2A Newsletter: November 19th

Rittenhouse Trial… Verdict?

*Update on November 19, 2021 @ 10:19am PST. The jury has come out with a verdict and found Kyle Rittenhouse to be NOT GUILTY on all charges. Thank goodness. 

We are updating you from our initial coverage of Kyle Rittenhouse’s fate from two weeks ago — As of Thursday this week, the Rittenhouse trial ends the fourth day of deliberation without a verdict. Initially, we thought that this might be due to the defense asking for a mistrial with prejudice so that Kyle wouldn’t be able to be tried for the same charges a second time in court. This was a reasonable ask from the defense as there were several antics from the prosecution that were actually kind of shocking.

The defense team was pretty weak that the judge clearly knew more about guns than they did. But the good thing is that the prosecution had even bigger clowns. At multiple points during the trial, the judge had to stop District Attorney Thomas Binger for things like crossing constitutional lines i.e commenting on Rittenhouse’s post arrest silence… ever heard of the 5th Amendment?

We’ll likely have to update this story shortly after publishing as the fifth day of deliberation rolls out but the latest development that was of interest to us was that a juror was followed home by someone from the media after the third day of deliberation. It was revealed that this person was arrested for trying to take photos of the jurors and was employed by MSNBC which is why MSNBC was banned from the courtroom by Judge Bruce Schroeder.

No reasonable person would send this 18 year old boy to jail for the rest of his life given how this trial had played out. It would be reasonable to assume that at this point certain members of the jury are concerned about their own safety or public backlash depending on how the jury comes out with the verdict. Given that there is no time limit for juries to deliberate, perhaps they’re taking their time to stall and to tire the people potentially getting ready to protest or riot if the result doesn’t come out the way they want to. Will Rittenhouse be completely acquitted? Or will there be a hung jury? More on this soon.

Ohio and Pennsylvania to get Constitutional Carry?

A couple weeks ago, we let our readers know that Constitutional Carry was on the table for Ohioans. Well, this week House Bill 227 was passed by a landslide vote of 60 to 32. We’re not out of the fog yet so don’t celebrate too early. The bill still needs to be passed in the Ohio State Senate before it lands on the governor’s desk for his signature. We’re very optimistic for this to happen as it seems like it’s just a matter of time but regardless, we’ll keep you posted.

Another bill that Ohio residents should keep on their radar is HB99, which also passed this week in the House 58-33. HB99 would reduce the training hours requirement for school employees to legally carry guns on school grounds. Currently, the requirement is 700 hours or an equivalent of 20 years’ experience in law enforcement. If passed into law, HB99 would reduce that requirement to 20 hours, which is the same standard for security guards who are permitted to work while being armed.

The good news tacks on this week as Pennsylvania is also getting Constitutional Carry. Pennsylvania’s SB 565 passed through their state House this week 107 to 92, positioning the Keystone state to become the 22nd or 23rd state to have Constitutional Carry depending on how speedy Ohio passes their version. Folks, we said that half or more than half of the country would get this within the next 2 years but it looks like it may happen much sooner than later which is awesome!

Faulty “gun studies’ results”

We’ll keep this about guns and 2A news, because that’s what you’re here for, but there’s a very good reason why so many people are disenfranchised and less likely to believe any “studies” or “research results” from just about anywhere and that’s because more often that not the research is bias-driven to have skewed results or interpretation. Spoiled alert: coincidence does not equal to causation.

The Harvard Chan School of Public Health has a Firearm Exposure Research Team that recently published an environmental research study that associated firearm licenses with elevated pediatric blood lead levels in areas around the state of Massachusetts. On the surface level this seems reasonable as lead exposure IS bad for children as it can damage the brain, nervous system and slow down growth or development in several areas.

This study suggests that gun ownership increases the risk of lead exposure (no duh) and blames it for elevated blood lead levels in children. But the researcher admitted themself, that the study was only done over the course of a single year which is hardly long enough to get any finite answers when there are many other potential contributing factors such as lead in water, paint around the house or certain occupations.

There is risk in everything we do in life. But this study solely talks about exposure to lead as a primordial risk to child development without any mention of lead poisoning which you’d expect to be the main point here. Why? For the same risk that a pool in your backyard does to statistically increase your likelihood of drowning, as does gun ownership increase your risk of exposure to lead. However, if it were such a big problem we’d be seeing an epidemic of lead poisoning across the country as there are on average 3 firearms per household with a total of over 393 million guns owned by Americans. Friends, please make sure you look into the context of research studies coming out these days to see if there’s actually any weight behind “results” that dominate our news headlines and don’t mistake opinions for facts.

ENJOY OUR NEWSLETTER?

Have topics you would like to see us touch on, or any feedback for us? Make sure to leave a comment below! We want to make sure we are putting out news relevant to our customers, and what you want to hear! Knowledge is power, and the more informed we all are to what's going on with our rights, the more effectively we can fight back.