6 time Olympian, Kim Rhode, is interviewed on this week’s Warrior Wednesday by Michael Ware! Daughter of Richard and Sharon Rhode; Her father, Richard, is her coach…Married to Mike Harryman…Has one son, Carter, with whom she was pregnant while competing at the London 2012 Olympic Games…Began shooting at age 10…Won the world championships at age 13 in skeet…Became the first American individual athlete to win a medal in five consecutive Olympic Games in 2012…Has a rich family history; her father’s side has relatives who fought in the infamous battle, Custer’s last stand, and her mother’s side had relations to Samuel Morse, the inventor of Morse code…NRA Board Member, Member of Safari Club International, and an honorary lifetime member of the NRA…Hobbies include collecting and restoring antique cars and first-edition children’s books.
A dangerous quack (Jason Benell, contributor) over at Bleeding Heartland, which is a far-Leftist Iowa-based blog, published a piece that starts with this headline:
“Republican voters are unreasonable and uninformed—a dangerous combination”
Of all the stupid lines in this article, these few paragraphs are perhaps the best:
“...Or are they just lying to avoid discussing their ignorance, sexism, racism, and apathy?
This is contemptible behavior from Republican voters, who are quite literally willing to sell their neighbors down river for the promise of a tax break…
…The folks voting against progressive and Democratic ideals aren’t doing it because they genuinely have principled positions on taxation, the environment, or child care, and they just need to hear the right thing to change their mind.
No, they are doing so because of the multitude of grievances they can contrive and justify their ignorance upon.
Rather, let us move around those voters and reach people who are interested in becoming informed and who are receptive to new ideas.Let’s not preclude a better future because of what some fictional reasonable voter may reject. They have shown themselves time and again to be uninformed and dishonest, and yes, unreasonable about things that matter to them or what they believe in.
No reasonable person votes based on what a trans person might do in the bathroom. No reasonable person votes for a raise in tariffs without knowing what they are. No reasonable person thinks their religion should be foisted on children in public schools but is afraid of other religions being recognized. No reasonable person thinks that criminal convictions and sexual assault allegations are better qualifications for public office than professionals and experienced workers.
So instead of treating them like they are reasonable, we should just go around them and reach out to folks who may genuinely may not know any better.Let’s talk about the benefits of increased wages and worker protections and clean water and secular governance instead of preemptively moderating our positions to appeal to someone who doesn’t exist.”...
Maybe Reasonable people don’t vote for progressives’ ideas because thousands of years of human history prove they don’t work!
Not only is the typical anti-gun Leftist an elitist, but they truly are the perfect example of projection in every sense of the word. Economist Thomas Sowell said;
“People convinced of their own superior wisdom and virtue have no time to spare for what other people want, whether in housing or health care or a whole range of other things.”
Mark Your Calendars Now!
Make sure you attend 2A Day on February 18th at the State Capitol and get your tickets for the IFC-PAC BBQ Dinner that evening with Iowa Hero, Major Jeff Streucker of Black Hawk Down Fame.
The acquittal of Daniel Penny just happened in New York City. Despite threats of violence from Black Lives Matter, out-of-control District Attorney Alan Bragg, a judge who stacked the deck against a good Samaritan, a complicit media, and George Soros’s best efforts to make self-defense in America a thing of the past. Twelve NYC jurors held up a collective middle finger and found Mr. Penny is not guilty as they should have, based on the evidence this case should never have been brought.
IFC applauds Mr. Penny’s heroic actions, and reminds everyone of the 1993 Jeffery R. Snyder essay“A Nation of Cowards”. We highly suggest you reread his timeless piece.
NYC Mayor from 1994-2001 Rudy Giuliani, was the man who cleaned up that city by cracking down on criminals and making it for a short time one of the safest cities in America just posted this comment on “X”
New York City can be safe again, Its voters just elect some adults like America’s Mayor again.
Make sure you attend 2A Day on February 18th at the State Capitol and get your tickets for the IFC-PAC BBQ Dinner that evening with Iowa Hero, Major Jeff Streucker of Black Hawk Down Fame.
In the case of Snope v Maryland, the Supreme Court is petitioned to take a case to rein in the lower courts. Let me explain why. At the end of this blog, I’ll send you over to Mark A. Smith at the Four Boxes Diner to watch his short video about how powerful the Snope case is.
