NY: Gunfight During Home Invasion, Disarm, Attacker and Resident Wounded

GALWAY — A man was shot with his own gun by an intruder who planned to rob him — but the victim was able to get off shots from another gun and left his assailant wounded, according to the Saratoga County Sheriff's Office.

The shootout took place Dec. 5 at a home on Jersey Hill Road. Deputies said a 33-year-old Amsterdam man and a 30-year-old woman went to the home planning to steal items from the resident, whom they knew. 

Once inside, the duo attacked the man, deputies said. He was allegedly beaten with a gun, stabbed and then shot with his own gun.

But the victim returned fire with another weapon, leaving the Amsterdam man with his own gunshot wounds. deputies said.

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Sheriff's Office account 

GA: 49-Year-Old Augusta Mother Shoots, Wounds, Intruder

The son called his mom, who was at work, and she came home and met her son in the driveway.

She was prepared: According to deputies, she had a gun.

They both went into the house and heard a noise at the top of the stairs. When they got to the top of the stairs, they found a man standing in her room near the window.

She made eye contact with him and fired several rounds at him, the deputy reported.

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Kyle Rittenhouse Not Guilty via Rule-of-Law, Guilty; Guilty via Critical Race Theory

Kyle Rittenhouse, not guilty, all counts

This correspondent has reported extensively on the Kyle Rittenhouse incident and trial in Kenosha, Wisconsin, for AmmoLand, with over two dozen articles in the last 14 months. 

Very early on, this correspondent explained there was no murder case, no criminal reckless endangerment, no firearms charge which was consistent with the law.

Repeatedly, the prosecutor, ADA Binger, informed the court the firearms charge was based on what the prosecution believed the law had to be, rather than on what the law was.  It is a microcosm of the left. Decisions are made on what the left believes reality *should be* rather than what reality *is*.

The firearms charge was important to lend the air of illegality to what was obviously legal and ethical self defense.

The case should never have been brought. The performance of the prosecutors during the trial confirmed the prosecution was done for political purposes rather than to bring justice. 

The job of a prosecutor is to pursue justice. It is not to obtain successful prosecutions.

The decision not to charge is every bit as important as the decision to charge a suspect. 

Six charges were brought against Kyle Rittenhouse less than 48 hours after the self defense shootings occurred. Wisconsin does not require indictments by a grand jury. Charges are commonly brought exclusively by prosecutors.

Kyle Rittenhouse  tried to turn himself in to the police within minutes of the events. He had successfully turned himself in to police about an hour after the events. This was characterized in the media as "being arrested" or "being taken into custody" rather than the factual "turning himself in to police".

A seventh charge, of violating curfew, was added to the first six charges, in late December, 2020, months after the events in August. The prosecutors botched this late, attempted pile-on. It was later determined no lawful order about the curfew had been entered on August 25.

The next strategy was to hold Kyle in jail with exorbitantly high bail, in order to prevent a good defense, to push him to accept a plea bargain. It is a common, and despicable, prosecution tactic. 

In a self defense case where the defendant turned himself in quickly, where voluminous evidence of self defense existed, Kyle should have been released on signature bond, or, at most a few thousand dollars bail.  Kyle's bail was set at $2 million. This is more evidence of a political persecution, instead of a criminal prosecution.

The Media/Tech Oligarch/Left mob actively worked to prevent Kyle from collecting funds from the public for bail. Both GoFundMe and Fundly kicked him off of their fund-raisers. Only a Christian fundraiser, GiveSendGo, accepted Kyle. GiveSendGo was denied the ability to accept funds through Discover credit cards.

After Kyle was out on bail, the prosecutors repeatedly attempted to have bond revoked for political reasons. They were denied.

During the run up to the trial, the curfew violation was dismissed by the Judge Schroeder.  The weapons charge was used as the basis for serious charges against Kyle's friend, Dominick Black. The weapons charge  was dismissed during the trial. The charges against Dominick Black should be dismissed. The wheels of the justice system turn slowly.  The charges against Dominick Black should be dropped before the end of the year.

Many, many, lawyers have made the case charges should never have been brought. It is now documented the weapons and curfew charges did not withstand the simplest of legal scrutiny. 

