BLUF
The end result is that Vang is out of the US and Walz exposed as a radical who will put children at risk to score cheap points on immigration. If Walz could have played this worse, someone will have to explain how.

Rubio and DHS Deported Child Molester Walz Tried to Keep In US.

I hate to say I told you so, but … naah, I love to say I told you so. Especially when it comes to kicking child molesters out of the country after Democrat governors attempt to keep them on the streets.

Last month, Tim Walz and his Board of Pardons issued a pardon to Tou Lue Vang, who had been in prison since pleading guilty to repeated sexual assaults on a girl for two years, starting when she was ten years old. The Board of Pardons, as David pointed out last week, consists of Walz, radical AG Keith Ellison, and Walz’ appointed chief justice of the state supreme court. Walz and his panel intended to keep Vang from deportation back to Laos, whence he came to the US illegally, by removing the only conviction on his record.

The Department of Homeland Security called the move “disgusting” at the time:

“Governor Tim Walz’s decision to pardon an illegal alien convicted child rapist so he can remain in our country is disgusting,” said Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis.

 “These are the criminal illegal aliens he and his Minnesota sanctuary politicians are protecting. Tou Lue Vang lost his legal status following his conviction for repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl.

Following the conviction, he was placed in removal proceedings and issued a final order of removal by a judge. This pardon will take away this child rapist’s qualifying convictions that made him removable from the United States.”

Well, that was what Walz and Ellison hoped, anyway. They wanted to thumb their nose at DHS, ICE, and Donald Trump by, er … [checks notes] … releasing a child predator onto the streets of Minnesota. As I wrote at the time, that logic appeared to parallel the Labour Party’s decision to allow rape rings to operate for decades rather than run the risk of looking culturally insensitive by booting out the Muslim immigrants running them.

I also wrote that this very weird strategy likely wouldn’t work:

I’m not so sure this will work. A state pardon does not have any real impact on the status of an illegal alien at the federal level. Trump has said he wants to concentrate on criminal illegal aliens, but that doesn’t mean deportation is limited to that class. Furthermore, the government has every right to cite the details of Vang’s crimes as an argument about his fitness to remain in the country. Walz’ pardon does not vindicate Vang, nor does it erase the evidence of his crime, including his own statements admitting to them. And again, a state pardon only has impact on state-level consequences, not federal consequences.

As it turns out, Walz’ pardon did nothing to prevent DHS from kicking Vang out of the country. The agency announced Vang’s deportation in the last hour by e-mail:

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released the following statement confirming that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested and deported an illegal alien from Laos who had been pardoned by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and his fellow sanctuary politicians despite a prior conviction for repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl.

Tou Lue Vang, an illegal alien from Laos, had been convicted in 2006 of first-degree criminal sexual conduct after he repeatedly assaulted a girl between 2002 and 2004, starting when she was just 10 years old. He once offered his victim $10 to keep quiet about the sexual assaults. When interviewed by police, he tried to justify his actions as “a cultural thing,” and even said that his victim was just as guilty as him and should also be arrested.

Following his conviction, a Department of Justice (DOJ) Immigration Judge issued Vang a final order of removal on October 31, 2006. …

“ICE deported Tou Vang, an illegal alien convicted child rapist. This monster repeatedly sexually assaulted a 10-year-old girl,” said Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis. “Tim Walz pardoned this sex criminal in an attempt to allow him to remain in our country. These are the criminal illegal aliens he and sanctuary politicians are protecting. We will always put the safety of the American people first.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio intervened to strip Vang of a legal status he never should have had in the first place. That allowed DHS to arrest Vang and kick him out of the US, as Rubio explained earlier today on X/Twitter:

What exactly did Walz, Ellison, and Democrats get out of this? They made it clear that they will let sex offenders on the street as a means to frustrate the enforcement of immigration law. At the same time, Walz also demonstrated his own incompetence to game out this situation more than a single step at a time. In fact, Walz may have made Vang more of a target for DHS and the State Department with his ham-handed abuse of the pardon process. Would DHS have made Vang a priority had Walz not turned him into some bizarre, pedophilic cause celebre?

The end result is that Vang is out of the US and Walz exposed as a radical who will put children at risk to score cheap points on immigration. If Walz could have played this worse, someone will have to explain how. 

It is interesting to hear certain kinds of people insist that the citizen cannot fight the government. This would have been news to the men of Lexington and Concord, as well as the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan.
The citizen most certainly can fight the government, and usually wins when he tries.
Organized national armies are useful primarily for fighting against other organized national armies. When they try to fight against the people, they find themselves at a very serious disadvantage.
If you will just look around at the state of the world today, you will see that the guerillero has the upper hand.
Irregulars usually defeat regulars, providing they have the will. Such fighting is horrible to contemplate, but will continue to dominate brute strength.
-Jeff Cooper

What becoming an American taught me about liberty

Growing up in Australia, I lived in what most people would call a “free” society. But it wasn’t until I moved to the United States and embraced the U.S. Constitution that my entire worldview transformed. I realized that back home, freedom was treated as a privilege carefully defined by the government. In America, the Second Amendment taught me a profound truth: we are born free.

