Monthly Archives: November 2019

The First Amendment is the First Line of Defense, iStock-1006474816

United States -(AmmoLand.com)-When discussing Andrew Cuomo and Elizabeth Warren recently, one thing has been very clear: Both of them have been very open about their desire to silence Second Amendment supporters. Yeah, they say it is just the National Rifle Association, but then again, dont they claim that they dont want to take away guns? Well, they used to say that these days, we know that is a lie.

Cuomo began a campaign of financial blacklisting against the NRA, at the urging of Everytown for Gun Safety, while Warren plans to use the IRS whether it means Lois Lerner comes out of retirement (and her six-figure pension) remains to be seen (and hopefully, we never find out) in conjunction with campaign finance reform that is really aimed at shutting up dissent from her anti-Second Amendment extremism.

Warren and Cuomo are trying to silence the voices of Second Amendment supporters. For good reason when Second Amendment supporters can get a fair hearing from their fellow Americans, they win the argument. The facts often shoot down the pretexts that are used to infringe on our rights. If fellow Americans knew how few people were killed with rifles and shotguns, the bans proposed by many on modern multi-purpose semiautomatics would be dead on arrival, and the politicians responsible for pushing for the bans would find their careers dead in the water.

This is why Second Amendment supporters need to defend the First Amendment with just as much vigor. The First Amendment is the first line of defense for our Second Amendment rights it is with freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the rights to peaceably assemble and to petition for the redress of grievances that we fight.

With freedom of speech and freedom of the press comes the ability to persuade our fellow Americans, whether one-on-one or to millions at a time via mass media or social media. With the right to peaceably assemble, Second Amendment supporters strengthen their voice by uniting for a common purpose, sometimes through formal organizations like the National Rifle Association, sometimes through more informal groups. The right to petition for redress of grievances can be as simple as a letter, phone call or e-mail to an elected official or it could entail hiring a professional to present the case to elected officials.

Just having these rights, which pre-exist the Constitution and the protection of which is codified in the Bill of Rights, is not enough. They are merely tools. Their effectiveness depends on how skillfully they are used. For the most part, Second Amendment supporters have been skillful enough in their use of their First Amendment rights to preserve our freedoms.

That said, we as Second Amendment supporters have to recognize that there is a need to up our game on this front. Those who seek to deprive us of our rights have adjusted in the wake of their failures, and we need to adjust to the adjustments they have made.

This includes the recognition that the fight for our rights has become a full-spectrum fight, one that has to be fought not just in the political and legislative arena, but also in corporate boardrooms, PTA meetings, and even when it comes to our professional life. Yet even in these new areas where we have to fight for our freedoms, it will be our First Amendment rights that will help save the Second Amendment.

About Harold Hutchison

Writer Harold Hutchison has more than a dozen years of experience covering military affairs, international events, U.S. politics and Second Amendment issues. Harold was consulting senior editor at Soldier of Fortune magazine and is the author of the novel Strike Group Reagan. He has also written for the Daily Caller, National Review, Patriot Post, Strategypage.com, and other national websites.

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The First Amendment is the First Line of Defense - AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

I applaud the Day's stand in advocating for the children of New London along with the State Office of the Child Advocate's concern. But the view from the outfield for manyof your readers is that you are not consistent in just reporting the news. I am talking about another report released by the State Office of the Child Advocate.

That would be their report on the Newtown shootings at Sandy Hook. The Newtown reportrevealed the tragic path of Adam Lanza and the long list of failed checks and balances that could have prevented the Newtown tragedy. It's an interesting read and has nothing to do with gun manufacturers manufactures and the upcoming civil litigation against them.

What then is its purpose? The answer would be the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the right to carry firearms.

While I would agree that the First Amendment is our most cherished amendment, I have heard said the reason we have the Second amendment is just in case someone tries to remove the First Amendment. The First and Second Amendments are krypton to the socialist progressive leftist and their mainstream media allies.

James L. Miller

Salem

See the article here:
Want to protect First Amendment? Then maintain Second Amendment - theday.com

By Linda Bryant

Many jails across the country, in an effort to reduce costs and offer inmates more opportunities for connection with loved ones and friends, increasingly rely on inmate video visitation. According to the American Bar Association, as of July 2018, over 600 correctional facilities across the country hadimplemented some form of video visitation. Jails invoke laudable justifications for incorporating video visitation into their offerings: to prevent the influx ofcontrabandinto their facility, to free up limited officer time, and to offer family and friends more opportunities to connect with their loved one.

