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Mexico: Woman who killed her rapist in self-defense sentenced to 6 years in prison
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“I regret what I did, but if I hadn’t done it I would be dead today,” Ruiz said in a 2022 interview. “It’s evident that the state wants to shut us up, wants us to be submissive, wants us closed up inside, wants us dead.”
The court found that Ruiz had been raped, but was guilty of homicide by “excessive use of legitimate defense.” In addition to the six-year sentence, she was ordered to pay $16,000 to the man’s family.
“My son, I hope to see him again,” Ruiz said, referring to her 4-year-old child. “I hope to stay with him, to be the one who watches him grow up.” |
IL: Court rejects request to temporarily block Illinois assault-weapon bans
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The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a request to block state and local laws barring the sale of assault-style weapons in Illinois while a group of challenges to those laws continues in the lower courts. There were no dissents publicly recorded from the unsigned order, nor did the justices provide any explanation for their decision.
The order came in one of the first gun rights cases to reach the justices in the wake of last year’s decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, in which a divided court made clear that the Second Amendment protects a broad right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense. |
CA: Allies of Banko Brown rally at DA’s office, demand prosecution of Walgreens guard
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A coalition of San Francisco organizations rallied outside the District Attorney’s Office today to criticize the DA for her decision not to prosecute the Walgreens security guard who shot and killed Banko Brown, a 24-year-old Black trans man.
The 60 people assembled Wednesday morning repeated what has now become a common refrain: The security guard, Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony, was not acting in self-defense when he shot Brown, as District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has said. |
NJ: Can You Legally Shoot Trespassers In New Jersey?
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Understand that when we talk about "force" here, we're not talking about guns yet.
This is about physical force to defend yourself and others against an unwanted party.
You would think that if someone breaks into your home that there's no question that self-defense force would be ok. Not always, though. |
UK: People are embracing Daniel Penny, it’s eerily familiar
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Cue the newest hero on the MAGA celebrity circuit: Daniel Penny, the former marine whose golden ticket to infamy was allegedly choking to death 30-year-old Jordan Neely, a Black homeless man with mental health issues on a New York City subway. Penny has been charged with second-degree manslaughter. He happens to be white, and is using self-defense as the excuse for his actions.
Sound familiar? Who can forget Kyle Rittenhouse, the AR-15 toting 17-year old who successfully claimed self-defense when he travelled out-of-state and killed two men, severely wounding another during a violent evening of protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin. |
AR: Nation can’t afford continued cowardice, inaction in dealing with gun violence
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Americans need common-sense gun reform at the national and state levels of government. And we need it today, not tomorrow.
Guns are now the No. 1 cause of death for children and teenagers in the United States, surpassing car accidents in 2020. That fact alone should be enough to spur action by elected leaders who were supposedly put in office to solve our biggest problems. Yet nothing happens, even though a substantial majority of American citizens strongly support gun reform legislation that would make our communities safer for everyone. |
.30 Super Carry and the S&W M&P Shield EZ: New-Shooter Experiment
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I love a good experiment, especially when I can rope my wife into it. Not long ago, our neighbors invited her to a basic handgun class, and she accepted.
Although we’ve been married for over a decade, guns and shooting have never been her thing. I’ll sing her praises in every other aspect of our relationship, but when it comes to guns, she’s “meh” on a good day. It hurts my heart.
She had a blast at the basic handgun course and agreed to attend with those same neighbors the concealed-carry class put on by Triangle Shooting Academy. Successful completion of the course would mean she could get her concealed-carry permit, a goal I’ve had for her since we met. |
MN: Minnesota Democrats' 'red flag' bill joins flurry of blue state gun control measures
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Minnesota is slated to become the next Democratic-led state to adopt gun control measures that activists say are crucial to respond to the threat of mass shootings and gun violence plaguing the nation.
The Public Safety and Judiciary Finance and Policy agreement passed early Tuesday by a vote of 69-63, just days after narrowly clearing the Senate 34-33 on Friday and will soon reach the desk of Gov. Tim Walz (D-IL), who has signaled his intent to sign the bill into law. |
LA: Louisiana ranks second in gun deaths involving children across the country
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Could weaker gun laws increase higher rates of gun deaths, including homicides, suicides and accidental killings?
Every year an average of 575 people in Louisiana die in gun homicides and 1,056 are wounded ingun assaults—a rate of 12.9 homicides and 22.7 assaults per 100,000 people.
