Category Archives: Second Amendment

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Second Amendment absolutist David Barton speaks at a Nevada Courageous Conservatives rally with U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and Glenn Beck.

Private citizens have the right to stockpile nuclear weapons under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Or so says David Barton, the former vice chair of the Republican Party of Texas and director of Ted Cruz's 2016 presidential super-PAC. Here's Barton's unedited quote on the WallBuilders podcastearlier this month:

We can see the bumper stickers now: "Don't start no nuclear conflagration, won't be no nuclear conflagration." "Nukes don't kill people, people kill people." "The real problem is not nuclear arms, but mental illness." And so forth.

Must we repeat the well-worn clich that the Constitution is not a suicide pact? Well, yes. Evidently we must when dealing with well-respected figures in today's GOP. If the logical conclusion of your interpretation of our founding documents makes the preservation of human civilization functionally impossible, it may be time to rethink that interpretation. And if you're a gun enthusiast reading this who cannot, right now, come up with a reason why what Barton said above is indubitably batshit, maybe consider sitting the next few elections out.

The underlying principle of his facially absurd stance is far from a fringe belief exclusively professed by survivalists eating insects out in the woods somewhere. It's repeated often by potty-trained Republicans: "Whatever weapon the federal government has, I should have a right to have as well."

That notion would void the National Firearm Act of 1934 and subsequent addendums, removing any legal distinction between military and civilian weaponry. Gatling guns, Tommy guns, grenades, mortars, landmines, rocket launchers, tanks, Tomahawk missiles, Kamikaze UAVs, radiological bombs all could be for sale at your local gun shop.

Wouldn't you love to be the police officer tasked with enforcing a warrant in such a libertarian paradise?

Barton would even overturn late Justice Antonin Scalia's precedent in the 2008 Heller decisionthat enshrined in law an individual's right to own types of firearms that are "in common use at the time" and explicitly upheld the prohibition of uniquely "dangerous and unusual weapons."

"The Second Amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, such as short-barreled shotguns," according to the decision.

For most of us, purchasing nukes is not only unusual but slightly cost-prohibitive. So, the upshot of Barton's bad strict constructionist take on the Bill of Rights would mean allowing shadowy hedge funds to effectively become nuclear powers. Billionaires as a class have increased their coffers by more than $2 trillion during the pandemic. That could fund quite the arsenal. If you enjoy oligarchy now, wait until it goes thermonuclear!

Self-defense from home invasion, hunting and recreation seem like three non-fruitcake reasons to argue for gun ownership, but alas, gun fanatics, following the marching orders of the National Rifle Association, feel the need to add a fourth: the ever-looming armed rebellion against tyranny, which will necessitate going toe-to-toe with the most technologically sophisticated and powerful military in history.

This is typically the point in the conversation when the example of Vietnam's pyrrhic victory against French and American colonialism gets trotted out as proof that a low-tech guerrilla insurgency can check the U.S. Armed Forces. First off, both China and the Soviet Union provided military aid to the North Vietnamese, who had possessed submachine guns and anti-tank RPGs to arm the Viet Cong. Neither of those are currently legal for your uncle's cosplay militia to pick up at Walmart.

The great irony here is that it's the rabidly pro-gun cadres who pose the most pressing threat to U.S. democracy today. That's a point raised by Ryan Busse, a former firearms executive and author of Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America. He detailed the danger during a recently appearance on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah:

Theres a couple different flags that we saw on Jan. 6. We saw Trump and American flags, and then the other flag we saw were the Come and Take It AR-15 flags. Right-wing political radicals in this country now use guns as the central symbol of their identity. Its a dangerous thing. This is authoritarianism at its formative stages. There are millions of responsible gun owners in this country who love to shoot with their kids and hunt and do all the things that I love to do, and believe in the right to self-defense. But this idea that guns are somehow the symbol of some right-wing political movement thats dangerous 1936 Germany stuff. Its frightening.