Snope, in his Petition, emphasizes the need for the Court’s intervention:
“But intervention is particularly important because, in the ongoing debate below, the side that to date has always prevailed is also the side that is flouting this Court’s clear teaching in Heller. This error results in an ongoing infringement of the fundamental right to keep and bear arms in the states that have made the most popular rifle in America illegal.”
The lower appellate courts in the Blue States have consistently ruled that they can ban AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles. Those appellate courts know that since the Red States don’t infringe on their citizens’ rights to own commonly used arms, there will not be a split in Federal Circuit Court rulings that would force SCOTUS to take the case. The anti-gun dangerous quack strategy is to delay any ruling in the hope for a future more-liberal majority SCOUTS that will wipe out our God-given right to self-defense and the tools we need to exercise that right.
There are three main points made by David Snope in his brief to grant Certiorari for his claim against the State of Maryland. They are as follows:
“There is a long-running and intractable dispute in the lower courts over whether the Second Amendment allows the government to ban arms that are in common use by law-abiding citizens.
Heller clearly teaches that arms in common use by law-abiding citizens cannot be banned.
This case is an ideal vehicle to resolve this dispute.”
The “in common use” test is the most important part of this brief:
“Heller itself demands that any ban on a type of arm that is “in common use”
be held unconstitutional.”
As Judge Walker recently explained in dissent in Hanson, although many circuit courts appear to understand Heller to “simply hold that the Second Amendment is an individual right, then add a lot of dicta, and then finally hold that D.C. cannot ban handguns,” in fact, Heller had four ‘increasingly specific holdings” that built on each other and should govern courts in resolving challenges to bans on types of arms. 120 F.4th at 260 (Walker, J., dissenting).
Those holdings were, in order:
1) There is, in general, an individual right to keep and bear arms;
2) Exceptions to that right depend on the history and tradition of gun regulations;
3) There is no history and tradition of banning arms in common use for lawful purposes; and
4) Handguns cannot be categorically banned precisely because they are incommon use for lawful purposes.
Id. \Following Heller, the courts of appeals largely accepted and understood the first and the last of these holdings, but it took Bruen for them to finally accept the second. Granting a review of this case is necessary to make them understand the third. Maryland’s brief in opposition, which, like the courts of appeals’, refuses to take “common use” seriously, amply demonstrates that fact.
Maryland, like circuits that have consistently gotten this issue wrong, disputes that “common use” was the reason why Heller held handguns were protected and could not be banned. Although Maryland readily admits that Heller said that “dangerous and unusual weapons” could be banned, it also claims that “this Court has not stated the inverse, i.e., that a weapon automatically is protected so long as it is ‘in common use.’ ” BIO 24. This objection is difficult to understand, given that earlier in the same paragraph where this argument appears, Maryland quotes Bruen stating that “the Second Amendment protects only the carrying of weapons that are those ‘in common use at the time.’
Id. (quoting Bruen, 597 U.S. at 47). Maryland offers no way around the clear import of this language. And the quote Maryland includes in its opposition is not alone. There is no shortage of statements in both Heller and Bruen that definitively establish that an arm in common use is protected because of that fact. For example, Bruen concluded that no further analysis was required with respect to the type of arm at issue because the parties did not dispute that “handguns are weapons ‘in common use’ today for self-defense.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 32. That conclusion only makes sense if common use definitively establishes constitutional protection. See also Hanson, 120 F.4th at 259–60 (Walker, J., dissenting) (collecting additional examples from Heller and Bruen).”
Why does this matter? Because those appellate courts mentioned above need to be slapped down by the Supreme Court. Maryland introduces all kinds of not just garbage but also contradictory legal arguments in its brief.
If a State can delay a right, it is effectively denied. Our rights also become privileges if the state can deny them because of bad actors abusing our right to keep and bear arms. All the state should do is punish those bad actors and leave the rest of us alone. The brief is short, at sixteen pages, and well worth reading yourself.
Make sure you attend 2A Day on February 18th at the State Capitol and get your tickets for the IFC PAC BBQ Dinner that evening. Our featured speaker is Ft. Dodge, Iowa native and Hero: Major Jeff Struecker of Black Hawk Down fame.
Really? Yes, there are over 44 million AR-15s in the United States.