States with the lowest rates of overall gun death in the nation are those with strong gun violence prevention laws and low rates of gun ownership according to Violence Policy Center analysis reports from the CDC. The state with the highest gun death rate in 2021 was Mississippi, followed by Louisiana, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Alabama. |
NJ: New Jersey's Restrictions on Public Gun Possession Are 'Plainly Unconstitutional,' a Federal Judge Says
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After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right to bear arms last June, New Jersey responded the same way New York did: by making it easier to obtain a carry permit but much harder to use it. "Although an individual seeking to carry a handgun for self-defense is no longer required to show a 'justifiable need,'" U.S. District Judge Renée Marie Bumb notes, "the State's expansive list of 'sensitive places' effectively prohibits the carrying of that handgun virtually everywhere in New Jersey." The message to gun owners, Bumb says, was pretty clear: "leave your Second Amendment rights and guns at home." |
ME: Maine Democrat Wants Gun Control for “Abnormally Dangerous Assault Style Weapons” But She Doesn’t Know What That Means
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In a public hearing by the Maine Legislature’s Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning, Rep. Rebecca Millett (D-Cape Elizabeth) struggled to clearly define the terms “abnormally dangerous” and “assault style weapons” in relation to her proposed bill to hold firearm manufacturers liable for damages inflicted by people who use their products.
Millett’s LD 1696, “An Act to Create a Civil Cause of Action for Persons Suffering Damages Arising from the Sale of Abnormally Dangerous Firearms,” would allow firearm manufacturers to be held liable for the manufacturing, marketing, importing, wholesale or retail sale of a firearm that is considered “abnormally dangerous” and causes “unreasonable risk of harm to public health and safety” in Maine. |
MD: NRA sues Maryland: What could it mean for the state's new gun laws?
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Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed gun-control measures into law on Tuesday, and the National Rifle Association quickly filed a federal lawsuit against the state.
The NRA claims the "unconstitutional bill was signed making carry illegal in so much of the state that a law-abiding individual cannot effectively carry for self-defense."
Adam Ruther, a legal expert, said that this lawsuit is about whether or not Maryland's new gun laws cross the line and place unconstitutional restrictions on a constitutionally protected right. |
IL: Supreme Court refuses to block assault weapons bans in Illinois
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The Supreme Court refused to block a local and state ban on assault weapon sales in Illinois, rejecting an emergency request from gun rights advocates and a gun store.
A vote count was not disclosed and the court did not explain its action.
Wednesday’s move by the high court is the latest example of the justices staying out of Second Amendment-related disputes for the moment, after the conservative majority last year issued a major ruling expanding its scope. |
Why Does the Second Amendment Only Apply to “Law-Abiding” Gun Owners?
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The limitation to “citizens” as the category of persons for whom the Second Amendment applies is already notable. Thomas insisted in Bruen that the Second Amendment was on equal footing with the rest of the Bill of Rights; it is not a “second-class right,” which is how he often said his colleagues treated it in the years between Heller and Bruen. And yet it might be the only provision in the Bill of Rights that meaningfully distinguishes between the rights of citizens and the rights of the more than 40 million noncitizens currently living in the U.S. Lower courts are divided on this very question:... |
IL: Illinois justices hear 2nd Amendment, equal protections arguments against state’s gun ban
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Justice Elizabeth Rochford asked Caulkins’ attorney Jerry Stocks about the training exemption law enforcement officers have.
“And that they continue to maintain that training while they maintain their exempt status as opposed to just everyone else,” Rochford said. “Is that an arbitrary …”
“It is arbitrary,” Stocks said.
Stocks said retired military who have training aren’t exempt. Other justices asked whether this is a Second Amendment challenge or an equal protections challenge.
“You cannot even begin to address the grounds that are in this complaint without addressing and finding what the Second Amendment says in this case,” Stocks said during the hearing. |
NM: New Mexico Gunfight That Resulted in 17-Year-Old’s Death Being Investigated As Possible Self-Defense
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Last Thursday evening, a 17-year-old boy named Santiago Garcia died in a hospital after a firefight that also left another man wounded.
This incident happened around 10 p.m. at 1400 Dona Arcelia SW, close to Coors and Sage, according to the Albuquerque Journal.
Police spokesman Gilbert Gallegos confirmed, “The second individual was injured by gunfire, and is currently in stable condition.”
