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Circa July, 2021, where the Second Amendment rights of Americans are concerned, we live—as the ancient Chinese would say—in interesting times.  With the advent of the Biden/Harris/Whoever Administration—Gropin’ Joe Biden, Temporary President—Democrats/Socialists/Communists have renewed their mania for disarming the law-abiding and obliterating the Second Amendment.  They intend to get their way through a combination of politicization/weaponization of federal law enforcement, partisan legislation, and if possible, packing the Supreme Court to make it a permanent D/S/C super legislature, giving them what they can’t get under the legitimate workings of the Constitution, which they also hate.

It’s hardly surprising, therefore, Americans have little trust in the Federal Government, as Pew Research reports:

For years, public trust in the federal government has hovered at near-record lows. That remains the case today, as the United States struggles with a pandemic and economic recession. Just 20% of U.S. adults say they trust the government in Washington to ‘do the right thing’ just about always or most of the time.

The only thing surprising is that 20% of Americans trust the government.  Remember, this is an average.  In much of the heartland—red America—trust is substantially lower, even virtually nonexistent.  This lack of trust is not addressed by the Administration’s nomination of anti-liberty/gun zealot David Chipman to head the ATF, as The Federalist reports:

David Chipman          credit: usagunblog.com

During Chipman’s May 26 Senate hearing on his nomination, he confirmed his radical, anti-gun agenda and revealed himself to be wholly incompetent. Not a single Republican senator left the hearing saying he or she would vote for Chipman, and many Democrat senators used their time to help him clarify his past statements about gun confiscation and his interest in arresting people before they commit crimes.

Chipman, a former ATF agent and current anti-liberty/gun lobbyist, is a piece of work.  Take the link to read the whole thing.  There may be a bit of good news on the horizon, but it’s far from a sure thing:

Texas has joined 21 states led by the attorneys general of Louisiana, Arizona and Montana in an amicus brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in a major gun rights case.

The multistate coalition is asking the justices to uphold Hawaiians’ Second Amendment rights to bear arms outside their homes [Young v. Hawaii] in response to a 2020 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that upheld Hawaii’s ban on the practice.

The amicus brief also asks the Supreme Court to resolve a split among the federal circuit courts of appeal, several of which have ruled against the high court’s landmark 2008 decision in Heller, which upholds Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

‘One of the highest responsibilities of a state is to safeguard the rights of its citizens,’ the states argue in the brief, ‘including the right ‘to keep and bear arms’ under the Second Amendment.

‘Law-abiding citizens keep firearms for self-protection – both inside and outside of their homes. Amici seek to ensure that their residents will not be deprived of their Second Amendment freedoms,’ which includes using guns outside of the home, they argue.

‘The plain text of the Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms, not just to keep them,’ the brief states. ‘Yet Hawaii’s firearm carrying regulatory regime functions as an outright ban on the right to carry guns outside the home for most people. It therefore violates the Second Amendment.’

The Supreme Court has not yet granted cert in this case.  Keep in mind the 9th Circuit is the circuit most overturned by the Supreme Court.  This lack of granting cert may be because the Court will hear New York State Pistol And Rifle Association v. New York City in the Fall of 2021, the first Second Amendment case it has agreed to hear since Heller (2010). 

The states joining the brief include Louisiana, Arizona, Montana, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

At issue in the New York City case is the city’s “may issue” law for concealed carry.  New Yorkers have to undergo an onerous application process and pay a fee of over $400 dollars only to have their applications turned down because they can’t possibly demonstrate a sufficient need to carry a handgun.  Merely preserving one’s life is not considered sufficient.  As with all such laws in D/S/C ruled states/cities, only the wealthy and politically connected are ever issued permits.

The case strikes at the heart of the Second Amendment.  If the Constitution speaks only to a right to keep guns in one’s home, the right to “bear” arms is meaningless.  If the right to self-defense does not apply wherever one might be, it’s not a right at all, but a government granted privilege, revocable at whim.  In order for the Second Amendment to be vindicated in the New York City case, the Supreme Court must rule the Second Amendment unquestionably speaks to the right of citizens to bear, as well as keep, arms.  Should the Court decide for the Second Amendment in the New York City case, the Hawaii case will be moot.  Should it decide it narrowly, or fail to fully uphold the Constitution, Americans are in for decades of continuing political warfare, which is why Americans so distrust the government, and why they’re taking steps to limit its power:

An analysis has revealed that more than three-fifths of all U.S. counties are so-called ‘Second Amendment sanctuaries’ after a number of states this year passed legislation declaring them as such.

