Category Archives: Second Amendment

The next gun rights case before the Supreme Court, United States v. Rahimi, involves an individual that no sensible society would allow to have a gun.

Three years ago, according to the Justice Department, Zackey Rahimi and his girlfriend had an argument in a parking lot where Rahimi threatened to take away their mutual child. He then allegedly grabbed her wrist, knocked her to the ground, dragged her to the car, and hit her head on the dashboard. After he realized that a witness had seen this fight, Rahimi allegedly pulled a gun and fired at this bystander.

He later called his girlfriend and allegedly threatened to shoot her if she told anyone that hed assaulted her.

This is one of a series of gun crimes allegedly committed by Rahimi. In 2020, he allegedly threatened another woman with a gun. According to the Justice Department, Rahimi also participated in a series of five shootings in December 2020 and January 2021. In one alleged incident, he fired into the mans house with an AR-15 rifle. In another, he allegedly followed a truck and fired multiple shots at another car that had been traveling behind the truck after the trucks driver flashed their headlights at Rahimi.

Although Rahimis lawyers claim that these allegations are disputed, they do not deny any of the DOJs specific claims. Nor do they offer an alternative version of these events.

Yet last February, a federal appeals court held that Rahimi and other domestic abusers have a constitutional right to own a gun. The Supreme Court will consider whether this decision was correct at a November 7 oral argument.

The federal law at issue in Rahimi allows someone to be disarmed before they are actually convicted of a violent crime. But the law also provides several due process safeguards.

Before anyone can be disarmed under this law, a court must have issued a restraining order against them, in a proceeding where the defendant was given an opportunity to appear and make their case. Federal law does not disarm anyone unless a court has either explicitly determined that they are a violent threat to their partner or to a child, or implicitly made such a determination by prohibiting them from engaging in violence against that partner or child.

Nevertheless, the Fifth Circuit didnt just strike down this law. It ruled that the law is unconstitutional on its face. That means that, if the Fifth Circuits decision is upheld by the Supreme Court, this federal ban on firearm possession by domestic abusers may never be applied to any individual, no matter how violent that individual may be and no matter how careful the court that issued a restraining order against such an individual was in ensuring that they received due process.

And that brings us to the single worst aspect of the Fifth Circuits decision in United States v. Rahimi: It was correctly decided. Or, at least, it was correctly decided under the Supreme Courts incompetently drafted decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), which places an extraordinarily high burden on any government lawyer tasked with defending any gun law in court.

Bruen was supposed to be the crown jewel of originalism the belief, now ascendant among Republican lawyers and judges, that the only legitimate way to read the Constitution is to determine how it was understood when it was ratified. The Bruen opinion was the six GOP-appointed justices attempt to build an originalist framework from the ground up, one that forced judges to rely almost entirely on historical sources when deciding Second Amendment cases.

A little more than a year after Bruen, it is clear that this approach is an unworkable failure that produces deeply immoral outcomes and that has fostered mass confusion within the federal judiciary.

The core question in Rahimi, in other words, is whether the Court will back away from its decision in Bruen, which has led to all kinds of disastrous results, including the Fifth Circuits decision holding that abusive husbands have a right to keep a weapon they could use to murder their wives.

Bruen held that, in order to justify nearly any law regulating firearms, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nations historical tradition of firearm regulation. This means that lawyers defending even the most widely accepted gun laws, such as the federal ban on gun possession by domestic abusers, must show that analogous regulations also existed and were accepted when the Constitution was framed particularly if the law addresses a general societal problem that has persisted since the 18th century. If they cannot, the challenged gun law must be struck down.

This places an extraordinarily high burden on any lawyer defending a gun law. When the historical record is ambiguous or indeterminate, the government loses, and a gun law is effectively repealed by the courts. And lawyers defending gun laws face an especially heavy burden when they defend laws that seek to address a problem, like domestic abuse, that has existed for centuries.

Almost immediately, the Bruen decision sparked mass confusion in the federal courts. Judges have reached contradictory results in a multitude of post-Bruen challenges to gun laws. Courts applying Bruen have struck laws prohibiting guns in places of worship, requiring guns to have serial numbers that allow them to be tracked by law enforcement, and prohibiting underage ownership of guns all claiming that these laws are inconsistent with historical tradition.

And if Bruen is legitimate, Zackey Rahimi must have a constitutional right to own a gun.

Until 1871, when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that a husband and wife may be indicted for assault and battery upon each other, it was legal in every state for married partners to beat their spouses. There is historical evidence that abused women, in at least some parts of the country, were able to obtain court orders requiring their abusers to temporarily turn over money, which would be forfeited if the abuse continued. But there is no founding-era analog to the federal law disarming domestic abusers.

And so the question the Supreme Court must confront in Rahimi is whether a decision like Bruen, with its unworkable legal standard and catastrophic consequences, can be tolerated any longer.

On the day Bruen was decided, Justice Stephen Breyer warned in a dissenting opinion that, by requiring judges to dive into often-vague and indeterminate historical records, Bruen imposes a task on the lower courts that judges cannot easily accomplish. Courts are, after all, staffed by lawyers, not historians, Breyer continued. And legal experts typically have little experience answering contested historical questions or applying those answers to resolve contemporary problems.

Indeed, Bruen has proved so unworkable and has led so many judges to such upsetting conclusions that many of those judges complain openly about it in their opinions. By announcing an inconsistent and amorphous standard, complained Judge Holly Brady, a Trump appointee to a federal court in Indiana, the Supreme Court has created mountains of work for district courts that must now deal with Bruen-related arguments in nearly every criminal case in which a firearm is found. Another judge slammed the Supreme Courts Second Amendment cases as filled with methodological flaws that invite judges with an axe to grind to selectively find historical evidence that supports the outcome they want to reach anyway, and then use it to justify that result.

Judge Robert Miller, a Reagan appointee, was even more blunt in his assessment of Bruen. After holding that a federal law that prohibits individuals from receiving a firearm while they are under a felony indictment must be struck down under Bruen, Miller concludes his opinion by admitting it was drafted with an earnest hope that its author has misunderstood New York State Rifle v. Bruen. Bruen, Judge Miller continues, insults the framers by assuming they were so short-sighted as to forbid the people, through their elected representatives, from regulating guns in new ways.

Needless to say, sitting federal judges do not typically hurl these kinds of insults at the Supreme Court, as the high Court has more or less unlimited power to sabotage lower court judges work.

One fundamental problem with Bruen, as Judge Millers critique of the decision emphasizes, is that the six Republican-appointed justices who joined it appear to have no understanding of why changes in American society over the past 250 years make it difficult or impossible to draw meaningful analogies between modern gun laws and those that existed when the Constitution was written.

