We may never see a better time to buy firearms and ammo in our lifetimes. The environment could change considerably in a couple of years.
I've long thought about buying firearms as an investment. Hell, I bought my SCAR 4 years ago at 2700 and I can probably get $3400 now for it. 26% return? Hell yeah.
Good video. But not entirely factual: Legislation to remove the three-day safety valve provision has been marketed as an effort to close the so-called “Charleston loophole.” The term stems from the hate-fueled 2015 shooting of several parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. Proponents of the legislation claim that perpetrator of the attack could have been stopped but for the three-day safety-valve provision. This is false. On April 11, 2015, the perpetrator of the Charleston attack attempted to buy the firearm he used in the shooting from an FFL and was delayed due to an arrest for drug possession. The firearm was transferred to him five days later, absent a direct proceed order from NICS. The attack did not occur until June 17. In the intervening time, the FBI had the opportunity to continue to investigate whether the perpetrator was prohibited from possessing firearms and could have referred the case to ATF for a firearm retrieval had they determined he was indeed prohibited. Contrary to inaccurate statements made by the FBI, the perpetrator was not prohibited from possessing firearms. Under federal law, a person is prohibited from possessing firearms if they are an “unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.” The FBI has contended that the perpetrator’s arrest would have prohibited him from possessing a firearm. In turn, this has prompted gun control supporters to claim that this instance proves the FBI should be given further time to conduct NICS checks, even though the FBI had more than two months to investigate the validity of the transfer in the case. To sustain a conviction for firearm possession by an “unlawful user” federal courts require the drug use to be “sufficiently consistent, prolonged, and close in time to [the] gun possession . . . .”1 A simple drug arrest does not meet this standard. Therefore, for multiple reasons, the ploy by this bill’s proponents of connecting the three-day safety-valve provision to the Charleston attack is simply fraudulent. https://dailycaller.com/2019/02/17/hr-1112-gives-feds-unfettered-power-to-block-gun-sales/ Now, that being said, you may be surprised to learn I am in support of this bill and would support its passing. But it should be noted that the Charleston attack would not have been prevented by this law, and any discussion - any real discussion - on firearm safety has to start with facts, not propaganda. Otherwise those of you on the left will never get those of us on the right who are more moderate to the table. And you need us for a solution.
Fair enough, the vid did make it sound as an arrest for something that would have barred him from gun ownership, not just possession.
The other thing the video did was pull on the emotion strings by pointing out all the deaths by firearms, never actually going into the fact that the majority of those deaths are gang related, are done with illegally owned firearms that no laws put in place (that aren't already in place anyway) would solve. Because that's not the narrative.
This case is probably headed for the Supreme Court. District Court Permanently Enjoins California Magazine Confiscation Law California's statute to confiscate all magazines over 10 rounds has been permanently enjoined by the United States District Court for the Southern District of California. The opinion was written by Judge Roger T. Benitez. Previously, Judge Benitez had issued a preliminary injunction against the confiscation law, and the preliminary injunction was upheld by the Ninth Circuit, as discussed in this post. Today's decision follows cross-motions for summary judgment, and makes the injunction permanent. The next step in Duncan v. Becerra will be an appeal to the Ninth Circuit by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. The 86-page opinion is the most thorough judicial analysis thus far of the magazine ban question. The opinion is founded on a careful analysis of the record, and thus provides an excellent basis for future appellate review on the merits, perhaps one day by the U.S. Supreme Court. Covering all bases, the opinion analyzes the confiscation law under a variety of standards of review. First is the standard favored by Judge Benitez, what he calls "The Supreme Court's Simple Heller Test." In short, magazines over 10 rounds are plainly "in common use" "for lawful purposes like self-defense." Ergo, they may not be confiscated. The analysis is similar to then-Judge Kavanaugh's dissenting opinion in the 2011 Heller II case in the D.C. Circuit. The Duncan opinion then examines the confiscation statute under various levels of "heightened scrutiny": categorical invalidation, strict scrutiny, and intermediate scrutiny. The confiscation statute is found unconstitutional under each of these standards. Under the various heightened scrutiny tests, the government bears the burden of proof. The opinion explains in depth why the evidence put forward by the California Attorney General does not come close to carrying that burden. The core problem is that the Attorney General's evidence, which relies heavily on expert declarations, is speculative, shoddy, or unrelated to the statute at issue. Nor are there any "longstanding" laws that create a tradition of banning magazines over ten rounds--notwithstanding the Attorney General's efforts to invent such a tradition based on state machine gun controls enacted in the 1920s or 1930s. The Attorney General's argument that law-abiding citizens do not "need" magazines over 10 rounds is rejected as directly contrary to Heller, which defers to the choices of the American people, not the government, about what is appropriate for self-defense. Several incidents detailed at the beginning of the opinion describe the harms suffered by crime victims who had insufficient defensive ammunition capacity. Moreover, defense against ordinary criminals may be a leading purpose of the Second Amendment, but it is not the only purpose. "Today, self-protection is most important. In the future, the common defense may once again be most important. Constitutional rights stand through time holding fast through the ebb and flow of current controversy." The government may not respond to bad political ideas by censoring speech, nor respond to crime waves "with warrantless searches and unreasonable seizures. Neither can the government response to a few mad men with guns and ammunition be a law that turns millions of responsible, law-abiding people trying to protect themselves into criminals." Under heightened scrutiny, laws restricting constitutional rights must be "tailored"--in strict scrutiny, "narrow tailoring"; in intermediate scrutiny, "a reasonable fit." But the confiscation statute "is not tailored at all. It fits like a burlap bag. It is a single-dimensional, prophylactic, blanket thrown across the population of the state." The confiscation statute cannot be saved by invoking the mantra of "deference." First of all, the confiscation law was enacted by ballot initiative, and not by the California general assembly. No deference is due to ballot measures that infringe constitutional rights. Even if the statute were a legislative enactment, the statute is not proven to be constitutional simply because the government offers some evidence. Some courts in Second Amendment cases have adopted an ultradeferential "some evidence" standard, but Judge Benitez disagrees. As he points out, the key case cited by advocates for ultradeference is the Supreme Court's Turner II decision, upholding certain congressional mandates on cable television providers. The Supreme Court majority in Hellerrejected Justice Breyer's dissent urging Turner deference in Second Amendment cases. And even if Turner were the controlling case, the Turner Court was hardly lax in its judicial review. The Supreme Court "extensively analyzed over the course of twenty pages the empirical evidence cited by the government, and only then concluded that the government's policy was grounded on reasonable factual findings supported by evidence that is substantial for a legislative determination....Turner deference does not mean a federal court is relegated to rubber-stamping a broad-based arbitrary incursion on a constitutional right founded on speculative line-drawing and without any sign of tailoring for fit." Congratulations to plaintiffs' attorneys Michel & Associates. While a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit lies ahead, and so perhaps do an en banc and the Supreme Court, today's opinion is a victory for serious judicial review of arms confiscation laws. https://reason.com/volokh/2019/03/29/district-court-permanently-enjoins-calif
Yes, I agree. This decision must be making the left crazy. Their reasoning is, if the government can mandate the size of your toilet, surely they can mandate the size of your mag. And let's be honest, their position is not totally crazy. A shooter with a 30 round mag is more of a threat than one with a ten rounder. What they miss is that we are talking about a constitutional right. Could the government limit the number of times a journalist tweets each day? Could they limit the number of editorials a newspaper publishes? After all, they don't "need" to tweet 25 times a day, and we have evidence that a lot of tweets are erroneous or misleading. The other reason this decision, provided it is upheld, is significant is that it establishes a firebreak for the slippery slope tactic. If the gun grabbers can ban high cap mags, do you really think they stop there? Next up is "assault weapons", then all semi auto pistols, then semi auto shotguns, then "too powerful" calibers, etc etc. They can forget about all of that if this decision stands. The smart thing for California to do would be to drop the appeal. I am sure the national anti-gun rights organizations must be agonizing over this right now. If they do appeal, they could end up with another unfavorable Supreme Court opinion that would hamstring them for decades, rather than one district court case that affects only California.