The same prosecutor's office refused to charge the police officer who shot Jacob Blake, the life-long criminal who was armed and fleeing from the police, with children he was under judicial order to avoid contact with, while refusing to comply with police commands. Blake was shot in the back seven times, reaching for a knife. This correspondent supports the decision not to charge the police officer. 

The evidence for self-defense in the Rittenhouse case is several times more compelling.

The charges against Kyle were brought for ideological purposes. What kind of monster puts an innocent 17 year old, who already was forced to go through the trauma of defending himself and killing attackers, to go through almost 15 months of legal hell, defending himself against a corrupt prosecution?

The Media/Tech Oligarch/Left movement is the monster.  None of this would have happened if the major media had bothered to report facts and actual law instead of imagined falsehoods and imaginary law. 

The purpose was, and is, to prop up false narratives about the nature of reality. Once a group of peers, united by an ideology, are fully committed to a false vision of reality, it is almost impossible for them to reverse those decisions and denounce their previous deeply held beliefs. 

They will construct false narratives and conspiracy theories to account for every contradiction of their false world view. It becomes too painful for them to acknowledge reality. Their entire world view and major parts of their personality are integrated with the false visions. They suffer from cognitive dissonance.

The nation saw the same media machine work to achieve the same goals in several previous events. The first obvious event was the arrest of Rodney King in Los Angeles.There the Media learned the power of taking an incident, distorting it from edited video, and using it as a tool of racial division.

The tactic was violently resurrected in the Obama administration following the justified shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

Hands up Don't Shoot was always a lie. 

The riots following the legitimate self defense shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida were based on media narrative lies. 

Both of those events have had their Media/Tech Oligarch/Left narratives destroyed by the facts uncovered in subsequent investigations.

The false narrative of Kyle as a white supremacist active shooter mass murderer has been destroyed by incontrovertible facts in a court of law. It was always destroyed by massive amounts of incontrovertible video evidence.

The Media-Leftist movement has turned to the conspiracy theory called Critical Race Theory (CRT). In CRT, any disparity in outcome between white people and other people is considered proof of systemic racism, unless the disparity is in favor of black people (such as football players). Disparities in favor of Asians, is somehow considered proof of CRT.  

CRT does not allow to be considered that there are infinite other potential causes of such disparities; or that disparities have always existed, long before the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus.

As expected, the reason given why Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty of all counts is not allowed to be because he was, in fact, not guilty. 

Instead, the reason is explained as "white supremacy". Kyle never shot a black person. Kyle never shot anyone who was not actively attacking him. Kyle showed remarkable fire control, refraining from shooting several people, where he was on the edge or beyond of being justified.

White supremacy, under CRT, becomes defined as the whole system of the rule of law, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Trial by Jury, and, essentially objective thought, truth, equality before the law, and private property, even the nuclear family. By proxy, this includes all of Western Civilization and Christendom. 

The goal of CRT is nothing less than the destruction of Western Civilization, the rule of law, the reliance on objective thought, logic, and equality before the law. 

This is why Kyle Rittenhouse was prosecuted. It was not that Kyle violated the law. It was because he followed the law. It was because he opposed the violent overthrow of Western Civilization, the Constitution, property rights, the rule of law, and the Bill of Rights.

Any crime; murder, arson, stealing, lying, raping, false witness in court, cheating, are all justified by the Media/Tech Oligarch/Left in order to bring about the downfall which they desire. The claim is, this will bring about utopia.  There is no evidence to support this fairy-tale. It is all false narrative and nonsense. 

Many want to believe; many desire the license to burn, loot, and murder. Many see the opportunity to become powerful and wealthy by looting the dying carcass of Western Civilization; many are so self-deluded they cannot discern between lies and truth. 

Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty by a jury of his peers, because they followed the rule of law, and did their duty. They stepped up to the plate, and did what needed to be done, as was required of them. They were able to consider the facts, outside of the false narrative the Media/Tech Oligarch/Left. They were capable of seeing reality unfiltered by leftist ideologues.

The real question is: How have we come to the place where elected officials deliberately plot the downfall of the rule of law, the Constitution, and Western Civilization, as beneficial, needful, praiseworthy, and good?

When most people understand the media, the ruling class, including the education establishment and much of the bureaucracy, have embraced the destruction of Western Civilization as positive and beneficial, we will have begun to solve the problem. 