Recall that Justice Clarence Thomass majority opinion in Bruen announced that gun laws that address a general societal problem that has persisted since the 18th century are presumptively unconstitutional unless there is a distinctly similar historical regulation from the 1700s. Applying this newly announced rule, Thomas argued that a citywide handgun ban is unconstitutional because firearm violence in densely populated communities was a problem that existed at the time of the founding, but 18th-century lawmakers did not address it with a handgun ban.

But the kind of urban communities that exist in modern-day America did not exist in the early American Republic. According to the 1790 census, New York City had only 33,131 residents around the time when the Second Amendment was ratified. The second-largest city, Philadelphia, had fewer than 29,000 residents.

Eighteenth-century lawmakers, in other words, simply did not confront the problem of firearm violence in densely populated communities because densely populated communities of the kind that struggle with gun violence in modern-day America did not exist in the 18th century. At the time of the founding, Americas largest city had more or less the same population as modern-day Meridian, Mississippi the eighth-largest city in the poorest state in the Union.

And yet, because the Supreme Court declared in a majority opinion that urban policymaking in 1790 was closely analogous to governing modern-day New York City, every judge in the country is now bound to follow this absurd conclusion.

Meanwhile, there are countless other ways that America in the 21st century would be unrecognizable to the framers.

For one thing, early America did not have police forces or, at least, the kind of organized police forces that could enforce modern-day gun laws. While early US communities sometimes relied on citizen watchmen to keep the peace and used patrols to track down escaped enslaved people, publicly funded and organized police forces did not emerge until the middle of the 19th century. Many sources claim that the first such police force in the United States was formed in Boston in 1838. New York City formed its police force just a few years later.

When the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1791, in other words, neither the United States nor any state or municipality had the capacity to enforce a law seeking to disarm domestic abusers. But that doesnt mean that such laws should be declared unconstitutional, any more than modern-day laws regulating the internet are unconstitutional because the framers lacked the ability to send electronic communications.

We simply have no idea how people in 1791 would have regulated guns or what sort of regulations they would have deemed permissible if early Americans actually had the state infrastructure necessary to do modern-day law enforcement. Bruens inquiry into which kinds of laws existed in a pre-police society tells us nothing about which sort of laws the framers would have deemed constitutional.

Similarly, we have no idea how early American lawmakers would have regulated the kind of advanced weapons that are widely available today, but that did not exist at all or that were at least very uncommon when the Second Amendment was ratified.

Indeed, the sorts of firearms that were widely available in the 18th century are not the sort of weapons that were typically used to commit acts of violence against family members or romantic partners. As Ohio State University historian Randolph Roth explained in a 2019 book chapter, fewer than 10 percent of household homicides in colonial and revolutionary New England or Maryland were committed with a gun.

The most likely reason why 18th-century firearms were not often used in family violence is that the kind of muzzle-loading guns that were available at the time could not be used impulsively unless they were already loaded for some other purpose. These guns could not be kept loaded because the black powder used by these guns would corrode the weapons inner workings and would become moist, losing its ability to ignite. Loading such a gun took at least a minute, as the user had to pour powder down the barrel, hold it in place with wadding, and drop or ram the shot or ball onto the charge.

So one other likely reason why 18th-century Americans did not enact many of the sort of gun laws that exist today is that guns were fundamentally less dangerous in the early Republic. The fact that early Americans did not forbid impulsive men the sort of men who might murder their wives from owning a muzzle-loading musket tells us nothing about how the framers might have regulated a weapon that can be stored while loaded, that can be hidden in someones pocket or waistband, and that can rapidly discharge more than a dozen bullets.

In fairness, Bruen does acknowledge that cases involving dramatic technological changes may require a more nuanced approach, and it does include language indicating that, say, machine gun bans remain viable, even though machine guns were not invented until 1884. Bruen says that the Second Amendment protects the possession and use of weapons that are in common use at the time. So machine guns will remain illegal so long as they remain uncommon.

But the fact that the drafters and ratifiers of the Second Amendment were comfortable living in a world where muzzle-loaded muskets were commonplace tells us nothing about whether they would have also wanted the Constitution to protect weapons that can be carried while loaded and that can turn a mere argument into a murder in less than a second.

At this point, you might be wondering how six Supreme Court justices all of them legally trained and well-credentialed could have embraced a legal framework with such obvious flaws that has been so harshly criticized by judges across the political spectrum. The short answer to this question is one word: originalism.

Originalism, in Justice Amy Coney Barretts words, is the belief that constitutional text means what it did at the time it was ratified and that this original public meaning is authoritative. All reasonable judges believe that it is sometimes useful to inquire into how the Constitution was originally understood in order to decide cases, but originalism, at least in its strongest form, claims that this is the only legitimate way to interpret the Constitution.

Many Republican lawyers, including Thomas, Justice Neil Gorsuch, and Barrett, view originalism as an important part of their identity.

Barrett, at least, also acknowledges two serious problems with the originalist methodology: It sometimes leads to terrible or ridiculous results, and it sometimes produces no result at all. As Barrett wrote in a 2016 article co-authored with scholar John Copeland Nagle, adherence to originalism arguably requires, for example, the dismantling of the administrative state, the invalidation of paper money, and the reversal of Brown v. Board of Education results that, Barrett admits, would wreak havoc.

Similarly, Barrett has also acknowledged that originalist methods dont always produce a clear result, although her answer to how originalists should approach this problem is unsatisfying: For an originalist, the meaning of the text is fixed so long as it is discoverable.

Justice Thomass biggest innovation in his Bruen opinion is that he figured out a way for originalists to resolve Second Amendment cases even when it is not clear how that amendment would have been understood at the time it was ratified simply apply a presumption that all gun laws are unconstitutional, and strike down the law unless the government produces sufficient historical evidence to rebut this presumption.

Thomass innovation makes a lot of sense if you are an originalist judge who wants to solve the problem of not knowing how to rule on a case if the historical record is indeterminate provided, of course, that you dont care one bit what happens to the people of the United States after countless gun laws are struck down. But Bruen does nothing to solve the other problem acknowledged by Barretts scholarship: What should an originalist do if their methodology leads to a truly awful and destabilizing result?

A responsible Court would confess that it erred in Bruen and come up with a new framework that can be applied in a sensible and predictable way by lower court judges. (As it happens, in the decade before Bruen, lower court judges came up with a two-step framework for deciding Second Amendment cases that was accepted by every federal appeals court that considered it. The Supreme Court could simply bring that framework back.)