Today, as a firearms instructor and the Northeast Regional Director — and former New Hampshire State Director — of Women for Gun Rights, I live by a simple creed proudly stamped on my adopted home state’s license plates: Live Free or Die.

To me, the motto means embracing personal responsibility and never surrendering the agency that belongs to free people. The U.S. Constitution, which is now my Constitution, does not create those rights — it recognizes them and establishes a government whose powers are limited so those rights may endure.

I am now one of millions of American women who choose to live prepared, not scared. Many of us volunteer our time to defend this civil right. Yet for years, well-funded gun control organizations have tried to convince the public — and women in particular — that passing more restrictions is the only way to keep our children and communities safe.

These groups often claim to speak for all women and all families. But those of us working alongside women in our communities know the rhetoric does not match reality.

Now, hard data has finally caught up to what we’ve known all along.

A national survey commissioned by the Crime Prevention Research Center and conducted this year validates what Second Amendment advocates have long argued: the public rejects the gun control premise. When asked what would do the most to reduce violent crime, voters overwhelmingly favored holding criminals accountable over passing new restrictions.

Thirty-one percent of respondents chose enforcing existing laws as the best way to lower crime rates, while more than 30% favored arresting and prosecuting violent and repeat offenders. Only 30% supported passing new firearm-related legislation. Combined, enforcement-focused solutions outperformed new gun-control measures by more than 30 percentage points.

The message from the American people to their legislators is remarkably simple: hold violent criminals accountable, stop treating law-abiding citizens like the problem, and trust ordinary people pursuing their own happiness.

Crucially, the Center’s survey shatters the myth that women universally support disarmament. Substantial numbers of female voters favored enforcing existing laws over passing new restrictions.

Among women, the data highlights a growing trend. Instead of looking to politicians or an unreliable government for a false sense of security, women are increasingly choosing self-reliance. Nationally, concealed carry continues to grow among women, reflecting a profound cultural shift.

According to the survey, 20% of voters report possessing a concealed carry permit, and nearly 30% report carrying a firearm at least occasionally. More importantly, the number of Americans carrying concealed firearms increased by more than 5% in just over a year. Carrying a firearm for protection is no longer exceptional — it has become part of the American mainstream.

In New Hampshire, we understand the value of removing unnecessary obstacles to liberty. We are consistently recognized as one of the safest states in the nation while respecting the right of law-abiding citizens to carry without first asking government permission. A culture that values
So what concerns me in the Live Free or Die state is not death itself, but the slow erosion of personal agency — the quiet cultural shift that teaches us to look first to the government, rather than to ourselves, for our safety, our well-being and ultimately our freedom.

The right to self-defense is not a bureaucratic luxury. It is an inherent human right.

Coming from a country that chose a different path, I can tell you that restrictions do not deter violent offenders. They only disarm the vulnerable. Australia continues to grapple with violence against women and violent home invasions despite some of the world’s strictest firearms laws. While these challenges are not unique to Australia, America remains exceptional in one important respect: it trusts ordinary, law-abiding citizens with access to an equalizing force.

That is true empowerment.

The Center’s survey suggests Americans are waking up to this reality. They don’t want more laws that turn peaceful citizens into criminals. They want safety, accountability and the freedom to protect what they love. They want to live free.

When I first arrived in America, I thought freedom was something carefully defined by the government. Becoming an American taught me something far more profound: we are born free. Liberty is our birthright. The Constitution did not give us that birthright — it recognizes it and establishes a government whose powers are limited so that liberty may endure.

Yet liberty is more than a birthright. It comes with a solemn civic responsibility. As a naturalized American citizen, I swore an oath to honor and defend it. That responsibility belongs to all of us: not only to preserve liberty for ourselves, but to pass it intact to the Americans who will one day inherit it.

Westwood Square shooter was acting in self-defense, HPD says

HATTIESBURG, Miss. (WDAM) – No charges are being filed at this time following an overnight shooting that left one injured. The incident occurred in the Westwood Square shopping complex, near the Walk-On’s Sports Bistreaux parking lot.

Hattiesburg police responded to a report of shots fired around 9:56 p.m. on Tuesday. Officers confirmed the shooting using on-site evidence.

According to HPD, a person suffering from a non-life-threatening gunshot wound arrived at a local hospital shortly after the shooting.

Officers spoke with an individual who remained at the scene, who admitted to firing the shots after being assaulted during an altercation.

HPD said the person stayed on the scene and cooperated with investigators.

At this stage of the investigation, detectives believe that the shooter was acting in self-defense. No charges have been filed, but the investigation remains ongoing.

BLUF
Nearly two decades after recognizing a constitutional right to arms, the Supreme Court is beginning to address lingering questions about its contours. Control-happy politicians probably will not like the answers.

Supreme Court Begins Answering Lingering Questions About Constitutional Constraints on Gun Control

After upholding the Second Amendment rights of drug users and carry permit holders, the justices will address the constitutionality of “assault weapon” bans.

