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DES MOINES Many significant changes would be made to Iowas gun laws if a bill working its way through the Iowa Legislature gains sufficient approval in coming weeks.

Those charged with keeping the peace and enforcing Iowas laws say they have serious concerns regarding some portions of the wide-ranging proposal.

Many of Iowas county sheriffs, city police chiefs and county attorneys say their deepest concerns lie with two particular provisions:

One that would lessen an individuals burden to justify the use of lethal force in self-defense.

One that would allow Iowans to sue local governments that prohibit the possession of guns in public buildings, such as county courthouses.

Multiple sheriffs, police chiefs and county attorneys interviewed for this story said they think much of the sweeping legislation would have little to no effect on their duties, and some pieces they supported.

But the so-called stand-your-ground provision and the notion of guns in courthouses and other public buildings give many law enforcement officials cause for concern.

Organizations representing the states peace officers, sheriffs and police all are registered as undecided on the bill. The organization representing the states county attorneys is registered in opposition to it.

Stand-your-ground laws have been debated passionately and nationally, particularly in the wake of a 2012 incident in Florida in which a black teen was shot to death and the shooter was acquitted of murder after claiming self-defense under the states stand-your-ground law.

Iowa law enforcement officials, particularly county attorneys, said their concern is that a stand-your-ground provision could make it difficult to prosecute shooting deaths.

Unfortunately, at least in Davenport, we have the exchange of gun fire on a frequent basis, and unfortunately people get killed. And our fear is the unintended consequence of this bill is going to make those types of cases difficult to prosecute, even if an innocent bystander were to be killed, Scott County Attorney Mike Walton said. It builds in a defense, because both sides are going to be able to say they were standing their ground. ...

Certainly, its going to be difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt who shot first. The law makes it difficult to prosecute. It builds in immunities.

Woodbury County Sheriff David Drew, like many others who have raised questions about the bill, said Iowa does not need a stand-your-ground provision because current state law already permits the use of lethal force in self-defense of ones home or vehicle. The proposal would expand that permission to anywhere.

I think stand-your-ground is a bad law. I agree with the attorneys, Drew said. I think what you can have is two people that are really of a criminal mindset say, I feared that guy, and he feared that guy, and were going back to the wild, Wild West.

Rep. Matt Windschitl is a Republican state legislator and gun shop owner from Missouri Valley and an advocate for reducing restrictions on gun ownership and use. He said stand-your-ground laws are designed to protect individuals from being prosecuted for acting in self-defense and such a protection should extend beyond the individuals home or vehicle.

Windschitl said the potential for more difficult prosecutions is outweighed by the expansion of protections for law-abiding gun owners.

May a sheriff or prosecuting attorney have to reach a new standard to prosecute? Under those rare instances when someone may claim stand-your-ground, yes, that may happen, Windschitl said. But I think the burden that may put on that prosecuting attorney far outweighs the burden upon an Iowan to have to try and run away from a very dangerous situation that endangers their life or safety or the life or safety of another. Were allowing Iowans the responsibility.

Linn County Attorney Jerry Vander Sanden and others said they also are worried a stand-your-ground law will lead to an increase in gun violence.

Floridas monthly homicide rate increased nearly 25 percent after implementation of its stand-your-ground law, according to a 2016 study conducted by a University of Oxford social policy professor published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

I believe the stand your ground law would embolden some to unnecessarily resort to deadly force and increase the likelihood of physical violence, Vander Sanden in an emailed statement.

Sheriffs and county attorneys said they also think any provision that makes it easier for individuals to bring guns into public places such as county courthouses is bad policy. They said emotions can run high in the courthouse and adding guns to that mix could be dangerous.

That would be a huge step backward for public safety, Linn County Sheriff Brian Gardner said. Some of the most contentious occurrences happen in the courthouse.

Walton described prohibiting local governments from regulating firearms in courthouses as lunacy that puts the public and courthouse workers in danger.

People are facing bad consequences in the courthouse. They may be prosecuted for crimes, their family members, relatives may be prosecuted for crimes, there may be juvenile situations, domestic abuse, divorces. It just goes on and on, Walton said.

A courthouse is supposed to be a place where things are peaceably resolved. I think its a shame that the Legislature would put my staff and all the staff in the courthouse at risk with people with firearms. I dont know why they would do that.

The proposed legislation does not repeal any local ordinances that ban weapons in courthouses or other public buildings, and judges would retain authority to ban guns in the courtroom, Windschitl said.

Judges still have domain over their kingdom, Windschitl said. Theyre still the masters of their judicial branch.

