The Constitution’s Red-Headed Stepchild — The Second Amendment.

Recently, thanks to the invaluable Instapundit, I read an article from Shooting News Weekly (which I have since supplemented with other research and reading), that describes what happened when a 22-year-old off-duty soldier, traveling in a Honda SUV in Washington, DC, was stopped by U.S. Park Police due to an expired license tag. The soldier, Jakob Noonan, is from Oklahoma and was only in DC because he has been mobilized as part of the National Guard safety task force sent to help protect DC and its residents. And his story illustrates all too well the hostility that some of our overseers harbor against those who desire to exercise our Constitutional right to protect ourselves in these somewhat dangerous time

When the police stopped his vehicle, they spotted an empty pistol holster in the SUV and asked Noonan if he had a firearm in the vehicle. The young guardsman confirmed there was a firearm in the vehicle and that it was registered to him in his home state of Oklahoma, which is an open-carry state. But because he did not have a District of Columbia concealed-carry permit, the police decided to arrest and charge him under DC Code § 22-4504 for carrying a firearm without a license.

DC’s penalties for a violation of § 22-4504 are draconian. A conviction carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, a $12,500 fine (for first-time offenders), and forfeiture of his firearm to DC. The SUV in which the young guardsman was riding is also subject to seizure and forfeiture to the DC government. And a conviction would automatically trigger federal law, 18 U.S. Code § 922(g)(1), which would make it unlawful for him to possess any firearm in any state, even in Oklahoma which issued his carry permit. Such a penalty would not require a separate court proceeding. It becomes automatic upon a conviction by the DC court. And a subsequent prosecution for violating § 922 carries with it fines of up to $250,000 and a fifteen- year prison sentence.

All of that is quite a load of “justice” for a young National Guardsman, who was busted by the Park Police for honestly answering their question that he was in possession of a handgun, as authorized by his home state of record.

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Riots in France — a Warning for America.

The riots in France look like the Summer of 2020. The Yellow Vests have now joined the student protests and have created what appears to be an outright revolution.

Here is an ongoing livestream:

They’re masked, they’re emboldened, and no one seems able to stop them. Another livestream:

The footage might as well have been from the city of Minneapolis or Portland in 2020, and there isn’t even a high-profile murder pushing them onto the streets. This is just public unrest, a real uprising and/or revolution.

According to Grok, the Yellow Vests aren’t left or right, but rather anti-elite, wanting more taxes on the wealthy, though not explicitly anti-immigrant.

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