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GA: Fort Benning hosts multi-gun challenge through Sunday
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The Fort Benning Multi-Gun Challenge started today and will run through this Sunday at the USAMU’s Krilling and Shelton Ranges.
More than 255 competitors from across the United States - both military and civilians - will challenge themselves in one of the best three-gun matches of the year.
The rigorous nine-stage multi-gun challenge is an annual match that is designed by the USAMU Action Shooting Team.
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It Begins: FBI raids house, terrorizes family of mom who protested local school board, elections
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An FBI SWAT team raided the home of an activist mother of three in Colorado on Tuesday, Nov. 16, knocking down her door, bursting into the house with guns and handcuffing her while she was homeschooling her children.
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Submitter's note: this violent, Waco style terrorist action by the criminal FBI occurred THREE DAYS AGO, and I just found out about it. Total blackout on even "conservative" sites such as Breitbart. |
When it comes to self-defense, the burden is often on the prosecution.
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For many Americans, the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse on all charges on Friday was a vindication of an innocent, if not heroic, teenager with good intentions. For others, it was a brutal disappointment, further evidence that the courts give white men a pass for their actions.
But for legal scholars, it was not a surprise. Once Mr. Rittenhouse claimed that he had acted in self-defense when he shot three men, killing two, during unrest following the police shooting of a Black man in Kenosha, Wis., the onus was on the prosecution to prove otherwise. |
MO: Missouri’s reputation is now one of gun-filled lawlessness
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...highlighted Missouri’s Second Amendment Preservation Act: Is this what Missourians want to be known for? I certainly do not and neither does anyone in my family. Everyday our entire family feels less safe no matter where we are, and the main reason is easy access to guns and increasing gun violence. Now Missouri passes the Second Amendment Preservation Act that issues a $50,000 fine penalizing local enforcement for cooperating with federal agencies like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms or the Federal Bureau of Investigation. |
IL: Illinois Supreme Court upholds Deerfield’s assault weapons ban in divided ruling
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Chief Justice Anne Burke said in September the case, Guns Save Life, Inc. v. The Village of Deerfield, would be taken under advisement.
On Thursday, the Illinois Supreme Court said Justice Michael J. Burke recused himself in the case and the remaining members of the court were divided in a 3-3 split.
“It is not possible to secure the constitutionally required concurrence of four judges for a decision,” the court said in their ruling.
The appeal was dismissed, which the court said was the same as an affirmance by an equally divided court. |
How Wisconsin's self-defense law ensured Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal
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"In a self-defense case, jurors want to hear a story. Mr. Rittenhouse’s narrative was that the first person he killed followed him and tried to grab his gun. The second person attacked him with a skateboard and a third person he shot pointed a gun at him," he said. "Apparently they found a reasonable doubt and that’s the standard for a not guilty verdict."
Wisconsin’s self-defense law is standard in putting the burden on prosecutors to disprove self-defense, according to Tali Farhadian Weinstein, a former New York state and federal prosecutor. |
Kyle Rittenhouse, Black Lives Matter, and the Idea of Self Defense
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But the Rittenhouse verdict tells us a lot about how this country decides which lives deserve to be defended, and the types of violence some are forced to endure without being allowed the right to defend themselves in the ways they see fit.
Is attacking a police car to escape a dangerous situation not a form of self-defense—any less so than choosing to travel to a volatile situation with an AR-15 style rifle loaded with rounds of full metal jacket? Is a Black teenager’s urging of a collective response to forces that endanger and degrade his life a less legitimate form of self-defense than a white teenager fatally shooting two people who were chasing him? |
OH: Rittenhouse 'would've never been charged' if shooting happened in Hamilton County
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Rittenhouse faced intentional and reckless homicide charges, as well as recklessly endangering safety. Deters said the law for self defense is clear, and said he believes the prosecutor overseeing the case acted irresponsibly to bring charges.
"[The] prosecutor is either spineless or an idiot," Deters said. "It's embarrassing to prosecutors around the country — know the law, know how it should be even handed. No matter who is being shot, who shoots, that's not the issue. What color they are, if they're gay, it doesn't matter."
