Category Archives: Gun rights

Democrats Introduce Gun-Grabbing Bill

Posted on November 27, 2023 by | 165 comments

from The Republican Standard 

Along with the attempt to codify abortion, there is another radical bill being proposed by Democrats in Virginia.

An assault-weapons ban has been filed by Fairfax-area Delegate Dan Helmer in the House and Charlotteville-area Senator Craig Deeds.

HB 2 seeks to “make it a Class 1 misdemeanor for anyone to import, sell, manufacture, purchase, possess, transport or transfer an assault firearm.”

The Bill’s text defines an assault weapons ban as “a semi-automatic center-fire rifle or pistol that expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material with anfixed magazine capacity in excess of 10 rounds.”

Helmer also carried a similar bill in the 2023 legislative session.

Republished with permission from The Republican Standard.

165 Comments

Posted in General Assembly, Gun rights

Never Again

Posted on November 6, 2023 by | 149 comments

Chinese-funded Code Pink’s co-founder Medea Benjamin at antisemitic rally in D.C. Nov. 4th. Courtesy Asra Nomani

by James C. Sherlock

At 78, I have been all over the world often and for long periods of time. I felt myself reasonably immune to cultural surprises.

But I had never seen anything like this.

It was the Maghrib prayer time about 5 p.m. on Saturday. On the southeast corner of 12th and Pennsylvania Ave. in D.C., a devout Muslim man was in the sujood prayer position on the sidewalk, forehead touching the ground.

That was not the surprise.

But a girl we took to be the praying man’s daughter was waiting a few feet away next to her mother and three young siblings. She looked to be, at the most, four years old.

There had been thousands like her at the festival on that beautiful afternoon. Families with toddlers and baby carriages were everywhere at the edges of the demonstrations. Watching. Learning.

Full of adrenaline from the hate that had been spewed out on a huge screen broadcasting anti-Israel rally speakers in the middle of shut-down Pennsylvania Avenue, that beautiful little girl was jumping up and down, tiny fists clenched, shouting in her small voice “Gaza,” “Gaza,” “Gaza.”

Three thousand years of hatred of Jews was being passed down to another generation.

It is never going to stop. Continue reading →

149 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Culture wars, Democracy and Western Civilization, Gun rights, Immigration, National Security, Threat Assessment

Tagged

A Tale of Two Governors

Posted on September 12, 2023 by | 98 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Why is anyone surprised that the governor of New Mexico has decided that a spike in crime constitutes a public health emergency that warrants suspension of 2nd Amendment rights of the people to carry a firearm?

When Americans merrily surrendered their civil rights three years ago during a health emergency, could they not foresee a perpetual state of emergencies, with tyrannical despots infringing on constitutional rights using the flimsiest of excuses?

I hate to say “I told you so,” but some of us tried to sound the alarm in the winter of 2020, but too many Americans were hiding under their beds to listen to us.

Now this:

On Friday, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, declared a public health emergency in Albuquerque and nearby Bernalillo County citing high crime rates and issued a 30-day ban on the carrying of firearms. She said she was likely to extend the order.

“I have emergency powers,” Grisham crowed. “Gun violence is an epidemic. Therefore, it’s an emergency!”

Never mind that of the five shooting incidents Grisham cited when suspending the Second Amendment, only two were in the Albuquerque area and chances are neither would have been thwarted by her unconstitutional ban. Continue reading →

98 Comments

Posted in Civil Rights, Ethics, Gun rights, Individual liberties, Leadership, Politics

Tagged

Guns for Felons?

Posted on August 1, 2023 by | 113 comments

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

Virginia law prohibits a convicted felon from possessing or transporting a firearm. Is that unconstitutional under the provisions of last year’s Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen  (597 U.S. ___; 142 S. Ct. 2111)?