The bill does permit individuals to petition the court if he or she feels adversely affected by a weapons ban. Creating that opening concerned many of those county law enforcement officials.

We have always been able to represent the courthouse as a safe place to victims and witnesses who are sometimes fearful about coming to testify in court, Vander Sanden said. If this legislation passed, it would subject counties across the state to lawsuits by those who believe they should have a right to bring firearms into county buildings.

Read this article:
Iowa law enforcement officials take issue with parts of gun bill - Quad City Times

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Since San Bernardino, Sandy Hook, Columbine et al., the progressives, the media and their acolytes have beaten their chests calling for even stricter gun restrictions, although the most restrictive states and cities that have the highest crime. They insist that the Second Amendment does not apply to individuals, but only to the National Guard, even though the modern Guard did not come into existence until the Dick Act of 1903. To them, the Supreme Court decisions in Heller v. District of Columbia and McDonald v. Chicago affirming an individual right are mistaken, a conclusion reachable only by abjuring grammar and history.

To anyone who can diagram a sentence the Second Amendment is crystal-clear, not a Delphic pronouncement. The Founding Fathers, well versed in Latin grammar, knew exactly what they meant when they passed the Second Amendment. The meaning is in the main clause the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed a complete sentence. A well-regulated militia is, in Latin, an ablative absolute, it introduces the main idea. Would Second Amendment opponents be happier if it read, The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, a well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state? The idea remains the same, but given the progressivist idea of a living Constitution, they would nullify the Second Amendment by asserting knowledge of the Bill of Rights superior to that of its author, James Madison.

Historian Leonard Levys Origins of the Bill of Rights reaffirmed an individual right. Wrote Levy: The right to bear arms is an individual right. if all it meant was the right to serve in the military [it] would never have reached constitutional status in the Bill of Rights. The very language of the amendment is evidence that the right is a personal one, for it is not subordinated to the militia clause. The state constitutions of the revolution and early national period also acknowledged an individual right.

The Founders classical education made them realistically fearful of government power. They knew well what had befallen the Roman Republic and that tyrannies were only possible when the people lacked the means to resist. The chaos and oppression of the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolutions short-circuiting of the Stuarts divine right ambitions were fixed in their minds as was the English Bill of Rights (1689) which, although limited to Protestants, secured an Englishmans right to arms. However, the roots go even further back, to the Trained Bandes, locals called up to defend the realm as Elizabeth I did when the Armada threatened England. Englishmen provided their own accouterments according to their station. Likewise, the chronic war with France in which for over a century frontier settlements were attacked, settlers massacred or carried off into Indian slavery meant colonists had to protect themselves.

New England towns either supplied weapons or, as had Plymouth in 1632, ordered freemen to arm themselves for defense against ever-present Indian dangers. When Queen Annes War (War of the Spanish Succession) broke out in 1702, New England militias were called to support the British assault on French Canada. Militiamen brought their own weapons; those who did not own a musket were issued one that they could keep when mustered out. The battles of Lexington and Concord at the start of the American Revolution could not have taken place without an armed citizenry. Who, then, was the militia? To George Mason, it consisted of the whole people. Under the Militia Act of 1792, every man between 18 and 54 who when so enrolled and notified shall within six months thereafter, provide himself with a musket, bayonet and belt, two spare flints, a cartridge box with 24 bullets, and a knapsack.

The lefts assertion that Americas creators couldnt foresee a firearm beyond a flintlock is the logical fallacy of presentism we know better today. Were the Dark Ages better than the Pax Romana because 900 A.D. came later than 300 A.D? Contrary to modernist fallacies, innovation, not stasis, was the characteristic of 18th century society. They might not have foreseen the M-16 but they knew the devastation of the massed firepower of .69 caliber Brown Bess and that weapons evolved. The matchlock was superseded by the wheelock, the wheelock by the flintlock, as the rifle was to supersede the musket. In 1770, British Army Major Patrick Ferguson had invented a breechloading flintlock rifle and effectively deployed his riflemen at Saratoga in 1777 (Fergusons rifle could have revolutionized warfare). By 1819, 19 years after the Constitutions ratification, the U.S. Army adopted the Hall breechloader.

What of the Second Amendment, then? It is most certainly individual, but more importantly, it does not grant a right; it affirms an existing one as surely as natural law recognizes every mans right to self-defense.

William Layer is a historian who covered Air Force presidential operations during the early years of the Reagan administration.

Original post:
The Second Amendment as an individual right - Washington Times

Despite strong endorsements from some gun rights advocates, Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch has a slim appeals court record on the subject a record that leaves his views a mystery on how far constitutional firearms rights extend.

