Penny Dean and Your Rights

LONDON — The queen on Saturday led tributes to individual acts of bravery on London Bridge, which included a Polish immigrant helping subdue the British-born terrorist with a five-foot narwhal tusk grabbed from a wall.

As more details emerged about Friday’s deadly knifings — carried out, police said, by 28-year-old Usman Khan, previously convicted and jailed for a terrorism plot — new profiles in courage appeared in the British press. They were bolstered by amateur video clips, witness statements and paeans by the London mayor and the British prime minister.

On Friday, police showed up to a young man’s workplace and tried to arrest him over social media posts reported to them by an old army buddy of the 28-year-old Afghanistan veteran.  This man, known as Alex and popular on Instagram under the handle of WhiskeyWarrior556, slipped out of the back door, hurried home to check on his family where he found out police had already forced themselves into his home and confiscated his legal firearms...

According to the affidavit, Barnes was shot several times while trying to force his way into the house. He told a woman who was in the home that he was looking for someone.

Sharon Moorehead saw Barnes on her home security camera walking along the side of her house with a phone in his hand. She says she called police twice and shot Barnes after he kicked in her front door.

Ross says she was too scared to see what happened to Barnes, but she saw plenty of police.

In 2011, Daryoush Taha’s friend alerted him to something shocking: Taha’s photograph and personal information on the website Mugshots.com.

Taha, then 40, had been arrested 13 years earlier in Bucks County, north of Philadelphia, on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, and had spent one night in jail. He later sued the police department for what he alleged was a wrongful arrest. Despite maintaining his innocence, he agreed to complete a one-year probation program in exchange for having the arrest expunged from his record.

Wichita police will begin placing alerts on addresses where potential swatting targets could be living, the department announced Friday.

The program is voluntary and open to any person who thinks they could fall victim to swatting, a false report to law enforcement meant to draw a large police presence to a particular address. The practice has been growing in popularity on the fringes of the online gaming community, including a case in Wichita that ended in tragedy.

The Trump administration is considering a proposal that would use Google, Amazon and Apple to collect data on users who exhibit characteristics of mental illness that could lead to violent behavior, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

The proposal is part of an initiative to create a Health Advanced Research Projects Agency (HARPA), which would be located inside the Health and Human Services Department, the report notes, citing sources inside the administration. The new agency would have a separate budget and the president would be responsible for appointing its director.

[excerpted]
"Now, I am a handgun owner, with a proper up-to-date pistol license, all correctly registered at county police headquarters, according to local ordinances. A complaint like the one filed against Junior apparently triggers some automatic computer search against the database of pistol license holders. So my name came up, and I got a letter from police HQ demanding I surrender my handguns.

[excerpted] Even though Wagshol has denied having any intent to commit a mass shooting, several news outlets have reported that Wagshol made a Facebook post about wanting to commit a mass shooting, including CNNand The Washington Post.

So, what was this scary Facebook post that led to Wagshol’s arrest?

Good question. There doesn’t seem to be one.

The “concerned citizen” reported a Facebook post regarding buying 30-round magazines. However, no post has surfaced stating Wagshol wanted them for a mass shooting.

Just days after a Texas Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility was shot up in what the FBI called a "targeted attack," Bernie Sanders unveiled a new plan on Sunday that would create a "registry of disreputable federal law enforcement officers," and provide "financial support" for similar lists at the state level.

Sanders' freewheeling proposal would also "ban the prosecution of children under the age of 18 in adult courts" for all offenses, apparently including even rape and murder, and would prohibit youth from ever facing prison time for misdemeanors.

This should serve as your periodic reminder that the case that Jeffrey Toobin lays out here — that the Second Amendment was never intended to protect an individual right — is an outlandish conspiracy theory that contradicts the text; the history; all of the contemporary commentary; the views of the drafters of the 14th Amendment, who incorporated it; and the actions of the states, almost all of which protected the individual right to keep and bear arms both before and after the drafting of the Second Amendment.