Over the course of 12 days last month, the Supreme Court upheld the gun rights of cannabis consumers, rejected Hawaii’s default rule against firearms on private property open to the public, and agreed to address the constitutionality of “assault weapon” bans. That flurry of Second Amendment activity underlines the point that supposedly sensible gun regulations are not necessarily consistent with the right to arms as it was historically understood.

When Congress enacted the Gun Control Act in 1968, legislators took it for granted that an “unlawful user” of marijuana, depressants, stimulants, or narcotics should not be allowed to own a gun. They reaffirmed that judgment in 1986, changing the wording to encompass unlawful users of “any controlled substance.”

Although the latter law was dubbed the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act, it obviously did not protect gun owners with a taste for politically disfavored intoxicants, or even gun owners who dared to use medications prescribed for friends or relatives. It treated all those people as felons.

That policy, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled on June 18, is unconstitutional unless there is evidence that a particular drug user’s gun possession would pose a danger to himself or others. It rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to prosecute a Texas cannabis consumer who owned a pistol, saying the government may not strip people of their Second Amendment rights simply because they are marijuana users.

The justices reached that conclusion based on “this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation”—the lodestar of the Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence. Applying the same test a week later, six justices said Hawaii had violated the Second Amendment by making it illegal for carry-permit holders to bring guns into a private business without the owner’s explicit permission.

As Hawaii presented it, that presumptive gun ban merely aimed to protect preexisting property rights. But as Justice Samuel Alito noted in the majority opinion, Hawaii’s law “departs sharply from the standard common-law rule on access to private property held open to the public.”

Under that rule, “everyone, including those lawfully carrying firearms, may enter unless expressly prohibited from doing so,” Alito wrote. “By contrast, under the new Hawaii law, no one carrying a firearm may enter without the property owner’s express authorization.”

That switch, Alito noted, imposed “severe restrictions on the daily activities” of residents with carry permits. Nor was that effect incidental, since Hawaii was attempting an end run around the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision recognizing a constitutional right to carry handguns in public for self-defense.

Five days after it overturned Hawaii’s law, the Court agreed to hear a pair of cases involving bans on widely owned rifles that politicians tendentiously describe as “assault weapons.” A dozen states, beginning with California in 1989, have enacted such laws, which hinge on arbitrarily prohibited features such as folding stocks, pistol grips, and barrel shrouds.

The rifles targeted by these laws are rarely used by criminals but commonly used by law-abiding Americans, who own more than 30 million of them. The latter point is constitutionally relevant because the Supreme Court has said the Second Amendment applies to “bearable arms” that are “in common use” for “lawful purposes like self-defense.”

The long-simmering question posed by these cases is whether the Second Amendment guarantees “the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.” If so, other restrictions on the arms Americans are allowed to buy, such as magazine limits and California’s handgun specifications, may be vulnerable to constitutional challenges.

The decided cases also have potentially broad implications. If drug use, by itself, does not justify disarming someone, what about a nonviolent felony conviction? And if Hawaii’s broad restriction on public gun possession was unconstitutional, the far-reaching, location-specific bans imposed by states such as California and New York likewise seem legally dubious.

Nearly two decades after recognizing a constitutional right to arms, the Supreme Court is beginning to address lingering questions about its contours. Control-happy politicians probably will not like the answers.

No Other Constitutional Right Is Policed Like the Second Amendment

The Bill of Rights protects speech, religion, the press, assembly, due process, privacy, and the right to keep and bear arms.

Only one of those rights has an entire federal agency built around regulating, restricting, investigating, and prosecuting the tools necessary to exercise it.

The Second Amendment.

That agency is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
There is no federal Bureau of Speech.
No federal Bureau of Religion.
No federal Bureau of Press and Assembly.

No federal agency licenses newspapers before they publish, inspects churches for recordkeeping violations, registers printing presses, or forces Americans to pay a tax before exercising a First Amendment right.

But when it comes to the Second Amendment, Washington has built exactly that kind of bureaucracy.

Other Rights Are Abused by Bureaucrats. The Second Amendment Is Policed by Them.  

Federal agencies have abused power against other constitutional rights, too.

The FBI and DOJ have targeted speech, political activity, and religious Americans.

The NSA has raised Fourth Amendment concerns through surveillance.

DHS and TSA have expanded federal search power in the name of security.

The IRS has been accused of politically selective enforcement.

Those abuses are real.

But they are not the same as having an entire agency whose firearms mission is aimed directly at the people, businesses, products, paperwork, and transactions tied to one constitutional right.

The ATF does not merely investigate violent criminals who misuse firearms.

It regulates firearm dealers.
It inspects Federal Firearms Licensees.
It polices paperwork.
It interprets federal gun laws.
It issues rules affecting lawful gun owners.
It decides whether products used by peaceable Americans are legal today and criminal tomorrow.

Other agencies violate constitutional rights when they overreach, but the ATF’s firearms mission is overreach by design.

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