gun control
August 31, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The White House thinks they have struck gold with their attack on “MAGA Republicans” as “semi-fascist” and all the rest. President Biden’s minders in the daycare operation at the White House are wheeling him out for a primetime campaign speech addressing “the soul of the nation” tomorrow night. The speech is to take place outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia. I am following Politico’s story on the speech here. My working
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June 30, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The great Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has set off the lunatic left that powers the throbbing heart of the Democratic Party and its media adjunct. He has set the left off ever since his nomination to the Court by President Bush in 1991. I’m so old I recall Joe Biden’s idiotic performance as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the confirmation hearing (and Biden’s descent from 1991 has
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June 27, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The day before the Supreme Court turned the world upside down and overruled Roe last week, it it held that the Second Amendment protects the right of law-abiding people to carry a gun outside the home for self-defense and that New York’s Sullivan law, which makes that virtually impossible for anyone but VIPs, was therefore unconstitutional. Justice Thomas wrote the opinion for the Court in New York State Rifle &
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June 26, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Justice Clarence Thomas’s moment has arrived. His majority opinion in Bruen (the gun rights case), and his concurrence in Dobbs, are drawing considerable attention, and rightly so. Among many other virtues, his opinions have managed the dual feat of laying out serious legal and constitutional arguments while trolling the left at the same time. This may be my favorite passage in his Bruen majority opinion: After all, the Second Amendment
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June 23, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Today the Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a challenge to a New York State law that barred residents from obtaining a carry permit unless they could show “proper cause.” Proper cause, in turn, required the applicant to “demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community.” Under the Court’s controlling precedents, Heller and McDonald, I think the New York
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June 22, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The Federalist has just posted David Harsanyi’s column on “The ‘do something’ gun control bill.” Harsanyi is the author of The First Freedom: A Ride Through America’s Enduring History With the Gun and someone whose opinion I respect. Here is a salient paragraph: [Republican bill sponsor Senator John] Cornyn spent more time bragging about the things he rejected than championing the useful ideas he brought to the bill, because it
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June 22, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The bipartisan Senate group released the text of the “gun bill” or “gun safety bill” or whatever it is just before the Senate voted to proceed on the bill without amendment last night. Taking a look at the text, I see that the bill may be cited as the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.” The authors apparently don’t want us to know what it’s all about from the title of the
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June 18, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Stephen Hunter retired as the Pulitzer Prize-winning chief film critic of The Washington Post in 2008 and is the author of the Bob Lee Swagger novels. His most recent is Targeted, published earlier this year. Inspired by recent events, he sent us this column. * * * * * Possibly you’re old enough to remember the great massacre spree of 1964? Classrooms shot up, strip malls decimated, scout troops blown
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June 12, 2022 — John Hinderaker
A bipartisan group of senators have announced an agreement on gun legislation. I am not sure whether their deal has been reduced to legislative language, and I don’t know whether it will get through the Senate, or whether Democrats in the House will vote for it. (If I were a Democrat, I would think that the deal is extremely weak, and its main effect may be to take gun control
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June 8, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The White House served up Hollywood star Matthew McConnaughey to lecture us on the virtues of assorted gun control proposals yesterday. He emotes more effectively than press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, but what does he have to offer? He is a native of Uvalde. He feels strongly about the Uvalde massacre. He doesn’t think too much of the Second Amendment. He has a superficial above-it-all take on the culture war. He
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June 7, 2022 — Scott Johnson
New York Post columnist Miranda Devine and two Post reporters have obtained a video of Hunter “casually wav[ing] around a handgun” and “point[ing] it at the camera while cavorting with a nude hooker in a swank hotel room[.]” The video was provided to The Post by the nonprofit Marco Polo research group. The Post story runs as “Packin’ heat: Nude Hunter Biden cavorts with hooker, illegal gun in latest mess
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June 4, 2022 — John Hinderaker
I haven’t written much about the latest round of gun control hysteria, mostly because I have said everything I have to say on that topic many times over the years. The liberal solutions to mass shooting incidents, which are very rare, are every bit as silly and ineffective as their solutions to crime in general, which is ubiquitous and therefore vastly more important. Defunding the police makes about as much
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June 3, 2022 — Scott Johnson
General Mills is in the news today for caving in to demands that it abandon a “controversial Pillsbury plant in the West Bank,” as the Star Tribune puts it this morning. BDS advocates claim victory. Speaking for itself, General Mills states: “We have made clear the global business strategy that drove this decision.” The company’s headquarters are located in Golden Valley, Minnesota. Yesterday we heard from a Power Line reader
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June 3, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Watching President Biden rattle on last night — the White House has posted the transcript here — I thought it was time to get serious about gum control. Yes, it’s time for Biden to quit flapping his gums with the usual dynamics ranging from a whisper to a shout in the deranged old-man style to which we have become accustomed. Biden himself appeared to have gum control in the back
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May 30, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The latest school shooting incident has prompted–indeed, prompted before the victims had even been buried–the usual stale anti-gun proposals. Once again, Democrats are pushing for a ban on “assault weapons,” by which they mean semiautomatic rifles that don’t have wooden stocks. My Marlin 60 has a wooden stock, so it is safe from the Democrats. It is a classic semiautomatic rifle that fathers often give their sons as a 15th
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May 26, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday at the White House executive-order signing ceremony commemorating the death of George Floyd, President Biden unleased a false bromide that he has often repeated (transcript here): I spent my career, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee and as Vice President, working for commonsense gun reforms — as I said, as a senator and a Vice President. While they clearly will not prevent every tragedy, we know certain ones will
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May 26, 2022 — Scott Johnson
As reporters ascertain what happened during the tragic school shooting in Uvalde, we have more to process. The Associated Press has reconstructed events outside the school during the shooting before and after the heroic Border Patrol agent entered the building. The AP story is “Onlookers urged police to charge into Texas school.” The story opens: Frustrated onlookers urged police officers to charge into the Texas elementary school where a gunman’s
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