Senior Legal Fellow @AmericanFreedom. Always technically as advertised, but never quite what you expected. All views and cat pictures are my own.
Apr 20 • 11 tweets • 5 min read
Just out of curiosity, I started digging through this year's "mass shootings," as counted by GVA.
Obviously, I take issue with their parameters. But what we should ALL take issue with are the clear patterns we see of suspects and circumstances.
Let's start on Jan 1. 📜
Jan. 1 - 4 people are shot during a 2am shootout at a nightclub. Both suspects were already out on bond - one for making terroristic threats with a machine gun, and the other for TWO counts of murder.
The first lawsuit filed to stop the Birthright Citizenship EO is just bad. You can read it here, but please allow me to dismantle some of the more egregious arguments.
📜
oag.ca.gov/system/files/a…
No, actually, that's not what Wong Kim Ark held. It considered the question of whether a child born in the U.S. to lawfully present and permanently domiciled parents was a U.S. citizen, and held that the U.S.-born children of this narrow and specific subset of noncitizen parents is, indeed, a citizen. Importantly, at the time, the Chinese Exclusion Acts meant both that Chinese subjects couldn't immigrate to the U.S. and those who (like Wong Kim Ark's parents) had long been lawfully present in the U.S. couldn't become naturalized citizens. Ever. The Court in essence is dealing with a situation where federal law created a permanent race-based barrier to citizenship and a class of lawful permanent residents relegated to perpetual alienage throughout subsequent generations. This is almost an identical scenario to the situation of the U.S.-born descendants of African slaves post-Dred Scott, which Congress was specifically trying to rectify with the CRA and 14th Amendment. But Wong Kim Ark does not stand for the premise that all U.S.-born children of all immigrants under all circumstances are automatically citizens. Nor does it mean that the Court held that the 14th Amendment adopted the full scope of pre-Dred Scott common law jus soli. In fact, it *can't* mean that, given the court's repeated emphasis on the lawful and permanent domicile of Wong Kim Ark's parents, which is utterly irrelevant under the common law. A true common law opinion would have said, "he was born on U.S. soil, his parents aren't diplomats or part of some invading army, so duh guys he's a citizen."
This is also why constitutional scholars for decades after Wong Kim Ark continued saying the same thing as Trump's EO says today - it still doesn't apply universally to every other class of immigrant. See, e.g., a comment in the Yale Law Journal immediately after Wong Kim Ark that acknowledges "in this country, the alien must be permanently domiciled," even though under English common law, mere temporary sojourn was sufficient.
Dec 16, 2024 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
The op-ed I tweeted below looked at 2023 data, but for the sake of argument, let's look at the data for 2024.
It's the same story.
Let's look at some of the 54 deaths that Everytown says have occurred so far this year during gunfire on school campuses...
They include a fatal road rage shooting that happened to occur in a school parking lot because that's where the drivers pulled into before the confrontation. School was done for the year and no students were present on campus.
A defenseless Detroit woman was kidnapped and raped by her abusive/stalker ex-boyfriend just one day before she was set to take her state-mandated course for a concealed carry permit.
fox2detroit.com/news/detroit-p…
We only know about this because her failure to show up for the class tipped off that something was wrong, and ended up being key to getting police involved in finding and rescuing her. So the article mentions it in passing. God knows how often it happens but isn't mentioned.
Sep 17, 2024 • 10 tweets • 10 min read
Since the NYT wouldn't dare allow a response op-ed to this, I'll settle for response tweet thread. Buckle up.
nytimes.com/2024/09/16/opi…
The interesting part about the last sentence is that it's so particularly true in the case of the Tucson shooting that it undermines the argument it's just "about the guns." Loughner was both an abuser of illegal substances, as well as clearly mentally ill and dangerous, and everyone knew it. His parents were incredibly worried about it. At the insistence of police, they took away his shotgun. On their own initiative, they kept disabling his car at night so that he couldn't easily leave. But the state never took action to ensure he couldn't just buy a new gun, which he did. His parents never really pushed the issue about a mental health evaluation (though I'm not unsympathetic to the difficulties of forcing your adult son to do anything). It's not that he fell into some grey area where there wasn't anything anyone could do under existing mental health frameworks - he should have been a clear candidate for involuntary inpatient commitment. Of all mass shooters, Loughner's stands out with the Parkland shooter as one of the most clear cut cases of "holy cow why did no one ever officially follow up or intervene." And that's not actually a story about guns. It's a story about our mental health system, where people who are clearly schizophrenic and dangerous are allowed to spiral sans appropriate intervention until they reach a point of acute crisis.
Jan 18, 2024 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
I'm reading through the DOJ's scathing report on the disastrous Uvalde response so that you don't have to.
Here's what sticks out: 🧵
static.texastribune.org/media/files/17…
The investigation "identified several critical failures and other breakdowns" during the response and refers to "cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy, and training that contributed to those failures and breakdowns."
Aug 14, 2023 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
Can we take a minute to appreciate how many women have protected themselves and others with firearms in the last two or so weeks? It's basically a highlight real of just how important the right to keep and bear arms is for us, too. Tip of the DGU iceberg, but important:
📜📜📜
Aug. 11, Tucson (AZ) - A woman living by herself fatally shot a would-be intruder who kept trying to break into her home despite knowing she was armed.