©2021 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch

PA: 14-Year-Old In Pizz Shop Shoots Armed Robbery Suspect

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- The 14-year-old son of a Philadelphia pizza shop employee shot an armed robbery suspect who started choking one of his parents, police say.

Police say the series of incidents unfolded around 9:30 p.m. Thursday when three men robbed the CVS pharmacy at North Broad and Spring Garden in the Spring Garden section of the city.

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OR: Gunfight in Portland Apartment, Intruder Shot, Killed

PORTLAND, Ore. — A person inside an apartment in Northeast Portland shot and killed a man who police say was armed with a handgun and fired a shot after trying to force his way inside the apartment on Monday.

On Friday, the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) identified the victim as 41-year-old Omar Greely. After an autopsy, the Oregon State Medical Examiner's Office ruled his death a homicide.

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GA: Hephzibay Homeowner fires at Intruder

The sheriff’s office says they were called to the 2800 block of Cross Creek Road at around 1:26 a.m. for a burglary.

When they arrived, deputies were told that two suspects broke into the home. It’s believed one suspect fled, and the other was confronted by the homeowner, who then fired shots. After getting shot at, deputies say that second suspect also fled.

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WI: Rittenhouse Case, Status Conference set for January 22 for Dominick Black

 Dominick Black, Kenosha

On August 25, 2020, Kyle Rittenhouse defended himself from numerous attackers with an AR15 type (Smith & Wesson M&P 15) rifle. The rifle was not legally owned by Kyle.  He had legal possession of it. This was due to a quirk in the law. People under the age of 18 have always been able to buy rifles from private owners and possess them, but they are not allowed to buy them from licensed federal dealers. 

Kyle Rittenhouse had given money to Dominick Black to purchase the rifle from a licensed federal dealer, with the understanding he would transfer ownership and possession to Kyle when Kyle attained 18 years of age. This is not illegal, as no "substantial transfer" to Kyle took place. Dominick Black retained legal and physical possession of the rifle. Temporary transfers are allowed by federal law.

During the attacks on Kyle Rittenhouse, Kyle killed two men and wounded another in justified self defense.

On August 27, 2020 Assistant District Attorney (ADA) T. Claire Binger charged Kyle Rittenhouse with possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under the age of 18. The law cited is Wisconsin Statutes 948.60.  The definition of "dangerous weapon" in the statute is very specific. The statute exempts rifles and shotguns from the definition, as long as they are not "short barreled rifles and shotguns". The same statute makes it a felony to knowingly provide a "dangerous weapon" to a person under the age of 18, if the weapon is discharged by the person under the age of 18, and results in the death of a person.

Four months after ADA T. Claire Binger charged Kyle Rittenhouse with the weapons charge, he charged Kyle's friend, Dominick Black, with two felonies for providing the rifle to Kyle on the night of the riots in Kenosha.

ADA Binger appeared to suffer from a mental block with regards to Wisconsin weapons law. He repeatedly said things such as; If read that way, the law makes no sense; That could not possibly have been the intent of the legislature; The exception only applies to people while hunting. 

The legislatures and people of Wisconsin disagreed. Rifles and shotguns have always been legal for people aged 16 years and more to own, carry, and use in Wisconsin. There were no age limits on the ownership, carry, and use of rifles and shotguns until 1985.  Before 1985, the same limits applied to everyone, regardless of age. Most age limits on the ownership, carry and use of rifles and shotguns are of relatively recent vintage.

This seemed difficult for ADA Binger to process, perhaps because he has been indoctrinated by the old Media, which has attempted to implant the idea that AR15 type rifles are especially "dangerous". He acted surprised when he asked Kyle Rittenhouse if Kyle believed Kyle could legally possess an AR15, but not a pistol, and Kyle answered "Yes". Perhaps ADA Binger disingenuously misapplied the law for political purposes. 

Most people were surprised to find that Kyle Rittenhouse understood Wisconsin weapons law better than did ADA T. Claire Binger. ADA Binger has been a successful lawyer for decades. He seemed capable of good cognition in court.

At the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, Judge Bruce Schroeder dismissed the weapons charge, because it did not apply to a person who was 17 years old, unless the rifle was a "short barreled rifle" with a barrel less than 16 inches long. 

