By Tanya Metaska
What’s New—Politics: Presidential Race: NRA-PVF event for Oct. 22 has been canceled; Campaign news; Walz’s shooting credentials suspect; FBI Crime Data revised: Trump was right on crime data—ABC’s David Muir was wrong; New Second Amendment Executive order by Biden; DOJ sues South Bend Police Department over hiring criteria; Marquette University poll: 70% of Americans support the Bruen decision.
Politics
Colorado: Proposition KK will be on the Nov. 5, 2024, ballot. This initiative would place a 6.5% tax on the retail sale of firearms, firearms parts, and ammunition to fund domestic violence programs. An article on www.truthaboutguns.com quotes the owner of Ault Ammo Depot in Fort Collins, CO.
“It’s just another attack against the Second Amendment and a selected group of people,” Tim Brough, owner of Ault Ammo Depot, Rocky Mountain Shooters Supply in Fort Collins, told the Tribune. “It’s not like we’re taxing the whole population to solve an entire population’s problem. We’re taxing a small portion of the population to solve an issue.” The author also notes that a lawsuit, Jaymes v. Maduros, has been filed against a California tax imposed on gun sellers.
Political Spending on the 2024 Election: In an article on The Reload, James Fogleman analyzes political fundraising among groups involved with firearms lobbying and litigation. If anyone has heard the wails from such PACS as Everytown, Giffords, and Brady of being outspent by the big, evil NRA, you would think they had a real problem with finances. An FEC reports paint a completely different picture. “Cumulatively, the NRA has raised $4,883,131.42 through its PAC and super PAC over the first three quarters of 2024, according to the FEC data. By comparison, Everytown for Gun Safety’s super PAC alone has raised $7,015,346.82 year-to-date. The gun-control groups have collectively raised $12,568,583.64 over the first nine months 2024.”
Kamala Harris on the gun issue
Kamala Harris has consistently advocated for ever-increasing gun control measures, with several notable statements and initiatives since 2006. TheReload.com has recently unearthed a Mercury News article from November 4, 2006. The San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris publicly supported the 2006 San Francisco ballot measure, Proposition H, that called for prohibiting residents of the city from buying, selling, or even possessing handguns. Many other California politicians, such as Gavin Newsom, at the time San Francisco mayor, and Senator Feinstein distanced themselves from the handgun ban, which cost the city hundreds of thousands in legal fees to gun-right plaintiffs when they successfully sued the city in California courts. In her 2019 presidential campaign, Harris made headlines by proposing that she would use executive action if Congress did not pass gun safety legislation within her first 100 days as president. She emphasized universal background checks, a ban on assault weapons, and actions against gun dealers violating the law. She also criticized what she called the “false choice” between protecting the Second Amendment and implementing reasonable gun control laws. Harris, like so many politicians, attempted to bolster her pro-Second Amendment credentials while promoting more and more restrictive gun laws.
Her remarks are disturbing to those who support fundamental rights. “I’m prepared to take executive action and put in place a ban on the importation of assault weapons … But we still have to deal with over two million assault weapons that are currently on the streets of America. So, a buyback program is a good idea.”
As vice president, Harris has continued this charade. In 2023, she announced initiatives to promote red flag laws, allowing law enforcement and family members to temporarily prevent individuals in crisis from accessing firearms. She pushed state legislatures to implement these anti-Second Amendment laws and used the carrot of federal funding to help promote them. Additionally, Harris has stressed the importance of preventing access to firearms by young people and those with mental health crises, advocating for enhanced background checks, and promoting safe gun storage in homes. See her 2024 White House fact sheet.
Her announcing that she owns a Glock is just another deception in her broad commitment to confiscating firearms and banning firearm ownership through legislative and executive actions. If true, that admission shows the lengths she will try to make her long-standing advocacy for gun control palatable to voters. The gun confiscation leopard has not changed her spots; she is just trying to camouflage them.
Trump Campaign: Robert J. Kennedy and Elon Musk
In the last month of the 2024 presidential election, several influential Americans have endorsed Donald Trump and are campaigning for his election. Two of the most important are Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Elon Musk.
When Kennedy was running as a Democrat, he was interviewed by Maria Bartiromo in July 2023, and he stated, “It’s interesting to me because I’ve been, you know, slammed in a way that I think is unprecedented even more than President Trump was slammed by the mainstream, by the corporate media.”
In October 2023, he decided to run as an Independent, and as early polls showed he was more disruptive to the Republican candidate than Democrat President Biden, the “deep state” and the media tolerated his campaign. Yet, even those who opposed him publicly did so in an understated manner. The worst thing that any news media said about his candidacy in October 2023 was that he is known for spreading anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. However, once Kennedy took off the gloves and pivoted to supporting Trump, he was and is being vilified, attacked, and threatened in the national press and social media.
According to Yahoo News, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “is the star of a new $250,000 ad buy from the conservative group CatholicVote, directed at Catholic voters in Pennsylvania, with a planned expansion to other states. In the television spot, first provided to Semafor, the third-party candidate-turned-Trump surrogate talks about his faith, then says he’s supporting the Republican nominee because he’ll “take bold action on the economy, on the border, and on restoring children’s health.”
Elon Musk
Ever since he bounced on the stage in Butler, PA, at the October 5th event and gave a rousing endorsement of Trump, he has been holding rallies in Pennsylvania and nationwide where he asks the attendees to sign a petition. The petition is simple, “The First and Second Amendments guarantee freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. By signing below, I am pledging my support for the First and Second Amendments.”
Mark W. Smith, @fourboxesdiner on X.com and youtube.com/fourboxesdiner, has a short video on why this petition is important for our gun rights and our culture. It is worth a listen.
Trump Campaign: Appointing Judges
An article bylined by Elie Honig in NY Magazine, dated October 25, 2024, prophesizes the makeup of SCOTUS depending upon the winner of the Nov. 5 election. Here are the two predicted scenarios:
“If Donald Trump wins, watch for the Court’s current 6-3 conservative majority to become so deeply entrenched that it’ll indeed survive for the next generation or two. Thomas and/or Alito — both true believers in the conservative cause — could step down, surely to be replaced by new like-minded justices in their late 40s (as Barrett was at her confirmation) or early 50s (like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were when they took the bench). That’ll cement a conservative majority until at least, say, 2050.”
“If Kamala Harris prevails, then Sotomayor might well decide to hang up the robe and give way to a liberal justice in her 40s or 50s. Breyer did this during the Biden years, rolling his seat over to the far younger Jackson, and Sotomayor resisted calls from some liberals to do the same.”
Although the article tries to be neutral, Honig has liberal credentials as CNN’s Senior Legal Analyst and was working in the office of the Attorney General of New Jersey for almost six years.
Another article concerning the President’s ability to appoint judges by Nate Raymond on reuters.com, reports that,
“Jake Faleschini, justice program director at the progressive Alliance For Justice Action Campaign, said even with fewer vacancies, a second Trump White House would have the ability to stack appeals courts with what he called “hyper-extremist” judges by promoting ones he already appointed.”
As happened during Trump’s 2017-2021 first term, the judiciary, as always, can be reshaped.
Second Amendment News
Marquette University Law School poll on NYSR&P v. Bruen
Marquette University Law School does conduct polling regularly concerning public opinion. In the last two years, they have included the following question in one of their polls: In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that subject to some restrictions, the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home. How much do you favor or oppose this decision?
