by Dave Funk | Jun 4, 2024
THE BREAKING POINT?
Are we at the legal breaking point yet? Last week’s conviction of President Trump in a totally bullsh*t case is the most in-your-face move yet by the authoritarian left. What is now no longer in question is that we have a two-tiered justice system in America that protects liberals, and punishes everyone else.
Even Elie Honig, a CNN Legal Analyst, called out the unconstitutionality of the whole case:
“The judge donated money in plain violation of a rule prohibiting New York judges from making political donations of any kind — to a pro-Biden, anti-Trump political operation, including funds that the judge earmarked for “resisting the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s radical right-wing legacy…
District Attorney Alvin Bragg ran for office in an overwhelmingly Democratic county by touting his Trump-hunting prowess…
Most importantly, the DA’s charges against Trump push the outer boundaries of the law and due process.
…the charges against Trump are obscure and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever…
Standing alone, falsification charges would have been mere misdemeanors under New York law, which posed two problems for the DA. First, nobody cares about a misdemeanor, and it would be laughable to bring the first-ever charge against a former president for a trifling offense that falls within the same technical criminal classification as shoplifting… Second, the statute of limitations on a misdemeanor — two years — likely has long expired on Trump’s conduct, which dates to 2016 and 2017.
So, to inflate the charges up to the lowest-level felony (Class E, on a scale of Class A through E) — and to electroshock them back to life within the longer felony statute of limitations — the DA alleged that the falsification of business records was committed “with intent to commit another crime.” Here, according to prosecutors, the “another crime” is a New York State election-law violation, which in turn incorporates three separate “unlawful means”: federal campaign crimes, tax crimes, and falsification of still more documents. Inexcusably, the DA refused to specify what those unlawful means actually were — and the judge declined to force them to pony up — until right before closing arguments…
In these key respects, the charges against Trump aren’t just unusual. They’re bespoke, seemingly crafted individually for the former president and nobody else…
“No man is above the law.” It’s become cliché, but it’s an important point. It’s worth pausing to reflect on the importance of this core principle. But it’s also meaningless pablum if we unquestioningly tolerate (or worse, celebrate) deviations from ordinary process and principle to get there…”
Meanwhile in New York City…
If you defend yourself from robbery or other crimes in NYC, you will be prosecuted. Take the case of the 61-year-old bodega employee who turned the tables on a convicted felon trying to rob and kill him. Or the case of a Marine Veteran who fatality restrained someone threatening to kill people on a subway. The NYC District Attorneys will charge the good guys while letting violent criminals be undercharged, if not just let go completely. This is despite NYC Police’s best efforts to control the violence on that once great city’s streets.
As Professor John Lott said in a recent Washington Times op-ed:
“While New York persecutes law-abiding people who try to protect themselves and others, criminals are often let go scot-free. New numbers show that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has downgraded 60% of felonies to lesser charges, almost always to mere misdemeanors. At the same time, left-wing DAs aren’t going after real criminals and crime is increasing, with reported violent crime (murder, rape, robbery, and felony assault) in New York City in 2023 up by 32%. Amid such leniency, reported murder rates are now up 23% from 2019 levels. At the same time, the rate at which people are reporting crime to police has plummeted, so the real spike in crime is much larger than the numbers show. Total crime, reported and unreported, has soared in large cities of more than a million people.”
Why would anyone stay in — or invest in — such corrupt and lawless places? Based on migration data, New Yorkers are leaving in droves for the Free States. New York is exactly what Obama and Biden want to happen in all of America. Our last chance to stop them is on November 5th. If not, then America is circling the drain for the last time as an administrative state robs the last traces of our freedom and dignity.
Please stay Ready at All Times, and help us defend all of Iowa’s rights by joining or renewing your IFC membership here today.
Shoot Straight, Speak The Truth, and Never Surrender Our Liberties.
Dave Funk
President
Iowa Firearms Coalition
by Dave Funk | May 28, 2024
ELECTION SEASON 2024
It’s officially election season, 2024. Well, maybe closer to Labor Day is the official date. However, as many of you reading this know, it never really ends here in Iowa – with our First in the Nation Caucuses. (I’m sure like me you’re relieved to see laundry soap and agricultural chemical ads return every November, instead of the constant bombardment of political ads.)
Almost three years ago, IFC-PAC launched our digital campaign to ensure victory for the long, hard-fought struggle to ensure passage of the Freedom Amendment. With your help, we achieved a remarkable 65.17% victory and captured an estimated 20% of Democrats and 60% of Independents who voted “yes” on State Ballot Measure Number 1. This successful campaign earned more votes than any other statewide race.
Engaging Voters
Why am I bringing that up now you might ask? That digital campaign allowed IFC to engage with over one million Iowans of voting age. In the campaign, IFC-PAC was able to highlight and publicly thank the elected Representatives and Senators at both the State and Federal levels, Statewide office holders (and candidates), and County elected officials who supported the Freedom Amendment.