More than 300 U.S. residents are shot daily, and more than 100 of us die from those wounds, while the number of mass shootings has increased dramatically since Columbine. It's worth talking about common-sense proposals such as closing the private sale exemption, instituting universal background checks, learning from successful gun control measures adopted by free societies elsewhere and enforcing laws already on the books intended to prevent domestic abusersfrom packing.

But in order to have a rational discussion on this controversial topic, it's vital that the prospect of mushroom clouds periodically dotting the landscape of our residential communities be a non-starter and that any credibility still held by high-caliber wackos like Barton be judiciously bought back and safely disposed of.

This essay was originally published by CityBeat sister paper San Antonio Current.

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Guest Commentary: The Rabid Right Believes the Second Amendment Has No Limits Not Even Nukes - Cincinnati CityBeat

Kyle Rittenhouse, the man who was acquitted of homicide charges after fatally shooting two people and wounding a third, was hailed at a hero to millions when he appeared before a group of young American conservatives.

Speaking at an event in Phoenix, Arizona, organised by Turning Point USA, a conservative student movement for freedom, free markets and limited government, the 18-year-old received rapturous applause and cheers.

Charlie Kirk, the founder of the influential student group, said Mr Rittenhouse had not only not done the wrong thing, but he had done the right thing.

We must say that he did everything right that night, that Kyle acted properly and morally and lawfully when someone tried to kill him, he said.

He added: Kyle did the right thing. And he should be applauded.

In the weeks since the teenager was cleared of all charges over the shooting of three white men, two of them fatally, amid protests for racial justice, Mr Rittenhouse has become something of a hero for many on the right, and defenders of the Second Amendment of the US constitution, which the US Supreme Court has found to give individuals the right to bear arms.

The young man had been charged with first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide, first-degree attempted intentional homicide and two counts of first-degree reckless endangerment, after the shootings in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the summer of 2020.

The largely white jury deliberated for 27 hours over the course of four days before pronouncing him not guilty on all counts. While the news was a shock to some, those watching the trial said under Wisconsin law, the young man has a strong chance of arguing that he had acted in self defence. He did precisely that.

Mr Rittenhouse did not have to take to the witness box to defend himself but he choose to do so. He was asked about why he made that decision.

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I wanted to tell my story. I wanted to tell the world what happened in Kenosha, the truth, unlike what the prosecution tried to say he said. That's why I took the stand.

In addition to Mr Kirk, Mr Rittenhouse appeared with right wing radio host and podcaster Jack Posobiec, Drew Hernandez, and journalist Elijah Schaffer, of the conservative network, Blaze TV, who filmed a lot of the video showing Mr Rittenhouse shooting the three individuals.

Mr Rittenhouse was asked about his interactions with prosecutor Thomas Binger, from the Kenosha County District Attorney's Office.

He was also asked about the admonitions given to the prosecutor by the judge, and whether the prosecution was trying to throw the case.

Absolutely. I think so, he said. I thought they knew they were losing and they wanted a mistrial.

Asked what he thought had been driving the prosecution, he said: I think my trial was an example of them trying to come after our Second Amendment rights, a right to defend ourselves, and to take our weapons.

Joe Biden last year linked Mr Rittenhouse to white supremacists, though they there is no evidence to support that. The young man has asked the president for an apology.

On Monday, Mr Kirk praised Mr Rittenhouse for withstanding such pressure. He said: You held it all together. Youre a hero to millions.

Excerpt from:
Kyle Rittenhouse cheered as hero to millions as he claims homicide trial attempt to come after 2nd Amendment - The Independent

Mississippi had actually filed its abortion appeal in the previous term, in June 2020, when Justice Ginsburg was still alive, but it wasnt until nearly a year later, this past May, that the court agreed to hear it. The case, Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, met none of the usual criteria for deciding whether to hear a case: In overturning the states ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit simply applied binding precedent, and there was no dispute among the lower federal courts for the Supreme Court to resolve. What the case offered was a vehicle the newly empowered anti-abortion supermajority was waiting for.