Background

Before trying to answer that question, it is helpful to review the Supreme Court’s opinion in Bruen. New York law required anyone wanting to carry a concealed handgun outside the home to show “proper cause” for the license. New York courts had interpreted that phrase to require applicants to show more than a general desire to protect themselves or their property. The Supreme Court struck down that law as a violation of a person’s right under the Second Amendment to carry a firearm for self-defense. Continue reading →

113 Comments

Posted in Courts and law, Culture wars, Gun rights, Virginia Law

Tagged

The Problem Isn’t Guns, It’s Richmond

Posted on June 14, 2023 by | 40 comments


by Shaun Kenney

Do you ever sit around and wish that a public figure would actually stand up and call out a problem for what it is? Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears is out there doing just that when it comes to Richmond’s rising tide of violence.

Virginia Democrats have responded to last week’s tragedy at Monroe Park, which killed 2 and wounded 17, with the usual tropes. Blame guns — which if one believes other leftist tropes about fearful gun owners clinging to their firearms and Bibles, you might wonder why all of rural Virginia isn’t some dystopian hell scape.

Instead, the dystopian hell scape seems to be centered in polities where Democrats are imposing their own utopian visions of a safe and secure society only to discover their policies are delivering neither safety nor security.
Continue reading →

40 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Gun rights, Political Influence, Politics, Uncategorized

Tagged

Virginia Judge Defends Handgun Purchases For 18-20 Year-Olds In New Ruling

Posted on May 15, 2023 by | 77 comments

by The Republican Standard staff

In a groundbreaking decision, a federal judge in Virginia has ruled that a ban on handgun sales to individuals between the ages of 18 and 20 is unconstitutional, citing last year’s Supreme Court Bruen decision.

Fox News reports:

In a 71-page ruling issued Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Payne said that since adults under 21 have the right to vote, join the military and serve on a federal jury, there is no reason why federal law should restrict them from buying a firearm. “If the Court were to exclude 18-to-20-year-olds from the Second Amendment’s protection, it would impose limitations on the Second Amendment that do not exist with other constitutional guarantees,” Payne wrote. “Because the statutes and regulations in question are not consistent with our Nation’s history and tradition, they, therefore, cannot stand,” he wrote. … This class action lawsuit was brought by John Corey Fraser, 20, and other plaintiffs who said the Gun Control Act of 1968 and subsequent regulations from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were unconstitutional because they excluded all adults under 21 from “exercising the right to keep and bear arms.” Fraser, 20, had attempted to purchase a Glock 19x handgun from a licensed dealer but was turned away, according to the lawsuit.

The ruling was derided by a number of gun control advocacy groups, including Everytown for Gun Safety which believes that “the federal law prohibiting federally licensed firearms dealers from selling handguns to individuals under the age of 21 is not just an essential tool for preventing gun violence, it is also entirely constitutional.”

It remains to be seen whether the Biden Administration will challenge the ruling.

This article is republished from The Republican Standard with permission.

77 Comments

Posted in Courts and law, Gun rights, Uncategorized, Virginia Law

Tagged

Gun Owner Whose Son Shot His Teacher Will Get Her Day In Court

Posted on April 11, 2023 by | 69 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Four words came to mind when news broke yesterday that a Newport News grand jury had indicted the mother of a 6-year-old school shooter: what took so long?

It’s been 13 weeks since a FIRST GRADER brought a handgun to school in his backpack and used it to shoot his teacher in front of his classmates.

It’s been 94 days since the 6-year-old sociopath got his hands on his mother’s gun and took it to school.

During the ensuing three months, prosecutors repeatedly said they weren’t sure the owner of the gun would be charged for the near-murder.

That effectively meant no one would be held criminally responsible for the shooting. It’s widely accepted that a 6-year-old cannot be charged with a crime.

Finally, on April 10, a grand jury indicted the gun owner — the mother of the shooter — and charged her with felony child neglect and a misdemeanor count of recklessly storing a firearm so a child could gain access to it.
Continue reading →

69 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Discipline and disorder, Education - Early Childhood, Gun rights, Weapons in Schools

Tagged

RVA 5×5: Annual Crime Briefing Numbers

Posted on January 28, 2023 by | 5 comments

by Jon Baliles

The Richmond Police Department held its annual crime review briefing this week and the numbers were positive on the surface, a little mixed in total, and almost miraculous considering the force has more than 150 vacancies.