Deters said it is clear Rittenhouse acted to protect himself, something attorney Carl Lewis agrees with.
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TX: Attorneys say Rittenhouse verdict could make jury selection harder in Daniel Perry trial
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In Austin, U.S. Army Sgt. Daniel Perry killed Garrett Foster in 2020. Perry drove into a crowd of marching protesters, and he argues Foster aimed an assault style rifle at him. Perry's attorneys say he was afraid for his life, so pulled out his own gun and shot Foster, killing him.
"Sergeant Perry's case is much, much stronger than the Rittenhouse case as far as a case of self-defense," Clint Broden, who represents Perry, said Friday.
A grand jury indicted Perry last year on a murder charge. Perry's attorneys called for the charge to be dropped, and filed a motion saying some evidence was not brought to the grand jury's attention. Those motions were denied. Broden is still deciding whether or not to appeal those decisions. |
IA: What to know about Iowa's stand your ground law
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During the trial, defense lawyers said Rittenhouse only pulled the trigger of his gun after protesters attacked him. Defense lawyers said one of the people Rittenhouse shot threatened him, chased him, threw a plastic bag at him and lunged for his gun.
"It was an issue of whether or not there was an affirmative defense of self-defense, and generally, that comes down to a factual question which is resolved by juries," Iowa City-based Criminal Defense Attorney Eric Tindal said. "This jury found that the defendant had shown sufficient evidence that any shooting was validated through self-defense." |
For far-right groups, Rittenhouse's acquittal is a cause for celebration
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In the minutes after a jury acquitted 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse on all counts, jubilation lit up on social media spaces where far-right extremists gather.
In one Telegram channel for the far-right Proud Boys, some noted they had taken the day off work to await the verdict. "There's still a chance for this country," wrote one. In another channel, a member stated that political violence must continue. "The left wont stop until their bodied get stacked up like cord wood," he wrote.
Rittenhouse himself is not known to be a member of an extremist group. But the trial, which from its beginning became a cause and rallying cry among conservatives who champion gun rights, has been particularly alarming to extremism researchers. |
KS: Defense attorneys 'surprised' judge did not base DeValkenaere ruling on self-defense
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While DeValkenaere's defense argued that he had to shoot and kill Cameron Lamb to defend his partner, Sgt. Troy Schwalm, Youngs ruled that DeValkenaere and Schwalm shouldn't have been on the property in the first place on Dec. 3, 2019.
"The court is compelled to further conclude the state has met its burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Sgt. Schwalm and defendant were the initial aggressors in the encounter with Cameron Lamb," Youngs said.
The officers didn't have permission to be on the property, nor did they have a search warrant. Youngs said they didn't have probable cause to obtain one, either. |
Kyle Rittenhouse's defense attorney discusses the trial and acquittal
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RICHARDS: The first instance, there was probably four different cellphones that were filming. There was a government drone down the street, which was filming. There was an FBI fixed-wing aircraft taking infrared movies. And through that, we were able to tell a story of Mr. Rosenbaum chasing my client down after he had made threats to kill him. And he chased my client into a corner. My client was hemmed in by the corner and demonstrators - not demonstrators, rioters. They were destroying cars in a parking lot. Kyle stopped. Mr. Rosenbaum kept advancing, and my client shot him four times in three-quarters of a second. It's all captured on video, and that was the start of it. |
MO: McCloskeys say they were defending themselves when they waved guns at St. Louis protesters
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In a 38-page response to a complaint asking the Missouri Supreme Court to suspend their law licenses, Mark and Patricia McCloskey say violent riots and protests in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis that summer justified their actions.
“The summer of 2020 was a period of civil unrest unlike anything the United States had seen in more than forty years,” their response states, describing looting, rioting and violence committed by extremists “from both the far-left and far-right” who “infiltrated many of the protests.” |
Rittenhouse Verdict Shows It’s All Trial By Combat At This Point
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Years ago, in a blog that doesn’t even exist anymore, I wrote an article about the then relatively new phenomenon of “stand your ground” laws. The crux was that these new statutes ultimately push the legal system toward a perverted form of trial by combat, introducing a new means of summarily dispensing with lethal gun violence if the perpetrator can cobble together some semblance of a self-defense claim. Before even getting to the strictures of a trial, the “winner” of a deadly altercation can just say they felt threatened and the victim is no longer there to suggest otherwise.