And there is a precedent for the Court swiftly abandoning a disastrous legal framework after a majority of the justices realized it led to disaster.

In Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940), the Supreme Court upheld a public school districts decision to expel two students who refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance in class the students were Jehovahs Witnesses, and they objected to saying the pledge on religious grounds. Almost immediately after it was handed down, the Gobitis decision triggered a wave of hate crimes against Witnesses, with one Southern sheriff dismissing the violence because theyre traitors the Supreme Court says so, aint you heard?

Three years later, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), a humbled Court reversed course, holding that the First Amendment forbids the government from forcing anyone to say something they do not want to say.

Will todays justices show the same humility their predecessors showed in Barnette? Unlikely. But there is a way out of the Bruen dilemma that will allow the six justices who joined that benighted decision to save face, while affirming that the government may enact reasonable gun regulations such as a ban on gun possession by domestic abusers.

Although Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh both joined Thomass opinion in Bruen, they also joined a separate concurring opinion by Kavanaugh, which enumerated several categorical exceptions to the right to bear arms:

[N]othing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. ...

We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those in common use at the time. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.

Kavanaugh added, moreover, that this list does not purport to be exhaustive, which implies that he would also endorse other categorical exceptions perhaps one for domestic abusers, or for people that the legislature has determined are too dangerous to be armed.

This list of Second Amendment carve-outs, moreover, appeared in the Supreme Courts decision in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Courts first decision holding that the Constitution protects an individual right to bear arms. And these carve-outs were not added to the Heller opinion because the Court determined that they fit into some kind of originalist framework.

Rather, as Justice John Paul Stevens revealed less than a year before his death in 2019, Justice Antonin Scalia, the author of Heller, added this language after relatively moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy asked for some important changes to the original draft of the Heller opinion.

Kennedy is no longer on the Court, but Kavanaugh, his successor, appears to have appointed himself as the keeper of this compromise that Kennedy struck with Scalia. Add on Robertss decision to join Kavanaughs Bruen opinion, plus the Courts three liberals, and thats five votes that are willing to create categorical carve-outs to the right to bear arms which exist outside of Thomass originalist framework.

Moreover, while Thomass framework supports the Fifth Circuits unconscionable decision in Rahimi, Kavanaughs framework offers the Court a way to rule that domestic abusers do not have a constitutional right to own a gun. As the Justice Department argues in its brief, the Court can add a new carve-out to Kavanaughs list, holding that the Second Amendment permits lawmakers to disarm people who are not law-abiding, responsible citizens.

Thats not a particularly satisfying answer to the legal questions presented by Rahimi because it places the Court in the role of an arbitrary policymaker, striking down some gun laws and upholding others because five or more justices think that a new carve-out should apply. But its a much more sensible outcome than affirming the Fifth Circuit and allowing abusers to have guns.

The most responsible course the Supreme Court could take, given Bruens many flaws, would be to overrule that decision in its entirety and announce a different, more workable framework that courts can apply in future Second Amendment cases such as the two-step framework that was used by the courts of appeals before the Supreme Court made them abandon that framework in Bruen.

But, since this Supreme Court is unlikely to admit that it erred, Kavanaughs willingness to create categorical exceptions to the right to bear arms offers the Court a way to save face while also reversing the Fifth Circuits terrible Rahimi decision.

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The Supreme Court is seriously considering whether domestic ... - Vox.com

Just hours prior to a mass shooting in Maine that killed 18, Congressman Mike Thompson, D-Yolo, delivered a letter he co-wrote with Nancy Pelosi and 90 members of the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force to new House Speaker Mike Johnson urging him to take action on gun violence prevention.

Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and teenagers in America. Parents across our country now live with the reality that if their child dies, the most common reason for that death is not because of cancer or a car crash, but a bullet, the members wrote. As you assume the responsibility of Speaker of the House, we stand ready to work with you on legislation that will reduce gun violence and urge you to commit to putting gun violence prevention legislation on the floor as soon as possible.

The letter added that since former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was removed from his leadership role on Oct. 3, 1,030 people have died from gun violence including 15 children and 60 teenagers, another 2,069 people were injured and 33 mass shootings occurred.

Although we can never get back the time that was wasted by the chaos caused by the lack of leadership in the House of Representatives, we must not let that dysfunction prevent us from working together to address the gun violence crisis moving forward, the letter stressed. We suggest that the House first start by considering the numerous gun violence prevention bills that are supported by a majority of Democrats, Independents and Republicans.

According to the Associated Press, Johnson said prayer was a proper response from the House for the Wednesday mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine.

Were really, really hopeful and prayerful, Johnson said. Prayer is appropriate at a time like this, that the evil can end and the senseless violence can stop.

Johnson then declined to take questions including those regarding gun violence legislation.

The suspect, Robert Card, is still at large and residents in Lewiston are being encouraged to shelter in place, according to the Associated Press.

According to data provided by the Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University, there have been 569 mass killings since 2006, with 37 so far in 2023 as of the time of publishing.

The database defines mass killings as an attack in which four or more people have died, not including the perpetrator, within a 24-hour period, which is consistent with how the FBI defines mass killings.

Cards family told NBC News that his mental health had deteriorated rapidly and that they had contacted his Army Reserve unit and police after he began hearing voices.

Following a rampage four years ago, Maine passed a law aimed at preventing mass shootings referred to as a yellow flag law instead of the red flag laws that have proven effective in other states, including California, according to the Associated Press.

A gun-rights group helped write the law to show that the state still had a pro-Second Amendment mindset. However, it is uncertain if the yellow flag law was used in Cards case, but many are blaming the killings on the states weak gun laws.

Red flag laws, which in California are called extreme risk protection orders, capitalize on what social epidemiologist Veronica Pear calls leakage, referring to when a shooter has a plan to perpetrate a mass shooting and tells someone else about it.

So theyre making the plan before it happens, she remarked in a June 2023 interview concerning red flag laws. The role of red flag laws is to capitalize on this phenomenon of leakage by basically providing an opportunity for those people who are made aware of the plans to either petition themselves, if they are permitted, or to law enforcement who can then petition a judge to ask for the civil order that would temporarily remove firearms from the high-risk person for either three weeks to up to five years in California.

However, Pear warned against the argument that mental health is the only cause of gun violence because it misses the point of what her research shows could save lives, which is that mental illness is not a leading cause of violence.

Its much more likely to be related to self-harm and people who have mental illnesses are more likely to be harmed by others than to harm others, so it is definitely just a red herring, she argued.

Pear is an assistant professor at the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program and argued that people want a solution that doesnt involve major change and pinning it on a stigmatized and vulnerable group can be an easy way out.