The decision to hear the New York gun case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, came after years during which the court sidestepped multiple opportunities to expand on the Heller decision, to the frustration of Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who had taken to complaining that their colleagues were turning the Second Amendment into a second-class right. Their protests finally bore fruit in March of this year, when the court accepted an appeal filed by a National Rifle Association affiliate.

The grant of review in the Maine religious schools case came at the very end of the last term. The grant itself was no surprise; the case is tailor-made to complete a project that Chief Justice Roberts has approached incrementally with the clear goal of enabling religious institutions to enjoy the same public benefits as secular institutions.

His mentor and predecessor, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, had a similar goal but lacked the votes, or perhaps the will, to see it to completion. One of his last major opinions, Locke v. Davey in 2004, held that while a state could choose to subsidize religious education, it was not required by the First Amendments Free Exercise Clause to do so. There needed to be play in the joints, Rehnquist wrote, connecting the First Amendments two religion clauses, one that protects the free exercise of religion and the other that prohibits religious establishment by the government.

The new case would transform the permissive into the mandatory, asking the court to rule that Maine cannot exclude religious schools from a program that, in school districts too small to have their own high schools, offers tuition reimbursement to parents who choose to send their children to a private school.

The line Maine drew for its tuition program was based on the states concern that to channel public money to the coffers of parochial schools that provide religious instruction, even though it is a program that relies on parental choice, would violate the Establishment Clause. The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld the exclusion on the ground that the programs purpose was to duplicate, for children lacking access to a local public high school, the religiously neutral education that a public high school offers. During the oral argument, the conservative justices seemed unable to grasp that simple proposition. They insisted to the states lawyer, Chief Deputy Attorney General Christopher Taub, that some kind of rank anti-religious discrimination was afoot.

Mr. Taub readily agreed with Justice Brett Kavanaugh that a state could not subsidize tuition at the schools of one faith while withholding the subsidy from schools of other religions; that would be discrimination, obviously. But Justice Kavanaugh wanted more. Our case law suggests that discriminating against all religions, as compared to secular, is discriminatory just as it is discriminatory to say exclude the Catholic and the Jewish and include the Protestant, he told Mr. Taub. While the courts recent precedents may suggest such an equal-footing principle when it comes to public education, they arent quite there yet. They soon will be. The Establishment Clause, long understood as a barrier to taxpayer subsidy of religious education, was almost completely absent from the argument. Its absence will be more than rhetorical if the challenge to the Maine program succeeds.

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Opinion | Trump Weaponized the Supreme Court - The New York Times

The UP government is all set to make amendments to the School Bus Rules, 2019 very soon for greater safety of school children who travel by buses.

Lucknow: The life of all school buses in Uttar Pradesh may be capped at 15 years in a move that may come as a relief to transporters who are plying buses to ferry school children, as per people in the know of things.

The state government, according to them, is all set to make an amendment in this regard, besides making some other amendments to the School Bus Rules, 2019 very soon for greater safety of school children who travel by buses. The proposed amendments will be put before the Cabinet within a week or two, they said.

One amendment proposal seeks to fix the age limit for all school buses at 15 years after which they would not be deemed fit to ply on the road. The present rules cap life of buses owned and operated by schools (educational institutions) at 15 years and those that are owned by individuals/private operators and used to transport school children on a contract permit, at 10 years.

The idea behind keeping lower age limit for school buses owned by those other than school managements was that such buses become unfit sooner because they ply more than school-owned buses that operate only for the limited purpose of ferrying children, said a senior transport official. But transporters had been demanding an increase in the school bus age limit for long, he added.

The second amendment proposal is for increasing the number of fire extinguisher cylinders to two from one in school buses. Under the current rules, each school bus is supposed to have one 5kg cylinder installed inside it. There is a proposal for installing two such cylinders of 2 kg each at two different places in every school bus for greater safety, the official said.

The government will also adopt Automotive Industry Standards (AIS) for windows and gates of school buses through yet another amendment and also insert a fresh provision, allowing school buses to carry children one and a half time their seating capacity .