In law, the possibility remained the rifle was a prohibited "short barreled rifle". The prosecution had not bothered to measure the barrel. This is understandable; the rifle is a standard S&W M&P 15, with a barrel slightly over 16 inches long. 

The prosecution clung to this legal possibility as a way to impugn the legality of Kyle's possession. until Judge Schroeder asked if the rifle was in the courtroom.  An apparently exasperated Judge Schroeder gave permission for the prosecution to measure the barrel. 

The prosecution gave up the sham and stipulated the rifle was of legal length. 

Obviously, the prosecution knew the rifle was of legal length the entire time. In previous hearings, they had acknowledged the "short barreled rifle" statute did not apply.

The charges against Dominick Black depended on the sham theory the rifle was classified as a "dangerous weapon" in Wisconsin Statute 948.60. Judge Schroeder ruled that was untrue, and dismissed the charge in the Rittenhouse trial. 

Judge Schroeder is the judge in the trial of Dominick Black. Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty of all charges on Friday, November 19, 2021.

On Monday, November 22, 2021, Dominick Black's attorney filed a request for a status hearing on Black's upcoming trial, for January 10, 2022. From wicourts.gov:

Minutes: Clerk/T. Lema. ADA Thomas Binger appeared for the State. Deft appeared along w/Atty Anthony Cotton. Defense counsel requests another date; needs time to speak with his client. Status conf set for 1/10/22 @ 11:30am.

This correspondent noted the dropping or dismissing of the Wisconsin weapons charges against Dominick Black, was almost certain, because the Wisconsin weapons charges against Kyle Rittenhouse were dismissed by Judge Bruce Schroeder during his trial.

A prediction: the charges against Dominick Black will be dropped or dismissed.

The dismissal is likely to occur on 10 January, 2022. 

Why it matters. 

The Kyle Rittehouse case has become a saga of American History. The rifles used in the case have become historical artifacts. Those on the left have a history of desiring to destroy historical artifacts, especially guns. The prosecution in Wisconsin has no authority to destroy rifles which were not used in a crime. 

The rifles are likely worth more than a quarter of a million dollars, if auctioned on the open market. They have become a symbol of Second Amendment rights and the right to self defense.

Possibly unrelated speculation: 

A peculiar event occurred during the testimony of Dominick Black in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. Defense attorney Richards asked Dominick if Dominick's attorney had told him Richards was available to speak with him, if Dominick was willing. 

Dominick indicated he had never learned of such an offer.

It seems unusual a lawyer would not communicate such an offer to a client. 

Could a requirement that Dominick Black not talk to Kyle Rittenhouse's counsel have been indicated or made by ADA Binger? 

©2021 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch

TX: Felony Murder Trial of Jared Naranjo Dismissed in the Interest of Justice

Online court records show 148th District Court Judge Carlos Valdez dismissed two charges: a first-degree felony murder charge, as well as a third-degree felony of deadly conduct involving a firearm charge.

District Attorney Mark Gonzalez said in a statement to the Caller-Times on Friday that prosecutors asked the judge to thrown out the charges.

"During trial, evidence was discovered that corroborated a self-defense claim. In the interest of justice, based on what was discovered, we felt compelled to dismiss the case," the statement read.

 

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IN: Davion L. Jones found Not Guilty by Reason of Self Defense in Jury Trial

LAPORTE — A LaPorte Circuit Court jury this week acquitted a Chesterton man of murder, attempted murder and aggravated battery in a 2020 shooting in the city of LaPorte.

Davion L. Jones, 23, testified during his three-day trial that he acted in self-defense when she fatally shot Tyler Terusiak and wounded Stanley Henderson on March, 28, 2020, in the 1400 block of Jefferson Avenue, attorney John Cantrell said.

According to court records, Jones immediately drove himself to the LaPorte County Sheriff's Department, told police his gun was in his burgundy-colored Pontiac Grand Am and gave a statement.

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GA: Roger Matthis Cleared in Self-Defense Shooting of former Roommate

SOUTH FULTON, Ga. — A DeKalb County elementary school teacher wants to get his job back after charges against him for shooting a man were dropped.

Roger Matthis says he was forced to shoot his former roommate in self-defense after the man kicked in the door of his South Fulton home in February 2020.