In one of her studies, Pear and her colleagues examined gun violence restraining orders in California between 2016 and 2018 by analyzing case details and respondent mortality.

The data showed that mental illness was a less severe risk factor than substance use or a sudden life-altering event such as the loss of a loved one or the end of a relationship.

Its not helpful conversation to just focus on mental illness because what we found was a majority, 80%, didnt have mental illness, she said regarding respondents of her study. So focusing just on that group means that youre missing a huge swath of people who are at risk of harming themselves or others and really shouldnt have firearms.

She stressed that the problem with politicians conflating mental illness and red flag laws is that the laws are being treated as mental health intervention when theyre really intended to be behavioral health intervention irrespective of a diagnosis.

Congressman Thompson is a staunch defender of the Second Amendment and rejects any solution that involves removing the right to bear arms for law-abiding American citizens except in the case of people who have a history of mental illness.

Ill never give up my guns and Ill never ask law-abiding Americans who have no history of mental illness to give up their guns, he stated on his website. Not only am I personally against this, but the Constitution forbids it.

However, a 2022 Columbia University study found that only about 5% of mass shootings and other types of mass murder were related to severe mental illness and that half of mass shootings were associated with no red flags.

When asked if his argument that he will never ask law-abiding Americans who have no history of mental illness to give up their guns is flawed given the data, Thompson said, Thats in the constitution.

Americans have a constitutional right to have a firearm, he doubled down in a late May 2023 interview regarding gun violence and mental health. There are things that we can do to make it safe, and thats what Im working on.

Thompsons rhetoric around mental illness and its relation to gun violence is one made by many on both sides of the aisle and is often used as a scapegoat by Republicans after significant mass shootings such as the one that took the lives of 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas last year.

Pear believes that Thompsons view comes off as an overly narrow approach thats going to be leaving out a lot of people who could benefit from ERPO law.

Additionally, she argued that this rhetoric has been encouraging other states such as Tennessee to begin shaping their red flag laws around mental illness.

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Letter urging House Speaker to act on gun violence sent hours prior ... - Woodland Daily Democrat

Have you seen the NRAs latest column in the Rutland Herald? The piece, titled, Gun-control legislation, dives into the current state of Vermont politics.

From the column:

One might ponder: How do such stringent gun-control measures find approval in Vermont? Its straightforward The gun-controllers are abandoning their rural roots. But, many rural Democrats have stood on principle and diverged from party leadership to uphold Second Amendment rights. However, their influence seems to be waning, overshadowed by politicians who choose to pander to major donors than stand with everyday Vermonters.

Over the past decade, progressive politicians have sold the rights of Vermont citizens away to the highest bidder. As we approach another legislative session and election year, it is time for Vermonters to stand up and make their voice heard. Click the Take Action button below to challenge your lawmakers to vote with their community, not progressive political bosses.

Despite being one of the safest states in the country, these progressive politicians continue to pass laws to restrict your Second Amendment rights. Thankfully for Vermont residents, the NRAs State Affiliate, the Vermont Federation of Sportsmens Club, is challenging unconstitutional laws in Vermont. To learn more about their efforts, click here.

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Vermont: Gun-Controllers Are Abandoning Their Rural Roots - NRA ILA

The increased dollars will be used to plug funding holes for struggling legal services organizations

The Florida Bar Foundation will distribute roughly $32 million to state organizations providing free civil legal services to those who cannot afford them by December 31, up from $7.7 million last year.

The 34 legal aid groups that received money last year should expect additional Foundation grants this year, but at roughly four times the amount, said Foundation Executive Director Donny MacKenzie.

MacKenzie said the Foundation sent out a survey asking the legal aid services if they have the capacity to spend that money.

We dont want to waste money, MacKenzie said. All of the grantees who responded said yes.

Donny MacKenzie

The money is intended to be used to pay for the salaries of attorneys who represent low-income clients for free in areas that affect their basic needs: health and shelter, personal safety, security, and stability.

The increased funding seems like a boon to legal aid at first blush, but it isnt.

For one thing, funding is already low, meeting about just 8% of overall need in both Florida and the nation. For another, needs have been exacerbated for low-income families during the pandemic. Also, other federal funding sources are expected to drop off next year.

Funding from the federal Victims of Crimes Act, which uses largely white-collar crime fines to pay for compensation and assistance to victims, is expected to decrease statewide by $40 million. And annual dollars from the federal Legal Services Corporation may go down, too.

So, this added money comes at a very fortunate time, said MacKenzie.

MacKenzie said the Foundation received a letter from one legal aid services group in rural Florida saying the additional money would be used to hire back someone they had to let go, and to restart a pro bono program they had to shut down.

Were going to basically get back to where we were, said MacKenzie. And thats always good news.

The Foundations legal aid funds are generated from interest on IOTA accounts. These funds increased more than four times over last year because interest rates have increased along with inflation.

While this money appears unstable, the Florida Supreme Court is trying to bring transparency and stability to the funds. Since 2021, the court has issued two amendments to the rule that governs the funds. The first amendment required the Foundation to spend no more than 15% of the total dollars on administration, and to separate the funds out for easier tracking. A 2023 amendment required lawyers to keep their trusts in higher-yield trust accounts that would bring in more money for legal aid.

The Florida Bankers Association is pushing back on the second amendment, saying that it goes too far, too fast. The court on rehearing is taking comments on the matter until November 1, at which time the court could make a final decision on the amendment or allow oral arguments.

The Florida Legislature is one of just three in the country that declines to provide funding for civil legal aid services in its annual budget topping $117 billion this year, according to the 2022 final report by The Florida Bars Special Committee on Greater Public Access to Legal Services. The committee recommended to the court in that report that the Legislature start allocating annual money for civil legal aid, in part, because these programs produce $7 in economic impact for every dollar spent.

Funding is critical to the operations of all the states legal aid programs, states the committees report. The Court, The Florida Bar, The Legislature, and the Executive branch should work collaboratively to secure dependable funding.

Florida civil legal aid funds are a patchwork of donations from the Foundation, individual fundraising by local legal aid organizations, and federal dollars from the Legal Services Corporation and the Office for Victims of Crime, which disburses the Victims of Crimes Act compensation and assistance allocations.

Both federal programs are struggling to meet the growing need for civil legal assistance.

The Legal Services Corporations bipartisan board requested $1.6 billion for 2024, up from the $560 million Congress allocated in 2023.

Current funding is simply inadequate to come close to meeting the current need, wrote Legal Services Corporation Communications Manager Kathryn Fanlund by email. More than 33% of unmet legal needs are directly related to COVID-19.