However, there are three inmate video visitation landmines that can create legal challenges for jail administrators. If these landmines exist in your facility, you can expect lawsuits asserting your jail is violating the constitution by unreasonably restricting aninmates First Amendment rightto communicate and associate with others.

Often, a jail moves towardsupplanting in-person visitation with video visitation. This is the wrong approach unless you want to be an easy target for plaintiffs lawyers. Lawsuits challenging video visitation are increasing against jails that use the technology to justify a decrease in or to eliminate in-person visitation. These lawsuits are ending in settlements requiring in-person visitation, payment of large fees associated with civil litigation alleging a violation of constitutional rights, and state laws clarifying that in-person visitation may not be supplanted by video visitation.

The American Bar AssociationsCriminal Justice Sections Standards on the Treatment of Prisoners, adopted by the ABAs House of Delegates in 2010, warns about eliminating in-person visitation. Standard 23-8.5(e), the standard governing visitation, states:Correctional officials should develop and promote other forms of communication between prisoners and their families, including video visitation, provided that such options are not a replacement for opportunities for in-person contact.[1]

Jail leaders should also heed the 2016 American Correctional AssociationPublic Correctional Policy on Family-Friendly Communication and Visitation, which states:Correctional agencies should promote communication between offenders and their family and friends and adopt family-friendly policies that use emerging technologies as supplements to existing in-person visitation.[2]

The bottom line is to remember the key phrase: SUPPLEMENT, NOT SUPPLANT!

A common business model for video visitation and large phone contracts between vendors and jails is for the vendor to charge for a call or video visitation session sometimes at an unreasonably high cost and provide some of the revenue earned back to the jail. The 2016 ACA Public Correctional Policy referenced earlier again provides the lodestar:Do not place unreasonable financial burdens upon the offender or their family and friends. The policy goes on to state:Establish rates and surcharges that are commensurate with those charged to the general public for like services any deviation from ordinary consumer rates should reflect actual costs associated with the provision of services within a correctional setting.[2]

Look, this has to be said: Anytime you have a jail profiting off the fundamental human need to communicate with family members and friends, or when exorbitant fees are charged to simply exercise this right, youre going to raise a lot of eyebrows. Its going to appear you are exploiting people and doing so knowingly and unconstitutionally. The incredible responsibility jail leaders have for the care, custody, and control of individuals, many of whom have not been convicted, does not include the ability to profit off of those same individuals, or to charge those same individuals for a lesser-quality form of visitation (where the constitutionally preferred in-person visitation is free).

While reasonable fees are defensible, exorbitant fees and kickback models are viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism by the courts. And no matter what, if you are charging fees for visitation in the absence of any opportunity for in-person visitation, you should talk to your lawyer quickly.

Weve all been frustrated by bad or lost reception during an important phone call or Facetime, Skype, Teams or Zoom session. Now imagine if your only means of communicating with the outside world was limited to a few minutes each week, and through a provider nowhere near as cutting-edge as some of the better-known telecommunications or social media giants. Through no fault of your own, your call (which your loved one paid for while also trying to pay other bills and put food on the table for your kids) is cut short. Or, the video freezes. Or the audio is out of sync with the video.

Any of these technological glitches lead to a horrible user experience. So you end up having to manage your frustrations and concentrate doubly hard to hear half the conversation. You wind up frustrated during the call. Its hard enough for an adult to cognitively piece together sentences and conversations in these instances; imagine if youre trying to communicate with your small child in this manner. That small child will soon lose patience and do something else, wasting the precious few minutes you receive to visit with family.

A study by the Minnesota Department of Corrections foundin-person visits decreased inmate recidivism by 13 percent. [3] Other research has shown thatin-person parent-child visits improve outcomes for children with incarcerated parents as well as for the inmates. [4] All jail professionals know the value of any program that reduces recidivism. Faulty inmate video visitation technology, or a faulty video visitation experience, swallows the visitation session itself and detracts from rather than enhances the purpose of visitation: maintaining strong bonds with loved ones and the community to ensure success upon release.

Jail leaders must remember that being able to connect with loved ones helps reaffirm ones humanity in an otherwise dehumanizing situation and serves to ease an inmates return to the community upon release. Against this backdrop, inmate video visitation is like any technology it can be beneficial or destructive. Avoiding the three landmines listed above will help ensure video visitation enhances your jails visitation offerings without endangering inmates constitutional rights or reducing their chances of successfully transitioning back into society.

References

1. American Bar Association. Standard 23-8.5: Visiting.Standards on Treatment of Prisoners.

2. American Correctional Association. Public Correctional Policy on Family-Friendly Communication and Visitation.Public Correctional Policies(see page 82).

