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Laura Ingraham Just Made George W. Bush Regret Attacking Trump, Calling Himself “Pretty Good”

If the establishment is striking back, Laura Ingraham was ready.

In a monologue Tuesday on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle,” the popular conservative talk show host who was an early supporter of now-President Donald Trump during his insurgent primary campaign, lashed out at the Republican establishment and “the expert class.”

But she saved some of her hottest fire for the last Republican to hold the White House before Trump, and reports that former President George W. Bush is running down the administration in private conversations.

At issue was a report published to Twitter by the National Journal, depicting the 43rd president sporting his “trademark smirk” to quip that Trump’s current troubles in the White House “sorta makes me look pretty good, doesn’t it?”

Ingraham is no big fan of Bush in the first place, and just last month bashed the former president for public criticism of Trump that Bush never engaged in during the eight disastrous years the country suffered under the Obama presidency.

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But the reported “pretty good” crack, combined with public opposition from Republican leaders like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan to Trump’s plan to impose import tariffs on steel and aluminum, pushed her into fighting mode.

If Bush really is putting down Trump’s presidency, Ingraham is making him regret it.

Check out an excerpt of the monologue here.

Earlier in the monologue, Ingraham basically redrew the battle lines of the 2015-16 fight for the Republican nomination – a fight in which George W. Bush’s brother, Jeb, played a starring, if ill-fated, role.

“Trump won by defying the conventional wisdom of the establishment, and he has continued to do just that. Donald Trump in politics is an innovator, and he’s not afraid to break with the establishment’s orthodoxy to do what he thinks, in his best judgment, is the right thing for the American people,” she said.

Did Donald Trump save the country from a second Clinton presidency?

“But his own party’s fairly unimaginative old guard is running to the same, failed ideas of the past that got us into the ditch we were in. And at the same time, the left is moving to the extreme. And I would say to the extreme irrelevance.”

Now, it’s no secret that there’s no love lost between Trump and the Bush family.

Trump’s serial humiliations of Jeb Bush until Bush bowed out of the GOP race still have to rankle. (Instead of nursing old wounds though, the family might be better off remembering why Jeb lost – and how he should have been content with the legacy of the successful Florida governor he was.)

RELATED: Chelsea Thinks She’s Attacking Trump, Actually Hits Her Dad Instead

But Bush’s backstage remarks – if he’s making them in the sneering way implied by the National Journal – are helping neither the conservative cause nor the country. And they sure don’t help the Bush reputation.

Had Jeb Bush won the nomination, Democrats and their allies in the news media and late-night comedy would have heaped endless scorn on him just as they did Trump, plus Hillary Clinton would have cruised to victory in November 2016.

Trump’s victory in the nomination fight saved the country from a second Clinton presidency, and that’s something every conservative should be grateful for.

We can only hope the left is as irrelevant as Ingraham seems to think, come the November midterms. Some recent polls and Tuesday’s primary turnout in Texas, as reported by CNN, aren’t pointing to a “blue wave.” But Democrats are undeniably energized against the Trump presidency.

Republicans – especially former Republican presidents – don’t need to be giving them any help.

Like and share this story on Facebook and Twitter if you think the Bush family should be quiet about the Trump White House.

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Media Says TX Dems Got Record Turnout, Ignore That What GOP Got Was Even Better

Ever since President Donald Trump took office, Democrats and their allies in the media have hyped an upcoming “blue wave” of Democrat electoral success in the 2018 midterm elections.

Some in the mainstream media have even gone so far as to suggest that they could “turn Texas blue,” even as Republicans have dominated the state for at least the past two decades.

But following the Texas primary election results on Tuesday, even The Associated Press was forced to essentially admit that the glowing media predictions of a Democrat wave were little more than wishful thinking, at least in the state of Texas.

In a typical midterm election year, but especially when the presidency and Congress are controlled by the same party, the incumbent party’s voters suffer from a lack of enthusiasm while the “out” party is generally much more enthusiastic to take back control — take the rise of the tea party in 2010, for example.

