Archives for July 2022

During the 2021 Louisiana legislative session, a great number of people worked very hard to get Constitutional Carry passed in the State House and Senate. Your LSA was right there in lock step with all the other Civil Rights patriots working tirelessly at the Capitol. However, when it hit the Governor’s desk, he vetoed the bill using the excuse that with Constitutional Carry, citizens would be armed without adequate training. He also said that the residents of Louisiana didn’t want Constitutional Carry. By the Citizens, he probably meant New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Shreveport Chiefs of Police, all of whom apparently hate the thought of law-abiding citizens having the ability to protect themselves from criminals that rule their respective streets.

Following the veto, the legislature called an unprecedented veto override session to consider this and other bills that the liberal Governor had vetoed. John Bel Edwards used the standard Louisiana political tactics of strong arming and closed door promises to make certain that his veto would not be overridden, and a few Republican Senators stabbed us in the back. As a reminder, they were Sen. Franklin J. Foil, Sen. Louie Bernard, and Sen. Patrick Connick. Remember them at election time.

We all know that we should not need the government’s permission to do something that is guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. We also know that one does not need a government course to know how to handle violent bad guys, and now we have proof. On July 17, 2022, in Greenwood, Indiana, a 22-year-old man named Elisjsha Dicken stopped a mass shooting at an Indiana mall. When a deranged killer opened fire in the mall’s food hall, Mr. Dicken swiftly drew his own pistol, that he was legally carrying without a permit and without a government course, and engaged the murderer. Police recovered 24 rifle rounds from the mentally ill person who wanted to kill as many people as possible, plus 10 from Mr. Dicken’s handgun. Early reports noted that he put 8 rounds into the murderer at 50 yards without any formal training. He was quoted as saying, “My grandfather taught me how to shoot.”

According to quotes taken from the Wall Street Journal attributed to Police Chief James Ison, “He engaged the gunman from quite a distance with a handgun, was very proficient in that, very tactically sound, and as he moved to close in on the suspect, he was also motioning for people to exit behind him. To our knowledge, he has no police training and no military background.”

Unlike Louisiana’s Governor who is way out of touch with the desires of the Louisiana public, Indiana’s Governor Eric Holcomb signed a bill to allow Constitutional Carry in the Hoosier State. That legislation took effect on July 1, and only 17 days into the new law, a law-abiding citizen stopped a crazed madman from doing his worst. “We could not find that he had a permit,” Chief Ison said. “He was carrying legally under the constitutional carry law.” Chief Ison continued, “Many more people would have died if not for a responsible armed citizen that took action very quickly.”

Governor Edwards, your argument is nonsense. We knew it then, and everyone knows it now. Shame on you!

The US Supreme Court struck down New York’s “good cause” requirement to obtain a carry permit, affirming that the right to bear arms exists outside the home.  You may read the Courts opinion here.

The State of New York makes it a crime to possess a firearm without a license, whether inside or outside the home. Prior to this ruling, an individual who wanted to carry a firearm outside his home had to obtain an unrestricted license to “have and carry” a concealed “pistol or revolver,” but only if he could prove that “proper cause exists” for doing so.  An applicant satisfied the “proper cause” requirement only if he could “demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community.”

Two adult, law-abiding NY residents were denied unrestricted licenses to carry a handgun in public based on their generalized interest in self-defense allegedly because they failed to satisfy the “proper cause” requirement. Based on the denial, they sued the state officials who oversee the processing of licensing applications, alleging that the State violated their Second and Fourteenth Amendment rights by denying their unrestricted-license applications for failure to demonstrate a unique need for self-defense. The District Court dismissed their complaint and the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s decision.

In a majority opinion authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court found that New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defense.

Second Amendment Foundation founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb said,

“We are gratified that the high court has said there can be no bureaucratic prerequisite to exercising one’s constitutionally-protected right to bear arms. For too many generations, New York’s requirement has been the vehicle by which the constitutional rights of average law-abiding citizens have been deprived under color of law.

Government bureaucrats have routinely been arbitrary and all-too-eager to prevent honest people from having the means to defend themselves against violent crime outside of their homes. This pattern of exclusivity—allowing only those with wealth and political connections to legally carry guns in public—has been an affront to the constitution for decades, and now officials in a handful of other states with similar arbitrary requirements are on notice they can no longer perpetuate what amounts to an outrage against the constitution. We’ll see how this ruling affects eight other states with similar laws including California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island.”

The Court affirmed that the right to bear arms does not stop at a person’s front door. This is the most significant Second Amendment ruling in more than a decade.