Matthis told Channel 2′s Tyisha Fernandes that he had been trying to evict Terrill Terry for weeks before the shooting.

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MT: "Warning Shot" Damages Fiber Optic Overhead

“An investigation was initially done, but a repair technician located a bullet hole in a fiber optic cable near the residence in questions the following morning, which cut off internet services to customers,” McLean said. “A subsequent investigation indicated Giffin had fired a handgun in the air when two other males were involved in a disturbance in front of her residence. A search warrant was ultimately obtained and officers located a handgun in her residence. She was subsequently arrested for criminal endangerment for firing the firearm in the air.”

A Charter technician noted that the bullet severed several wires and they had received multiple complaints about outages. It had impacted internet and communications to a Verizon cell tower were also interrupted. Charter estimates that it will cost $10,000 to fix the line.

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NM: Shooting of Francisco Fonseca by James Lawrence was Self Defense

Authorities say after interviewing witnesses, detectives determined the shooter, James Lawrence, fired a handgun in self-defense as Francisco Fonseca attacked him with a blunt object. Fonseca died from the gunshot wound.

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Update: The Misleading Murderer you Know, latest data

Those who follow the debate on restoring Second Amendment rights have probably heard the other side proclaim some variant of: 

"Most victims are murdered by people they know."

The implication is defending yourself from a murderer is futile, because there is no point in trying to defend yourself from a person who is close to you. 

This is a way of lying with statistics.The truth is far different.

Few victims are murdered by someone they live with.

In 2013, this correspondent published an essay on the Misleading Murderer that you Know. The numbers were from 2010. This update uses the latest numbers. They  are from  the FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) for 2019. 

The most accurate crime statistics involves homicides, particularly murders. The most easily solved homicides are murders of passion between intimates. The hardest homicides to solve are those where there is no connection between the murderer and the victim.

The largest category of victim in the FBI reports of victim relationships to their murderer is unknown. In 2019, those victims are 49% of the total. It is a huge number. Some of this is because FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) are often filed before an investigation is complete. As murders of passion among intimates are the easiest to solve, this means a much higher percentage of strangers and acquaintances fall into the unknown category when the UCR report is filled out.

The clearance rate for murder in 2019 was 59%. This means 41% were not solved. About 84% of the murderers who are unknown by the time of the UCR report remain unknown. It is likely most of the 16% solved are not intimate partner murders. Those that are, are unlikely to have been living with their victim.

The clearance rate for murder in 2020 dropped to 54.4%. 

The next largest category of murderers are acquaintances. It is 20%. These are included in people you "know". 

The slightest connection to you counts as you "knowing" them. The gang-banger who was in your remedial English class in community college, the drug dealer you filed a report about, the laborer who cleaned up your neighbor's yard, the person who involved you in a fender-bender, the high school classmate who was always in trouble, are all counted as an acquaintance. So are addicts' suppliers, criminals' associates, and members of a gang. 

The next largest category are members of the immediate family. They are 11%. This is who most people place in the category as "known".  This includes estranged and ex-family, such as ex-wives and ex-husband.

Then come strangers, at 10%. These are the hardest murderers to catch.

Boyfriend/girlfriend is at 5%. This includes ex boyfriend/girlfriends.

Other family is 2%.

Friends are at 2%.

Neighbors are 1%

Employers/employees are just a trace, at .16%, too small to show up on the chart.

To create the misleading statistic that most murderers are "known" to their victim, those who want you to believe self defense is futile, include acquaintance in with family, friends, and neighbors. 

Then to inflate the "known" numbers, ghey assume the murderers who are unknown have the same percentage of immediate family and relationships as those where the relationship is known. It is a bad assumption. 

Applying that misleading calculation to the 2019 figures creates that misleading figure that 80% of murderers are "known" to their victims.

A more realistic appraisal is unknown, stranger, and acquaintance categories make up 79% of murderers. Of the remaining 21%, a large number are ex-spouses, ex-boyfriend/girlfriends and estranged family and friends. 

The numbers of ex's and estranged are not reported. A great many domestic homicides occur between ex spouses, ex-boyfriend/girlfriends, and estranged others. 

It is likely the number of people who murder someone living with them, when determined, will be less than 10% of the total.