However, it appears that Democrat enthusiasm was no match for the sheer number of Republicans in Texas, nor those voters’ determination to keep the state red. Even though Democrats saw more than a million voters cast a ballot for the primary election — the most since 2002 — that number was dwarfed by a record turnout of more than 1.5 million Republican primary voters, higher than the record 1.48 million in 2010.

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In fact, Breitbart noted that incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who the liberal media and Democrats have long despised and hoped to oust from office, received 1.3 million votes in a race against four GOP challengers.

Meanwhile, progressive leftist Democrat Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, who the liberal media have heaped lavish praise and attention upon as their greatest hope to unseat the conservative Cruz, received a mere 641,311 votes in a race against two other Democrat opponents.

To put things in even greater perspective, Cruz actually received more votes than the entirety of all Democrat votes cast statewide.

This despite O’Rourke out-raising Cruz in campaign donations thus far and a greatly increased turnout by Democrats in early voting, which gave the party a lead heading into primary day.

Do you think Democrats will have a “blue wave” of voters in November?

Politico’s election results coverage showed a similar occurrence in regard to the gubernatorial race, as incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott easily obtained 90 percent of the Republican vote — more than 1.3 million votes overall — against two other GOP candidates.

Meanwhile, the top two Democrat challengers — former Dallas Sheriff Lupe Valdez and Houston businessman Andrew White — received just over 715,000 votes combined in a race which contained a total of nine challengers. They will face a runoff in May to decide who will challenge Abbott in November.

The Democrat media will no doubt continue to hype the higher than average turnout for Democrats in the Texas primary while they ignore the even higher Republican turnout, and will search long and hard for any sort of sign of momentum that can be applied nationwide as we head toward November.

To be sure, the Democrat Party has a chance to pick off a few seats here and there around the country, and it is possible that they may even manage to change a red state into blue … but it won’t be Texas, at least not this go-round.

RELATED: Bill Maher Just Defended Trump Fans and Crushed the Mainstream Media’s Fake News Machine

That said, those possible gains could easily be countered by Republicans picking off the seats of vulnerable Democrats in solid red states, and if the left continues to push unpopular gun ban proposals, mock tax cuts that help working class Americans and offer no message other than “resistance,” they may even lose a few of their own “safe” seats as well.

The incredible amount of hype from the media regarding Democrat turnout in Texas, while ignoring even higher turnout among Republicans, is yet another example of why so many Americans have lost trust in the media, and why they will most likely be utterly shocked when their preferred party loses once again in November.

Share this story on Facebook to spread the word about how more Republicans than Democrats turned out in Texas for the primary elections.

What do you think of the record turnout for both sides in the Texas primary elections? Scroll down to comment below!

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Still Rattled By Trump’s Tweet, Jimmy Kimmel Blames Netflix for Oscar Ratings Collapse

Obviously still rattled by President Trump mocking his record-low Oscar viewership, a defensive Jimmy Kimmel blamed Netflix for the historic ratings catastrophe.

Early Monday morning, Trump poked fun at the Oscars with a tweet that read, “Lowest rated Oscars in HISTORY. Problem is, we don’t have Stars anymore – except your President (just kidding, of course)!”

An already defensive Kimmel fired back with this bit of fake news, “Thanks, lowest rated President in HISTORY.”

Actually, according to Rasmussen, one of the most accurate pollsters of the 2016 election, Trump is sitting at a healthy 48 percent job approval rating, and as of late has polled higher than former-President Obama did at this exact same time in his failed presidency.

Probably knowing that his first response to Trump was pretty lame (not to mention inaccurate), like George Costanza and the Jerk Store, the neurotic Kimmel thought he would give it another go on his late night show Jimmy Kimmel Live!

This time Kimmel actually tried to explain why he hit a record low. The only problem is that his explanation is simply not true.

“The truth is,” Kimmel said, “every year since Netflix happened, the ratings are down for every big TV show: the Super Bowl, the Grammys, the Emmys, the Golden Globes.”

Yeah, no.

This is a straight-up falsehood. Before Sunday night’s Kimmel crater, the previous record low was all the way back in 2008, a few years before Netflix’s streaming service really took off. Moreover, Oscar ratings actually increased between 2013 to 2014, from 40.3 million viewers to 43.7 million viewers. So to blame Netflix for your failure is simply anti-science.