IFC-PAC worked hard to become the “go-to” expert on all things Second Amendment here in Iowa. We need to repeat that effort again this summer and into Election Day on November 5th.
Because of the foundation you helped IFC build in 2021-2022, this year that job is easier. However, we still need to do it. In order to highlight 2A supporters, IFC-PAC needs to fund our digital campaign again this Summer and Fall. Unlike 2021-2022, the need is not for hundreds of thousands of dollars, but instead just a fraction of that.
You all know how hostile Biden and his ‘string-pullers behind the scenes’ are toward your individual rights, and particularly the 2nd Amendment. Let’s stop them here in Iowa from making any gains against your freedom.
That’s why I’m asking you today to go to IFC-PAC and donate what you can. Even just a small recurring donation is a huge help. Your local elected Representatives will tell you that they appreciate IFC-PAC’s highlighting them as supporters, as opposed to the small amount of dollars we could donate to each of their campaigns directly.
Please stay Ready at All Times, and help us defend all Iowan’s rights by joining or renewing your IFC membership here today.
Shoot Straight, Speak The Truth, and Never Surrender Our Liberties.
Dave Funk
President
Iowa Firearms Coalition
by Dave Funk | May 21, 2024
FBI: DON’T BELIEVE YOUR LYING EYES
FBI: don’t believe your lying eyes! Well, it would figure that the once-revered Federal Bureau of Investigation as the ‘best of the best’ in America has now totally succumbed to the Obama-Biden politicization of Federal Law Enforcement and our DOJ. The FBI is cooking the books when it comes to crime data in the United States, and it was another federal agency that ratted them out!
The FBI issues its Uniform Crime reports, but it fails to highlight that major cities like New York, Los Angeles, and others, don’t even report their crime data to the FBI. Also, many other cities including Baltimore and Chicago underreport theirs. Meanwhile, in its annual National Crime Victimization Survey, the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows crime skyrocketing!
Noted economist and author Dr. John Lott just published an article about this very subject, it’s worth a full read. I’ll highlight just a few paragraphs here:
“I have pointed out before that since 2020, the FBI’s number of reported crimes and the NCVS’s number of total crimes have gone in opposite directions. For example, between 2021 and 2022, the FBI showed a 2.1% drop in violent crime, but the NCVS showed an increase of 29.3%.
But there is a more fundamental problem. The FBI and NCVS’s estimates of reported crimes have also gone in opposite directions since 2020. From 2008 to 2019, the FBI and NCVS measures of reported violent crimes generally tended to move up and down together. But from 2020 to 2022, these two numbers were almost perfectly negatively related to each other. Each time one measure of reported violent crimes rose, the other measure fell.
For example, while the FBI’s number of reported violent crimes fell by 2% in 2021 and 2.1% in 2022, the NCVS’s measure showed increases of 13.6% and 29.3%, respectively.”
Dr. Lott sums it up here:
“The news media relies on reported crime numbers without considering unreported crime. However, the gap between the two measures of reported crimes provides strong doubts about the accuracy of the FBI’s reported crime data. Americans believe that crime is increasing as law enforcement is collapsing. They also say that they are reporting more crimes to the police, but that isn’t showing up in the FBI reports.”
How can we have good public policy without good data, while many cities and the FBI are clearly cooking the books? The answer is we cannot. It’s another reason why the Framers never wanted the government to have a monopoly on power and why they enshrined our God-given right to keep and bear arms into our Constitution.
Please stay Ready at All Times, and help us defend all of Iowa’s rights by joining or renewing your IFC membership here today.
Shoot Straight, Speak The Truth, and Never Surrender Our Liberties.
Dave Funk
President
Iowa Firearms Coalition
by Dave Funk | May 14, 2024
LEGAL UPDATES & IFC AT NRAAM
Legal updates & IFC at NRAAM: This week’s President’s Message includes a couple of surprising court decisions and a heads-up that IFC will be attending the NRA Annual Meeting in Dallas this week. As President of Iowa Firearms Coalition, I was invited to speak at the Clubs & Associations Forum on Friday, May 17th. After missing the last two weeks for a much-needed vacation, I’m back at it here at IFC.
Legal Updates
These last few weeks have seen some interesting court rulings from some surprising places.
This first unfortunately is from the Iowa Supreme Court with a ruling (I think incorrectly) that antique muzzleloading firearms are “firearms” when it comes to ‘felon in possession’ statutes. We strongly disagree with this ruling and are studying the case to see if the Iowa legislature needs to clarify this issue.
The more interesting case is that the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has held that non-violent convicted felons cannot be denied the right to keep and bear arms in Duarte. In Duarte, the three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that they could not be denied. The case was very well summarized by Jeff Charles at RedState:
“The court’s ruling repudiated an earlier Ninth Circuit decision in United States v. Vongxay and argued that the decision was “clearly irreconcilable” with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen. The Vongxay ruling upheld federal laws prohibiting felons from owning firearms.