Mark Bowes writes in the Times-Dispatch that “The good news for the city of Richmond from a crime perspective last year was a 37% drop in homicides (from 90 to 57) and a 17% reduction in robberies of persons.” The numbers of reported rapes, aggravated assaults and commercial robberies rose in 2022 over the preceding year, but overall violent crime was flat, [Acting Police Chief Rick Edwards] said, dropping about 1% from 1,099 reported offenses to 1,087.

However, a more disturbing trend was the 33 incidents of shootings with more than one victim (80 people total in 33 shootings – recall the one shooting last summer on Broad Street with six shooting victims). That was up from 31 multiple shootings in 2021 with 68 victims. Also, the number of non-fatal shootings increased from 244 in 2021 to 256 last year.

“The numbers would have been even higher,” Edwards said, if not for police initiatives during the final quarter of the year that reduced by 12% the number of shootings during that three month period. They dropped from 69 to 61. “We were on track to have a much higher increase in non-fatal shootings,’ the chief said.”
Continue reading →

5 Comments

Posted in Blogs and blog administration, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Gun rights, Uncategorized, Virginia Law

Tagged

The Violent-Child Problem

Posted on January 24, 2023 by | 44 comments

by James A. Bacon

The story of the six-year-old school shooter in Newport News generates endless attention. It seems indicative of so much that is wrong with our society today.

Law-enforcement authorities are rightly focused on the question of how a six-year-old child (a) managed to lay hands on a gun that his parents claimed to have stored out of his reach; and (b) how he managed to bring the gun into school and evade a search of his knapsack. Guns and young children don’t mix any better than guns and alcohol. Though the remedy is less than obvious, it should be clear to all that America has a gun problem.

America also has a violent-child problem, and the solution to that is even more opaque.

The violent-child problem is national in scope, as The Wall Street Journal makes clear in a front-page article today. “Violence among children has soared across the country since 2020, a stark reversal in a decades-long decline in juvenile crime,” the newspaper writes.

In the U.S., homicides committed by juveniles acting alone rose 30% in 2020 from a year earlier, while those committed by multiple juveniles increased 66%. The number of killings committed by children under 14 was the highest in two decades, according to the most recent federal data.

In Washington, D.C., 214 children were arrested for firearm-related crimes in 2022. Sixteen juveniles were shot to death last year — most by other juveniles. Continue reading →

44 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Gun rights

Tagged

Senator Boysko on Home Defense

Posted on January 10, 2023 by | 104 comments

by James C. Sherlock

I have a loaded 9 mm semiautomatic handgun in my house for defense against home invasion. Never take it out of the house except to the range.

It is locked up but readily accessible, even in the dark by a 77-year-old.

If my kids were still at home I would still have that loaded gun here, locked up. I would also not be 77.

Virginia Code § 18.2-56.2.

A. It shall be unlawful for any person to recklessly leave a loaded, unsecured firearm in such a manner as to endanger the life or limb of any child under the age of fourteen. Any person violating the provisions of this subsection shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.

The Virginian-Pilot reports Sen.-elect Jennifer Boysko, D-Herndon, will introduce a new bill:

Boysko said her bill would require unattended firearms to be stored unloaded in a locked device or cabinet in homes with residents under the age of 18, or in homes where there was a reasonable expectation that a minor would be present.

It would also require ammunition to be kept in a separate locked device.

Raising the age from 14 to 18?

It will be controversial, especially in rural areas and among a lot of other gun owners. Camel’s nose under the tent. That sort of thing. And they will be right about the nose part.

But if she wants that provision, I recommend not packaging it with the rest of the changes she proposes. Continue reading →

104 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Gun rights, Uncategorized

Tagged

The Perry Family Lawyers Up

Posted on December 16, 2022 by | 52 comments

by James A. Bacon

In a news conference yesterday the parents of D’Sean Perry, one of three University of Virginia football players slain in a mass shooting last month, called for changes to gun laws and faulted UVa for failing to boot their son’s killer off campus. Said D’Sean’s father Sean Perry: “(We want) to make sure another family will never, never go through this again.”