The website, Sanctuary Counties, found on June 20 that there are now 1,930 counties that are ‘protected by Second Amendment Sanctuary legislation at either the state or county level,” representing 61 percent of all counties.

It noted that a number of states have passed ‘Constitutional Carry’ laws, while specifically, approximately 1,137 counties ‘have taken it upon themselves to pass Second Amendment Sanctuary legislation and likely hundreds of cities, townships, boroughs, etc. have done so at their level as well.’

There are some states/counties—Wyoming for example—that have not yet taken the legislative route, but one may be reasonably confident federal government overreach will not be tolerated there.  In essence, in a constitutional carry state, they may feel it unnecessary to enact such laws as there is really no disagreement among their citizens on this issue.

In a statement to The Epoch Times on Friday, a spokesperson for the Sanctuary Counties movement said that a ‘Second Amendment Sanctuary … refers to a state / county / city or other municipality expressing their support for the Second Amendment and … many cases vowing not to enforce new / unconstitutional gun laws.’

D/S/Cs have, of course, lost what little is left of their minds over this issue.  Delighting in “sanctuary” cities and states where immigration law is ignored and illegal alien criminals are allowed to run amok, they absolutely oppose any similar attempt to protect an express, unalienable constitutional right through actual legislation.  For D/S/Cs, blue cities, counties and states have the absolute right to ignore federal law, but when red cities, counties and states pass legislation to uphold rather than ignore the highest law of the land, they’re outraged.

And in recent days, the federal government has increasingly pushed for more gun-control legislation amid a spike in crime around the United States, which has been linked to the defunding of police departments over the past year across the country.

President Joe Biden this week announced a plan to target firearms dealers who flout the law, calling them ‘merchants of death.’ In recent days, the president and the Department of Justice have attempted to tie the sharp increase in shootings and homicides across major U.S. metropolitan areas with a lack of enforcement of gun laws.

‘We’ll find you and we will seek your license to sell guns,’ Biden said in the State Dining Room of the White House on June 23.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, who spoke before Biden, said that the majority of licensed firearms dealers sell to individuals who passed their background check.

‘But those dealers that willfully violate the law increase the risk that guns will fall into the wrong hands,’ he said, characterizing part of the administration’s plan as a ‘concerted effort to crack down on gun traffickers.’

What this means is the ATF is going to go after dealers for minor paperwork errors.  They’re also going to warp statistics.  If, for example, they find five guns sold by a given dealer over many years were somehow connected to crimes in, say, Chicago, they’ll declare that dealer a “gun trafficker,” revoke their license and try to prosecute them.  The goal is to dry up as many lawful sources of guns and ammunition as possible.  Yet the long term trend is opposite their desires and intentions.  Consider this map relating to the bearing of arms from 1986:

Note there was only a single “unrestricted” state and only eight “shall issue” states.  “Unrestricted” meaning constitutional carry, or no permit required to bear arms, concealed or openly.  Consider this map for 2021:

Clearly, the trend is toward more and more liberty, particularly the kind of liberty envisioned by the Founders as the people’s best chance to deter tyranny, or if tyrants will not be deterred, to overthrow them by force of privately owned arms.  Notice that circa 2021, no state outright refuses its citizens arms, though some make gun ownership, and particularly, bearing, as difficult as possible: the yellow states.

The Second Amendment Sanctuary movement may be additionally significant in that it may indicate not only that law enforcement in those places will not help federal agents in infringing on the rights of their citizens, it may indicate local law enforcement may actively oppose federal attempts to oppress their citizens.  There is, of course, no way to know this unless the Federal Government adopts totalitarian tactics such as seizing guns from the law abiding, imprisoning Americans for merely exercising their rights and other police state tactics.  One would certainly hope that never comes to pass, but should fanatics like David Chipman assume positions of power, it becomes ever more likely.

The threat of court packing continues to loom over the Supreme Court, and Chief Justice Roberts, a disappointment to Americans that love the Constitution, is very much sensitive to this threat.  It may be impossible for the Court to rule for the Constitution where D/S/Cs hold the power of court packing.  Democratic senators have already threatened the court should they dare to uphold the Second Amendment.  Yet another reason why the Second Amendment Sanctuary movement is gaining in popularity.  It’s a warning to corrupt politicians: there are some lines you dare not cross.