More and more people are effectively defending themselves against people they know who have become deadly enemies.

Just because you know someone, doesn't mean you cannot defend against them. Legal measures such as restraining orders make a self-defense claim clearer to police, prosecutors, and courts. This correspondent refers to these cases of domestic defense. 

In a quick look, 20 cases of domestic defense were reported by the media in the last three months. The vast majority involved firearms as a defensive tool, where the attackers were wounded or killed. It is likely most defensive uses do not result in shots fired or in people wounded or killed. Most are not reported to police, and of those reported, few are mentioned in the media. Actual domestic defense uses of guns are probably 50-100 times greater than those reported in the media.

Self-defense against intimates is almost never counted as justified homicide in the FBI UCR, because of the extremely limited definition of justified homicide the UCR uses.

©2021 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch

 

Followup LA: Michael Woulfe Arrested after being Shot by 78-Year-Old Victim

The Sheriff's Office identified the man who shot Woulfe as Walter Tabary, 78, of Destrehan. The Sheriff's Office said Tabary acted in self-defense and was not arrested. 

"After an extensive and thorough investigation including securing video footage of the events, it was determined that Woulfe was the aggressor and provoked [the 78-year-old] to respond in self-defense," the Sheriff's Office said in the statement.

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LA: Home Invasion Gunfight, Two Intruders Shot, Wounded

Lafayette Police say one person was inside his residence when two people forced their way into his home.

The male victim got his own gun and shot the intruders, police said.

They were able to flee the area and seek medical attention for their injuries at a local hospital, police said.

A third person identified as 21-year-old Antonio McClelland has been arrested and booked into the Lafayette Parish Correctional Center for one count of principal to aggravated burglary and one count of conspiracy to commit armed robbery.

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CA: Ninth Circuit En Banc Panel: State can Ban Magazines over 10 Rounds

 

From Wikipedia, Government image Public Domain, cropped and scaled by Dean Weingarten

 

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed the three judge panel decision in Duncan v. Bonta, the ban on magazines which hold over 10 rounds. The opinion was released on November 30, 2021.

(The original nomenclature was Duncan v. Beccera.)

At the end of March, in 2019, Judge Roger T. Benitez wrote a well reasoned opinion which found the California ban on magazines of over 10 rounds to be an unconstitutional infringement on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.  The case was appealed to a three judge panel. The panel, in a split decision, upheld Judge Benitez' opinion, on August 14, 2020. 

As has become common in cases involving the Second Amendment in the Ninth Circuit, the case was then asked to be heard by an en bank panel of the Ninth Circuit. The en banc panel issued its opinion on November 30, 2021. The en banc panel reversed the decision of Judge Benitez at the Circuit court and of the three judge pane. They found a ban on magazines which can hold more than 10 rounds to be an acceptably small infringement on the core Second Amendment right. From the decision Page 31-32:

Defendant does not dispute that California’s ban on large-capacity magazines implicates, at least in some measure, the core Second Amendment right of self-defense in the home. See, e.g., Pena, 898 F.3d at 977 (assuming without deciding that firearm regulations implicate the core right); see also Worman, 922 F.3d at 30, 36 (assuming without deciding that Massachusetts’ ban on large-capacity magazines implicates the core right); Heller II, 670 F.3d at 332 (declining to decide whether the District of Columbia’s prohibition on large-capacity magazines “impinge[s] at all upon the core right protected by the Second Amendment”). Instead, Defendant argues that the ban imposes only a small burden on the Second Amendment right and that, accordingly, intermediate scrutiny is the appropriate lens through which to view California’s law. We agree. Just as our sister circuits unanimously have applied intermediate scrutiny to other laws banning or restricting large-capacity magazines,3 we hold that intermediate scrutiny applies to California’s ban.

Later on, in a concurring opinion, Judge Hurwitz writes: 

The people of California should not be precluded from attempting to prevent mass murders simply because they don’t occur regularly enough in the eyes of an unelected Article III judge. 

The obverse of this argument is any excuse is acceptable to circumvent Constitutional rights. 

One of the primary purposes of the Constitution is to prevent majorities from infringing on the rights of minorities, in moments of rhetorically fanned passion or fancy.

The en banc opinion decisively challenges the Second Amendment, indeed, the entire concept of limited government, and the Heller and McDonald decision upholding the Second Amendment as an individual right which limits what the government may do. 