In an unusual twist to my weekly 2A Wrap-Up, I will highlight a video of David Thompson at the 2024 convention of The Federalist Society. Mr. Thompson is the managing partner at Cooper & Kirk and one of the nation’s foremost litigators who works closely with The Second Amendment Foundation and several other 2A groups.
Two points I’d like to highlight from David’s speech —
First: Anti-gun dangerous quacks claim that AR-15s are too lethal for civilians to own:
“The entire history of firearms is the relentless, continual search for more lethality and more accuracy,” he explained. “These are instruments that determine your life or your death, whether you live free or as a slave.”
Second: Those same anti-gun dangerous quacks want you to believe that the Framers could not envision modern firearms. They clearly could, and did in 1777 when a twenty-shot repeating firearm was made available for demonstration. As Justice Anthony Scalia quotes in Heller, and David Thompson points out in his video:
“The Constitution protects advancements in arms
as much as it protects advancements in speech or the press.”
Why this matters:
David Thompson makes the very reasoned argument that increased lethality is exactly what the Framers intended when they enshrined our God-given Right to Keep and Bear Arms in our Bill of Rights. Mark A. Smith of The Four Boxes Diner introduced Thompson’s powerful, short, ten-minute video. Watch it here, and bookmark it for future reference.
Hopefully, President Trump will clean out the nest of anti-gun dangerous quacks in the Federal Government starting promptly on January 20th.
The administrative state loses again! This time in the case of Marin Audubon Society, et al v. FAA, theD.C. District Court of Appeals struck down the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), a toothless cabal inside the Presidential Executive Office. The CEQ has exceeded its authority for decades by publishing its guidance in the Federal Register implying its guidance has the force of law. From the decision by a three-judge panel:
“As the parties argue the case, it centers on whether the Agencies complied with regulations of the Council on Environmental Quality, an entity within the Executive Office of the President. We will not address these arguments. The CEQ regulations, which purport to govern how all federal agencies must comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, are ultra vires.”
Ultra Vires means “beyond the scope of its authority.
This undoes fifty years of bureaucratic law. Coupled with the end of the Chevron Deference, this gives the incoming Trump Administration tremendous power to shrink the size and scope of the administrative state. This means that three-letter agencies will have to fight their battles in the Federal Courts, not with their own unaccountable-to-the-voters administrative law judge.
Couple these steps with the future Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that’s going to be led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, whose quotes are highlighted by Clarice Feldman over at The American Thinker:
“Vivek Ramaswamy, co-nominee for the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) made clear the chainsaw they intend to take to the bureaucratic state:
“Here’s a key point about our mission at DOGE: eliminating bureaucratic regulations isn’t a mere policy preference. It’s a legal *mandate* from the U.S. Supreme Court:
— West Virginia v. EPA (2022) held that agencies cannot decide major questions of economic or political significance without “clear congressional authorization.” This applies to *thousands* of rules that never passed Congress.
— In Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), the Court ended Chevron Deference, which means agencies can’t foist their own interpretations of the law onto the American people. Over 18,000 federal cases cited the Chevron doctrine, often to uphold regulations, many of which are now null & void.
— In SEC v. Jarkesy (2024), SCOTUS restricted the use of “administrative law judges” by agencies. The same agency that wrote the rules shouldn’t be able to prosecute citizens in “courts” that it controls.
— In Corner Post v. Board of Governors (2024), the Court held that new businesses can challenge old regulations, greatly expanding the statute of limitations & opening many more rules up for scrutiny. So we shouldn’t just look at rules passed in the last 4 years, but over the past 4 decades (or more).”
When Obama bragged in 2009 as the new POTUS, that “elections have consequences”, he had no idea how that statement would come back to bite him. It’s incredible that just fifteen years later the out-of-control federal government (courtesy of Obama, and his minions Biden and Harris), would become the reason Donald J. Trump would be twice handed the Presidency by the American people.
Between taking away the authority of the three-letter agencies, and then defunding them, Americans will again live freely. As freedom-loving gun owners, we can hope that the ATF shrinks down to size, if not eliminated entirely.
There’s a new boss in town, and he’s not the same as the old boss. Please stay Ready at All Times, and help us defend all of Iowa’s rights by renewing or joining IFC today.
Shoot Straight, Speak The Truth, and Never Surrender Our Liberties.
Dave Funk Member, Board of Directors Iowa Firearms Coalition #2A4IA
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