Moreover, Sunday night’s ratings drop was not part of a trend; it was a flat-out crash, a collapse of 20 percent — an implosion, where only 26.5 million viewers tuned in, compared to 33 million the year prior. What had been an incremental ratings drop, starting in 2015, turned into a debacle on Sunday.

Thankfully, the insecure Kimmel was not done making a fool of himself. After just making stuff up about Netflix manhandling his Oscar ratings, Kimmel bragged about winning more Twitter “likes” than Trump.

“Since I was the host of the Oscars, I felt like it was incumbent on me to respond [to Trump],” Kimmel told his audience of trained seals. “So I tweeted to him … [and] wanted to point out that my tweet got more than twice as many ‘likes’ as his tweet.”

Does no one love Jimmy enough to tell him to just stay down?

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.

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WALSH: Many People Have Asked Me To ‘Tone Down The Jesus Stuff.’ I’m Going To Do The Opposite.

One of the most common complaints I hear from readers is that my writing is too religious. Borrowing a phrase from an email I just read, I am guilty of “injecting religion into everything.” I need to “tone down the religious talk,” according to a guy on Twitter. “Please cool it with the Jesus stuff,” someone else recently told me. I was informed by many people that the piece I wrote last week about fathers was “ruined” because I “brought God into it.” Some of the commenters here have given me the moniker “Pastor Walsh,” because only pastors talk about religion, I guess. I have even noticed, unsurprisingly, that many of the people who lodge these complaints often declare themselves to be Christian. In America today, nobody hates hearing about Christianity more than a Christian.

Rather than ignore these criticisms, I thought I might try to explain why I don’t plan on toning it down. In fact, I’m headed in the opposite direction. The reason is very simple: I really do believe this stuff. I have often been pretty bad at living and acting according to my belief — I am no expert when it comes following the teachings and making all of the sacrifices a Christian is called to make — but no matter my personal weaknesses (which are many and daunting), I still believe it all.

When Scripture says we are fighting not against “flesh and blood” but “the powers of darkness,” I believe it. And when it says that the Devil is prowling the world “like a lion seeking someone to devour,” I believe that, too. And when Revelation tells us about the war between Michael and the angels of God against Satan and his minions, I believe exactly what it says. I have sometimes wished that I didn’t believe any of it. I have even had terrible times in my life when I have tried not to believe it. But I still do. I believe it for the simple fact that it is true, no matter how I happen to feel about that truth. It just is. That’s all.

We are in a spiritual battle. No topic really matters apart from this deeper spiritual truth. The political arguments are only significant to the extent that they are manifestations of the underlying spiritual war. Every meaningful debate reflects, in some way, the eternal battle between Good and Evil. To ignore the eternal and focus entirely on the temporal seems not only dishonest, but also dull and boring. We are in the midst of a war between the powers of Heaven and the armies of Hell, and these people want to just talk about politics? That’s like if aliens invaded Earth on the same day that a new Star Wars was released, but nobody paid attention to the aliens because they were more interested in watching the movie.

As far as “bringing God into everything,” it is not up to me to do so. I cannot bring God in or take Him out. He is already in everything, except sin. And in those dark, wicked crevices of existence where He is not present, someone else is there. We cannot go anywhere, we cannot retreat to any corner, we cannot debate any topic that is truly “ours.” Nothing exists just on the temporal plane. As C.S. Lewis put it: “There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God, and counterclaimed by Satan.”

So, one way or another, whatever we do, whatever issue we discuss, whatever argument we have, we are aligning ourselves either with Him or him. That seems a relevant fact, and should probably be mentioned as often as possible. There is an entire mountain beneath the surface of this island. Without the mountain, it would be just a bit of sand floating in the ocean, easily swept away and forgotten. That is how an atheist sees human existence. As Christians, we know better.

Speaking of atheists, I understand that they will laugh when they hear this kind of talk about God, spiritual war, angels, demons, and so on. They really have no choice but to react that way. If God is not true, then He is ridiculous. To treat Him as anything less than ridiculous is to admit that He might be true. The sneer of an atheist doesn’t bother me and never has. Sneering is their only defensive mechanism. I don’t hold it against them. I pity them. I pray for them. They are miserable and stubbornly holding onto their misery.

