted that it be called an act of terrorism.
[attack audio]
But Frank’s attack was just one of nearly 10,000 violent crimes committed just so far this year in a crime wave that’s being hailed as historical in New York State’s lineage. The crime wave has drawn so much attention that it’s the inspiration for a new plan rolled out just this week in an attempt to focus on the homelessness and violence in the subways and other areas of high crime.
ABC News did an in depth article on the suspected motivations for why more guns are being carried by citizens, and the relationship that has to do with an increase in gang violence and a decrease in police involvement. Much of this was policy-driven, since, in the wake of a spike in killings at the hands of police, people have gone from voicing concerns to all out rioting in the streets. Check the article for links to that and all other research I’ve done for this story.
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