As per a Supreme Court ruling, a school bus can ferry children up to one and a half times its seating capacity, considering the fact that many children travelling in a school bus may be less than 12 years and now we are putting this provision in school bus rules also for clarity, the official said. He said school buses rules were framed and notified in 2019 and some amendments were being made after a lot of discussion with stakeholders.

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Life of all school buses in UP to be capped at 15 yrs - Hindustan Times

The sixth annual Magpul Wyoming Governors Match, presented by Vortex Optics, will be held July 28-31 in Casper, Wyoming, at the Stuckenhoff Sport Shooters range. The Wyoming Office of Outdoor Recreation along with the Casper Shooters Club are bringing this nationally recognized shooting sports competition back to Wyoming.

I look forward to attending this exciting event each summer, said Governor Mark Gordon. This annual shooting match is one way we recognize the importance of the safe and proficient use of firearms while also honoring Wyomings forever commitment to the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms.

Competitions like the Governors Match require shooters to hit a series of targets at varying ranges and positions with their firearm as they move through a course of fire. They are scored based on a combination of time and accuracy.

Casper Shooters Club is proud to host the 2022 Magpul Wyoming Governors Cup, said Brian Shain, Vice President of the club. This event will be a USPSA sanctioned pistol/rifle match featuring 10-12 stages and will attract shooters from all over the country allowing us to show off the great State of Wyoming.

The Governors Match will be a community based event that allows members of the public to be able to watch some of the worlds best shooters in action. Organizers hope to attract several hundred participants to Casper for a long weekend, and members of the local community are excited to welcome these visitors again.

The Magpul Governors Match is a fantastic event and I am thrilled that Casper will be hosting in 2022, said Representative Art Washut (R-Casper). The City of Casper and Casper Shooters Club have been working diligently to improve the range facility and their efforts have been rewarded! The Wyoming Office of Outdoor Recreation has been an integral part of this match for many years. I am confident that the 2022 match will exceed all expectations.

The last two matches were challenged by both the pandemic and ammunition shortages, but the event coordinators are hoping for a big turnaround this year.

Were excited to bring the match back to Casper in 2022, said Chris Floyd, Manager of the Wyoming Office of Outdoor Recreation. The local club brings a lot of enthusiasm to the event and we look forward to working with them to help make it a success.

More detailed information about the 2022 Governors Match will be released in the coming months. Visit the website for up-to-date information.

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Magpul Wyoming Governor's Match Returns to Casper in 2022 - ShortGo

More to it than misinformation

Re: "Lies on vaccines are killing people in less educated parts of California" (Column, Dec. 14):

One does not need a college degree to see that many, if not all, of these misinformation stories are just plain ludicrous.

Common sense will see through the lies. There appears to be much more behind people's reluctance to get vaccinated than the misinformation. What about the college-educated people who refuse vaccinations? How about medical professionals?

It is shortsighted to categorize the unvaccinated as uneducated. A more comprehensive study might shed some light on why otherwise reasonable people choose not to get vaccinated.

Robert D. Jackson, Palm Desert

I am quite puzzled by the media's big coverage of Officer Kim Potter relating to the "accidental shooting" of Daunte Wright in Minnesota.

Wright was trying to get away from the police as they were trying to detain him. He also had a warrant out for his arrest.

Potter knew she made an error, pulling out her gun instead of her Taser, and admitted same. Yet she is being tried by the media.

Now, Alec Baldwin took a gun pointed at an employee and "accidentally" did not check to make sure it was not loaded, fired and killed an innocent lady and wounded a man.

He is blaming everyone else for his crime, and he is getting a pass from the media. Now, this same Alec Baldwin who is against the Second Amendment, but makes a living using guns in movies, then shoots an innocent person. What a hypocrite.

Ed Manske, Palm Springs

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: There must be more behind vaccine refusal than just misinformation

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There must be more behind vaccine refusal than just misinformation - Yahoo News

A professor at the University of Miami School of Law has penned a proposal for a "redo" of the First and Second Amendments in a Boston Globe op-ed.