But the increased funding ask is unlikely to materialize and may even decrease in 2024. The U.S. House is considering decreasing funding from $560 million to $489 in 2024 and the U.S. Senate is proposing to maintain it at $560 million. If the House proposal is adopted, the Legal Services Corporation estimates that Florida legal aid groups will serve 12,437 fewer people.

Two areas of major concern include housing and domestic violence, Fanlund wrote.

Traditionally, the federal Office for Victims of Crime would step in on domestic violence assistance, but it continues to take in less money every year since white-collar crimes arent being prosecuted as frequently. President Biden signed the VOCA Fix to Sustain the Crime Victims Fund Act of 2021, a measure that amended the law to deposit fines from cases that arent prosecuted, which should restore billions to the fund, according to the National Network to End Domestic Violence.

But that will take time.

Florida is still spending past years allocations, according to the state attorney generals office, which disburses the victims of crime money to local aid groups. So the $40 million statewide cut for 2024-2025 matches the decreased Florida assistance funding from 2020 to 2021: $106.7 million to $66.7 million.

Jim Kowalski

In addition to that impending cut, President and CEO of Jacksonville Area Legal Aid James Kowalski, Jr., said his office already received a 25% reduction in those federal dollars for this year.

When the federal victims of crime funding drops, state family law assistance programs suffer.

Other than that federal money, which requires applicants to come in through the crime victim door, legal aid in Florida provides almost zero general family law assistance across the state, Kowalski wrote. It is the single biggest area of need, and the coverage is almost zero.

In addition to the $32 million the Foundation will disburse in December, it has already doled out $3.8 million in pro bono support from the $45.5 million it received in 2022-2023 in IOTA collections. The grants are for one year. The Foundation expects to receive a report on last years disbursements from the legal aid organizations in the spring of 2024.

As part of the 2022 disbursement, the Foundation gave $61,207 to IDignity, an organization that works to secure I.D. cards for vulnerable individuals in Central Florida.

One woman who benefitted from the grant, Angel, lost her I.D. while having heart surgery almost two years ago, hindering her ability to apply for a job or secure housing.

I was completely homeless, Angel says on an IDignity promotional video. I came to IDignity to get my I.D. and my birth certificate. And Ive got all my documents that I need. It made me human again.

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Foundation prepares to disburse roughly $32 million in legal aid ... - The Florida Bar

Sean Hannity had one combat sport in mind while outlining how he gears up for potential shootings just hours after a mass killing in Maine left at least 16 people dead on Wednesday.

And then I always ask the question when something like this happens, what is your plan? What do you do? I have a personal security plan. I train in mixed martial arts, the Fox News host mentioned in an interview with GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley.

Ive been a big believer in the Second Amendment for a long time with the prayer that I would never have to use it.

The Fox News hosts comments arrived after the deadly shootings at a bar and bowling alley in Lewiston, the states second-largest city. Law enforcement sources told The Associated Press that dozens of people were wounded in the shootings.

State police have since identified a person of interest, a military-trained firearms instructor and was committed to a mental health facility for two weeks over the summer.

Hannity went on to ask Haley what she views as the underlying cause of shootings in America before the candidate called for serious law and order, the defunding of sanctuary cities and to acknowledge the cancer in America that is mental health.

Social media users mocked Hannity over his mention of his MMA training, joking that hes training to block bullets with his body during a shooting.

Continued here:
Critics Sock Sean Hannity Over His Bizarre Personal 'Plan' For Mass ... - Yahoo! Voices

A fusillade of amicus briefs has now been filed in support of affirmance of the Fifth Circuit's decision invalidating the federal ban on possession of a firearm while under a domestic violence restraining order (DVRO). While no one countenances the alleged behavior of respondent Zackey Rahimi, the various amici persuasively argue that the federal law 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(8) facially violates the Second Amendment.

In this post, I'd like to identify some of the briefs that I thought to be extraordinary. All of the briefs are easily accessible in the docket on the Supreme Court's website.

But first I'd like to mention the Brief of Respondent, filed on behalf of Mr. Rahimi. Lead counsel is Matthew Wright, Office of the Federal Public Defender, N.D. Tex. The brief covers all of the bases of text and history, as mandated by the Court in NY State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, and in particular does a thorough job of recording how the founding generation responded to interpersonal and domestic violence. That generation responded in numerous ways, but never by banning possession of arms. Contrary to myth, numerous men were jailed for spousal abuse in the new nation.

Public defenders are underappreciated, but they do God's work by providing counsel to indigents. Kudos to Mr. Wright's team for their professionalism.

Disclosure: I filed a brief on behalf of the National African American Gun Association. It focuses on the purported historical analogues relied on by the United States, such as bans on arms possession by "Greasers," "tramps," and "vagrants," which were traps for involuntary servitude. The government also cites the confiscation of arms by oppressive British monarchs, seizure of the arms of Loyalists by our own patriots in the Revolution (there was a war going on after all), and wholly irrelevant laws against gun sales to children and intoxicated persons.

The government also argues that the development of repeating arms after the Founding justifies 922(g)(8) as warranted by "novel modern conditions." However, technological innovation in arms did not increase domestic violence, given the prevalent use of knives, blunt instruments, and bare hands by abusers.

Now on to the high points in some of the other briefs, in no special order.

In states like California and New York, DVROs are handed out like beads thrown from floats at Mardi Gras. Judges routinely sign on the dotted lines with little pretense to due process. These practices are detailed in the briefs of the Alameda County Public Defenders et al. and The Bronx Defenders Union and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Is domestic violence something new that was unknown to the Founders, necessitating novel firearm restrictions? The brief of historian Angus Kirk McClellan has the obvious answer: No. "Domestic violence was a serious social problem at the founding and throughout the nineteenth century." Did English and early American law tolerate cruelty by abusive husbands to wives? The answer is also no, as McClellan demonstrates. For instance in 1687, in the colony of Pennsylvania, wife Hannah Overton brought evidence of husband Thomas Tunneclif's abuse toward her and their children. The court ordered him to give a good behavior surety which could be levied against his property. Had he not done so, he would have been jailed. McClellan also details the Founding-era surety system, which was the historical, common-law way of addressing threats of interpersonal violence. It did not involve disarmament.

On 922(g)(8)'s failure to provide due process protections, check out the gold-star brief by Dan Peterson on behalf of Law Enforcement and Firearms Rights Groups. The federal law provides no standard of proof for issuance of a DVRO under state law, such as the "clear and convincing evidence" standard, in order to trigger 922(g)(8)'s possession ban. Nor does it require the right to counsel or to a live hearing, where evidence can be proffered, witnesses can be cross-examined, and other procedures necessary to fundamental fairness can be followed.