The National Rifle Association notes favorably a 2012 case in which Gorsuch wrote for the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the Supreme Court has held the Second Amendment protects an individuals right to own firearms and may not be infringed lightly.

Taken with his conservative leanings, originalist views on interpreting the Constitution and comparisons to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, that leads many gun owners to believe Gorsuch would protect their interests.

He has an impressive record that demonstrates his support for the Second Amendment, Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRAs Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement endorsing the nominee.

However, he has not ruled on major Second Amendment cases.

We dont know, for instance, if he believes people have a right to carry guns in public. We dont know what he thinks about restrictions on assault weapons or high-capacity magazines, said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.

Those are the big issues that are likely to come before the Supreme Court with regards to the Second Amendment, Winkler said. And on those issues Gorsuch is a Second Amendment mystery.

The case cited by the NRA involved a man who appealed his conviction of being a felon in possession of a gun, saying he didnt know he was considered a felon due to a misunderstanding over his deferred prosecution in a previous robbery case.

Although he had signed documents indicating he would be considered guilty of a felony, the state judge told him, among other things, If I accept your plea today, hopefully you will leave this courtroom not convicted of a felony and instead granted the privilege of a deferred judgment, which means you will be supervised by the Department of Probation for a period of two years.

Miguel Games-Perez was arrested less than a year later with a pistol that had an obliterated serial number.

Gorsuch was on a three-judge panel that found the government had only to prove that Games-Perez knew he had a gun, not that he knew he was prohibited from having one.

Gorsuch said the panel was bound by precedent.

Our duty to follow precedent sometimes requires us to make mistakes. Unfortunately, this is that sort of case, Gorsuch wrote.

Games-Perez later asked the full appeals court to hear the case, a request that was denied in a 6-4 decision. Gorsuch dissented, saying the full court could reconsider its precedent. He wrote that due to the repeated misstatements from the court itself, Mr. Games-Perez surely has a triable claim he didnt know his state court deferred judgment amounted to a felony conviction.

Some groups favoring more stringent gun laws refer to the same case when arguing that Gorsuch is unfit for the Supreme Court.

Judge Gorsuchs views are so outside the mainstream that he has gone out of his way to side with felons over public safety, Peter Ambler, executive director of Americans for Responsible Solutions, said in a statement opposing Gorsuchs nomination.

And not all gun rights advocates are enthusiastic to endorse Gorsuch because of another case.

Larry Pratt, executive director emeritus of Gun Owners of America, said the case that gave him pause involved a police officer in New Mexico disarming Daniel Rodriguez, a convenience store employee who had a pistol tucked into his waistband. The man turned out to be a convicted felon, but Pratt said the officer had no way of knowing that at the time because the man wasnt accused of a crime and the officer didnt question him beforehand.

Gorsuch sided with the appeals panel to uphold the mans conviction.

Ultimately, Pratt said, Gorsuchs judicial philosophy and overall record helped earn an endorsement, which lobbies for gun rights.

Were going to support him with this caveat of our concern because of the Rodriguez case. And part of its a practical matter that if Gorsuch were to be turned down, its not likely, politically, that the next one would be any better, Pratt said.

J. Adam Skaggs, litigation director for the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Americans for Responsible Solutions Foundation, said in a telephone interview that Gorsuch has a very thin paper trail, but the few cases where he has ruled on gun issues raise a lot of questions.

In a 2010 case, Skaggs said Gorsuch relied on procedural grounds in rejecting the appeal of a man charged with possessing a gun after being convicted of domestic violence rather than conceding the point that convicted domestic abusers dont enjoy the same Second Amendment rights as law abiding citizens.

Instead, he went out of his way to resolve the case on a complicated procedural ground, Skaggs said.

Still, Winkler, the law professor, said its difficult to know how Gorsuch would rule in the most important Second Amendment cases because his track record is so limited.

Hes only decided a few cases with Second Amendment overtones and none of them are the major decisions on the important issues of the day, Winkler said. Nothing in his path tells use what he understands the scope of the Second Amendment to be.

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Find APs reporting on Neil Gorsuch here: http://apne.ws/2mfXk4V

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The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate@ap.org

Continue reading here:
Gorsuch view on scope of Second Amendment a judicial mystery - The Seattle Times

GETTY

The horror statistics were revealed yesterday by the group which used to operate at the now-demolished Jungle camp in Calais.

It said many women suffered daily attacks.

Richard Matis, the charitys vice president, said: Refugee camps worldwide are plagued by violence, that is a fact.