Mary Anne Franks, the Michael R. Klein Distinguished Scholar Chair at the university, wrote that the first two amendments, which include the rights to free speech, religion and bearing arms, "inspire religious-like fervor in many Americans" and that both are "deeply flawed in their respective conceptualizations."

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"These two amendments are highly susceptible to being read in isolation from the Constitution as a whole and from its commitments to equality and the collective good," Franks wrote.

The professor claims that the two amendments "tend to be interpreted in aggressively individualistic ways that ignore the reality of conflict among competing rights."

This is a copy of the cover of the U.S. Constitution.

The result, according to Franks, is that "the most powerful members of society" benefit from these rights at the expense of vulnerable groups. Franks did not elaborate on individuals in these groups.

Franks proposed that both amendments should explicitly state "individual rights within the framework of domestic tranquility and the general welfare set out in the Constitutions preamble."

For the First Amendment, her proposed "redo" reads:

"Every person has the right to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and petition of the government for redress of grievances, consistent with the rights of others to the same and subject to responsibility for abuses. All conflicts of such rights shall be resolved in accordance with the principle of equality and dignity of all persons."

It continues that the government must respect "the freedom of religion and the freedom from religion."

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For the Second Amendment, Franks said the concept of self-defense should be expanded to include "a meaningful right to bodily autonomy" such as on reproductive matters. Her proposal reads:

"All people have the right to bodily autonomy consistent with the right of other people to the same, including the right to defend themselves against unlawful force and the right of self-determination in reproductive matters. The government shall take reasonable measures to protect the health and safety of the public as a whole."

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Law prof suggests rewrites of First and Second Amendments that do not mention free press or bearing arms - Fox News

Former Senate majority leader and 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole passed away December 5 at the age of 98. A World War II veteran who was the recipient of two Purple Hearts and two Bronze stars, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and a five-term Senator from Kansas, Dole served his country with distinction throughout his life.

A quarter century has passed since Dole was in the U.S. Senate, but the freedom he helped secure for law-abiding gun owners lives on. A staunch supporter of the Second Amendment, Dole was instrumental in enacting several pieces of legislation that had a profound effect on gun rights.

Dole was first elected to the Senate in 1968, the same year President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Gun Control Act. In the years that followed, Dole would become one of the GCAs staunchest critics.

Describing his position on the GCA in those years at a 1988 candidates forum, Dole explained,

Simply stated, the legislation placed undue burdens on law-abiding gun owners, thereby diverting law enforcement resources away from real criminals. That, coupled with overzealous enforcement by government bureaucrats, eventually made the need for remedial legislation painfully obvious.

Putting this understanding into action, in 1979 Dole co-sponsored the first version of the McClure-Volkmer bill (the Firearms Owners' Protection Act, or FOPA).

In 1982 Dole secured the first legislative rollback of the GCA. At the time, the GCA required federal licensing for all ammunition dealers and required that a record be kept on all handgun ammunition sales by retailers. The senator sponsored a successful amendment to a trade bill that removed .22 caliber rimfire ammunition from the GCAs dealer ammunition sale recordkeeping requirement. Two years later, Dole offered a successful amendment removing the GCAs restrictions on military surplus imports.

Upon becoming Senate majority leader for the first time in 1985, Dole put FOPA at the top of the legislative agenda, securing passage on July 9 of that year. Writing Dole to thank him for his hard work several days after FOPA passed the Senate, NRA-ILA Executive Director J. Warren Cassidy noted,

all of us here in the Institute will never forget that it was your strong, determined leadership that brought about the passage.

If you had not made it known that you intended to bring that bill to a vote, certain parties both pro and anti gun would have once again blocked any positive action.

The House passed FOPA on April 10, 1986. On April 26 of that year Dole served as the keynote speaker at the 115th NRA Members Banquet at the NRA Annual Meetings. During his speech, Dole made clear his intent to shepherd the vital gun rights bill through final Senate approval. FOPA was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on May 19. Pursuant to NRA tradition, NRA presented Dole with a well-deserved flintlock long rifle crafted by master gunmaker Cecil Brooks.

