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NC op-ed tries to distort reality on gun permits

March 21, 2023 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

North Carolina is the only state in the South with gun permits. By that, I mean permit-to-purchase requirements for handguns. You simply cannot lawfully buy a handgun in the state without one, even for a private purchase.

And that’s a big problem.

After all, this is a constitutionally-protected right we’re talking about here. Further, this is a Jim Crow-era law that deserves to be removed.

But some people like to distort reality to try and defend such laws.

Who are we to believe?
North Carolina Republican legislators, who have a legacy of enacting laws that courts have declared racially biased and now say they’re looking to rid the state of a vestige of the racist Jim Crow era by repealing the state’s statutes requiring county sheriffs to issue pistol permits after background checks from applicants.
Or …
Organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) – North Carolinians who know and lived Jim Crow first-hand – or the Duke University Center for Firearms Law, who say “statements that North Carolina’s permit law was purely racist or solely intended to disarm Black citizens don’t hold up to close historical scrutiny and often do a disservice to the quality of debate and discussion surrounding modern legislative proposals like the current push to repeal the law.”

First, how many current members active with the NAACP actually lived during the Civil rights Era? I’m genuinely curious how many of the leaders denying the Jim Crow roots of gun permits in the state actually remember what it was like during that time in North Carolina’s history.

Further, the Duke University Center for Firearms Law is a glorified gun control think-tank. They’re not historians, and the center has repeatedly found fault with decisions overturning various gun control laws on Second Amendment grounds.

So I’m sorry, their claims aren’t definitive by any stretch of the imagination.

Take a look at the requirements for just a second and you’ll see the “good moral character” requirement. That’s the very clause used to keep numerous black people from owning guns for years. They couldn’t lawfully say to exclude black men and women, but they used it for that purpose just the same.

Further, all it takes is one racist sheriff to do it all over again. In a world where people such as many NAACP members claim systemic racism, do you really want to trust that?

Of course, some will invariably claim that such laws keep North Carolinians safe, and that gun permit requirements make it harder for bad people to get guns.

Yet North Carolina’s violent crime rate is above the median average with a permitting requirement. If that’s the benefit of gun permits, then just what the hell is wrong with North Carolinians? After all, their violent crime rate appears to be higher than in my native Georgia that has no gun permit requirement for purchasing firearms.

So if the gun permits keep people safe, what are these folks trying to say about North Carolina in the first place? I ask because it sure looks like it’s not working.

Florida woman charged for brandishing pistol with drum clip at McDonald’s employees because item she wanted wasn’t on the menu

March 21, 2023 by Andrew Chapados Leave a Comment

A woman was arrested in Florida after allegedly brandishing a pistol at two McDonald’s employees at the drive-thru after she was told an item she asked for was not on the menu.

According to Fox News, Quavi Young, 26, made a second pass through a Cocoa, Florida, McDonald’s drive-thru to ask for an item that didn’t exist, the worker asked why Young was mad, and that’s when things took a turn.

According to the arrest affidavit, Young “requested a meal which was not on the menu” and eventually brandished a handgun while threatening the employee by saying she would “push her ‘s— back.'”

After arguing with the drive-thru speaker, Young reportedly went to the second drive-thru window, grabbing her gun and putting it in her lap. The gun, an M&P Shield handgun with a drum-style magazine, sat on the woman’s passenger seat before she picked it up.

Employees soon called the police, who made contact with and arrested the woman.

The 26-year-old was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without the intent to kill, open carry of a weapon, and driving with a suspended license. She was booked on a $7,500 bond and eventually released.

Early 2023 was particularly rough for fast food workers; in February 2023, an Altamonte Springs, Florida, woman waved a loaded handgun at McDonald’s drive-thru employees. The woman was reportedly upset by the fact that no one asked if she was using the McDonald’s rewards program, as she believed she was entitled to a free cookie.

The woman was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, improper exhibit of a firearm, battery causing bodily harm, and resisting an officer.

Earlier that month, a 16-year-old was shot at a Wendy’s in Lynn, Massachusetts, while working the drive-thru. The glass at the drive-thru window was pictured with multiple bullet holes.

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Everytown dings WI Supreme Court candidate… over abortion?

March 21, 2023 by Cam Edwards Leave a Comment

Everytown for Gun Safety’s latest ad attacking Wisconsin Supreme Court nominee (and former WI Supreme Court justice) Daniel Kelly takes an odd approach for a gun control group; hitting Kelly for his positions on abortion as well as his his role in a 2017 Second Amendment case. It’s not the first time the supposedly single-issue group has tried to use abortion to drum up support for anti-gun candidates, and Everytown’s president is trying to draw a straight line between Kelly’s positions on the two issues.

“Dan Kelly wants to make it harder for women to make their own reproductive choices and easier for criminals to get their hands on guns — both of which are terrible for the health and safety of Wisconsinites,” John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement. “With the U.S. Supreme Court having opened the door to the arguments of gun rights extremists, it’s more important than ever for us to elect state judges who respect the right to take common-sense steps to prevent gun violence.”