GETTY

AFP/Getty Images

1 of 23

A young boy cries at a makeshift camp for migrants and refugees at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni

But women are usually found to be more at risk of rape and other forms of sexual assault.

Refugee camps worldwide are plagued by violence, that is a fact

Richard Matis - GSF vice president

The charity, which now treats female migrants stuck in the sprawling Grande-Synthe tent camp in neighbouring Dunkirk, added the women were raped and beaten on a daily basis, and had become immune to sexual violence and abuse.

Mr Matis added: Some women were repeatedly raped during the perilous journey to Europe.

Others are trapped in abusive marriages. And some women are pimped out by their husbands and forced into so-called survival sex with people smugglers so that their families can continue travelling across Europe.

GETTY

The charity added that tearing down refugee camps was not the solution to the migrant crisis, and called on the government to open more emergency shelters.

Mr Matis said: Every time a makeshift camp is evacuated and dismantled, thousands of female migrants are brutally uprooted and exposed to danger and insecurity. The chaos that ensues increases their vulnerability to sexual assault.

More here:
MIGRANT CRISIS: Two-thirds of female refugees have been 'raped, beaten or pimped out' - Express.co.uk

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Posted: Mar 13, 2017 12:01 AM

Deal with it, Democrats: illegal immigrants commit crime far more often than legal immigrants.

Six days after President Trump was inaugurated as our 45th President, the typing wizards at the New York Times got a little desperate. Were talking nail biting; chain-smoking; shot-pounding nervous.

So they made a story. Days before President Trumps first address to CongressCNN and Vox copied the New York Times yellow journalism. Their big story: ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARE HARDWORKING TAXPAYERS WHO RARELY COMMIT CRIMES. (Too bad it was also a big lie.)

Contradictions and fallacies immediately jump out at you. For example, from the New York Times:

A central point of an executive order President Trump signed on Wednesday and a mainstay of his campaign speeches is the view that undocumented immigrants pose a threat to public safety. But several studies, over many years, have concluded that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States. And experts say the available evidence does not support the idea that undocumented immigrants commit a disproportionate share of crime [emphasis added].

Besides conflating legal immigration with illegal immigration, the Times cites several studies making the same conflation. Most notably, a 2007 Rutgers University paper that analyzes crime rates of legal immigrants. So besides being out-of-date, the paper does not offer us any research on illegal immigrant crime rates.

Similar to the New York Times, CNN cited a study from over 20 years ago citing data from 1997 and earlier. Vox cited a study that focuses solely on legal immigrants and crime. Both articles were attacking Trumps policies targeting illegal immigrant crime.

Hot Off the Press: False Equivalency

Why is the media fabricating a false narrative that illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes than American citizens? Heres why: To attack President Trumps immigration policies, most notably his travel ban.

How moronic do the journalists at CNN; the New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media think we are? And why is no one exposing this huge scandal?

First off, any data on crimes committed by illegal immigrants is scarce at best. So, because the data doesnt exist the media is citing studies relying on data from 1980-to-1997, and published up to 20 years ago to prove a false narrative.

While dated, these studies do show that legal immigrants, when compared to American citizens, sometimesin pointed instanceshave lower crimes rates. These studies do not tell us anything about the relationship between illegal immigration and crime.

However, we do have some data. The Texas Department of Public Safety publishes annual crime statistics, and also released illegal immigrant crime statistics from June 1, 2011 through February 28, 2017. During this period, Texas law enforcement booked 1,162 homicides by illegal immigrants, compared to 4,065 total homicides for the state of Texas between 2011 and 2015. Comparing the number of arrests made of illegal immigrants to total number of arrests, illegal immigrants represent 3.5% of all arrests.

Mexico: Democrats #1 Straw Man Trumps new travel ban specifically and exclusively places travel restrictions on citizens from six countries: Libya, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Syria for a blip in time (90 days). Probably the most underreported story in America today is country that happens to be missing from this list: Mexico.

Besides being antiquated and dealing with legal rather than illegal immigrants, the studies the mainstream media is referencing all happen to be emphasizing data based on immigrants who are of Hispanic descent. In other words, the media is using data that shows legal Latino immigrants are not wanton criminals in comparison to natural-born American citizens to claim that we should blindly welcome illegal immigrants from terrorist hotbeds like Syria and Libya.

Theres no using denying reality: we simply do not have enough data on illegal immigrants from the countries impacted by President Trumps proposed travel ban. The media is making assumptions based on non-correlating data.

Lets get this information in the public arena so thatfor the first timewe can have an honest discussion on immigration reform in America.

See the article here:
Illegal Immigrant Crime: The Real Story - Townhall