[For more information on the important changes to federal law in FOPA, readers are encouraged to study David T. Hardys excellent work on the subject, here and here.]

Doles obvious work on behalf of gun owners did not stop some of the more outspoken within the gun rights community from, at times, finding perceived fault with the senator. Speaking in 1988 Dole explained,

Ive done more than talk about my commitment. Ive done more than give lip service to gun owners rights. Ive made a difference.

All gun owners should be grateful for the tremendous difference Dole made.

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Bob Dole: Veteran, Senator, and Friend to the Second Amendment - NRA ILA

Imagine your 5-year-old child singing in school, to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star:

Lockdown, Lockdown. Lock the door. Shut the lights off, Say no more. Go behind the desk and hide. Wait until its safe inside.

And then being stalked by another child, this one with, for example, a Sig Sauer 9 mm semiautomatic weapon designed for warfare. Imagine the call from the hospital or the police telling you your child or grandchild is dead by gunfire. That you will never see him or her again. Ever.

Every day a police officer goes to work, we are told over and over again on cop shows on TV, their family never knows if theyll come home alive.

We cut cops a lot of slack because they put their lives on the line every day, the Supreme Court even created a doctrine called qualified immunity so if a police officer kills somebody it is extremely difficult to hold them to account.

We also celebrate our Soldiers, Marines, Airmen, and Sailors for largely the same reason: they put their lives on the line to protect the rest of us.

We pay them combat bonuses, provide them with a lifetime of medical care including dental and drugs, and even pay for 100% of their college tuition, cover up to 100% of the cost of their housing when studying, and give them up to $1000 a year for books.

And do not forget the special funds for ex-GIs who live in rural areas to travel to college in distant cities. All because they were willing to face gunfire. But our children?

A recent study reported in The American Journal of Medicine found that, in 2017, there were 144 police officers who died in the line of duty [including for medical reasons] and about 1,000 active duty military throughout the world who died [of all causes], whereas 2,462 school-age children were killed by firearms.

The War in Vietnam arguably began in 1963 when JFK sent advisors to that country.

In the years since 1963, nearly 193,000 American children have been killed with guns, far more than the number of U.S. soldiers killed in action in the Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars combined.

It can be difficult to parse out how many police have died from gunfire in the line of duty as most police websites and police unions include everything from heart attacks and cancer to car accidents in their lists of line of duty deaths, but a recent report from PBS concluded: For the last four years, the data indicate an approximate average of 40-50 officers were shot, stabbed, strangled or beaten to death each year.

So figure at most 50 police officers a year dying from gunfire, over the 58 years since 1963, and we have about 2,900 police who died by guns since the year JFK was assassinated by gunfire.

And their families generally get generous death benefits (it varies from state to state and city to city), while wounded officers get top-of-the-line medical treatment at little or no cost. Not to mention pensions for the rest of their lives.

But those 193,000 children and their families? They got nothing. Not even a thank you from Congress. In fact, there are fewer than a dozen Republicans in Congress who will even mention those tragic souls.

The 3,371 American children who died from gunfire in 2019 enough to fill 168 classrooms of 20 children each received no protection whatsoever from Republicans for sacrificing their lives to protect the Second Amendment: instead, the GOP continues to fight to keep the gun-show loophole open and increase the number of weapons of war on our streets.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of children suffer lifelong wounds and trauma from gunfire injuries every year.

As the Childrens Defense Fund noted this year:

Just like with tobacco, weare witnessing the result of a decades-long hundred-million-dollar marketing campaign to earn the weapons industry billions in profits while filling America with handguns and other weapons of war. It is literally killing us and our children.

And the millions conservatives on the Supreme Court allowed them to pour into their lobbying campaign kept the US government from even legally compiling gun death statistics. In 2005, a bought-off Republican-controlled Congress passed the Protecting Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, gifting the weapons industry with broad immunity from lawsuits by grieving parents, relatives or communities.