According to CNN, the Perrys said they wanted unspecified reforms to “gun laws” (CNN’s words), although it was unclear from the article what remedies they sought. “The red flags were there, and (the suspect) was still able to purchase a firearm,” said D’Sean’s mother, Happy Perry. Here’s the background provided by CNN: Continue reading →

52 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Gun rights

Tagged ,

Chesapeake Walmart Tragedy

Posted on November 28, 2022 by | 53 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Ask them.

Someone please ask the knee-jerk lefties who joined the Greek Chorus of “we must do more to end gun violence” last week just what “we” — the government, I suppose — could have done to prevent the massacre of six Walmart employees in their Chesapeake break room last Tuesday.

Ask them.

I’ll wait.

An assault weapon ban? Uh, no. That wouldn’t have prevented this. He used a pistol.

One gun a month? Nope. The shooter only bought one gun.

Short of a total ban on firearms, which would have to include confiscation of every weapon in the country, there is no law that would have saved these innocent lives from this homicidal maniac.

That’s the sad, but awful truth. Continue reading →

53 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Gun rights

Tagged

Cause, Effect, and Regret

Posted on November 25, 2022 by | 124 comments

Photo credit: Foxinterviewer.com

by Jim McCarthy

Bacon’s Rebellion recently hosted a series of articles exhaustively parsing the procedures and policies at the University of Virginia regarding threat assessments in preventing violence related to the killing of three students and wounding of two by a colleague. The examination included the possible human failures that contributed to the event. Under state legislation, institutions of higher education in the Commonwealth had been tasked to produce policies and procedures designed to afford safety to campus communities, including intervention somewhat similar to “red flag” laws. The UVa shooter had been previously identified to campus authorities as “possessing” a firearm; upon inspection, a cache of arms was discovered in his dorm room. Cause and effect? Broken procedures and policies? Negligence?

There is no arithmetic or mathematical equation that governs or can predict cause and effect in human behavior. Unlike gravity, laws and rules of society and its organizations are essentially the overt expression of norms of behavior functioning as guides and generally will succeed because they are accepted by most as necessary to civility and peace and safety. When these guardrails fail, the effects can be deadly. Continue reading →

124 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Gun rights, Individual liberties

Tagged

Mass Shootings: Take A Breath Before Bloviating

Posted on November 25, 2022 by | 83 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

On Wednesday morning I woke up at 4:00 a.m., planning to head to the radio studio for four hours of happy holiday banter with my co-host, Mike Imprevento.

Then I glanced at my phone.

A news blast from The Wall Street Journal: “Six Killed in a Shooting in a Chesapeake, Va. Walmart.”

The killing occurred at approximately 10 p.m. Tuesday. That’s what I get for going to bed early.

I rubbed my eyes and stared at the screen. It seemed unbelievable. SIX DEAD? IN CHESAPEAKE?

We met with our producer, Lee, in the studio at 5 and the three of us knew we would be doing a very different sort of show from what we’d planned. Fewer holiday ha-ha’s. Our neighbors were dead and dying. Tidewater would be in shock when they woke up.

When I checked local news, it was exactly as I expected: reporters contacted the usual suspects — local Democrats — and they denounced “gun violence.”

So predictable. As if a gun acted alone. Continue reading →

83 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Gun rights

Tagged

Was Richmond’s Gun BuyBack Program a Success?

Posted on September 5, 2022 by | 6 comments

by Jon Baliles

By most accounts, the city’s gun buyback event on August 20th was a success. The city spent $67,500 in gift cards to 160 people who turned in 475 firearms, and then had to shut down even though there were more people in line.

Organizers with the Robby Poblete Foundation said they are not against the Second Amendment. “We are against senseless gun violence,” said Pati Navalta, executive director of the foundation. “We are for gun safety.”

Glenwood Burley, a retired Richmond police officer, said the line of cars was “unexpected” and considered the event a big win.

“Any gun that you can get out of someone’s bedroom, that someone may break-in and take somebody’s life with it next week, this is a win for everyone in the city,” Burley said.

Opinions vary widely on the effectiveness of such events from being a media stunt to every little bit helps, and research remains unclear whether such events have real effects on reducing gun violence. Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in Gun rights

Tagged