The problem is that many Christians try to stake out a similar position. But that position isn’t actually available to us. They want to admit that all of this spiritual stuff is true, but then relegate it to the background. They want to say they believe in God, but there is no reason for God to “come up.” They want to acknowledge the eternal with a dismissive wave and then get back to the business of ignoring it.

As I said at the beginning, I understand this inclination. I have felt the inclination. It can be scary to think about these things. Especially if we are living deep in sin. Indeed, even the virtuous cannot help but tremble in fear when they contemplate themselves standing before the Heavenly Throne. But the fact remains. And it is a massively important fact. It is the fact upon which every other fact is built. It is the fact that every fact leads back to. It is the tree that holds every branch.

There is a whole side to existence — the more real, more solid side — that we cannot see, though the beings on that side can see us. They not only see us but act upon us. They attack us, or help us, or hurt us, or heal us. Every moment of every day there are legions of demons and legions of angels fighting over you, personally. You are in the middle of a great battlefield, and you are the prize the two sides are fighting over. Indeed, you are the battlefield, in a certain sense. They are waging this war inside your soul.

And when you die, which could be literally any moment — and will certainly, in the grand scheme, be soon — you will either join the angels in Heaven or be consumed by the demons in the darkness of eternal oblivion. We must believe this if we are Christian. And if we believe it, how could it not dominate our thoughts and our conversations?

But, yes, we can “tone down the Jesus stuff” if we want. And if we keep trying to “tone Him down” in our lives, there may come a time when we really succeed. We may enter a place where Jesus is silent forever, and nobody speaks His name. We will have finally gotten what we wanted there. And I think, now that it is too late, we will realize that we do not want it anymore.

So please don’t ask me why I write about God. Ask me why I ever write about anything else.

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TPP Advocates Karl Rove and Paul Ryan March in Lockstep Against Trump’s Populist Tariffs

TPP Advocates Karl Rove and Paul Ryan March in Lockstep Against Trump’s Populist Tariffs

The Associated Press

by John Binder6 Mar 2018Washington, D.C.0



Former George W. Bush official Karl Rove and House Speaker Paul Ryan are begging President Trump’s administration to water-down proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

During a press briefing on Tuesday, Ryan — an avid free-trader — said he opposed Trump’s proposed 25 percent tariff on imported steel and a 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum, asking the White House to be “more targeted” on trade.

Specifically, Ryan said the administration should be only going after China on trade, rather than imposing global tariffs on steel and aluminum.

“I think the smarter way to go is to make it more surgical and more targeted,” Ryan said. [Emphasis added]

“What we’re encouraging the administration to do is to focus on what is clearly a legitimate problem and to be more surgical in its approach so that we can go after the true abusers without creating any kind of unintended consequences or collateral damage,” Ryan continued. [Emphasis added]

On Fox Business, Rove echoed Ryan’s statements against Trump’s proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, saying he had a “bad reaction” to the populist trade initiative. Rove, like Ryan, says Trump should be solely going after China.

I thought the issue here was China and China’s dumping of steel, so we’re going to get at China by hurting our allies, neighbors, Mexico and Canada,” Rove said. “This ought to be more narrowly targeted. This ought to be focused on the abuse.” [Emphasis added]

Ryan and Rove were two of the biggest Republican defenders and advocates for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, also supported by former President Obama, which Trump campaigned hard against and ultimately killed by executive action, saving millions of American jobs in the process.

In November 2015, when Trump was already campaigning against TPP, Ryan continued defending the multinational free trade agreement which was expected to not only eliminate millions of U.S. working and middle-class jobs, but also drive down wages for remaining American workers.

Ryan said at the time that TPP had “great potential.”

In the same month that Ryan was continuing to promote TPP, Rove wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal where he railed against Trump for opposing the multinational free trade agreement.

“Mr. Trump’s worst moment came when he attacked the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal,” Rove wrote, defending TPP.