A return to a "reasonableness" test to determine the validity of restrictions on the Second Amendment is advocated not just by amici for the United States, but also by some supporters of the right. But, as Cooper & Kirk's brief on behalf of the Center for Human Liberty demonstrates,

that is "obviously an invitation to the very type of untethered judicial policymaking rejected in Heller and Bruen." This brief also systematically rebuts the government's case, showing that 922(g)(8) cannot be reconciled with the history of firearm regulation in this country, particularly because it disarms individuals who have not been found to present an imminent threat of violent criminal conduct.

As to the arguments by amici for the United States to "convert long-rejected invidious discrimination into modern constitutional precedent," David Kopel's brief on behalf of Professors of Second Amendment Law demonstrates how they "overlook the arms-related constitutional enactments repudiating the invidious laws. The right to arms is governed by constitutional enactments, and not by abuses the enactments were designed to stop."

Rahimi preserved the argument that, aside from the Second Amendment, Congress has no power under Article I, 8, of the Constitution to restrict mere possession of arms. The brief of the Firearms Policy Coalition explains how no such power exists under either the Militia Organizing Clause or the Commerce Clause to prohibit possession of firearms. The Justices could avoid the Second Amendment arguments altogether by holding that the Framers of our Constitution plainly gave Congress no authority to regulate non-economic, intrastate matters like the relationship between intimate partners and the mere possession of a firearm in the home.

These are some of the highlights, and there are other fine briefs. David Kopel will also be blogging about the various briefs.

Meanwhile, the United States has filed a cert. petition in Garland v. Range. In that case, the Third Circuit held en banc that the federal ban on possession of a firearm by a felon is invalid as applied to a person who was not convicted of a violent felony and is not dangerous. The government suggests that the Supreme Court hold the petition until Rahimi is decided, and then dispose of the petition as appropriate. I will provide an update on the case when Mr. Range has filed his response

Here is the original post:
Second Amendment Roundup: Fusillade of Amicus Briefs Filed in Rahimi - Reason

In a legal battle that made national headlines, the governor of New Mexico last month sought to unilaterally suspend the right of residents to bear arms in public.

This insanely unconstitutional measurewhich courts fortunately brought to a quick haltwould be troubling on its own, given the Supreme Courts clear defining of the right to keep and bear arms in the 2022 case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

However, the move by New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, is merely the most recent in a long parade of attacks by gun control activist politicians seeking to thumb their noses at the Supreme Court and undermine the Second Amendment.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, just signed into law 23 new gun control measures, despite the fact that his state already faces myriad legal challenges to its existing restrictions.

Earlier this summer, Newsom proposed a 28th Amendment to enshrine gun control in the U.S. Constitution.

Since the Supreme Courts Bruen ruling, Maryland has gone to such great lengths to impose restrictions on concealed carry permit holders that even an Obama-appointed judge was willing to find that the state crossed constitutional lines.

Massachusetts, meanwhile, is trying to ban the sale or future possession of millions of commonly owned semiautomatic firearms.

Its important to understand what these laws all have in common. Rather than protecting Americans by addressing very real problems such as rogue prosecutors and lack of accountability for repeat violent offenders, these politicians are focused on depriving as many peaceable Americans as possible of their natural right of self-defense.

And thats a problem.

Almost every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between500,000 and 3 milliontimesannually, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has acknowledged. In 2021, the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the issue concluded thatroughly 1.6 million defensive gun usesoccur in the United States every year.

For this reason,The Daily Signalpublishes a monthly article highlighting some of the previous months many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missedor that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read other accountsherefrom past months and years. You also may follow@DailyDGUon Twitter for daily highlights of defensive gun uses.)

The examples below represent only a small portion of the news stories on defensive gun use that we found in September. You may explore more using The Heritage Foundations interactiveDefensive Gun Use Database.(The Daily Signal is Heritages news organization.)

As these examples make clear, peaceable Americans routinely rely on their Second Amendment rights to protect themselves and others from criminals.

With crime rates spiraling out of control, law-abiding Americans deserve better than desperate attempts by gun control activists to blame and jeopardize their right to keep and bear arms. This constitutional right remains an important last line of defense against anyone who would threaten life, liberty, or property.

The correct response to criminal violence is to crack down on violent criminals, not to threaten potential victims who merely want to defend themselves when the government cant or wont protect thema scenario that, unfortunately, is becoming increasingly common.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please emailletters@DailySignal.comand well consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular We Hear You feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

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12 Defensive Gun Uses Bare Absurdity of Attacking Gun Rights - Daily Signal

The killing of innocent Israeli civilians is a brutal and bloody reminder of the importance of the Second Amendment in America.

Hamas fighters carried out a devastating sneak attack in Israel several days ago that resulted in the evil slaughter of hundreds of innocent men, women and children. Dozens more were captured as hostages and taken to Gaza. Their fate is in the balance.

The chilling videos show Hamas terrorists roaming the streets gunning down and killing people on sight. They also went into neighborhoods that look similar to the suburbs in America, going door-to-door looking for Jewish families to murder. At least 260 innocent people mostly on the younger side were slaughtered at a music festival as the attack began.

All of this horror is an important reminder of why civilians have fought to keep their right to bear arms in the USA.

What happened in Israel would be significantly harder to pull off in America for one simple reason:

Our country is flooded with private gun ownership, and people have access to weapons similar to what the military and police have.

While gun ownership isnt banned in Israel, it is heavily restricted compared to America and there is no individual right to gun ownership.

One of the first things Israel did after the horrifying terror attack was to loosen its gun laws to get as many weapons into civilian hands as possible. Its the same thing Ukraine did as the Russian invasion unfolded. The Ukrainian government handed out rifles to anyone in Kiev who could get their hands on one.

The logic is simple. Armed people are harder to kill than unarmed people. Bullets flying in both directions giving bad guys something to consider before attacking.

However, here in America, there is a long track record of armed people killing bad guys, including in religiously targeted attacks. If none come to mind for you, thats because the media in general doesnt like to spotlight anything that validates how important civilian gun ownership is.

But to cite just a couple:

Stephen Willeford used an AR-15 to engage a gunman who was carrying out a massacre at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. The first line of defense wasnt a police officer. It was Willeford an armed civilian firing rounds on the murderer to put an end to the carnage. If he had not intervened and engaged the shooter, the killing spree would have continued much longer.

Sutherland Springs wasnt the only shooting in Texas an armed civilian put an end to. A man entered the West Freeway Church of Christ in 2019 and killed two people. Jack Smith, another armed civilian, unholstered his weapon and killed the shooter. How many more people would have died if Smith hadnt been there? Its hard to say for sure, but it definitely would have been more than two.