The court applied Bruen’s two-step framework, acknowledging that Duarte, as an American citizen, is part of “the people” covered by the Second Amendment and rejected the state’s argument that felons are excluded from its constitutional protections.
At Bruen’s second step, the court determined that “The Government put forward no ‘well-established and representative historical analogue’ that ‘impose[d] a comparable burden on the right of armed self-defense’ that was ‘comparably justified’ to the current law’s “sweeping, no-exception, lifelong ban.”
Why This is Surprising
What is striking to me is that this same court just overruled its own prior decision in United States v. Vongxay. That case previously upheld the federal ban on felons’ possession of firearms. You might remember that the current SCOTUS session included a case I’ve previously written about, United States v. Rahimi, challenging that ban. That ruling has yet to be passed down from SCOTUS but is expected shortly.
At the time of the adoption of the Bill of Rights, the only felonies defined by law were capital crimes like murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, and a few others. At that time, capital crimes were mostly punishable by death. Because those were so serious, persons convicted of them lost their constitutional rights.
This ruling might be the 9th Circuit’s attempt to set up a future Bruen-limiting SCOTUS ruling. For now, however, the Bruen decision is upending nearly everything related to gun bans and prohibitions. Its impact will be felt for years–and that is good news. I’ll follow up in the next few weeks in a future President’s Message, with the “in common use” standard. I think that standard may be the answer to nearly every unconstitutional gun ban starting with the 1934 National Firearms Act to the present.
Please post a comment below on this issue for us. We’d like to get your input on this important question.
National Rifle Association Annual Meeting 2024
NRAAM is this week, and a couple of members of our Executive Committee will be in attendance in Dallas. On Friday morning, May 17th, I have the honor of presenting about IFC’s social media efforts. I’ll be talking about how we successfully spread the truth regarding the Second Amendment far and wide. As the 2020 and 2022’s ‘NRA Outstanding State Association of the Year’, IFC continues to set the pace when it comes to leveraging both social and earned media.
Please stay Ready at All Times, and help us defend all of Iowa’s rights by joining or renewing your IFC membership here today.
Shoot Straight, Speak The Truth, and Never Surrender Our Liberties.
Dave Funk
President
Iowa Firearms Coalition
by Michael Ware | May 9, 2024
Tyranny is the problem with the progressive anti-liberty mindset. Whenever possible, they employ tyranny over us with glee and enthusiasm. Why? Because they tell themselves they’re saving us from ourselves. It isn’t that the 2A or 1A are fundamental problems. Rather, the average progressive, post-modern, neo-Marxist, or run-of-the-mill left winger can’t handle a world they don’t control. It won’t matter to them that you and I, among 99% of the rest of us do well, sometimes even great, with the exercise of our civil liberties, but more that they can’t imagine doing anything of the sort themselves. And because they can’t think through what it would be like to defend oneself with a firearm, they seek to remove any choice for you to do so.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
–C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)
Lewis does a pretty good job of outlining this fundamental problem in the quote above. If you cut to the core of these silly progressive liberal arguments, you inevitably come to one irrefutable truth. They can’t possibly grapple with the precept surrounding responsibility and consequence. They wish to place upon us restrictions that make them feel better about themselves with simultaneous safety nets to make it work.
Why safety nets you ask? Well, when the consequences are no longer bound to the choices we make, we simply don’t learn the lesson. Without lessons learned, we are apt to make more bad choices. With more bad choices, we see poor outcomes associated with everything you can chart, categorize, or easily reference. To avoid the truth associated with such endeavors, safety nets are necessary to mask the logical conclusion that ethics matter and serve as the basis for our morals in action.
This isn’t to say progs don’t care about people. Of course, they do. But they don’t love them enough to allow them to grow in ways that can often result in a bruised knee or a scraped elbow. My dad pushed me down the driveway, which had a considerable grade, without training wheels, and yelled, “Peddle son!” Guess what? I learned to ride a bike in 7 seconds. How long might it have taken me if I’d had training wheels on? I’m unsure, as it was the road not traveled. But I’m guessing longer than 7 seconds. Dad wasn’t wrestling his own mind about what was going to happen or not happen when he gave me a push. He had sized me up, knew I was probably ready to rock, and gave me a shove. Progs have a hard time with that metaphorically speaking, so they tend to avoid the possibility it won’t go well, by placing everyone on perpetual training wheels for their own good.
Unfortunately, their version of training wheels is perpetual intolerance of us while demanding 100% tolerance of them. Thus, tyranny and Hell on Earth. Pay close attention to what they say when they’re talking. They rarely skip an opportunity to talk down to you. Go read the Lewis quote above again, and let it sink in.
In Libertatem,
Michael Ware – IFC Board
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