The en banc decision is directly challenged by a vigorous dissent. From the dissent on page 104:

Contrary to the Second Amendment, however, our court upholds California’s sweeping ban on so-called large-capacity magazines.1 It can’t be because these magazines lack constitutional protection. The majority assumes they are. And it can’t be because the ban is longstanding. California’s law is of recent vintage. Rather, the law survives because the majority has decided that the costs of enforcing the Second Amendment’s promise are too high. The majority achieves this result by resorting to the tiers-of-scrutiny approach adopted by this court years ago. Under that balancing test, the government can infringe on a fundamental right so long as the regulation is a “reasonable fit” with the government’s objective.

Commentary:  

The dissent lays it out clearly. The Ninth Circuit's en banc opinion eviscerates the Second Amendment. If 11 rounds is too many, why are 9 rounds acceptable, or 5? 

Why should a person be allowed to own any semi-automatic, or any gun with more than 1 or 2 shots? There is no end to this argument, once "in common use" is breached.

The decision comes to pass because the Supreme Court has been unwilling to correct the lower courts as they kept chipping away at the Second Amendment, Heller, and McDonald.  That may have been understandable given the split nature of the Supreme Court of the time. Neither Originalsist or Progressives were sure of the outcome.

The Ninth Circuit opinion admits it is infringing on Second Amendment rights, cites decisions from previous cases the Supreme Court has declined to hear in other Circuits, and challenges the Supreme Court to do something about it.

This is the basic standard of law as applied by Progressive ideology. The Constitution is seen as an impediment to be overcome. It interferes with the ability of the ruling class to rule as they see fit. 

The ruling class includes almost all of the old media, which issues opinions to the masses; the tech oligarchs, which withholds alternative information from the masses, to obtain the support they desire for their policies; and what most have come to call the "deep state".

If the Constitution blocks what the ruling class wants; then the Constitution must be changed by the courts, as the amendment process is considered too long and cumbersome by the ruling class.

The Ninth Circuit opinion in Duncan v. Bonta will be appealed to the Supreme Court. It remains to be seen if the Supreme Court will take up the challenge. 

 

©2021 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch

NV: Davion Treadwell, Shot in Self Defense, Dies 9 Months Later

Davion Treadwell of Las Vegas was shot in the early morning hours of Jan. 23 on the 2800 block Vigilante Court, near East Azure Avenue and Losee Road, according to the Clark County coroner’s office. He died Sept. 10 from complications of a gunshot wound to the neck.

His manner of death was ruled a homicide by the coroner, but North Las Vegas police said the shooting was being considered self-defense.

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TX: Armed Samaritan, Domestic Defense, Neighbors Hold Chad Dick at Gunpoint for Police

Chad Dick is the father of George, who is married to Hillary

The victims, who police identified as Hillary and George Dick, were taken to HCA Houston Healthcare Clear Lake Hospital where they were stabilized for their injuries. George was hit in the stomach, while Hillary was shot in the arm, police added.

In responding to the incident, Dickinson police said they were called to a home where the couple, their two children and the suspect all lived. Officers arrived to find neighbors holding the suspect at gunpoint.

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NE: 43-Year-Old Intruder Shot, Killed in Bellevue

Officers said they were called to a home for a possible home invasion around 3:39 a.m. Saturday which "resulted in the 43-year-old intruder being shot."

The intruder has been identified as forty-three-year-old, Lou P. Slaughter Jr., of Omaha.

BPD said three people were inside the home when the man Slaughter Jr. tried to get in.

 

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NC: Robbery Suspect and two Bystanders Wounded in Durham Mall

Interviews by investigators and reviews of video determined that two men approached a man selling jewelry outside a store on the second floor of The Streets at Southpoint on Nov. 26, and one of the men tried to rob the salesman, the Durham Police Department said in a news release. 

The vendor and the would-be robber, a 26-year-old man whom police have not identified publicly, both had guns and fired at each other, wounding the suspect and two bystanders, a 10-year-old girl and a 58-year-old man.

The man and child were treated at local hospitals and released the same day. The suspect was still hospitalized on Friday. Police said they have not yet identified the man who was with him, and so far no charges have been filed.

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