Penny Dean and Your Rights

If you want to exercise your constitutional rights in the Northern Mariana Islands, you’d better be willing to fork up $1,000. The U.S. territory just decided to implement a handgun tax on any gun purchased on the islands, no matter what size or caliber.

According to the Marianas Variety, the bill was passed after the island’s gun ban was struck down last month. The bill also included language that said guns should only be used for self-defense.

A rural school district in Wagoner County has erected signs on campus this week informing visitors that some staff members may use a gun if necessary to protect students.

The Tulsa World reports that the signs follow a gun policy that was approved by the Okay Public Schools board last August.

"I knew the camera system was capturing everything the entire time. It knew everything that happened. I told him, 'You just messed up. You have no idea how bad.' He told me to 'shut up.'"

That's the conversation 47-year-old Larry Faulkenberry had with an officer of the Caldwell County Sheriff's Department after being leg-whipped to the ground and roughed up by three deputies in January 2015. Faulkenberry was tossed in jail for 10 days and held on $807,000 bail. He was staring down years in prison for assaulting a cop, resisting arrest, and other charges.

The Mesa police officer charged with second-degree murder for an on-duty shooting in January pleaded not guilty during his first court appearance Tuesday.

Officer Philip Brailsford was released without bond.

"He is not a danger to the community," Craig Mehrens, Brailsford’s attorney said. "He has honorably served the community as a Mesa police officer and he was honorably serving the day he received the call [to the shooting scene].”

Attorneys for the victim, Daniel Shaver, argued Brailsford was malicious during the shooting and raised questions about the gun used.

"Conservatives should not accept an extreme left-wing judicial activist. They should not accept an extreme right-wing judicial activist, if there were such a thing. They should not accept a moderate judicial activist, for the same reason that they would not shoot themselves in the foot with a firearm of moderate caliber. Litmus tests may be in bad odor with our self-proclaimed sophisticates, but here one is very much in order: The law is the law is the law, and it isn't anything else.

<img src="http://gunowners.org/images/scotuspick2.jpg" align="right" width="300">"Despite promises to nominate a consensus candidate, Obama has chosen a radical leftist in Judge Garland. He supported the DC gun ban in 2007, voting to reconsider the Heller case after a three judge panel had ruled against the ban." - Erich Pratt, Executive Director of GOA

From Lawyerist.com:

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I’m really excited to announce a new service I just launched: MyCourtCase.org. Right now it’s just for Hillsborough County, Florida, but I am working on expanding it to other counties and states.

An elderly man from Sparta, who shot and killed three bears on his lawn and was caught trying to dispose of the carcasses, was found guilty and fined by a New Jersey judge last week. The judge called the defendant's actions those of "a vigilante, usurping the right of the state," according to the New Jersey Herald.

<strong>Seven stabbings in 10 MINUTES as mass brawl rips through sleepy town</strong>

<img src="http://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/1/590x/colchester-650202.jpg" align="right" width="200">A SLEEPY town has been littered with crime scenes after seven stabbings and a mass brawl - in 10 MINUTES.

Police officers in Texas conducted an experiment to see how children raised in a home with guns reacted to finding a firearm without supervision. Officers released a handful of elementary school children into a conference room with a realistic “fake” gun that could not be fired.