Ryan and Rove’s attacks on Trump’s tariffs are similar to those by the White House’s trade globalists, including adviser Gary Cohn, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and Defense Secretary James Mattis. As Breitbart News reported, the band of trade globalists desperately tried to stop Trump from proposing the aluminum and steel tariffs but failed.

Meanwhile, one of Trump’s close economic nationalist allies in the White House, Peter Navarro, told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview that “it’s going to be a great day for America” when Trump signs the new tariffs into law. Navarro also blasted the free trade absolutism of the Democratic and Republican establishment, multinational corporations, and mainstream media.

“I think the record is clear on these free trade agreements,” Navarro said. “They always are done with promises for significant jobs for Americans and significant access to markets, and we always lose dramatically once the ink is signed.”

Multinational free trade agreements have been responsible for massive manufacturing outsourcing and job loss over the last two decades. For example, the KORUS free trade agreement has displaced at least 60,000 American workers since its enactment in 2007.

Meanwhile, since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect in the 1990s, at least one million net U.S. jobs have been lost because of the free trade deal. Between 2000 and 2014, there have been about five million manufacturing jobs lost across the country as trade deficits continue soaring.

One former steel town in West Virginia lost 94 percent of its steel jobs because of NAFTA, with nearly 10,000 workers in the town being displaced from the steel industry. Since China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, there have been 3.2 million American jobs lost with 2.4 million of those jobs coming from the U.S. manufacturing sector.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

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NY Times Reporter: Trump Deserves ‘Enormous Credit’ for North Korea Breakthrough

New York Times national security reporter and CNN contributor David Sanger gave President Donald Trump credit on Tuesday for a recent breakthrough in North Korea talks.

CNN’s Alisyn Camerota pushed Sanger on the credit Trump is due after South Korea announced Tuesday it would be holding its first summit with North Korea in more than a decade in late April. North Korea also vowed to halt nuclear and missile tests while talking with the United States and its souther neighbor. The announcement came after a senior delegation returned from a visit to the North where they met leader Kim Jong Un.

"But David, in terms of giving President Trump the credit, don’t you need to rewind the tape back farther than the Olympics?" she asked. Camerota’s reference to the 2018 Winter Olympic games held in South Korea was to acknowledge it was a time viewed by many as a major step forward in improving relations between the two Koreas.

Camerota referenced that during Trump’s presidential transition period, he was already talking about sitting down and negotiating with Kim.

Sanger agreed while also pointing to Trump’s imposition of "truly deep sanctions, which the U.S. stepped out to enforce."

The commitment to sanctions, he argued, gave Kim "additional motivation to realize that he had to get into some talks that would relieve that pressure."

"I think President Trump deserves enormous credit for ratcheting up that pressure and making sure those sanctions were real. There was no reason the Obama administration couldn’t have done that, and they didn’t," he said.

The post NY Times Reporter: Trump Deserves ‘Enormous Credit’ for North Korea Breakthrough appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

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GLOBALIST PAUL RYAN Hits Trump Again on Proposed Tariffs — Defends Foreign Manufacturers with Inferior Product (VIDEO)

GLOBALIST PAUL RYAN Hits Trump Again on Proposed Tariffs — Defends Foreign Manufacturers with Inferior Product (VIDEO)

March 6, 2018
by Jim Hoft

Speaker Paul Ryan pushed back against President Donald Trump’s announcement to place tariffs on foreign aluminum and steel.

Paul Ryan, a renowned globalist who joined President Obama in pushing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, attacked President Trump on Monday for his announcement to place tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum.

Paul Ryan still has NO INTENTION of passing the Trump agenda more than a year after his stunning win over Hillary Clinton.

Paul Ryan came out again on Tuesday and slammed President Trump’s plan to tax aluminum and steel imports.

Paul Ryan is supporting foreign companies with inferior product and fraudulent practices.

On Tuesday Kobe Steel from Japan admitted it was putting out inferior product for five decades.

Reuters reported:

Kobe Steel Ltd admitted on Tuesday its data fraud has been going on nearly five decades and also revealed new cases of cheating, highlighting the challenges facing the 112-year-old company mired in compliance failures and malfeasance.