Like turning law-abiding gun owners into criminals? When you dig deeper into Everytown’s objections to Kelly’s record, it seems that what they’re really objecting to is his belief that the Second Amendment is a real right, and one of fundamental importance.

The ad claims Kelly “opposed background checks on all gun sales,” pointing to a 2017 decision that made it easier for “dangerous people” to carry guns in public. The campaign also claims Kelly “worked for a radical anti-abortion group,” showing clips from protests that occurred after the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court in June.
“Here’s what you don’t know,” the ad narrator says. “Banning abortion. Putting our communities at risk. Dan Kelly is too extreme for our Supreme Court.”

So what was that 2017 decision that supposedly made it easier for “dangerous people” to carry guns all about? Well, as it turns out, the case involved a challenge to a particular “sensitive place” designated by officials in the People’s Republic of Madison; public transportation. Kelly was the author of a 5-2 decision that overturned the ban, ruling that it violated the state’s firearm preemption law.

The plaintiffs argue that Wisconsin’s Act 35, the state’s concealed carry law, pre-empts any local government from imposing stricter regulations on when and where license holders may take their guns.
A circuit judge and the Court of Appeals agreed that the Act 35 pre-emption rule only applies to counties, cities, villages or towns adopting ordinances or resolutions more strict than the state’s gun law, and not to an “agency rule” of the transit commission.
Kelly, however, said the court is “not merely arbiters of word choice,” and must apply the plain meaning of a statute. And since cities derive their authority from the state, the Act 35 prohibition prevents even an agency rule from restricting licensed gun owners from taking their weapons on Madison’s buses.
“In the city’s reading of the statute, the Legislature made a conscious decision to withdraw firearms regulating authority from a municipality’s democratically accountable governing body while leaving that authority entirely undiminished when exercised by the municipality’s democratically unaccountable sub-units,” he wrote.

In other words, if cities aren’t allowed to impose their own local gun control laws, then city agencies aren’t allowed to do so either. That’s hardly a controversial position to take, unless you’re opposed to things like firearms preemption and concealed carry to begin with like Everytown.

Maybe that explains Everytown’s embrace of the abortion issue, as well as their desire to obfuscate the details of that 2017 decision. If the facts are known, Kelly’s position doesn’t sound extreme at all… at least not compared to Everytown’s position that the tens of millions of Americans who possess a concealed carry license and responsibly exercise their right to bear arms are “dangerous people” for doing so.

Trump legal team sues for NARA records to highlight alleged discrepancies in ‘highly politicized’ agency’s treatment of the former president versus Biden, Obama

March 21, 2023 by Joseph MacKinnon Leave a Comment

Former President Donald Trump is presently fighting legal battles on multiple fronts. While he prepares to mount defenses against what some have called a “patently political prosecution” in Manhattan and against accusations advanced by a Democrat prosecutor in Georgia, the legal team representing Trump in the classified documents saga is now going on offense.

Fox News Digital reported that the trio of attorneys representing Trump in the special counsel investigation into the presidential candidate’s handling and retention of allegedly classified records are now forcing the National Archives and Records Administration to show its hand.

Attorneys James Trusty, Lindsey Halligan, and Evan Corcoran filed a Freedom of Information Act request Monday with the NARA.

They claim their FOIA suit will confirm their suspicions — and the suspicions of members of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability — that the National Archives is a “highly politicized” agency that criminalized a civil dispute over classified materials in an “unconstitutional and unprecedented weaponization of the Presidential Records Act.”

Trusty told Fox News Digital that they have demanded “documents that will expose NARA’s completely different treatment of President Trump from every other president.”

TheBlaze previously reported on accusations that the NARA provided deferential treatment to President Joe Biden, who was found to be in possession of several troves of classified documents, which he may have improperly handled and retained.

Committee Chair Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) wrote to acting Archivist Debra Steidel Wall on Jan. 10 concerning “a political bias” at the NARA. Wall was reportedly one of the leading figures who triggered the FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence over allegedly mishandled documents.

“For months, NARA failed to disclose to Committee Republicans or the American public that President Biden—after serving as Vice President—stored highly classified documents in a closet at his personal office,” wrote Comer. “NARA learned about these documents days before the 2022 midterm elections and did not alert the public that President Biden was potentially violating the law.”

“Meanwhile, NARA instigated a public and unprecedented FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago—former President Trump’s home—to retrieve presidential records. NARA’s inconsistent treatment of recovering classified records held by former President Trump and President Biden raises questions about political bias at the agency,” Comer added.

Trusty said that he and the rest of Trump’s legal team expect the FOIA suit to unearth evidence of “highly-politicized bureaucrats who worked in tandem with DOJ and politicians to criminalize a dispute that never has had criminal implications.”

“We’re confident that a substantive response to our demands from NARA will firmly establish a different and politicized treatment of President Trump,” added Trusty.

In the event that the NARA complies with the FOIA suit, it will turn over records pertaining to its “dispute resolution process and communications about how the agency characterizes presidential records; its process for establishing secure locations for past presidents to maintain possession of those records; and other information.”