The years since have only strengthened this argument. Assuming the shooter wasn’t Black. |
UC Irvine Vice Chancellor Sends an Official Message About the Rittenhouse Trial
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I would think that the verdict conveys a message that
There's a right to self-defense, whether against the "allies" of blacks or against the enemies of blacks or against anyone else.
That's particularly so if a person is pointing a gun at you, or reached for your rifle.
The prosecution has to disprove claims of self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt.
Twelve jurors unanimously concluded that the prosecution hadn't met its burden.
Perhaps Rittenhouse should have nonetheless been convicted. But it seems to me that universities should be places where such matters are honestly, freely, and thoughtfully debated, and I don't think that universities' taking an official stance on them is conducive to that. The Kalven Report puts it well: |
Kyle Rittenhouse’s Sham of a Trial Ends With Not Guilty Verdict
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Maybe the worst thing about this verdict is how entirely unsurprising it is. These systems are built to protect white boys and men like Rittenhouse and this sham of a trial made that clear from start to finish—from the judge who wouldn’t allow the people who Rittenhouse killed to be called “victims” but would let them be called “rioters” and “looters,” to the sitting Republican Congressman who floated the idea of making him his intern, we knew how this was going to turn out. That doesn’t make it any less tragic. |
OR: Riot declared in downtown Portland in wake of Kyle Rittenhouse verdict
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A riot was declared in downtown Portland after protestors broke windows and vandalized buildings Friday night in the wake of the Kyle Rittenhouse not-guilty verdict.
Rittenhouse, 18, shot and killed two people and wounded a third during protests in Kenosha, Wisc. after a white officer shot and seriously wounded a Black man named Jacob Blake in August 2020. He faced the possibility of life imprisonment but was acquitted of all charges on Friday after arguing that he acted in self-defense.
Just after 7 p.m., an independent journalist tweeted that roughly 100 people had gathered outside the Justice Center in downtown Portland to protest the Rittenhouse verdict. |
Should We Get Rid Of Guns?
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You will not be surprised to learn that my answer is no, but what I’d like to discuss an argument by an eminent philosopher that we should. Robert Hanna is an authority on Kant (Objectivist readers will already see trouble ahead), and in an article published online this month, “Gun Crazy: A Moral Argument for Gun Abolitionism,” he calls for the repeal of the Second Amendment.
He presents his argument for gun abolitionism in two versions, short and long, and oddly the key premises of the short argument are ones that most readers of the Mises page will accept: “1. Coercion is forcing people to do things, by using violence or the threat of violence. |
Ghost guns and the limits of gun control
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But the Times also reports that ghost guns are “especially prevalent in coastal blue states with strict firearm laws.”
No kidding.
Gun laws only work on people who are willing to obey laws, which violent criminals by definition are not.
Similarly, the more you try to regulate away certain products, the more you push those products into the black market. While the Biden Administration has sought to curtail access to ghost guns, it is definitionally difficult to do so.` |
PA: PA's 'Constitutional Carry' Will Be Vetoed, But It's Not Dead
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Unfortunately for Pennsylvania gun rights advocates who spent years trying to get permitless concealed carry passed, that is not going to happen. At least not now. Wolf has already said he'll veto the measure when it lands on his desk.
Regardless of Wolf's pending veto, the fact that the legislature approved the measure says something about the direction gun rights may be moving in Pennsylvania. |
Rittenhouse Acquittal ‘Is A Loss’ For CNN, MSNBC And Stupid People
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“It was a victory for self-defense,” Gutfeld said, “it was a victory for the Second Amendment, it was a victory for people who don’t like pedophiles, who don’t like riots, who don’t like domestic abusers. It is a loss for CNN, a loss for MSNBC, a loss for stupid people, a loss for people who want to defund the police. It’s a loss for the legacy media that try to change the narrative away from the truth and create a basket of lies.” |
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TO REMEMBER |
| Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state government, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people. — Tench Coxe, Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788. |
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