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Legislators considering Constitution before passing laws? THE HORROR

March 23, 2023 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

When laws are challenged, they’re challenged on constitutional grounds. Is this law in keeping with the Constitution or is this a case of legislative overreach?

In fact, lawmakers are supposed to at least consider such things before passing laws. After all, they swear to support and defend the Constitution, which one would imagine requires them to consider it at a minimum before passing some bill.

But it seems that the folks at the Huffington Post are upset that lawmakers are considering court rulings before passing gun control. They made this pretty clear recently.

In fact, they’re so upset, they said it all over again.

Left In The Legislative Lurch
Eight more states have laws similar to California’s assault weapons ban that could be affected if the Supreme Court ultimately weighs in.
The expectation that these laws may be doomed is already complicating the politics of passing new ones like them.
In New Mexico, Democratic Gov. Michelle Luján Grisham has repeatedly urged the legislature to send her an assault weapons ban to sign this session, but lawmakers tabled the effort — partly over concerns that it wouldn’t withstand scrutiny in federal court.
“There’s absolutely no point to passing new laws which federal courts will strike down and which are clearly going to be deemed unconstitutional,” state Sen. Joseph Cervantes, a Democrat, tweeted last month.
With those lawsuits still playing out, the future of gun policy remains in flux. But that legal panorama makes it hard to imagine clear lanes for reform in the near future.
“We’re in a very difficult spot with that Bruen ruling,” said Miranda Viscoli, co-president of New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence. “Even though it was only about concealed carry, it’s just made everybody afraid who wants to pass common sense gun violence prevention legislation.”

Now, in fairness, this is only one part of a much longer piece lamenting the rulings and the impact they’re having on gun control.

Still, it’s interesting that they’re still complaining about states not passing gun control because they figure it’ll be tossed by the courts.

I’m sorry, that’s not a bug. It’s a feature.

Huffington Post can be big mad all they want, but the truth of the matter is that gun control isn’t constitutional. The author tries to get hung up on the militia clause at one point–a matter that has been thoroughly and completely debunked–and then laments the text and history test laid down in Bruen, but at no point can they actually make a legitimate case that gun control is within keeping behind the text or spirit of the Second Amendment.

That’s unsurprising, of course.

I’m glad to see legislatures hold up a bit before infringing on people’s rights. I’m upset that they’re only starting to do it just now, but this is a case of better late than never.

If they’re holding up, that’s great, but as the piece also notes, a lot of places aren’t. In truth, that is the real problem, not those exercising a bit of caution and, dare I say, common sense.

Then again, it’s Huffington Post. What can you really expect?

Huffington Post laments Bruen preventing gun control

March 13, 2023 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

The Bruen decision really upset the gun control apple cart.

Based on the history and text standard laid out in the Supreme Court’s decision, a lot of existing gun control laws are likely just counting the days before they’re overturned by the courts.

As Cam mentioned earlier today, over at the Huffington Post they’re upset about something different. They’re upset that gun control laws aren’t even passing.

New Mexico’s Senate Judiciary Committee gathered recently to figure out how much latitude they had to regulate guns after last year’s bombshell Second Amendment ruling from the Supreme Court.
Most sounded confused. Some seemed unaware that the laws they passed might not hold up in court if a similar regulation hadn’t been on the books in the 18th century. One lawmaker called the ruling “mind-boggling.” Another asked whether their authority was now limited to regulating firearms “where you have to manually load the gunpowder.”
New Mexico’s legislative session last month opened with gun reform high on the agenda. After a string of politically motivated shootings at the homes of Democratic legislators in Albuquerque, Gov. Michelle Luján Grisham (D) called for a series of firearm restrictions, including an assault weapons ban, in her State of the State speech in January.
But with a week left to go before the session ends, lawmakers are cautiously approaching gun bills and are wary of passing laws that will run afoul of a Supreme Court that has taken a firm stance on the side of gun rights. The legislature is likely to pass some gun reform before the session ends, but lawmakers say an assault weapons ban would be unlikely to hold up in court, and they’re uncertain about a proposal to raise the age to buy some types of firearms from age 18 to 21.