3. Minnesota Department of Corrections.The Effects of Prison Visitation on Offender Recidivism.

4, Poehlmann J, Dallaire D, Booker Loper A, et al. Childrens contact with their incarcerated parents: Research findings and recommendations.American Psychologist. 2010 Sep; 65(6): 575598.

About the author

Linda Bryany, JD, CJM, was appointed by the Governor of Virginia to the Virginia Parole Board. Parachutist-qualified, she served as a Captain on active duty in the U.S. Army and a Major in the Army Reserves. For over 17 years, she prosecuted violent crime and homicides for the city of Norfolk, VA, rising through the ranks to become a Deputy Commonwealths Attorney. In 2013, Linda was appointed to serve as Deputy Attorney General for the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Division of the Virginia Office of the Attorney General, where she oversaw the litigation of all lawsuits against the Virginia Department of Corrections. She has also served as the assistant superintendent and compliance attorney for a mega-jail that houses special management inmates. Currently, Linda is a consultant for Lexipols Corrections solutions and a consultant and instructor for the American Jail Association.

Link:
Inmate video visitation and the First Amendment: 3 landmines to avoid - CorrectionsOne

A woman tries out a rifle at a National Shooting Sports Foundation's Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show in Las Vegas.

Getty Images

Matt Post is too young to remember the last time the Supreme Court heard a case over gun control.

But the 20-year-old college student is hoping the nine justices think of him and other members of the so-called mass-shooting generation when they consider the scope of the Second Amendment during arguments in a landmark dispute next week.

"The shooting in Sandy Hook happened when I was in sixth grade, and I think it's hard for people who didn't grow up with this to learn how it weighs on you," Post, an activist with March for Our Lives, said in a recent interview.

"Someone can just come in and slaughter your classmates," he said. "The Constitution guarantees you a better childhood than that."

On Monday, the Supreme Court is set to hear its first major Second Amendment case since 2010.

The dispute, over a since-repealed New York City handgun regulation, comes amid heightened criticism of the nation's uniquely permissive gun laws. A decision is expected by July, in the midst of the 2020 presidential election.

Gun-control advocates worry that a ruling could spell doom for measures that have been considered lawful by appeals courts in the past nine years, like assault weapon bans and restrictions on gun use outside the home.

For gun-rights supporters, the case is a welcome return to the Second Amendment for a court that they see as having abandoned such cases for too long.

While the top court has repeatedly taken cases featuring other aspects of the Bill of Rights, some conservatives, including Justice Clarence Thomas, have lamented what they see as the justices treating the Second Amendment as a "second-class right."

With a divided Congress unlikely to reach a deal on gun legislation any time soon, the most important vote on the issue for the foreseeable future is likely to come from the justices.

The case has already spurred fighting among lawmakers. After a group of Democratic senators led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., filed a brief in connection with the case warning the court it could be "restructured," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and the rest of the Republicans in the Senate told the justices that they would protect them.

The composition of the court has shifted since the court last heard a case involving gun legislation. Justice Anthony Kennedy has since departed, and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh have joined it, forming a reliable conservative majority. Kavanaugh in particular has expressed an expansive view of gun rights.

The court established a loose framework for gun legislation in a pair of cases decided in 2008 and 2010. In the 2008 case, D.C. v. Heller, the court found that the Second Amendment protected gun ownership unconnected with service in a militia. In 2010, the court applied that ruling to the states, in McDonald v. Chicago.

Hannah Shearer, who researches Second Amendment litigation at the Giffords Law Center, an anti-gun violence group, said that since 2010 lower courts have treated the provision similarly to the First Amendment.

"They consider whether the law burdens Second Amendment rights, and whether there is a compelling public safety reason that is supported by evidence," Shearer said.

The worry among gun-control proponents, Shearer said, is that the court could do away with considerations of public safety, known as a balancing test.

"It would mean that judges couldn't consider the public safety need for any given gun law and would only be looking at whether the law is supported by early American history," she said.

Kavanaugh is on record as an opponent of the balancing test, having laid out his views in a 2011 dissent issued while a federal appeals court judge in Washington.

"Heller and McDonald leave little doubt that courts are to assess gun bans and regulations based on text, history, and tradition, not by a balancing test such as strict or intermediate scrutiny," he wrote.

Thomas, who has been vocal about gun rights, and Gorsuch, whose approach to the law focuses heavily on how the Constitution was understood in the 18th century, are also likely votes in favor of broadening the reach of the Second Amendment.