We tolerated hundreds of thousands of tobacco-related deaths every year with no penalty or consequence to the tobacco industry whatsoever until the late 1990s, when a group of plucky lawyers and a few Democratic-controlled states took them on.

People are still dying of lung cancer, but it is harder for kids to get cigarettes now even vending machines were banned because they are so easy for children to use to get tobacco products and it is illegal for tobacco companies to target advertising to children.

There are no such protections for our children from guns and the people who manufacture, market and sell them.

Today in America a child going to school is more likely to die from gunfire in the course of getting an education than a police officer or soldier is to die that way in the line of duty. We spend about half of all discretionary federal dollars on police and our militaryand only nine percent on our children.

Democrats have worked for decades to reduce the number of weapons of war on our streets, passing both the Brady Law and the Assault Weapons Ban. Last week they tried again to advance gun control legislation in the Senate in response to the Oxford, Michigan school shooting, but were blocked by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley.

Republicans and the weapons industry that supports them successfully gutted the Brady Law and refused to renew the Assault Weapons Ban when it expired during the Bush administration; they have, since the election of Ronald Reagan, turned guns into part of their culture war against the American people.

With devastating results to our children.

If you want to know who Republicans in Congress value, look at who they protect and who they let die. By any reasonable standard, America has taken a very wrong and very tragic path.

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Distorted Values: Why some Americans are so willing to let children die to protect the Second Amendment - Milwaukee Independent

The Issue: Residents of Beverly Hills, Calif., who are arming themselves in the wake of a rise in crime.

Its hard to muster much sympathy for the denizens of Beverly Hills who are awakening to the dystopian results of leftist policies that they have continued to vote for because it hadnt affected them yet (Up in arms with 9MMs in the 90210, Dec. 11).

They are beginning to understand the Second Amendment gives citizens the right to defend themselves when their government has abandoned that responsibility.

Well, many people have been living with the reality of rampant crime and inadequate police response for a long time.

Everyone needs to wake up and stop voting for pro-crime, anti-self- defense politicians who enjoy government security details for themselves and their families and couldnt care less about yours.

Sharon Wylie

Westport, Conn.

Funny how life works, isnt it? Many of these people are the same ones who want to take away others Second Amendment rights.

Now that crime is coming to their neighborhood, having a gun is just fine. The hypocrisy comes out and shows how ignorant most of these people truly are.

Im glad they get to see firsthand what the judges, district attorneys and bail policies are doing to the country.

Most of these people helped put these clueless officials in office, and hopefully have realized they have been used by a small group of people trying to ruin a once-safe country.

Joe Micare

Malta

Utterly amazing. The very same idiot liberals who voted for radicals to lead them are now arming themselves against the very people they believe to be innocent victims of society.

It cannot be stated too often: This is what you 90210 morons advocated for and voted for. Too bad. You won. Suck it up and quit whining.

Stephen Valentini

Bonita Springs, Fla.

Former 60s radical Vera Markowitz said she is now a radical in the middle and not on the extreme of anything. Ive always believed that when you believe in something, you fight for whatever it is.

Without knowing it, Markowitz has updated the definition of a conservative to a former radical who is afraid of getting mugged.

David Ross

San Diego, Calif.

The Issue: Money donated to the campaigns of leftist district attorneys by George Soros nonprofits.

New Yorkers are about to experience the ill winds of George Soros money after his $1 million backing of incoming Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (Soros $hock & awe game, Dec. 17).

Bragg is no different than the other radical district attorneys funded by Soros who have managed to increase crime in their major cities to alarming rates.

Nicholas Maffei

Yonkers

Day after day, I read about the innocent being slaughtered in our country due to progressive reforms pushed by leftist activists and leftist district attorneys backed by George Soros.

Hardened criminals are arrested and released shortly thereafter to prey on the innocent. When will this madness end?

Michael Greaney

Massapequa

Want to weigh in on todays stories? Send your thoughts (along with your full name and city of residence) to letters@nypost.com. Letters are subject to editing for clarity, length, accuracy and style.

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Letters to the Editor Dec. 18, 2021 - New York Post