Its not a surprise that my assessment of the critical role the Second Amendment plays is backed up by the NRA and Gun Owners of America. NRA spokesman Billy McLaughlin told me, Crime can happen anywhere and at any time. That is why the NRA believes it is prudent for law-abiding people who choose to have an effective means of defending themselves and their loved ones to be able to do so. As we are reminded daily, being an instant responder to atrocity is ones best chance of survival.

GOA senior vice president Erich Pratt, The conflict in Israel demonstrates the truth found in the Second Amendmentthat the right to keep and bear arms is necessary to the security of a free state. Ironically, gun control advocates in this country were calling for gun restrictions here, at the same time Israel began slashing its. This underscores the perennial problem with gun control: firearms restrictions never stop criminals from possessing guns, and they put good people at the mercy of heinous terroristsboth foreign and domestic.

A lot of people who pay attention to history certainly agree with the NRA and GOA on the issue.

While the IDF and Israeli police did the best they could to beat back and kill the Hamas terrorists during the heinous surprise attack last Saturday, the simple fact of the matter is the more guns in the hands of good, law-abiding people, the safer we all are.

While some states like New York and California have restrictive gun laws and bans on many popular semi-automatic firearms, there are still civilian gun owners in those states.

In states like Florida or Montana, people are locked and loaded across the board. My brain cant even comprehend 100 terrorists roaming through a Florida community and not being chewed to pieces by armed civilians.

Its believed there are more than 24 million AR-15s in private hands in America, its estimated roughly one million Glock handguns are sold annually in the USA, and theres a total of 76 million rifles and 64 million shotguns in private circulation. In addition, its believed more than 22 million Americans carry weapons on their body outside of the home. That figure doesnt include states where no permit is needed for concealed carry.

It would be Red Dawn in the streets if a terrorist organization or foreign army ever showed up looking to kill innocent people, and the Second Amendment is the reason why.

The fact is also that bad people dont want to shoot up places where theyre likely to meet armed resistance. They choose schools, music festivals and other soft targets where few, if any, guns are likely to be found. Do people attempt mass shootings at gun stores or gun shows? No, because they wouldnt get far at all.

The Nashville mass shooter even scoped out a different school, but opted to not target it because of its security measures.

Bad guys dont want bullets coming their way. They want defenseless and easy targets.

While I wont get into specifics, it wouldnt take long to arm a lot of people very quickly in the event of an emergency.

I know many people who could hand out guns in a matter of minutes if not seconds if they looked out their window and saw terrorists roaming the street killing people.

The Hamas terrorists in Israel went door-to-door executing innocent civilians and taking hostages. Breaking into a house in America is a great way to end up dead.

As the famous saying goes, God made man. Samuel Colt made them equal.

Look at the areas where the riots in 2020 did the most damage in America. It was mostly in areas with strict gun laws like Washington D.C., New York, Portland and other liberally controlled areas. A violent mob tried to burn Kenosha, WI to the ground and Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people.

Another great example is the 1992 riots in Los Angeles. Koreans took to the streets and rooftops armed with weapons and beat back the rioters. Without those weapons, who knows how many might have died.

The bad guys tested their resolve, the Koreans opened fire and stood their ground. Again, bad guys dont like being shot at.

Some people seem to hate the Second Amendment and the fact that millions of Americans are armed, but their attitude will quickly change if they need help. If anyone ever tries what happened in Israel here in America, theyre going to immediately learn why the Second Amendment exists. Thats something Im very grateful for.

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Horrific Attack In Israel Shows Critical Importance Of Second Amendment In America | David Hookstead - Outkick

Published 5:08 pm Wednesday, October 11, 2023

By Rep. Wayne Sasser

Rep. Wayne Sasser

Constitutional rights are not conditional. They are not applied differently to Americans depending on their race, gender, religious beliefs and especially not based on their state of residence. For example, while different states may have different rules and regulations in place that govern their elections, the Nineteenth Amendment protects womens right to vote in every corner of the nation.

The Second Amendment is no different. The fundamental right to keep and bear arms must be protected for all Americans, wherever they live. Unfortunately, threats to the Second Amendment are on the rise. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham launched one of the latest assaults on Americans freedoms by declaring through executive fiat a public health emergency in her state due to gun violence. This declaration empowers the New Mexico Department of Health to temporarily prohibit the open or concealed carry of firearms in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County.

This sets a dangerous precedent if you dont like something, simply declare it a public health emergency, and suddenly, you have a free pass to ignore the Constitution. There are reasonable ways that states can and do go about implementing guardrails in the system to keep dangerous criminals away from firearms while ensuring that law-abiding citizens rights are not trampled. But these solutions must be kept within the scope of the law and not bend the rules to fit an end goal.

Instead, what were seeing in New Mexico is a government overreach that twists the law to implement an agenda.

While a federal judge has already blocked portions of Grishams order temporarily, lawmakers cannot sit idly by while threats to the Constitution persist. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) recently stood up against this abuse in sending a letter, along with other Republican senators, to the Department of Justice urging them to intervene to protect the rights of the citizens of New Mexico. He also co-sponsored legislation that would prevent the president and other government officials from using such arbitrary public health orders as a means to implement gun control measures.

The developments out of New Mexico reflect a broader effort in parts of our country to tamper with our Second Amendment rights. In fact, other states have already made similar pushes to crack down on basic freedoms through public health declarations.

For example, recent legislative sessions in Connecticut have seen efforts to declare gun violence a public health emergency. At a federal level, some lawmakers are even calling for a national public health emergency declaration on gun violence through the Department of Health and Human Services.

At all levels, we are seeing more and more attempts to abuse emergency declarations to fast-track a crackdown on our right to bear arms. If the decision by New Mexicos governor is left unchecked, countless other government officials would feel empowered to follow suit and a threat on the other side of the country would soon be felt closer to home in North Carolina. This is especially pressing if action is taken at the federal level.

Tillis is right to call on other lawmakers and the DOJ to make it clear that these kinds of actions wont stand. This isnt only a defense of the Second Amendment. If we pick and choose when and where we stand up for basic rights, the foundations of our democracy will crumble. Our nations leaders must rise above politics and see Grishams abuse of power for what it is.

The freedoms of all Americans are at stake.

Wayne Sasser represents the 67th District in the North Carolina House of Representatives.

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OPINION: Second Amendment rights deserve protection - The ... - Stanly News & Press

This commentary is by Noel Hudson, a lawyer who lives in Montpelier.