They see that as a bug whereas I see it as a feature.

The truth of the matter is that gun control isn’t a solution. It’s just a new set of problems dressed up to make lawmakers appear to give a damn about a different problem.

The fact that Bruen is making lawmakers pause before they pass new gun control laws is hardly a bad thing. In fact, they should have been pausing all along.

It’s not like the Second Amendment is new. It’s been on the books for over two centuries, after all, and the text isn’t that difficult to comprehend unless you will yourself to misunderstand it.

So lawmakers pausing is hardly a bad thing. The only issue is, as I’ve said, it should have happened a long time ago.

But the folks at the Huffington Post would rather try and paint the Bruen decision as some obstacle.

Well, they’re free to do so. The First Amendment is also a thing that’s been on the books for more than two centuries.

However, I’m also free to point and laugh at them.

The reason New Mexico is pausing before passing gun control laws that are likely to be slapped down by the courts is because Bruen isn’t that difficult to understand. They see where things are going and, for once, lawmakers are thinking of the Constitution before passing blatantly unconstitutional laws.

That’s cause for celebration, not lamentation.

Unless, of course, you work for the Huffington Post.

Huffington Post celebrates bipartisan gun law

February 16, 2023 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

Huffington Post loves gun laws. They can’t get enough of gun laws, actually.

As a result, the crowd over there was always going to love the bipartisan gun control effort passed in the wake of Uvalde. So it’s not surprising that they’d find a way to celebrate its success if there was any way to do so.

It seems they found a way to do just that.

The gun reform law Congress passed after two mass shootings by teenagers last year has begun blocking some firearm sales to people under 21.
So far, more stringent background checks for younger gun buyers have resulted in 64 denied transactions, an FBI spokesperson told HuffPost on Wednesday.
…
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), one of the lead authors of the law, said Justice Department officials told him during an early January congressional visit to a background check facility in Clarksburg, West Virginia, that the new policy had blocked 27 firearm sales to people under 21.
“They’re starting to actually deny gun purchases based on juvenile mental health and criminal records,” Cornyn told HuffPost. “It’s just the beginning, and hopefully as the bill’s being implemented it will have a bigger impact.”
There’s no doubt 64 rejected transactions represent a small impact, given the overall volume of gun purchases. People with felony criminal records or restraining orders have long been barred from gun ownership, and in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, the national background check system ran nearly 10 million checks, denying more than 153,000 transactions, according to the FBI’s latest report.
But the blocked sales represent a momentous political change after decades of congressional inaction on rising gun violence, which in 2020 became the leading cause of death among children in the United States. Some kids today have personally experienced multiple mass shootings in their short lifetimes, including Jackie Matthews, a Michigan State University senior present for the Sandy Hook massacre of 2012 and another mass shooting at her current campus this week.

Except there’s absolutely no evidence that any of these 64 people were actually going to do anything illegal. We don’t know why they were prohibited, and in theory, they’re supposed to be able to enjoy the totality of their rights when they turned 18. After all, the gun law in question directs agencies to look at juvenile records as well.

So, someone screws up as a kid, walks the straight and narrow until they become an adult, then decide to buy a gun for home defense, only to be told they can’t because of something they did when they were 12.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Further, if the gun law only stopped 64 people despite the millions of gun sales since the gun law was passed, doesn’t it really illustrate that maybe this wasn’t as big of an issue as some people liked to claim? Oh, we can pretend that this is about mass shootings, but we haven’t seen a lot of evidence of that being the case. After all, they brought up Sandy Hook, where the killer murdered his own mother so he could take her guns.

I’m sorry, but this “celebration” of a gun law just illustrates how small the issue was in the first place.

Violent crime hasn’t been impacted. We’ve had three major mass shootings this year and it’s only mid-February. Literally nothing has been accomplished except for denying 64 adults without a criminal record as an adult from exercising their Second Amendment rights.

That’s it.

This gun law isn’t something to celebrate. It’s something to mock.