(1) She was 30 weeks pregnant, which would have been illegal in most states pre-Roe [and most of the world], and is 20 weeks past the FDA's approved usage timeline for abortion pills.
(2) She wasn't charged under the abortion law. She was charged with concealing the remains.
(3) Her mother is charged with *performing* the abortion after 20 weeks, as well as with performing the abortion without a medical license.
(4) Doctors lose their licenses all the time for far less egregious things than prescribing abortion pills at 30 weeks.
Jun 27, 2023 • 20 tweets • 5 min read
It's indisputable that an armed civilian stopped an active shooter last week.
You almost certainly haven't heard about it.
Why?
Because Las Vegas Police have gone out of their way to downplay it, while the media have shown basically zero interest.
THREAD.
Last Friday, LVPD responded to a shooting at a luxury condo just off the Las Vegas strip. The initial reporting on it looked generally like this:
Example #1837 of why it's a horrible idea to only count defensive gun uses if they're confirmed in some publicly available media report.
Often, the public doesn't get updated if a shooting is later deemed justified unless it's suddenly relevant again.
wtvr.com/news/local-new…
Case in point - a Richmond teenager was fatally shot in Nov. 2021. Limited info, except for a March 2022 article detailing that his family was upset no arrests had been made. That could mean many things, including a lack of suspects.
This is some Orwellian doublespeak. You don't "enshrine freedom" by literally limiting the scope of your existing freedoms, which are already enshrined. And you can't "leave the Second Amendment intact" while cutting out its heart and removing its soul.
The Second Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, protects what citizens may do by telling the government what it cannot do.
Newsome's amendment turns this on its head, mandating what government MUST do in order that peaceable citizens may NOT do certain things.
Jun 6, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Normally, I'd say this isn't going anywhere, given that Colorado's ERPO statute explicitly states there's no civil, criminal, or administrative liability for declining to initiate investigations or file petitions...
...but the kicker is that it has to be done in "good faith."
This could be a problem for a Sheriff that explicitly and repeatedly said his office simply wasn't going to pursue or initiate these, ever, as a categorical rule...and would only enforce privately-initiated ones in "extreme circumstances."
Is that a "good faith" declining?
Jun 6, 2023 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
Assuming that the basic facts are correct - that the woman fatally shot her unarmed neighbor through a locked door during a dispute - I'm genuinely astonished that the woman hasn't been charged yet.
"Stand your ground" isn't relevant here.
Here's why:
cbsnews.com/news/florida-m…
Florida authorizes the use of deadly force when a person reasonably believes such force is necessary to prevent either imminent death or great bodily harm or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony.
26 felonies. They're charging him with 26 felonies, each of which has a mandatory minimum of 3.5 years in prison.
Why?
Because an otherwise upstanding, peaceable citizen with a license for 5 rifles...didn't have a license for his other guns.
abc7ny.com/queens-shootin…
If he has a NYC permit for 5 rifles, he's an upstanding citizen *according the city itself*.
The process for obtaining a rifle permit is virtually identical to the one for a pistol permit, except that the latter is twice as expensive and requires an in-person interview.
Jun 1, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
This is actually worse than it appeared at first, and it appeared really bad.
Turns out, the guy has a license to own a shotgun or rifle. Just no license to own a handgun. And no license to carry.
People think I'm being dramatic about just how big of a problem these giant teen "house parties" are becoming...but let me present a short rundown of recent times they turned into shootings. And by recent, I mean "just this year."
If you want to understand the rise in "children" being shot - the "who, where, when, and why" - look no further than this recent incident.
Let's break this down.
whio.com/news/local/sho…
The article calls 2 victims "children" and states the incident took place at a party with "50 to 60 kids." You'd think someone opened fire on an 11-year-old's mid-day birthday party with that framing, and that it's just random violence killing our kids during low-risk activities.
Apr 18, 2023 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Gun owners, let's talk about the many ways this tragedy could have been prevented. I understand being elderly and feeling vulnerable in general, but we have to make better decisions - and set ourselves up to avoid costly mistakes.
cnn.com/2023/04/17/us/…(1) Install a peephole so you can see who's there without having to physically open your door. I'm not suggesting that this teen was inherently threatening. But let's say you're uncomfortable for whatever reason - a peephole allows you to be uncomfortable BEHIND the locked door.
Apr 14, 2023 • 19 tweets • 5 min read
Because they're not "weapons of war." They're incredibly useful for defending innocent life from criminal threats in noncombat zones like...say...downtown Louisville. Which is exactly why the peace officers responding to that civilian-context threat used them, too.
But while I have everyone's attention, let's have a history lesson and reality check at the same time.
Gather round, children, and let me tell you the tale of how mass public shooters have ALWAYS been able to kill a lot of people with far more...rustic...guns.
Mar 30, 2023 • 23 tweets • 5 min read
An AR doesn't prevent a home invasion. But it will help you end one.
Also, tell me you've lived a very safe and privileged life without telling me you've lived a safe and privileged life.
Happy for you, truly, but do you realize how often people face multiple home intruders?
Someone has never been a woman alone in the woods and it shows. I'm far more concerned with other humans. But also not taking my chances with bears, mountain lions, and [in the south] those damn wild boars.