Self-proclaimed militias have been an increasingly visible part of the American scene since the 1990s, so far culminating in their leading role during the storming of the capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The movement has manifested locally in Vermont with the worrisome antics of Daniel Banyai and his Slate Ridge militia training facility in Pawlet.

During its most recent legislative session, Vermont responded by joining the many other states that have prohibited, with varying degrees of severity, the formation and training of private militias. Public reaction to militias, both locally and nationwide, often is confused regarding the constitutional principles at stake. This confusion understandably focused on the importance of a well regulated militia in the Second Amendment is both misplaced and unnecessary.

Simply put, there are no Second Amendment-related rights at issue in suppressing private militias, nor has any significant court decision ever recognized any.

The Second Amendment often reads mysteriously to contemporary Americans, mostly because it comes down emphatically on one side of a debate that Americans stopped having nearly two centuries ago. The question was: What type of military force can be maintained by a stable republic? A professional army, or a citizen militia?

For a large portion of colonists and subsequent early Americans, the answer was, in no uncertain terms, a citizen militia. The prevailing republican ethos that fueled Americas revolution, imported and nurtured by various British dissidents and Cromwellian republican refugees, viewed a professional army (a standing army in the lingo of the period) as inevitably fatal to republican government, a virtual guarantee of a return to monarchy or some other form of tyranny.

The danger stemmed precisely from the armys professional nature: Paid soldiers were economically dependent on following orders, no matter how extra-legal, unjust or tyrannical those orders might be, rendering them mercenaries in all but name. A government in possession of such power, as all European monarchies were, could never resist the temptation to use it.

On the other hand, a militia composed of armed citizens would respond only to orders that were just and legitimate. With the military function in the hands of the citizenry, a would-be tyrant would have no effective fighting force at his disposal, and republican government would be sustained.

The ideal of the republican militia survived the American Revolution, but the events of the war complicated matters. As the colonial legislatures became independent shadow governments organizing against the British empire, striking the first blows in Lexington and Concord in the spring of 1775, faith in the citizen militias was strong. But the reality of the fighting in and around Boston that year was that the British force involved was small and inexperienced.

Such favorable conditions wouldnt last, and by the end of 1776, a massive army of the Crowns best redcoats and a large contingent of battle-hardened German mercenaries had annihilated the combined militias of New England and roamed the mid-Atlantic almost at will. General Washington, long a militia skeptic, finally had room in the wake of the catastrophe to demand authorization for a professional army, shorn of the colonial militias democratic command structure and complete with pay, imported drill masters, and harsh military discipline.

It was this far more effective but ideologically deviant Continental Army that won the war, with no small help from the uber-monarchical French army and navy.

Even waning ideologies can be durable, and the wartime lessons were of small effect. There was little appetite in early America to move on from the militia, a disposition helped by the public memory of the wars first year, and which settled into an iconography that lasts to this day.

The Continental Army was disbanded promptly upon victory, and the prevailing assumption through the confederation period and among the Constitutional Congress formed in 1787 was that the state militias would be the principal military force of the states and of the United States. Our Constitution as drafted in 1787 reflects that assumption in the militia clauses of Article I.

But the recent war and the judgment of its most illustrious veterans, Washington and Alexander Hamilton, led the Constitutions drafters also to include in Article I a provision for a professional federal army. For several decades, the requirement that the federal army and its funding be formally reauthorized by Congress every two years ensured that it remained a nominal force compared to the state militias.

Nevertheless, the mere possibility that the new Constitution would facilitate the establishment of a standing army provoked an enormous storm of protest. Attachment to the militias remained of fundamental importance to a critical mass of the citizenry, among several points of debate that nearly prevented the Constitution from being ratified.

When the recalcitrant anti-federalists succeeded in agitating to amend the Constitution with a Bill of Rights, the Second and Third Amendments were aimed squarely at preserving the states citizen militias and preventing a federal standing army. State constitutions already had parallel militia and arms-bearing clauses, ensuring that state governments were constrained from establishing professional military forces as well.

The first Congresses and President Washington duly complied with the Constitutions command to regulate the militias, passing the Militia Acts of 1792 and the Militia Act of 1795.

While Article I of the U.S. Constitution, the founding-era state constitutions, and the federal Militia Acts of the 1790s are hardly obscure documents, they specify and implement the original meaning of the Second Amendment and its militia clause in ways that can seem discordant, fantastic, even alien to people steeped in contemporary rhetoric. So it is worth looking squarely at the complex brew of rights and obligations that the anti-federalists attempted to cement immovably in place with the Second Amendment.

Firstly, a well-regulated militia meant universal conscription, every man a soldier as a duty of citizenship and for no compensation. With few exceptions, every free white male between ages 17 and 45 was permanently enrolled and semi-mobilized in times of peace (and, implicitly, fully mobilized during war), including that large contingent of men who did not own land and therefore did not even have the right to vote.

These militiamen were required to serve for their entire adult lives. The average life expectancy of the time was 35 years; as a practical matter, there was no retirement age. Federal law specified at length the type of firearm, ammunition and other supplies that every militiaman was required to buy and maintain for militia duty; functionally, this was an onerous tax in addition to being a draft.

The militiamen answered to an officer corps appointed by their state governments and a chain of command that ended with each states governor. At the election of Congress, all state militias could be put under command of the U.S. president. By 1795, the president did not even need Congress to act in order to take command of the state militias; he could do so on his own authority. A libertarian paradise early America was not, but the alternative was a large professional army that few people wanted and many dreaded.

As decades passed and early Americans endured the heavy burden of militia service, however, that alternative looked better and better. Disillusionment with the militias accelerated after the War of 1812, when their poor performance in battle led again to disasters that finally started to seem predictable.

By the end of the 19th century, hardly anyone complained about Americas permanent professional military and professional law enforcement officers displacing the state militias. By the end of the 20th century, hardly anyone remembered accurately what the state militias were.

But it is worth remembering what they were, as our contemporary world is full of internet-fueled nonsense about what a well-regulated militia was and how it worked. Legions of contemporary firearms enthusiasts insist with equal parts confidence and ignorance that well-regulated had nothing to do with government regulation at all, and that our Constitution enshrines the right of independent bands of armed men to make fundamental decisions about what our laws mean and whether we live in a state of peace or war, all while answerable to no one but themselves. This belief appears to be widespread, passionately held, and often put forth with deliberate menace.

Vermonts Legislature and Gov. Scott should be commended for taking a step against this dangerous vision. It has no redeeming value, no practical promise, and no serious basis in our nations history or law.

Continue reading here:
Noel Hudson: What, exactly, was the well-regulated militia? - VTDigger