Detectives are currently attempting to unravel whether the injured man shot Garcia in self-defense, thus potentially categorizing this incident as a justifiable homicide. |
Obama Suggests US Should Ban Law-Abiding Americans' Gun Rights
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Democrats will fight tooth and nail to keep people from indulging in their God-given rights as free Americans.
Former President Obama suggested that the U.S. follow in Australia's footsteps when combatting mass shootings by banning Americans' right to own firearms.
"You know, in Australia, they had one mass shooting 50 years ago, and they said, 'No, we're not doing that anymore,'" Obama told CBS's Nate Burleson. "That is normally how you would expect society to respond when your children are at risk. We are unique among advanced, developed nations in tolerating, on a routine basis, gun violence in the form of shootings, mass shootings, suicides." |
NJ: Federal Judge Blocks Part of NJ Handgun Carry Law to Prevent Guns Near Gatherings
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A federal judge on Tuesday blocked part of New Jersey's new handgun carry law that barred weapons from being carried in so-called sensitive places and halted a new insurance mandate the law sought to institute.
Second Amendment rights groups that filed suit against the law hailed the opinion as a victory, while the spokespeople for the Democrat-controlled Legislature's leaders and Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy stood by the law.
State Attorney General Matt Platkin filed an appeal to the order by chief U.S. District Judge Renee Marie Bumb. |
IL: Gun Control Advocates Claim Initial Victory in Illinois, but Here’s Why They’ll Likely Lose the War
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The Supreme Court declined to intervene Wednesday in an important Second Amendment case challenging Illinois’ new restrictions on gun owners.
But no, it’s not time to panic.
The battle isn’t over. Not even close.
Earlier this year, Illinois enacted a law prohibiting civilian sales or transfers of many types of commonly owned semiautomatic rifles, based solely on the state’s arbitrary determination that certain cosmetic features turn these guns into so-called assault weapons.
Illinois residents who already possess these firearms, potentially millions of people, may continue to do so under the new law—but only if they first register their ownership with the state. |
TX: Texas Senate Committee Passes Second Amendment Financial Privacy Act
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On Monday, a Texas Senate committee passed a bill that would prohibit financial institutions operating in the state from requiring a credit card merchant code to track the purchases of firearms and ammunition.
Rep. Matt Schaefer and Rep. Candy Noble introduced House Bill 2837 (HB2837) on Feb. 24. Titled the Second Amendment Financial Privacy Act, the legislation would prohibit a financial institution operating in Texas from requiring or assigning a firearms code, which is defined as “any merchant category code approved by the International Organization for Standardization for a firearms retailer, including Merchant Category Code 5723.” |
NV: Gov. Lombardo Vetoes Anti-Gun Bills
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Today, Governor Joe Lombardo promptly vetoed three anti-gun bills that the Legislature passed earlier this week, stemming the tide of new gun control being imposed upon Nevada each year. In his veto message to the Legislature, he stated:
“I will not support legislation that infringes on the constitutional rights of Nevadans… As I stated in my letters, much of the legislation I vetoed today is in direct conflict with legal precedent and established constitutional protections. Therefore, I cannot support them.”
Assembly Bill 354 would have banned possessing firearms within 100 feet of polling places and redefined firearm frames and receivers. |
MO: These young Kansas Citians are arming themselves against the rise of far-right violence
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Lydia Kidder, 21, is preparing to begin their first firearms safety and training course. They don’t own a gun personally, but says they plan to purchase one in the months after their class, once they’ve saved up enough money.
Growing up, they never saw themselves becoming a gun owner. Their father, a hunter, made a point to get rid of any firearms before Kidder was born. They say family and friends often avoided the topic of guns and gun ownership all together.
Now, however, a lack of trust in government and law enforcement has convinced them that they have no choice but to get used to using a gun. |
TN: Tenn. lawmakers face reckoning over gun rights in wake of school shooting
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Republicans who dominate the state Legislature were poised to relax gun laws -- including a measure to lower the age for a concealed carry permit to 18 -- before Audrey Hale, 28, stormed into the Covenant School on March 27 and fired 152 rounds.
Since then, such proposals have been tabled. But leaders have also moved to silence those urging new gun restrictions. When three state lawmakers led a protest on the House floor, two of them were expelled. They were quickly reinstated.
Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican who as recently as 2021 supported constitutional carry -- allowing people to openly carry firearms, without a permit -- issued an executive order to strengthen background checks after the shooting. |
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