Japan’s third-biggest steelmaker said its CEO will step down to take responsibility for the widespread data fraud scandal that came to light last year, although doubts remain over its corporate culture and the possibility of future fines.

Kobe Steel, which supplies steel parts to manufacturers of cars, planes and trains around the world, admitted last year to supplying products with falsified specifications to about 500 customers, throwing global supply chains into turmoil.

The company, in announcing the results from a four-month-long investigation by an external committee, said it had also found new cases of impropriety, widening the total of affected clients to 605, including 222 customers overseas.

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As DREAMers Protest DNC, Trump Trolls Democrats For ‘Running For The Hills’

As DREAMers and immigration activists descended on the offices of the Democratic National Committee on Monday to protest the Democrats’ “too many lies” (video below), President Trump took to Twitter to troll the self-styled “pro-immigrant” party for “running for the hills” on DACA.

In a series of tweets on Monday and Tuesday, Trump called out Democrats for refusing to come to the table in the DACA negotiations despite Republicans being “ready to make a deal.”

“It’s March 5th and the Democrats are nowhere to be found on DACA. Gave them 6 months, they just don’t care. Where are they? We are ready to make a deal!” he wrote Monday, the final day of the Obama-era program.

“Total inaction on DACA by Dems. Where are you? A deal can be made!” he reiterated Tuesday.

“Federal Judge in Maryland has just ruled that ‘President Trump has the right to end DACA,'” he added later. “President Obama had 8 years to fix this problem, and didn’t. I am waiting for the Dems, they are running for the hills!”

As the Daily Wire highlighted Monday, dozens of pro-DACA protesters converged on the DNC offices in Washington, D.C. on Monday, chanting, “Too many years, too many lies!”

“For years I’ve been told that Republicans aren’t my friends, and they don’t care about my community,” one self-described DREAMer told the press. “I’m here to say ‘no.’ I’m withdrawing from the Democratic Party. I will not be working on any other campaigns. I will not be advocating for Democrats until something happens for my brothers and sisters.”

Another expressed a similar sentiment: “I went down to the DNC and I took back what they stole from me and I took back my dignity and I took back my humanity!”

One of those protesting the Democrats was a Democrat herself, Arizona State Rep. Isela Blanca, the state’s first “formerly undocumented” female legislator, who ended up getting arrested along with some of the other demonstrators:

Video of the protest below:

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20-year-old suing Walmart, Dick’s over age limit on purchasing rifles

I suppose we all knew this was coming but I didn’t realize it would happen so fast. After a number of outlets bowed to public pressure and announced that they wouldn’t sell rifles to anyone under the age of 21, a lawsuit was pretty much inevitable. This week, 20-year-old Tyler Watson of Oregon announced that he attempted to purchase a .22 caliber rifle from both Walmart and a subsidiary of Dick’s Sporting Goods named Field & Stream. He was turned away in both cases based on his age and is taking them to court. I’ll explain why this will be a problem for the stores in a moment, but here’s the basic rundown from The Hill.

A 20-year-old Oregon man has filed two lawsuits against companies who recently changed their gun sale policies to prevent anyone under the age of 21 from purchasing a rifle.

Tyler Watson alleges in one of the lawsuits that he attempted to purchase a .22 rifle from Field and Stream, which is owned by Dick’s Sporting Goods, on Feb. 24, but was turned away because of his age.

Dick’s publicly announced four days later that it would stop selling guns to people under the age of 21, and would also end the sale of assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines. The company made the announcement in response to the school shooting at a Florida high school last month.

In the second lawsuit, Watson accuses Walmart, which announced its new gun-sale policy on the same day as Dick’s, of age discrimination, saying that he tried to purchase a rifle at a Walmart store on March 3.

As soon as these stores announced the policy change there were many of us batting around the legal questions involved. Believe me… it’s complicated, no matter how easy you think the answer may be. First of all, this isn’t a Second Amendment issue because the Bill of Rights is designed to limit the government, not private entities like Walmart. Also, it’s well established that laws about minimum age requirements for various activities have long been accepted by the courts. What’s in play here is the question of whether or not the stores are engaging in age discrimination.

Thanks to a lengthy article on this subject from Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway, I was pointed to Eugene Volokh, writing at Reason, who explains some of the ins and outs.