So, too, with fellow conservatives Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, who were part of the Heller and McDonald majorities, though their records are less certain.

A sliver of hope for those on the left is that the court could drop the case altogether, due to a recent move by New York.

The suit was brought by a group of gun owners living in New York City and the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, an NRA-affiliate group, which challenged a New York City regulation barring the transport of handguns outside the home, including to a second residence.

But that rule, which was believed to be the only such regulation of its kind in the nation, no longer exists. After the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case, New York rushed to do away with the rule, seeking to avoid a ruling that could weaken gun control laws around the country.

Attorneys for New York argued that the city's move made the case "moot," or no longer active, and urged the court to dismiss the matter. But the court has not done so, and the gun owners argue that their case is still live because the city could still penalize them for past violations.

The Trump administration, which is supporting the gun owners before the court, has argued that the case is still worth hearing because the gun owners could theoretically seek financial damages, though they haven't done so yet.

In any case, the justices have decided to move forward with oral arguments. They have warned the attorneys who will be arguing on Monday that they should be prepared to debate whether the case is still active.

"We hope and expect that the court will dismiss this case as moot," Shearer said.

If it does so, the legal landscape for gun legislation will likely be unchanged, at least for now.

The case is New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York, New York, No. 18-280.

Read the original:
The Supreme Court is about to hear its biggest gun-control case in a decade - CNBC

Eric Rasmussens critics thought they were going to silence him. Instead, in a repeat of similar misadventures in would-be censorship in the past, they expanded his platform to express opinions they find vile.

The Indiana University business professor reported that the number of my Twitter followers has risen from less than 400 to 833 from November 18th to 21st and my web log still exists and has over 10 times the number of readers it used to have.

The lesson: Intimidation can backfire, he said.

The veteran professor doesnt seem too rattled by his negative experience in the national spotlight. He described his widely reported battle with IU administrators as a kerfuffle defined as disorder, uproar, confusion.

But that snickering description only emphasizes an obvious fact the professor has the hide of a rhino.

Rasmussen was denounced by the IU administration for what were described as racist, sexist and homophobic remarks on social media. News reports of the controversy generated a huge public reaction, to the point that IUs provost complained that various (university officials) have been inundated in the last few days with demands that he be fired.

IU officials did not dismiss Rasmussen because the First Amendment of the United States Constitution forbids us to do so.

That is not a close call, said Lauren Robel, vice president and provost.

But Robel responded to Rasmussens speech with statement of her own. She described his opinions as wrong and immoral and stunningly ignorant.

Rhetorically speaking, Professor Rasmussen has demonstrated no difficulty in casting the first, or the lethal, stone, she said.

Lethal? Thats what the provost said in an obvious overstatement. But her rhetoric is consistent with the current leftist stance that being exposed to opinions they do not share constitutes acts of violence that cause physical and/or psychological wounds.

Rasmussens sin came when he posted an article written by Lance Welton that raised a dubious assertion, Are Women Destroying Academia? Probably. A number of news outlets reported that Rasmussen, not Welton, wrote it, further fanning the flames of outrage.

If the media cant get the simplest facts right, dont trust their summaries or conclusions. Read original sources. Be suspicious of articles that dont give links to their sources, Rasmussen warned on his blog.

Theres no question Rasmussens views are out of step with current campus political orthodoxies. Rasmussen has raised questions about the propriety of affirmative action, womens roles in society and homosexuality, all of which received a thorough and hostile airing in the recent controversy.

In addition to the vigorous denunciation of Rasmussen, IU announced that no one will be forced to take a class from Professor Rasmussen and that, in the future, he will use double-blind grading on assignment, an apparent attempt to blunt his alleged hostility to certain kinds of students.

Rather than roll into a fetal position, Rasmussen fired back at his critics, including the provost.

She lies about my opinions or, at least, she carelessly attributes specific opinions to me that I have never held, without evidence (no links) and without confirming with me first, he replied.

Rasmussen also challenged the double-blind grading. He said administrators are sending a clear message to the student body.

Having seen the Provost and Dean down on a professor who does not share their views, students will feel more comfortable in expressing their own views that is, they will know what to expect if they speak freely in the classes of the 99 percent of professors who are (a) leftwing, and (b) exempt from blind grading, he said. Indiana University is not discouraging bias, but encouraging it, even requiring it, as a condition of teaching.

God help the conservative student whose professor checks Facebook and Twitter before grading term papers.

Jim Dey, a member of The News-Gazette staff, can be reached at jdey@news-gazette.com or 217-351-5369.

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Free-speech controversies not exclusive to the UI - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette