The Supreme Court finally issued their opinion in Heller v. DC, and the ban is overturned! Scalia's opinion is pretty solid, though some of the dicta about what might be "reasonable" is kind of troubling. But, then, all of that would be decided in later cases, and at least now we have our foot in the door. Word on the street is that suits are being filed in Chicago and NYC tomorrow.

Equally troubling is the fact that four of the Justices dissented from a Constitutional right just because they don't like the outcome. They rambled on a bit about the meaning of "to," pretty much lied about the filings/holding in Miller, and, most bizarrely, said that the right to assemble and petition the government are collective in the same sense they think the Second is. And here I was thinking I was joking when I wrote this.

And all that was only like ten pages into the dissent. I had to take a break before my brain exploded..

(Oh, yea, speaking of breaks, between losing internet for a week, nervously waiting for this decision, and general business, it seems I haven't blogged in a month now. Feels like I haven't slept in half as long for that matter.)

GamePolitics has a rather odd piece today about the ACLU's new claim that the US is violating the civil liberties of children by not censoring what they see. Or something like that.

[The US has] failed to uphold its commitments to safeguard the rights of youth under 18 from military recruitment and to guarantee basic protections to foreign former child soldiers... U.S. military recruiting practices... target children as young as 11...

And how have they failed?

The Army uses an online video game, called “America’s Army,” to attract young potential recruits at least as young as 13, train them to use weapons, and engage in virtual combat and other military missions... According to Army personnel testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the goal of the then-new recruiting effort that included the “America’s Army” video game was to penetrate youth culture

Granted, yes, the government does not have a right to free speech. Children do, however, have a right to read/view/hear any material which is not deemed "obscene" by the archaic Miller Test. Ergo, the ACLU wishes to take away people's Constitutional right to access speech and their right to free thought in order to protect their "right" to not be recruited by the military.

And where does this so-called right to be free of pro-military speech come from? A UN protocol. One which, as best as I can tell, only prohibits contractually signing up children as soldiers, not a ban on advertising where they might see it.

Or, in other words, the American Civil Liberties Union is opposing an American civil liberty in favor of a UN mandate. George Orwell couldn't have dreamed this one up.

Oh, and, look, they're also claiming that the America's Army game can "train them to use weapons." This line is straight out of Jack Thompson, Hillary Clinton, and the VPC's playbook. This isn't the first time I've noticed a convergence between the gun grabbers and the censors. It is kind of eerie how the talking points line up here though..

Via Of Arms and the Law comes this piece, in which Josh Horwitz defends.. tyranny? To be honest, I'm not quite sure where to start (or stop) quoting to make any sense of this, but these two bits kinda stick out.

Before we get carried away with the idea that guns are the ultimate guarantor of our civil liberties, however, we should consider what maintaining the capability to resist the decisions of a democratically accountable government really means.

...

If this insurrectionist logic were to be embraced by the Supreme Court, however, our democracy would be severely degraded.

He goes in so many circles that it's hard to tell where he's going, but to me it sounds like he's saying (and perhaps unintentionally) that that tyrants need a monopoly on force to protect democracy and freedom. Or something. And no, I'm not making this up. Towards the end he says Saddam Hussein's regime was tyrannical, but even then that the state needs a monopoly on force to enforce rights. And that the state is the "only hope of vindicating individual rights."

Ooookay...

Speaking of circular logic, in the amicus brief he co-authored in favor of the DC ban, it was claimed that the Second Amendment was a federalist provision which "enhances state and local authority to protect life and liberty through the maintenance of militias composed of the local populace" and "prevents unreasonable federal intrusions into gun possession that would impair state authority by defeating the States’ ability to raise “well regulated militia[s]” to protect public welfare and order." Or, in other words, just a few months ago, he said the Second was there to prevent the Feds from having the total monopoly on force he's calling for now.

So which is it?

Even more amusing (or sad, depending on how you look at it) is the bit in the middle where he sings about all the wonderful things the Feds' monopoly on force has given us.

Since the ratification of that document, our nation has been through much travail, but through some of our biggest challenges (i.e., the Civil War, World War II, and the civil rights movement) it was ultimately America's ability to mobilize both a federal bureaucracy and military power that kept us free.

Civil War? That was a bit of a toss up since it freed the slaves (which is a good thing) but it saddled us all with a more powerful, repressive central government (which is a very bad thing to everyone but you, apparently). I'll give you that one though.

But the civil rights movement?! If your anti-gun group had been around during the civil rights movement, you would have been on the side of the segregationists. All your precious gun laws are based on Slave Codes and Jim Crow laws, but now you want to claim your victim disarmament agenda played a role in the civil rights movement? Fuck you.

If it weren't for folks like the Deacons for Defense and Justice or the brave, black veterans who took on a racist county in the Battle of Athens, the civil rights movement might have died (literally and figuratively) before the Federal government got off its ass to do anything.

And then there was United States v. Cruikshank in 1875. Let's see here.. A group of KKK types attacked a group of freedmen. Said freedmen defended themselves with private arms. Then your beloved Federal government ruled in favor of the oppressors. Is that an example of this "only hope" you were talking about?

As for World War II, umm, are we forgetting the thousands of citizens with private arms who volunteered for Civil Defense programs to help secure the coastlines? Not to mention the Japanese admiral who said they couldn't invade the mainland because there would be "a rifle behind every blade of grass."

I'm not sure how many of my (maybe five) readers don't follow the news on GTA IV, but last week I had the opportunity to fly to NYC for a pre-launch party with some other webmasters. I've been back in Virginia since Wednesday night, but just haven't had the time and/or motivation to blog since then. While the party and the game were tons of fun, it was still nice to get back here and "cling to my guns" which couldn't come along for the trip into victim-disarmament land.

And after checking out the other blogs, David Codrea has two pieces which made me extra happy to be home..

First up, it appears that the day after I left, Emperor Bloomberg unveiled his new "Hercules Teams" which will patrol the subways and stuff in full SWAT gear. If the idea of heavily militarized police doing daily patrols in what is supposed to be an American city doesn't bother you enough, well, just take a look at this screen capture from the news report Mr. C. is talking about.

Yep. That's right. Dark Helmet there is sweeping a dozen or so people with the muzzle of a select-fire M4 as he walks past. With his finger on the trigger. If that's the kind of gun safety they see from the police in NYC, I almost understand why it's filled with so many hoplophobes now..

Next up came this news from earlier today that race-card-poker champion Al Sharpton led a huge protest over the acquittal of the three detectives who shot the unarmed Sean Bell. While I actually agree with him that the shooting was dodgy, I don't think my brain could have withstood being in such close proximity to the aura of cognitive dissonance which this man emits.

As I've said before, Sharpton has always been at the forefront of demanding slave code and Nazi-based laws which would make police the Only Ones with guns. Yet every single time these laws (predictably) backfire, he acts all surprised. Go figure.

David Kopel had a great piece in today's Wall Street Journal about the comical attempts by Hillary and Obama to appear pro-gun.

Imagine an election race of Pat Robertson versus James Dobson, each of them appearing at organic grocery stores and Starbucks throughout Massachusetts, with each candidate insisting that he alone deserves the vote of gay-marriage advocates. An equally silly spectacle is taking place these days in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Indiana, West Virginia and Kentucky, as Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama compete for the pro-gun vote.

He totally nailed it with that comparison. And that's just the first paragraph. By the end, he hasn't just knocked the proverbial ball out of the park; he sent it into another timezone..