[3.] But about a third of all states ban discrimination based on age in places of public accommodation, and some of those statutes may well ban refusal to sell guns to 18-to-20-year-olds. These laws vary from state to state, so I can’t speak to all of them; but the one I checked — Connecticut (the alphabetically first on the list) — does indeed seem to ban discrimination against 18-to-20-year-olds in retail sales, with no exception for guns.

[4.] Likewise, some cities and counties have similar ordinances (even if their states don’t); two I found, for instance, are Madison, Wisconsin and Broward County, Florida. (I looked them up just because I remembered from other research that they have broad antidiscrimination ordinances.) Seattle, on the other hand, bans age discrimination, but apparently only against people 21 and above, again without regard to whether the store sells guns or anything else.

So the question of whether or not the retailer can impose such an age limitation depends on where you are. 19 states have public accommodation laws which prohibit age-based discrimination in areas of public accommodation. The list is here and as you will see, Oregon is one of those states, so Watson clearly has a path forward. But will he win? As I said, it’s complicated. Doug goes on to explain that simply making a rule creating age limits on purchases isn’t enough to automatically put the stores in the wrong. A court hearing this case will have to decide whether or not they feel that the imposition on the consumer is sufficient to amount to discrimination based on the level of scrutiny applied and the “rational basis” test.

As for the state laws, it largely depends on what level of scrutiny the courts in those states would apply to the policy in question. Generally speaking, discrimination based on race and ethnicity is subjected to the highest level of scrutiny while discrimination based on other factors, such as gender, age, and other criteria are subjected to lower levels of scrutiny. Traditionally, age has been held to be covered by the lowest level of scrutiny, often referred to as the “rational basis” test. What this means is that a policy or law that discriminates based on age generally must past what is known as a “rational basis” review, meaning that it will be considered permissible as long as there is some rational basis for that law or policy.

Doug goes on to offer his own opinion (while admitting any court may disagree with him) that there is indeed a rational basis for preventing someone of a certain age from purchasing a rifle. I think he’s totally off base here since that would mean that the courts would have to accept that all 18-20 year olds in general are too irresponsible to own a rifle. The plaintiff will likely immediately argue that we shouldn’t be allowing them to hunt for small game, participate in skeet shooting, enlist in the military, take jobs as security guards, apply to the Police Academy or do anything else requiring a firearm. But, like Doug, I can’t predict what a court in Oregon will say.

So this one will remain up in the air for the time being. But for those saying that Walmart and Dick’s have already won by default, check your facts. This matter is far from settled.

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Dick’s Sporting Goods, Walmart Face Ageism Lawsuits For Not Selling Guns To People Under 21

A man in Oregon filed lawsuits against Dick’s Sporting Goods and Walmart on Monday after both retailers refused to sell him a rifle because he was not 21 yet.

Tyler Watson, 20, filed suits against both retailers after they refused to sell him a rifle, since both companies increased the age required to purchase long guns from 18 to 21 in the wake of the recent Florida school shootings. The Associated Press reports:

Tyler Watson’s lawsuits filed against the retailers in two separate counties claim he faced age discrimination from Dick’s and Walmart, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. The lawsuit is believed to be the first filed over the new gun policies enacted on Feb. 28.

The lawsuit claims a store owned by Dick’s Sporting Goods in Medford, Oregon, refused to sell Watson .22-caliber Ruger rifle on Feb. 24. The suit says Grants Pass Walmart in Oregon refused to sell him a gun on March 3.

Watson’s attorney, Max Whittington, said that his client “was really just trying to buy a rifle,” hinting that he was not trying to gain publicity from filing the lawsuit.

Watson is reportedly asking for judges to force both retailers “to stop unlawfully discriminating against 18, 19, and 20-year-old customers at all Oregon locations.”

While Dick’s Sporting Goods did not respond to a request for comment concerning the lawsuit, Walmart spokesman Randy Hargrove responded by saying that Walmart intends to fight it.

“We stand behind our decision and plan to defend it,” Hargrove said. “While we haven’t seen the complaint, we will respond as appropriate with the court.”

via Daily Wire

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