The request, as written, “covers records located at any office within NARA, including its Office of General Counsel, each of its field and regional offices, the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, the George W. Bush Presidential Center, and the Obama Presidential Library.”

Insights into the Clinton, Bush, and Obama presidential libraries and into how other presidents were treated by the NARA (e.g., whether the NARA has made criminal referrals with Biden or past presidents) may provide contrast for how Trump was in turn treated.

Extra to demanding communications between the NARA and the Biden administration — both about his storage of classified records at various insecure locations and his possible circumnavigation of the National Archives in other instances — Trump’s legal team is “very interested in the arrangement where Obama’s Foundation acknowledged possessing classified documents for years.”

The Federalist reported that prior to the end of former President Barack Obama’s tenure in office, he “rented a private facility in Hoffman Estates to serve as a storage place for his presidential papers, and by October of 2016, while he was still in office, shipments of artifacts from his presidency began arriving at the suburban Chicago storage facility.”

The NARA later worked with Obama to ship his classified and unclassified documents to the Chicago area, where many remained well into 2018.

Trusty noted that the Trump legal team would “love to see the paper trail” relating to the $3.3 million that Obama Foundation Executive Director Robbie Cohen mentioned paying to the NARA “in eventual moving costs” for the Obama documents in a Sept. 21, 2018, letter.

The lawsuit also covers “any and all documents” related to the “dispute-resolution process that NARA uses, or has used, to resolve disagreements with any of the Past Presidents and their Administrations, concerning the classification of records as Presidential records, personal records, agency records or otherwise.”

In addition to providing a look behind the scenes at the NARA and at its approach to Trump, the former president’s attorneys indicated they mean to expose that “the underpinnings” of the DOJ’s investigation into Trump’s handling of classified records are “rotten.”

Trump’s legal team gave the NARA 10 days to turn over the documents, noting, “Expedited treatment is justified because President Trump has a reasonable expectation of an imminent loss of a substantial due process right.”

This lawsuit comes just days after a federal judge ordered Trump attorney Evan Corcoran to testify in the classified documents investigation, reported CNN.

A Trump spokesman said of the DOJ’s targeting of Corcoran: “Whenever prosecutors target the attorneys, that’s usually a good indication their underlying case is very weak. If they had a real case, they wouldn’t need to play corrupt games with the Constitution. Every American has the right to consult with counsel and have candid discussions – this promotes adherence to the law.”

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TikTok Surpasses 150 Million U.S. Monthly Users as Biden Mulls Ban

March 21, 2023 by Ben Kew Leave a Comment

The controversial video-sharing platform TikTok has confirmed that its application has grown to 150 million monthly active users in the United States, a 50 percent increase from the 100 million reported in 2020.

The revelation comes as Congress and the White House consider banning the application over evidence that the Chinese Communist Party uses it as a spying tool.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee as Congress mounts scrutiny over the company.

Earlier this month, the House of Representatives gave authorization to the Biden administration to ban the app on national security grounds, while a growing number of Senators have also backed the move. The app is also banned on all official U.S. government devices.

Among those sponsoring the legislation is the Senate Intelligence Committee chair, Democrat Mark Warner, who said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast that he did not believe data of U.S. users was secure.

“This notional idea that the data can be made safe under (Chinese Communist Party) law, just doesn’t, doesn’t pass the smell test,” he said.

TikTok continues to deny all spying allegations and insists that it has invested over $1.5 billion in rigorous data security efforts. The company has also rejected demands by the Biden administration for its Chinese owners to divest their stake in the app to ease concerns of U.S. lawmakers.

“If protecting national security is the objective, divestment doesn’t solve the problem: a change in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on data flows or access,” the company said last week. “The best way to address concerns about national security is with the transparent, U.S.-based protection of U.S. user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification, which we are already implementing.”

Meanwhile, The Hill reports that Republican aides are predicting that the company is likely to avoid or play down other issues surrounding the app, including “allegations of sexual abuse targeting minors on the platform, children who died after attempting to TikTok challenges and teenagers who died of fentanyl overdoses.”

The company is also expected to tout its popularity among the younger generations, with some prominent TikTok creators also ready to come to Washington this week to discuss the importance of keeping the app available.

The aide explained:

These are all problems and major concerns that the committee has raised…and we have yet to receive adequate answers for how it plans to address the issues and keep children safe. They’ve clearly recognized that they can’t convince the Biden administration, the various national security agencies or Congress that TikTok is not an immediate threat to American interests and national security. So instead they’re pivoting to attempt to use the court of public opinion and TikTok’s popularity with younger generations to try to make it politically toxic to ban the app.

The White House has repeatedly refused to give details about its plans. All that is known for certain is that TikTok has been negotiating with CFIUS — a group composed of the Departments of Treasury, Justice, Homeland Security, Defense, and Commerce, among others — for over two years on a deal that would allow the company to continue operating in the U.S. market and satisfy both sides.